u/OddlyLucidDuck

I transferred some books to my Nook Glowlight 4 Plus, and they all had #'s in the titles as part of a book series. My Nook sees the books in the library, but I get errors when trying to open them. I removed the #'s in Calibre, which changed the .epub file names, and sent them to my device again. Voila, they work perfectly. It's a little weird that they dislike the # symbol so much. They probably only show up in the library due to the separate cover.jpg file that Calibre puts in the book folder.

I'm rereading the series for the first time in decades (on book 14 now), and so far it feels like half of the books only have a plot because the team can't stop lying to each other, or at the very least holding back critical information. It's classic sitcom "if you just told other people what's going on, you'd solve this in 5 seconds. However, we need a full plot for this episode/book, so you're going to withhold information and lie to create conflict and pad out the runtime/number of pages."

Marco - "Jake, don't tell anybody that my mom is Visser One. It's none of their business." Yeah, because they clearly would never need to know that the highest ranked Yeerk outside of the council is residing in Marco's mom and just might cause a conflict of interest. /s

Jake - "I'm experiencing a weirdly realistic jungle flashback, better hide that from everybody until the very last second." Granted, I don't think that Ax would have thought about Sario Rips based on the random flashbacks, and it only really made sense after the situation already happened, but Jake is the leader and always got pissed at everyone else for keeping secrets. Rules for thee but not for me, eh?

Rachel - "I'm suffering from an alligator a crocodile allergy that causes spontaneous morphing, but I'm Rachel the Invincible, so first I'm going to lie about what's happening until I get caught in the act and almost get the whole team killed by Visser Three, and then I'm going to tell everybody that I did the 'DNA burp' thing that Ax talked about even though I don't even know what that means. Wow, this boy is cute (<- realistic for a 13-year-old girl, but still an annoying subplot)" This was by far Rachel's most selfish book to-date.

Cassie - "It's book 9 and I'm already guilt-ridden about the war, so I'm going to pretend to be a skunk mom to sneak into her den without telling anybody (except Tobias, who only knew because he showed her where it was) and almost get trapped in morph because my heart bleeds way too much." Luckily Tobias isn't a dumbass, and immediately went to tell Jake.

Tobias - "I hate my life as a human and won't tell anybody just how obsessed I am with being a hawk." This led to him getting stuck in morph approximately 5 seconds into the series, which lowered the Animorphs' fighting power by 20% right off the bat.

Ax - Just the entirety of Book 8 from cover to cover lol.

I just finished book 4, last read it 25 years ago, and there were a few minor things that stuck out to me:

• Cassie referenced Marco having a bald eagle morph instead of the osprey morph that he had in the second book. Maybe the person who compiled the epubs that I downloaded had an updated copy of the second book, but didn't get the updated copy of the fourth book? It's still weird to me that Applegate randomly switched Marco from one to the other, especially since neither one was a unique-to-him morph and the change didn't have any impact on the story.

• Cassie can't seem to decide if her barn is a Wildlife Clinic or a Wildlife Center, flip flopping back and forth between the two terms throughout the book. From what I remember, most of the team is pretty consistent about calling it a clinic except for Marco. I found it funny that Cassie herself couldn't decide in her first book as POV protagonist.

• I would have liked to see Ax be suspicious of the team for longer than 0.2 seconds. It fits in with him being a naive kid, but he never questioned their story at all. It took less than a minute for Ax to go from "knock out the team as soon as they board" to "I will follow you, Prince Jake." From what I can remember, the first free/escaped Hork Bajir that the team encounters in a later book cuts open their own head to prove that there's no Yeerk wrapped around their brain. I'm not saying that the team needed to perform surgery in the dome ship, but it would have been nice to have something to show that Ax wasn't immediately won over after they mentioned Elfangor's name.

• The whales. Even ignoring the whole "this whale used some weird telepathy to show the location of Ax's ship," the whales in this book were crazy. Since when do sperm whales and humpback whales hang out together and coordinate attacks? The whales saving the team from Visser Three was a bit too deus ex machina for me. And then the humpback whale just carried them to their destination ala the children's book Amos & Boris. Sometimes it feels like the characterization for animals is based on one or two small facts, like how humpback whales are known to be very friendly and sing to other whale and dolphins.

I did enjoy the book, and this is coming off a bit more negative than I want, so I'll leave you with my favorite quote that transported me back to the 90s:

"I did some homework on the bus (math, gag, yuck!) and listened to my Walkman."

I bought frozen precooked shrimp from the store because I'm playing around with some spring roll recipes for quick after work meals. I'll be using the shrimp directly from the fridge since they're cold spring rolls. The only results I'm finding online are about keeping freshly cooked shrimp in the fridge, and they commonly say 2 - 4 days.

