LadyCrimson

That's awesome. I think Bruce Campbell's desk should sport one.

"Who wants to be bulletproof?" I'd rather be drown/suffocation & shark proof. Then I might go windsurfing and stuff.

I don't have any facts, which I know y'all like *grin* but I think that the "me" generation concept isn't likely the real root of the problem. I'd suspect there have been "me" generations in other civilizations of the distant past, just not ones with cell phones, video games, and Porsches. There may be other possible explanations for increasing noticable incidents such as these - overpopulation/city-crowding, better news media coverage/record keeping of incidents that makes percentages vs. "the far past" seem inflated, increasing stressful 'modern' lifestyles/restrictions/financial pressures that may (emphasis on may) trigger violence in people who under milder circumstances might not have their internal "time-bombs" go off. Anyway, definitely a tragic event. My sympathies for the families of those lost.

The worst of the series, but I still kind of enjoyed it. But then, during that time we were on a heavy TR kick, buying 2 copies of almost all the TR's so we could play at the same time etc. Maybe it's more fun when you can holler/laugh to your spouse about something in the game.

I spent 30 minutes touching up a cropped section from a photo, where I thought I had managed to catch a "smiling" cow chewing a piece of grass. Seriously. But then I went away for a bit and when I came back, my eyes shifted focus or something, beause I suddenly realized what I thought were teeth was a reflection off the cow's wet nose. I actually freaked out a for second - the illusion of smiling cow has been so convincing I thought my files were suddenly all corrupted. Moments like those make for weird mornings.

The Fox maddness started with Al Bundy ... :D American Idol is a Fox production too, which I'm sure gives them plenty of funds ...

Not a movie, but I've been watching the Planet Earth series on DiscoveryHD. Gorgeous stuff, narrated by Ms "Alien" Weaver. It gives me serious camera gear envy. Videocameras that do 1000 frames per second. Yeah. I want one of those. But I wouldn't want to camp in the desert for 4 months trying to get video of camels, or go swimming with piranhas.

He'll always be Darkman and Rob Roy, to me. Re: palpatine - I liked him a lot, myself. I mean, in that hammy hall of fame kind of way. It's not bad acting so much as "hamming it up." Re: Obiwan - I thought poor Ewan was shafted ... he was so excited, in interviews, to be picked to be in the films, but then ... watching him in the movies, it felt like he knew how riddiculous the lines he was speaking were and was wincing inside as he said them.

Shallow DOF - need a wide-open f-stop (smaller number - like 2.8 ), if your camera will let you. There's other factors but DOF is the place to start. If your camera uses a lot of auto-exposure modes, try increasing to a higher shutter speed, which should set the f-stop to whatever it's minimum may be.

Isn't Samsung kind of the same thing for Sony? I can't remember. 50"plus LCD tv's are still not very common, either; plasmas dominate (or the projections), tho that may change before too long. Again, I'm not a huge fan of LCD, and Sony is the only LCD that went above 46" that I liked at all, of the ones I saw. Gorgeous color and picture from good viewing angles, assuming an ideal signal. But it was $4-5K vs. a plasma's $2-3K. So maybe in a few years.

I don't have an answer but you could try the lucasarts kotor2 support forum. They appear to have a technically knowledable person or two often in attendance there, re: possible game/pc issues & solutions. Listing your system specs is also always helpful.

I guess I'd have to say Sim ThemePark. Couldn't stand it. It's no Roller Coaster Tycoon ... There's some games I hardly played because I could tell right off I wasn't going to like it, like DungeonSiege2, The Last Express, etc. so maybe they'd qualify, but hard to say based on 30-60 minutes of gameplay.

Point taken. Or maybe the person was threatened in some way by the "guests". Still...I'm dubious.

For TV's that size, plasma's are still generally cheaper. Not always, but usually. And imo, they look better.

Sony would be my LCD brand suggestion - they're by far the best LCD's picture-quality wise, imo, especially as you get bigger in screen size, but they're pricey, which is why we didn't buy one when we were looking (we were looking for over 40" tho). You might find one of their older 26" Bravia's on sale somewhere for slightly under or slightly over 1K. You're probably looking at a 21-32 inch if LCD. Cheaper brands; Samsung and LG seem popular. Sharp might be ok. I didn't like Philips. I noticed LCD TV's still can have a lot of that weird pixelation effect from a lot of fast-motion in a tv signal (indoor motorcross jumping can look pretty bad, for example) - it's more noticable the bigger the screen. I have no idea how that would affect game screens, if at all. I don't know about tubes. They're cheaper for same size, but when we were looking around, the few that stores carrry nowadays didn't look very appealing. Since we weren't buying our TV for gaming, I really don't know what would be best for that purpose.

Yeah, someone was asleep at the switch.

No kid who's on "normal" good terms w/their parents would've allowed that to happen w/out calling the police or knocking on neighbors doors, or something, so I agree. A little trash and fun, sure, but not to that scale. Something weird going on there, for sure.

I remember seeing this on TV; thought they were just plain old ads with weird animation and haven't really watched them since I usually walk away during commercials. So I wouldn't have noticed. From the article, certainly doesn't seem politically correct, that's for sure. Whether the producers meant any real harm or not, who knows.

Wrath of Khan is a fun movie, both if you're an original ST fan and if you're a fan of overacted, hammy performances (Khan/Kirk).

The Ice Harvest. One strange little movie.

If the company knowingly hired someone with a record or something similar, perhaps I'd see it, but otherwise, no ... sounds like an attempt at a mo' money-grab to me. Personally, I'd never take a shower with a work dude (or gal) in the house. I take the shower before they arrive, then sit in an adjacent room reading or whatever. I wouldn't mind knowing how the person's sister got a hold of the man's phone to take the chip out in the first place.

I think you missed my implication of liking having options for both mega powers as well as not?

QFT Although it personally took me a while to warm up to the first one. Once I did, I liked it quite a bit. Enough that I didn't like the 2nd one nearly as much, even if it did have some fun moments. It just felt a lot more "forced" than the first one, or something.

Today it rained on my newly washed car, thus proving the old saying. California needs the rain tho, so I can't complain much. Other than that, I spent some time photo-fiddling/uploading, cooking, petting cats, popping advil, and napping. The usual.

They could be/were. But I like games that allow me to play either way - ie, if you don't want your character so powerful, you don't use those weapons or powers that make them so. I get a lot more replay from a game that way. If a player refuses to not use those powers/weapons and then says it's too easy, it's not neccesarily an issue with the game; imo, it's more often an issue with a player's "they put it there so I must use it" attitude. Which I do occasionally suffer from, myself.