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Mr_Odwin

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Posts posted by Mr_Odwin


  1. 9 hours ago, Happenstance said:

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    I tried making the switch over to iPhone earlier this year and found it fine but in the end I really did find myself missing Android and especially foldables. I was originally going to look at getting the Samsung Z Fold 5, an upgrade from my old Z Fold 3 until I saw a review of the new OnePlus Open and I was really impressed so decided to try it out as it was in the Black Friday sale.

    I'm full on envious of that. I'm itching to get a foldable, but I've been on Chinese phones for so many years paying out max of about £400-£500 per phone that a foldable just feels like too much of an expense.


  2. On 22/08/2022 at 3:00 PM, bob said:

    You've specifically mentioned the 2 (generally agreed upon) worst films there are, which doesn't help your argument. I love the MCU films, but i've not seen Thor 2 since I saw it at the cinema when it came out.

     

    Personally I am suffering from fatigue, but mostly from the TV shows rather than the films. I still enjoy going out to the cinema to see the films a few times a year, even if the quality of some of the Phase 4 films has been a bit lower. I'm still looking forward to the new ones though.

     

    The TV shows however, haven't really lived up to their hype. I thought Loki and Wandavision were good, but the rest have been downhill from there. They all seem like filler just to have more content about certain characters, without any good storyline in place. I've always been a bit reticent about having shows that you needed to watch in order to enjoy the overarching plot though. I think main plot points should stick to the films, and the TV shows should be self-contained (albeit with cameos and references). 

    They need to slow it down with the releases though as well, I feel like we only just finished Ms Marvel, and there's another one?! 

    I think it's just so that people keep up their disney plus subscriptions. I only buy it when there's a series that I want to see but it seems like with Marvel and Star Wars I've been subbed for the last 6-8 months straight, and I really didn't mean/want to be. (I cancel it recurring as soon as I've renewed it.)


  3. 22 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

    The issue with Phase 4 is that a lot of it doesn't seem to knit together, at least not yet. With the Phase 1 you knew they were setting up to a big team up in Avengers and then the next few years was getting the stones and prepping for Thanos. So far, Phase 4 hasn't really done any of this, outside of the Loki series mentioning Kang.

    I think the TV shows have done more damage than good because people are having to watch a lot of content now just to keep up with things. A few at work didn't realise that they needed to watch Wanadavision before Multiverse of Madness and I imagine lots of people will be lost when The Marvels arrives but haven't watched Ms Marvel. 

    I'll continue to keep track of things but I can see why so many have dropped off during this phase. I know a few of my mates were happy enough to leave it at Endgame and will jump back in once the X-Men arrive. People really want the mutants to arrive in the MCU, myself included.

    It's all about the multiverse isn't it? Like that's the consistent theme through everything at the moment. Spiderman, Dr Strange, Loki, What If, Ms Marvel .... all giving us knowledge about the multiverse.


  4. I did a bit of MatLab at uni, dabbled in VB.NET around that time (if you google "FAVC DVD" I wrote that!), but for the last 16 years I've been using a stats package at work called Stata that uses a simple scripting language you can write "programs" in that Stata can interpret. I found transitioning from one package to another okay back then but now my brain is old and brittle so I'd probably struggle. In stats the popular software packages are SAS (big industry - rubbish syntax), R (opensource, supported in academia, not very intuitive language) and Python (hot in data science, but I've not used it).

    The "color" thing is pretty prevalent for me as I'm always having to change colours in charts/figures.


  5. Which Children's hospital are you with? My son has an issue that means he has regular surgery and he's with Manchester Children's hospital. They are amazing and a slick machine.

     

    Good luck, hope it all goes well.


  6. On 21/06/2022 at 2:11 PM, bob said:

    Second episode of Ms Marvel was better than the first, but it's still a bit awkward and cheesy. It feels like watching Clarissa Explains It All, or Tracey Beaker, especially when Kamala is flirting with Kamran. I kept expecting her to do a turn to camera and put her fist in her mouth.

    Finished Ms Marvel last night and overall I think it was terrible. Worst marvel TV series easily. I'm not wordy enough to say why in a convincing way, but it was just bad. Wife thought it was okay, if that means anything.

    • Like 1

  7. On 14/05/2022 at 10:26 AM, Glen-i said:

    Well duh, don't wanna distract from my birthday, do we?

