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Aaron,
What do you think about work/life balance? Without giving out too much details savings, after all discretionary and non-discretionary spending, is in the low six figures, but I’m working 6/7 days a week and when(if) I’m not working it’s still on my mind. After dealing with employees, customers, and all the business stress, I’m wondering if it’s worth a 25%-50% pay cut, by reducing business hours, at this point in my life to get rid of the stress and enjoy life more, whether it’s to travel more or maybe find that special lady to make some clones of myself 🙂 Anyway, curious to hear your thoughts on this topic!
A
I have found that as you climb the ladder, the additional pay does not compensate for the additional sacrifices you have to make. There some people online, such as the infamous Michael O. Church, who fantasize about an “effort thermocline” where pay shoots up but work necessary goes down rapidly, but this is complete nonsense. I think that this level really exists, but it is far above senior management in BigCorp. Probably you’ll have to be in the investor class to enjoy this or be put in some kind of sinecure due to political connections and/or special protected status. As a well-connected woman, you can go from zero to becoming “Chief Diversity Officer” to the tune of seven figures a year, but as a white guy, your task is to work hard so that the corporation can afford such largesse.
What traveling do u have in mind in this post-pandemic world? I’m in Asian rn. I’ve thought about bouncing. Only places I know of that would make sense for me rn r going back home to Texas, or Florida, or Dubai.
Where in Asia are you?
I have postponed all travel plans for as long as this Covid nonsense is going on. I would like to return to Singapore one day. In terms of places I really want to visit but haven’t yet, I’d say the list is quite short. It contains Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Lying on a beach and doing nothing isn’t what I enjoy, so typical tourist destinations hold little appeal for me.
I’m in Saigon. I really want to check out those places as well. Especially Hong Kong.
I think that art is the last thing to go in a civilization. We’ve already seen the norms and values of Western culture go down the drain for generations. Now movies and music absolutely suck. At least in decades past we had artistic expressions to fight the power of a self decaying society. Now there is nothing to film or music. The youth are vapid and it is not even their fault. Art may be the last domino to fall. Fuck that’s depressing.
Enjoy the decline. This culture has to get wiped from the planet, so that a new system & culture can emerge from its ashes.
In some way I don’t see it as bad, as it would be a naive assumption that the West and its culture was the best of all possible cultures.
So I say, maybe next time.
Viennese culture was pretty great. I think we would have been on a pretty great cultural trajectory in America hadn’t foisted the cancer known as democracy on the world.
We easily forget that the Austrians used to rule over a huge empire as well. It all had to go down due to the hatred of a certain group for monarchy. If there is anything positive about this it is that the United States are on the way out, hard. The empire is unravelling as we speak, and I’m not just referring to the CIA staging a color revolution within the U.S. itself. The best analogy is having an auto-immune disease. If this happens to your body, you’re fucked. The same is happening to the U.S. Also, push-back against the U.S. dollar as reserve currency has grown to enormous proportions. Russia has dumped all its dollar holdings. Venezuela recently adopted Bitcoin as legal tender. Also, collapse is normally precipitated by massive overreach of the powers that be. You may have heard that the “international bankers” are now buying up houses and rental apartments wholesale, often 50% above market value, with the goal of removing home ownership altogether so that your only option os to be a serf. Defunding the police is related to this because if government spends less on police, they can spend more on debt service and fatten the pockets of the banking class.
@Aaron, it was El Salvador, not Venezuela that adopted BTC as legal tender, taking effect Sep 7th 2021.
Signalling for similar moves has been observed by other Latin American country politicians, by the way. Paraguay, Peru and Mexico, I believe.
On a side note, this has some interesting second order effects, namely that other countries now start demanding their governments drop capital gains tax on Bitcoin, given it’s a legal tender elsewhere. https://twitter.com/LobbyNewZealand/status/1403920841105022980
@Neutralrandomthoughts
Profits on foreign currencies are also subject to capital gains tax in most jurisdictions, I believe, so I don’t see what difference it would make in that regard.
@Karl
good point. I think it’s an interesting situation. Say a BTC holder in the US goes on holiday in El Salvador and spends his BTC there. Is that a taxable event? I understand that if he bought sth in the US with it, it’d be one. How will this work going forward?
