alanschu

This has got to be one of the weirdest threads I have seen in a long time. I'm hoping there's a lot of Poe's Law in effect here because otherwise I'm just mostly confused....

Reasonably healthy. He and David Lee both missed some time in my third season. Though I have some bad news, I noticed that they had retired #14 (the game has a bug and lets me keep my number for my first contract). Plus, they didn't offer me an extension (though they were open to resigning me), but I ended up going with the Toronto Raptors. As a franchise with limited history (plus it's Canadian), and #14 still available, I went there. I found significant improvement in my abilities (I save up my points and dump them all at the end of the season, so I can see a marked improvement season to season), and also picked up level 1 "Finisher" (improved ability to finish layups/dunks with contact) as well as Microwave (takes less time to hit a hot streak). Was player of the week most recently, thanks in large part to a 41 point and 31 point performances, with some solid rebounding and assist numbers to boot (almost had a triple double against the Lakers, with 9 boards and 9 assists, and had a monster 18 rebounds and 7 assists against Sacramento).

NBA 2k13. Golden State Warriors shooting guard Allan Schumacher has slowly come into his own in the league, as he shares the backcourt with Stephen Curry. In his third season he became the starter and has improved his totals every season. I'm a free agent at the end of this season, but I feel like being pretty loyal to the organization. The only other option would be Chicago.

Or just a voice actress that wanted to do the role... :\

For myself, it was coming to terms with the realization that I do not have absolute control over my thoughts (a concept which may scare some people). For example, if I tell you to not think about pink elephants, there's a significantly greater chance you'll think about pink elephants than had I not told you that. For my own personal issues, I was directed to something called "Acceptance Commitment Therapy" (ACT) and it came in pretty useful in dealing with my thoughts that dwell on the past. An example in a book a read pointed out how people with anxiety disorders get caught in negative feedback loops because they are so anxious about having an anxiety attack in public, that they make it more likely to actually have an anxiety attack. Avoidance techniques (like not going to events one wants to go to out of fear of having an anxiety attack) actually reinforce the strength of the fear. People become frustrated because increasingly so, the fear of anxiety starts to control their lives, and they dwell on the thoughts of their anxiety which only gives it more and more strength. Part of the process for myself, was to realize that it's okay if my mind wanders to an event (real or imagined) with the people that scorned me in the past, and to realize it's part of being human and that I shouldn't let it bother me. It's easier said than done, but the book had a lot of interesting exercises to help me understand what it was that my brain was doing, and how developing techniques to convince myself that it's okay if this happens will, ironically, have it happen less. It might be easier for me because "the one that got away" ended up becoming "The one that utterly betrayed me and took advantage of me." Until the apex of the crap, however, it was tough for me to realize she was taking advantage of me. Even in the immediate aftermath, I was more concerned with the decisions she was making than my own well being. Fortunately I got out of that nonsense haha.

That has nothing to do with the story missions (the ones where you aren't actually fighting you know. I know you've seen these, you bitch about them later). The fire is on the other mission and you have options 1. Go help 2. Do nothing 3. (Rockman) Send in the rockman to help out 4. (System Repair Drone) Send the drone to help out Because I like to have fun and I probably could have taken your situation and actually been successful? Maybe you would have actually won had you taken out its engines and reduced its ability to evade your weapons on future waves. Though I'm sure you would have raged up a storm on the second and third phases of the mothership. Yes, a lot of bad stuff can happen if you aren't equipped for it. It's random (sometimes the bad lone survivor has no issues at all. Sometimes he's gone insane and there's a few other random outcomes that he can do). Sometimes he can outright kill a random crew member. Sometimes he joins your crew. Check out the lone survivor with an upgraded medbay (you only need level 2) or with a slugman on board. Medbay can heal the lone survivor if he happens to be insane. Slugman can use his telepathic powers to assess the lone survivor's mental health and decide to let the man on board or to leave him. The sun does burn you (and usually your opponent). Of course, if you have the long range scanner, you can detect such things and completely avoid them. Same goes for battles in asteroid fields. Or are you referring to the story mission asteroid fields? Because those ones can frequently hurt you, unless you have things like the scrap recovery arm (you can safely use it to gain a load of scrap from the asteroids). It's a roguelike. It has random elements. You can either laugh at the game the same way you laugh at XCOM when you miss that 99% chance to hit on that Chryssalid beside you, or you can go "WTF this super cheap indie game is like random and stuff, and because I almost beat the mothership (phase 1 I'm guessing to boot!) doing the same thing (even though had I done different things differently in earlier battles I might have actually stood a chance)." Sure, it's not predetermined so that you can ultimately metagame, and given that the game takes what, 30-60 minutes to actually reach, it's not like you lost a whole lot. You scratched the game and it's not for everyone, but if you're going to give it a single go on a game that's meant to be replayed (like a roguelike, where you eat that food and oops, your poisoned... piss off game!), then yeah you're not going to fully understand why so many people actually like the game. You asked why I liked it, and the random element is what I enjoy. It's like Nethack in space.

