Bartimaeus

Gromnir changed his avatar for the first time since I started coming here way back in 2008. My day has been ruined.

I haven't bought a physical PC game in about 7-8 years - ever since Steam got...uh...steam and started getting everyone to publish there.

Speakers finally arrived today. Something called Kanto YU2 - don't ask me! They were on sale much cheaper than they normally are, so I decided I'd give it a try. First time I've ever had speakers, and I'm liking them so far.

Yeah...that's one thing that bothers me in these third person "tactical"-RPG games like Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age...the camera is an absolute nightmare to use in actual tactical combat. Constantly rotating and jumping around as you go from character to character, need to zoom in and out to be able to actually see what you're doing...makes me nauseated. And for some reason, they always make the isometric-style camera unusable in some way...(Dragon Age's was arbitrarily limited in the distance from how far you can move it from your characters, for example - and the range is shorter than enemies can shoot at you, which makes fighting back in a timely manner...difficult).

Shockingly bad performance all around by the offense, except for Lacey, (why wouldn't they give the ball more to him, given his ridiculous average yards per attempt!?). On the other hand, the thing that everyone was worrying about, our defense, actually looked pretty good - not that it should've been that big of a challenge, given the Bills' offense. Nevertheless, though. And then to top it off, both the Vikings and the 49ers lost...the Vikings were so close, too. Stupid division...

Almost all of the teams I wanted to win today lost. Stupid game. It all started with a horrible Packers game...

[off-topic] It's not *malice* I ever detect from your posts...but rather...something else. The way you constantly seem to use questions instead of statements when it's usually the latter you're making... In limited amounts, it makes you seem more reasonable - like you're not completely sure of what you're saying, and you're open to corrections and clarifications. But you do it all the time, and you're generally a pretty strong-headed individual - not that there's anything wrong with that...just that it feels at odds with the way you talk, and it's post after post that you do it. The whole "overstate my side of the argument while simplifying and redefining my opponent's" doesn't much help either, haha. That is at least some of my impression, anyways, . We're usually at odds in regards to opinions and beliefs, but it's more often the way you talk to me and others that actually gets under my skin, since you're usually pretty reasonable in most other ways, even if still strong in what you think. Sorry! [/off-topic]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_qOPC-UM5o

One is a gross invasion into my physical privacy and property - the other into my private thoughts and communications. There's so much you might want to keep private, even if not illegal, that could be used against you. An out of context joke, sensitive photos, crazy ideas on an off day that might get you labeled as a nutter - or even insane thoughts that you know to usually keep to yourself that you mentioned to a friend in private one time, half-seriously. There's good reason I don't post all the thoughts that pop into my head for all the world to see - the situation is precisely the same in regards to what I communicate privately instead of publicly. I value my privacy greatly, but I am at the mercy of the people I socialize with - a risk that I personally risk and accept, as it's more or less directly within my control - and, unfortunately in this internet age, additionally the powers that be...and I would rather everyone remain in control of their own privacy as much as possible, not some government agency run by actors beyond my and everyone else's influence. Both transgressions can easily outstrip the other, depending on the person and circumstances. I doubt nudists, for example, would be bothered as much by having their hobby or occupation (or whatever - does it look like I know anything about nudists? ) recorded. It would, of course, depend upon the person in question...but I'm sure there are at least a few - on the other hand, they might consider their personal diary absolutely sacred. None of it is any business except to those explicitly privy. P.S. The way you framed your "question" feels rather insulting - probably because you loaded your end of the argument while downplaying mine, and made it into more of a statement than a question. Can't say I particularly care for it.

Yes. Different, but at very least potentially equal, and possibly worse.

Sphere's always pretty much the last companion quest I do, since it's probably the hardest of them...besides maybe the Shade Lord, (who's really easy in vanilla...not as easy in SCS, especially when Liches can spawn in Amaunator's temple).

It's more about than just the principle. Do I have anything illegal to hide when I change clothes within my own home, away from the eyes of the government and everyone else? No, but that doesn't mean I don't highly value my right to privacy in doing so for other reasons.

So...one mage? Now I'm kind of curious how hard it'd be to beat the game without even one - feel like it'd be pretty impossible without at least using scrolls in some manner...I guess that'd be assuming I'm still using SCS - you could probably get away with no mages in the vanilla game due to no enemy pre-buffing, which is a good portion of what makes SCS spellcasters so tough. If you say so! If you can't end the game with more than 500 credits in the bank, though, then PC controls are still superior.

Yeah, there's no way I could play Papers, Please! with a touch-screen. The controls are frustrating enough when you're playing on PC...

Before they took down the auction for a bit, some individuals had literally tens of billions of gems. And people complain about USD inflation...