Go a bit more extreme. Say a US taxable person holds BTC and then goes to El Salvador. They want to spend BTC at a merchant who technically cannot accept BTC but only USD (this is covered in their legal tender law, btw). So the US person converts their BTC into USD at a local ATM. Is that a taxable event in the sense of capital gains? Currently apparently it is. I’m just wondering if this will not get challenged.
@Neutral, I am fairly certain it will be challenged. Staking rewards on proof of stake cryptos are taxed, which is being challenged as I type. I don’t think people will be very compliant with crypto taxes going forward
@Herkerderker
yeah, I agree. Plus, if BTC does become legal tender in other LATAM countries, it’ll attract a lot of the crypto crowd. Most of the LATAMs have territorial tax laws, meaning income generated outside of the country is not taxed.
But then again, even if they push for it, as long as there isn’t a big crackdown on exchanges to get data on who bought what when, I think taxing/confiscating crypto will be quite difficult for govs. Then there is the simple “lost my private keys”/”I got hacked” excuse…
Just imagine this: Already today govs finance themselves more from printing than from tax. Add non-compliance in tax and icreased printing to finance themselves. This leads to even higher crypto prices – quite the feedback loop.
I mean… it’s pretty much over if you ask me.
Btw, anybody see Max Keiser’s idea about Volcano Bonds from El Salvador? That’d be fun. 95 Megawatts is nothing to sneeze at. That’s like 28’000 S19pro Miners at 95TH/s. Think like $15mio per month in revenue at current prices. Watch the IMF lose their shit. Or Bukele finding himself in a plane crash. We’ll see.
Hey Herk, I forgot – got a link to tax on staking rewards being challenged?
@Neutral, https://decrypt.co/71943/tezos-users-sue-irs-over-crypto-tax-staking-rules
A Danish soccer player collapsed live on TV during a game of the European championship:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jun/12/denmark-v-finland-match-suspended-after-christian-eriksen-collapses
This has probably absolutely nothing to do with the vaxx because people collapse for no reason at all all the time.
Aaron,
Happened to a family friend a couple of years ago, too. It happens.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4969030/#:~:text=Sudden%20cardiac%20death%20is%20the,based%20upon%20the%20athlete%20population.
A
I follow football and it happens extremely rarely.
If it happens more on this tournament then there will be a high chance the reason was the vaxx.
Has anyone noticed that a lot of the better looking guys who did well with chicks during high school, then eventually got married, didn’t marry hot chicks? Like, most of them didn’t marry land whales (I do know a few who did though), but the chicks they paired off with are rather plain in comparison to the chicks they banged in high school. I wonder if it was to do with getting it out of your system. Once you’ve gotten some hot ass, you start caring about who you click with and can build something with more than how hot she is.
I noticed something similar, but then I noticed how much I had over-estimated the looks of chicks in high-school.
So yes, the guys whom I remember banging “hotties” in high-school settled for 6s… But then I also looked up the “hotties from high-school” and noticed that they are 6s now.
It’s a mix of the fact that 7s look like “hot girls” to a horny teenager… and those 7s become 6s by their mid 20s… So it’s roughly the same girls, he isn’t going down in hotness.
This is an excellent point, Alek! Also, probably the first girl in the classroom that grows boobs is considered hot by all the guys, almost regardless of her looks. In addition, there is the occasional teen or pre-teen who is hypersexualized, think bright red lipstick, short skirt, stuffed bra and all that. It is extremely unlikely that such women will retain their relative sex appeal as they get older.
Do an experiment. Look up the chicks you remember as being “hotties” in high-school, and you will have your answer. These guys did not “get tired of banging hotties” and “get it out of their system” lol, trust me.
That’s easy to explain, the average 15 year old easily beats a top 10% 30 year old.
So it looks like to you they have a worse mate now, but it’s still a top 10% (or any other percentage), it’s just that aging makes most people look much worse
And also if anything, I would say the opposite happens. When you get used to having sex with attractive women, it’s very hard to go back to just average looking women, they do nothing for you at that point
@Alex. Just about all the hot ones from my high school are still hot. We are in our early thirties.
It may be that they followed the money. And connections, as Aaron pointed out a while back. Guys fro affluent families marry girls from other affluent families.
