Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
Burnt out, over the hill autistic IT nerd and longtime SSC lurker
User ID: 3219
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
If you've ever seen how the sausage gets made at a major company, jobs are very much withheld and created on more of an internal, political basis than any actual needs the companies have. On top of that, most major organizations are still barely adapted to using spreadsheets and the most simple algorithmic techniques that were created decades ago. Literally just using excel to automate tasks could save these companies tens of millions of dollars a year. And yet... they don't?
Ah. You've met both my employer and the department that employs them at the State level, I see.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
I mean, my wife doesn't love it when I start in on an infodump, but she married me anyway and we make it work. She has occasionally quoted Jen from The IT Crowd at me, specifically making white static noise at me or saying, "I want to stop listening to this," to bring me back to Earth, a behavior that I have encouraged so that she doesn't have to get ever-more lost in what I'm on about.
Did I warn you that I'm totally a cheap date when it comes to Kindle books in general and LitRPG in particular since it plugs right into the brain centers that began to develop the first time I picked up D&D as a wee lad? Because I'm totally a cheap date when it comes to Kindle books in general and LitRPG in particular! That disclaimer out of the way, while I can't remember anything specifically atheistic in DCC, it's more than crapsack (grimdark?) enough of a setting to invoke that sort of thing and Carl is definitely guilty of wangst-filled thought monologues throughout the series; I honestly wouldn't be surprised if one or more of those was explicitly atheistic and it just didn't register highly enough for me to remember it. Anyway, I should probably qualify the series that I've enjoyed so let me do that real quick, starting with the fact that out of all of them, 12 Miles Below is the only one that doesn't have any sort of comparative rules or system and that in fact intriguing enemies and RPG systems are definitely one of the hooks that get me into series. So:
- 12 Miles Below: I utterly adore the world and the worldbuilding of this series. Good writing and characters as well! I'll devour these as soon as they appear.
- Noobtown: Intricate RPG system, lots of "fish out of water" humor along with hysterical foil characters, lots of pop culture referencing, not too heavy of a tone in general with periodic exceptions for reasons of Plot.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Another intricate RPG system, tons of fights, many of them epic, surprising world, character and system depth overall, which isn't surprising given that the series is long and still unfinished. That said, the MC is a self-described chuunibyou and he's got a lot of that wangst going on, so maybe get some other opinions if those things don't sound like your cup of tea.
- The Menocht Loop: I don't even remember how this one came across my radar but I utterly adore the magic system and the worldbuilding of these books. This series starts with the MC being way OP for his world but explores what that looks like in a larger 'verse. This is perhaps the best written series of all of the ones that I mentioned, with a well-thought-out magic system, and a rich 'verse for the characters to explore. Exceptionally well written characters, at that.
- The Dungeon Slayer: Just good overall, but an interesting system where most characters are locked into their overall level and skillset, with the exception of the MC who starts with nothing but can actually advance. Some interesting characters and bosses and good fighting as well.
- Oh, Great, I was Reincarnated as a Farmer: This one's another humorous, "fish out of water," series, that's all about the MC gaming the System to advance and prosper despite the lowly farmer class he inherits when he enters the world. Not outstanding, but the humor largely worked for me and did I mention that I'm a cheap date to begin with?
