Talking about Dragon Half got me to thinking about dragons in general.

And suddenly I realized there's some characters that would fit our setting like a glove.  Though we run the risk of explodicating a town.  :V

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid.

EDIT:
OMFG, I just realized something.  Imagine Saitama the One Punch Man next to Kobayashi as something kinda nuts happens.  They'd both have that same "dead fish eyes" expression.

Inspired by this classic meme and the fact that Kobayashi has a tendency to make the same face when confronted by something that does not quite fit in the framework of what's "Normal".

Mostly I just wanted to have that thread title, but there's a new chapter of Benefits of Old Laws too
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/11540013/107/...f-old-laws

As of today on the Justin server over on homecoming the dev's have put up a series of proposed tanker buffs and man I'm stooooked if they do get the ok. I'm tryin really hard to not get too excited but man looking at them and they look amazing if they do make it over to live. 

 Here is the link to the thread of proposed changes- https://forums.homecomingservers.com/top...k-updates/

Here she is, with a lot of less than optimal enhances but going for ridonkulous pie-in-the sky goodies

Villain Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.1
https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/...o-designer

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Tigritsa: Level 49 Mutation Stalker
Primary Power Set: Savage Melee
Secondary Power Set: Regeneration
Power Pool: Leaping

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Maiming Slash

• (A) Stalker's Guile - Accuracy/Damage
  
• (3) Stalker's Guile - Damage/Recharge
  
• (19) Stalker's Guile - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
  
• (31) Stalker's Guile - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
  
• (36) Stalker's Guile - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
  
• (36) Stalker's Guile - Recharge/Chance to Hide
  

• (A) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance
  
• (3) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance/Recharge
  
• (5) Shield Wall - Defense
  
• (34) Shield Wall - +Res (Teleportation), +5% Res (All)
  

• (A) Overwhelming Force - Accuracy/Damage
  
• (5) Overwhelming Force - Endurance/Recharge
  
• (21) Overwhelming Force - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
  
• (33) Overwhelming Force - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
  
• (36) Overwhelming Force - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
  
• (37) Overwhelming Force - Damage/Chance for Knockdown/Knockback to Knockdown
  

• (A) Numina's Convalesence - +Regeneration/+Recovery
  
• (15) Numina's Convalesence - Heal
  
• (21) Numina's Convalesence - Heal/Endurance
  
• (34) Numina's Convalesence - Heal/Recharge
  

• (A) Assassin's Mark - Accuracy/Damage
  
• (7) Assassin's Mark - Damage/RechargeTime
  
• (7) Assassin's Mark - Accuracy/Damage/RechargeTime
  
• (9) Assassin's Mark - Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime
  
• (9) Assassin's Mark - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime
  
• (11) Assassin's Mark - RechargeTime/Rchg Build Up
  

• (A) Touch of Lady Grey - Defense Debuff
  
• (17) Touch of Lady Grey - Defense Debuff/Recharge
  
• (31) Touch of Lady Grey - Recharge/Endurance
  
• (31) Touch of Lady Grey - Defense Debuff/Recharge/Endurance
  
• (37) Touch of Lady Grey - Defense Debuff/Endurance
  
• (37) Touch of Lady Grey - Chance for Negative Damage
  

• (A) Adjusted Targeting - Recharge
  
• (11) Adjusted Targeting - To Hit Buff/Recharge
  

• (A) Unbreakable Guard - +Max HP
  
• (13) Unbreakable Guard - RechargeTime/Resistance
  
• (13) Preventive Medicine - Chance for +Absorb
  
• (15) Preventive Medicine - Heal
  

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO
  

• (A) Numina's Convalesence - Heal
  
• (17) Numina's Convalesence - Heal/Recharge
  

• (A) Scirocco's Dervish - Accuracy/Damage
  
• (19) Scirocco's Dervish - Damage/Endurance
  
• (39) Scirocco's Dervish - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
  
• (39) Scirocco's Dervish - Chance of Damage(Lethal)
  
• (40) Scirocco's Dervish - Damage/Recharge
  
• (43) Scirocco's Dervish - Accuracy/Recharge
  

• (A) Reactive Defenses - Scaling Resist Damage
  

• (A) Numina's Convalesence - Heal
  
• (23) Numina's Convalesence - Heal/Recharge
  
• (23) Numina's Convalesence - Heal/Endurance
  

• (A) Empty
  
• (25) Empty
  
• (25) Empty
  

• (A) Mako's Bite - Accuracy/Damage
  
• (27) Mako's Bite - Damage/Endurance
  
• (27) Mako's Bite - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
  
• (40) Mako's Bite - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge
  
• (42) Mako's Bite - Chance of Damage(Lethal)
  

• (A) Preventive Medicine - Heal
  
• (29) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime
  
• (29) Preventive Medicine - Endurance/RechargeTime
  
• (40) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime/Endurance
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Armageddon - Chance for Fire Damage
  
• (33) Armageddon - Damage
  
• (33) Armageddon - Damage/Recharge
  
• (34) Armageddon - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
  
• (43) Armageddon - Accuracy/Recharge
  
• (43) Range IO
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  
• (39) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  
• (42) Empty
  
• (42) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

• (A) Empty
  

... when it comes to writing, especially since I haven't produced anything in a while for the current projects, but a new idea has been insisting on elbowing its way to the front of my consciousness.  And I'm posting about it here because it's COH-related:

Evangelia, immediately post-2012-shutdown, wakes up in Aincrad from Sword Art Online.

