LadyCrimson

They deemed it too gratuitously violent for my tender self, up to about the age of 13.

I just had to interrupt to mention that struggling to give 10 cats a bath all in one day burns a whole lot of calories...not to mention endows one with lots of beautiful scratch-scars. With my dwindling cat population has come a decline in physical activity. Maybe I should get a dog.

I remember Pong...I just never actually played it. My parents restricted my access to a lot of things. I wasn't even allowed to watch Popeye and all my friends had the cool toys when I didn't. <_< Even the Atari was bought because it was originally thought it might help my father maintain his hand co-ordination for longer.

For some people, that's actually true. My husband likes games, but won't play them very often because they're too time-consuming/distracting, and he has an addictive/obsessive personality. If he really got into games, he'd probably live in a battered trailer and have to join Gaming Annoymous, so he doesn't play much. Only to please me once in a while, mostly. :D

Heh...my parents never actually owned any of those old computers, so I missed out on those early text-based PC ones, tho I know the references from friends. But the parents did buy an Atari 2600 - Combat, Break-out etc. - for me electronic gaming was always a graphical thing. Unlike many of the regulars on this forum, while I like a good story/characters, that's not my main focus - I'm really more into the...um...mechanical tinkering - item vs situation number crunching, how many different paths I can use to achieve the same end result, can I beat a scenario using only beetles and no dragons, can you mix blue potions with red potions. :D If a story/characters comes with the tinkering, all the better...but without the tinkering aspect it's boring to me. Probably one reason I don't like FPS that much - almost no tinkering at all. You'd think I'd like RTS strategy games more, but I don't...they're generally not open-ended enough to satisfy me, with their levels and structured "Defeat the guy across the water using your peasants" objectives. All the cRPG's I've liked were largely because of the tinker value...hours spent seeing if I could beat M&M7 while never leveling up my characters (just the skill points from shrines and stuff) or figuring out the alchemy potion formulas without looking them up, that sort of thing. This might be because I remember when there wasn't a walkthrough on the internet/shelves practically before the game hit the stores...you were stuck trying to figure things out on your own for a few months, and if you couldn't, you couldn't progress. lol What I'd really like to see is a combination of crpg/environment and sim-like strategy flexibility, but I've reached the conclusion that the computer gaming industry has hit an environment/flexibility plateau that it cannot yet cross over, maybe because the tech isn't quite there yet, or something.

Your dad was probably a bit older when he played with those, but I remember those kind of computers. My parents didn't have any themselves, but friends and schools did. My husband took a lot of those ones from the late 70's/early 80's apart when he was a young teen - it's what got him interested in electronics/computers. Computers - you've come a long way, baby.

I'm idly curious how long you've been playing computer games, since I've been feeling much the same way. I think for me it's the fact that all the games seem the same...not just now, but for a long time. All FPS are like still basically like Doom, only fancier, cRPG's haven't really changed at all for years, they just get prettier, and for action-RPG's, they're all like Diablo. Been there, done that. There's only so many times I can play essentially the same game, even if it's disguised in a shiny new wrapping of creatures, land design, 3D, weird skill names and story. Sadly, for me, I think games and repetitive environments/scenarios etc. aren't as durable at keeping your interest over many years, unlike, say, books, where your own imagination for the visuals helps overcome the fact that there's only so many plots in the world. Edit: To be not so totally off-topic...I think that the above contributes to my not minding shorter games...since it always feels like I've been there before, I don't mind the journey being a bit shorter. Perhaps 10 years ago I would have felt a bit more "cheated" by a short game. I dunno.

Women definitely get mixed messages in this regard - if you think about it, it hasn't been all that long since women came out of the kitchen en masse, to use a crude cliche. One of our male friends had a firm belief that his wife should go out and make money...and yet he also wanted her to keep the perfect house, do all the cleaning, have a meal cooked for him when he got home from work, etc. If she did not, and he was 'forced' to have to nuke something or eat out, then she was 'lazy', even tho she was out working as many hours as he did. I used to take him to task on that one a lot. Really PO'd me off...him thinking that his sitting on the couch drinking beer all night after work wasn't lazy cause it was "his due/reward for working hard all day" but it was lazy for his working wife. Double-standard crap. As to the original topic - I'm against mandatory percentage laws in this case, largely because I think it likely breed resentment which could in the long run harm the "cause." As the older generations die and the newer ones take over the power reins, I think things will slowly evolve...just takes time for attitudes and social mores to adjust. Nothing changes over-night. Yeah, there's more that could be done to further the education/attitude changes, but I just dont' think mandatory is the right path. The equal salary thing - it's absurd when/if a woman (or anyone) is paid less for the same job. And don't give paid maternity leave as an excuse...that's just lame.

Jogging in general is bad for the knees. Gogo power-walking.

I know Photoshop is a great program, but it always amuses me when people suggest it for stuff like altering forum avatars. Unless your parents/friends have a copy and let you use it, I don't think anyone's going to want to spend hundreds of bucks just to make avatars. :D Looks like you got it done, but for reference, there's plenty of free or free-trial editors that work fine for basic stuff like that. Sites like tucows or similar always have lots.

