Right!? So I figure even if I just pay on ONE loan, any amount, (my idea was to pay on the smallest one and get most of it paid off) before Dec, then I'm doing good. But we will see what the loan counseling has to say.

I created a photo book for Katie out of all the photos I took and that family sent me. I know she's getting professional photos, but eh. I like to do photo albums. I have been wanting to start making photo books for a while, so why not start with this one? Even though I won't have it, she will LOL I also printed off a 5x7 of my nephews family (the one with the baby) and a photo of Katie/Wes for my kids wall (birth, graduation, wedding). - guess Shane's wedding photo will soon come off there. I should just go ahead and take it down, I know they arent' getting back together even if the divorce isn't final.

Update us, I'm curious if their advice is different from this :D

Photo books are fun! When I was a child my Mom would get photos printed and put them in photo albums. Super nostalgic. Nowadays, of course, you make your photo book digitally - it is much more practical.

Also those sound like lovely additions to the photo wall. I suppose you're right with Shane - but if the wedding photo is a nice one, I get that you were not in a hurry to take it down either. Or is it more that it's sad to see the state of their relationship, and that has kept it up there, as a reminder of when things weren't this tense?

I think it's more I've become a bit lazy about my photos? I finally have a set up on the wall that I LOVE having there - I used to change them out a lot when the kids were smaller (I have a TON of professional - errrr walmart studio, then JC Penny studio photos) and I liked the variety, and I'd change out for holiday specific ones a lot too - and then I just settled, really enjoying my layout (er is it a layout if its on the walls? anyway. I like whats up there) The wall where the wedding one is has all 3 kids birth photos, all 3 kids graduation photos, and then bottom photo was always intended to be a wedding photo. Also I guess its partly because they ARE still legally married? I didn't take down the family photos of Ryan and I/Ryan and I with the kids until after my divorce was finalized. I then found four photos of just ME with my kids (me and Shane, me Shane and Katie, me and all 3 young - and then got a new one of me with all 3 in Nathans Jr year of high school after the divorce was final) and put those up instead of the family ones. It is a nice photo, from their wedding. But it for SURE is not anything about being sad about their relationship or a reminder of anything. I hate to say it but I had a feeling from the get-go that they'd end up divorced. Shane is just ..... Shane. And everything I learned about Anna in the 2ish years I've known her - she's just as bad.

I will say I didn't wait for wedding photos for Katie and Nathan lol I did couples photos - I put up a really adorable photo of K&W that I got when I did the new family photos, and I snapped a picture of Nathan and Asher at Nathans graduation and put up that one a year later - I am not sure if Nathan and Asher are still together and probably should take that photo down too? I dunno. I'd have to check with Nathan on that and I don't want to upset him, he was VERY DISTRAUGHT when Asher broke up with him, but they've been talking again, so I dunno whats up. It just didn't look right to me, to have one couple up there - one photo frame in that line - and not others. So I had to make it look right to me, with the adaption plan of wedding photos replacing the couples photos if/when they got married.

Yes! I printed and did photo albums until Nathan was born, after that I just....didn't. Not sure if I didn't have time, didn't have energy or didn't have money - maybe all three? :P But I always felt bad about it, and when I learned about photo books, I was like, oooh yea, I can just go back and go through all the photos and do special photo books - like, birthdays, christmas, etc...and have not yet. So the wedding was my first attempt at it!

Damn. Kind of sad to see a relationship you feel has no chance of working out, but that is life! And if people lack stability and emotional maturity, then yeah, it feels pretty inevitable unfortunately.

And you know - if you like your photo wall the way it is right now, then absolutely there will be less drive to change things up!

I love my Mom's little photo wall - it's more a lineup of pictures, where she has two wedding photos, one of mine, one of my sisters, and the next thing on the line is a signed picture of Joan Jett that I gifted her for her birthday! Every time I see that I smile to myself. Joan Jett is just so cool, and it's awesome that my Mom likes her so much, plus it's proof that I gave her a REALLY GOOD birthday gift. I think I can never top myself there, unfortunately!

