Aristes

Yeah, I was the same way, only it was more than a week. I was probably in the hospital longer, though, and I was in surgery for hours, so it might just be my body was healing more. Either that or I'm just an old bastard and don't recoup like whipper snappers like you.

Try buying a house in Manhattan or San Jose or any of the other expensive markets.

First of all, keep plugging away TheSlug! I don't have any grand insight, other than to agree with GD. Just because she's awkward or won't open up to you is probably more a sign of how she feels about herself than you. Dunno, but good luck my friend. As for you, Hurlshot, OUCH! Dude, get better.

Nope, the expansions uses the special 'air duct' variant.

I believe it's good to know how the numbers crunch in the background, or at least to have that information available. However, I don't believe that it's a big deal to most players. I don't have a crystal ball to know what 'the average gamer' wants, but that degree of specificity isn't really necessary to beat any games I've played. Sure, if you pump up the settings to the hardest settings and maybe include mods that make it even more difficult, you might need to rely on the tiniest bit of information. I seriously doubt, crystal ball or not, that most gamers ramp up to the hardest setting and then saddle their characters with additional mod created difficulties. ...And if the difficulty comes from a mod changing the difficulty, the information about the underlying mechanics is moot anyhow. Don't get me wrong. I think the question is legit and the fine tuned number crunching discussions are great fun. For an essential discussion, though, we really need to have basic information that's easy to understand in a nutshell. Let me incite riots amongst the faithful by citing World of Warcraft. In WoW, you have armor, defense, dodge, parry, and block. Armor basically stops some damage. Defense makes it harder to hit and crit the character and then adds to dodge, parry, and block. Dodge allows the player to flat out avoid the attack by character movement. parry allows a player to use a weapon to deflect the attack. Block allows the player to use a shield to absorb some of the damage from an attack. Now, the specifics are more complex, but a player can get through the vast majority of the game with that essential understanding. Resilience reduces the chance of crits against the character and the damage of the crits that hit, but resilience is basically a player versus player defense. If the design team can't provide mechanics that players can distill into the same brief understanding, then it's a failing on its part.

I've taken a break from the game. First of all, my video card bit the dust. Second of all, the holidays got in the way. Third of all, and related to the video card, I don't buy anything for myself during Christmastime until after the first of the year. I didn't figure that anyone would buy me a new video card, but you never know. Anyhow, I don't like to put my games on the wife's computer and the laptop would melt if I tried to play DA on it. Video card will be here this week and then I can make fun of Walsh's puny character. Bwahahaha

I'd say that this all sounds great. The point isn't that I would want to play a stinking, ugly, and commie ghoul. The point is that this is a wonderfully imaginative bit of story that shows attention to detail and love for the setting. I'm not cautious at all. If they can pull it off, and offer something as lovingly crafted that I'll actually play, then I'll go gonzo over the damned thing. No ghould for me, though, so get to crackin' on something human, rat bastards.

I think alternate history is tons of fun. Really interesting conversations come out of the sheer speculation. I don't agree with Guard Dog and Lord of Flies in that it was completely and utterly inevitable. I do think it was virtually impossible to avoid World War One, but that's because it's hard to imagine a world in which it did not occur. If it hadn't occured, it would have been difficult to imagine a world in which something so horrible had actually happened. Think of it this way, if we had endured a nulcear war in the 1980s, then it would have been hard to believe war wasn't inevitable. Hell, a lot of folks were convinced that we would end up in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Counterfactual history is wonderful for discussion, but anything beyond immediate proximity is probably worthless as an academic endeavor. It's not even possible to come to any real consensus about soomething as immediate as the bombing of a Nagasaki and Hiroshima in relation to the ending of World War Two, let alone something as complex as a world in which World War One never took place. I completely agree with both GD and LoF in regards to the immediate cause of Franz Ferdinand's assassination. With so much tinder and so many sparks, taking out just one would not have been enough. There were certainly enough immediate causes waiting in the wings to set off the event that the absence of any one would not have been sufficient to guarantee peace. How the world would look had any one particular event not taken place is anyone's guess, but it is almost certainly not exactly what anyone would imagine.

I've been bumped to first class before. I'm a cheap ass, so I don't fly anything better than coach if I pay for the ticket myself, but I have had benefactors who have paid for first class or business class tickets. Well... I'm cheap and I don't have a lot of money. We often don't do much for New Years, and this year we actually did nothing. At midnight, we had a rum and coke. Right now, I'm thinking about the crazy assed three months I've had, what with my week in the hospital and all. I was supposed to take a big exam and now I've put it off until the next cycle. Could have taken it in December, but the wife was griefing me so I didn't. BTW: congrats, Guard Dog. And sorry to see you leave our fair land, Walsh, but at least you didn't get molested by Sluggie.

Good Lord, kid, lay off the ganja. I agree, though, Leliana is certainly much more marrying material than Crazy assed Morrigan.

I'll probably pick it up tonight or tomorrow. Artsy like The Path? I mean, the Path was weird and substandard in a lot of ways, but I enjoyed it for what it was worth and the wife played it with me on the big screen. Gotta do the same thing here.

Funny. I've had all the seasons on DVD for a while. I'm watching the first season again. It starts to go down hill in season 4 and then hits the skids in season five. Season six has some good things going, but a lot of crap also. We'll see. I'm not making the mistake of buying it when it hits the shelves this year. Currently watching House Season One. After this, we'll watch the entire series of the Twilight Zone that I just received this Xmas.

Dude, there is a Carnivale thread in my head somewhere, but I haven't gone to the wiki entry. I'm just reluctant to read behind the scenes stuff sometimes because I don't want to ruin what I got out of the movie/show/song. Sometimes I do, though.

I want to see the Road. I think it looks cool and I didn't even realize it's a book. I know it's made by the same folks who did No Country for Old Men, though, so I'm looking for a mortality rate something along the lines of an Alistair MacLean novel.

Well, keep telling us what you think as you progress. I've not wanted to update here because there wasn't any participation and I hate being the only person posting in a thread.