And thanks for the recommendations! I haven't read any of your main recommendations yet, though it sounds like I'll have to check out all of them at some point. I actually have Primal Hunter in my Kindle library, but I know I haven't read it yet. In fact, I have several LitRPG books and even series in my library that I haven't gotten around to because some shiny daily or countdown deal caught my fancy as I have a bad habit of reading the free sample and then buying if I like what I've read, sometimes multiple books in the series. Looking at you, Guardian of Aster Fall series. Don't think I've forgotten you either, Cyber Dreams. And that's just LitRPG in particular, I have plenty of sci-fi, fantasy, nonfiction, and psych stuff in my library to read (someday?) as well, so I'm definitely on your wavelength there. And doggone it, I only ever did read the first few books of the Master and Commander series... But yeah, I'll have to check out your must-reads and honorable mentions for sure!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
Interesting! I'm not big on audiobooks as I tend to prefer the speed of reading and the imagery that my head evokes but there's definitely a lot to appreciate in a good narrator. I may have to give a James Marsters narrated Dresden Files novel at some point, for instance, because that sounds a lot like a Reese's Cup combination right there. But yes, I'll have to see how much the audiobook will set me back and I'll definitely drop a line if/when I pick up City and give it a read. I'm positive I've seen it on sale at the Kindle store at some point in the not too distant past so I view it as only a matter of time. :)
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
Same, I gotta say that IMO a lot of this just boils down to industrialized food targeting the lowest common denominator, which is to say that sweet and salty tastes in particular tend to be ramped up in most store-bought food items in order to enhance its appeal to the mean human palate.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
Dungeon Crawler Carl was my gateway drug to LitRPG and it's must-read series in my book. Others that I have highly enjoyed include 12 Miles Below, Noobtown, He Who Fights Monsters, The Menocht Loop, The Dungeon Slayer, and Oh, Great, I Was Reincarnated as a Farmer. Some of these aren't, strictly speaking, LitRPG in the sense that they talk about and/or expose game mechanics in any sense, but they're all good. There are a couple more series that I left out that I don't think were categorized as LitRPG and there are a few more series that I've read but didn't continue for various reasons, a big one unfortunately being genre fatigue.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
Wow, The Diamond Age is my single favorite work of his as well! Given your dislike for those aspects of Reamde, I'd definitely tell you to stay away from Fall--it takes that reverse verisimilitude and cranks it up to 11, so much so that my favorite review of it described it as fractally bad. I would add that Fall is a dreadfully predictable wall-banger of a novel that's about as subtle as a brick to the head. Worse, it wears Neal Stephenson's style as a skin suit. Seveneves isn't that bad, IMO, if you can stand an expy of Neal DeGrasse Tyson being a character and played straight as a hyperintelligent protagonist, though there are other parts you might not enjoy as well.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
Right?! I kinda feel like in retrospect, Cryptonomicon and the Baroque cycle were peak Stephenson, and were it not for the whole LitRPG phenomenon, I'd probably be doing more re-reads of my favorite works of his. Hell, if it weren't for Fall, I'd probably still be gobbling up whatever he chose to write!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
Gate Crashers, by Patrick S. Tomlinson. Good read, but really not living up to the favorable comparison to Douglas Adams that helped get me to bite, either.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
Never read the book, but those GOP types were definitely way high on their own supply in retrospect. Having been there at the time, I would say that in the right-coded media of the day, there was a commonly shared perception that the Obama campaign was weak and that much of his campaign was artificially inflated, whereas the Romney campaign, despite suffering the traditionally-perceived pro-Blue bias, was doing better than reported. Regardless of the perceived weaknesses of Obama the incumbent (and I believe he did lose a significant amount of votes from 2008), they paled in comparison to the actual weaknesses of Romney the candidate as revealed by the voters.
The replay of these dynamics in subsequent presidential elections has been an endless source of fascination to me personally, though I have long since given up on personally having any decent idea who would emerge victorious as I have lost both the ability and the desire to separate the signal of actual voter sentiment from the noise of propaganda.
and it seems that it gets pretty bad once you're in your mid 30s, and concerning past the 50s.
Since we're sharing anecdotes here, I'll add two more to the pile: my wife's experience and my own. Let's just say that my wife and I are both mainstream Gen Xers, in relatively good health overall, and a bit closer to the concerning side of your time frame without being specific about my mumble decades on this ball of iron, rock, and water. In 2020, IIRC, both my wife and I had minor respiratory symptoms (drippy nose, scratchy throat) and while mine went away the next day, hers hung around and got a little worse so she got a telehealth appointment and was diagnosed with COVID based on no other information. She really didn't get much worse from my perspective but the fear was real even though it cleared up quickly, which is to say that she remembers that episode as being significantly worse for her symptom-wise than I do. IIRC the vaccine zapped her for maybe a day, whereas mine was again, minor respiratory symptoms and fatigue for <1 day.
