Guard Dog

My bathtub is leaking. I spent the whole day chasing that down. Turns out the leak is in the diverter valve and it's been leaking into the wall for some time now. This will be fun to fix. What a POS this house is.

I'm curious (and I'm trying to take you seriously here) I own a house and 25 acres of land. Far more than most people do. Most American homes are on .15 - 1 acre lots, or are co-op. Now for all that I have a modest salary (for someone in my profession, Electronic Engineer) and I saved for a long time to buy this place. Now since I obviously have so much more than say a janitor can afford (since I have a college education that I paid for myself) would you consider me rich? Would someone like me exepct to have all they worked for seized by spontaneous revolutionary forces or governmnent?

Edit: Nevermind, I misread Kills post.

It's been colder than usual here. We got a few inches of snow over the weekend which is very rare. Damned global warming.

Link: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091207/D9CED36O0.html Very cool stuff. I'd go if I had that kind of money. But the truth is, as this becomes more commonplace the prices will drop. Just think, in a few years they will begin offering orbital flights. Lunar flights my be just a decade or two away. Perhaps even industrialization on the moon which has an abundance of fissable material called tritium. The future is bright.

You got that right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWnxlFbYjVY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCyh3HYtSes...feature=related

Has anyone ever cried after a sporting event? And not because you lost money . I have. Once. It was after Uwe Krupp of the Colorado Avalanche ended the Florida Panthers playoff run in '96 in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals. But I came close last night when Florida lost to Alabama in the SEC Championship. Man, they were so close. Kudos to Nick Saban and Alabama though. They came in with a brilliant strategy that was flawlessly excetuted by their players. Afterwards I watched the Nebraska-Texas game and came to the conclusion that neither of those teams deserved to be playing even on the same day as Florida or Alabama. What a stinky game.

Wrong again. Two of the largest and most influential Unions in the world are right here in the USA along with thousands of smaller ones. What we don't like is coercion. You guys lost me on the consumer union idea with this: "a consumer union, with legally binding group behaviour". With that phase Wals idea goes from organized boycotts (which are perfectly fine) to yet another mob of pushy @$$holes telling other people what they can an cannot do with their money and the legal authority to force somone to conform. When you get right down to it, the biggest thing I have against government is that all too often it is nothing more than a tool for a small group of idealogical zealots to ram their politics down everyone elses throats. Thats why it should be given as little power as possible. It should be strong enough to do what it must, but no so strong as to become overbearing, or worse. We used to have that but we blew it starting with FDR, then after Nixon it really began to fall apart.

Oh here we go again, profit is evil, ruin the envorment, yadda yadda ya. Can you hum that to the tune of La Internationale? Is that right? Well then, lets try a little experiment. Why don't you post a few examples of deregulation here in the US over the past thirty or so years and explain how they got us "in this mess". Which mess were you referring to anyway? I could think of several. The funny thing is Harlequin you are so close to being right about something but I'll bet the facts about who is really behind deregulation will blow your mind. Specific examples please Harlequin, not vauge talking points about evil business and benevolent politicians. I can come up with three right off the top of my head. Remember, I posted several times government does have a role to play.

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You missed the point completely. It's: Freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom

Funny thing, if we had never played games like Torment of FO2 we would not even realize the shortcomings of FO3. I guess ignorance is bliss after all. @Killlian, I agree I had fun playing FO3, and of course I'll keep buying the titles, but there were times it was a little hard to swallow. Bad writing/dialoge does not kill a game. A bad plot will. And for all of FO3s flaws it's main plot wasn't terrible. It just wasn't great.

Holy S**t! Haven't you read anything I've said? Business is better than government because it does not COMPEL you to do anything. You can CHOOSE to patronize it or not. Government does not give you a choice in ANYTHING. "Do as we say or we will destroy you." Consumer union with leagally binding power over people behaviour? What the hell does that sound like to you? @ Everyone else: Of course businesses care about making money! You know where they stand, where you stand with them. You have something they want, they are offering you something you might want. Obsidian Entertainment is making Alpha Protocol to make money! They are not doing you a favor, they are not doing it to mke the world a better place. If you buy it they will make a profit off of it. It absolutely boggles the mind why that is a bad thing to a few of you. If you buy it and enjoy it then thats great but thats not why they did it. Whats more, they are not FORCING you to buy it. If you don't like the company or what they do, you do not have to buy their product. Thats called freedom. Do you enjoy the same relationship with your government? Any government? No. As many of you astutely pointed out, government does not care about making money. Indeed, they can waste and lose and misuse money with near impunity because when it runs out they just tax you more. If government does not care about making money, what do they care about? If you think it's the citizens you are either a fool or willfully ignorant. If it is the latter, please repeat after me: "BAA". What government cares about is control. Control over you, over you money, life, actions, your very thoughts. In the last three US administrations, seventeen years now, can you name one thing, ONE FREAKING THING the US government has done that resulted in less governemnt control over something. There is only one thing, tax cuts. Under Clinton in '97 and under Bush in '01. Of couse that has been countered by tax increases so its a small thing. I don't understand you guys. Regulating business is the proper role of a government. Anti trust laws, enviormental regulations, fair trade and even labor laws are necassary. But it sould be a silk leash, not an iron chain. But this mindset that the government is the paragon of good and virtue looking to protect you from the big, bad, business that only cares about ...profit. It makes no sense. Business cannot take your freedom away, they cannot take your money away. Your government can, so who is the bigger threat? "Government is not compassion ... Government is nothing more than structured, widespread coercion ..." -- Glen Allport

This just made me cry. I USED to have nights like that. Damn you Shryke!