My experience with photo albums was pretty similar. My mom stopped doing them, and once I was a teen and took photos with a digital camera I tried doing one myself - it was pet themed! Cats, guinea pigs, ponies. I did not last very long though and never filled more than a couple of pages, haha :P there's something about it that feels like it's a lot of work somehow? Too many steps involved maybe! But I did a photobook last year! I do like photos as memories, nowadays there's just too many pictures floating around though.

I have a friend who, as a final project in their digital art class, created a compass of pictures, where the idea was that if you move the compass around you get to see the pictures that were taken in the direction you are "looking" in. That was very cool to see! I contributed a few pictures to the project as well :D in practice I don't think it would do much for me, because 99% of the pictures I take are 1) of my cat and 2) in my home, so the compass would not have a lot of variety there.

My photo wall stemmed from my love of photos and also my Gramma's photo wall (my mom's mom). She and my Grampa had 9 kids between them (first four were his/hers and then the last 5 were theirs). And Gramma set up a graduation photo of each and every one of them in an arc on her livingroom wall, and under them, added photos from events in their lives, marriage, kids, etc....and I always LOVED my Grammas photo wall.... Well, pretty much every wall in my LR and hallway is now a photo wall - but each area has its own "theme" of sorts - one corner is the "family" wall - with photos of my brothers and their kids and my parents, and my best friend/her family. The next wall is the birth/grad/wedding photos, the next wall is me and my 3 kids, then on the other half of that wall is some more random-ish ones - but its all matching - so like a similarly posed baby photo and a toddler photo of each kid, plus a birthday photo of each that ALL match in the background (I had a hard time getting that one and was SO excited when I finally got one of Nathan at not too great of an age discrepancy from the other two), and one vertical line of group photos. The last wall has a professional "Set" of photos, all from the same photo shoot, individuals and group photos. The hallway has graduation collages, baby/childhood collages and the RenFair cartoonish drawings (what are those called again, ugh I hate when I can't remember - oooh yeah! Caricatures).

Because yes, photos are memories to me!! I take a bazillion photos of my kids/family and post it on facebook mostly. That compass thing sounds cool, but I'd do it outside for sure LOL My property or the beach I was visiting or something like that.

Hahah if Mom put it on the wall with your wedding photos, then yes! That was a great gift!! I recognize the name and have no idea who it is :P Silly me.

EDIT: Ok done with that meeting for the loan stuff. Basically he told me that the zoom meetings I was going to miss were about introducing everyone who attended to how to access the FAFSA site and to choose which loan repayment plan works best for you, as well as how to contact your loan processor - all which I can find out for myself on the FAFSA site - so guess that is my next step. He did say if after I did that, if I had any questions or concerns, I could set up another meeting with him or someone else to help address them.

Aw that's beautiful, continuing the family legacy of photo walls :)

On Joan Jett, I can give you a bit more context if you'd like? She's a rock singer, songwriter, plays the guitar, had a band - my view might be a little skewed, but I think the most known songs of hers are "I Love Rock'n'Roll", "Bad Reputation" (my personal favorite of hers, I love jumping around to "I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation" :D ) and "Cherry Bomb". She got big in the 80ies, and seems like a cool person!

And that's awesome that you have people you can consult in case you have any questions, but that is a bit less answers than I expected them to give you :P I thought they'd be able to tell you about repayment plans, not just reference the website that gives an overview over them, although I suppose that works too!

i suppose if i knew the right questions to ask i might have got more info out of him. but i only briefly looked at the repayment stuff once years ago and didn't think to before meeting. eh. ill figure it out. ill look on the fafsa site this weekend.

ahhh yea. ok i know some of those songs. im not a huge rock fan but know a good bit of the older ones. I've never been able to remember many names of artists but can recognize some and lots of songs lol im better with country. been listening to it longer.

[edit] 410pm Hmm. Nothing like the site format changing randomly on you while you are questing...I loaded the page again, blinked and was like, huh this looks different....oooohhh this color changed. This font changed, this size changed.... LOL

Yes, I'm sure you'll figure it out! Fingers crossed for you :)

Do you have a favorite country singer? I don't listen to country a lot, but I do listen to a big mix of genres, and I quite like Johnny Cash - I think that would be country? I'm not super confident at identifying the genre, admittedly.

When I was questing I suddenly hit a lag, but thankfully that went away again! I'm not doing any Alexander quests on Kumos lately haha. Simply not worth getting him bookmarks, they're too expensive!