Maybe it's because I've played the game so many times, but all the companion characters seem so danged annoying and clingy to me nowadays. Drives me crazy. Which is why I like to roll my own parties, I guess. Which reminds me...my party in BG2 is super overpowered. I beat Ascension & Sword Coast Stratagems-improved Demogorgon on my first try. Timestop, Improved Alacrity, Lower Resistance, Lower Resistance, Lower Resistance, Comet, Dragon's Breath, a few Fingers of Death and Disintegrate (Spell Revisions, so it still does some damage even if he saves vs spell/death), aaand he's dead within like two minutes. Next playthrough, it's gonna be 66% or 50% quest and creature XP, not just 75%...

I hate to, er, rain on your already decidedly downcast looking parade, but...that's actually not all that good - in fact, it's rather bad for an SSD of that calibre. I saw a Crucial MX100 500GB being sold for as low as $140 pre-Black Friday - I got a Samsung 840 Evo the day before Black Friday for...I think it was either $180 or $190, (I actually wanted the Crucial MX100, but I was a day late...and even with the Evo's old-file performance problem, it's still a better drive, so oh well). I also saw a Sandisk Extreme II at around $170-$180 a few days ago. All of those are much better drives than the gimped Kingston V300, haha. Honestly, people should be able to get refunds for what they did - although I think it's been long enough now that people should know.

Bah. Oh well. I got it for cheap though, so there's atleast that. What'd you get it for, out of curiosity?

Regarding the Kingston V300: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

The Mako bits are literally so much better with Cheat Engine's speedhack hotkeys. There's also the internal console speedhack command, which I used when I first played it, but Cheat Engine is more convenient and less trouble to setup.

The thought of bleeding from your arches really freaks me out for some reason. Toes? No big deal. Heel? Ha! The callused "pad" or whatever you want to call it, below your toes? Again...nothing. Arches? Makes me physically squirm. It's like...bleeding from in between the spaces between your fingers by the knuckles - there's just something unwholesome about it! Heal up soon, Woldan, and good luck with your business!

I don't really like either the Dolphins or the Jets, but the fact that they had a better jersey color and they were the underdog made me want them to win last night. So why should I hate them?

Right. My point, similarly, was that the port DOES support x16 - it's just not working at x16 either because the CPU was not configured for it, (because it's a 28 lane CPU, as you said), or because the motherboard is dumb and has an arbitrary restriction.

BG2. Beat Kangaxx. Holy garbage, was that an intense fight. He absolutely ruined my level 14/15 party a half-dozen times. Couldn't figure out why I couldn't do any damage to the bugger after multiple Ruby Rays of Reversals and Breaches - bloody demi-liches are only vulnerable to +4 weapons and better, and I only have the Flail of Ages +4 on my Mage/Cleric who doesn't really use it too much at the moment, (I am thinking of shuffling around my proficiencies a little to make better use of major weapons...), and Foebane +4 on my Ranger who kept getting imprisoned, (as well as the Short Sword of Mask +4 that I'm currently not using in favor of...uh...Usuno's Blade, I think, which is only +3 in Item Revisions). My Mage/Cleric was level drained to level freaking three by the end of that fight by the demi-lich level-drain/imprisonment combo - don't know how he managed to keep resisting the imprisonment bit, but hey, not having to get a dumb Freedom scroll is fine by me. My sorceress has really been my saving grace for all these fights - don't understand why the class gets so much hate, to be honest. There's no way I'd have the endurance to take these guys on at this level without her. I need at least two to three Ruby Rays of Reversal to take down these guys' magical defenses, another two to three Secret Words or Pierce Magics, and a whole bunch of Breaches if I want to keep them on their toes, unable to cast any truly damaging spells on my relatively low-level and very vulnerable party. The damage these super arcane spellcasters can do when they're not too busy casting physical protection spells to defend against my front-line fighters is too great to weather. Next stop...Twisted Rune. I'm pretty sure I will not be able to do it, but I've surprised myself with this party composition a lot already, so why not? My advantage with all of these other normally "a lot later" fights, though, have been that they're single-foe encounters - where I can make great use of having two arcane spell-casters to bring down spell defenses rapidly, unable to get an inch edge-wise. Twisted Rune, though...there's...what, at least three major spellcasters? Yeah, I'm gonna get wrecked.

Yeah, was a bit tired and forgot to include the link. But it's when you pinch someone in the bottom. Haha, nice! I would've thought it was a common saying. Might be more of an american thing maybe? As an American who has also only heard it (from what I can remember) from the WoT books...I don't think so. It sounds like it could be British...or maybe deep South American? Not sure!