GunStarHero

Been experimenting with some homemade General Tso's chicken. Cleaned and chopped up some chicken thighs and tossed em in cornstarch and salt and cooked them in the air fryer at 400 for about 20 minutes. Made some kinda buster Tso sauce with ketchup, soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic, onions, ginger, MSG, and some Aleppo peppers. Tossed the chicken in that and had it with some Jasmine rice. We have two air fryers so it's been...interesting seeing how long to cook this in either one. Our 6qt fryer heats up super quick but kinda nukes the outside and is hit or miss with the inside. The 10qt takes longer but cooks it perfectly. Nice and crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Personally love the big air fryer cause I don't need to fool with frying in oil as much. I don't post on the forums as much atm so I'll also mention I started making these white, thin crust pizzas with leftover Mississippi chicken and mushrooms with zaatar and Aleppo peppers and a blend of parm, asiago, mozza, romano, and feta crumble cheeses. This is probably the most expensive from scratch pizza I'm currently making and it's still pretty cheap. Maybe around $6 in ingredients to make 4 of these? Was making a marinara and philly cheesesteak pizza, too, but the chicken one is more popular amongst us and our guests. Also been messing around with crock pot stuffed manicotti, which ends up being a sort of lasagna almost. Started making it after I found some whipped feta cheese which is absolutely divine.

Thinking about these guys I keep running into on classic Halo 2. Seems they have marinated long enough and one was losing his mind. ILoveHappyEndings.mp4

As far as I can tell it was regarding the situation with ITT Tech that got them shut down. I had multiple loans out with them to begin attending and one was very small and I managed to pay it off early thanks to the discount. At least one of the other loans was federally backed so that was the one that came back to me.

Found myself in a rollercoaster of a situation with my student loans. I had my funding for my original college taken away by my father (don't be gay, kids) and I wound up taking out a loan at ITT Tech and graduating there with an associate's degree. Managed to have perfect grades the entire time so I was top of my class, which is misleading by the way, technically I was top of all graduating students (around 100 people) that quarter but my graduating class by field was 3 people. Anyways that was important because they offered to cut my loans down by a massive 70%. Struggled to pay my loans off at first and they were garnishing my wages but I was contacted by the Department of Treasury and given a weird deal where I would surrender all tax returns for the next 10 years, regardless of whether or not it exceeded or fell short of my total amount owed. But I had to get some money back every year or it voided the agreement. I threaded the needle and had many years where I had super small tax returns. At the 9 year mark I was informed my loans had been forgiven by the Biden administration and I just needed to submit the proper paperwork. This was in regards to ITT Tech, however, versus blanket student loan forgiveness. Thought that was the end of it but late last year I got a message from my estranged mother talking about some letter she got in the mail addressed to me. Three times. I had her send one over and it was this weird looking Treasury document that looked poorly copied, had sharpie and pen revisions and even highlighter marks. Did not look legit at all. Well it arrived a 4th time so I said fuck it and sent a skeptical email to the person on the letter. She said I was owed a refund for what I had paid during my agreement and just needed to confirm my current address, which she also already had. I confirmed, thinking it might be some weird scam. A couple weeks later I got like 5 checks in the mail for the total amount I had paid for my loan. Then my credit score went down 30 points. Magical.

Original Xbox games online via Insignia. I have been assisting with the testing of games as they are added to the service. Two most recent big game tests were Forza and Halo 2. Here is a video of a test game before they launched the public beta for Halo 2. Service is free and can run on XEmu (Xbox emulator) on PC or on original Xbox consoles that have been soft modded (or hard modded). https://insignia.live/

The Halo show is so insanely bad that I cannot wrap my head around how so many people seem to like it. I may be a big fan of some of the games but I'm not such a lore snob that I clutch my pearls at the thought of any changes being made. I get that it's a "different timeline" and that it was created for a broader audience, and that's fine, but this? This is what they made? Season 1 started with a brutal Covenant attack on a human settlement and then just dive bombed into weird subplots and got lost in the weeds trying to declare it was not the existing lore. Apparently some of the showrunners didn't play any of the games or read any of the books, and they're proud of that? This shit is boring ass bullshit. It's the epitome of lame. What a rich universe to just throw out the fucking air lock for the sake of "nuh uh this is a different timeline!" but still keeping so many elements from the original, only to butcher them. Normally I say let people enjoy what they enjoy and leave it be. If it's not for me, then I shouldn't watch it. But in this instance, this show is trash and you have bad taste if you enjoy this sober.

Saw it in theaters. Enjoyed it, probably more than the first. We got two of the weird Shai-Hulussy popcorn buckets. Sold one for $80 lol

I conveniently always have another job that I simply cannot move my schedule around to get the days and hours I want at a new job.

Not sure if anyone here would be interested but I recently finished working with an editor on a Halo 2 montage showcasing my gameplay.

I mean I guess it boils down to which music you're talking about? Popular music? Stuff you hear on the radio/in public places? I have a playlist I listen to almost every day that I tweak at least a couple times a week and the overwhelming majority of 700+ songs on it were made in the past decade. Don't think there's been a better time to be alive when it comes to enjoying music. Just gotta find what you like and seek out the artists making it.

Halo 3 fucking sucks, especially as a comp game.