My favorite "singer' is a group - Alabama. I also love many others - Reba McIntyre, Travis Tritt, John Anderson, Tracy Byrd, Alan Jackson, George Strait are some of the older ones I really enjoy, but they're just a few of many I love. I also love Taylor Swift's country music, not really sure who of the newer artists I like best, but I do enjoy some of them, can't think of names offhand (again, I am terrible with artists but know songs lol) Yes, Johnny Cash is an older country artist, he's also pretty good. I got into country as an older teenager, before then I listened to the "oldies" LOL Now I guess they'd be ancient and "MY" country music would be considered the "oldies" :P

I will do Alexander on kumos if the total quest is 100k or less. Because, yeah, he's not worth it - but I'm also trying to level up on his reputation.

Morning from Europe! I had a good night's sleep, finally. This week I keep having restless nights, lots of tossing and turning.

I had an event where the wizard gave me an extra quest, and then it went away again. Ope! I didn't realize there's a time limit, I wonder how long it is? Half an hour? Maybe next time I get that and I didn't do my quests yet it will be a motivating factor to speed it up a bit haha :D

Honestly I'm bad both with artist names and song titles. I do like my playlists in my music app though! I like to participate in the forum game on here that is linking song titles, and you better believe I reference my music app every time :P

Thankful it's Friday. I'm low on motivation for work. We keep getting battered with "it's important you use AI as much as possible". Nobody seems to care about the resources (clean water, energy) wasted on every single prompt. We're a big company too so if everybody feels pressure to use AI (even if they don't need it), that is SUCH a drain of these things! I hate it.

Ahhh yay for a good nights sleep. I slept ok. Feel like I could sleep some more though. I am just so tired. Maybe because so much happened in the past couple weeks? I am glad its Friday too! Ready for the weekend to just chill as much as possible.

I have tried some of those commenting forum games (to get forum posts) but I always forget to go back and do it again....Oh well :P

The schools are ok with us using AI for lesson planning, not sure how you'd use AI and it uses resources such as water and energy?? Unless you mean something different by AI than I do - Artificial Intelligence? For AI for school - like I said, you can just search "lesson plan for ...." and it pulls up a whole lesson. Its crazy. And then in college for our classes they say we can "use" it to get ideas - but NOT to use it for our assignments, talk about contradictory. And then at work everyone talks about how they used it when they couldn't think of something or were tired or just wanted a new idea - instead of thinking on their own. I mean, if it works and the kids learn, I'm ok with it, but also - many many teachers have old lesson plans printed out and saved that work just as well, its just a different type of effort to go look at those than it is online :P

I just spend over 30mil in the past two days on here - to buy two 15mil minions to use in the genetech lab to create two of the same item - one for the minion zoo, the other to feed to my pet. Phew. Biggest purchase I've made in a while. Glad thats done. Now to save up my millions for the other millionaire shop items I need (food mostly from the millionaire center)

The wizard quest event is why I've gotten into the habit of doing wiz first - well, after Shinwa, in case she asks for him. But then I do all of his, so if I get the event, I get to just quickly go do it and not worry about will I run out of time before the 16th quest! Plus, its a nice bonus to get 70 extra tokens instead of 20, by "finishing" doing wiz quests twice LOL

Caveat ahead of time - I'm not a scientist! But I do think this is an interesting topic, that I've at least delved a little into. So if you don't mind, I'll try explaining some!

By AI I do mean Artificial Intelligence - the way we understand it nowadays, which usually refers to "large language models", LLMs. Now the first thing people are not aware of is that there are hidden queries. If the question that is asked is complex in some way, then the LLM will do multiple background queries before coming back with a result. I would bet good money that bringing back a lesson plan is more than a single query. Each query in itself is a request to a data center. The data centers use lots of computer chips, that process the queries. That uses a ton of electricity, but also - the chips get hot! And getting hot is bad for them - chips can burn out and then are not usable anymore. So to cool them down, water is being brought into the system. And not just any water, but drinkable water!

It's a big issue if a data center is built in a place that simply does not have extra drinking water. If there is extra drinking water in the area, it could be fine - but if a data center means your tap doesn't run anymore, I think that's abhorrent, and I've at least seen videos of that. I don't have more background info than this though!

