Random Thoughts

WyldeMan wrote:Because I can just buy $300 tvs every few years.

UltimateMarvel wrote:

WyldeMan wrote:Because I can just buy $300 tvs every few years.

You cheap bastard! It better last at least 3 years.

WyldeMan wrote:The tv that just burned out was my very first TCL Roku tv from either March 2017 or March 2018 when I first cut the cord with cable, so I had a good run with it but I can't quite remember if it's been five or six years now.

UltimateMarvel wrote:

WyldeMan wrote:The tv that just burned out was my very first TCL Roku tv from either March 2017 or March 2018 when I first cut the cord with cable, so I had a good run with it but I can't quite remember if it's been five or six years now.

That's not bad at all. I have a Sony 1080p LCD TV from more than a decade ago still going strong.

WyldeMan wrote:The nice thing about replacing my tv every four or five years is that I'm not a decade behind on current technology, you know that thing that rapidly evolves every year...

UltimateMarvel wrote:That's not bad at all. I have a Sony 1080p LCD TV from more than a decade ago still going strong.

WyldeMan wrote:The nice thing about replacing my tv every four or five years is that I'm not a decade behind on current technology, you know that thing that rapidly evolves every year...

Rusty wrote:This. This is exactly what I've been dealing with the past 12 months. Perfect timing for a rant.

I'm in need of at least two new TV's. One for my parents house and one for the van down the river.

My parents have three TV's - Bedroom/Lounge Room (Mum's room)/Back Room (Dad's room). All are LG. I like LG, plus with my parents not being the most tech-savvy of 70 year old's, I've always tried to ensure all the TV's are similar; similar operating systems; similar remotes, etc, so there's a constant familiarity. Unfortunately, to this day, even after using the same remote with the same TV daily for the past 5+ years, when he wants to change the channel or adjust the volume, my Dad still has to look at the remote for 5+ seconds before he figures out where the correct button is - and that's under light. Add 10 seconds if the room is dark. His instinct for technology is at about 4%.

I don't upgrade their TV's too often because they won't use 99% of modern features. Shit, every TV they've had since the dawn of the Plasma/LCD era has been a hand-me-down from me. When I upgrade, I give them my old one, which is still a massive upgrade on what they were previously using. The one they currently have in the lounge room is one of mine from approx 13 years ago. Whilst it is 1080p HD, it isn't a Smart TV. Can't download/use Apps on it. That's the one I need to upgrade because my mum is more inclined to attempt using modern tech (Apps).

She can actually utilise Netflix and other apps, and there's an app called BritBox that is jam packed full of British TV shows from the past 50 years which is right up her alley, and she has been dropping not-so-subtle hints about it for a year. Unfortunately, even the other two TV's, which are smart TV's, have outdated software which are no longer supported and are outdated for that particular app she wants.

The issue is as much as I still like LG TV's, when I started buying them they were the decently priced mid-range quality TV. Now, they're a leader in TV/screen tech and their product pricing has been adjusted accordingly.

If I can manage to jump in at the right time I can get a 4k UHD 43" LG for around $600 (about $400 US) - but that's at the big clearance sale, two year old stock end of the pipeline.

However, the same price could get me something with comparable, if not better performance, in the 50"-60" range from TCL or Hisense. I think it's time for my parents to say goodbye to LG.

@WyldeMan I have to ask this. With your experience with the TCL line - I recall you've mentioned them multiple times over the years - as times have progressed, do they keep up with software, firmware upgrades etc at a somewhat reasonable rate? or do they simply pump and dump products?

In this day and age, if I can't get a minimum of 5 years of reasonable technological relevancy out of a TV, I want nothing to do with it.

As for the TV for the Van? I'll save that for a later rant.

WyldeMan wrote:The missing Titan Submarine has been found, or what's left anyways as it apparently imploded near the Titanic....

The San Bernardino Sheriff’s office announced today that hikers had found a body in the Mount Baldy wilderness, the same general vicinity where actor Julian Sands disappeared in January. The announcement makes no mention of the actor, but it does promise,”Identification should be completed next week at which time we will update this press release.

The sheriff’s office posted the following notice at 5:27 pm today:

On Saturday, June 24, 2023, at about 10:00 a.m., civilian hikers contacted the Fontana Sheriff’s Station after they discovered human remains in the Mt. Baldy wilderness.  Fontana Station deputies, along with the Sheriff’s Department’s Emergency Operations Division, responded to the scene.  The decedent was transported to the Coroner’s Office, pending positive identification.  Identification should be completed next week at which time we will update this press release.  No further details are available at this time.  

The discovery comes a little more than 24 hours after Sands’ family issued their first statement on the matter, saying they are “deeply grateful to the search teams and coordinators who have worked tirelessly to find Julian.”