    It's kinda mad that out of the small active member base here, 2 of them actually share the same birthday!

    Remember, @bob I'm always precisely three years younger then you.

    There's a proof in maths/statistics that shows the probability of any two people in a group sharing a birthday reaches 0.5, or 1/2, when there are just 23 members of the group. Feels nutty when you first hear it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem
     

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

  8. We had new staff photos taken at work and the photographer, who made everyone else look great, has made my forehead even bigger than it is in real life. Very disappointing.
    Or maybe I have a distorted sense of my own fivehead.

    rfgtZTa.jpg

    • Like 2
    • Haha 1

  9. The LCD screen on our thermostat just died over time. I did this weird thing (following a youtube tutorial!) where I dismantled it and heated it over the toaster, which revived it for a few months, but it's died again and the toaster method borked it more. Bought a smart thermostat and it's all set up to be controlled with an app or the google minis around the house.

    oD1kqqN.png


  10. 1 minute ago, Ashley said:

    Well yes that's because you're old. 

    Finally watched Luca over the weekend and as expected it just made my want to be in Italy. 

    As we get older, the proportional difference between our ages tends to 0. :-D 


  11. On 12/10/2021 at 5:40 PM, Will said:

    I stand almost all the time while I’m at home. I’d like to get something I can kneel on (I often do this as a bit of a break with my chair) and we have some balancing stools in the office which are quite nice.

    My favourite chair of all time was the Patrick chair from IKEA:

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    Not sure why, but it just really suited the way I sat and I felt super comfy in it - I wish I could still get hold of one.

    Currently looking into getting mine reupholstered, because all the pandemic WFH has not been kind to it.

     

    kILzO0Y.jpg


  12. Not quite as useful these days as it used to be, but I always have a USB thumb drive on my keyring.

    And my second suggestion might not be techy enough, but I often have a philips head screwdriver and two Allen keys with me (the two sizes I have seem to fit nearly everything).


  13. On 04/08/2021 at 6:47 PM, Raining_again said:

    Jesus, odders, thats crazy. 

    If you denounced your faith outwardly would it mean leaving your family? (i've heard things about Mormon faith being intense but I dont want to assume). 

    Nah, it's not quite to that extent, but it's just a kinda gulf mentally.


  14. 22 hours ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

    Unsure if I am in a rut or not, which I suppose by definition would say I am...? 

    Jobwise I'm comfortable knowing that I *have* a job, but knowing that when my former-colleague-who-left-then-came-back-as-agency-and-got-old-job-back, she was told that they hadn't filled in all the vacancies put out by our seniors so "we", meaning "you", would have more work to pick up whilst they "sort it out", which means I'm going to be pumping the breaks on stuff I'm doing, because I'm already doing the majority of an agency colleague's load because he's too damn slow (I've been coming in on weekends so keep everything level), which I've tried to sort out over the past few months, but eventually told my service manager that someone should take over his work sooner rather than later because I couldn't take anymore of this, the response was "your deputy service manager is on leave this week, I'll have a meeting with when he gets back". I asked what should I do in the interim, but was ignored, so guessing her response was just to keep doing all the extra work.

     

    Family, thinks going ok with the missus and the kitties. Too many projects I want to do in the house, get the bathroom to have a bath in it... either turn the conservatory into a more modern one - currently has a wooden frame which is falling apart - or just turn it into a single story extension. I've conversed with my building contacts, and turning it into an extension is the cheaper option, and I think would open up the "dining area" instead of there being a bottleneck where the sliding doors into the conservatory are, which mainly stores our books/boardgames etc, it's too small to have as a relaxing room per sé. Garden is a mess, but that's her domain, so no doubt I'll have to end up doing it when the whining reaches critical mass.

    Although got told my brother got crashed his van and got arrested last night, so that's a super start to the weekend. Suspicions are high on the drink side of things (he had two pints with myself in the pub beforehand), but I suspect other... concoctions... may have had an impact also. Probably going to get banned from driving again, which may have fucked up his holiday plans in a couple of weeks when we all go to Cornwall for our Mum's wedding (I'm giving her away - awww)

     

    And SOOOOO many Warhammer models to paint, I've been taking some into work to do during breaks. Which is nice as Games Workshop/other places are opening up so can get some games in.

     

    Whoa, how much did he send over/over how long?