Shame Volition wound up remastering Saints Row The Third and not SR 1 or 2. Since Volition is no longer a thing, maybe the rights holders will do something with the franchise. Saints Row 2 was far and away my favorite of the series. Felt like they embraced being a video game and it found them success against GTA 4.

Evidently I have a twin in Russia. I'm probably the evil one, though.

You can use applesauce as a substitute for milk, oil, juice, syrup, and even stuff like wine in stuff like bundt cakes, soft cookies, muffins, pancakes, etc. You can also just use some in an existing recipe, but like scoob said, just cater to it's inclusion. Then you have more uncommon things like apple kugel, which is a casserole, or latkes/potato pancakes. Non-baking stuff would be things like marinades and glazes, especially on things like ribs or slow cooked meats. Works great in sauces in general, really, if you want that apple flavoring. Then there's adding it to an existing food, like mixing it with oatmeal or in with yogurt or ice cream/custard. This can be even better if you have time to freeze the applesauce and make a sort of sorbet. There was a time in my culinary career I was really interested in using fruit and fruit byproducts with meats in different ways. Lead me to some really amazing dishes. Applesauce just kinda kept coming up as an established ingredient, though lol

Applesauce is great. I especially like mixing other fruits into it when making it. Good for baking, too.

I still go to LANs when I can but its getting harder to find enough CRTs to make it authentic. Here's a pic from one a few years back:

Recently got a CRT with a VCR/DVD combo off Craigslist for $25 and everything works so I was stoked. Happy to hear you got one, as well. I love old media and have several hundred VHS tapes, including a ton from Japan. Even got a refurbished Sony VCR from a Japan for cheap at a great price. Really want to get one of those weird Blu Ray/DVD/VHS players and a laserdisc player, too. Gotten really lazy with it lately but I was preserving old media and want to continue doing so. Got tons of stuff that's not available anymore, some not even as rips or anything.

Easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Saw it on streaming last night. Just misses every fucking mark at the advertised lightning speed. Don't watch it; isn't even fun to riff on. Just fuckin' sucks.

The therapist I saw after the Vegas shooting genuinely helped me through that difficult time, she really did. But our final couple of sessions were unhinged, to be honest. She successfully helped me confront things I was shying away from in my life in general and got me moving forward again but then she just went off the deep end. Started feeling like she was airing her grievances to me. Told me personal stuff like how she had gotten breast implants and loved them, totally unprompted. Suddenly tried to convince me that my new partner, whom I am still with, was going to abuse me in the bedroom and I needed to leave her ASAP. (Literally no clue where this even came from tbh.) And the one that just sent me was when she said "well all LGBT people were raped as kids, that's how you become one." For all the good she had done, she just lit another fire back up inside of me cause she sounded like my abusive father. Just a stupid motherfucker that may be skilled and knowledgeable about one thing but is a total, cocksure moron with everything else. She helped me with one thing but just ended up making things worse for something else. All she had to do was shut the fuck up, too.

Loved doing the super jumps off trash bags in the original.

Dungeons and Dragons - 7/10 Fun little movie. Wouldn't mind another one, also wouldn't mind it being the only one. Across the Spiderverse - 8/10 Love the animation, another fun movie (mostly). Only complaint was the runtime since it was a cliffhanger. Avatar: The Way of Water - 5/10 Some of this movie is drop dead gorgeous, some of it is not. The entire story was driving me mad and I hated the dialogue and weird/stupid direction parts of this film went with. How did this fucking thing make $2.3 billion at the box office? I call shenanigans. Bros - 7/10 Did not expect this to be as funny as it was. Ben Stiller's cameo damn near floored me. Shame this one bombed but at the same time the way that that was handled by the writer/star did not help. Bullet Train - 7/10 Another fun little movie. More like this, please. Trailers made it look god awful but I was pleasantly surprised with the movie itself. The Menu - 6/10 It was fine, really, but I expected more from it. Well accustomed to the type of snobbery the movie was poking fun at but, like, that's exactly what I don't want to see, if that makes sense. Cool to see someone live out the chef's dream of killing annoying/pretentious customers, though! Air - 6/10 You could do worse for a corporate biopic but if you thought this was one big advertisement for Nike as they jerk themselves off for being so great, then you were spot on. This would have worked so much better as a documentary that spliced in the Hollywood cast reenacting tidbits and having the real people react to said bits. Play the whole thing tongue and cheek, ya know? I'm thinking too much. John Wick 4 - 6/10 The John Wick formula of action porn has finally glossed my eyes over. Saw this in theaters, got the collectible coin set, thought the movie was largely mediocre. Cool seeing Scott Adkins do martial arts in a fat suit and some of the shots, like the overhead with the dragon's breath one shot scene, were awesome. Hope any future films do not focus on John or rely so heavily on guns tbh. Nope - 7/10 Solid movie. Had no fucking idea what it was about and it kinda hit me over the head with weird and unsettling shit but I can dig it. Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness - 6/10 Please god make them stop. For every good scene in this I felt like there were a dozen lesser ones. Expected a lot more from this, as well, like, I don't know, more Multiverse shit?

Guy is leveraging his stepdad's dire situation to get noticed by blink182 and to try and pick up girls. Jfc. Also he may or may not be the person that threatened a massacre and kept stalking and harassing women in Vegas a couple years ago at a rave?