The search for Sands had been suspended temporarily because of the severe winter conditions across Western U.S. this spring. San Bernardino sheriffs said they have conducted eight searches to find the British actor, an experienced outdoorsman, along with eight other operations.

The efforts picked up again last Saturday. Officials said more than 80 search and rescue volunteers, deputies and staff participated in the search that took place Saturday in the nearby wilderness and remote areas across the mountain. The effort included two helicopters and drone crews.

Mount Baldy, which lies in the San Gabriel Mountains less than 50 miles northeast of Los Angeles, is one of the highest peaks in the region, at over 11,000 feet. While close to the country’s second-largest metropolis, the area’s steep terrain and ravines make portions of it difficult to access, especially in winter, when Sands disappeared. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s office said last week that some parts of the wilderness were still covered in 10 feet of snow.

Rusty wrote:Was just reading about that. What a fucking terrible way to die.

UltimateMarvel wrote:

Rusty wrote:Was just reading about that. What a fucking terrible way to die.

Very terrible to go! I've been reading about the design of the submarine and I couldn't believe it. They use a video game console controller to steer it.

WyldeMan wrote:Ever since the implosion, I've seen Titanic charting among the top movies on several streaming platforms. Nothing like a real life tragedy to make folks nostalgic for a movie about a real life tragedy.

UltimateMarvel wrote:

WyldeMan wrote:Ever since the implosion, I've seen Titanic charting among the top movies on several streaming platforms. Nothing like a real life tragedy to make folks nostalgic for a movie about a real life tragedy.

Funny that you should say that because my neighbors were watching it last night. lol It's very interesting, I'm not one to check out anything just because it's in the home page. Plus, who hasn't seen Titanic by now?

WyldeMan wrote:
People never care about anything unless there is blood involved buteven then they only care enough to dedicate a few hours to being entertained by said tragedy before moving on to the next one. It's called The American Way.

I might have seen Titanic once but I didn't care for it enough to ever watch it a second time. Take that! Certified Door Expert James Cameron.

Rusty wrote:Same. Checked it out once it hit home video. Once was more than enough.

Funnily enough, looking at his filmography, I don't think I've ever watched a Cameron movie more than once. Maybe Aliens and True Lies, but even then it would have been twice over the same weekend when I rented them on VHS.

Looking at his entire work load - the only thing I know I've watched multiple times is Rambo II, with his only contribution being co-writer with Sly.


On another subject. Two weeks ago I finally bought my first vacuum sealer - an entry level Food Saver - and holy shit I should have bought one of these sooner. The amount of additional space and organization it adds to my freezer is massive. Would've given me 30% more capacity, and the one I had has the little hand held thingy so I can use their reusable ziplock style bags. I'm saving freezer space and the planet at the same time.

Greta would be proud.

joey con carne wrote:Just got an email from Paramount saying my $100 annual subscription is no longer a thing and my tier is now bumped up to $120 a year but now I get Showtime. I guess that’s okay. I pay annual for HBO and Paramount. With those two that is all I ever need now. For less than $280 a year I now have more content than I can shake a stick at! Woo hoo Kind of seems like a lot of money, though. Might have to cancel one or not go for annual subs.

Human remains recently discovered by hikers in the Mount Baldy wilderness outside Los Angeles were identified as those of British actor Julian Sands, who had been missing since January, authorities announced Tuesday.

On Saturday morning, civilian hikers contacted the Fontana Sheriff’s Station after they found the remains, which were then taken to the San Bernardino County Coroner for identification.

“The identification process for the body located on Mt. Baldy on June 24, 2023, has been completed and was positively identified as 65-year-old Julian Sands of North Hollywood,” the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. “The manner of death is still under investigation, pending further test results. We would like to extend our gratitude to all the volunteers that worked tirelessly to locate Mr. Sands.”

An avid outdoorsman, Sands was reported missing by his family Jan. 13 after he had gone hiking in the Baldy Bowl Trail area of the San Gabriel Mountains that day. The sheriff’s department and volunteers have been searching the area since then, with the effects of an unusually severe winter hampering their efforts.

“The local mountains offer great adventure, you can go out for an hour, a day or even several days,” Sands had said in a May 2020 interview for the Thrive Global website. “It’s always different and always fantastic. And of course, I do believe in a certain athleticism for me as an actor, keeping fit is important. So living, or being based in Los Angeles — actors don’t really live anywhere, they are always on the road — lends itself to a wonderful outdoors lifestyle.”

In two of his most memorable roles, Sands wooed Helena Bonham Carter’s character in the acclaimed Merchant-Ivory drama A Room With a View (1985) and starred as a son of Satan in a pair of Warlock movies.

