Sledgstone

Well they counted enough of the absentee ballots here to confirm my district went republican for the 4th term in a row. Dana Balter ran on a campaign of medicare for all/universal healthcare, bail reform, other democrat talking points, etc. Another democrat running on crap campaign ideas that will never secure them a win. If she'd have run on legalizing marijuana, jobs, reducing medical prescription costs, etc. she could have won. Instead, like the majority of democrats this time around, they pandered once again to ultra minorities and focused on their ultra liberal base and that doesn't win elections when you need a majority vote. https://www.syracuse.com/politics/2020/11/dana-balter-concedes-to-rep-john-katko-in-race-for-congress.html Oh well. Katko has been ok for this area for local stuff but nationally hes not good because he has no backbone and votes for everything exactly how the republican party tells him to vote for. Ehh. Another prediction for 2021 and the next election in 2022.. democrats still don't realize they should campaign on things they can win on and will instead double down on dumb programs and political correctness that ensures them more losses in the senate and house.

I just downloaded the ap. I haven't used it in years. Wow this is much much better now. My younger brother has a ps5. I'm going to log in to his system and see if I can get these free games on my ps4.

Season 3 started and its 5 episodes in so far. This has become one of my favorite Star Trek series. I would have never imagined myself saying that during the horrible season 1, but season 2 was amazing and season 3 is awesome so far. I highly recommend this show. I did not think the show could get better than season 2, considering captain Pike and Spock were top notch, but its maintaining that same quality easily. Talking about season 3 is a huge spoiler if you haven't seen season 2. Regardless of that I will say "The Burn", the event that completely changed the entirety of star trek, all species, all great powers in the galaxy, etc. is an extremely interesting plot. Well done for the writers because this has me hooked all over again. It makes the show completely unpredictable in terms of where that plot is going and I have no idea what they will reveal next. CBS is working on more Star Trek series and for the first time I can say hell yes. They're reviving one of my all time favorite scifi shows back into the glory days of having new series coming out and they're all high quality.

Exactly. This is the first generation where they made a variation of the console that is digital only.. but we can't access our full library of digital purchases from that company on a single device. And I hear ya about the licenses. Along with the lack of physical media being produced and no employees having to stock a shelve, there should be discounts for digital games over physical on day one of release. At least one good thing about digital release games, regardless of licenses there will always be people making ROMs out of those digital games. Even if a company pulls a game, there will almost always be a way to still get that game on PC or android emulator boxes. There are some decent emulators I need to setup on my nvidia shield so I can play a crap load of old retro games. I've seen quite a few streamers on twitch use them so I'd like trying them out myself. I still prefer digital supported releases when they are available, I bought the Castlevania & Contra collections for steam a few months ago for $7 total. But there are so many old games that have never been re-released in a digital that it looks like ROMs are the only way to play them anymore.

This topic hasn't been updated this in a while. Lol.

Just a heads up for everyone with ps+.. if you don't have a ps5 yet you can add the free ps5 games to your library so you can have them for when you get a ps5. But Sony updated their Playstation store website recently and only Microsoft edge browser seems to work correctly with it. Google Chrome and Firefox blank out the area on the site that let's you add games to your library. https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/bugsnax/ I heard the new Playstation app works for adding to library to.

