Rant 1040 / Clearly, Martian Sand Must Be Some Special Sand.

My order of 10 litres of soap isn't going to be shipped till the middle of next week! I think I wasn't the only one who saw how awesome the deal was.



















Made a honey-and-cider-vinegar drink after trying out the honey drink I bought from the Chinese pharmarcy together with the herbal teas.

Their honey drink is just a $1-bottle of cheap honey mixed with water, and it was pretty damn obvious.

So I made my own and added some cider vinegar and honey I had bought long ago back when I first started cooking.

In the test, I added a tablespoon of each and filled with mug with water. It was too thin but still pretty good.

So I moved on to using a big reusable bottle but this time, it tasted slightly too sour.

I think it's because I didn't add enough honey. In the experiment, the tablespoon of it included the honey that was stuck on the spoon itself because I used it to stir.

While adding four spoons of honey into the bottle, I did not rinse the spoon each time I poured one tablespoon of it in. Since honey is so thick, there must have been a significant difference by the fourth spoonful, maybe even half a tablespoon's worth.

Regardless, I just added more water and made it less sour. It's better to be a little more sour than sweet IMO.






















So a chicken thigh costs the same as a chicken breast, except a chicken breast consists of the meat and bones of both sides of the chicken.

To be fair, the vendor also throws in a free thigh for every 5 purchased, so I could get $1.67 per thigh. Still, it's not the same.

And de-boning is free, which is awesome. I've finally come to apprecate it ever since the one time I forgot to tell him to de-bone everything and I had to do it myself. It's not the hardest job in the world but it is a completely unnecessary annoyance.




















Finished Fallout 1. Took a lot of hints from walkthroughs at the end, especially for stuff like keys. How the feck was I supposed to know that the badges I bartered for can open doors? I thought all items required to advance the plot have to be given or asked for or found, and random stuff I trade for from random NPCs are usually unimportant items.

And after playing FO3 and FNV, I had the impression that Dogmeat is invulnerable. Took a lot of reloads for me to admit that Dogmeat doesn't seem to be designed to be kept alive till the end. Once the super mutants started spamming with their miniguns and flamers, I started spamming reloads.

Finally I gave up at the 4th level of the Cathedral. It was simply impossible when all 3 Nightkins and Morpheus were ignoring me and going for him (I left everyone else on the 3rd floor).

Still, I finished the game without fighting after that. Using the walkthroughs, I played the rest of the game without violence and saw the cinematics for both endings.

Time for FO2.

FO1 was a nice game but there were definitely flaws, like the rather redundant energy weapons. Only Katja had the skill for them but she couldn't use them, so only the protagonist can possibly use them.

Except if I decide not to spent points on Energy Weapons, they would be complete dead weights.

And the companions. Ugh. Good thing they decided to let them level up in later games. It's not just Dogmeat, but I talked about it because it's the only companion I cannot get rid of.

I have to admit I had to adjust my standards a little to compensate for its age. It's not for the graphics but for all the things that can only be found through trials and error.

Maybe I should have bought the Fallout combo I saw on sale on Steam some time back.






















Still interested in buying candle holders (for the wind) but I'm not seeing any on sale :(






















Medical science is both a solution and a problem. For all the good that it does, it presents us with a major issue in the long run - it slows down the process of natural selection.

Natural selection has worked for millenia when people with poorer genes have fewer chances to reproduce and those with better genes have more.

While modern medicine defies this process, it nonetheless follows the rule of "survival of the fittest" by turning humanity as whole into the "fittest" instead of merely the individuals.

Regardless, the fact remains the unhealthy genes are being covered up by medical treatments and passed down the generations. However, the costs of medicine today still renders this somewhat ineffective, hence like I said, it only "slows down the process of natural selection."

I believe the most humane way to save us from this quandary is though genetic engineering. It is true that there are issues with this but eventually, we're still going to have to do it, as long as we try to make medical care accessible to every human on Earth.

We just can't have everything under the sun.