thebardingreen

thebardingreen, 2 days ago

What about Dave’s Famous Bread?

The spell I want is my personal favorite restaurant Felipe’s Pizza Grotto. I’m pretty sure I know exactly what that one does.

thebardingreen, 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

Felipe’s Pizza Grotto

6th Level Conjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: touch

Target: An empty dead end corridor in a dungeon or cave.

Components: V

Duration: Four hours or until everyone in the party is stuffed and can’t possibly eat another bite, or until it’s clear they aren’t going to order and the maitre d looses patience with them, or until the maitre d is destroyed or dispelled. Whichever comes first.

Classes: Wizard, Sorcerer

Carrying all those rations around in the dungeon is hard, plus good luck finding a safe, peaceful place to sit and eat them. Felipe’s Pizza Grotto can only be cast in an underground environment, in a “dead end”.

The stone walls in a 40ft by 40ft area shift and morph, becoming a pleasant dining establishment. The tantalizing smells of garlic, cheese, spiced meats and baking bread waft through the space. Small marble fountains, statues and potted plants appear, along with tasteful oil paintings on the walls. A counter appears, behind which is a fully stocked kitchen with a wood fired pizza oven, and a wine cabinet. A number of tables will appear, scattered around the space and stools will pop into existence in front of the counter. The whole space is lit with small glass oil lamps and candles. A stone wall with a stout wooden door appears, blocking off the passageway. A maitre d appears blocking the door, asking all who approach if they have a reservation. Any the caster designates will be allowed to enter, all others will be turned away (the maitre d has the stats of a Spectral Guardian).

If the caster and anyone accompanying them do not sit at a table on their own, the maitre d will attempt to show them to a table and will become agitated if they don’t cooperate. They will become hostile and berate any characters who have not taken a seat within 5 minutes of entering the grotto.

Once the characters sit down, a waiter will appear with menus, listing every delicacy you would expect to find in a high class restaurant of the sort that serves dishes involving bread, cheese, pasta and garlicky tomato sauce. However, the menu primarily features specialty and build your own pizzas and the waiter will look down their nose and act snooty toward anyone who orders anything else (appetizers, wine, dinner salad and desserts are all acceptable, I recommend the garlic knots and the minestrone soup personally). The waiter will not engage in combat and will disappear if attacked (however, this draws the ire of the maitre d, as does any other interference with the grotto’s operations).

Once all characters have placed orders, the various utensils behind the counter spring to life, acting as if wielded by invisible chefs. The pizza ovens flair to life, ingredients appear and are chopped by levitating knives. Dry pasta flies into pots of magically boiling water. Pizza dough hurls itself into the air and spins around, coming down in a classic, flat round shape, before levitating spoons begin ladling tomato sauce onto it and hovering cheese graters cover it in fresh mozzarella, Parmesan and provolone.

When the food is ready, the waiter will supervise a group of levitating delivery trays and serve it to the characters in the grotto. Each character will receive exactly what they ordered and the execution, preparation and presentation will be flawless, the finest chefs in all the land would find no fault with it.

As the characters are eating, both the waiter and the maitre d will repeatedly stop by their table to ask how their food is tasting and if they need anything else. The waiter will refill water and wine glasses and bread baskets. When everyone seems to be slowing down, the waiter will ask if anyone saved room for dessert and will recommend the cheese cake. Any complaints will be handled with a mix of professionalism and haughtiness worthy of food service professionals who KNOW their food is top notch, but also want their customers to leave satisfied.

If any character is lingering over their food or failing to eat it, the maitre d and the waiter will become agitated and start pestering them, asking if their meal is to their liking or they can get them anything else. If this goes on for too long, they will glare at the whole party impatiently, while unoccupied chairs levitate up and stack themselves on tables and hovering brooms start sweeping the floor. The fire in the pizza oven will go out, and the waiter will begin pointedly snuffing the candles and asking anyone lingering over their meal if they need a to-go box. Once the spell ends, the grotto vanishes and the cavern returns to normal. Food in to-go boxes persists, but is cold, disappointing and somehow less nourishing than when eaten in the grotto.

At the GMs option, characters leaving the grotto may be fatigued from the sheer amount of food they have consumed, and may be required to make constitution saves in order continue their exploration of the dungeon prior to resting.

thebardingreen, 3 days ago

They are allowed to sell the land to other entities controlled by the hedge fund or their cronies.

thebardingreen, 3 days ago

Which is how they run the business for short term profit. This is confusing, but it’s a thing. It being confusing is half the point, because if all the average Joes out there understood how it all really worked, they’d demand reforms so fast your head would spin. It’s essentially a paper vehicle for transferring non fungible value into money in the bank, and then using chapter 11 protections to bilk the other creditors (sometimes including employees with bounced paychecks). They can then sell the Red Lobster business again (probably at what looks like a huge loss, which they can then write off their taxes, to offset profits from other entities they own). Then they can lease the land to the new business owners. Or they can restructure Red Lobster in some other way that allows them to keep squeezing profit out of it (converting to franchising, then finding suckers to buy the individual locations, for instance).

