Thank you all for your opinions on the matter!

pwhodges wrote:In the UK a lot of businesses are refusing to handle cash at present, and many are only doing business using contactless cards (or phones with Apple/Google-pay), so that there's no need for customers to type a pin either. The banks helpfully upped the contactless transaction limit from £30 to £45 as soon as this started (the phone apps don't have this limit, because you have to authenticate to them). An alternative is to order online for collection, pay with PayPal or whatever, and bring the receipt printout to the collecting point.

But I have a feeling that we are rather more advanced in cashless facilities than most places...

No, the US - the country of the credit card, ironically - is remarkably bad at it. Part of it is caused by high fees for bank transfers and the like. The other part is basically a technological deficit (!). I actually read up on it a few years ago, and back then there were discussions going on in the USA about developing technology that has existed in Europe for over 30 years...

Shamsiel-kun wrote:there were discussions going on in the USA about developing technology that has existed in Europe for over 30 years...

OT story. In 1957 there was an international meeting of record companies to agree what standard should be adopted for cutting stereo LPs. EMI suggested the 45/45 system which was eventually adopted. But RCA said that this would require licensing to be paid to them, as they had a patent on it - at which the EMI representative silently placed on the table a copy of their expired 1931 patent for the same thing! Their genius engineer, Alan Blumlein, had at that date not merely designed the system but also made a few stereo 78s using it - having first developed a stereo microphone, of course.

So, about Vic. Regardless of where you stand on the more serious allegation lobbied against him, I have this weird anecdote about him. Some friends of mine have been in the Convention scene for well over a decade now. One of them is very well connected with several cons and generally has many panels that he's contributed to these cons for 10+ years. One if these friends told me of a time where Vic got one of his panels to close early so that Vic could have his panel in that room early. (A lotta girls to awkwardly hug-kiss-whatever, I guess.) Vic interrupts the panel mid session and yells at the con staff to kick them out. I don't know if Vic realized that he was double booked and had to leave the con early, or if he was eager to hit the town, or what, but he made a very big and very loud stink about waiting for this other panel to end so he could get started. Take all of this with a grain of salt, because I wasn't there to experience this for myself. (This was before my time attending conventions.) But, there it is.

I will say this about Vic's more serious allegations: Actors/Entertainment industry people, especially in niche markets, tend to stick together. They look out for each other. Spike Spencer will suggest other VA friends of his for a radio PSA and stuff like that. Even in larger industries, people tend to protect one another, even if they don't deserve protecting. We have Terry Gilliam coming out and saying Harvey Weinstein did nothing wrong, even though Weinstein's guilt was clear. Steven Spielberg signed a petition to exonerate Roman Polanski. Many filmmakers want to ignore the allegation against Woody Allen. The point is, people stick up for their colleagues in this industry, even if the people they stick up for are guilty. (Like Weinstein.) Industries that have a difficult time unionizing especially try to help each other out, like in the anime/video game VA business. And yet no one in the dubbing industry has publicly stuck up for Vic. No one is defending him. That's weird. That's REALY weird. If Harvey Weinstein has an industry Stan or whatever in Terry Gilliam (AFTER a guilty plea), and everyone in the industry has abandoned Vic, then that's telling of something. Many of the stores I've heard about him, both corroborated and not, tell of a man who is at best angry and unprofessional most of the time. So, while the Vic situation is severely unprecedented, it's not at all surprising. Everyone in the industry seems to be tired of his shit and wants him out. (All of his future projects looks like they've been relegated to the live-action type instead.)

However, it's not our job as individuals to force justice on this man. We can't do that. We cut off too much of ourselves off from the rest of the working world when we do that, and to no real effect either. While Vic's situation definitely comes from complicated aspects of the industry in which he works, the debates around him online have turned into some of the most unfruitful and distasteful things I've ever seen. Nobody should care this much about a voice actor. Nobody at all. Not one way or another. However, I will admit to gleefully treating the online drama as a spectator sport. Call it my only real guilty pleasure. (I feel no actual guilt over the many other "guilty pleasures" I enjoy, so movies like VelociPastor don't count in that category.) It's not entirely healthy, but it's interesting. It just helps if you don't get too riled up by it. Whether you stan or kick the man, you just end up getting angry over things you have no power in changing. As someone who works with video a lot, I just work hard to make sure that I'm kind to the people I work with and try to build a safe environment for creativity. People I meet who behave like Vic get kicked regardless of rape allegations, because they ruin my groove and the groove of others around me. That's how I try to make a real difference in the part of industry I work in.

So for once there's something interesting on Dutch TV, and of course the power supply for my set-top box gave out since the last time I watched TV (which is a few weeks ago, yes, TV sucks that badly over here). They also used a non-standard plug so I can't use a universal power supply...

Welp, there's one more thing on my list of "things I will do my damndest to never do again":
Pulling an allnighter for a math assignment.