I know two slayers who ended up with women far below their looks level. Both essentially got trapped, as unbelievable as this may sound. One of them I know quite well. He was essentially at the wrong place at the wrong time, wanting only to get laid after a stressful time in his life. Then he bumped into a chick in her early 30s — he was in his late 20s at this point — who made it very easy for him. A few weeks later he told me that he’s going to become a father. The other guy apparently got psychologically manipulated by some chick. It’s a case of a co-dependent relationship between a narcissist and a Cluster B-woman. It’s quite sad. Well, that guy lost his boyish good looks within a few years of living with that woman.
There are also highschool Chads who turn into total losers. They get fat early, some develop drug and alcohol problems, and those guys obviously are not going to put a ring on a 10.
As hot as you perceived them back then? Like you saw a girl as a 9 then and you see her now and still think 9?
I’ve noticed the phenomena Alek describe.
First, lots of the hot girls from high school don’t look good at all any more. They’ve aged poorly. This happens to everyone, but is especially common among Swedish girls. Swedish girls tend to be extreme sun-worshippers in summer, which coupled with fair Nordic skin gives a lot of them wrinkled, cow leather-like skin by their mid 30s. You start to notice the skin wearing out as early as their mid-20s or early 30s, though.
Second, a couple of years ago my old school photo catalogs resurfaced during a move. I looked through them and was surprised by how a lot of the “hot” girls, that I thought of as 9s at the time, seem more like 7s or low 8s when I look at them with today’s eyes.
I noticed the boob thing, too. But then again I’ve always been a boob freak, so that might just be me. 🙂
I’d argue that very few Swedish girls get their tan from sunbathing. It’s the sun studio. Also, I was quite surprised when I learned how much Swedish women drink. This goes hand in hand with the phenomenon of the reversed sex roles in dating, i.e. men act coy and the women approach them. You can find chicks in clubs, even feminine-looking ones, who down a few shots and then walk around, grabbing the ass or crotch of guys they find attractive. I have not experienced anything like this anywhere else. Needless to say, alcohol consumption speeds up the aging process as well.
@Alek, I’d say the tens from my high school are still nines and tens relative to girls in their thirties. Women are in their prime at age 18, so i suppose they’re not AS hot. Texas chicks seem to age better than other white women. Idk if it’s the moisture in the air, but i lived in utah for 6 months, and notice people didn’t age as well. If I compared the pics of their wives and the hot chicks from my high school, there’d be a pretty clear distinction.
And there’s the kicker. We don’t define girls as hot “relative to females of the same age”, lol 😀 Hotness is compared to the female population in general. By your logic you could refer to grannies as “hot”.
And even if we did do that, I doubt that 100% of the girls you know didn’t gain any weight at all. If even half of them gained weight (which they do), they wouldn’t be nines and tens (even relative to chicks that age). Or are you going to say next “relative to chicks of the same weight”? lol.
Are you perhaps not struggling to be defensive and keep onto your idea?
@Alek, the chicks I’m thinking of were fap material then, and are fap material now. Grannies aren’t. To put it bluntly. I painted a misleading picture by adding “relative to their thirties”. I no longer think “getting it out of your system” has anything to do with it, but I’m not totally convinced of the responses here. There’s truth in them, I just think there’s something missing.
Come to think of it, maybe Aaron’s comment fills in the gap. I know some successful guys who pulled some hot ass who wifed up some mediocre chicks, but I think there’s a correlation with how successful these other guys have been, and how hot their wives are.
So none of them gained weight? Or you fap to fat chicks?
Also, why fap to a 30-year-old as opposed to a much hotter earlier version of her? The same reasoning applies to sex, obviously.
@Alek, maybe 5% of them gained weight.
I think the main thing I’m taking away from the reactions is Texas chicks age better. I was very struck by the difference in how women age when I lived in Utah.
Imagine tuning into the E3 live stream to watch ads for upcoming games but instead you end up with a panel discussions on why we need more homosexuals and women in the industry:
https://www.pcgamer.com/take-two-e3-2021-livestream/
I have not bought a PS5 yet, and my interest is quite low because contemporary games just don’t seem to appeal to me anymore. I actually wonder who the target audience nowadays even is because the people they target surely do not play those games in significant numbers.
Hey!
