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My Sis has been dealing with chronic pain (CRPS) for a while now. Recently she had a spinal cord stimulator surgically implanted, and the results have been exceptional. As long as she keeps it charged up, she is nearly free of pain. It's had a most wonderful effect. Science rocks.

Hey everyone Just wanted to say I’m really enjoying The Outer Worlds so far. The writing and humor feel classic Obsidian, and the companion characters are surprisingly fun to travel with. Still early in my playthrough, but I’m already hooked by the choices and consequences system. Looking forward to seeing how everyone else is playing it.

Finished Broken Sword 5 (meh, Nostalgia bait). Replaying Pentiment -- Obsidian's game for the Christmas season you don't even realize is Obsidian's game for the Christmas season until you play it. Damn shame that the subforums here have like a handful of threads at best. Then again, Pentiment ain't a game for everyone. But as a wise dev once said: "A game for everyone is a game for no one." *

Every time I see "news" re: PC parts/prices "panics" etc, I pat my PC and compliment it, to encourage it keep running for, oh, say, 5 more years. It's not even the money, for me - it's becoming principle/disgruntlement. Also, my old tablet is still going like a champ, hope it works for another 8 years. I seriously use it more than the desktop for browsing/youtube etc. Makes me happy I'm no longer generally interested in any of the big name new titles. I'll also be keeping an eye on where that Steam machine goes. Could be a decent solution for ppl like me, in another generation or three. Wouldn't be my ideal solution but I'd probably like it a lot more than a PS/Xbox, the way things are going. Also - it's cloudy and cool and I'm just going to stay in bed all afternoon. Also also - current hubby back treatments did zip.

Finally, I finished the game. Considering the ending indicates that the story is clearly unfinished, I would like to humbly present my two cents, which could probably help a potential POE3 receive and sell a little bit better. Praises New Elements in RPG I think it's admirable that the devs have been letting players see new elements in their RPGs in order for the players to always have new things to try out. In POE1, we have the construction and upgrading about the Caed Nua stronghold; in POE2, we have the voyage, ship management, and ship combat. It seems to have been a tradition in Obsidian Entertainment's RPGs since Neverwinter Nights 2. Although I'm not a fan of the "Spirit Energy" system in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, I admire the devs' effort in bringing a new element to the game all the same. Also, in this game, when we are on our way from a region to another region in a city (e.g. Neketaka), we sometimes run into a random event. That's also an innovative and fun design in my opinion. This innovative tradition really worth keeping up so that players can see that RPGs can be more than just plain story and quests doing. Surprising Detailed Designs In a previous thread, I talked about my experience of completing a quest which I thought I wouldn't have a chance. And later after I took a seemingly insignificant action, I was able to complete the quest. In short, initiating a battle with a ship without firm evidence of their crimes is not my cup of tea, and I thought I probably had to give up that quest. But after I put up a different flag on my ship, the target ship came to attack me, exposing they were really criminal. I was surprised that the design is so detailed that it offers players an alternative way to complete a quest. The design is very helpful, especially for players who value their moral choices. Whoever came up with the idea really deserves a kudos! Advice Let Controversial Ideologies Stay in Real Life The ideology in this case is feminism. In the game, we keep seeing high-standing or role-reversing female NPCs. Female gang leader, female captain, matriarch, female monarch, female warrior leader, female admiral, female chieftain, female scientist, female weapon smith, female weapon vendor, formidable retired bounty huntress, brave little girl, Berath manifests as a goddess -- you name it. Even the story narrator is female. On the contrary, the counterpart male NPCs are noticeably less in number. Through out the course of the game, we meet those female figures one after another. The marketing is so obvious that I felt it became a bit pushy and contrived. There is a reason that POE2 sold less than POE1. Please understand that the majority target audience of classic RPGs are male, and the said ideology is not likely to be preferable to a large number of them. If you would still implement feminism in your future projects, I hope you could make it optional so that players can make their own choices. Incidentally, we know that D&D has been promoting this kind of ideologies, and I really find it regrettable that POE did not seize the opportunity to differentiate itself from D&D in this respect. Respect Players' Choice of Companions In POE1, there were some recruitable companions who I didn't recruit and White March NPCs who I have never seen before. However, when they meet me in POE2, their dialogs blatantly said or implied that we traveled together or have met each other in the past. It's disappointing that the game did not respect my choices in POE1. Precisely speaking, I felt like a non-existent story was imposed on me. Of all such characters, only one's dialog allowed me to thoroughly deny any connection with him (He is from White March, according to the wiki). The rest's dialogs simply force me to choose options to say something like I recognize them ... blah blah blah. Also, at the end when the narrator is concluding my journey, one of the scenes mentioned my companions and the screen showed all recruitable companions standing together on my ship. However, I only recruited Eder and Aloth, so it makes no sense that other recruitable companions showed up on my ship in that screen. In fact, one of them (the Rauatai ranger) had already been killed by me for joining force with her superior in trying to murder me because I refused their shocking proposal against the Huana queen. Had my choices were respected, I would have felt less disconnected from the story. This is definitely something worth working around to make players enjoy the game more. Avoid Reusing the Voice of a Voice Actor or Actress Actually, this issue already existed and was more prominent in POE1. That is, the voice of Eder's voice actor was reused for many male NPCs. It sounds awkward and embarrassing. Yes, embarrassing. When that happened to me for the first time, I was like why on earth am I hearing Eder's voice from the NPC in front of me when Eder is in my group behind me. Although some of them have a bit different intonation, you can still make out it's the same voice actor of Eder's. I still remembered a quite funny situation in POE1 that 3 or 4 of my party members all shared the same voice of Eder's voice actor, and when one of them in a combat said something like "the weapon's not working" I couldn't tell who said it. In POE2, the male part is less prominent, but still persists. For example, you can still tell that Eothas' voice is Eder's voice. I also noticed that a voice actress' voice is reused frequently through out the game for many female NPCs. Judging from the fundraising for POE, I guess it's not difficult to hire a few more voice actors and actresses, unless there is something I miss. So this issue is one that worth looking into as it can affect the quality of a game, in my opinion. ------------------------------ And that's all for now. Thanks for your time.

