u/vixaudaxloquendi

I've been studying Latin one way or another for the past fifteen years or so and have gotten to a pretty high degree of reading proficiency, such that I can crack open most things and comfortably tackle it without needing to look up much (obviously I have my weak spots and genres I'm less accustomed to, so this is not meant to be taken as an absolute indicator of skill. I'm just trying to convey an overall impression).

I've even attended and started up conversation groups both in my local area and as much as possible whenever I'm abroad. When it comes to speaking, I would say I'm decent, but certainly not anywhere close to what you can marvel at on YouTube.

Some time in the last year or so, however, I've had this strange indifference to cracking open anything Latin. It had always been my goal to become a good composer of Latin prose, but lately I find myself completely satisfied with my reading ability.

And any time I try to read anything in Latin for pleasure, I find I can't really hold my attention on it for more than a page or two before putting it away and turning to something else altogether.

Have any other long-time students of Latin found the verve for the language fading?

I should say this is rather unique for me. I've had times where I look at Latin less frequently, and these will usually last for a month at most before I find something else to pull me in.

But it occurred to me today that I haven't looked at anything in Latin for weeks now, maybe even a few months, beyond some of the plaques I've read while travelling on holiday or in museums.

PS I'm sure the flair is incorrect, but I didn't catch anything exactly relevant.

I picked up Shiren 5 last year on a dirt cheap eShop sale. I made it MOST of the way through the story tower, but I hit a brick wall at some point, and after looking up guides on how all the mechanics worked, I started to get overwhelmed and put the game down after, vowing to return one day.

Well, the summer sale's on and I picked up Shiren 6 on discount, largely because I heard it was more geared towards newcomers to the series, which is an introduction I think I'd appreciate.

My question is: let's say I click with Shiren 6 and I end up putting tons of hours into it. Is a lot of that knowledge transferable to Shiren 5?

I'm still very interested in Shiren 5, I would even say I like its aesthetic much more than 6's. But I'm hoping 6 will function as a good intro to the whole series, and not be so different as to "be its own thing."

I got accepted to this summer course in Europe, while I'm based in North America. The course is cool and I'm glad to have been accepted. My institution is covering travel while the host institution is covering my accommodations. For context the course is only a week long.

Anyways, I had the worst case scenario happen: as soon as I got to the city where the course is being held, I started to come down with something. Woke up with an upset stomach, fever, exhaustion, chills, the whole bit. It doesn't help that I'm squarely in the middle of this historic heat wave.

It sucks, but I'm not going to force myself to these classes while I'm under the weather, and I don't want to be "that guy" who gets everyone who traveled here sick.

I did some background reading on reddit and it seems like an extremely common situation in academia that no one bats an eye at.

So I did my due diligence, let the organiser know about my initial condition, then my worsening condition, and my decision to simply stay in the hotel and ride it out.

This provoked a flurry of emails about the accommodations they're able to make for me. They can provide me masks. They can give me a special desk way apart from the other PhDs. They can let me bring my own food to the lunches while I sit apart.

Each time I try to assert that, hey, I'm likely very contagious at the moment and I feel awful, I get met with this very helpful attitude which has an underlying current of, "We'd really like you to be here if at all possible."

I don't know if it's a culture clash or what. I get that maybe the hotel room is an unfortunate lost expense, but with the timing of my illness, it's not like they could have recouped the cost anyways.

I'm just surprised. I would have thought that, while unfortunate, they'd appreciate me sitting it out. I am not a presenter nor is the cohort size small enough that they would miss me.

The only other thought I have is it might be some kind of culture clash. Maybe North American attitudes to public illness are a lot more severe in the wake of COVID than European ones, but I honestly can't tell.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Due to some unfortunate circumstances (including significant travel delays and TWO dropped accommodations on arrival), my sleep schedule has been completely reversed in coming to Paris and right now I'm on a more nocturnal schedule.

Last night was my first night in Paris and while I definitely did not appreciate lugging my luggage around on foot for the better part of five hours, I was enchanted by the quiet of the city especially after midnight.

Once I got to my accommodations (long story), I went out for a bike ride around the city and got to see a lot of it with empty streets.

I'm only here for a couple more days but I don't think I'm going to get my sleep turned around in time before I head onward. Also, many of the original daytime activities I had planned were cancelled due to the heatwave with no availability of rescheduling while I'm here.

Do you think it's a waste if I just inhabit the night rather than the day while I'm here?

I arrived in Paris last night after booking a hotel online. The hotel advertises a 24-hour reception desk, and also asked for my rough arrival time.

I indicated arrival around 9-10pm, but arrived closer to 11pm due to train and metro delays. I think this was still reasonable for international travel.

When I got to the hotel entrance, the doors were locked. There was a keypad with fob, but no buzzer. I had received no instructions for entry on my own either or anything indicating a special procedure "after hours."