The lanky actor also was memorable as a Latvian pimp in the Nicolas Cage-starring Leaving Las Vegas (1995), one of seven films he made for writer, director and countryman Mike Figgis. The others were The Browning Version (1994), One Night Stand (1997), The Loss of Sexual Innocence (1999), the innovative Timecode (2000), Hotel (2001) and Suspension of Disbelief (2012).

He was not afraid to take risks: He played a shapeshifting centipede posing as a Swiss gentleman in David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch (1991) and the surgeon who quadruple-amputates his obsession (Sherilyn Fenn) in Jennifer Lynch’s controversial Boxing Helena (1993).

Sands made an early impression with moviegoers as British photographer Jon Swain in the Roland Joffé-directed The Killing Fields (1984), about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. The film also starred Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor and John Malkovich.

“Roland’s audition process was extraordinary,” he told The Guardian in a 2014 interview. “I was 24, and I’ve never come across anything as rigorous since. He was looking to put together a troupe of actors without much film experience, because he wanted the freshness of everything to resonate with us.”

The Killing Fields was nominated for the Oscar for best picture, and a year later, so was A Room With a View. In the romantic period piece, Sands was at his dashing best as the free-spirited George Emerson, who ultimately wins the love of Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch over the bookish Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis ) in the year 1907.

“The power of the film was in what the camera saw as much as what the characters said to one another,” he said at the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival. “Some of the most beautiful moments were moments that didn’t require speech, because what was there to say? The scene in the cornfield when we embrace, certain scenes around the piazza … they are iconic.”

Sands’ title character created mayhem in 20th century Los Angeles after being transported from Boston in 1861 in Warlock (1989), and he returned for Warlock: The Armageddon (1993). Bruce Payne portrayed the menacing villain in the 1999 sequel.

The third of five sons, Julian Richard Morley Sands was born on Jan. 4, 1958, in West Yorkshire, England. He attended Lord Wandsworth College and the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and appeared in Derek Jarman’s 1979 short film, Broken English, starring Marianne Faithfull. (He also served as assistant director on that).

In 1983, Sands showed up on the London Weekend Television miniseries A Married Man, starring Anthony Hopkins, and had a supporting role in Oxford Blues the following year, which saw him break out in The Killing Fields.

George was Roger Ebert’s favorite character in A Room With a View, he wrote in his review, and he admired Sands’ delivery of an “astonishing” speech to Lucy “in which he explains that Love exists between them. (Not love, but Love — you can hear the capital letter in his voice.)

“Lucy must not marry Cecil, he explains, because Cecil does not understand women and will never understand Lucy and wants her only for an ornament. George, on the other hand, wants her as his partner in the great adventure of life.”

Sands also played the British poet Shelley in Ken Russell’s Gothic (1986), the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt in James Lapine’s Impromptu (1991), the masked man in a 1998 version of The Phantom of the Opera and an Israeli dance teacher in Yeh Ballet (2020).

His onscreen résumé also included the films Arachnophobia (1990), The Medallion (2003), Golf in the Kingdom (2010), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and The Painted Bird (2019) and TV stints on Smallville (as Jor-El), 24, The L Word, Person of Interest, Gotham, Elementary and The Blacklist.

In 2013, he starred on stages from Edinburgh to San Francisco in A Celebration of Harold Pinter, directed by Malkovich.

Survivors include his second wife, writer Evgenia Citkowitz, whom he married in 1990, and his three children, Henry, Natalya and Imogen.

A day before his remains were discovered, his family released their first statement since the search began, expressing their gratitude to those “who have worked tirelessly” to find him.

“We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts and as an original and collaborative performer.”

In his Thrive Global interview, Sands described the feeling he got from hiking.

“It’s about supplication and sacrifice and humility, when you go to these mountains,” he said. “It’s not so much a celebration of oneself but the eradication of one’s self-consciousness. And so on these walks you lose yourself, you become a vessel of energy in harmony hopefully with your environment.”

Source: THR

WyldeMan wrote:It was nice of them to let you know ahead of time that they would be bringing the Showtime Vaseline before they bent you over.

New Mexico teenager Enrique Padilla, 19, who allegedly shot a man dead in a weekend dispute over reserved movie seats, has been captured.

The dispute that sparked the shooting happened late Sunday night in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Ironically, the incident happened before a screening of the Jennifer Lawrence comedy film, No Hard Feelings.

Padilla stands accused of one count each of homicide, shooting at an occupied building, and tampering with evidence. He was arrested and charged Monday after being discovered hiding in some bushes near an emergency exit for the theater. He also suffered a gunshot wound to his abdomen in the altercation, but police have not said how that happened.

Padilla was taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital for treatment after he was captured early Monday morning, police said. Michael Tenorio, 52, was shot and killed. He died at the scene despite an off-duty police officer administering CPR.

Witnesses claimed Padilla and his girlfriend were loudly arguing with an older couple prior to the shooting. Tenorio and his wife had allegedly been moved into different seats than those they had purchased by a movie theater employee. A report said that Tenorio and his wife paid for seats 8 and 11, but an employee suggested they sit together.

