exatreide

I haven't yet, I'm listening to the series on audio book, I'm a little bit half way through book three.

Hey folks, For the first time in decades there is general ground war in Europe, and a massive one at that. What are your thoughts on the current conflict in Eastern Europe?

Well, the conclusion of the series happened a few months ago. I was pretty happy with how it ended, but it did seem to leave enough open to have a season or two for last couple books. I'm currently rocking the second audio book and it's really well done.

Hey folks, I just got a new desktop for the first time in a few years so I'll try to be on more often. Things are still going alright for me, I'm still somehow an elected official for a medium sized city of about 55K and oversee a budget of about 95 million dollars. Working as a nurse and going to school full time as well, and my daughter is 7 and wicked smaht. I'm also on standby for refugee assistance in Eastern Europe to help with the Ukrainian situation and may be headed to Romania/Moldova for aid. We meeting for drinks right Edric O?

This is exciting stuff! It's been decades since the last dune RTS. I'm pumped.

I watched it last night. It lacked a lot of the subtle nuances of the book, but it was entertaining. The Lynch version was a confusion riddled mess that was a bad movie(I still love it) when the Mini series had the ability to tell significantly more due to its time allowance. The cinematography in this was great. I'm quite pleased.

Moving into 2021 (well nearly half way through) We continue to see the lingering impacts of a waning Covid 19 wave (I say that since we are looking at other spikes in the Delta Varient nationwide) Supply chain issues are also continuing to dominate local manufacturing issues here in Northern Indiana. While we have some relief (lumber is already falling) we're still beset by things like chip shortages. Locally our unemployment level is under 4%. Which has led to a massive increase in demand for workers. And definitely shifted the power back to labor. Local companies have had to raise wages to compete and most have a minimum of 15 dollars an hour. Politically we're also looking to raise the minimum wage allowed for companies asking for a tax abatement up to 17 dollars or more. Biden has done okay. Honestly surprisingly effective with how the senate is currently. The child tax credit ($250-300) a month for six month for every kid in the US is a game changer that could reduce child poverty by millions. But we're s faced with looming environmental, police, and voting rights issues in the states.

Hey folks, I'm a fan of the horror podcast last podcast on the left. They did a spin off series talking about the Dune series. It's pretty comical, and a good listen. Hope you enjoy. https://www.lastpodcastnetwork.com/dune

Big back and forth on If it will be released in HBO max at all. Or just theaters. Personally I don't care either way, we got a big budget dune movie

Hey Folks, Is anyone else here a fan of the Expanse? It's currently on Amazon Prime and heading into its last season (season six). I really enjoy it, the political aspects of it between the three factions (Earth, Mars and the Belt), the action side, and the unknown aspect of the protomolucle. It's always a book series that is quite an entertaining read as well (on book two my self). Anyone else a fan?

Oh hey folks. Since the last post i've been elected to city council (still running for state house). Yeah, lil ol exatreides is now in government. Hows the turns have tabled!

Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Boys do we have worm sign! I ain't gonna lie, I was worried. I'm still worried it may suck. But come on! We have something to look forward to this year! In DUNE! and It's not a terrible spin off novella or something. Wooohoo!

So, I'm terribly bored so I figured I'd jump on the ol Dune2k for an update on my life, since I am as we all know, the center of the two known universes. I spent two weeks in Shiprock new mexico working as a triage covid nurse for the Navajo reservation, this was all volunteer (with expenses paid). We were nearly always busy, and the Navajo nation continues to be one of the hardest hit areas in the country. Back home, I quarantined for a couple weeks and continued my Don Quixote like statehouse run. We had the primary here in Indiana, and while my GOP opponent went from 8,000 votes in 2016 to 5,001 now. The dem went had 2,965 votes in 2016, and I had 2,947. So, while GOP enthusaism was down, Dem's wasn't really up. Still though, the race goes on, and our website is up. www.mishlerforindiana.com Other than that, continue to do nursing telehealth visits, and offer what support I can to local health and advocacy organizations.