Maybe Sony's user data shows the majority of players install a single game, marathon and play it to completion and then uninstalls it to never play it again. If thats the case the smaller hard drive may not be as much of an issue.. I'm not one of those people tho and I have another person using the console to. I love single player games but some have become too long.. like Last of Us 2 literally took me a month and half to beat, 45 hours. I was very busy for that month and a half so I didn't have much game time, but after I while I was starting to get burned out playing in small chunks so I threw a different game on here and there for 15 minutes increments or so. Sometimes I might have a couple games like that going or lady might have a game or 2 installed as well, so PS5 only having that amount of space will leave me almost always on the edge of running out of space depending on the size of the games. I bet families that have 2-3 kids all wanting their own game on the system for when its their turn to play will be the biggest issue with the hard drive size limitations. I'll get a PS5 eventually with a larger hard drive in it. I still love console gaming, its convenient sit on the couch and play. But I will say my PC is becoming my goto gaming system more every day. Especially since I stream my games straight to my 4k tv with surround sound. Steam Link app for android is amazing, the nvidia shield makes the games know its hooked up to 4k and surround sound. Very user friendly. I've been using my xbox 360 controller or my wireless keyboard and mouse with a lapdesk to play games on my tv like it was a console for just over a year now. I can hook up my ps4 controller or an xbox one controller with blutooth no problem too. What does urk me more than anything is the consoles not having full digital backwards compatibility. I own all the Final Fantasy 13 games on ps3, I've been wanting to play them.. but they are locked to my PS3 thats in another room and the controller isn't the best. But if I bought those same games on PC, I could load them up right now at max settings and stream them right to my living room and play them with a ps4 controller. Meanwhile ps5 comes out and says "no, you can't play those ps3 digital games on the new console." Ok... so when ps6 comes out and they say I can't play my ps4 digital games on it, what motivation do I have to keep buying their games when I can guarantee you that every pc game I buy now I will be able to play for basically the rest of my life on any new pc I own. In the end its coming down to the library. I own a lot games in my own personal library. When a new console comes out and says I can no longer access that library on their new systems that aggravates me. Other people will say, "its a new system, buy the new games." Sure... but I actually still enjoy playing old games. Not necessarily full on retro games all the time, but theres a crap load of games out on the market that are great and still being sold to this day that were originally released over a decade ago that I still want access to without having to buy them over and over. Oh well, I've said this complaint plenty of times but I don't think Sony cares about it anymore. They just want to sell their own version of google stadia with their PSNow subscription. Yeah, no thanks Sony.

They offered me to upgrade to I think 400 mbps for $99 but didn't include the phone service. The spectrum lady i talked to did say that they have specials that run monthly which I found interesting. She said I could call next month and ask if there is any specials on the package I have now and if so they could change me to that deal with no issues. She said there was currently no specials/promotions for the internet package I was on. So I asked her its OK for me to call once a month every month to see if there's a deal and I can get a locked in cheaper rate. She said yes and it'll never be a contract. When time Warner upgraded my internet to 300 mpbs years ago they had to upgrade my cable modem because the modem could only go up to 50 mbps. When I moved to my new house years ago they made sure to get me a decent modem again, but their wifi router sucked ass. They never charged me for the wifi until my bundle package finally expired And they wanted to start charging me $5 a month. I turned that router in with the cable boxes the other day. This is the tp link router I have right now. It handled the 300 mpbs no problem. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079JD7F7G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabt1_s69QFb4H7BB4Y I'm thinking the cell phone companies will become the new internet companies. We're getting 5th generation networks now, but once 7g, 8g, etc finally start coming out, cell phone internet will probably be as fast as current cable internet. At that point we can completely cut the cord and either have the phones be our personal hotspots or buy a dedicated hotspot from the cell phone company to be the equivalent of a cable modem. But then again wifi tech is growing just as fast. Once wifi can be so strong my local Walmart broadcasting its wifi across 50 miles could become a new internet provider and wifi phone provider because they'll never give it away free once it becomes that far reaching. And whoever controls that wifi router controls everything on it. They could restrict the ip#s needed for wifi voip phone connections, restrict all internet traffic on all connected devices to just walmart.com only or less restrictions but still block domains of competitors like Amazon.com so people can't price compare while in store, etc.

