So, I’ve got steam wishlist items going into the third grade this year. I can wait.

Gilligan’s Island had a long, healthy life of reruns on over-the-air TV, which was the only affordable option (i.e. free) for my fellow poors up until ~2007

My reading journey mirrors yours. When I entered the professional workforce, I was consistently met with vacant stares when I’d use whatever words I thought perfectly fit whatever I was describing. I came to find that using “big” words like that (examples I can recall: superfluous, inimical, vacuous, cogent, avuncular) made people think I was trying to show I was better than them. I had to pare my verbal vocabulary back to the most basic form so I could do my actual job.

Granted, I was in a “white collar” job surrounded by blue collar folks.

A room temperature can of full sugar soda takes at most 2 hours to chill in a 0 °F freezer. A refrigerated can of full sugar soda takes about 45 minutes to get to just above freezing (the perfect temperature for Dr Pepper consumption).

Diet sodas take about half the time in both scenarios.

This is for 12oz cans.

I’ve got it down to a science.

I beat breath of the wild solely because I was holding out hope that it somehow got good at some point.

The dungeons and boss fights were enjoyable. But there were only 4 of those and the rest of the game was sorely underwhelming.

Tears of the kingdom is the first Zelda game I didn’t care to finish in 30 years. I’ve even beat Zelda 2.

The main thing I remember about this game is that it was financed by the fortune of a former MLB baseball player, independent of any game studio.

The posters username is ironic, given the content.

90s kid here, but in a poor and rural area. I would play in my yard all day and couldn’t leave because it bordered a highway, and the nearest business was 5 miles away. Libraries were special trips. I had no neighbors, and no friends aside from school and church.

I played a fuckload of super Mario and read everything in the house whether I enjoyed it or not. Got halfway through the encyclopedia before we got free dial up Internet through AOL trial CDs and NetZero, but even then time was limited because phone line time was expensive.

I see this repeated all the time and I’m sure there’s some truth to it, but A&W burgers are also disgusting and more expensive than their competitors. So there’s that.

I’ll say what I’ve been saying for 9 years: I’ll believe it when I see it.

Madam Web. The premise of your perception being un-stuck in time and the ramifications that has for your psyche is really cool. What’s not cool is hiring bad writers and nepo baby actresses to portray that story

I can program and I have a mechanical engineering degree but I have super niche skills so I can’t get hired abroad. I always read that there’s a skills shortage in tons of countries but there aren’t any actual jobs to take.

Really? I thought it was ok at best.

I didn’t like SpiritFarer. For how much time it takes, there wasn’t enough game there. There was a lot of waiting, and it gets worse as the stories progress. They stretched a decent story out 4x longer than necessary.

Death road to Canada is pretty solid.

Spelunkey 2 is fantastic, albeit incredibly challenging.

I made a point to play every game in my library a few years ago. Every game got 2 hours at a minimum (unless they didn’t work). Played some real gems like Torment: Tides of Numenera, Tyranny, and World of Goo.

It’s a 17 year old tool in the world’s most popular scripting language. It’s effectively had billions of tests run against it.

Nobody would be able to understand me because English has diverged so far from 12th century English that it’s a different language. Also I’d be in north America where nobody had even seen a white person. Additionally, I’m 20 ft above the ground right now in a building that didn’t exist back then. Finally, I’d be rightfully blamed for bringing plague to the native tribes of the area and likely killed.

Assuming those hurdles were all cleared: I’m a mechanical engineer. So, I’d tell the natives where iron ore, coal, and oil was buried and how to extract and refine it. Tell them how to make gunpowder. Speed run making steam engines and lathes. Get north american natives armed, industrialized, and organized against the external European threat.

It’s actually worth the price. I’m also a patient gamer; this is the only full price game I’ve bought since 2020ish. 120 hours to beat the main campaign once is already worth it. There’s actually substance to the hype around the game. The only full price game I’ll buy in the foreseeable future is Silksong.

I have a tiny 3ft tape measure on my keychain for similar reasons. It’s so handy!