Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@HobbitGamer - Glad to year you’re in a position to lend a hand as opposed to needing a lending hand. I’d probably lose some ash trees in wind like that.

Yep, us farmland folks already have chainsaws gassed and winches fastened to half our vehicles, ready to help them city slickers 😁.
Georgia Power uses our fairgrounds as a staging area for these things and they’re packed in. We’ve also got a large National Guard armory, and they were packing up generators and comms equipment Friday. Add the Army base in Hinesville and the Air Force Base and Army depot in Savannah, and disaster response is pretty well executed around here.

Oh man, all of that has been a secret so long!! No girl version of Zelda, tho!

@HobbitGamer Ah, good to hear. Meanwhile, in a news item I saw today, I've learned that we've got other American things to mourn as well, because the very last Blockbuster video/DVD rental store (located in Oregon) is in danger of being closed down. Yet another institution about to fall into obscurity...

The owner and some of the customers (still well over 5000!) were interviewed, and what it mostly came down to, is people not wanting to take subscriptions for 10 different streaming services to be able to see those things that they want to see, there not being a decent enough internet bandwidth in their area and also a bit of youthful sentiment.

Here's hoping they can keep it running for quite some time to come, otherwise those 5000+ customers will either be forced to pay a hell of a lot more for their choice of movies/series, or they'll have no alternative at all, if they live in an area where the internet basically sucks...

@ThanosReXXX Yup, the Blockbuster in my rural town that I moved from Charleston to come take over closed almost six years ago. People loved the service and being able to ask what I’d suggest (since I saw them and remembered them and their preferences). Only the franchises were left. But there were a lot of problems near the final two years of corporate stores, and Dish bought them in the hopes they could assimilate a potential customer base. Meh.

There’s a Family Video about a half mile south of my place nestled in a methy little strip mall with a Little Caesar’s, a discount tobacco, and several vacant storefronts. I have a large sum of money riding on a vape shop as the next store to move in. It’s always hopping there, day or night, but the parking lot is stacked deep in the weekends. I stream.

@ThanosReXXX - I’ve been to Bend, OR several times, and I know right where that Blockbuster sits. This was years ago, and even then, seeing it was slightly nostalgic. Bend is the exact sort of town that would still support the very last Blockbuster. The store manager probably has sidewalk grill parties out front on the weekends.

@bimmy-lee Awww, I did sidewalk grills too 😭
@RedderRugfish Yeppers. In fact, the last few years, Disney and a few others would no longer sign supply contacts with Blockbuster because those studios wanted more profit share. Which meant stores had to go and purchase multiple copies on release morning from retail stores at full price causing evening more of a revenue per unit issue. It also kinda defeated the idea because the studios and their suppliers got inflated “customer” sell through numbers, and actual customers wanting to buy movies from the retailers were impacted. It was also a logistic nightmare. The biggest mistake BB made was buying itself out from Viacom’s control.

@HobbitGamer Yeah, corporate takeovers. Meh, indeed...

@bimmy-lee Yup, it was in Bend. Forgot to mention that. Then again: there's only one Blockbuster in Oregon, so it couldn't be mistaken for another one...

And I certainly believe that the owner would love a couple of sidewalk grill parties a month. Or maybe even a couple a week, judging from her size...

Funny thing I forgot to mention is that people also simply come in there to buy the T-Shirts, as memorabilia of a more customer-friendly age, and a time where things were just simpler and cheaper.

It's so American to travel to another state just to do something like that. I couldn't even imagine going to another province over here, just to visit some store or get some memorabilia. I'd probably just find out if they have a web shop...

EDIT:

Found a great video about the Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon, made by The Verge. It explains the need for the store and the way they work and manage it in exquisite detail. It's a short and interesting watch:

Speaking about outfits...

@Anti-Matter Wrong. We were not speaking of outfits, and certainly not of the cartoony kind. By now, you must surely be the king of derailing topics. Or at the very least of ripping things out of context in the wrong way...