My fridge is pretty cold, taking about 2 days to fully thaw shrimp. If it takes 2 days just to thaw the shrimp, does that mean that I have to use them right away, or do they have 2 - 4 days from the time that they're thawed? If I have to use them right away, I'll probably try thawing very small batches that I'll use all at once, rather than thawing enough for a few meals.

I signed up for RAP last week after SAVE was officially nixed and Nelnet sent out a 90 day notice, and one of the questions asked if my income is significantly less than last year. I got some retention bonuses last year to stay at my job until they transitioned my team to a new company, so I said yes.

There were two options: one was to use information that I provide, and the other was to have the student loan servicer calculate. When I tried to select having the student loan servicer calculate, tons of warnings popped up about how this was such a long, drawn out process and I would be forced to submit documents (the horror!), and generally made it sound like a shitty option. So I chose the first option instead, assuming that they would reach out to me to "use the information that I provide" before finishing the process. Apparently that option really just means "we're using your tax return information anyway, even though you literally just said that you earn way less now," because the next email that I got was "your next [super huge] payment is due Aug 1."

I went back and recertified, this time selecting the second option. And what do you know, now I can upload a payslip and have them calculate it. What the heck was going on with those dire warnings about how complicated the process is? You really think that I'm going to just accept a monthly payment that's nearly 2x what it should be just to avoid uploading a single payslip?

I'm starting to reread the series for the first time since it ended (which was 2/3 of my life ago), and my first thought after Visser 3's introduction is: what is stopping any other Yeerk from stealing his Andalite body while he's taking a dip in the pool? A human is a human, a Hork Bajir is a Hork Bajir, etc, but there's only one Andalite Controller. That seems like it would be a great benefit to any Yeerk who happened to wander in. Is it a taboo for them? I can imagine that their entire society would break down fairly quickly once people started stealing each other's hosts.

I had an injury that prevented me from training in time for an Ironman in September. I registered within the first 90 days, so I should be able to defer this race until next year. I can't find any information on how to actually defer the race. The Ironman website just goes in circles. Do I really have to email the race specifically and beg them for a deferral? It's crazy to me that there's no more automated way to do this in 2026.

I've been running on the LFT pretty much every day for the last 20 years, and it's way worse this year than in previous years. There are so many people running directly on the yellow line that separates the two running lanes, and there's nobody else within 100 meters of them on their side of the path. I get it if you're passing someone and you have to veer a bit too far to the left, but that's not the case with most of these people.

If there's enough space for someone to pass you on the right, which I have to do a lot this year, then you should be embarrassed. It's just like driving a car on the highway: slower people stick to the right, and faster people pass on the left. I'm out there running 6:30/mile pace and still stick to the right as much as possible (and most other faster runners are good about this, too). If you're one of these people and you're going the opposite way that I am, just know that I'm not going to move out of your way even 1cm, and that you will get my shoulder or elbow in your side as we cross paths.

I can't find any section of the Amazon site that allows me to open a chat with someone. Everything is pre-generated questions that take you in loops and only give you very basic options.

Tomorrow is my first 13.1 and I'm not familiar with bike parking in the area. We're running all through the park, so I imagine that that's all pretty well blocked off. I'm going to ride my beater with a backup helmet. What would be the best bet for finding a nice reasonably secure spot?

Edit: I ended up getting there around 6:30 and the bike valet still had a decent amount of space.

Greetings! I'm new to Votann, and Warhammer as a whole, and I'm working on 2x the new combat patrol. With flexibility in mind, I'm thinking about magnetizing as much as possible. The Einhyr Hearthguard were super easy to magnetize, and the Brokhyr Thunderkyn are a bit more complicated with those ball wrists but still straightforward with the options. The Hearthkyn Warriors, however, have way more one-off options, and it's a bit confusing as someone who doesn't understand the differences too well.

In each combat patrol, 3 of the models have options for different backpacks, and 4 other warriors have specialist two-handed guns that would take the place of the standard ion blaster/bolter option (HYLas, EtaCarn, L7, Magna-rail). Should I build 2x each of the different backpacks and specialist weapons, or 1x and have more ion blasters/bolters? Speaking of which, which is better between ion blasters vs bolters? Is it worth it to magnetize all 20 models to have the bolt pistol + plasma knife as secondary (plus magnetize the 3 unique backpacks to line up with the correct weapons), or is that overkill? I'll magnetize at least 4 of them, the ones with no specialist options, to have at least some stabby shooty boys on retainer.