LadyCrimson

Hope it's nothing serious and just flu. Strange illness/symptoms are always disconcerting. But glad the doctor wanted to play it safe...I like doctors like that.

Obviously, basic gameplay hasn't changed, but there's tons of changes to the way skills/trees work, pets work, buffs/raid-stacking works...I literally feel like I have to learn how to play my hunter all over again. It's not just altering a skill or two...it's literally the whole tree/s, with new skills, re-arrangement of skills on the tree, and what they do. Beyond that ... I haven't been very impressed with the new land...w/BC, the 'new areas' seemed cool and interesting compared to the pre-BC areas, but Northrend's first area, at least, is really unexciting. I'm sure it'll get better later. I hope.

Sitting around this morning wondering what our average internet bandwidth usage might actually be, in light of the seeming new/upcoming trend of companies w/download limits. Marveling at how it can feel chilly here in the morning, sometimes, and then by mid-afternoon be "ugh" hot. I like it... Thinking that the WoW expansion may not be to my personal liking and for once Blizz won't be getting my money.

It's called already being filthy rich and just coasting along to pay for the new multi-million mansion... hahah I didn't think 21 was that bad, but it was nothing special, yeah.

I'm a female, and I believe there's no such thing as "romance". Not in the...to coin a phrase...romanticized media way that many (especially relationship-inexperienced) people seem to think of as "how a relationship should be." This romanticizing of relationships is, imo, one reason why people give up on relationships far too early. I don't mean to say relationships can't be romantic, in that when you look at your spouse you feel all squishy inside because of how wonderful you think they are...that sort of emotional "high" people tend to associate with romance etc. Just that imo relationships don't come about because of "true romance" - "true romance" comes about because of the relationship, if that makes sense. Relationship-romance is not the same as the initial tee-hee magnetism of early attraction/courting. I remember having a discussion once with someone who's marriage was falling apart. He kept focusing on how he bought new cozy living room furniture and was trying to romance his wife/make her feel wanted/loved by creating a "romantic, cozy" environment w/the flowers, candy, candle light dinners, baths, massages, and all that. It wasn't working, and I couldn't seem to get across to him that those things were (in his case at least) not the reasons for the relationship falling apart. He had a defined idea of what romance was and couldn't step outside of that box. No one is going to respond to such surface and supposedly "romantic" overtures if the intellectual/emotional connection isn't established - and the greatest mistake people make is in thinking such connections can be established in 6 months and then you never have to think about it again. People change...interests, jobs, priorities and activities...you have to keep reestablishing the emotional and intellectual connection somehow, as life moves forward, in whatever way that works in your relationship. Course, sometimes it just won't work out, but if you succeed, the "romance" will still be there 50 years later. So I guess what I'm saying is that I believe a long-term relationship does not spell out no-romance, as long as your idea of romance is realistic and not based on fantasy or only physical attraction.

"If I Had Words" from the film Babe. Chipmunked vocals FTW

Hahahah! I love it. Re: using compressed air to dust...I guess if you have 'dust covers' on your fans, that would help, but be cautious when using that method...I farked up my power-supply and video card fans once, because the huge clouds of flying dust got into the fan bearings or something. First they made noise, then they ground to a halt. If you can find a good one for pc's, a vacuum works a lot better, especially if you have months or years of dust collected.

It's icky hot here, we no longer have a swimming pool since we moved, my street is blocked off from the city slurry-tarring the road so I can't drive anywhere for a while, and the WoW beta is shutdown for the afternoon. But ... I can always sit in a bathtub full of cold water and I can walk to the nearest mini-mart for some ice cream. Mmm...ice cream.

The load on the pc from all that video-info can be immense...especially w/older pcs. Definitely get more RAM. But even with that, some games will drop their frame rate by quite a lot when you turn Fraps on. It's just something that has to be accepted and lived with, at the moment.

Dead Calm. A 'psychotic stranger' on-a-small-boat suspense movie that missed the 'classic' mark by a little bit, but is still a fun piece. I like how it essentially has just three people in the whole movie, plus its gorgeous cinematography. Also the first movie where I really "noticed" Sam Neill & Billy Zane.

I just got into the WoW WotLK beta, so I'll be playing that for a while. At least, after they finish with a 7 hour server thingie that, of course, was started 10 minutes after my first login. First major beta-play I've ever been in...they're really changing everything...this will be interesting.

Tell me where I actually said that a game plot itself is 100's of hours long. Maybe I'm unusual, but every game I've really liked I've played for 100's of hours. Which is why I don't like shooters much - they're not typically very replayable imo.

I might have minded the movie-ending slightly less if it hadn't had one of those "NOOOOOOOOOOOO" type moments. With 'what if" stories like The Mist, I like ambiguous endings that leave the reader/viewer with something to muse on.

Can you actually play the game? Is the character speech-text also garbled, or is just those main menus? Tried different drivers etc? Sounds strange...

Relatively useless as a party member (why use him when others were so much better) but had a few amusing lines. But I didn't find him interesting or compelling, no. Mostly, the large, round, death-star wanna-be just got in my way visually so I told him to take a hike.

I took a shower.

The ending was left very ambiguous - no big conclusion, but w/a very slight sense of (yet unlikely) hope. He doesn't shoot anyone, no army to the rescue.

Or in the majority of cases, worse. I have to admire your optimism, though. After all the rehashed stuff that the EU has been making even worse time and time again, Ive grown pretty pessimistic about the whole deal altogether. The only things of EU that interest me now are KOTOR(Both the games and the comics) and the Legacy comics, though the bad art on the KOTOR comics really isn't helping... Agree about the usually worse trend. And I try to be optimistic about everything, because now and then rehash/sequel can end up being as good, and even more rarely, better, than previous attempts...yet I'm not so optimistic where I'll rush out and buy - I have friends/reviewers be the guinea pigs before I spend my money on it. *wink

Stephen King has nothing to do with In the Mouth of Madness....Carpenter paid tribute to him via the Sutter Cane character (King & Carpenter are supposedly friends), but that's the only connection. I've never even heard of a King mini-series called "The Fort." Was it based on one of his books or was it some "King original-for-TV?" And don't get me started on The Mist...I have read the story (it's really more of a short novella rather than a true novel, imo), and while it wasn't anywhere near King's best, it was a lot better than the movie. I loathed the changed ending. Most movies based on King's books are terrible.

I think they eventually will be able to, as well...but that time is not now. I'm not sure I really want games that look like actual live-actor movies. For one thing, then the constant violence aspect becomes more ... well ... creepy ... to me personally. 90-100 minutes of horror movie is fun, but I'm not sure I could stomach 100's of hours of such whilst playing a game. I'm a wimp, I know.

Re: BG2 - I liked that game well enough, and can easily admit it outclasses BG1 in a few ways, but I never became emotionally fond of it like I did w/BG1 so it's not on my list.

I don't care how great they can make CGI humans look in stills or freckles or skin wrinkles etc. They still can never get the speaking-mouth movements right, and that ruins the whole effect in terms of "realism'...for me at least.

My list from the last top-10 thread: At the moment I'd probably replace Overlord with WoW/Burning Crusade...simply because Overlord has very little replay value for me and WoW-BC has sucked up way more hours than Overlord. Something about BC that is a lot more fun than pre-BC WoW. If you're level 70 at least.

"If I Had $1,000,000" - Barenaked Ladies. I don't think there's a single song of theirs that I don't at least like.

I could be out at the park with my camera, but today I'm waiting for the cableTV guy. I hope he won't turn out to be a psychotic stalker.