I agree. The more I’ve caught up on what I missed out on and wanted to play for PS3 (not to mention some 3rd party games that made it to Switch), the harder it is to accept the steep decline in character design and narrative for many of these modern games. I had a friend who was really into the Assassin’s Creed games, but now they’re making games with homosexual Vikings so it didn’t age well. I’ll be looking forward to seeing if Zelda BotW 2 and Metroid Prime 4 show up during the Nintendo Direct, but that’s about all. It looks like it’s getting so bad that the best things to look forward to are remakes and revivals of old franchises.
I had downloaded the demo for Monster Hunter: Rise on Switch recently and as much as I think I’d enjoy it, I did a quick analysis in my head about how much this game is really going to cost me. It’s $60.00 currently, though imagine the time sink to learn all the complex controls, grind to a decent level to beat certain monsters, again grinding to a point where you’re competent enough to play with others online — the true costs of the game could be hundreds of hours! My interest in open world games have plummeted dramatically as well for similar reasons.
Welcome back, Pickernanny! The problem with remakes and sequels of franchises that died a decade ago is that they are oftentimes made to appeal to the currently enforced wokeness paradigm. Suddenly, all women in the game are ugly whereas the men look buffer than ever. This reminds me of a hilarious critique of the Mad Max game that came out a few years ago. Instead of some sexy chicks in mini skirts you get to look at wrinkly, fat hags, and some of them come on to the player character. I’m not sure whether I’d drop the controller faster after such a scene or after game-enforced homosexuality in the manner of Assassins’ Creed. (Now that I think about it some more, there is a non-trivial question in this: If there were only ugly women around you, but plenty of attractive men, would you feel more attractive to the latter? I’d argue that this would probably be the outcome, even when ignoring the homosexuality angle completely. I’ve noticed this myself in meetings, for instance where, when I have to look at someone when giving a presentation, I rather look at a reasonably attractive man than an ugly woman.)
Your point about Monster Hunter is certainly valid. Yet, this is a game that has been made for people who play nothing else it seems. On HLTB, the games in this series have some of the highest average play times. If you are fine with playing nothing else for two or three years, then putting down $60 for Monster Hunter Rise is probably the best value for money you’ll get in this hobby. I’ve played the demo as well but I did not like the color scheme, even though I found it initially appealing. Also, Monster Hunter is known to be a tough game to get into for newbies. As I’m curious to check it out, I thus picked up a cheap used Nintendo 3DS and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, which is widely claimed to be the best entry point to the series. I have yet to seriously play it, though.
I haven’t played games in weeks, though. Right now, I’m slowly freeing up some time to write again and once I’ve gotten back into it, I’ll block time for gaming again as well. The Sleeping Dogs disc is still in my PS3 and I intend to keep playing it because what I have seen so far was pretty great.
Thanks!
I’ve never even heard of Sleeping Dogs, I’ll check out some gameplay. I managed to catch Doom Eternal half off a couple months back but it’s still sitting on my Switch waiting to be played. I haven’t played any Switch for quite a while, only PS3.
Btw, have you seen the Dragon Quest 3 2DHD remake trailer? I know we just went off on remakes but I’m definitely interested in seeing more classic rpgs remade in this vain. Think of how nice Chrono Trigger would be with an Octopath Traveler aesthetic. Granted, the original CT looked pretty nice on SNES, however, Dragon Quest 3 could definitely use a makeover from what I’ve seen (if I’m not mistaken, wasn’t there a SNES remake of Dragon Quest 3 already?). This would be a nice entry for me into the series as I’ve never played any of them.
Nintendo’s Direct this year was not what I expected. They didn’t even show Splatoon 3 (not interested in those games btw). I thought the 2D Metroid game looked kind of neat, and Zelda looked pretty fun as well.
Sleeping Dogs got completely overshadowed by GTA V. This is a real shame as it is a better game in many regards. I wrote down some impressions in a comment a few weeks ago. You should find them easily via the search function.
The Dragon Quest 3 remake looks good. What I don’t like, though, is that there seems to be a lot of wasted space in the battle scenes. The original game was designed for a 4:3 format. On a wide screen, the developers should look for ways to better utilize all that empty space in those scenes, in my opinion. It looks downright jarring. I think there is a Dragon Quest 3 remake on SNES. There is probably a fan translation available as well.