So queries use water. But also training LLMs uses a TON of resources, since training involves feeding the LLM through the computer chips with massive amounts of data. Doing that uses both water and electricity, and there is always training happening. AI companies are constantly training new models.

Fun fact - power plants also use water (so in a way, consuming electricity also uses water). But it's different because power plants tend to not use drinking water. It's lake water, ocean water, things like that, and once they have used the water to cool down their systems, it gets fed back into the body of water it came from. In data centers, it's drinking water they use, and it is evaporated in the process, so there's nothing to feed back even if they wanted to do that.

And then the computer chips that are used in the data centers - the production of those uses distilled water. So there's water every step!

And then the bigger issue is that the data centers that are being built are being built for "the future". The LLMs that currently exist don't need them. It's all projection, and in my view the world's economy is being gambled on this "future" of "bigger" AI, with insane amounts, billions on billions, being put into data centers and the AI hype, even though LLMs don't even make money. They're expensive and most people are not paying, right now. We will be paying later, I fear.

It all feels insane, and it makes me feel insane, to have management all day every day go on about how we need to be using AI every step or else "we will fall behind". I heard that today! Fall behind on what, causing a global financial crisis when the AI bubble pops? Ugh! And I work in Finance! I thought we'd be a LITTLE smarter than this. It's frustrating, and I'm frustrated :P

Did that make sense? You can ask questions if you'd like. I do think, just like your experience in school, how AI is being handled proves that we don't really know what we're doing with it. It doesn't surprise me that your experience wouldn't be consistent! People can't decide how it should be used, and sometimes it does feel like people ask an LLM rather than think for longer than a minute... and this probably won't help how the internet is already gobbling up everybody's attention span, with these addictive short videos on so many platforms.

My parents already thought it was bad when I was handed a gameboy as a kid and got really into Pokémon :D

Oh wow. yeah I never even thought about all of that type of usage!! I am for sure not a techie, so even if I had learned about data centers and heating up chips and cooling down with water - I probably wouldn't have remembered.... Hmm yeah, building centers based on what you think "might" happen doesn't make much sense to me, I mean, just think about how far everything has progressed in the last 50 years!! We don't do things the same way we did back then, all the tech and stuff is way different!! I can only imagine that in that "future" the ways of processing data and things could very well change!!

Mmm My gameboy had Mario and Tetris LOL AND my first game system was an Atari :P

Exactly! I'm with you there.

Oh, and I thought you didn't do video games - these totally count :P That might sound like a joke but I do mean it! Mario and Tetris are classics!

Btw, the big purchase you mentioned above? I bet I know what it was... I put that on my wishlist recently, because yep, I need three of them haha. One for the minion zoo, two for genetech... 15mio is such a steep price tag for sure! I am bad at saving sP, but mostly because spending it is MUCH more fun :D so that will take a while! It's not even the only thing from the spring section I want with the 15mio price tag, I also want this background! Bunnies! :D

The extra wiz quest lasts 14m59s :)

Andd oooh Berry, I am RIGHTG there with you on AI, data centers, water usage..

And right now, we're actually in the middle of a nationwide fight against data centers in Archibald, PA. They're trying to build 6 of them in a small area, right besides trails that people use constantly, etc. And.. even though they don't have the go-ahead to build them, they're already clear-cut 6 acres of forestland to "be prepared." 6 acres of forestland, in an already wet area.. the environmental impact lawyers already predicted there's goign to be even more flooding and landslides, etc. Especially since all this is on abandoned coal mines, so the land underneath wasn't entirely stable to begin with..

And yes, they use SO much water. They also raise electricity prices for everyone around them, because they use so much that all the lines, etc need to be upgraded.. and they don't pay for that because it's the whole county.

AI is a scourge. >.<

Thanks Mieke, that's good to know! Today I did hurry to do my wizard quests, so now I'm prepared, just in case :P

Definitely on the same page with regards to AI being a scourge! I hope y'all can win that fight, fingers crossed! You brought up a point I didn't even think of before, but it seems obvious - raising the price of electricity. Just ignoring the locals' needs and wants like this is maddening. Horrible that forestland was already cleared! Definitely would rather have a forest than a data center, personally... but the people making the decisions don't think like that, clearly.

It really seems like such a lose-lose situation.

