Christ Centered Gamer

Chozon1 wrote: Tue Jan 24, 2017 8:52 am Time travel is always a sticky concept?

Yeah. I think that lately the new incarnation of Doctor Who takes too many liberties with the "We have a time machine" concept. The smartest time travel episodes I've seen came from season 9, and it was almost jarring compared to the previous seasons. Then again, I vastly prefer the personality of the Peter Capaldi Doctor to Matt Smith, sooooo.

Anyway, enough about Doctor Who.

Time travel stories are tricky because time travel acts like a deus ex machina. If the story involves time travel, it's hard to make the time travel both sensible and suspenseful. For example, suppose your story involves traveling back in time to fix something, and they end up breaking it. No problem! They can go back and fix it! Except that kind of ruins dramatic tension without some upping of the stakes. Upping the stakes is always a dangerous ploy, as it is very easy to come up with a cheap "upping the stakes" motive. This is actually my problem with the majority of Matt Smith's run as the Doctor: The stakes have to continually be increased to keep things interesting, and the show finally crossed the threshold from "thrilling" to "patently ridiculous." Even after Smith left, things didn't really get "better." Season 8 was garbage (despite Capaldi being the most interesting Doctor character since Eccleston, IMO), but season 9 started to make things slightly better by going back to individual episodes (or pairs of episodes) with a few recurring threads culminating (FINALLY) in the removal of my least-favorite companion ever: Clara. I have hopes that the guy who takes over the show after Moffat does a better job, because good grief this show has gone off the rails. And so has Sherlock, by the way. Season 4 was annoying and just flat out disappointing.

If you're reading this, selderane, I fully admit I was wrong about Moffat. He's a hack. Doctor Who has been going almost continually downhill since he took over. Sherlock started well enough, but has been tanking.

Also, I just realized I ended up ranting about Doctor Who more than time travel. Oops. XD

RedPlums wrote: I would prefer and SUV or Hatchback to hold more stuff as i move around a lot.

I know to generally try and stay away from american made because they don't have the best track record, unless i have 10k to spend on a newer model.

Manual transmission or automatic?

If a non-American hatchback is what you want, and you can find a good deal on one, the Honda Fit is a great car. Unfortunately/fortunately, it holds its value pretty well, and used can be hard to find at an affordable price. The aforementioned Kia Soul is also a great car, if you want a foreign hatchback.

The question of manual versus automatic can best be summarized by asking a simple question: How much do you plan on driving in traffic?

Manual transmissions are an absolute nightmare to drive in heavy traffic, or anything where you are constantly starting and stopping. Your leg will grow really tired from engaging and releasing the clutch so often. If you drive long distances where the speed goes up and down (For example, country roads where the speed between towns is 65, but the speed in town is 35), a manual may also be a less convenient choice.

On the other hand, manual transmissions are a ton of fun to drive, and I think being able to drive one is a skill everyone should acquire even if they don't use it on a regular basis. They are also really useful if you want to shift into a lower gear (For hills/towing, for example) easier. Automatics have a lower gear mode, but manual transmissions give you a much more intuitive level of control.

So in short, if you expect to be hitting a lot of stop-n-go traffic or a lot of successive starts and stops, go automatic. If you like having a little more fun and control while driving, go manual. But above all, make sure you are comfortable with manual if you go that route, you don't want to drop money on one only to find out that it's too frustrating for your area.

Automatic it is then. I agree that manual's are a nightmare, the first car i drove was a 1953 Chevrolet pickup that was a manual and i nearly brought my grandfather to tears trying to properly changed gears.
Needless to say, i know how to drive a manual, but i plan on never doing it again.

Favourite car color?

I generally like darker colors (harder to see dirt), but not so dark as to cause the car to heat up a ton.

Right now my car is black (Beggars can't be choosers...), but I've had silver, red, and dark green cars before. If I had to chose one, I prefer dark green because it's not as heat/light-absorbent as black, but dark enough to hide dirt at first. Red is about the brightest I'm willing to go again, because silver just picked up so much dirt.

The one car you wish you could have bar-none?

An Aston Martin Vanquish, no question. That said, there's no way I will be affording one of those any time soon. XD

My thing is...the future and past are constant things, not static things. They don't stop just because the hero happens to go back to the past. So if said hero were to change the future by modifying the past, the reason for him to travel to the past would have never existed, meaning he wouldn't have traveled to the past to fix it. Meaning the instant he changed something, he would cease to exist, which means the event never got changed in the past, which means the future doesn't change either. Even if some magical thing were to allow the hero to remain existent after changing the past, the second he returned to his present, he's going to cease to exist, which means we are back to square one.

Oh sweet mercy, why is it I comedically tried to unsuccessfully open my desk drawer a half dozen times, only to get angry and succeed the 13th time by ripping it open with all the strength my fury can summon, when my thumb was unintentionally between the steel drawer (now traveling at a million miles an hour) and the solid wood arm rail of my chair?

I...I forgot a legitimate question amidst the eye-watering pain.

Well at least one can always dream, right?

When you slowly push the blankets down to the end of the bed in your sleep so you wake up freezing?

Chozon1 wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:39 am My thing is...the future and past are constant things, not static things. They don't stop just because the hero happens to go back to the past. So if said hero were to change the future by modifying the past, the reason for him to travel to the past would have never existed, meaning he wouldn't have traveled to the past to fix it. Meaning the instant he changed something, he would cease to exist, which means the event never got changed in the past, which means the future doesn't change either. Even if some magical thing were to allow the hero to remain existent after changing the past, the second he returned to his present, he's going to cease to exist, which means we are back to square one.

Oh sweet mercy, why is it I comedically tried to unsuccessfully open my desk drawer a half dozen times, only to get angry and succeed the 13th time by ripping it open with all the strength my fury can summon, when my thumb was unintentionally between the steel drawer (now traveling at a million miles an hour) and the solid wood arm rail of my chair?

I...I forgot a legitimate question amidst the eye-watering pain.

Sounds like you need to ice that thumb. XD

RedPlums wrote:Well at least one can always dream, right?

When you slowly push the blankets down to the end of the bed in your sleep so you wake up freezing?

I have a slightly different (but no less chilling) problem. I toss and turn while sleeping, and have woken up many a night to find my sheets/blankets on the floor next to my bed. Brrrr...

It's a real tragedy among Americans.

Staying up late just to have some alone time?

Not a huge problem for me, because I live alone already. Actually, a bigger problem for me is having too much alone time. I sometimes have to go out of the way to socialize with people.

That sounds sublime. Trade living spaces?

Developing claustrophobia?

RedPlums wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2017 4:04 pm That sounds sublime. Trade living spaces?

I dunno, I kinda like my current living space, except for the ludicrous amount of snow the Portland area has been getting lately. XD

Chozon1 wrote:Developing claustrophobia?

Honestly, I don't really have claustrophobia, so I can't really comment. I can say that I have been developing a case of agoraphobia, which is a fear of being unable to get out of an "unsafe" environment. I don't have a severe case of it, but let me tell you, sometimes I just get a big wave of "I've gotta get outta here!" like you wouldn't believe.

Of course, I'm self-diagnosing, which is always a bad idea. XD

Portland hippies?

Not as common as you might think, though they do exist. In truth, Portland has a pretty wide range of personality types, though some are more drawn here than others (Basically certain types of people do well in the Pacific Northwest, these are the people you find in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver). Portland does have some weird things, but it is also a very normal city in a lot of ways.

The main things it has in spades that separate it from other cities are decent public transportation, lots of great local coffee, and a wide variety of craft beers.