No solid plot yet, but some interesting ontological issues to explore, particularly with her as a player character with no player behind her... and of course all her incarnate abilities come along...

What's bothering me is that I really want to finish up the current chapters of DW8 and DW-S first, but this is building the kind of inertia in my mind that DW-S did when it first demanded that I start writing it some years back.

So, recently I've been reading Lazy Dungeon Master as translated by "Ziru's musings," and it's fairly decent... well, at least once you get about a dozen chapters in. The MC is a much bigger asshole at the beginning, and collaborates with a bandit gang who are in no way Robin Hood like "outlaws with a heart of gold."

They bring prisoners in to be murdered because it makes the dungeon grow, and in 10 maybe the chief buys a dog-girl "whose age is not even double digits" as a sex slave and is non-explicitly described making use of her... until getting horribly slaughtered by some knights from the capital, while the girl hides and is later rescued from the fire they set to dispose of the bandits' remains by MC convincing himself she's an object so the dungeon can absorb her. Yeeeaaah. If you think that'll be a show-stopper for you, skip the chapter(s?) from the bandit chief's viewpoint, because while it's still not explicit and I don't remember anything that would trip a word filter it's distinctly unpleasant even so. He dies far too kindly, is all I will say about that.

It takes all of two paragraphs once she's been rescued to snap out of that bit of self-hypnosis, though, and while I still feel she springs back unrealistically fast to become a non-sexualized little sister figure the rest has been largely clear of that particular flavor of squickiness. Asked what he thinks of young girls while under the effect of a truth-detecting magic, MC answers, "Eh? They're cute I guess..." and restates his internal narration of tastes reserved for well grown legs and feet, directly shutting down a few shows of affection from the girl that could be taken in questionable ways on other occasions.

Slavery as such is still a thing though, enforced by magical contract and unremoveable collars, and the MC takes advantage of the security of the contract to make sure she and the second "employee" he acquires will keep his secrets, even if they are also treated as well as a normal standard fantasy setting issekai party member otherwise.

Honestly, the only way it really stands out in its genre is that the MC mostly gets over being an asshole so quickly even if the only thing he wants to do most of the time is sleep, but if you enjoy the genre it's a solid example, and the food porn once the group gets an inn going in the area above their dungeon can lead to some tasty sounding recipes if you search for the dishes.I've only gotten into the low 40s out of... er... not quite 400 I think? current chapters, but the tone has kept quite constant since getting rid of the bandits.

Note that the site as a whole is NOT work safe - some of the other translation projects are R18, and their titles at least are directly on the page below as links to other TOC pages and also recently posted chapters.

https://zirusmusings.com/ldm-toc/

So, the Alberta (Conservative) Government has decided it doesn't want to have to explain about public schools and funding, so it has changed the name of every public school and public school board to eliminate the word public. They even managed to do it without using the word public.

Hard to have a difference between public and private if you can't name it after all.

https://albertapolitics.ca/2019/09/alber...cI56K_e3o4

Hey, guys. I ran into a common bug in the Sutter TF last night that ended up causing the PUG I was in to hang around for 30 minutes, waiting for a GM, and then to restart a mission, before figuring out the workaround. This added about an hour to the TF, so I thought I'd share.

After Part 2, "Defend Paragon City," which takes you into the sewers to fight Riptide and Harbinger, you should exit the mission into the Skyway City sewers. An exit will take you to Part 3, "Defend Skyway City," which is the final confrontation with Fusion and Temblor, and then the Durays. Upon clicking on the mission entrance, you may get the message that you have to complete your current mission to enter the next mission, even though you have already gotten the message that Part 2 has been finished. The GM that finallly got back to us reported that this is a common bug. The workaround is to have the entire team log out of CoX, wait one minute, then log back in. You should then be able to progress on to Part 3.

Hope that helps.

So, a couple of weeks back I found this channel on YouTube where the guy does a possible build of a fictional character for a D&D game. Today it was Usagi’s turn:


Enjoy.

Okay, bit of background info here, so just bear with me.

My sweet little laptop, a 15" HP Envy x360, is not without its deficiencies.  It had a mere 250GB SSD - which is pretty pathetic these days if we're being brutally honest.  And it only has 8GB of DDR2400 RAM.

However, it's not like this can't be fixed.

The RAM only occupies one of the two slots on the mainboard.  And the mainboard, interestingly enough, has provisions for both an M.2 SSD (those are the funky little PCIe SSD sticks), as well as a SATA drive.