I emailed them to let them know I was outside and to please assit, and I had my wife call on my behalf (my e-sim was not working for phone calls at that moment) and email as well.

Her call was not picked up, and my email was never answered. Her email was answered approximately three hours later (2am) asking for clarification, as if I were lost and could not find the place (I know from Google Maps and other people's screenshots of the entrance that I was definitely at the right place).

At that point I had already made accommodations elsewhere as it was no longer reasonable to remain on the street at that time with all my luggage.

I have not yet engaged the merchant to redress this and will do so, but I already know from reviews online that they are pretty cagey about not refunding customers, so I am preparing the evidence for a chargeback on the merchant.

Has anyone gone through something similar? I know Amex is strong for consumer protections but I'm less familiar with how Visa operates in these situations.

For transparency, I asked the same question in r/StrategyRpg, but since reposts aren't allowed here I've done it manually. Hope that's OK.

I've been asking around about this the past couple of days because I have some eShop gift card money to spend.

I'm a casual SRPG enjoyer, but the ones I've enjoyed, I really got into. I'd say my two favourite recent games in the genre are Tactics Ogre: Reborn and Unicorn Overlord.

Particularly the former, I put hundreds of hours into it, did Palace of the Dead multiple times, cleared all three routes, all that stuff. Once it got its claws into me, I was hooked.

UO scratched that FFXII itch I've had going on forever.

For Fire Emblem games, my experience is ONLY with Three Houses. To be candid, I liked 3H, but I simply thought it was OK. The story was decent but I found the tactical gameplay incredibly boring. I can't really put my finger on why.

I did end up finishing one of the routes but I felt like I was pretty done with the game afterwards.

I often read about how Engage is superior to 3H in terms of gameplay. I guess I'm asking for an introduction as to why I might like Engage more in concrete terms as someone who isn't familiar with the series' gameplay outside of 3H.

Other games I liked recently that weren't SRPGs were Stellar Blade, Old World 4x, Expedition 33, Etrian Odyssey HD, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven and Xenoblade 1 DE/2/X DE.

Basically, I find a lot of the reviews for Engage are by pre-existing Fire Emblem fans who largely speak to one another in terms they're all already familiar with, so it's hard to gauge why I might like Engage more than Three Houses as an outsider to the series.

Bonus: I'm also curious about the Dark Deity series, but I hear mixed things about them too.

I've been asking around about this the past couple of days because I have some eShop gift card money to spend.

I'm a casual SRPG enjoyer, but the ones I've enjoyed, I really got into. I'd say my two favourite recent games in the genre are Tactics Ogre: Reborn and Unicorn Overlord.

Particularly the former, I put hundreds of hours into it, did Palace of the Dead multiple times, cleared all three routes, all that stuff. Once it got its claws into me, I was hooked.

UO scratched that FFXII itch I've had going on forever.

For Fire Emblem games, my experience is ONLY with Three Houses. To be candid, I liked 3H, but I simply thought it was OK. The story was decent but I found the tactical gameplay incredibly boring. I can't really put my finger on why.

I did end up finishing one of the routes but I felt like I was pretty done with the game afterwards.

I often read about how Engage is superior to 3H in terms of gameplay. I guess I'm asking for an introduction as to why I might like Engage more in concrete terms as someone who isn't familiar with the series' gameplay outside of 3H.

Other games I liked recently that weren't SRPGs were Stellar Blade, Old World 4x, Expedition 33, Etrian Odyssey HD, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven and Xenoblade 1 DE/2/X DE.

Basically, I find a lot of the reviews for Engage are by pre-existing Fire Emblem fans who largely speak to one another in terms they're all already familiar with, so it's hard to gauge why I might like Engage more than Three Houses as an outsider to the series.

Bonus: I'm also curious about the Dark Deity series, but I hear mixed things about them too.

Yesterday I booked flights, but something came up today and we needed to cancel in order to reconsider whether we still wanted to take the trip.

No problem. 24 hour cool-off period. It's tight but I've got a few minutes left!

I go to manage the booking online and when I click on cancel booking, I get taken to a page that says you have to call in for a cancellation and refund.

By the time I had fiddled around just to be sure it wasn't a browser bug or something and get the number to call in, six minutes had elapsed from the 24-hour cooldown limit. I thought it might be tricky, but still wanted to try.

Except I get hit with their automated system and it tells me I'll have to wait two hours to speak to anyone. Fine, I opt to have agent call me back when my turn in the queue comes up.

This is where it gets tricky.

The agent who calls me two hours later tells me they can't do it because I'm too far outside the 24-hour limit. I ask him what he means by "too far." He says that if I were within an hour of the 24-hour window, he might have done it for me. Because we're on the phone after this extra-grace window, he won't do it for me.

This is where I started to dig in a little. If he had just said, "Sorry, we have a hard cutoff at 24 hours," it would have sucked, but I would have understood.