In this whole process, they’re probably raising food prices while lowering quality of both ingredients and service and deferring essential business expenses (like maintenance and equipment upgrades). Because the money is disappearing into rent and the business looks like it’s struggling.

Source: I used to be a business analyst for a VC company.

thebardingreen, 2 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

It was a long time ago and yes.

They actually hired me away from college. I was like 21, it was during the first .com boom. They offered me $76k a year, which seemed like so much money, plus commissions (I got a bounty essentially, if I found them a good opportunity). One of the partners had encountered me in another context and was like “I don’t need people with skills man, I need smart people who wanna learn.” At first I did it part time, for $30 an hour, 'cause I was going to school, but after a month they were like “We need you full time man, you’re gonna make so much money, you don’t need a degree.” They said I was gonna make 5 times my salary off commissions, but I didn’t even come close to that. Some guys I worked with there did, but I didn’t have the predatory instinct for it.

The worst part was the blatant misogyny. It was like some Wolf of Wallstreet shit. Me and the other analysts would be working and the partners would be looking at Russian mail order bride websites or talking about how the senior partner was “gonna hire a bunch of hookers and take 'em out on his speed boat.” No women worked there, and the partners would talk about how “Women’s brains are smaller, and we can’t hire them cause they take longer in the bathroom, so we miss opportunities.”

The next worse part was the enforced caffeination. This job ruined coffee for me to this day. First thing in the morning, the boss would stop by your desk and if you didn’t have a big cup of coffee from the cafe in the lobby, he’d just quietly set caffeine pills in a paper cup by your mouse. This would continue throughout the day… the message was “if you’re not heavily caffeinated during work hours, you’re not sharp enough and we’re gonna miss opportunities.” “Missing opportunities” was an unforgivable sin. There was even one time one of the partners told me he was “keeping my commission from one thing I’d done, to make up for this other opportunity that I’d missed.” I was too young and unconfident to stick up for myself. In retrospect, I think that was a test, and I failed.

Everything was a $$$ dick measuring contest. The partners had a whole pecking order of who was worth more and who was making more money. I’m not sure how they divided income amongst themselves, but there was a lot of “You keep what you kill” going on, but they also had a lot of joint venture entities too. Each partner had their own LLC, then there were two other LLCs, one of which was the entity my paychecks came from, but we ended up doing work on all kinds of stuff. They were into stocks, bonds, derivatives, tech startups, medical startups, real estate and they would create new entities all the time. Who my commissions came from depended on which entity was benefiting off whatever work I was doing.

I’ve been vague about what the work was, because the work was of different varieties, but it was all some variety of research. Like “Watch the financial news and see if there’s day trading opportunities?” or “Are there any new companies doing IPOs this week that we should invest in?” or “Read these 10 startup business plans and tell the partners which ONE they should look at more closely” or “Come with us to this party this medical device company we invested in pre IPO is throwing, to celebrate their IPO. Don’t drink, don’t do the cocaine, don’t bother the strippers (that’s what the partners are there to do), your job is to stay sober, talk to people and “find opportunities” for us.” or “Go to this startup pitch and see tell us if it’s a company you think we should look into.” or “Go out and check out some of these different start ups, take a look at their operations, meet their executives, tell us if you think WE should talk to their executives.” There was also “Here’s a new entity we’re thinking of setting up, to do X thing. Read through the plan and think about ways to isolate risk and maximize profit.”

I was there for about 14 months, and I did all of the above.

If you’ve seen “Enron: The smartest guys in the room.” you’re gonna have a good idea of the kind of culture I’m talking about.

In the end, I got let go because I “missed too many opportunities, so we can’t keep you aboard. You understand.” I think they could also tell I was really unhappy. I was NOT one of the golden boy analysts who went on to become junior partners. I never got rich. Now I do IT consulting and software development. I’m much happier.

In fact, this experience really turned me into much more of an angry socialist than I might have been otherwise. The fact that our society not only lets those guys get away with being who they are and doing what they do… but rewards them for it? Some of the BIGGEST rewards around? That’s a major failing of us as a culture and as a civilization.

thebardingreen, 1 day ago

I actually never got around to it.

thebardingreen, 4 days ago (edited 11 hours ago)

Maxolx / Kzin / Kilrathi - Always gonna start shit with humans, always gonna have a tech edge, always gonna be arrogant and convinced of their own superiority, always gonna lose.

thebardingreen, 4 days ago

If it’s me, my nose is just itchy, and I’m not even thinking about it, or aware I’m doing it. Happens all the time.

thebardingreen, 5 days ago

If there was EVER a movie where they could conjure an excuse for Jackman to show off his Broadway chops while in character as Wolverine, I feel like Deadpool is it.

