Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@TheFrenchiestFry Thanks for the recommendations - I've actually been thinking about getting a PS5 somewhere down the line. I just finished my P4G download, too

Today, I finished the first season of High School DxD. I LOVED IT!

The last two episodes actually DROVE ME TO TEARS.

Huh. There's something weird with Amazon and Assassin's Creed games.

Remember my problem with the Rebel Collection? Well, I also bought AC III, to give both games to my brother has his Christmas gift, since he likes AC much more than me. The other game was still on discount, so I completed the collection for him! So... Cool! Right?

Well, I noticed the order had a warning symbol, which is not unusual, however when I checked the order itself, it said the package was being returned to the seller, and I would get a refund for it.

So. I would get a refund, for the discounted price, and would need to order again... At full price.

I was having none of that. So I put on my Karen wig again and contacted them. They decided to replace my order. I'm not sure if I'll still get the refund from the original order but eh.

Anyway, that's just bizarre how both games ended up requiring replacements.

I had an excellent Magmar Community Day in Pokemon Go. I caught seven shinies total; most were randos while walking around, but 1-2 were from the incense I was running. I landed one at home right before the spawns stopped in my time zone. Most of them were bad stat-wise, but I did manage to land a 13/15/15. Planning on evolving and increasing its CP for raiding.

In other news, I've stayed away from the timesink that is WoW for many years, but all the Shadowlands hype is giving me that old itch....Must...resist....

@Eel What does this Karen wig look like, and where can I procure one? =3 Maybe you should steer clear of ordering Assassin's Creed games for awhile? Seems like an odd streak of bad luck.

@Heavyarms55 I rarely if ever release any shinies I obtain in the main games. Same with Pokemon Go, unless I end up with a ton of C-day shinies; I keep a few around for trading, but past a certain point I need to get rid of a few for storage space. Gonna need to increase that again soon.

Out of curiosity and in condensed form, what do you prefer about the Japanese school system? I realize at least most public school systems in the US aren't great. Pretty sure I don't need to get in why and who's all at a disadvantage there when compared to private schools.

I held off a bit from getting a Switch. Mainly due to budget and backlog reasons. It was my Christmas gift to myself last year; I ordered it around now as Walmart was running a decent pre-BF deal where you could secure a V2 system and one of a few select lesser-name games (I chose Spyro Reignited Trilogy) for about $270. Didn't officially crack it open (besides a brief check that it shipped with all components and wasn't damaged) until just after Christmas. A few small issues aside, it's probably one of my favorite consoles ever. Now I just need a pro controller. XD

Not gonna get too political with guns either, but here's my bit: I'm not a fan of them either. I grew up around them - my father owns a couple of rifles - and we had it drilled into our minds early that they weren't toys. They were kept in a building outside the house under lock & key. They were mainly used to dispose of wildlife that would get after livestock or any pets (Cute as they are, raccoons don't mix well with cats....). I understand the practical and recreational uses of them, but at the end of the day they're weapons that, like many other dangerous objects out there, are both used properly and abused; the main difference between a gun and many other items on the weapon spectrum is how quickly they can be lethal. They're highly regulated in my state, but not so much in the surrounding ones.

Family gatherings have been painful for years. I've always been a bit of an introvert and as a kid would sneak off to play my Game Boy or read somewhere after eating, but past a certain age some of the older relatives, mainly on dad's side, thought I should be more "social". I had to "stop" those behaviors; I think some of them had the wrong impression off of some of an aunt's kids as they'd keep their noses in electronic devices nearly the whole time. Mom's side is a little more laid back about that kind of thing, but nobody really games or shares a lot of my interests there either. Too, I have very few cousins around my age; with the exception of a step-cousin I don't see often, my interests diverged from the others years ago. We still get along well for the most part. Just don't mention a couple of taboo topics on mom's side, and sections of dad's side are fraught with drama....It's almost like a soap opera at times, except everyone hasn't married everyone else ten times.

To be fair, the groups breaking off for Turkey Day sort of do their own group gatherings anyway as their families are growing; 2020 aside, we normally would still have a very large family gathering since my grandma is still around; I suspect this year is a test run for the Turkey Day after she passes. Grandma has slowed down physically and barely leaves the house anymore, but she's still in decent physical health. We're hoping to keep it that way.

Favorite Turkey Day food? Besides dark meat turkey, I also like stuffing, some sweet potato casserole a cousin normally brings (gonna miss that this year), and pecan pie. I now know who to forward pumpkin pie to! I'm not very fond of pumpkin in general.