    "Just" a few grand over a couple of months.


  15. On 24/07/2021 at 3:17 PM, martinist said:

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    And here is the rest of it. Had to fight with my bank to put the payment through. £1360 total plus the motherboard it's £1500 ish

    You managed to get a GPU from somewhere? Crazy times for graphics cards. It's almost okay if you're upgrading because your old card will also sell for more than it's worth. I was subscribed to all sorts of stock notification places and managed to grab a 3070 at the start of the year.


  16. On 09/06/2021 at 11:12 AM, MindFreak said:

    Finished Mare of Easttown this Monday. It was a good show with a lot of character and depth. It might not be as good as everyone's saying it is but I enjoyed it very much nonetheless.

    We needed something lighter and shorter again now, so started watching Cobra Kai yesterday. Two episodes in. I haven't watched the Karate Kid-movies since I was a child but I do remember some bits about it - but not much about the second and third movies. My wife has never seen any of them but she got spoiled a lot in the opening scenes of Cobra Kai. Anyway, looking forward to progressing it.

    I also want to watch Shadow and Bone now. 

    It's good to finally have some more time in the evenings now that the children are sleeping better again. The past couple of months have been rough.

    Did you persist with Cobra Kai? I thought the first couple episodes were weak, but it got so much better. Wife and I blitzed it in a couple of weeks. Lots of nostalgia if you liked the movies, and it's great TV if you're willing to dismiss that thought in the back of your head about how unbelievable all the karate fighting really is.


  17. Dragging this back up from the depths of page 2.

    Professionally? I like my job most days. The work can be interesting and varied. Most of the time that I come across something new that I don't know about I can figure it out. (My most work related recent google history was: "sample size negative binomial regression stata" and that turned out to be fine.) I'm pretty fairly compensated for what I do. Now that my wife is working, in an admin role at the local school, it feels like we're kinda raking it in. I know in the future kids will probably head to uni and that might be a hit. I'm trying to convince them to go to Manchester though - train tickets are cheaper than flats. :grin:

    Personally, my immediate family is great. There are two things making that worse. First, my boy has a huge health issue where his throat closes up over time (scarring from excess stomach acid) and he has to have an op, under general, to stretch it open every few months. The day of each op is just a worry from the start to when he comes out of the op. Second, there's an underlying tension because I'm not really mormon anymore in my heart (though I'm not fully out so keep it on the DL), and that causes differences in opinion between me and my wife. It's kinda a full-on religion so ...

    My not so immediate family is a bit of a disaster on my side because my dad got catfished two years ago and left his wife (my mother) of 40+ years to go live with a younger woman in America (that he'd been sending money to). Of course she didn't really exist, but the family is broken now, and that has just been awkward ever since. He was literally at the easy bit of life - state pension, private pension, just chilling out with my mum. But he threw it away, and now lives in a caravan park/little flat depending on whether or not he can rent out his caravan.


  18. On 23/04/2021 at 8:26 PM, bob said:

    This happens to be all the time. It's so annoying.

    Also, photos on Facebook still don't show up correctly on Chrome for Android. It's been an issue for literally years, but they don't give a shit because they want people to download the app.

    Isn't messenger also disabled on the mobile version of facebook? Or do you use the desktop version setting? I'm not sure I could be bothered with that to use facebook.


  19. On 03/02/2021 at 12:44 PM, Happenstance said:

    Ooof. You ever go into a meeting and realise immediately that you are in over your head? :laughing:

    I may still be able to do the job and may still get asked but it was obvious immediately that my working knowledge of databases and how I use our current school's one is tiny in comparison to this other bigger school and the amount of coding I'd need to know.

    My problem is that apart from my A levels from college a lot of my IT knowledge is just self taught. We'll see though. Hopefully it's not nearly as complicated as they were making it out to be and I actually do know what I'm doing, even if I just do it a different way.

    Hopefully just case of something like imposter syndrome - where you feel like someone in your position should know more than you do. I think it turns out that a lot of people are winging it in a lot jobs.

    • Like 2

  20. Watched Normal People on BBC iPlayer. It's great. Story about a couple that drift in and out of each other's lives over the course of a few years. Deals with some meaty issues - depression/anxiety, social pressures, abuse, break ups ...

    Which makes it sound sad, but it's uplifting overall, or at least bittersweet.

     

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