Padilla and his girlfriend were allegedly unhappy with the new seat arranging because it affected at least one of the seats they had reserved. A manager managed to briefly work out a deal, and the two couples were seated directly next to each other.

However, Padilla allegedly threw a bucket of popcorn at the older couple, and Tenorio pushed Padilla against a wall.

The incident occurred at the Century Rio movie theater. The venue was evacuated post-shooting and swept for safety.

“There was a sense of chaos here,” APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos told the Albuquerque Journal. “A lot of people were running from the theaters and trying to get out of the way.”

The theater is now closed.

joey con carne wrote:Spending a few years in prison is definitely worth it when someone takes your reserved seat in a theatre. The only illogical move I can think of would be to talk to management and ask for a refund.

WyldeMan wrote:Alan Arkin has died at 89 years old.

Rusty wrote:Sitting at the van, about to light a fire, and I now have perfectly working internet!

Finally figured out why my internet down here shit itself over the past year. Turns out it was my mobile router. I was using a Netgear Nighthawk M2 mobile router, and whilst good, it connects to external antennas via TS-9 connections ... which fucking suck. They're real finicky, don't seat securely, and are easily damaged. They were great at the start, but because I had to constantly remove them and pack them up when I left, over time they just got worn out.

After my 8th pair of new connectors wouldn't work, I bit the bullet and picked up a Teltonika RUT360 mobile router. It comes with small antennas, but the connectors for my external MIMO setup are the lovely threaded SMA type, and they won't budge .

I'm so fucking happy right now. Currently getting 20mbps which is more then aenough for anything I need. The only downside is the new router needs constant power. The Nighthawk has a rechargeable battery so it was beneficial during power outages - but I'm planning on setting up off-grid power down here soon so it won't be an issue in the long run.

UltimateMarvel wrote:Congrats Russ! If you're getting 20 now, what did you have before?

Rusty wrote:

UltimateMarvel wrote:Congrats Russ! If you're getting 20 now, what did you have before?

About the same, when it worked, but with the TS-9 connectors being so shit, the last 6 months I rarely even got a connection at all.

WyldeMan wrote:
I prefer to think that it's not just about having a shitty internet its also that you're too busy wrestling 25 foot crocs in your front yard.

Rusty wrote:

WyldeMan wrote:
I prefer to think that it's not just about having a shitty internet its also that you're too busy wrestling 25 foot crocs in your front yard.

Or we're busy watching our native birds eat snakes (not my photo).

Smallville actress Allison Mack, who in 2018 pleaded guilty to manipulating women into becoming sex slaves via the “self-improvement” cult NXIVM, was released from prison Monday, according to federal Bureau of Prisons records and an early report from Albany’s Times Union.

Mack was arrested in 2018 along with a handful of other NXIVM bigwigs, most notably ringleader Keith Raniere, who was sentenced to 120 years in prison. Mack was charged with sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy and forced labor conspiracy, and sentenced to three years in jail for her role in the cult’s nefarious activities.

While Mack had originally faced up to 17 years in prison, she received a shorter sentence after cooperating with prosecutors who were pursuing a case against Raniere. And then she wound up being released after just two years.

The former actress is the first NXIVM defendant to complete her sentencing term. Former NXIVM president Nancy Salzman, who pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and received a three-and-a-half year sentence, is scheduled to be released in July 2024. NXIVM operations director Clare Bronfman, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants for financial gain and fraudulent use of identification and received an 81-month sentence, is expected to be released in June 2025.

Mack’s involvement with the group gained added attention by way of HBO’s NXIVM-themed docuseries The Vow. A second season of the series finished airing in November 2022.

“I am sorry to those of you that I brought into NXIVM,” Mack wrote in a court filing ahead of her sentencing. “I am sorry I ever exposed you to the nefarious and emotionally abusive schemes of a twisted man.”

Rusty wrote:lol A Hollywood sex-trafficker was released early from prison one day before the anti-trafficking movie Sound of Freedom was released. Perfect timing.

Movie looks good too.

UltimateMarvel wrote:Damn! If Allison Mack ever decides to do an interview, she has to do it on Michael Rosenbaum's podcast.

WyldeMan wrote:No way man, if Allison Mack is to do an interview about her early release for human trafficking, then Jim Caviezel should do it!

Think about it! He can time the release of the interview with the home video release of the Sound of Freedom.

Caviezel's gonna ride this bible banging wave of Jesus loving momentum right into the Resurrection of Christ.

WyldeMan wrote:Who do you guys use for your VPN?

UltimateMarvel wrote:
Does he have a podcast? I will check out his movie.

I still don't understand how he went from doing Person of Interest to how he is now.