But now I'm having to explain that when I called in to enter the queue, it had been six minutes after the cutoff. More than that, I only needed to call in because the website hadn't let me cancel for a refund when I WAS within the cutoff. We're only speaking hours later because of the phone queue.

He then starts to get dodgy with me. He tells me that's not what he sees: that I booked the tickets more than 25 hours before I'd decided to call in. I ask him for a time stamp, because I am staring at my phone's call logs which clearly show a time of +6mins.

He refuses to give me a time stamp and tells me that's not what he's seeing. He walks me back to the 25-26 hour time lapse.

When I start to press him on how that can be possible when I'm staring at a call log with a time stamp which verifies I called in "on time" for his extra-grace window, he begins to tell me that I'm just not understanding what I'm saying. When I ask him to explain what he means, he simply restates everything I've just written here.

At this point I am getting frustrated, though I'm trying to remain assertive rather than angry. Again, I recognise I don't have a right to a refund outside the 24 hour window, but that's not what this agent is saying to me. He's saying I missed whatever extra buffer ON TOP of that, which I have evidence I didn't.

He then tells me that if I want to escalate it (something I hadn't actually brought up), that I should write in instead since the calls are recorded. I ask him how should I reference our conversation. All he says is "say [his first name] and time stamp." When I ask if there isn't some reference number or file number or ANYTHING like a support ticket number that I can append, he just doubles down on name and time stamp.

The whole thing is extremely suspicious to me. As I said, if he had just started with, "Sorry, 24 hours or bust," I would have understood. But because he indicated that there was a one hour buffer window (and honestly he was kind of vague about that too) that, according to him, I had ALSO missed (when I had proof that I hadn't missed it), I felt forced into defending my claim given how much money is on the line.

I do intend to write in, but because he wouldn't really give me anything other than [name] and timestamp, I'm not very hopeful that anything will actually be done.

Some context, when I bought the console, NONE of these games were on my radar. I did a sweet trade-in deal on my OLED and they happened to only have the bundle option in stock, so I went with it.

Mario Kart World: is probably the one I'm least excited about, just because I don't tend to enjoy solo MK. My wife seems curious about playing it with me, but she is not a gamer and there's no guarantee. My son is too young, but in a couple years he might be interested.

Donkey Kong Bananza: I'm not typically a fan of 3d platformers. The last ones I played were the Galaxy games on Wii, and I did really like those. But I have heard great things about Bananza and it does seem different from what's come before, so I'm open to it.

Pokopia: Not really into Animal Crossing or Minecraft, but this game has gotten such good press, even from non-Animal Crossing/Minecraft fans, that I've had trouble crossing it off. I grew up on Red/Blue/Gold/Silver and I'm still fond of the first two gens of Pokemon, but I haven't kept up lately.

Basically, I'm stuck partly because I have this download code that I've already scratched open and, in the abstract, I probably wouldn't have chosen any of these games for myself to begin with.

Got a yellow banner today in the web UI a few hours after a chat about potentially moving to Codex. I don't do anything untoward in my conversations on the web UI.

I have used Claude Code to help me crack open some Steam game DLC you literally cannot buy anymore due to licensing issues, and it did require me to use an ENI jailbreak.

Can you get a yellow banner for activity in Claude Code? I do use /remote-control in the terminal sometimes so that I can continue working through the web app on my phone, but I can't think of what else may have triggered it besides the CC stuff.

NB I beat ch. 12. I'm saving 13 for after I beat XC3.

AFAIK XCXDE doesn't really have an end-game in the sense of XC2, where you get a robust NG+ and the challenge mode battles and exclusive blades.

I also found myself getting strangely tired of all the side quests towards the end. When I wrapped them all up and beat ch. 12 I rejoiced, thinking I could move on from the game.

Except... I find myself with the strange desire to go back. I love my mech. I love the world of Mira. I love putzing around in it farming mats to build the gear and outfits I want. I love material ticket farming. I love nuking groups of mobs with phoenix. I love building augments and seeing the numbers go up.

Basically, I think the actual quest structure and mission designs were the weakest parts of the game. But the core game underneath it is rock solid.

It's the same with XC2 which (as I wrote previously) at first I very much did not like. But I can't bring myself to remove it from my Switch: I like to load up and just try for those fusion combos a few times a week.

I played X3 in its many iterations a bunch maybe four years ago during the height of the pandemic. Was excited to see X4 come out but a lot of early reviews mentioned it being better to hold off for the moment.

Well, it's been long enough that X4 and its DLC goes on a decent discount now, so I've picked it up.

But I notice there's an on-going beta branch with what looks like very substantial changes.

I'm hesitant to jump in only to have the game change in a big way under my feet soon.

Is the beta disruptive enough that it would be better to let it release before starting it up? My X3 knowledge is extremely rusty now, so I do feel like I'd be starting from scratch in a lot of ways.