I stopped after 5 shinnies, that's 2 for go, 2 for home, and 1 for let's go! None of them were great, but I did get a few with decent stats, and one regular magmar with good stats to keep as a battler.
Yeah, these two last CDs were pleasant and easy.

Something like this:

That wig reminds me to Estefania from telenovela Carita de Angel.

@Tyranexx Congrats on the shinys in Go. I only played a little since I actually hatched a shiny Magby a few months back. But I did grab one more shiny so I have a spare I can send into Home and the main games.

As for the schools, there's a lot of things. But I want to start off by mentioning that I strongly dislike private schools. Private schools are, very often, profit based and worse, can often provide an imbalanced advantage to children of wealthier families. Privatized education is not the solution.
But to start with, American schools are vastly imbalanced. Not only is it left to the states, resulting in at the very least 50 different sets of standards, but going down even to the local levels you have schools funded by their towns. This means low income towns have painfully underfunded schools, providing an inferior education to the students and perpetuating the cycle of poverty. On top of that, many school districts in America suffer from the absurd idea that if a school is underperforming, then the solution is to cut funding and resources. To take away after school activities, clubs, libraries, etc etc. To give an example from my own childhood, my high school had to purchase a new balance beam scale for their science department. Not a set for a class, just one. It cost the entire budget for the science department in that school that year. The funding was low because the average science grades were low. Further more lack of funding leads to schools with painfully thin staffs. 1 teacher in a room with 35-40 children is absolutely absurd. Everything above I just described is not the case in Japan. Japanese schools have national standards to provide equal opportunity to all children through jr. high school. Schools are funded based on the number of students they have, not test scores. Great effort is put in to ensure all kids have a comparatively equal level of opportunity in elementary and jr. high school. Only once entering high school do things changes and much of the responsibility shifts onto the students shoulders to pass rigorous entrance exams to get into better high schools. And I want to point out that, even in relatively poor towns, there's always, at least, 1 teacher and 1-3 other staff members in the immediate area to help with the children, and generally class sizes are smaller unless special circumstances force it to be otherwise.

Moving on from just money and resources, Japanese schools provide a much more rounded education. Where American schools focus heavily on core subjects like language, math, science and social studies, Japanese school do that for essentially all subjects. There is a comparable amount of effort put into art, music, shop class, and after school activities such as sport and art clubs. Students in Japanese schools are all taught a variety of practical skills as well. Things like cooking and cleaning and general household chores. The children, under adult supervision are responsible for daily cleaning of their own classrooms and hallways to teach them to better take care of their things. Leadership is taught by actually having the students be responsible for some of their younger schoolmates in clubs and student councils.

The Japanese system is far from perfect though. It suffers from an abundance of standardized testing. And teachers and staff often work absurd hours without overtime pay. Homeroom teachers are essentially treated as the third parent for their kids. You have mom, dad, and teacher. Only the teacher has a lot more kids to worry about. And the system is extremely time consuming. School is life for the kids. Class might start at 7:50 and end at 2:30, but the kids will often be at the school from 7:45 until 4-6pm. Then they go home for homework.

Overall though, looking at the two systems, I consider the Japanese system far better. While I can list off many faults for it, I see far more advantages over the US system. On the other hand, about the only thing I think the US system does better, on average, is to allow children more free time.

Anyway, if you don't want your pumpkin pie, I will gladly take it off your hands!

Also wow, you got a Switch and a game for only 270? That was a darn good deal!

Yeah, i have finished Evoland 1 PS4 just now !
It was very short adventure with Zeldaish, FF VII ish, FF VIII ish, Dragon Quest, Bomberman parody on it. 😆
Well, i still haven't finished Evoland 2 PS4.
Still long way to go.

Had an odd dream last night. I dreamt I was at work and a group of people infected with COVID came into my work but they looked like Zombies from a Resident Evil game, slow moving and look like rotting corpses and just communicating with moans and grunts. My co-workers and I were telling them to leave but they just kept wandering around the store touching everything. In my dream I kept telling my co-worker we have to get them out. We finally manged to but not before they coughed and sneezed on me and my co-worker. Once they left my co-worker and I started cleaning everything with cans of Lysol and while doing that normal people started to come into the store and me and her were telling them to get out.

Odd thing was the store wasn't a store at all but some old church that was falling apart but for some reason it had furniture laid out just like we do at my store (I work at a furniture store).

So yeah have no idea where that came from lol.

That dream was tooo specific @Tasuki .

*Slides lysol, eye patch, and extra mask into zombie prepper pack because thats the second time i read that someone dreamed both viruses were linked.