Not that I had to do it because I needed the time to solve the tasks, no. I needed my father to help me get the scanner back to work so I could actually sumbit it before the 11:59am deadline and by the time I was done, it was too late to go to sleep and still wake up in time to scan and submit the stuff

The air conditioner in my bedroom has been acting up lately and nowadays, it turns on and off randomly and pumps out hot air. Until it can be fixed, the bed was moved to my office room. Another bad thing that could've been worse was that while standing on the bed that was on the floor, I slipped due to not having a good footing and nearly broke my back due to landing on the right side of the desk that has my computer. I'll be feeling the after effects in the days to come but fortunately, nothing broken or else I would've seriously needed the doctor in spite of the pandemic.

Some neighbours living next to me were moving today, I stood on my balcony, and all of a sudden I hear one of them say REALLY LOUDLY "That one next to us (i.e. me) does really strange things the whole time".

I was all "WTF?", I've never had any problems with them beyond the occasional noise and cigarette smoke wafting over the balcony, and never got any complaints about anything (or had trouble with them for that matter).

Maybe painting the scale models? Working form home and having video chats? Having geeky interests in general?

Anyway, if they had some problem, they could simply have said so... (the whole remark is quite ironic from that point of view)

^At least you're seeing the back of them.

What child of Lilith said. Good riddance to them, and hopefully you get better neighbors soon (pandemic notwithstanding).

Well, they were okay neighbours in general (of course, considering the utter clusterfuck that Psycho Neighbour was at my previous apartment building, about anyone who isn't batshit crazy is going to be a "okay neighbour"...), which is why a comment like that out of the blue was rather shocking.

On the other hand, they were the kind of Dutch people who are likely to make that kind of comment about anyone who doesn't indulge in the more "popular" aspects of Dutch culture, i.e. booze, orange-mania, and enjoying the broader* aspects of soccer matches (softdrugs optional).

* which means that the actual sport is somewhat accessory to things like racist choirs and borderline rioting.

I thought until today that Blu Ray discs were practically invincible when it came to skipping and scratches. That all changed tonight when I popped in disc 1 of High School of the Dead and when the credits for episode 1 were rolling, suddenly it stopped moving at one point to my disbelief. Have any of you had these issues and how did you manage to fix it?

Update on Blu Ray situation: I looked up solutions on the internet and one of them was to clean it with a cloth doused in white vinegar. All the scratches seemed to come off almost instantly but when I put the disc on the player to test it out, it still wouldn't play where it stopped. Remind me to leave a bad review on Ebay in case the seller asks me whether I enjoyed the item or not.

Optical disks have always been a bit iffy, right from CD days; it's a bit of a miracle that they work as well as they do. My solution has always been to have more than one player, as it's very common that a disk that fails on one will read on another.

And have you asked the vendor for a replacement before simply giving a bad review?

I tried playing it on my PlayStation 4 but it still wouldn't play right.

Hereby I'd like to flame companies that provide "GDPR-compliant" advertisement setting cookies that simply won't take "No" for an answer to their very complicated and long lists of advertisement scumbag companies. I disable all the options, and keep getting confronted with the same dialog box over and over again, because apparently that kind of system can't (or more likely doesn't) want to handle my combination of ad-blocker + privacy-scumbag blocker.

My suggestion to that kind of company: Please go have an accident with a chainsaw up your <censored>. Also, you just ensured that instead of me clicking yes on any of your shit, I simply blocked the website elements that provide your so-called "GDPR-compliant" cookies (I'm pretty sure they aren't GDPR-compliant with that kind of behaviour... ).

Moments that make me pause:
Getting myself perma-banned on another forum for pointing out that you can add trolls to your ignore list without missing anything important, to which apparently a mod took exception and decided I could also be missed (no warning whatsoever) I guess it wasn't very smart of me to post that after a mod warned to keep things civil , but I wasn't involved in the incivilities (unles pointing out sockpuppets counts as "incivilities" in there)...

Mods here: sorry for ranting and possibly importing drama from another forum, but I frankly appreciate it that on this forum you do get a warning. Can I offer you a virtua-hug?

*sighs* More muscle pain on the way...

Just hurt both my upper arms because of putting pressure on them due to a exercise routine. And after just recovering from the right foot, what bad luck follows me around huh!

I think I am developing a severe online shopping addiction. It's not so much about buying items, it's about buying then canceling items I know deep down I don't need. This seems to have developed out of necessity due to the pandemic leaving stores like Wal Mart out of commission.

I just feel stupid sometimes because of my limited knowledge on how to get my insurance bills working for vision. And my mom ends up doing that because of how she’s better at that kind of stuff than I am.

And given my reputation here, and possibly some other forum sites, I just feel a total dumbass, and people are apparently right about that fact. I have no college degree or anything, just a high school diploma. And compared some others, I’m just a total dumbass. I guess it could be due to the fact I’m autistic that I’m so stupid, not mention me being a loser that I am.

In the end, I’m just a worthless nobody, with a low IQ to match.