Big Blue Huddle

Thanks guys. I am largely on the same page, and I agree with the point about really close, true, loyal, good friendships not always being easy to find. I also agree that you always help family in need provided you're able to, and it is much better to treat it as a gift.

There is a lot of real wisdom, intelligence, and life experience on this board, so I figured this would be a good group to ask a bit of a tricky question.

What are your general overall thoughts on loaning friends money? Have you done it before? What were the circumstances in your friend's life that led to him/her asking you for the loan? Was it a very substantial amount of money? Did you get paid back when the friend said he/she would? If they didn't pay on schedule how did you handle it? Did it impact your friendship? If you said no, did it impact your friendship?

Do you have any rules of thumb on this practice? Do you have a firm, "hard no" policy under all circumstances, or are you more case by case? Or do you basically to it almost anytime a good friend asks? If the latter, how have the results been as far as getting paid back?

I have loaned friends money before myself but I have mixed feelings on the broad subject, and I have a situation where I think I'm about to get asked by someone, possibly for a more meaningful amount than what I have done with people in the past.

I'm just curious what your experiences have been around this subject and what if any rules of thumb you have.

Thanks in advance.

Stumbled on this on Twitter today. Good thread.

https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1494302449586290691

There is some discussion in the comments section about the advantages of trying to go for a consonant-heavy word with the first word rather than a vowel-heavy word.

I start every morning with ADIEU and have had good results. The logic for starting with a consonant-heavy word like "STERN" though is that there are obviously many more consonants than vowels in the alphabet, so chipping away at the larger population early offers more of an advantage than finding out which vowels are in it but then still having tons of consonants to have to work with and try to eliminate.

I may give the consonant approach a try just for fun, but I'm guessing the truth is that the vowel-based approach is better as it gives you a much clearer sense of the structure and sound of the word.

Quote from: Jolly Blue Giant on February 14, 2022, 08:43:02 PM
I had only one "i" and all the other vowels were used up. Finally tried a word with a "y", but it wasn't the end of a word so that confused me, but that helped to know it was part of the word. I had pretty much exhausted all my consonants. So I sat for several minutes scratching my bald head totally lost. I had a "c" left, but no other consonant that would go with a "c" that made sense. Finally came to the conclusion that the consonant had to be used twice and the light went off. One of the toughest ones yet...although, "ultra" was no walk in the park. Just not that many words that start with a vowel and end with an "a". Anyway, I like challenges and that one gave it to me.

I failed to get one on the other site earlier today. After three tries, I had "_ound" all in the green so I went with "round", then "sound", then "mound" and ran out of tries. It was "wound". I guess the law of averages says you have to miss at some point 

It's really funny. I had almost the identical experience (including a similar process of elimination) that you did to arrive at the word today. Once I managed to get to the point where I said "ok the second letter definitely can't be anything but a Y" I was able to get there, but I definitely struggled today with this one today.

Quote from: Jolly Blue Giant on February 14, 2022, 05:10:36 PM
Anyone have trouble with today's Wordle? I got it, but it took my 4th try and I thought it was too out there to be right

Funny you say that. I found this to be one of the trickiest ones yet, and I have one close to 30 days worth now. Like you, I got it on my fourth try, however I was stuck after the third try for quite a while. The combo of letters I was working with felt like such a dead end. I finally got it, but that was definitely harder than normal I thought.

Quote from: Sem on February 11, 2022, 06:14:53 PM
We have a wine dinner coming up in a couple weeks at our son-in-law

Quote from: LennG on February 09, 2022, 09:11:46 PM
Good or bad, I start with the same 3 words, HOIST, READY, and PLUCK. So I have all the vowels with a Y and several of the main letters. With this plan, I rarely get the word before the 4th try. So then I see what I have either permanent or movable and try a few combinations to see where the movable letters might go and what I might mix with whatever letters I have left. As of now, it has worked well for me as I have only missed one word and that includes several of the 'other' games from the link you gave each day I do play.

I also play Candy Crush every single day, maybe for years now. I am at level 3000 and something and the game is much harder. Don't know if anyone has played but it is more than just a silly kids game as there is a very certain strategy to it once you get into the higher levels. They still want you to buy things to help you beat levels but in all the years I have played, I have never spent a penny on this game, but I do enjoy it very much.

I always start with ADIEU every morning. I like having four out of the five vowels (not counting Y) revealed after the first round. Even if I get all greys after that first guess I feel like that gives me a lot of info. I'm not sure that there is any "best" starting word, but I think the more vowels you cover off on early the better generally. You just have more of a feel for the structure of the word when you have a good idea of the vowel makeup by the second guess.

Quote from: LennG on January 28, 2022, 08:42:32 PM
Question on todays game

I started with HOIST--nothing
Went with READY- Got E and Y correct
Went with FLUKE and K correct and a yellow E

Wouldn't that indicate that there was another E somewhere since my first E was green with the READY word? This thru me off until I just ignored the yellow E and proceeded to get the word.
I thought it was mentioned that if there were 2 of the same letters, one would be green if it were in the correct spot, and then if there were another it would be yellow.