BG1 w/ tutu, Unfinished Business, and NPC project installed.

Well, at least it was better than Oblivion.

Thats why so many of us woud rather have a well written and thought out low graphics 2D game than a big, beautiful but painfully stupid production like FO3. Just once wouldn't it be great to have both?

I'm off work until next Thursday. I was going to fix the barn roof but its cold and raining. It is supposed to snow later to to hell with it. So I went to Gibberlings 3 to see what new BG mods are out. I loaded up a few, made a new PC (druid this time) and giving it yet another run through. This will be the first time I've played in 3 years.

It is possible though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_I...Great_Escape.22 Ha! Shortly after I wrote that post, I mused that I should've appended "for any purpose other than escaping a Nazi prison camp" to the first sentence. I meant it was possible to build a stable tunnel using crude tools! Although it would be a stretch to call their tunnel stable since it collapsed on them the night they escaped.

I really disagree with you here. You have far more power over business than government. If you don't like what a certain business does you can simply not buy their product or not use their service. You can withhold from them the only thing that matters, your money. Even more, you can organize others to do the same. It's called boycotting. With a little bit time it is VERY effective. If the government does something you do not like you still have to pay your taxes. Sure you can call your Reps and Senators, odds are they will be nice to you on the phone and do whatever the hell they want anyway. You have power over your government once every two years. You have power over business every single day. You guys need to understand something here. Government is evil. A necsassary one without question, but still evil and is best when taken in small doses. The trend in the US right now is to empower it at the expense of personal and economic freedom, and I seems to hear a lot of posters here calling for that too and that just scares the hell out of me. I promise you Slowtrain, if you get audited by the IRS just one time it will make a Libertarian out of you.

I'd have to agree. Right now free unrestricted access to infomation via the web is still common enough in all but the most restrictive countries. But with the US (since the new admin came into power) and UK starting to take measures to censor web content and restrict access to certain web sites I think we are quickly beginning to move away from that. I think more and more over the coming years we'll see governments trying to limit the information it's citizens can reach in the name of "fairness" and "balance".

It is possible though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_I...Great_Escape.22

I'm taking the Bills to win tonight. I'll pick the rest tomorrow.

How ironic is it that I'm sitting in the lobby of the federal courthouse in Nashville and in about 30 min I'm going to go meet with a federal bueracrat who is, and I'll be kind, very impressed with his station in life and seems to enjoy making a royal pain of himself for no other reason than that he can. @Slowtrain, I do not believe for a second that any government sees the protection of the people as the reason for it's existence. The reason govenrment does anything it does os to pereptuate it's own power. If it can protect the people while doing that fine and good and I do believe most government employees and politicians will try to help the citizenry when it can provided it does not damage their power. But those same politicians will ruthlessly harm that same people if they can get away with it and it furthers the expansion of their power and influence. I fail to see how a business wanting to make oney is a bad thing? Apple wanted to make more money so they invented the ipod for people to buy. The wanted to sell more ipods and make more money so they made better ipods and sold more of them. If they did not care about making a profit there would be no ipods. If you do not want to contribute to Apple's profits then you don't have to buy an ipod. You can buy a Zune, or Sansa, or not buy one at all. Now on the other hand lets look at the new Obamanation Health Care bill the House just passed. If FORCES all citizens to BUY health insurance. From a private company if they wish, from the government if not. If you do not buy their insurance it is a crime and they will throw you in prison. On one hand Apple says "This thing is cool and you might enjoy it. Buy it if you wish". On the other Uncle Sam says "You MUST buy this, if not we'll take all of you money and imprison you". This is admittedly a simplified example but you see what I'm getting at here?

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying business is always good or government is always bad. Both are both good and bad and both have a necassary role to play. Iam just pointiong out that many posters around here seem to be under the impression that business is always bad and vice versa. In an enviorment totally absent government, business will run amok. In an enviorment totally absent business, well, the USSR was such a joyful place to live wan't it? (New flash LoF, that whole "Iron Curtain" thing was meant to keep people in, not out). But in general terms what I seaid was dead on correct. And as for the first point, I do not know how the government works in the UK but in the US contruction workers, engineers, etc are not kept on any govenment staff. All public contruction is privately contracted. *Pardon my typing and spelling please, I'm using a blackberry today and the se buttons atr too small for my fingers!