Day one: Day one yesterday was an odd day, but the first day of treating patients. The first half consisted entirely of onboarding with the Indian health systems, finger printing, hippa training ect, meeting coders, medical records ect. It was long, tedious. I thought nextgen was a bad electronic charting system. Indian health ehr is almost DoS like. Originally I was supposed to work in the low acuity alternative care site. That's not open yet, so I'm outside in the triage tent helping screen folks. It seems my fate in any pandemic is to wear ppe outside, in the heat. While Ebola had much more intense PPE for maybe an hour or two, this is less intense PPE for much longer. Its very hot, and we had a near constant stream of cars from my arrival at 3pm till I left at 7pm. We had a couple cases non covid related, a head wound, a cat bite, and a stomach pain. But everyone else was covid, covid, covid. Contact tracing normally focusses on an individual, however due to Navajo culture, whole families, 3 or 4 generations may live together in small homes. So the idea is family tracking instead. The outbreak continues upwards here, with the Navajo nation instituting a curfew from friday 8pm to monday 5am. All those who violate face a $1,000 fine. It's not severely complicated work, just getting vitals, moving folks from the parking lot in a wheelchair up a hill, and into the ER. Tech work, but hey it's helping and the staff here is incredibly grateful for the help. The alternative care site to house folks is a gymnasium near here. If I'm here, or there doesn't matter as long as we're helping out.

Today was a travel day, up early and away, a sad goodbye to the beautiful girlfriend for the next two weeks :(. The airport experience was...different and my first time traveling in a COVID-19 world. Security took no time at all, I was the only person there. Then the ritual pre deployment beer, drank with a pulled aside mask and gulped hurriedly. Normally I fall asleep on the flight, but it was a bit uncomfortable with the N95. Landed, and switched planes. Met up with the new team, all of whom seem to be pretty good folks. There's 4 of us on this mission, two nurses, a doc and an NP. We picked up a rental car, made a quick stop at wal mart and headed off. We we're originally going to work in Gallop but they told us we will be working at a hospital in shiprock instead. Part of any successful disaster response is flexibility, you have to be able to go with the flow, and adjust as needed. Well, I'm a bit nervous on since I haven't done inpatient care in a long time. And Gallup was supposed to be a lower acuity setting. But hey, nerves are normal and I'm sure it will be fine. We drove first from Albuquerque to Gallup to meet with our team, get some supplies. We had a couple hour discussion with our native American Liaison about culture and history before heading off. Gallup itself is under lock down, turning folks away without reason to be there (we had a letter). Another hour and a half driving to get to our air B&B where we will be staying for two weeks, or however long we're needed. Attached is photos of checkpoints.

I have volunteered to work in a covid unit in the Navajo nation for two weeks, I'm leaving on Thursday, I don't know if cell service or internet will be available during that time.

@Vanguard3000 We made a deal, I sit through 90 day fiance, she sits through Babylon 5. Trying to use the art of compromise in the relationship. The first season of Babylon 5 is pretty bad though honestly, we just made it to season 2 after skipping a lot of filler episodes in season 1. She's not a huge fan but hasn't refused to watch it... give it time. Like a whisper from Mr. Mordan it's influence will grow.

Is Doom Eternal worth it? I've been thinking about it. I've been playing battlefield 5 for awhile, patiently waiting for more content. But they just announced that there will be no further content added after June. Which is, to me, a slap in the face. Imagine you spent 60 dollars to go see a movie, then half way through the movie they told you that's that! No more movie! Seriously a ww2 game with only the British, Germans, Americans and Japanaease? No French?! No Italians?! No Russians?! NO D-DAY? No Eastern front?! I'm very tempted to never buy a battlefield game again.

Oh, that's neat. I like the design.

