Release That Witch webnovel

This is a rare webnovel that transcends webnovels. It is good enough to be considered a real novel. (Most webnovels are low quality.)

This 7-book hardcopy is supposedly based on official text from 起点中文网. Only the first 96 chapters are free there, though the entire novel (1498 chapters) can be found elsewhere easily — with varying quality (due to censored words).

It does not seem to be an offical copy, though. It does not show 起点中文网 on the book cover, despite appearing in the listing. (The seller told me it was removed after 起点中文网 told the publisher to do so.)

The text is in two columns, so it is easy to read. The last chapter of each book is broken up and continues in the next book.

I found two more editions: a 4-book edition and a 10-book edition. One is enough. :lol:

Most online text are based on 校对版 — they are 99.9% identical. AFAIK, this is the first published edition. However, I've always wondered if the author went back to make corrections after finishing the story. In particular,

• Inconsistent value of gold
• Number of witches in Tilly's group
• Number of ancient witches

That's why I'm interested in 起点中文网's edition. It has user feedback, so mistakes may be corrected.

Macross DYRL 40th anniversary

Dual 4K and Blu-ray release. New remaster. Includes English subtitles!

9,900 yen for the standard release. (The limited 1st edition costing 14,300 yen can only be purchased in Japan.)

It is not known if the blu-ray is improved or the 2016 release.

I am waiting for these 4K releases:

• Castle of Cagliostro
• Cars

Castle of Cagliostro was already released by Discotek Media in 2021. Waiting for it to drop price to US$25. :lol:

For Cars, I'm waiting for a real 4K release.

I'm thinking whether I want any Studio Ghibli releases in 4K. Of the 3 I like, only Princess Mononoke will benefit from 4K.

Ticket-to-Ride 20th anniversary

Wow, has it been so long?

A set of five deluxe train sets, plus one more from "exclusive" game shops.

Speaking of which, I'm still waiting for The Little Plastic Train Company's Deluxe Board Game Train Sets: Wave 2.

It must have gotten on a slow boat from China — despite paying US$34 for shipping!

It is a set of 3 engines and 5 railcars.

At this point, TtR is more about collecting miniature train models!

Transformers 40th Anniversary – SS86 Optimus Prime

SS86-31 Optimus Prime

The highlights for me this year are SS86 Bumblebee and SS86 Optimus Prime.

Bumblebee was a disappointment. It is not G1 enough.

Optimus Prime looks really good. It looks like a cost-down MP-44 — including its giant backpack. Sadly, that means I won't be getting it.

To be released next year are SS86 Megatron and SS86 Constructicons.

Megatron will be a tank, but hopefully its robot mode is on point to G1.

Everyone has the same idea to release Constructicons for 40th anniversary: FansToys, XTB, MMC. This is the third Devastator war!

The Day The World Blue Screened

Happened to me at 12:34 pm. After my notebook power-cycled, a colleague told me his notebook also crashed, but unlike mine, it could not boot. He said it happened to many people in office.

A solution was posted on Reddit very quickly — enter Recovery mode and either delete the offending file or rename the entire CrowdStrike dir.

But there is a gotcha: to enter Recovery mode, you need the Recovery key if your system is encrypted with BitLocker. Who has it written down? Panic is when the server holding the keys is also BSOD. Pray IT has the key to the server offline...

I renamed the CrowdStrike dir and it was gone. I wanted a less intrusive change by using RegEdit to stop the service from running, but I could not do so. I had no admin rights to edit the Registry even in Safe mode.

It struck me I could disable ZScaler the same way... :devil:

In Reddit, there were postings that it affected N-1 and N-2 deployments too. N-1 means one patch earlier, N-2 means two. Generally servers will use N-1. To use N-2 means to be extra-conservative.

The reason this affected all is because the update is "data", and data is rolled out to all immediately. CrowdStrike prides itself having extremely up-to-minute protection. Data is normally considered safe — except when it is corrupted.

The lessons here:

• Input validation!
• Staged rollout (limits damage)
• Roll back on error

Some people will say more testing before release. But we all know how that works. Testing is never comprehensive.

Against Trump no matter the cost

When you can't win legally, you take the other path.

Trump is very lucky to be alive.

TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is real. Many people instinctly dislike him because they see him as rich, spoiled, a playboy and is not a career politician.

Let me put it this way. If the State Apparatus dug all the way to 40 years ago and could only bring such insignificant and weak charges against Trump, I'll say he has lived a pretty clean and good life.

And this is why the Deep State is worried... he cannot be blackmailed.

Conspiracy theory time

The gunman was seen climbing up the roof. Several bystanders notified SS (Secret Service) officers, but they were ignored.

The gunman was well within SS "secure" perimeter.

The SS sniper already had the gunman in his sight, but only fired after the gunman fired 8 shots.

The conspiracy theory is: kill the gunman after he kills Trump to leave no living witness. (This is not the first time this has happened, seriously.)