toynbee

“How do you figure?”

Well, according to Steam, the answer is a tool that used to be available to adjust GPU fan speed. At the time I had a video card that wasn’t letting the OS adjust that, or maybe I didn’t have the right driver, I don’t really recall enough details to retroactively troubleshoot it.

But if I didn’t use that even the least demanding game would very swiftly overwhelm the card because it didn’t have any heat mitigation, so any time I played any game I would also open this tool and crank the fans to max so I didn’t have to pay attention to them (I had headphones). It also wasn’t that uncommon for me to forget to close it since it ran in the background once configured. In fact, it looks like I have even more hours in that than I do in EVE Online.

I applaud the effort of catching up with the culture, but those two things seem like a bad idea to catch up on at the same time.

For everything else, there’s Wawa. Or Sheetz.

Fascinating - I believe I’ve heard of the story, but never read it or any summaries of it.

Based on the referenced historian, perhaps I am that traveler, as this was many years before I was born.

But it cannot be, for I would never voluntarily allow it to be capitalized …

Nah, but a few years after I chose this username I was walking around Philadelphia and randomly saw one in the street. Basically no one who’s part of my offline life uses that name so it was weird to encounter unexpectedly.

That the name is referencing the tiles is usually people’s first guess, but I chose this long before I’d heard of them. When the 2001 X-Men movie came out I was looking for a new username. In the movie they just show the character Toad in his villainous role, but in the novelization they cover more of his life, including his secret identity of Mortimer Toynbee. I liked it and adopted it. It’s almost never taken anywhere, either, which is nice.

I didn’t expect to show up in this thread at all, let alone multiple times. It’s nice to know I’ve made an impression!

Wrong!

My two best friends had them. My parents refused to buy anything newer than a Genesis and that was only because it was available cheap and used from where they bought their Christmas trees.

I hope you get to see this one again sometime soon!

Yeah, Ripley used to be kind of a jerk. She’s always been patient with our young kid, though, and has started warming up to me these last few months.

Thank you! I’m on the upswing from the surgery, at least in theory. I’m scheduled to see the surgeon for a follow-up tomorrow and, honestly, if he does nothing but confirm I don’t seem to have an infection, I’ll probably be on my way to feeling fantastic. The surgery was on my spine and I’m still getting accustomed to being able to do things like use stairs without whimpering.

Thanks! All told I have five ladies, human and otherwise, who seem to be collaborating to ensure my comfort and well-being. They’re all doing good jobs and I’m grateful towards each one of them.

You know, that’s a very fair point.

I have a Siamese (well, I think; she looks like one but I don’t know anything about cat genetics).

One thing I think is interesting is that, when she came to us, she looked very much like your picture. The older she got, though, the more the dark coloration from her nose migrated and spread.


Now she looks like this. (Please try to ignore my disheveled hair. A recent surgery has reduced my opportunities to shower.)

edit: My wife likes to describe our pets by their apparent flavor. Ripley, shown above, is s’more flavored. Another cat, a striped one another lemming once described as “standard issue cat,” hasn’t been given a flavor. Instead, because she has one white toe, she “stepped in milk.”

That reminds me of a novel based on the HALO universe. In it, a minor character has the password `ThereOnceWasAGirl`. However, he has to type it twice to start his shift because he accidentally didn’t capitalize a letter, I think the W, when typing it.

I read that as a teenager. I didn’t understand why the author included that detail then and I don’t now.

An erstwhile co-worker used to create passwords by stringing together the names of porn actresses and, I think, adding two random numbers at the end.

Before I started working with them, apparently they almost told the owner of the company this, but were talked down by some other compatriots.

I’m not giving you quantities of numbers

Hiro Protagonist, presumably.

Just make sure you avoid Ice-9.

Mike Bautista.

There are two things.

My first girlfriend tricked me into getting her pregnant. My sister adopted our progeny. He turned eighteen a few months ago. He’d be well within his rights to hate me, but recently he’s been reaching out to me. I’ve been reaching out to him, too, and he’s responded. Every time we talk I want to cry from relief. I’m so happy he doesn’t hate me.

The other is the only dog I’ve ever had whom I chose to put down. She was the best dog I’d ever met but her pancreas had failed. She wasn’t eating and she was peeing blood, but what right did I have to decide her life was over? I hope I spared her some suffering.

Recently my nephew talked to me about my ex-dog. My goodness were there some emotions that night.

edit: Grammar.

Those are wonderful! Thank you for sharing.