Weight Loss Program

A guy calls a company and orders their 5-day, 5lbs weight loss program.

The next day, there's a knock on the door and there stands before him a voluptuous, athletic, 19 year old babe dressed in nothing but a pair of Nike running shoes and a sign around her neck..

She introduces herself as a representative of the weight loss company. The sign reads, "If you can catch me, you can have me."

Without a second thought, he takes off after her. A few miles later puffing and puffing, he finally gives up. The same girl shows up for the next four days and the same thing happens. On the fifth day, he weighs himself and is delighted to find he has lost 5lbs as promised.

He calls the company and orders their 5-day/10lbs program. The next day there's a knock at the door and there stands the most stunning, beautiful, sexy woman he has ever seen in his life. She is wearing nothing but Reebok running shoes and a sign around her neck that reads, "If you catch me you can have me".

Well, he's out the door after her like a shot. This girl is in excellent shape and he does his best, but no such luck. So for the next four days, the same routine happens with him gradually getting in better and better shape.

Much to his delight on the fifth day when he weighs himself, he discovers that he has lost another 10lbs as promised. He decides to go for broke and calls the company to order the 7-day/25 lbs program.

"Are you sure?" asks the representative on the phone. "This is our most rigorous program." "Absolutely," he replies, "I haven't felt this good in years."

The next day there's a knock at the door; and when he opens it he finds a huge muscular guy standing there wearing nothing but pink running shoes and a sign around his neck that reads, "If I catch you, you are mine."

He lost 33 lbs that week..

Tabletop and Careers & Finance are both bopping. I'm happy with my efforts in both of those forums. It finally seems like Special Interest has more traction to it than just Wrestling and IRP. I'm not knocking those forums at all. I like IRP and I'd probably like Wrestling too if I actually watched it.

In a better life, I'd try to push for a possible mod spot in Careers & Finance. In a better life I wouldn't have left Tabletop. In a better life, I'd probably do a lot more things, but I gotta take the small victories while I can.

I started up another writing journal thing in Creative Writing. I might do stories again when I'm not so busy. Work sucks up a lot of time and I'm so exhausted when I get home.

I was telling Intoxication about the process of how I update the games. I suppose I can give you a more in depth version here.

sword_of_omens places his bets for the roulette. At this point, I also have 5 other notifications from other games, but I try to do all like-games at the same time.

I keep Neoseeker open and Tabletop Sim open. I read off his bets and move the chips accordingly. While the guys do the math for me, I double check it anyway. I move on to the next person placing bets on roulette and do the same.

After that's all done. I press "print screen" and paste that into MS Paint. I then select the area I want, make sure I didn't cut anything off that I need, and then paste it into another MS Paint file. There, I crop it a bit and save it as bets. I just save over the bets file every single time I update it so I don't have 100000 copies of the board.

I then post the picture and total bet amounts in the thread. I then subtract the bets from the totals on the bank page.


The roulette is pretty easy. Pai Gow Poker is the more time consuming one since I have to screenshot and crop every single hand for the thread. I could save time and just list the hands in text, but I think the visual makes the game more...appealing I guess?


If I'm at work or another computer where I can't access Tabletop, I just let it sit. I can't do anything about it.


That's why I sort of like Seeker Spies. I can edit that pretty much anywhere. You might notice that the colors of the stars might look like different shades of blue or red. That's because I copied the picture from Neoseeker and posted it in the less updated file to edit it. You see, I have 2 files for Seeker Spies. One is at home and the other is at Job 1. At any given time, one of those is more updated than the other. When I move the newer image over via copy/paste, the hues get a little wonky. No one has said anything about it so I didn't worry about it. I don't even know if people noticed.


Anyhow, I'll continue on helping Special Interest. I have my eyes on Travel, Arcades, and Health & Fitness. I think Sports Betting has potential for Cap Bucks, but we'll see. I can run some sort of horse race thing there where the horses are owned by Gotenks and myself.

Plans, plans, plans.

First off, gotta give credit where it is due. Gotenks I told you this in a PM, but thanks again for inspiring the Cap Buck. That sort of joke we had going turned into something that's been nothing but fun to manage. It has given way to the Cap's Casino and the Neostreet Market.

Second, gotta thank all you guys for going along with my silly idea. sword_of_omens Intoxication The Lost Soul Praetorian_Lord you guys rock for going along with all this. These threads have been the most fun I've had in a while.

So, what is next for Cap? I was planning on running another Cap's Casino game with PokeLounge to promote activity there. I have the cards ready, I just need to finalize the game board. It'll be the little card flip game that you can play in Pokemon Silver. Betting will be similar to how the Roulette currently works.