I sold my Switch a few weeks ago as I’m no longer using it and none of the announced games appeal to me enough.
I second Sleeping Dogs. It’s one of the best, if not the best, GTA-style games ever released. I’ve played through the entire game twice, and am considering doing it a third time. And I usually never play a game more than once. 🙂
I see you are a man of taste. What other games do you like?
Yeah this is triggering and I’m not even a gamer. Last game I played Was MGSV, which I enjoyed, but found many aspects of the storytelling unfulfilling.
I may resume gaming again at some point, but thanks to the gamergate type stuff talked about on this site, i won’t be investing in any new consoles unless PC culture implodes in my lifetime. What a shame. Video games are such a cool art form. Maybe the coolest.
@Aaron
I don’t think that having some flashy character attack animations would have been too much to ask for as well. I really liked Octopath Traveler’s battle system but the narrative was mostly bad imo. Honestly, I think Chrono Trigger had my favorite turn based system, it was seamless and Idk why more rpgs haven’t utilized the same formula (I can’t think of any that did).
@Karl
I see that Sleeping Dogs received a 9/10 on Steam. I’ll have to keep this one in mind.
@Herkerderker
I’m still playing MGSV. I think it’s pretty cool overall, though it seems to have sort of a mobile app kind of aspect to it that keeps you engaged in the game for longer than previous entries. It gets awfully grindy as well and chapter 2 is a mess, I see how this game went off the rails and never got completed now. Gameplay is a lot of fun for a while, however. I think it might have been nicer if instead of an open world (which mostly seems unnecessary) they had designed a bunch of blocked off missions similar to how the Cuban prison camp in Ground Zeroes was executed.
I just went to GOG to check out the currently ongoing sale, and the first game that was shown to me was Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition. You can get it for 2.99 at the moment: https://www.gog.com/game/sleeping_dogs_definitive_edition
The PS3 version may be preferable, however. I recall reading that the “Definitive Edition”, which was released on PS4 and PC, was made by a different studio. They messed up a few things on the PS4 port, according to fan reviews. Those issues may have been fixed in the meantime via patches, though.
Oh, btw @Herkerderker what were your favorite main missions? I really had a memorable time infiltrating OKB Zero. I remember my first run I managed to get through with perfect stealth, then I went back and rolled through the main road on the walker gear for the S rank. I had to dive off of it after passing through the hangar gate to avoid falling through the elevator shaft to my death and it cracked me up. I also think I’ve played the prologue more than any other mission.
@Aaron
Thank you, sir!
I’d recommend the Yakuza series, which is a Japanese series about a member of the yakuza. It’s a lot of fun, and most of the games have got a great story, and interesting substories (side quests). It’s not quite a GTA-style game, but pretty darn close.
I personally enjoy Japanese games a lot, because they don’t go all PC, and have traditional notions of manhood. Kiryu (the main character in the Yakuza series), for example, is a stoic and powerful man who adheres to what you could almost say is a modern-day code of bushido. Loyalty to friends and worthy superiors, protection of the weak like women and children, and so on. There are also un-PC elements, like if you end up on a blind date with a fat or old woman, Kiryu freaks out, and takes massive damage from it. 😀 As one reviewer (not me) on Steam said: “Play this game. You won’t regret it. The testosterone is still leaking from my headphones.”
The series is also known for having really good localization. I really like playing it with Japanese voice and English subtitles. 🙂 They’ve got some of the better voice actors from Japan working on the games.
There are really only two downsides to it that I can think of:
1. The localization team took some liberties at times. For example, they removed one substory that portrayed a trans negatively (and where Kiryu used the pronoun “it” when talking about it 😀 ), and they eliminated a rape joke from the game. Basically this really obese woman said she was worried about walking past some ruffians because they might rape her, and a guy went “Rape? YOU!?!” and laughed at her. They changed the subtitles for this, though you can clearly hear him say something like “rape-u” in Japanese. 🙂
It’s not too big of a deal, though. It’s not even 1% of the game that they screwed with, and I don’t think they messed with most of the games at all.
