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Comment Re:Stationary bikes (Score 1) 304

That's not too bad if you don't have an electrical power grid handy.

What if you don't have a pedal generator handy either?

Why would I lug such a thing around when I could lug a large solar panel for about the same effort and not have to pedal it? I think I'd rather use my feet to move my body and lift things rather than make electricity.

If I had a pedal generator up at my cabin, I would immediately look at making a waterwheel for it.

Comment Re:Question In Headline (Score 1) 153

I'd take any of the cheap OSR stuff over 5E. It has the same feel, but way more material for it. Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, Beyond the Wall (my favorite), and many others with varying degrees of compatibility. The quality of materials in the 5E starter kit was a big disappointment, the price was nice and low because there were sections of the manual they didn't bother printing out and offered for free on the website instead. "Free" meaning not really all that free in this case because the PDFs are useless without the beginner box and I had to pay money for the beginner box. Even though it was very inexpensive, I think I would have paid $10 more to have another $1 of materials added to the box.

My main group does Pathfinder, but they have dumped the battle maps and we use a quickly sketched notepad and jellybeans. (yes, you get to eat the jellybean if you kill something). Everything is solved by the DM ruling on issues that arise from our loose game style. I don't know if you can call that an OSR style or not, I seem to recall a lot of original D&D gamers doing graph paper maps back in the day.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good hex crawl. I just don't want to move my character around a chess board every time its my turn. I don't even want to have well defined turns, I want to take actions whenever it makes sense for me to take an action. (ie, when it is necessary or dramatic to do so)

Comment As a software engineer (Score 1) 681

I understand that my profession isn't the pinnacle of human knowledge, and there is a world outside of my text editor. One can be very successful in this industry without having a scientific background or scientific understanding. But there are a few sectors of the industry where the scientific method is a fundamental part of the job. While he dismissed a large group of people in a single broad statement, he's still mostly right.

Comment Re: Oomph. (Score 1) 70

If the software on my laptop does what I need it to do today, then why can't it continue to operate for 6 years? (I have a desktop for gaming, because laptops usually kind of suck for gaming. But I'm not really that into gaming)

My laptop (Acer 1410) is a little over 5 years old now, I use it every day. I tried to replace it once but I was unhappy with the replacement. My little laptop is now on it's third charger, I keep replacing parts that wear out or break. Now I believe the only reason for me to replace it is if it breaks or it is lost. I can do software development on it, I can use SSH and Git. Videos play fine on it (youtube, amazon, netflix, crunchyroll). I did my taxes on it this year. I can't imagine what else it might need.

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