I think I'm ready to try writing a story again. I'm going to make some sort of noir style story about how Detective Toxie investigates some sort of assassination plot in the Cap's Casino. That's just one idea. I could always re-write the Cap's Cruise or Pain's Too Many Coronas Mafia ideas again. I'll keep my ideas attainable this time so I don't get mad with how the story becomes.


I'm also thinking about writing about every single heist in Payday 2 now that the game has reached the end of its lifespan. That's probably not very interesting to anyone here, but I wanna do it anyway.


That said, I'll be sticking around for the Retro Game Society and the new tourney there. I hope I don't lose to sword_of_omens too many times in Ice Hockey for the NES.

Remember how in the old days, whenever a blockbuster movie came out, a video game based on that movie came out with it to make a few more bucks? Almost all of them had shoddy quality and very few of them were fun or finished. But a few among them were actually not bad and some were pretty good. Granted, they had nowhere near the polish, fun, content, graphics, or story/dialogue a AAA game would offer, but that didn’t stop them from being solid games within themselves. Whenever I think of good movie tie-in games I’ve played, I think Goldeneye 64, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Transformers Dark of the Moon.

Goldeneye is the ultimate classic. Mention Goldeneye in a group of gamers and prepare for nostalgia stories.

From what I’ve heard, Spider-Man 2, based on Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man 2 movie, was an excellent game. But I didn’t play that, I played The Amazing Spider-Man, based on Andrew Garfield’s first movie. Honestly? It was fun. It was repetitive, yes, and getting ALL of those comicbook pages was a nightmare, but for what it was, it was an enjoyable experience. The new Spider-Man on PS4 is actually a lot more like TASM than you’d think based on what I’ve played.

Transformers Dark of the Moon was an quick copy-and-paste job of the Transformers War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron games. They took the engine and the gameplay and painted a coat of Michael Bay’s Transformers on top. The result? War for Cybertron lite. And that isn’t a bad thing. Cool environments you wouldn’t see in either Cybertron game along with the already completed gamesplay mechanics of the mentioned games made for an enjoyable game that I didn’t mind going back and getting all the achievements for.


The point is, I miss those old cash grab games. Most were just awful, but from what I’ve heard many actually made decent money and it’s a shame to see them go away, especially because every so often, a gem would appear amongst the rubble. Maybe one day they’ll come back, and mediocracy with an occasional prodigy will flourish again.

2018 was the year of Final Fantasy XIII for me. At the beginning of the year, I went through FFXIII-2, at the end of the year I went through Lightning Returns. Now going into 2019, I’m just about done with the original FFXIII, bar the time consuming trophies. I originally went through the XIII trilogy on the Xbox 360 when the games first came out, when I still only had a giant box TV that only gave out a whopping 720p with a 15 or so inch display. Now I’m going through them again on PS3 with a 55’ 4K TV and I had no idea what I was missing. The graphics on the games are insane, even for this day and age, and the environments are beautiful.

Going through these games again is something of a eye opener for me. Back then the trilogy was not good in my opinion. The original Final Fantasy XIII was a frustrating drag whose story made no sense, XIII-2 was unnecessary, and LR was even more frustrating and unnecessary. But, coming back to them knowing what to expect actually made these games very enjoyable, to the point where XIII-2 has risen to become one of my favorite Final Fantasy games. The streamlined battle system and monster raising system are very satisfying and Caius is a badass. Bar a few needlessly time consuming ones, collecting fragments was fun, and the beautiful open world environments were a joy to traverse.

Lightning Returns was also enjoyable because it satisfied my like of time management games. Cramming in as many quests and trophies in a single in-game day as I can was satisfying and the battle system was a nice fresh take on the other two games.

Now we move onto the original FFXIII. To some, the game was great, and to others the game is the blacksheep in Final Fantasy’s happy little flock. Before now, I would’ve agreed with the naysayers, saying that the game was far too linear, battles played themselves with the the auto battle option, the dialogue and story made absolutely no sense, and the characters were bland and annoying. But coming back to it with fresh eyes has changed my mind. The flaws are still very much there, but XIII is a good game.

So, you’re probably asking, “if XIII is a good game to you now, what are the flaws?”. Well, in my opinion, the flaws lie almost completely in the battle system. With your characters completely stopping to do poses when changing paradigms - sometimes stopping for a full 5 seconds - while your enemies and their stagger gauges keep moving, and the fact that you simply lose the battle when your party leader dies (and the fact that you can’t change party leaders midbattle), there are a few things that need to be polished in XIII’s battle system that XIII-2 mostly took care of. Of course, there is also the glaring issue of your AI party members and healing you, which will leave you screaming things at your TV such as “HEAL ME PLEASE”, “WHY ARE YOU USING CURA INSTEAD OF CURE?” and “YOU HAVE A FULL ATB GAUGE. USE IT. I’M GOING TO DIE!”.