Hahah, this is about the only video game I play now, my online game of subeta and whatever random game i decide to play on this site, if any.

Well, I guess I will still play Mario with my kids, when they ask me. I'm not nearly as good as it as I used to be. The year the Wii came out, we got one for the kids for Christmas, it came with the Mario game inlcuded. The kids played that first day, the day after Christmas I took them to my moms for the rest of vacation, and me and my ex hubby played the ENTIRE game (every level passed!!) before the kids got home giggles I was also the Tetris Master in my house growing up. I would play it for HOURS. I tried playing Mario on the Switch when I got one for Nathan a few years ago. It was fun, but challenging to me, as my hands were no longer used to playing with the remote LOL

Yep, that minion was the big purchase. I earned the 30mil over like 4-5 days? I think? Maybe a bit longer. I also did pull a couple mil from my cheap shop...the last few years I've gotten into the habit of NOT touching my shop till in one specific shop the entire year, and then doing a big spending spree at New Years - sometimes I do a spending spree after my birthday in June too....I often have like over 500-600 mil to spend. I am up to around 300 mil already this year and its only April, AND I've spent the shop till of one shop (my cheap item shop) several times. you have a whole lot more than me to buy, so its easier for you to spend right now. I look at what I have to buy and I'm like. GAH I don't want to spend that much on items....but its what I have left to get LOL So spend it I do....since I've already bought the cheaper items. Every food item I still need is like over 10 mil at this point. Its crazy. I wish they'd bring some of that back out and re-release it. But also a lot of the items I need are collection items, and they DO release those, every month....but those are CSC or super expensive sP...so either way I'm spending a lot!!

Yes! The more you play a game, the better you are :D well, there's always exceptions of course. Some games don't care :P

And makes sense! I'm not touching my shop till either, for achievement reasons, so gotta be patient with that. But spending sP is fun! Getting more wardrobe pieces, more beanbags, more stickers... I'm not worried about food and books yet, but that will no doubt come at some point too. I do like minion collecting but I find the zoo at lot less straightforward, I'm missing the option to see "missing minions" there too!

Yeah. I did a list on subetalodge for the minions, and use that and my wishlist/account to keep track if I have a minion or not. Because you can put duplicates in the minion zoo, if I remember right..

Need to do laundry today, and shopping. Going to wake Shane up in a bit if he doesn't wake on his own. He woke me yesterday. I had woke up at like 4 ish to put the dog out (she was whining) and then fell back asleep, surprisingly!! And he texted me at 730 to see if I was awake since my door was shut - nope. I was asleep!! :P Today I got woke up at 530 by the dog whining, but didn't go back to sleep. Still tired. Stayed up late last night reading.

Got some gardening stuff for the rose bush area by the house yesterday, started working on that, found a baby snake. Stopped, hopefully it left the area and I can work again today. Going to be a lot more effort than I hoped. Dang grass roots are huge. I'm trying to clean all the grass/roots out of a 2ft wide section all along the front of the house in that area, then I am going to put in a border, some weed fabric, fill it back up with dirt/topsoil/potting soil mix, and then add another layer of weed fabric and THEN top it off with the cheapest rocks I can find (they were $6 a bag and I think I'm going to need at least one more bag, if not two more. Ugh. And then hopefully the grass won't grow all up around my roses anymore. I hate weeding around them. Am debating doing the same in the future for around/under the swing, but that will be harder, as there is a LOT more grass there....But I have roses on either side of the swing....I may not clean it out as much, or add the extra dirt there. I may just put in a border and dump rocks ??? Since I just really want to eliminate the grass under the swing so I don't have to weed-eat or mow under it and around the roses there.

Maybe some day I'll do the same for minions, but not today :D and glad you got good sleep yesterday!

Sleep is so important. I similarly got woken at 6 am by my cat and got up to help her out. Then went back to bed, because I was up until 1 am, so definitely needed more sleep. And I may nap sometime soon.

Aw, baby snake! Hoping the little one made it out okay. Baby snakes are so cute.

And yeah, that sounds really hard, pulling out all the grass! Never done anything like it myself, but I do think if you put a border and dump rocks, the result may be less tidy but should still get you what you want, that you won't have to mow under the swing. Fingers crossed in any case!