Will

I’ve been charged for it! Woohoo! Very happy I’ll be there on the first day.

No confirmation for me yet but my order page has updated so I can’t change anything on the order anymore - getting hopeful it’s coming day one!

Good to hear you guys are getting confirmations for launch day delivery. Hopefully Amazon Singapore does the same tomorrow.

Here’s a sample of the smart lights for our tree. They’re these Twinkly Lights if anyone wants some.

It was a calculated error to make sure I had an additional excuse to post in here. Daytime pic below: Once it gets dark I’ll try to show how the smart lights work.

Today we put up our tree and set up the train set. I’m very ready for Christmas this year but it’s going to be a bit of a weird one. We’d been planning to go back to the UK but have now cancelled this. I’m pretty upset by that but we’ll make the most of Christmas here and then travel back whenever we can next year. At least it will be cheaper I guess. As a new addition to the tree I bought some smart tree lights this year - they’re great! Various different designs to pick from and they work really well to make the tree something a bit special - I thoroughly recommend them. So what have you all got planned? Are your Christmas lists ready yet?

F1 2020 Predictions Game Round 14 Results Lewis Hamilton, World Champion. Maximum points for this race were: Pole - Stroll (10) Fastest Lap - Norris (10) 1st - Hamilton (25 + 5) 2nd - Perez (18 + 5) 3rd - Vettel (15 + 5) 4th - Leclerc (12 + 5) 5th - Sainz (10 + 5) The results for this round: @BowserBasher - 35 @Will - 30 And the overall standings (previous total in brackets): @Will - 709 (679) @BowserBasher - 596 (561) @Mandalore - 241 (241) @Nicktendo - 191 (191) @bob - 155 (155) @Goron_3 - 113 (113) Bahrain Grand Prix Predictions: Pole - Hamilton FL - Hamilton 1st - Hamilton 2nd - Bottas 3rd - Stroll 4th - Ricciardo 5th - Perez

Right?! The 5 was by far my favourite iPhone and I’m so glad we now have something similar to it - really happy with this one so far. Both of these have been on my want list for a while, but never seem to find anything I really think is a good buy.

iPhone 12 Mini

New phone day:

Well I learnt something today! Had no idea there was a name for those but it does totally make sense they’d be called that. Can see how it would be a nice little business. I imagine you could make quite a good YouTube channel explaining various things with that. I bet it already exists.

Mine is out for delivery. Had to have it sent to my parents place so probably won’t get it in my hands until Christmas. Will be a nice present from me to me.

Maybe this is totally obvious but... what’s a whiteboard video? I think a lot of people think of furlough as being a nice holiday on close to your normal pay and everything going back to normal as soon as it’s over. Unfortunately the reality is often much bleaker, especially for the smaller companies out there. Hope it all pulls together for the company and they can find a way to get things working properly again. I totally understand how you feel with not seeing family. We’ve not seen ours on either side since July last year and since we had the baby they’ve all missed out on some really nice things due to the ongoing difficulties with travel. We’ve also scrapped our Christmas plans which I’m pretty upset about, but we’re at least hoping we’ll be able to get over to Japan for new year and see that side. The restrictions really do suck. Really hope it does work out. Even if not we should get to the point where testing improves and processes are put in place to open more things up safely. Certainly in Asia we’re getting to a place where you can do pretty much everything, just with increased regulations to follow. There’s still a long way to go but it does kind of feel like we have an end in sight.

Love those family portraits, @Eenuh! I’d definitely like one too if you have time in your schedule.

It’s a lot more than the vast majority of companies are doing. I’ve had many discussions around doing similar things that for $$$ reasons always go a certain way and EA could have opted to do the same thing. Totally. I think this kind of has to be taken up by governments to actually recognize the problem for what it is before much will be done. Some countries are starting to realize it’s a bigger issue but still far too many are not. I believe in the UK there was a Lords review of some sort that said loot boxes should be considered gambling and legislated as such quite recently. Hopefully that goes somewhere and it helps to move things forward. The difficulty with this is at some point you need people to self-identify what is a problem for them. If someone earning $1k a month is spending $1k a month then there is an issue, but how would the store know that about them? It’s very difficult to identify where the line is but I do agree there needs to be more tools available to those who need them. Things will get better, but it will probably take a long time.

Very jealous of you guys enjoying the new console, and the impressions sound great. How do the load times of stuff not held in memory compare to the quick resume?

Finally finished listening to the 50th episode and really enjoyed it. The interviews were a great addition and really enjoyable to get some more perspectives on things. I even listened to my own and didn't completely hate it! Would be great to have more of those in the future. Quiz was also good, don't think I would have done very well on it at all. I should have researched my own history a bit better, I realized that some of what I said was not completely accurate as I managed to get dates and times muddled up - you'll have to let me off, it was 13 years ago! Looking forward to the next 50 episodes!

Oh that’s great news! I was expecting a long wait for GT7.

That's good, I wasn't allowed in for the birth which I was pretty upset about. I remember that well! Had absolutely no idea what we were doing but you quickly get the hang of it, in a few weeks it will all feel totally natural.

This was really great, totally nuts song but brings back very happy memories.

Not surprised at all that they’ve finally gotten rid of this business. It’s been losing money for years and was only kept around in the hope that they’d be able to convert them into casinos under law changes in Japan. They do have some decent locations but the buildings are all in a pretty crappy state, hopefully the new owners can figure out how to make money with them. It makes sense that they would keep the branding, and with SEGA continuing to have a minority in the company I’m surprised people thought they would get rid of it.

But not all stores will have it across the entire region, it’s about the right timing to start seeing it roll in. It really does. I can’t wait to get my hands on one and try it out for myself, probably the best thing about the new console I think.

Can't quite believe the direction this is going in. I thought Biden would ultimately have a fairly comfortable win after quite a tight race throughout the night. I tuned in this morning (just as polls were closing on the east coast) and Sky were predicting a dead heat. Checked the BBC and they were predicting a fairly easy Trump win. What?! Either way we're heading to disaster. If Trump wins, more Trump. But if he loses, he's already putting in place the platform for an uprising with his insane supporters. I'm very glad I'm not in the US anymore.

Yeah it was very common in the UK too, at least where I’m from back when I was growing up. It being common there doesn’t really excuse it’s use, especially in his position. Yeah I think Lewis had it won already, but the VSC certainly took away any chance of a bit of excitement for the lead. I’m quite amazed that all these late European races didn’t result in anything a bit more interesting, thought we’d at least get one proper wet race this year.

F1 2020 Predictions Game Round 13 Results Mercedes win the constructors championship. Maximum points for this race were: Pole - Bottas (10) Fastest Lap - Hamilton (10) 1st - Hamilton (25 + 5) 2nd - Bottas (18 + 5) 3rd - Ricciardo (15 + 5) 4th - Kvyat (12 + 5) 5th - Leclerc (10 + 5) The results for this round: @BowserBasher - 83 @Will - 78 @Nicktendo - 30 And the overall standings (previous total in brackets): @Will - 679 (601) @BowserBasher - 561 (478) @Mandalore - 241 (241) @Nicktendo - 191 (161) @bob - 155 (155) @Goron_3 - 113 (113) Turkish Grand Prix Predictions: Pole - Bottas FL - Hamilton 1st - Hamilton 2nd - Verstappen 3rd - Bottas 4th - Ricciardo 5th - Stroll