With COVID-19 going on and most of us resorting to streaming media to get us through the days. I'm running out of stuff to watch. So, what's getting you through the days? Currently I'm watching Babylon 5 on my old hard drive Community on netflix And The Death of Stalin on Netflix as well. What about you? Any good recommendations?

This is a fantastic video going over Dune 2, Dune2000, and Emperor battle for Dune. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOemQuy2JUc I hesitated to post it to one of the games threads as it has a lot do with licensing and other history that encompass more than just one individual game. There's also some great points as to why a remake of any of the Dune games is hard to do if not impossible at the moment. This is a pretty fantastic video relating to the Dune universe as a whole. Take a look.

In the theme of forum revival, let's talk gaming. What are you currently playing through this COVID-19 life style? How are you getting through it? Maybe drop a steam ID or a gamertag if you would like some friends to join. Currently I'm playing through Witcher 3 on xbox 1. I've never played it before, and I'm enjoying the game much more after watching the netflix show of the same title. Also now and then I'm playing some battlefield 5 on there, good to get some tension out with a ww2 shoot that lets me blow up stuff with Tiger tanks and Shermans. How about you?

Having watched the entire series, it was.... Okay. It wasn't great, it wasn't terrible, it was Picard. I enjoyed the reunions, enjoyed seeing seven, enjoyed Riker and Troi coming in for an episode. However the overall arch of the series felt like a mass effect rip off. I think some of the best parts of the series were the small amounts of world building on the borg cube with the xbs. I wish Hugh would have asked about his old friend Geordi. I think a lot of folks big gripe with the show is that it's rather grimdark for Star Trek. Gene Rod would have hated it for that reason. Star trek has always been a "this is a better tomorrow" sort of show. It's avoided (to some chagrin) of the depressing stuff that other shows have utilized in the past (Farscape, Stargate, The Expanse ect). This did not, things got very real, and very dark quickly. That's hard for a lot of folks to adapt to.

Well, currently working at home as well. I've done some consulting work with the local health department and mayor of my city regarding plans and preparations. I spent 6 months in Liberia as an Ebola nurse and have worked in around 9 disaster deployments around the world. But despite that, I have very little actual hospital work. A lot of outpatient stuff and things related to that. My girlfriends a nurse, and she works at a local hospital doing stress testing, both of us are on standby to deploy to Chicago or CT to work in a covid unit. I'm not that worried If I can survive an ebola zone in Liberia, I can survive Covid in chicago. Besides that, just dealing with the massive amounts of boredom.

Hi folks, I can only speak about my region of the United States (Northern Indiana). I can definitely see a growing division and hardening of partisan lines here. These are exacerbated by gerrymandering and special interest groups. I've ran for office a couple times in the past, once for county coroner in 2016, and once for township board in 2018. Both times I received around 33-36% of the vote. In my second race, my opponents never even campaigned or went as far as making a facebook page, they were just simply elected on the fact they had an R next to their name. I'm running for state house now, and it's another don Quixote race. I expect to get around the same vote total this time. However, no one else stepped up to run against him and I hate the idea of an unopposed race. So thus my race for Indiana's 48 house district began! I think the role and influence of mass media and social media has worsened things considerably in this nation. Fox news has created a hyper partisan army of angry voting seniors and science deniers, quick at the hip with the latest facebook meme conspiracy theory drivel. I can't even discuss policy without having to hear about hunter biden and other nonsense. How covid-19 impacts this is to be seen, how did the spanish flu impact the 1920's? Was it the same economic shock that this has caused? I don't remember reading about a massive depression after the spanish flu. However we weren't such a globalized economy during those times as well. I worry about the rise in antisematism here in the states as well. I've had a few voters tell me they would never vote for me because I'm a Jew for this race, I've never heard that in my 2018 or 2016 races, the rise of the right wing here frightens me a bit, but I won't let it dampen my desire to improve healthcare or workers rights here in my state. The fight must go on, it has to go on.