FFXIII’s 10 year anniversary is coming up next year, and the games have recently been made backwards compatible with Xbox One with (what I heard is) a great graphics update, so I think now would be a good time time to give Final Fantasy XIII the Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age treatment, and revamp the battle system. To me, this is simply transplanting XIII-2’s battle system into XIII. The following changes would make XIII an infinitely better game in my opinion:


1. The way you initiate battles. In XIII you simply run up to enemies and try not to be detected by them to preemptively strike them. In XIII-2 and LR, you attack them, which also reduces their total HP for their duration of the battle, which is a feature that XIII could use, especially when it comes to enemies whose fights drag on simply due to their resistances rather than their difficulty.

2. Paradigm shifting. A complaint that myself and others have had in the past with paradigm shifting is that your party stops moving completely to individually to do poses while shifting. Not only that, but your enemies do not stop attacking and their stagger gauges don’t stop falling as this goes on. In XIII-2 that is severely cut down and much more streamlined, and each party member does a quick pose that barely interupts their actions. Taking that and translating it to XIII I feel would make battles much more enjoyable and make grinding much more bareable.

3. Party leaders. So this is a weird and frustrating one. Simple question: why do you lose the battle when your party leader dies? This is fairly artificial difficulty, whereas it would be much better if you simply changed leaders when your current one died, or you were given a 10 second or so grace period where you were given a chance to be revived by the AI. Most of the deaths I’ve suffered in XIII so far have been because the AI makes poor choices in healing. Why is Hope only using two ATB bars to heal me when he has 5, and the enemy is going to town with his claws? This was also fixed in XIII-2 and I didn’t even need it in that game.

4. The CP and Crystarium. This one really only needs small tweaks. I don’t feel like the Crystarium should be capped in increments during the bulk of the game like it is, and I feel like the CP should be should be scaled to reflect that. I feel that you should be able to level up as much as you want, but ensure earning the CP for it is a chore early in the game.


That’s how I would fix my issues with FFXIII. People have a lot of criticism towards the story and the characters, but because I had already played the trilogy 8, 6, and 4 years ago, the stories have properly sunk into my mind and I think, that while each part of this “trilogy” has nothing to do with with each other despite claiming they’re one big story and the story was poorly explained in each game, they are all very unique and good. As for the characters, thye’ve grown on me, and I like them all. Maybe they have a few issues, but I don’t think they’re as bad as people make them out to be. A revisit to these games would be good for those who previously hated it; maybe they’ll see them in a new light.

As far as the linearity goes, it doesn’t last very long as long as you know what you’re doing, and once you get to the open world that breath of fresh air is nice.

If they were to remaster the trilogy as a whole, I don’t have many issues with XIII-2 that immediately come to mind, but a nice graphics polish and update to LR would be nice. They seem very choppy and thrown together compared to the last two games.

Here’s hoping they do an Final Fantasy XIII HD revamp game some day soon, even though I’m almost done with the original version as it is, I’ll still take one with an adjusted battle system. I even made up an awesome name for it in the title of the blog!


Thanks for reading! Many more blogs to come!

The European Commission has announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU, rather than German, which was the other contender. Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had room for improvement and has therefore accepted a five-year phasing in of "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make sivil servants jump for joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k", Which should klear up some konfusion and allow one key less on keyboards.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f", making words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e" is disgrasful.

By the fourth yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and everivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. ZE DREM VIL FINALI COM TRU!

Herr Schmidt

The jokes that i say are jokes about “problems” that i have so i hope if someone reads a joke that is joking about a disability they have i am sorry if it offends you in anyway

Back in November, I posted my list of my top 20 favorite movies of 2018. However, the year wasn't over yet at that point. Now that 2018 is officially in the history books, here is my updated list of films:

20. Venom
19. Aquaman
18. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
17. Solo: A Star Wars Story
16. Mary Poppins Returns
15. Halloween
14. Avengers: Infinity War
13. The Last Movie Star
12. Ralph Breaks the Internet
11. Won't You Be My Neighbor?
10. Ant-Man and the Wasp
9. Deadpool 2
8. Creed 2
7. Bohemian Rhapsody
6. Incredibles 2
5. First Man
4. Christopher Robin
3. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
2. Ready Player One
1. Black Panther