@HobbitGamer 20-30mph gusts? That's even in the forecast? Here they forecast 30-40mph gusts as "pleasant - breezy" as a nice October day. (Not even joking.) 15 years ago they called it windy. Now its' "breezy" as the limbs come falling on your head.

@ThanosReXXX "and a time where things were just simpler"

I love how "more complicated, more problematic" is somehow sold as "better".

"It's so American to travel to another state just to do something like that. I couldn't even imagine going to another province over here, just to visit some store or get some memorabilia. I'd probably just find out if they have a web shop..."

I envy your "local everything." Here something in the next state is what you're told IS local. I mean the shortest trip you can expect to buy anything is about 20-30 minutes each way. Heck with how traffic has changed it can take 10+ minutes, each way, just to get off/on my own street, making a trip to the food store, literally on the opposite corner, a 20 minute trip. Heaven forbid they didn't bag something and you have to go back...that's a 40 minute trip to buy food, and I can see the store's sign from home.

The nearest Walmart is 168km away from my home.

@StableInvadeel And I bet it takes less time to get there.

I don't know the distance. But the nearest Walmart is about 45-50min away. In the most hideous nightmare parking lot torture ever designed to the point that I refuse to go there. Ever. Period. It went out of its way to recreate all the problems of urban parking, without any of the perks of the real urban environment.

Does that mean that you agree, or what? I'm not quite certain, and I'm not even kidding.

Well, local is relative. Even in such a small country as this, you could still be traveling for well over 3.5 hours, depending on where you'd need to go. Of course that's nothing compared to having to drive from the West Coast to the other side of the States, or from the South to up North, but for such a small country as the Netherlands it's still a considerable amount of time, and in that case I truly do prefer web shops or whatever.

On a side note: even in Amsterdam itself, it takes me 20 minutes to get to the city (I live in the second ring (or canal belt, as they're called over here) surrounding the city. There's four in total, so I'm located halfway there), so that's not much different from your situation. And because the city is so car-unfriendly, I usually have to take public transport, so waiting times could easily add 10 minutes or more to that.

Of course, I do have the local supermarket around the corner, so the most necessary things are available to me, but not everything, so every once in a while, I do have to suffer public transport. And my regular game shop is also located in the center of the city, so that's another reason for going there.

But to stick to the actual topic: this isn't about actual shopping, or getting things you really need. It's about people traveling across states to visit a video rental store, just for a movie or even just for sentimental feelings and a T-shirt. That's just many, many steps too far for me.

@NEStalgia When the wind doesn’t really get above 10mph that often, and there’s pines and pecan trees for miles, you’d better believe it’s in the forecast here. 30 will pull pines out of the sandy soil here. And we’re mostly flatland.

Dang it!
I have fallen asleep again on my bed.
It's 12.40 am here.
I have some bad mood lately.
I felt like i didn't want to do anything after working time at school.
My Calendar 2020 projects still got pending due to my bad mood.
It's already September but i haven't work with my Chibi characters on my PC.
I still have some conflicts in my mind about the concept of my Calendar 2020 that i will use.
I'm so frustrated.....

Wouldn’t you want to be asleep in your bed at midnight during a work week, tho?

@NEStalgia about two hours by car

@HobbitGamer
When i got bad mood, i tend to lay on my bed and oftenly got fallen asleep.
I have wasted my precious hours to prepare my drawing concepts for my Calendar 2020 project.
It always like Home Alone Rush situation over and over again.

Btw, in my mind i want 2 version Calendars like Pokemon style but considering the time and days are not really enough to be finished before 28 December 2019, do you think i should change my plan and think about simpler concept ?

@Anti-Matter As long as Joe Pesci isn't trying to rob your place, you'll be okay!
I'd recommend just sticking to one version that way you have more time to do it the way you'll be happy with. You can plan for a 2 version style for 2021!