2. It has a LOT of side activities. This is a positive in itself, but if you’re a completionist like me, it can be tempting to try to complete them all, which is nigh impossible. 😀 I played all seven games in the series and only ended up 100%-ing one of them. If you don’t have this obsession like I do, it’s not really a problem, though. 🙂
It’s also got really fun combat and advancement systems, with few exceptions (combat in Yakuza 3 sucks 🙁 ). The animations are overall really good as well.
It’s got pretty wacky Japanese humor at times. The main story tends to be more serious and have more “normal” humor, but the substories sometimes go the silly route. 🙂 Personally I really enjoy both.
I’d highly recommend you give it a whirl! I’d start with Yakuza 0 rather than Yakuza Kiwami (improved Yakuza 1) – it’s a prequel, but I played it first, and found that preferable.
I played Yakuza 3 for PS3 many years ago and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked when playing the sequel. Some time ago I rebought both for PS3, with the intention of replaying them. The other games in this series are on my list as well. Assanova spoke highly of this series in a comment some time ago.
When I played Yakuza 3, I had the impression that I could notice the influence of Shenmue, which I loved on the Dreamcast but do not intend to revisit because I don’t think it holds up.
@Pickernanny, hmmmmm. I don’t recall the names or the places, but the one where you extract the blond guy was memorable.
@Herkerderker
Lmgdao! Okay. Early on you rescue Miller, a blonde fellow, and then later there’s the White Mamba mission where you beat a 12 year old blonde child into submission. Though there is actually an alternative way to take him out without him being able to resist.
Thanks Aaron,
I’ll probably end up ordering it from ebay whenever I get around to it. Hopefully you’ll have beaten it by then and can fully recommend it!
I bought it used for four or five euros for PS3, and I have already gotten my money’s worth. It’s a really solid game. Even if I don’t complete it, I would not regret the purchase. Now compare this to Astral Chain, which I paid full price for and suffered through five hours, maybe more, hoping it would click.
@Pickernanny, i’m going to work on proofreading my phone messages lol. I meant blind*, not blond.
@Aaron
“I played Yakuza 3 for PS3 many years ago and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked when playing the sequel. Some time ago I rebought both for PS3, with the intention of replaying them. The other games in this series are on my list as well. Assanova spoke highly of this series in a comment some time ago.
When I played Yakuza 3, I had the impression that I could notice the influence of Shenmue, which I loved on the Dreamcast but do not intend to revisit because I don’t think it holds up.”
If you enjoyed Yakuza 3, then you’re in for a treat, because it’s almost universally agreed upon that’s it’s the least good of the Yakuza games (I agree with that sentiment myself). Not bad, just the least impressive of a very good series. 🙂
I thought that Yakuza 3 was criminally underrated. From the looks of it, it also sold really poorly. I had no problems tracking down a new copy for very little money years after the release date, and it even came with a first-print bonus disc. There is another game for PS3 that was made by the same studio, which I thought was likewise phenomenal: Binary Domain. It has fantastic shooting mechanics, a surprisingly good story, and pretty unique gameplay. Shooting the legs off robots who then come crawling to you did not get old for the duration of the entire game. It’s also available on PC.
At the current rate, it will probably take me five to ten years to make it through the seven or eight Yakuza games.
@Aaron
Nice. I’ll probably end up getting it or at least checking it out. I still need to finish MGR:R and start Vanquish, as well as Doom Eternal. I’m pretty interested in the upcoming Metroid: Dread now also, as well as Hollow Knight 1 and 2. I’m thinking the Nintendo Switch is the last console I’ll ever own. If they end up making a Metal Gear Solid or RE4 remake I’ll just watch a high level play-through or something.
Speaking of modern gaming, I find today’s ultra-high-definition graphics somehow less appealing than 720p from yesteryear. This could partly be due to developers adding excessive details everywhere, so maybe this situation will improve. The Demon’s Souls remake is a good example. It seems that everything is busy. Even bleak, uninviting corridors form the original are now overgrown with all kinds of plants and show artistic details in walls. Quite frankly, none of this adds anything to the game. From a gameplay perspective, it is a negative as it is distracting.
@Aaron
Yeah, Yakuza 3 is a good game. It’s just that those of us who had played other Yakuza games had such high expectations. Taken by itself, not just compared to the other games of the Yakuza series, it’s a good game! 🙂
Thanks for the tip about Binary Domain, I’ll have to check it out! 🙂