Man I hope they don't do endless free money to everyone again. That was some bs in my opinion. Trump basically gave everyone free government paid wellfare to sit on their asses for half a year. Democrats would be dumb as hell to do that all over again. But then again I wouldn't put it past Pelosi to try to throw more money out the window at everyone. I only ever got a stimulus check, I wouldn't mind getting another of those again, but all those people that got hand over fist money in unemployment making more money than they ever did while working, that was insane to me. I doubt we'll get a national lockdown, but I bet we will get a national mask mandate.

I "cut the cord" yesterday right at the end of my billing cycle. With Spectrums crazy price increase last month my bill jumped to a staggering $240 a month with cable / internet / phone. I never used the phone but it was needed at the time in the dumb bundle to give me the best price. Somehow with that bundle it was initially saving me $20 a month to have the phone part of the bundle instead of just tv and internet. Anyway, years later and multiple price increases I'm done with them. My bill for internet only is now $69.99 a month for 100 mbps down and 10 mbps up. Along with youtube tv with HBO max at $80 a month, my new monthly totals for the same level of service is $150.00 a month. I'm now saving $90 from cutting the cord. Whats really surprising to me is Spectrum didn't even attempt to keep me as a customer of those services. Didn't offer me some new package at a lower rate or anything. Back in the day time warner would have broken down and given me a new customer package at a better rate to keep stringing me along and start the cycle of price increases over. Spectrum seems almost content in knowing their cable service is dying. The only thing they tried to sell me was a streaming package they offered with basic channels only for $15 a month and barely has any channels compare to youtube tv, it includes no DVR and no on demand. ehh. And they seem to be focusing entirely on mobile packages now. They really wanted me to switch to them for cell phone service. I'm guessing years from now Spectrums primary business will be internet and cell phone service from now on.

I don't see it happening. They really pushed the vaccinations last year too even before covid because of all the anit-vaxxers out there letting their kids get mumps and crap. They made did make it mandatory, if I remember right, that all kids going to public schools have to have records of all their vaccinations or they would be prohibited from attending classes at public shools. When a covid vaccine comes out, they'll probably add that to the list of required vaccines so it will probably get forced on kids unless those parents make the kids go full remote learning from that point on. I don't see how they could force it on everyone though without legal challenges. I know I'd rather let other people take the vaccine first before me and see if they have bad reactions to it. Let those people test the waters first. Taking money out of the bank for a national lockdown seems kind of stupid. How would he pay amazon with cash for all his deliveries? lmao. All the lockdowns we had before was everyone staying at home buying stuff online. Good news is Cuomo didn't put us on lockdown, instead it was targeted locations within the county that went to yellow status which basically put more restrictions on restaurants to have seating go from 10 person tables down to 4 per table max and all schools in that area had to increase covid testing, etc. So yay, no lockdowns again and it didn't sound like any lockdown would be coming after that either.

I like that they're moving to SSDs, but leaping straight from standard hard drives to a proprietary only SSD was a stupid choice I think. They should have just gone with standard SSDs and locked out all non SSD external hard drives. It would have been more user friendly and everyone would still have significantly faster loading times compare to the PS4. Oh well. Sony will have to make storage expansion a priority at some point. Until then I have a huge backlog of games to play through on PC and PS4. And single player games FTW. Uncharted 4, God of War, Tomb Raiders, Last of us 2, Final Fantasy VII remake, Ghost of Tsushima (I still need to play this one), just to name a few, so many great single player games this generation. With the huge sale figures some of them got, I hope the trend continues. I hate all these live service games, battle royals, etc. I don't have time for that crap any more.

Now it looks like the ps5 won't support playing games from USB SSDs either. According to their blog all ps5 games must be played off the internal ssd only. Wtf. I'm definitely waiting on buying one until a new slim version comes out with ample internal storage.

https://blog.playstation.com/2020/11/05/playstation-5-launch-day-ordering-update/ No PS5 will be in stores on launch day. https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/5/21551165/sony-ps5-playstation-5-no-m2-ssd-expansion-launch Sounds like that limited hard drive space will definitely be an issue at launch.