I was thinking to suddenly consider Dragon Quest Heroes PS4 after i watched the gameplay from Youtube.
It was like a random PS4 game that suddenly i might consider very soon after i was curious by looking at the cover then want to know the gameplay.

Also, i was thinking to consider both Ni No Kuni 1 & 2 PS4 version too. Same case, random games that i will consider after watching the gameplay from Youtube.
What do you think guys with my choice ?
Pretty decent JRPG games, eh ?

It's been a good few years since I've played the Pokemon Trading card game. But on a whim I decided to play a little bit online and I was able to put together the "Leon's Charizard" deck by making some trades. Some of the cards I had on the account are stupid valuable for expanded and legacy formats so I was easily able to fill out the decklist for this and it's really fun.

I seriously doubt I'll get back into the game with any serious effort, but it's cool that I have a standard format deck that actually works for the first time in nearly a decade.

@Anti-Matter good luck. Im constantly thinking about what rpgs i should get since I dont want to get into a long game i might not like or finish.

Sometimes i forget to youtube games Im interested in. Its a good source to use when considering games.

I was picturing poofier hair with curlers, but that'll work too!

@Heavyarms55 Thanks! And belated congrats on the shiny Magby. Shiny hatches are always a pleasant surprise....Unless it's Feebas. XD

On public education in America: First, I wanted to mention that I'm not in support of those posh private schools either as they definitely favor the wealthy. I merely used them as an example of how disadvantaged the public school system is in comparison.

You've outlined some of my issues with the US's educational system. A lot of it here starts at the state level and filters on down (For reference, I live in IL, which probably tells you A LOT lol). Resources here are definitely based on your district's population and, yes, contribute to a vicious cycle. There were many cuts several years ago to "extra" programs and trying to just stick with the basics. The public high school I went to was somewhat small - I graduated with a class of 30 students, though we were the smallest class size at the time - and they added several different classes in math, language arts, and technology only to cut most of them and a couple of the teachers hired to teach them shortly after I graduated. I really wish my high school had offered more options in technology and foreign language. What I can say is that there were a couple of mandatory classes that did teach some life skills, simple adult things such as balancing a checkbook, maintaining a budget, and changing a tire. The irony is there was a Home Economics class that taught cooking, cleaning, and a few practical skills like sewing that was scrapped the spring before I entered HS.

The points you make about the teacher/student ratio are important too. My mother is retiring at the end of this school year after teaching for just over 30 years. Last year she only had a class size of 12-13 kids as the entire grade was large enough to be split into two. Probably one of the best classes she's had, and pretty manageable. This year, on top of all the added madness in the Covid department, she's dealing with 23 kids (not quite big enough to split the class up; there were less at the beginning of the year, but two moved in), two of them remote learners. They're a very needy bunch who need a ton of supervision, and unfortunately she only has a shared aide for a couple of hours in the morning. Due to the possibility of the district going fully remote at the drop of a hat, they don't want to pay for a full-time aide. So she has to share.

I would love to mail you the pumpkin pie, particularly since it's part of the takeout Turkey Day restaurant order we're making; the place we're ordering from has excellent pies. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it would survive the journey in one piece, plus I think the rest of the family would have my hide if it turned up missing. XD

On the Switch deal: I was absurdly pleased about it. Particularly since the price kept fluctuating. I'm glad I jumped on it when I did; it shot up a little in price a couple of days after I ordered the system and game. Still below the $300 threshold though. I was gonna cave for the MK8 + Switch deal until I read it was the V1 Switch. Not a huge deal looking back as I play docked most of the time, but the extra battery life has come in handy.

@Anti-Matter I've wanted Ni No Kuni on the Switch for some time, mainly because the game's animated sequences were produced by Studio Ghibli. I still don't have it yet; too many other games to work through. I'm also trying not to pick up more RPGs for awhile.

@Tyranexx
The reason i pick the PS4 version for Ni no Kuni instead of Switch version because :
1. Ni no Kuni PS4 running on 60 fps.
2. It has the sequel on PS4 as well with same 60 fps so i would like to have similar games on same machine.

It will be look a little weird for me to have Ni no Kuni 1 Switch version but the sequel on PS4. 1 item as cartridge and 1 item as BluRay disc.

Btw, i found some similarities between Dragon Quest Heroes 1 & 2 male protagonist with other games characters.

Luceus (DQH 1) looks like Matthew from Golden Sun Dark Dawn.
Lazarel (DQH 2) looks like Bede from Pokemon Sword.

What do you think ?

@Anti-Matter Well for me almost all anime designed characters looks nearly the same.

insert dragon ball character design joke here

Super Saiyan Chibi male protagonist Dragon Quest Builders 2.

Any of these three characters could be Goku