Guard Dog

Well, Alex Rodriguez can still play. I guess you can't have an Evil Empire without a dark lord to give it menace.

I haven't been around much the last two weeks. Just checking in. I see there has been some good news, Calax has a girlfriend (I know he said almost but that was a few days ago. I'm sure he's closed that deal by now) and bad news with Shady taking cold showers. I'm working long hours both at work and home learning the new job. The hardest part has been absorbing the state laws and county codes for property use and water management. I'd describe this job was 33% engineering, 33% ecology and 33% lawyer. Obviously I'm weakest on the last part to that is where I'm spending the most off hours studying. I did hear one interesting nugget. The job was offered to two other candidates who were more qualified but they turned it down because (I'm assuming) it is a public sector job and does not pay well. The offered it to me because I interviewed well and because I'm a vet and they make veteran hiring a priority. I thought that was nice.

This statement will either be proven completely false or only half true. We'll have to wait and see which. It will never be completely true.

The Dorne storyline won't be as interesting as the one in the books because half the characters are missing. Particularly Arianne Martel. But it's one I am looking forward to. As for watching the leaked episodes, nah. If I can't watch it in 1080p on my 80" TV I'm not interested.

Do you enjoy pain? If you've read all of those you have definitely walked a hard road. I found Atlas Shrugged a real chore to read even though I enjoyed it for the most part. Foutainhead could easily have been condensed and still made it's point. Her writing was ponderous to say the least.

Another appalling pitching performance from the Rays last night. They got down 8-1 in the 2nd inning. But then battles back to tie it at 9-9 in the 9th. Only to choke on it on a worm burner single in the 10th. Just heartbreaking. In other new the Fabulous Fighting Fish of Miami let a 8-1 lead slip away in the 7th. What the hell? At least they pulled it out with a walk off single in the 10th. It's odd watching your two favorite teams play each other isn't it?

My advice would be to start a business. If she's passionate about books I'd start there. A used book business has a low overhead and low startup costs and if you are creative does not require a "brick and mortar" footprint. You can start with a website and a table at a local flea market or swap meet. You will have to do some legwork coming up with inventory (yard sales, library sales etc.)and you really have to keep the price point low since you are "competing" with Amazon & e-readers in a way. But since most folks don't re-read book the idea of buying a used copy last years best-seller for $1 is still appealing. The start up costs are low but not nothing and this is not a business model that will ever yield high earnings but if you are smart and careful you can grow it into a steady income stream. I'd be sure to make flyers and post them in high schools and community colleges. Those students always have reading assignments and are looking to save a few bucks. Just an idea. I've got lots of those.

Absolutely. There was a small, but incredibly well done persistent world server for NWN1 called Montlethia. The interactive roleplaying experience there was almost indescribable. After a bad experience, I rolled a cleric of Talos and went full darkside. My villain became so notorious for extortion, chaos, and mayhem, that the DMs made one of the port towns hostile to me. That town's guard even had an official quest with journal entries and everything where they were to hunt me down and bounty my ears. One day I got caught by a group of Tyrians (my mortal adversaries) alone deep in a dangerous part of the woods. I even used my special unique ring given to me by the DMs that could change the weather, but there were too many of them and my reign of terror was brought to an end--not before taking several of them with me of course. The paladin that turned in my ears even refused the kingly bounty...how disgusting is that? Hahaha. Such good times. Well after some informations posted about the game in last two weeks, I can already see the developers saying. "We disabled the evil alignment to streamline the multiplayer experience." No kidding. There seems to be a concerted effort to dumb this thing down as much as possible,

I've been very busy learning the new job. I haven't played PoE in over a week. A week! That is weak. Tomorrow we catch up on house projects, watch the last three episodes of the Walking Dead that neither of us has had time to watch, and maybe get some PoE time in. I was thinking of making a new PC & starting over. I hate it when I get like that.

Hmmm. Since Shady lives in Colorado when I saw the word joint in the title I thought this thread was going to be about something else.

I speak English and Spanish. Well, a friend of mine from Puerto Rico says I don't speak Spanish, I speak Mexican. But anyway it requires a real mental effort for me to switch from one to the other. The languages the OP speaks are so dissimilar that it's amazing he can speak with fluently. I found Spanish so much easier (since it's also Latin based) than trying to pick up Japanese or Tagalog when I was living in those countries.

The Rays picked up their first win last night. Odorizzi was razor sharp. With all the injuries to the pitching staff it's nice to see one of them can do better than just throwing BP to the other team. In other news I've got tickets to the Redbirds home opener against the Cubs tonight! Yeah, it's the Iowa Cubs but still...

Sonny Gray just missed a no-hitter in Oakland: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/116668668/sonny-grays-bid-for-history-foiled-by-rangers-ryan-rua

Great job Shady. Now look what you've started!

Well, except for Longoria and Kieremier the Rays performance was quite crappy. But, the upshot it we'll try again tonight.