thebardingreen, 6 days ago

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

They’ll beat you, bash you, squish you, mash you

Chew you up for brunch

And finish you off for dinner or lunch

They’re marching down the halls

They’re crawling up the walls

They’re gooey, gushy, squishy, mushy

Rotten to the core

They’re standing outside your door

Remember Herbert Farbage

While taking out his garbage

He turned around and he did see

Tomatoes hiding in his tree

Now he’s just a memory

I know I’m going to miss her

A tomato ate my sister

Sacramento fell today

They’re marching into San Jose

Tomatoes are on their way

The mayor is on vacation

The governor’s fled the nation

The police have gone on strike today

The National Guard has run away

Tomatoes will have their day

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

They’ll beat you, bash you, squish you, mash you

Chew you up for brunch

And finish you off for dinner or lunch munch munch

Dinner or lunch munch munch

Dinner or lunch

thebardingreen, 6 days ago

How about Reagon / Carter? El Salvadore Death Squads? School of the Americas?

thebardingreen, 6 days ago

I encountered an engineering firm that did this. I wanted to do it too.

The company I worked for at the time (said engineering firm was doing subcontracting for us) was full of older business people who could never in a million years have wrapped their heads around the idea.

thebardingreen, 6 days ago

So if you’re already pretty good at bash would you bother to switch and learn this?

thebardingreen, 7 days ago (edited 1 day ago)

Compared to them, I’m broke. My street has 1.8mil+ houses on it. We got a super good deal on this place, it’s getting leased to us at cost.

We have to drive 10 minutes away to go grocery shopping. Not that there aren’t stores around here, but who wants to pay $8.39 for a box of organic hippy brand cereal?

thebardingreen, 7 days ago

My Ubuntu box I use for browsing/watching videos and listening to music just barely works and was frustrating to get properly configured.

Something is wrong. Have you tried Linux Mint? -Someone who has used Linux as a daily driver since 2001.

thebardingreen, 7 days ago

I genuinely had an experience like this myself. I suggested Linux as a solution for something to a friend of mine who was a physicist doing a start up. This was around 2015-2016. He went on an angry rant about frustrating Linux was and nothing would work. His last experience with it was in 2002.

thebardingreen, 7 days ago

Your surround sound, I’m sure it could be done. I’ve set up some pretty successful visual / audio stuff with Linux. I did IT for an Indy film festival four years in a row and we used Linux for all kinds of stuff (mostly because the festival was broke and didn’t want to spend money on new computers or software). We would run into hardware and configuration issues and our philosophy became “if you can’t solve it in two hours, distrohop.”

For the rest of it, I couldn’t agree more. If you need the tools that lock you to the platform, you need the platform FOR THOSE TOOLS. I have Windows and OSX machines (although it’s been like a year since I couldn’t do something on Wine, even if it’s glitchy). My Windows machines dual boot and I haven’t booted the windows partitions in literally 6-8 months. One OSX machine gets used almost exclusively for video conferencing (just because it’s in a convenient place) and for Garageband. The other OSX machine literally… just runs linux VMs that I can connect to over the network for various projects. I had other plans for it originally, but someone gave me a 6 year old Dell all in one that now runs Linux Mint and performs better than my actual Roku TV anyway. It’s a bit smaller than the TV, but it doesn’t matter to me. The TV disappeared into my wife’s office and now she’s the only one that uses it.

thebardingreen, 6 days ago (edited 1 day ago)

Why do you think I’m angry? You (and my buddy) are just comically wrong, don’t wanna learn and get frustrated and mad when you run into trouble, like a cartoon character trying to open a can with a hammer.

I use Linux for everything, it’s stable, easy, fun I’m WAAY more comfortable in it than I ever was in Windows. Your opinion doesn’t change how well Linux works for me and has for decades. It’s definitely NOT shit, you just don’t know what you’re doing.

You’re like a dude talking to a professional race driver saying “Why drive manual, automatic is SO much easier, and therefor better and manual is harder and therefor shit.” Like dude, you’re talking to a room full of professional drivers. Like think about that for a second before you keep going the way you have been.

thebardingreen, 8 days ago

Academic journals: How do we profit from this situation?

thebardingreen, 7 days ago

I read this as “40k porn” and was like…wtf mate.

thebardingreen, 8 days ago

Here you go.

https://lemmy.starlightkel.xyz/pictrs/image/34bbcb55-6061-42b1-ab1e-2622f533497b.png

thebardingreen, 8 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

Just as an amphibian enthusiast / custom aquarium maker, if my wife gave me a frog this way, I would squee like a little girl.

I mean… she got me a hamster and three months later I had built this:

lemmy.starlightkel.xyz/post/128358

thebardingreen, 9 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

I really have no objection to drug fueled sex parties TBH.

EDIT: After reading the article, sounds like there’s maybe some sexism and bad power dynamics in play and it’s not even “He said, she said” it’s “there MIGHT be some insinuations that things could be coercive / women could feel pressured to participate / toxic masculinity stuff.” All very non specific.

thebardingreen, 10 days ago

Man who can’t let go of past allows childhood bully to goad him into unwinnable challenge, forces friends to play history’s most boring sport. They get their asses kicked.

thebardingreen, 11 days ago

It’s not real and we live in an age of miracles.