Fast forward to 2023. My wife quickly develops cold symptoms. Now that we have quick and dirty home tests for COVID, she uses one, tests positive, has another telehealth appointment, and is advised by the doctor to get the good, behind-the-counter Sudafed and prescribed cough syrup. She does this and is (mostly) better in a couple of days. I quickly develop symptoms the next day, also test positive with the home kit, follow her same regimen, and do not see improvement. I think I discontinued in a day or two because the ephedrine in particular was messing me up and so I just went with regular OTC cold medicine. I have a telehealth appointment, in which the doctor pretty much tells me to keep doing what I'm doing, and spend a solid week with stubbornly persistent symptoms of low grade fever, head and sinus congestion, and low energy. I was not up to doing much of anything other than the bare minimum during that time. Finally, the congestion starts to break up and move, and I am mostly back to normal in another few days, although I don't feel 100% for another couple-few weeks. It was certainly the longest bout of illness I've had in my memory (10 days), but in the last two decades I've had two serious bouts of the flu that were more acute in their presentation, with the nastier one lasting for a week. So overall, yeah, a lot like coming down with the flu, though neither of us felt like our lives were in danger.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
Hear hear!
I've tried to refrain from commenting on this myself but I found the middle of the WoT books to be tedious as often as not. I'm one of the ones that bogged down hard for the first time right around the bloody menagerie in TFoH. Nor did I particularly care for the style of rapid-fire exposition endings that were then revisited in excruciating detail in a subsequent book that evolved around that time, either, but Brandon Sanderson finished out the series so strongly that I liked it enough overall to go back for a re-read.
Which was a mistake that I was making because once again, I bogged down at the bloody menagerie and realized that regardless of how much I liked the series as a whole, life was too short for me to force myself to slog through those middle books all over again. I still think that the first four and last three books are tightly plotted and well written despite their length and I can only wonder at what might have been if Jordan had never gotten deathly ill with amyloidosis.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
I'm finding it gripping as well and in fact I'm right at the point where they're pushing for their IPO!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
I started Retail Gangster: The Insane Real-life Story of Crazy Eddie by Gary Weiss just a couple of days ago. It's been a highly interesting read thus far, the glimpse into the New York City of the 70s has already made the read worthwhile for me, much less the story of Eddie himself.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
3mo ago
Just finished The Universe Within (Amaranthe book 22) by G.S. Jennsen and have moved on to Girlfriend in a Coma: The Novel by Douglas Coupland.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
3mo ago
You say UI doesn't matter, but Amazon's enshittification of the Kindle OS is a crime. My library is buried beneath ads.
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS. I have a huge Kindle library that I read through, and I personally find that Fire tablets are cheap and serviceable enough to serve as my readers but even with the ability to cut out the ads the experience has steadily declined. I still love to buy books to support the "independent" authors that I like rather than subscribing to Kindle Unlimited but even so, Amazon seems to have their fingers in every piece of that pie as well, be it books from 47 North or serials from Royal Road curated into Kindle books, and the bookstore itself is utter shite to browse now that every. Single. Damn. Page. Consists of about 25% of the same four "sponsored" books at the top and bottom of each page.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
3mo ago
Thanks for the write-up! That was indeed long but I still read every word of it and found it highly enjoyable. I appreciate how immersive your travelogues are as well as your appreciation of the places you visit!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
3mo ago
It's been years since I've read Casino Royale but FWIW, ISTR coming away from it thinking that the movie was a good overall adaptation of the book.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
3mo ago
The Neon Court (Matthew Swift #3) by Kate Griffin. Fun series, I'd probably love it even more if I were a Brit and I might absolutely adore it if I were a Londoner. Or perhaps in that case, I'd think it was shite.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
3mo ago
Thanks for this, it's amazing what a boost a simple fragrance can be when it's suitable. I've been mucking about for years now trying all different sorts of things ever since my one cologne (Clinique Chemistry) went away. CK One has been the closest I've gotten but even so, it's just not the same.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
3mo ago
I finished book six last night and I just have to say: holy shitsnacks did some major stuff go down! I was sorely tempted to start right in on number 7 although I chose a different book, I'll be tempted tonight to put that choice down and go back to the Hollows anyway.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
3mo ago
I did think that Dotson had more upside potential than Zacchaeus, as much as I liked the latter, but it's hard to say that the trade paid off when looking at Dotson's stat line. Regardless, I have to agree that it's hard to care too much about Dotson's production or those future picks given that we could just feed Saquon the rock and reap the rewards for game after game. Never thought I'd get to see good old-fashioned NFC East smash mouth football win a ring in today's modern game.
Almost 2/3 of the way through the first book. I'll probably continue the series, though the MC's build is reminiscent of the MC from He Who Fights Monsters, another LitRPG series that I've been reading.
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