Awesome movie. I watched it a couple days ago. One of the best movies of 2020 for me. Very fun, energetic, great CGI and the monsters were all pretty damn cool and unique.

Damn covid is hot spotting its ass off in central NY. Looks like Cuomo is going to shut down the entire county on monday. wtf. The hospitals are not being overrun with patients and it sounds to me like the majority of people getting sick at this point are only having flu like symptoms and get better. Meanwhile everywhere I go everyone has a mask on and I have not run into a single person in any store that coughs. Its hard to believe so many people are getting sick when I don't see it. Maybe those people are actually staying home when they get sick? I guess, because I know if I got sick I'd stay the hell home too. Its frustrating.

Well Biden won. Eh. Good thing it didn't come down to NY deciding anything. They haven't even started counting our absentee ballots yet. https://www.syracuse.com/politics/2020/11/absentee-ballot-count-in-onondaga-county-delayed-1-day-after-legal-challenge.html And thats why I voted in person.. NY mail in ballots counting is a complete disaster. They said it would be delayed counting to begin with but I didn't think it was going to be this delayed. I hope Pelosi and Shumer lose their positions of power, especially Pelosi. They need to kick her to the curb and get an actual leader for the democrat party instead of her crazy ass with defund the police and other non-sensical crap she wanted her party to run on. Like defund the police was not to shut them down, it was to not make them military equipped.. but no they ran with dumb slogans. Like Hillary in 2016, she had "Love Trumps Hate" slogans.. how stupid was that to give him free advertising on her own bumper stickers. Just having his name in the slogan is basically all anyone would see. Its almost like an endorsement "Love Trump. Trump Hates" wtf. Democrats need fresh blood and get all these olds out. And honestly, shame on the news media. I've been watching it off and on to see who wins and as it was looking more like a win for Biden all the news turned into laughing children making fun of Trump like a bunch of shameless assholes. Sure I don't like him but all of a sudden all professionalism went flying out the window with these clowns. wtf. This is some serious shit and they all act like asses. I expect that from the Onion, not "news" channels. Also, props to Trump for getting such a massive turnout of voters. He whopped Hillary's numbers from 2016 easily. I thought he was going to win reelection when it was announced Biden won the primary considering all of the Biden baggage of 40+ years of bad choices. If Trump wasn't on twitter all the time making comments to incite anger in half the population for 4 years he probably would have won easily. Interesting statistics for alot of the voting too: https://www.google.com/search?q=google+election+results USA is really like a deck of cards with republican and democrats. They're all shuffled up all over the entire country and intertwined. Even Texas having 5 million+ biden votes and 5 million+ Trump votes, its really shows that everyone is basically each others neighbors. Theres just a few more relatively speaking in each state making them more one party than the other. I know theres alot of republicans in NY and I'm pretty certain the GOP is winning my district for the 5th time in a row for the house. A good chunk of my extended relatives voted for Trump in ohio and I'm sure half the village I live in did to with all the Trump signs that have been in everyones yards over the last couple months. My prediction for 2021 at this point is nothing gets done except a new stimulus. A bunch of executive orders get issued to probably override Trump's executive orders. GOP retains the senate and stonewalls anything Biden plans on doing. Biden goes down in history for president with highest national debt ever because he'll inherit that from Trump and pass a stimulus on top of that. Now that republicans aren't in power the national debt will be a major campaigning issue that they endlessly talk about. And if Biden lives to re-election time he needs to step down because I will not vote for any 80 year old.

Well thats the problem with all our politicians, Almost all are senators are millionaires, almost all of them are retirement age. But they'll all keep getting re-elected and keep their positions of power until the day they die. I don't think its really about legacy, its just a shit ton of old people that don't want to ever give up their power. Average age of an American is 37, average income of an american is $33,700.00. Average age of a senator is 67, average net worth of senators and congress combined not counting their income is a minimum $500,000 and they all make like what.. $174,000 a year from a quick google search. But senators are mostly multi millionaires. None of these people can accurately represent the average american in the slightest. They all have completely different lifestyles, completely different opinions based on their large age disparity and none of them will ever know what a real day to day life for a citizen is really like. Look at all these old millionaires running the country: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/10/25/richest-members-of-congress-by-net-worth/40290533/ When every one says "drain the swamp" they want new politicians in and the old ones out.. but it'll never happen because all the democrats and all the republicans in office are almost all retirement age. None of them will actually pass a law for term limits or age limits because it would mean all of them would have to actually retire with their multi million dollars, multiple houses, life time free healthcare paid for by the government, etc. No.. poor them.. nah, they just all want their power to hold over people. ehh.

Every state has it's own voting laws. Some might use touchscreens, some might use the old punch card booths, some use these scantron forms like in NY, some have paper ballot backups and others might be all digital. Theres no federal mandated specific voting style which is why every election night is a mess. But because its all on a state by state basis, the odds of the entire election being manipulated on a federal level is very low. Yeah I think its stupid that candidates can get themselves listed 2 or 3 times on a ballot under different parties. All the other parties are pretty pointless since none of them ever win. For a ballot like NY all that really matters is the top two lines for republican and democrat. I think they switch positions as to which is at the top of the form every other year. You heard the saying, "Vote across party lines"? It means this: The party lines go from left to right. The one I circled is the democrat party line. You fill in every circle on that line and you just voted for every democrat, one line down, vote from left to right and you just voted for every republican. The inside of the cardboard/plastic privacy things have examples and directions that make it all pretty straight forward to.

Trump could easily win this tonight. And honestly with the electoral college, my vote doesn't count worth a damn anyway. NY state always votes majority democrat and since electoral college votes is all that matters, I could have voted for neither and in the end my vote wouldn't affect the outcome whatsoever. If somehow Trump does lose, he'll probably declare his new re-election campaign, do rallies and continue everything hes been doing all along for another 4 more years except not being president at the same time.. then win re-election and have yet another 4 years of Trump continuing rallies, etc. We might be better off if he wins just so we can get just 4 more years of him and finally move on. If not it could be 8 more years. lol. Either way I've scaled back my consumption of politics and I'll continue that trend into the future. I forgot to comment about this again. I kept forgetting.. but what if I pumped multiple rounds of the .22 into the person and basically swiss cheese their face? Then again that'd probably be murder after shooting more than twice. I like that shotgun. Simple yet plenty good enough for me.

Way back in the day the voting booths I used in Ohio had curtains and when you walked in, you hit push buttons on a machine to indicate who you vote for, after you click push buttons for each category, I pulled a lever and it simultaneously imprinted a paper ballot with the vote and opened the curtain so I could walk out. I never liked that style because the paper vote was all inside the machine so you couldn't see it. All the voting I've done in NY has been the same for years, cheap cardboard privacy thing at a table with metal folding chairs. You get the ballot from one of the poll workers after you tell them who you are and they verify your address, then you sign for it. Take the ballot to a chair, sit down, fill in the circles for who you vote for like a multiple choice test in high school, then take the ballot to the machine and feed it into it. The machine sucks in the vote, says its casted and thats it. Heres sample images: I don't see a sample 2020 one so heres one from last time. I didn't take a pic of the ballot today because I think thats illegal. Basically you just fill in one bubble for each column to cast a vote. Only takes a couple minutes.

Me and lady voted earlier. In and out. It was pretty quick, we were there maybe 5 minutes. Except an elderly lady was there and threw a fit to get attention because the poll workers asked her to remove her political hat. Its been a law in NY for years upon years that you can't wear anything political at polling places and courtrooms. I think that's actually a law in almost every state. Everyone was wearing a mask and did the 6 foot distancing and another poll worker was sanitizing all the chairs and privacy spots after people left. It was organized pretty well.