Nepenthe

Yyyeah, Civilization V and ME3 are F2P? What? Also, just to bring my (usual ) contrarian opinion here, I'm willing to accept the publishers' statement that day 1 dlc is made on a separate budget and thus wouldn't exist as a part of the came (cut content or never there in the first place). I can live with that, but I'm not a mass consumer of games, probably still average 4-5 per year, so I'm not averse to parting with a bit more cash for the few games I deem worth my time... Sure, sometimes, such as with Saints Row III, when the stuff is already on the disc and I have to pay to activate it I can't help but feel fleeced, but exiled prince/stone prisoner/from ashes... totally ok with me.

Yyyeah, seems that the fondest wish for many people is to get a console (with plausible deniability that it's actually a PC) with Valve instead of Microsoft or Sony... That backwards compatibility statement is a fine example of the fact that MS had reached almost Daikatana levels of hubris before launch. 180, indeed. Let's see them back up on this one, as well. There's the one reason that could persuade me to buy their console.

Well, my wub wub edition is still MIA. Happily, the other person who had ordered one is the store manager, so at least I have exceptionally motivated Gamestop staff looking to get them into the store. :D

I actually stopped caring many years ago what people thought - truth is, I'm a human. I have seen no evidence of that.

Turns out movies have subtitles in a large part of the universe, including casa Nepenthe (even if I use ones in the original language whenever I can, it calls for a lot less concentration when I have access to both sources of input).

Indeed.

Meanwhile, I've been testing my new pack... And it's so comfortable, it's amazing. Awesome lumbar support, I'm almost tempted to take it to work to make a point about my work chair. :D I decided I'd support Finnish as much as I could, so I went with (the Canadian but Finnish owned) Arc'teryx. Cost me an arm and a leg, but seems to have been a good investment. Also have hiking boots on the way from another Finnish-owned company, Salomon. Oh, and medically the immediate crisis seems to be over. Still have irregular heart beat, but the initial batch of tests were all clear. Probably need to have some stuff looked at more closely, but looks like I might be around to play Project Eternity after all

Cousin's married to a lebanese lawyer chick (French-educated). Lucky bastard.

That was my other alternative, but i found I preferred the Khard in the size group where the corresponding Eberlestock would probably have been the Halftrack. Also, an Eberlestock tends to be a secret handshake for former UN peacekeepers around here... