LadyCrimson

That movie where Sylvester Stallone tries to be Rambo again. Did I mention that already? I don't remember. It's not worth remembering. "The Midnight Meat Train" - has a decent creepy atmosphere for a while, but then fell flat for me. "In Bruges" - I loved this movie. The ending was a bit disappointing, because it didn't keep pace w/all that was so great before that, but if you like "matter of fact" humor, it's awesome. The ads try to make it seem like an action movie - it's not. Deliberately slow-paced most of the time, surreal...and often hysterical. The action is at the end...and while it ties things up, it does so too neatly, or something...but still worth the ride.

I turned 39 again not long ago. Today I watched the Phillies get trounced by the Dodgers. Boo, I want the Phillies to win ... so they can be trounced by the Red Sox ... or the Rays. I prefer the Sox, but it doesn't really matter - they'd both currently be very likely to trounce either NL team, imo.

Hiya! Nice to "see" you again, even if briefly. I'm not currently "missing"...still, I'm much the same at this point. ... although I frequently fly in and make a post or three every day for a few days, once every couple weeks or once a month or ...

Yesterday and today I got to watch my cat have 3 grand mal type seizures which were several hours apart. It's horrible to watch. He hasn't had any at all for several months (since I put him on an all wet-food high-meat diet), so I thought I could save some money again by giving 1/4-1/2 cup dry-kibble during the day and only 1 can of the wet food per day at night (instead of 2 cans a day/no kibble). So I did that for about a month. Then watched as his ribcage area became disproportionately wider again even as he yowled that he was always still hungry (he didn't act hungry w/the 2 cans of wet a day), and now the seizures come back. Guess I was wrong. I had one leg mostly over the fence about the whole dry/hi-carb vs. wet/high-meat food debate, but now I'm definitely all the way over.

The actual space-map where you click to travel isn't that exciting no matter what...bunch of colored dots on black...but yeah, if you have a lot of lag and the pixels look like huge legos it definitely wouldn't be the same, since half the appeal is the 'cuteness.'

On the DRM issue - I'd largely agree w/Montgomery Markland & neckthrough's positions. I can understand the distaste for companies trying to restrict customers abilities, since no one likes to think their freedoms are being infringed upon, but I don't think DRM on its own is some kind of major violation of my rights, or something. I'd also agree that if a consumer misses a cut-off date because they never check their mail/email or never watch/read news etc, that's not Wal-Mart's fault or responsibility. You can't expect them to hang around everyone's front door all day to make sure everyone who's ever bought a song from them knows of the date. And imo, Wal-Mart is no worse than any other company who ends up with a near monopoly for their target market or area. IIRC Blockbuster had some similar flak early on. Wal-Mart allegedly does some shifty work-outsource/insurance stuff which might be considered ethically objectionable, but at this point so do lots of other companies. If a city/town doesn't want a Wal-Mart, and succeeds at blocking them from building one, more power to them...but not wanting a company in your city doesn't make the company itself evil.

Space is visually fun, but I'm feeling frustrated by it more than enthralled. 1 - I'm poor. I'm sure the money will come as I figure things out more, but the point is it feels unbalanced because...in the first hour I was already offered the ability to buy a planet - because I said "hey wanna trade?" and did one mission for them - of course the amount to buy was completely out of my financial reach to do and likely will be for a long time. It makes the gameplay feel very lopsided or out balance or something, that they're willing to be bought before I've even made half the amount of the initial starter cash. On the plus side, the Speed Demon trait is one I like. It isn't necessary, I'm sure, but I can't imagine flying around at a slower speed once used to being so fast. 2 - I placed buildings on my first colony, then completed another (homeworld tutotrial) mission ... and when I went back to the colony, those buildings were missing and I had to re-pay to put them down again. Since they were expensive and I'm poor, this sucked. I don't know if it was because I'd put them down before I was 'supposed' to and the new mission re-set the planet - either way seems like a bug. There was no raid etc. 3 - reading the Spore forums I'm under the impression that what you do in one save game affects the other - ie, if you destroy 'Earth' while playing your "Grog" creatures, if you then load the save game to play your "Bizzby" creatures, when the Bizzby's get to that point in the game, Earth will be destroyed there too. If true (and some people ran casual tests so it seems to be) this also sucks. I can understand wanting to design a game where the whole galaxy is intertwined, but this means you cannot play separate civilizations and count on having certain options available to all of them, if that makes sense. Unless you buy more copies of the game/do separate installs, of course. Maybe there's a way around it, like some techie file-fiddling, but it's a poor concept to not allow for more than one 'galaxy' per install. IIRC, the Sims had a few "neighborhoods" you could play...keeping what went on in them entirely separate. They should have followed that model, because for me, this makes the entire new game/evolve-a-new creature on-a-new-planet aspect pointless. Unless I'm missing a 'new galaxy' type button somewhere? Or they changed it in the patch? Anyway .... again, it's visually fun, and I like the zipping around from planet to planet to explore, even if all the planets basically look the same...there's some silly fun to be had, to be sure, and I think you can safely ignore 'raids' if you want, most of the time (not all the time, but...) so you can explore more if that's your thing, but over all ... meh. The city-building games like Pharaoh do a much better job at integrating casual/simple strategy-goals w/the tinkering fun of watching/building an evolution-civilization process. P.S. If I had to score, I'd give Spore a 5.75 out of 10...and that mostly for the creature editor and being generally 'cute'.

I mean in-game, after you've "won" a stage and hitting the button means "automatically take me to the next stage" while I'm hollering "No, no, I didn't want to leave yet, and the save game was from 30 min. ago!" Heh. I don't have any confirmation screens of any kind at all, even for exit to desktop. I don't have the patch, if that means anything. Anyway, I finished Civ and went to Space. Civ was horrible in a "oh god this is very awkward" way. So much so that I went ahead and went Econo instead of Military (so no raid bonus) because it seemed the easiest/fastest. I essentially did nothing but click cities and bribed my way into being allies & thus "conquering" everyone. The early part of the space/tutorial aspects were ok...your spaceship moves very fast at least. I dunno tho...I'm not finding it enthralling yet, but I just started. I like my spaceship, however. I made a whiskered mousey-ship or something.

True...in Creature stage I wanted to delay so I could build my creature w/some high-level or just cute parts...but after a while I realized/remembered it wouldn't matter in space stage much, if at all. At the moment the main aspect to these early stages, for me, is making sure my actions mean I get the stage-bonus I want. Tho I was wondering if anyone felt like the bonus skills you get for manually playing through the phases was generally worth the bother? I haven't used them at all.

I've probably spent an hour or so. It's easy to play and I know you can get through all the stages very fast, but the first time through I don't like to do that, especially since once you leave a stage, you can't go back and explore w/out starting a new game..and I'm not sure how much I'll want to re-play, yet. Plus, I've only allied two tribes - and beyond that I've done nothing but gather food - yet the progress bar is half full. It happens so fast that I find myself delaying filling the bar because I want to explore the environment I guess. And I'm an omnivore. I got the omnivore mouth part in cell stage and put it on. I was rated a carnivore, so all the mouth parts since have been that, but luckily I never took off the omnivore mouth. So I have two mouths - the omnivore one looks like skinny horns and so I use them as a head decoration alongside a stat-giving carnivore mouth. :D

IThe different stages all have something different to bring to the table and they're all lovely and sparkly in their own way (except tribal and Civ which just plain sucks, both of them, sucks.). The reason most people say that the space stage is the most fun is that it is definately the most "harcore" part and will appeal to people who normally play lots of games. I'm finding I dislike Tribal stage enough to have a difficult time wanting to play to get past it, even tho it wouldn't take that long. I liked Cell stage because it's cute, but it doesn't have enough depth to make it a stage you'd want to play 10 times. Creature stage was more fun, but it's not deep enough to engage the mind for long, either - mostly it's fun because of finding parts and "designing" your creature as you go. Still, of the 3 stages so far, I'd re-play Creature stage far more than anything else. A big quibble that I personally have: No save/exit confirmation message, meaning that if you hit that green arrow by accident, you've lost your progress. On the positive side, I discovered that creatures you make in the editor and saved, have a random chance of showing up in your game as one of the AI creatures. When Tribal stage introduced the first "go befriend this tribe' example mission, I was startled when a creature I'd tinkered around with making popped out of the ground. I'd guess the same applies to the other stages. So if you love to make creatures/vehicles w/the editor, but don't use Sporepedia, at least you'll have some possible "variety" in the game (vs. only Maxis creations) that way.

I would say that applies to almost everyone, to some degree or other, not just "the media.' I noticed that as well. I think he did actually glance at him from the corners of his eyes, so to speak, a few times, but it was a very noticeable behaviour. Course, Obama hardly looked at McCain in the beginning either, but then seemed to get the hosts message about wanting them to talk to each other and occasionally tried to look at/engage McCain in face-to-face...which McCain largely ignored. That aspect of the debate became a large (and amusing) distraction for me...their actual 'debate' was hardly more than just them making speeches to the host. Obama is the better orator in general...but I haven't been very impressed with either of them and this debate didn't change that.