The feminism nonsense is being forced in all media now. It's tedious.

The tariffs are a major gamble because it is all but impossible to determine what the long-term impacts will be. The economy is too complex to predict that accurately. But it's clearly not a robust approach to improving the economy; that comes from factors like better education and sound investments, not from trying to wreck every other nation's economy. A better approach would have been to be selective in tariff application, only applying them for nascent industries that need time to mature. But now that they are in place, they are much more difficult to remove because other nations have applied counter-tariffs. I fear that, in the future, the tariffs will prove to be a major handicap for American competitiveness. Extracting illegal immigration from the economy is always going to be difficult, and is bound to have a negative impact on the economy. He would have been better served to focus on border security; letting current immigrants become assimilated and grow economically. Overall, his policies are inflationary and damaging to the economy. Any possible benefits of tariffs will take years to express themselves, and removing immigrants will continue to have a negative effect (except perhaps for government costs). In the meantime, the country is in for more pain over the next few years.

Always good when offshore tech turns off a DB because "since the CPU usage was low, I assumed the server was not in use".

Pretty much the title. I took before and after screenshots of adding the weapon to junk, but I found out it also removes the mods from armor and it works both ways. You can also see there's a significant loss of value (varies depending on the weapon and mods, of course). Maybe it's a bug. Maybe I've just discovered a tiny pocket rift eating up my equipment mods! Oooh the implications! Perhaps we can adapt this technology to force our enemies to fight in their skivvies!

Black Geyser No spoiler tags as everything there is to spoil is above already. I spent the next hour trying to kill the guy and survive. The game blocked the progress, though. So, while I could kill the story-critical NPCs, doing so resulted in the infinite guards spawning. No romance, alas. I should have purchased this at the first opportunity. They are removable, but this is a curious item. Bloodstained No idea why there were so many collaborations with the title. The thing felt quite uncomfortable and unpleasant to play. Real Web Legends: Carter's Quest Unexpectedly, it is an in-game costume.