Haha, I don't think that someone being a romantic means they must be hopeless about it

Things such as stuck living in the past, if not immaturity, is likely symptomatic of some other psychological issue. It is never good to be stuck living in the past, since you're no longer in the past and only exist in the present. It's completely different to remember the past, so it's best to not confuse the two. I have an excellent memory and can remember mountains of events of my past, including my emotional context at the time. I don't live in it though, since that does nothing for me and only distracts me from making positive choices in the present. The same goes for being hopelessly in love. Being really in love with someone is different than being hopelessly in love with some one. It's another symptom of being stuck dwelling on a situation that is not ideal, since being hopelessly in love with someone is not a good thing either. The definition of hopeless is: Feeling or causing despair about something. Inadequate; incompetent: "I'm hopeless at names". None of those are positive emotions. As someone that was certainly hopelessly in love with someone (and even then am likely still somewhat of a hopeless romantic), being hopelessly in love with someone is a reflection of being attached to someone in an unhealthy way. You end up sacrificing your own self-respect and dignity because the idea of NOT being in love with that person seems unfathomable (which is never truly the case of course). The problem, of course, is convincing a hopeless romantic that they are being hopeless. I should be clear that people that feel this way are likely not bad people, nor are the even necessarily immature people (in general). I do feel they are immature ways of living one's life however, unless some incident or alternative precondition has set it up to be a genuine psychological disorder. This was the case with myself in the wake of my brother's death in 1994, although in overcoming the psychological issues I probably found myself maturing as an individual as well as I learned how to better cope with trauma in my life.

Then there's no point in mentioning that the move wouldn't benefit Sony because Sony only makes up 10% of the total sales. That he uses the word "only" is an implication that the move wouldn't benefit Sony very much. Though I very much disagree that it would lose Sony enough customers that it likely wouldn't pay off for Sony.

Yeah I don't really understand what Pachter is talking about (not the first time he's made me shake my head at clearly talking out of his ass either). If only new copies of the game can be sold, Sony would probably come out ahead. CDProjekt did with The Witcher 2, as have various indie games as well (although with mixed success). Though things like Ubisoft's always online didn't really catch on.

That line is more a lead in to the Pachter's other comments. Though you should probably more thank Gamasutra for stating the obvious, since they felt like separating it. Pachter obviously had more to say than just that. Having said that, used game sales are living on borrowed time anyways, as the game industry becomes increasingly digital.

It is dependent on luck, but it's not at all "that's all there is to it." The luck element works for the game because it's not very long (so if you fail on the mothership, you don't lose very much in terms of time investment). It means, however, that you can't just pick your optimal strategy all the time and go with it. There's also the traveling salesman aspect of it in terms of how to maximize your time in each sector (since each sector gets progressively more difficult) that tickles my computing science brain. Factor in that different ships have different components and crew (and achievements that unlock other ship types), and the game can begin to tell some very interesting unique stories of the ship and crew every time that you play it. Some aspects of the game are surprisingly deep for your actions as well. Killing the crew of a ship (whether by boarding it or using your weapons to do so), for instance, increases your salvage. In the event of slave ships, it can increase the odds of you choosing what type of crew member to get if the slave ship has slaves on board. Although killing all the crew on a slave ship by disabling their oxygen supply and letting them all slowly suffocate (and preventing them from repairing their O2 generator) will give you a message that all crew and slaves on board have suffocated, leaving you to only the (enhanced) salvage. Though hey, you did find a cool weapon on board, so it still worked out! It's also still fun to learn of the alternative ways to solve things, based solely on your current equipment and crew. Find a story mission where a ship is on fire? Well it's a good thing you have a rockman on board (they're immune to fire). Or a system repair droid. Simply having the goal of "defeat the mothership" isn't really why I enjoy this game. Defeating the mothership is pretty easy and I am able to successfully do it in the overwhelming majority of my games. The journey of this game is what I find fun, and no journey is ever the same. The combat can be very tactical depending on what types of equipment you have as well. The enemy ship has 3 shields and I have 4 shots, but it's midgame so his dodge chance will be better. I can try to get 4 shots past and cripple his weapons (hopefully giving me more time and less damage against). I could take out the pilot room to remove the dodge chance, but if I'm unlucky the room is upgraded that won't work (of course, if I have enhanced sectors, I will have this information to help fuel my decision making process). I could try taking out the engines, which even if upgraded will at least reduce his dodge chance. Or I could try the shield itself, which would make the future attack waves easier to get past the shield generator. Of course, I'll also need to evaluate what weapons the hostile has. Does he just haev beam weapons and I have level 4 shields with a fully upgraded crewman running the shields? Eh, I'll be fine. does he have nothing but breach missiles that will punch holes in my ship and suffocate me of my oxygen? Maybe weapons is more important than I was thinking.

Eh? What's immeture about any of that? As someone that has suffered from all of those afflictions, I'd argue that my maturation as a person helped me no longer do any of those things. Essentially what you mention are psychological issues that people suffer from that, in most cases, are not a productive influence in their life. I have been hopelessly in love, and was burned horribly because of it. I found myself living in the past (because of my being hopelessly in love), because of an inability to let go, and realize that I missed out on other excellent opportunities because my focus was elsewhere. The good thing that came out of all that was learning how to recognize it so I don't let it impact me again.