I'd say Gandalf. Here's why. You know what Vader's got. There is no secrets there. Gandalf doesn't look lime much but he always seems to come up with whatever he needs right when he needs it. Gandalf wouldn't let it come to a fight with Vader unless he knew his hole cards were winners.

I'll tell you one thing. L Ron Hubbard was a genius. And not in the way these folks think. Here is a guy with what looks like bipolar disorder and paranoia who's writing crappy science fiction stories for a penny a word in a crappy magazine, so broke he can't even buy a car. He get's involved with a group of Satanists, dates one of the girls in their group and sees how into they are so he decides to invent a religion. Well, all he does is write science fiction so he writes a pseudo-science fiction psychology book that ridicules psychology and sells it to people a s religion. The he gets people to give him thousands of dollars to teach them the crap he made up. He takes that money writes another book with an even wackier backstory and brings in more people who give him more money. I wonder is he ever started believing his own stuff himself? I think he probably did. We should invent a religion. It's easier than working for a living.

Wow, a love letter to Obsidian. You know in all the years we've been camping on their forums I don't think anyone has ever done that. Well for what it's worth PoE is just f-----g AWESOME. So was Fallout NV. NWN2 was good. KOTOR2 & DS3, well... no one is perfect. In all seriousness I'd say thanks to them for keeping these forums around and not running us all off because we seldom talk about them or their games around here. And thanks to the rest of you nuts that post here and make this an entertaining place to come.

I watched "Going Clear" on HBO this morning. The truth is no matter how absurd something is, someone will buy it.

Less than 24 hours to go. I'm excited about it. I'm a fan of all the major pro sports in the US, as well as soccer & Rugby when the national teams are playing. But of all of them I like Baseball the best. I've always wondered why that is. Football and Hockey are certainly more exciting to watch. But to me they are like watching a movie. It's short, intense and over quickly. They are about the action. Baseball is like reading a book. The season does not explode in front of you then flame out in a few short weeks. It unfolds slowly. And while it does have plenty of action it's driven more by the characters. I like watching it on TV. I prefer it on the radio while doing other things but it's always best when you're at the park. Sportswriter Geoff Young once wrote "To be at a baseball game is to be outside the confines of time—at least for a while. Yes, time is always present, inescapable in the long run. But in the short run, there is only green grass and the false promise of eternal youth." You know exactly when a football game will end. A baseball game ends when it's over. I think the reason I like it the best is because it's the game I played with my brother. It's the game our dad taught us. It's what I used to talk to my grandfather about. He lived his whole life a fan of the Braves, from Boston, to Milwaukee, to Atlanta. He must of told me a hundred times about the time he met Hank Aaron. I used to take my father in law to Marlins games and he'd spend the whole game talking about the Dodgers & Ebbets Field. I don't know why but the NFL, NHL, & NBA who all have long histories are never remembered the way baseball is. I guess it's because the athletes of bygone days for the most part could not compete with the players of today in any sport other than baseball. Jim Thorpe was good enough to be in the Olympics and play pro football. But today he'd be lucky to be a third string tailback on a bad team. If Mickey Mantle in his prime were playing CF for the Yankees on Monday their odds of contending would double. Every magazine and paper I've read tell me the Rays are going to have a terrible team this year. They hit the "self destruct" in the offseason no doubt. But I'll have the game on at 2:00 PM on Monday when they play the Orioles because you just never know.

You know who I feel sorry for the most? God. Put yourself in His place for a moment. You have created the heavens and the earth, performed feats of engineering that stagger the imagination. You pick the third planet of a run of the mill solar system and put humans on it. You give these humans a soul, self awareness, and the capacity to love and ask for nothing but that they USE that capacity to love one another and what do they do? They rampage around killing each other and to add insult to injury they say they are doing it all for YOU!

Just an observation here. There is a bill passed in Indiana that MIGHT lead to a handful of shop owners to serving a gay couple. None of that has actually happened yet mind you and everyone is going bat**** nuts about how terrible Christians are. These people where slaughtered by Muslims for no reason other than that they were Christians yet all you hear are crickets. I'm not singling out this forum or anyone on it. Just in the world in general something that might happen but hasn't has energized a lot more fury than something that did happen.

I stated this a few months ago and got away from it. But I picked it up again last week. It's The Heart of Everything That Is by Bob Drury & Tom Calvin. It's about Red Cloud and the Lakota Sioux during the late 1860's beginning with the founding for the Bozeman trail and ending with the fight over the Powder River country. What history calls "Red Cloud's War" For anyone with an interest in history or how an inferior military force can defeat a superior one it is worth a look. So far I have thoroughly enjoyed it, Red Cloud was a remarkable man. I was curious if he had any living descendants. His great, great, great granddaughter is a high school student in South Dakota. From her FB page she looks like a typical American teenager doing typical teenager stuff. I wonder what Red Cloud would have thought of that.

I don't think that was too much in the way of spoilers. All I gave away is Jon got a letter and who's not dead... yet. Now a REAL spoiler would be what happened after the letter. But I won't give that one up.

C'mon folks, let's hear some predictions here! I put mine out there.