theroadstopshere

I, uh, ended up writing something sort of like poetry while discussing suicide with people today. Just realized it might belong here.

And so onwards I push against the tide, pointlessly drudging to my demise.

"Better to die with head held high! Better to give your family pride!"

They all shout and jeer, with faces alight, their hands clutching at me as they pull towards the brine.

"Wouldn't they cry if you didn't go into the sea, where all of the other great and noble dead be? What shame to just lay there and wait on the swells, or swallow the hemlock and die in the hills! Come die with us, it's better this way!"

And so the dead march, and drag me their way.

The sand turns to marsh, the marsh into void, and the laughter of dead men is drowned in the ocean's great noise.

A hand pushes downwards and the man next to me grins, his face a dark spectre in the dark murky grim. They'll drag me down with them, and we'll all be great friends. It's all a great feast, down there at the end.

The dead men will sit around their dead tables, and we'll all tell dead stories, and swap dead fables.

Our bodies will rot, collapse, decay. We'll all reassure each other. "It's better this way."

My lungs fill with water. I hurt and I choke, and the faces around me dance like black smoke.

Surely this was better.

Surely this was kind.

Thank goodness for these dead men, who kept me in mind.

Hemlock is for weak men, and the tide is a poor grave. I'm sure the world will be happy, since we all died this way.

Alright, so I freely admit that tonight's venture was more of a "Why the hell not, I have the ingredients" than my usual pre-planned meals (which I will begin photographing and posting more often, now that I know this place exists), but might as well start off on a bad note.

Our first dish for the night! Tuna Casserole! *wild cheering and applause*

So, I found a package of egg noodles I hadn't used yet, and decided, let's go for it. You can too! And, I know, tuna casserole is already an amazing, mindblowing concept, and definitely not boring, but I promise, this one knocked my socks off. Really great stuff. Here's where you start.

1.  For ingredients:

This recipe used chinese egg noodles, which I feel worked very well. If you have a preferred variety of noodles, be sure to know how they bake and check on them every so often to make sure they don't dry out too much once they're in the oven.

I had no pimento, and no green bell pepper, so I substituted by replacing both with one tablespoon yellow bell pepper, since most of my family doesn't care for peppers.

I added in a few dashes of steak pepper, which added some garlic and a few other mild seasonings into the mix, and was a suitable replacement for pepper.

Did not add the cup of evaporated milk. Not for any particular chef-like reason, but because I was tired, distracted, and busy tracking my progress on a skype chat, for no apparent reason. Personally, I found the dish to be excellent without it, but I always recommend following the directions, so I'm imagining that the addition of heavy cream was probably intended to soak through the noodles and help everything soak together well and be much more of a mash than mine ended up being. It probably mutes some of the stronger flavors, too, and gives the casserole a distinctly "casserole" texture and flavor.

Anyways, next step, boil the noodles.

BAM. Don't fuck this shit up, it's super easy. You can see the ends of my noodles just starting to slip into the water there. If they're a particularly stubborn brand and don't bend properly, just snap 'em in half (oh god, so much innuendo up until that part) and then drop both halves in.

NEEEEEEXT UPPPPPPPPP, I skipped some steps and threw everything together in a bin. Here she is, all the ingredients, minus noodles, tossed together!

Look at how classy I am. I'm appalled at myself.

At this point, you should have your oven preheated to 350, and tinfoil ready to go to cover your casserole. No? Get that shit going! You still got a minute! All your ingredients are chopped up, tossed together, scooped out, and poured into a bowl or bin, minus the noodles, aaaaaand, then you check your noodles to make sure they're ready for draining.

Are they? Yeh? Nice and tender and delicious? Great! Drain them in a collander, and use cold water to do that while you toss them. Make sure to pick them up and move them around so that you can be sure that all the noodles got properly washed a little bit, then throw them in the bin too.

And here's the part where you avert your eyes, because I hand-mixed the batch all together, to make sure that everything was properly distributed.

Ain't it a lovely sight? Be sure to wash your hands thoroughly again if you plan to do this, for your health and the health of others.

However you plan to mix it all up, be sure that all the ingredients in your bowl get properly distributed around the casserole. Don't let anything get heaped too much in one place or another, if you can help it. The more even the spread, the more even and better the taste.

Now into the buttered casserole dish, and then to cover her with tinfoil and into the oven!

That's the last we'll see of her for 40-45 minutes, until we take her out for a quick look near the end.

I removed my casserole at 40 minutes to check on her, and found her just right for adding a light topping of cheese to before putting her back into the oven for a final few minutes. The smell was almost overwhelming. With a little melted cheese on top, it was a fantastic dish to round off the evening, especially after eating my fill of our second dish, a highly appetizing noodle/rice/egg stir-fry I threw together with the remaining noodles while waiting for this beauty to cook. I will be posting that in a moment.

Final picture of the casserole:

Ahhhhh. Magnifique

That's a pretty good definition. Let us go with that. This is solid... like a potato.

Goddamn it, Grumps, I'm trying to eat here. Nearly choked to death on a pork chop laughing.

Any word on the last server you're waiting on?

Ah, Onemanga. Such fond memories.