• The top 7 remain the same.
• Creed 2 breaks into the top 10 (I love me some Rocky movies), while Spider-Verse, Mary Poppins, Aquaman and Ralph Breaks the Internet push into the top 20.
• Infinity War stays put at 14, but Halloween and Solo drop lower due to some re-evaluation of them.
• Pacific Rim Uprising, The Meg, The House With a Clock in Its Walls, Smallfoot and Rampage all drop out.
• In addition to the films that drop out, I also saw Holmes and Watson, Teen Titans Go to the Movies and Tully last year. I hated all three (I'd also rank them in that particular order as worst movies of 2018).
• I still haven't seen Crazy Rich Asians, A Star is Born, Chappaquiddick, Isle of Dogs, A Quiet Place, Mission Impossible: Fallout, or Love: Simon. None are really my cup of tea.

What awaits in 2019? Stay tuned to find out.

When you imagine of the tyrant lizard king who do you think? T. rex undoubtedly. Not only was T. rex (aka T-Rex) the most recognizable tyrannosaur of all time, but it's also the most well-known dinosaur ever. T-Rex reigned at the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs, but it took a long and successful bloodline for the Prehistoric King to reach his rightful throne above all else. And that rich history is what we're about to unveil.

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In the Beginning
Late Jurassic — 160,000,000 years ago
We're going to start this story off some 95 million years before the emergence of T-Rex with its great great great [...] grandfather; Guanlong wucaii. At no more than 3 meters (10 feet) long Guanlong certainly is not the picture perfect tyrannosaurid by any means. Unlike the descendants who had short arms and two-fingered hands Guanlong bared long arms with three fingers — useful for grappling prey. Yet the most noticeable characteristic was Guanlong's ginormous crest upon its head. This crest was thin and possibly hollow with the intention of display.

Guanlong also had some key features that will one day be passed down to later tyrannosaurs. These include broad teeth and a uniquely shaped pelvis. Although despite being a basal tyrannosaur, Guanlong itself is a descendant of even more primitive coelurosaurs.

Early Cretaceous — 126,000,000 years ago
Our next entry will be the “Emperor Dragon”; Dilong paradoxus. And unfortunately, it too wasn't much to look at as Dilong was also a very basic tyrannosaur. However, unlike the earlier Guanlong, Dilong did not possess an extravagant crest but did keep its feathered coat [a trait which Guanlong probably had as well].
Despite being a primitive tyrannosaur Dilong had some interesting traits that can be found in nearly all of the later tyrannosaurs these include a rounded jaw, fused nasal bones, and excessive sinuses.

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The Transition
Early Cretaceous — 100,000,000 years ago
And this is the part of our story when things are kicked into maximum overdrive for the teeny tyrants. Because with the emergence of the intermediate-sized Xiangguanlong everything changes. Because at this is the point of tyrannosaur evolution we start seeing their arms beginning to shrink and the skulls gradually appear to become a little more box-like in shape like the later tyrannosaurids. Looking at Xiangguanlong's spine it is important to note that the vertebrae are more robust. This can be seen as an evolutionary upgrade to better support the massive heads dinosaurs like T-Rex will one day acquire.

Two very similar tyrannosaurs to Xiangguanlong are the Asian Alectrosaurus whom appeared much later. And Aliormaus a tyrannosaur with a long snout that seems to have split away to it's own evolutionary branch.

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Nearing the End
Late Cretaceous — 75,000,000 years ago
At last, here we are, at the final stages of the evolutionary history. North America during the Late Cretaceous was a hayday for many tyrannosaur species and has proven to be rather confusing for paleontologists to wrap their heads around. In the Eastern portion of N. America you had the oddball tyrannosaurids like Appalachiosaurus while in the Western portion of N. America you saw various species coexisting with one another.

Tyrannosauridae can be broken up into two different subfamilies: Albertosaurinae and Tyrannosaurinae. In the subfamily Albertosaurinae you had the albertosaurines... Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus. Still with me here? And the albertosaurines are considered a sister taxon to the tyrannosaurines (a subfamily which includes heavyweights like Daspletosaurus, Tarbosaurus, and T-Rex).

Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus are both practically the same size reaching 8-9 meters (27-30 feet) in length with some Albertosaurus specimens reaching 10 meters. Both animals weighed approximately 2 tons and were relatively slender in build with lower skulls with a sharp crest from the lacrimal bone located above the eye. Other key differences for the albertosaurines were in their legs as they had shorter ilia and longer tibiae compared to the tyrannosaurines.
In fact, there has been some controversy over the differences of Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus.