Government spending and taxation are intrinsically linked. Where do you think the money that the government spends goes? Do you think the hundreds of billions of dollars that it spends on each year just evaporates out of the economy? The problem with government spending isn't just that it's spending, it's that it can mask inefficiencies in an industry and keep putting money into something that may not be truly economically viable. Cutting all the spending while keeping the taxation exactly where it is is going to cause ridiculously unemployment in the short term. The private sector will just move in, and may or may not provide the services more efficiently (there's situations where this isn't the case. Having 3 competing medical clinics all have to fork out the millions of dollars for the high tech equipment in order to compete for customers is grossly inefficient when the total volume of work can be easily satisfied by 2 or even 1. The only winner in this case is the company that was able to sell 3 of these pieces of equipment instead of just 1 or 2, but this just reflects how complex the market can be in trying to ascertain this stuff. This still depends on what that alternative is. That Buffet article linked had a very interesting observation. If your investment goes from earning 5% to 4.5% ROI after tax (which is what your ROI would be with a 10% increase in capital tax), are you going to stop investing in capital gains and sit on the money instead (earning what, 0.25%?). All the taxation does is mean that people see less direct profit from capital gains, which means when they are sold there is less purchasing power. It also means that a person will have less equity with which to borrow against. Now, what this WILL do, is make the investment a bit riskier. As a result, you'll get less people borrowing with the sole purpose to invest it elsewhere. But, if I am not mistaken, you yourself encourage people to not go into debt. There's much less risk if losing the investment means you have lost some capital and equity. If losing the investment means you're still on the hook for the loan you took out with the hopes of creating wealth with it, So you can argue that less capital growth/profits on investments is still bad for the economy (since there's less money to spend), but the fear of capital investment being reduced only becomes an issue if you support the notion of taking out loans in hopes of investing in capital. Is this something you are in favour of though? I get the impression that you do not think this is a good thing to do.

Warren Buffet actually wrote an article in the NY Times and at one point mentions how it'd be ideal for the spending to be a shade greater than the revenue in perpetuity. It seems that when adjusted for inflation and economic growth, the debt load will be stable and not an issue. I was a bit surprised to see him say this, though the notion isn't something completely new to me.

What's the context of the video/movie?

The constant reloading when your mage gets one shot is like hardcore and stuff though!

I played the **** out of FTL the past week. It was my crack/cocaine and I actually had to skip on sleep entirely (my sleep schedule is royally pooched at this point). 60 hours, and I installed it at around 8 PM on Thursday last week... Loaded up Fable: The Lost Chapters after picking them up on the Steam sale.

People are missing the point regarding the wine. You can't blame the wine situation solely on the wife, yet I don't think there's much surprise in . Furthermore, if he found it inconsiderate to have to leave the gathering, he's falling to the same trap so many other people do. Not having the guts to say "No thank you" when asked. Unfortunately, it is easier to hold someone else accountable for one's inability to say no, and is just another reflection on how communication has broken down. No matter how much you may think it's the hosts fault for not providing the wine (which is perfectly valid), the hosts is both Hurlshot and his wife. That a circumstance arose that reflects "adapting to the situation at hand" is indeed nitpicky. Sure, be pissy because there's no wine to begin with. The response, however, is what needs to be judged. Father's statement reflects an undermining of the reaction to the situation, by carrying over the blame from the cause leading to the situation. Though I myself don't consider "dinner with the parents" to be a "party," I wouldn't at all be surprised if Dad is just looking for ammo. When someone's mind is made up, I doubt he can convince them otherwise. Then say "No thanks" when asked! You can even state "Man I've had a busy day and would just like to rest.." State the type of wine you'd like (preferably a brand, but even just a style), let her run off and get it, and relax with the son and grand kids. Yes there is! Try "No thank you!" Especially in an off the cuff, unexpected situation like that. Dad could have done dozens of different things to both decline while ALSO making light of the situation so people aren't offended. As a Canadian the joke is that we can't say "no" either so I know what it's like, but it's okay to say no to things. Sometimes people even respect you for it, and you'll almost undoubtedly respect yourself more for doing so. My parents and I started our tradition of "just the three of us" Christmas by stating "no thank you" to a family get together one time. It was liberating! Family didn't seem to care.

Haha! I don't care much for them either, but I think they are actually a huge win for relatively low investment. The chat thing is huge for me though. It's pretty much my defacto IM with most of my friends.

Entirely too much Faster Than Light.

To be fair, you WERE asking why you should shop on Steam. I think it's a good question, since you'd pay less otherwise in most cases. As for why the developers charge what they do, I can't really say. It's their prerogative though.

It's -16F here...

I love simulation games. SimCity was the first, but I have played pretty much all the Sim games from the 90s (ironically, The Sims doesn't appeal to me at all lol). I loved playing games like Capitalism (1 and 2).

Edmonton was pretty darn cold the past few days. Mostly insanely annoyed because some guy is half parked in my stall so I can't park my car and plug it in. And the towing service won't tow it because they need BOTH titles in order to authorize moving it. And my condo board is not back until the 28th.