No. When you went with READY, you had the E and the Y in the correct spots already.

When you then went with FLUKE, since you moved the E out of the correct spot, it switched from green to yellow. It wasn't going to keep it as green since you moved it.

Really enjoying doing my daily Wordle. I've now done ten days worth of them. Sadly, while I wish I could report a perfect record, I missed one two or three days ago so I'm at 90% so far. On the one I missed, I was very sloppy/lazy with my 3rd and 4th guesses and didn't put nearly enough thought into them. Lesson learned. But I think this is a fun little daily exercise that gives your brain a quick workout to start the day without taking too long.

I think it's an impressive lineup and should be very good. As far as hip-hop goes, these are among the biggest and most known stars. I was surprised when they didn't do something like this when the Super Bowl was in Atlanta. Doing Maroon 5 for that show and not a hip-hop act was a mistake on their part in my opinion, and I have nothing against Maroon 5 and thought they did a good job. Better late than never though I guess. I'm looking forward to it.

Got today on the third try. My second guess was a very fortunate one.

There is for sure a lot of luck in the first two rounds in this game. I went from having one green in the first round to four in the second round. So the third pick was easy.

I read that it's best to start with a vowel-heavy words in the first round, which makes sense. If you hit a vowel or two early you have a bit more of a tangible base, since there are so few vowels compared to consonants.

Very fun game. I agree that it's a nice little brain exercise. I've done about 8 or 9 of them, and I showed my 14 year old daughter, and she is also a fan. I'm happy to say that so far I have not missed any, but they are generally taking me 4-6 tries. I have gotten two on the sixth try, so I'll certainly miss one soon. I have not gotten one in two tries and I think I only got one in three tries once, and that one was pretty lucky.

What is your way of attacking these things? This is how I have been approaching it:

First try: Just pick a word with a lot of reasonably common letters like "paste" or "boats"

Second try: Still have to be creative here. Just try to get something that fits the clues, but using all new letters, again favoring common letters.

Third try: By now, hopefully you've got at least one green to work with. You should also have a decent number of eliminated letters. Since most of the eliminated letters will be very common ones, depending on how many yellows and greens you have, you can start to piece together some possibilities. You also may have a better idea of where the yellows should be located as you may have two different wrong spots for the same yellow letter.

Fourth try: In this round you should be taking a genuine stab at the word with some sort of confidence. There aren't many letters left that that aren't part of the word, so it's just a matter of thinking about what the word could possibly be given the clues. In this round, you're probably going to have to start thinking about random letters like J, W, X, etc.

Fifth and sixth tries: If you haven't gotten it by now you should be really in trial and error mode with very few possibilities and it's just a matter of process of elimination. I have seen some annoyingly weird words like "oxide", so they'll definitely throw some tricky ones at you.


Jolly, if you have any tips I'd be happy to hear them!

Quote from: ozzie on January 18, 2022, 06:23:15 PM
Yes. My daughter introduced me to it this past weekend. Fun game that makes you think. Very enjoyable but I wish you could play more than once a day!

That second link provided in the OP allows you to do that.

Love it. Just tried and got my first one right on the final try. Stressful!

Quote from: T200 on January 14, 2022, 10:44:20 AM
I was super excited for them to make up for the crap they fed us with the previous series finale.

The first five episodes of New Blood were as expected, setting up his kill list. But it seemed a little rushed to me, even with the 10 episodes.

I wish they would have had Bautista confront Dexter. Logan getting soft and letting Dexter get close enough was lazy writing and it seemed they were rushing to finish.

I didn't like them having Harrison kill Dexter, although I can see the door being open for Harrison to start in his own series.

Overall it was very good and a much better ending.

T,

Very solid points and critique.

As I said in a different thread, I thought it was an excellent season. Solid A- for me and probably well above average among all Dexter seasons. Good flow from episode to episode, I liked the new setting, very good villain (albeit he was no Trinity), the usual superb acting from Hall, pretty good supporting acting, very solid dialogue (especially Dexter talking to himself), and just good general tension throughout.

One criticism I had was I thought they played up the whole "small town" theme a bit much. Some of that got a bit hokey and trite. In particular, I thought it was silly that in that whole town, and I appreciate it is a small town, there were basically three cops, one of whom was the chief, one of whom was the high school wrestling coach, and the other was some guy at a desk. I found that to be not believable at all.

I agree about having a scene where Bautista confronts Dexter. That was a bad miss on their part, and I felt sure it was coming. If they were going to bring him back into this season, they should have used him more.

I was initially disappointed by the ending because 10 minutes prior I was under the impression we were going to be getting some "Dexter LA" seasons in the future, but upon reflection I thought it was done very well. I tend to believe that that's it for Dexter. I doubt the do one with the kid. He may be a decent actor, but it just wouldn't be the same. The only way they could possibly do it is if they have Dexter's ghost talking to the kid the whole time, the way he used to do with his Dad and with Deb in this season. Then I suppose it would be feasible. But my guess is that they won't. If Hall wanted to continue doing this, I doubt he would agree to be killed off.