Hehe, yeah, that was funny...shows how up to date I keep on stuff. lol It was during the Beetlejuice time when I saw that article...it might have been Alec Baldwin that said it. That'd be typical of his arrogant style. Too bad I threw out all my mags last summer...I could've looked it up. I think it's great Geena got into that tho - always wanted to do archery myself...but I probably won't. And that about sums up my fitness regimen these days. haha! Home treadmills are becoming steadily more popular as they improve in quality and people don't want to brave the weather all year or whatever.

That sounds....attractive.

Yes, well, as I edited into my last post, the article I read was from 11 years before that. Time enough for her to shape up, if indeed the actor who made the observation was being truthful. At any rate, I'd mentioned it because of the relevance about thin vs in-shape...

They also still have the edge on graphic applications. Some of them, anyway.

Ok, I looked it up...guess she was, later. Well, I don't know, that's just what the actor said...it was years ago (like 10 years before the Olypia archery thing). Edit - ARGH I keep typing before I'm thinking.

I'm talking about the actress. Last I knew, she was no Olympian.

For some reason I've always remembered this mag. interview with an actor yaers ago, who commented that Gena Davis was an intelligent & attractive woman who looked great but was in the worst shape he'd ever seen. "Couldn't even do one push-up." I'm also noticing a lot more cellulite on even the thin, youthful thigh's these days.... :D

*skims thru the thread really fast* I don't have a problem with a system that gives levels at a rapid pace, as long as the game doesn't become easy to defeat at any point, no matter how many hours you spend fishing or hoarding gold or plunging dungeons to gain levels. I don't include "action-RPG's" when I say that, because that genre is, of course, power-gaming/short attention span oriented, for when you just want vicarious no-thinking mashing fun. A more 'serious' RPG should be balanced so the character/equipment never outstrips the quests/monsters/new areas, but because there's so many notions of what too-easy entails, combined with trying to make a game not feel too linear (freedom of exploration), blah blah, it's difficult to implement to majority satisfaction...and thus they too also usually fail to have the balance, always falling back to the 'more power' mentality. Even stuff like BG1 with its comparitively low level cap, half way through the game the fights were too easy simply because they made arrow attacks too powerful (whatever the cause) and I blew throgh the 2nd half of the game combat-wise with my eyes almost closed primarly because of that. They were still very fun games tho, with other aspects to keep you entertained...just not balanced combat-wise. People can complain that Kotor2 is too easy combat wise, and it is, but IMO, so are most 'serious' RPG's. Just because you have to configure your party classes & pause the game more often mid-battle to give commands etc. doesn't make it harder - it just makes it more time-consuming. Personally, I think it's just a flaw in the whole mentality of needing to be awarded 'skill points' as you level to gain/pick your powers. I don't think it works all that well in a computer game envrionment. I like RPG's that aren't level based at all - you never 'level up' and your strength/health stays the same etc. - and award you powers/abilities for quests or just as expensive purchases from stores and such...I've played a few like that but can't think of their names at the moment cause unfortunately, they weren't memorable/good games beyond the chr. system... :D Sorry, I've been long-winded lately.... "

My entire family are Mac people, except me. They don't play games tho. The party poopers. My mother just bought one of those new Macs where the HD & stuff is encased in the (very flat profile) monitor - even tho the monitor is nice, I just think that's weird, and potentially inconvienent. They may be improving performance wise & are good for classroom/office machines etc. but it's their odd ways of putting their machines together that I don't like. I don't know a lot about them really, but as my husband likes to say, they're not for people who like to work/upgrade their computers themselves.

That is so what I was thinking.

Even at 20 hours it's still cheaper than a full price movie per hour. And I agree, content and the fun factor are the most important things. I'll take a fun, fast, 20 hour game over one that's 80 hours long but boring as s**t. But it would be nice if the two combined together more often, tis true. A game that takes me more than 30-40hours to finish is because I spend a lot of time 'tinkering,' optional stuff that's not required to 'win', & re-loading type experimenting, even on the first run-thru, not because the game actually has that many hours of straight story/levels/gameplay. That includes BG1. I don't really see how to make the majority of them longer tho - unless you like plain old randomly generated dungeon levels that all look the same, the more content there is the more time and money it takes to make them...which at today's salaries, business practices, and prices, would probably = higher priced games, which would cause people to whine even more. edit-typo

Age of Aquarius from The 40 year old virgin.

If I pack on an extra 10 pounds (goes up and down all the time) I blame my inability to stop snacking. I'm one of those late-night snackers, which drives me nuts, but oh well. I had a girlfriend who was probably in 250+ category and she lost about 80 pounds largely from a lot of walking (she could walk faster than some people jog) and some diet changes, but last I knew, she still couldn't shed the final 50 pounds. Her brother lost 20 pounds just by not eating a pint of ice cream every day anymore. lol Fad diets to permanetly lose weight are stupid & dont work. Although I do admit I like some of the 2-5 day cleansing fasts just to purge the system of all the crap once in a while. heh

Yeah, it happens here and there. http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=32759&hl=

Or sometimes they misjudge how many calories they actually burn via their daily activities, vs. calorie consumption, even if they are eating a lot of chocolate and chips. EDIT: Haha, that's my hubby's main calorie problem. A six pack has a lot of calories. hehe