And with that we are almost done. So don't close the tab just yet! We still have the final act, the tyrannosaurines…

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The Final Act
It's been about around 100 million years since their start, but the tyrannosaurs have come far in evolution. They have been the apex predators in their ecosystems for sometime now and they only continue to grow. It seems that nothing can stop them now...well, except for a six mile wide asteroid screaming towards Earth...but that's later.

Picking up at about the same time as earlier we investigate the newest baddy on plains; Daspletosaurus. And Daspletosaurus was much like the other multi-tonned tyrannosaurs with puny arms although not quite as large as T-Rex whom will appear in a few million years.
There is also extensive fossil evidence that shows that Daspletosaurus often coexisted with another tyrannosaur; the previously mentioned Gorgosaurus. But unlike Gorgosaurus the Daspletosaurus was larger and much more robust with a more powerful head than the albterosaurines. Though despite this head difference the teeth were about equivalent in strength which indicates a difference in feeding and diets. Both apex predators were able to coexist together mostly because they both served their own environmental niches. It is likely that the much more common Gorgosaurus fed on the easier-to-kill duck-billed hadrosaurs while the less common Daspletosaurus feasted on the horned ceratopsians of the time.
Daspletosaurus was perhaps the most advanced tyrannosaur up until the appearance of T-Rex. So much so in fact that the general consensus amongst paleontologists is that Daspletosaurus is a direct basal relative of T-Rex through anagenesis.

Meanwhile, back in Asia, some tyrannosaurs continue to thrive. One in particular that I must mention before we reach T-Rex is Tarbosaurus bataar.
Some scientists believe that Tarbosaurus is an Asian representative of T-Rex. This would make “Tarbosaurus” become invalid as T-Rex was named and described first. If these two are not synonymous, Tarbosaurus is at least a closely related sister taxa.
Some differences between Tarbosaurus bataar and Tyrannosaurus rex is the fact that Tarbosaurus is slightly smaller in size at 10 - 12 meters, has a smaller skull (but larger than all other tyrannosaurids), narrower skull, and slightly more teeth (58-64) than the T-Rex.

(L): Tarbosaurus bataar; (R): Tyrannosaurus rex
However, in 2003, analysis of an Alioramus skull showed that it was the closest relative to Tarbosaurus instead. The investigation showed that Tarbosaurus and Alioramus shared stress distribution characteristics in their skull...which appears to be unique among these two. If true, it would be used as evidence to keep Tarbosaurus and T-Rex as separate genus and would also indicate that Asian tyrannosaurids experienced a slightly different path of evolution. But more fossil evidence is needed for a clear answer.

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Late Cretaceous — 65,000,000 years ago
And finally, here we are. Tyrannosaurus rex, the Tyrant Lizard King. I can go on to write a novel about T-Rex alone, but I'm not. And it has come to my realization that this article is getting pretty lengthy as it is so I'll be ending it here as we're all familiar with T-Rex. But if anyone is interested in seeing an article about T-Rex specifically in the future just ask!

Without further ado, I thank you for reading.

So, another year over and all that happened, all I can say is "Thank you, 2018, but so long, farewell and piss off!"

I'm not going to lie, it was pretty crap: a crap start and it barely got much better!

It seems that almost every modern day animal has some sort of giant and extinct ancestor, doesn't it? Sloths, bears, sharks, camels, and even beavers to name a few. But this time we're learning about big ol’ kangaroos.
Procoptodon goliah to be exact. Standing anywhere from astounding 2 - 2.7m (6.6 ft - 8.8 ft) tall and weighing approximately 200 - 240 kg (440 - 530 pounds) puts this giant short-faced kangaroo at three times the size as the largest modern relative. But not so fast! Not all members of the genus Procoptodon were huge, some like P. gilli were the smallest of all the short-faced kangaroos (Sthenurinae) at merely a meter tall.

Back to P. goliah...it is possible that due to it's size the animal was incapable of hopping — a defining characteristic for modern kangaroos. Being as large as it was P. goliah had a much higher risk of tendon breakage if it was hopping. Instead, a more plausible form of transportation would have been as an unguligrade biped; similar to the great apes.

Unfortunately, however, much like the rest of the megafauna, Procoptodon too dipped into extinction. During the Pleistocene epoch climate change and human interference we're both substantial factors in the extinction of many animals. However, there is currently no evidence in the fossil record to suggest that humans hunted Procoptodon — not to mention the early humans arrived on Australia 10-15,000 years before the disappearance of the short-faced kangaroos. So human interference is no longer considered as a major factor.

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On a somewhat related note. I wonder what would happen if that was a P. goliah that the man punched…

You think you have came up with a completely unique name but when you google it there's always that one guy from a random site who somehow managed to think of the exact same thing as you; even though what you thought of really isn't based on anything. Everytime.