I'm at the Tribal Stage. The creature editor is creatively fun, but the game is so-so. Pretty, and fun for the first 10 minutes of each 'stage', but then repetitive and confining. I think the problem for me is that I was expecting a more...seamless?...concept of creature evolution, rather than these drastically different split up stages. I also didn't realize that eventually the game wouldn't be about designing/creature evolution at all, but rather the spaceship thing. I was also hoping for more of a 'sandbox' mode - the editor is one thing, but a playable sandbox would be nice. Question - the game booklet shows a 'progress meter' for the Space stage. Does it take a really long time for it to fill up, compared to the other stages? Or is it just as fast? Just wondering, since so many people seem to think space stage is the best stage/"real" game, or something. Do they just keep playing after the progress meter is full, or what?

Hmm....Breakout/Pac-Man on the Atari, which my dad bought. Don't remember what year/what age, late 70's/early 80's. Watched friends play arcade games but never played much myself. Nothing much after that. One day when we were bored, hubby and I bought one of those first Nintendos in the late 80's. Didn't buy many games and it last long. Still have it in a closet. Largely ignored electronic games for a while, despite going to a lot of computer conventions etc. I remember once getting hooked on auto-cad and spent hours designing 'rooms' with it...the precursor to my liking city-building games? heh...Then hubby came home w/a copy of Doom/Wolfenstein, which all his co-workers were playing, and that was that ... I was addicted to pc-games.

Slept too much. Housework. Fiddled around w/Spore. Played with cat. Dinner. Watched Ugly Betty. Now the internet. Pay bills. Then more Spore before I snore.

Question: Registering your game & making a Sporepedia account is how you can download creatures and buildings other people make...is that how you populate/encounter other worlds w/creatures not of your making? ie, let's say you didn't register (or just didn't download Sporepedia stuff)...would the space stage of the game then be really boring because of lack of variety in colonization, or something?

Trying to figure out the best way to build a casual but semi-permanent shelter for our lawnmowers/bikes and things that doesn't cross the 'can't build a perm. structure on the side of the house' line - and that can stand up to a lot of wind coming from one direction. They want way too much money for pre-built kits/thingies. P.S. I'm also moping around over the nearing of the big 4-0 birthday. Heheh

Like I said, there are certainly cultural/psychological and "traditional" biases, but actual stats on frequency of intermixed marriages depend a lot on location, as well as generational "tradition" gaps. There could be a whole interesting thread on that topic alone, from a psychological/pure stat standpoint. Didn't like your phrasing, but we all rant sometimes. I don't hate ya. heh Movies: I picked up "Married Life" in the rental store because Chris Cooper starred, and I love that actor. But the movie fell somewhat flat - it had some potential for being a milder more introspective American Beauty or something, in terms of it's topic and quirky/bizarre character motivations, but the plot itself wasn't great and they took it too seriously/arty so it felt kind of dull/lackluster. One of those films where you can't stop watching, but you're thinking "this could've been so much better" the entire time. Not one of Chris' better films.

Thanks for the info. Sounds at least helpful, but then of course it limits you to what 'style' you'd choose to play. It's been nice to see the good/bad viewpoints in this thread...my initial enthusiasm isn't quite as high, but I think I still want to check it out before too long.

You mean a download, or some reward type bonus for doing something in the game?

Community/jr. colleges are definitely a cheaper way to start out than going to a University right away, but nope, they're not free. I bought a giant bag of unsalted peanuts-in-the-shell and am having a grand ol' time tossing them out into the yard and watching the squirrels come down and bicker over them. Squirrels are just too cute. I know, I know, they're rodents w/fluffy tails - but there's something about 'em.

First time I was aware of a guy having a crush on me was...um...y'know, I'm losing track of how old I was when a lot of this kind of stuff occurred. Probably when I was 9 or 10. A guy I hung out for quite a while who suddenly wanted to "go steady", tried to give me a ring and kiss me. If there was anyone else before then, I was oblivious. :D

That's an absurd way to refute TrueNeutral when your own statement could easily be taken as hostile, or at least insulting. I'm Asian, and my husband is "white". I know many Asian women with "white" spouses/boyfriends, as well as Asian men with "white" women, including my own family. It's true that there can often be deep cultural clashes/biases in this area (not just w/Asians either), but to suggest that Asian women who are w/a white guy means she was abused as child, or whatever - is quite offensive to me. If you were rejected by some Asian women in your life, I can understand your romantic frustration, but really...if you're going to stereotype in such a rude fashion, expect that not everyone is going to react in a friendly manner.

The Forbidden Kingdom - 2.5 stars out of 5 Watchable youth kungfu fantasy, but not what I was expecting at all. Action scenes fun, but the plot was like a cross between The Last StarFighter and Karate Kid.

Does college-town = big live-in campus communities? Because I can't think of any "college towns" in the greater Bay Area at all (that's many different cities)...we just have colleges that happen to be located in one city or another. Very true about the non-coast smaller city/town vs. big cityish aspect tho. Still, people have to work/school here too....or move out of state.