I was able to score the laptop in the first place because I purchased it on a leasing program.  Recently, that lease has been paid off and now I can go ahead and take out another lease.

My goal?  Upgrades, and a dash cam setup for my Jetta.  And an iPad.  I have dearly missed the one I used to have, and the price point isn't all that bad if you're getting the ones that don't have cellular service.  (I'm perfectly happy with tethering my iPad to my iPhone for Internet on the go.)

So, to resolve the storage issue, I got two SSDs: a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 SSD, and a 2TB Samsung 860 QVO SATA SSD.

Yeah, one of my online friends went "GOOD LORD!" at that.  What can I say?  I hate having insufficient storage.  The real drive hogs is the anime.  Most of what I watch I tend to get on Crunchyroll, but for the few they don't have, I still torrent that stuff.  And let me tell you, fansub groups don't like to skimp on the quality - they see themselves (perhaps even rightfully so) as providing a product that is superior to any offerings by American distributors.

It is rare for me to find a 720p DVD rip for new anime these days.

So yeah.  1TB for the OS, applications, and other sundries.  And a 2TB for all my media.  I should be good to go for a while here, though I still have an eye towards building my own little workstation, because I will be tailoring my education with an emphasis on designing mechanical systems.

SO....  Now to the fun part.

I'd been eagerly anticipating this upgrade, and I had an added advantage in that HP is good enough to make the service technician's guide free to download form their site.  This way there was little chance of me screwing something up because I missed it.

There were a few unexpected surprises, such as the metal housing that covers the RAM and the M.2 SSD.  It really threw me because there was no mention of it at all in the manual.  Eventually, I figured out that it was just held on by some clips soldered to the main board.  Some careful work using a prying tool for servicing smart phones got it off nice and neatly.

But the biggest issue....

The SATA cable for the SATA drive was missing.  Or rather, it wasn't included because why would you?  The port is there on the main board, so I just had to find the cable online (unfortunately, HP had already discontinued my laptop and, as such, no longer made spare parts for it) and order it up through eBay.

But it left me with an issue.

For whatever reason, the only place in town that sells an external USB enclosure for M.2 SSDs was Altex.  Nobody else.  And unfortunately, they were closed because of Labor Day weekend.  Argh.

When I came up short on the enclosure, I figured in that case I could just use the SATA drive - clone the current 250GB SSD into the SATA without changing the partition sizes, and then once the drives were installed in my laptop, clone it from the SATA drive into the M.2 SSD.

But the absence of the internal SATA cable complicated things.

In order to get this done, I would have to start out as I would have before, cloning the old drive to the SATA drive, and then boot up from the SATA while it was connected through the USB port.

This should work, right?  Especially since I'm cloning to partition, right?

Wrong.

UEFI and Secure Boot fucked me over.

See, UEFI is what they've replaced BIOS with.  It has a lot of nice features for things that BIOS wouldn't support without a whole lot of ugly kludging.  But what manufactures love the most is Secure Boot.  I forget exactly how it works - something about a security hash shared between the OS and UEFI to ensure no one tampers with the precious machine.

Basically, it makes it virtually impossible to boot from USB or anything other than a hard drive mounted directly into your computer.

What follows is the process I had to come up with in order to finally get my drive properly migrated into the new M.2 SSD.  Keep in mind, this was a VERY iterative process (EDIT: At least, it was after Step 8), where each step below was only figured out after a couple of hours of research and trial and error.  Wash, rinse, and repeat ad nauseum.

1. Use cloning software the USB 3.0-to-SATA cable you bought came with to clone the contents of the currently residing SSD into the SATA SSD.
   
2. Completely power down your laptop.
   
3. Open up your laptop
   
4. Remove the battery which is secured with six tiny little screws
   
5. Carefully pry off the protective cover over the RAM and M.2 SSD
   
6. Swap the old M.2 SSD for the new one
   
7. Put everything else back the way it was
   
8. Boot up machine
   
9. Wait for error message to show up with the options to go to recovery tools, special boot options (safe mode, etc.), or the UEFI settings.  Since it's being a poison fucking pill about it, it's not letting you into Recovery Options or Special Boot Options.
   
10. Go into UEFI settings and disable Secure Boot and enable Legacy Boot
    
11. Save and Reboot
    
12. Wait for error message to show up again
    
13. This time, you can now enter special boot options
    
14. Choose safe mode - safe mode with networking is fucking useless because Windows doesn't like to use WiFi in any sort of safe mode.
    
    Now that you're in the OS, you can actually do THINGS.  Except...  the cloning software you used the first go around doesn't work in safe mode.
    
    
15. Fight the urge to start breaking shit because now you have to open the laptop again and put the 250GB M.2 SSD back in because you need to download cloning software that WILL work in safe mode.
    
16. Clone the drive to the SATA drive again, and then repeat steps 2 through 14.
    
17. After several false starts, one OH SHIT moment, and two errors that necessitated reboots, FINALLY get the contents of the original drive cloned onto the new M.2 drive.
    
18. Cross your fingers and reboot.