Glad to have you around, Nyu, hope to catch you in the forums sometime.

Rejoice, fellow Batotians! For given to us this day is a message from Grumpy himself! After our long months of wandering in the fear of server downtime, and remembering the dark times of DDOS, a light has been shown to us!

A light that will lead us to a new land!

The PROMISED LAND!

A land of bountiful server space, and fresh, untouched cicuitry!

Space enough for all of our various and nefarious activities!

For romance, comedy, action and mature content (which will be swiftly removed for the safety of the children)!

Truly, a land of milk and honey!

Praised be to Grumpy, who will lead the promised potatoes to the new land! Blessed be his username, and the domains upon which he treads! May his and his god-like moderators reign with divine mercy for the years to come!

Praised be, oh Based One!

But seriously, thanks for the great news. Glad to hear it's a win-win for everyone involved, really appreciate everything you do for us. Y'all are absolutely fantastic, I'm thrilled to be a part of your community.

I've got time and energy, though my equipment is a touch lacking. Let me know what I can do to help from here.

Oh lordy no, I worked so hard to escape high school.

Why

Why would this happen?

I want to be a normal russet potato again. TT_TT I liked being a russet potato.

I often try to push my glasses up to the bridge of my nose like some stereotypical scheming glasses character. Even when I'm not wearing glasses. So half the time I look like my glasses don't fit right, and half the time I look like I enjoy stroking my nose for funsies.

The ability to receive gifts from others. Its kind of strange, but for some reason, people tend to give me things that hold personal value to them. Things they made, gifts that were passed onto them by people they respected, small items they own that they somehow feel like I could use.

I've collected a lot of precious and important memories from people like that. And I try to give them away to new owners who will value and treasure them whenever I can. But not before I write down what it was I was given, from whom, and what it meant to them.

Its an interesting cycle. I feel very lucky to be a part of it.

So this is the final list, meb? If that's the case, then I have to I find this arrangement most agreeable. Since I have no part in the popularity contest, I can focus entirely on my campaigning for Horn.

I call it the "Rabu-rabu Robbu" movement. We advocate peace, love, and pure dedication to the beautiful and magnificent being to whom we bare our hearts and prostates.

Gods, I need to let up a bit on the sex/sexuality jokes. Its bordering on creepy how much my humor relies on that these past few days.

Phil, old buddy, I got your back.

And Katzilla, truly beloved but rarely seen.

Final vote was a coin flip. But I know how beloved he is, so I'm going for it.

Phil777 - Lucky sevens. Needs no introduction.

Katzilla - Cannot avoid loving. Been here forever, will hopefully be here forever more.

Trebor - God, King, Prince, and sensual master of the way of the Mod. Master of the courts, the forums, and the bedrooms of every man and woman who meets his seductive gaze.

Really hope Trebby doesn't get me for that last one. 

Its out of love, I swear.

Really wanted to vote for Robbu and some of the others again, but it looks like they have their nominations nailed down, so I took the chance to bring in new names. So just know that I love you from the bottom of my tiny and twisted heart.

You are the best people.

All hail the mighty new overlords.

May their reigns be long and merciful, and may they be beloved by contributor and member alike.

Long live the Mods.

Long live the Members.

And Long Live Grumpy, Emperor-God of the land of the Potatoes.

Praise be.

I have a tendency to double up my words when answering short questions.

Ex:

"How are you doing?" -"Good good"

"What are you up to?" -"Not much, not much."

"What is the purpose of your life?" -"Not much, not much."

"Is it true that you're a senseless moron with no sense of self-preservation or common sense?" -"Hahaha, yep, yep." (That one hurts)

Since the majority of the forum population seems to be either students or workforce champions (with a few notable exceptions), it seems to me that this would be a good topic for us to share thoughts about. Obviously, there's a lot of us who run here in order to avoid work/put off work we know we have to do, but when it comes time to bite the bullet and work, I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of different methods out there we use to make that work go more quickly and more smoothly. So, here's where to share ideas about getting that nasty outernet stuff done.

Questions you could answer:

- How do you get motivated to get your work done? 

- Do you have any schedule that you follow for handling workloads?

- What do you do to get past distractions to get yourself focused?

- Do you prefer to study with others, or alone?

- What kind of studying works best for you personally? Have you found a method that you know for sure works for you?

- Do you think your study/work habits have an effect on your daily life?

- How do you justify reading this forum, which was clearly written by someone procrastinating on his work, when you could be catching up or getting ahead on work of your own?

My general thought process:

Go for it, ladies, gents, and otherwise ( -A-)/ The goal here is that we share thoughts and ideas to help each other be more effective, efficient, and maybe have a little bit more fun while we're at it.

Have you addressed it to the company? They patch pretty frequently, and listen to user requests fairly well.

Or so has been my experience to date.

And on another note, DAT SKILL TREE.

I could play for years and never get bored of creating new classes with new focuses. Started with a basic marauder strength two-handed weapon build, absolutely wrecked house. So much damage, so much life leech, so much regen. It set me down the path of destruction. The only thing I have left to try is a trapper focus.

PoE - too much stat build. Too much addiction.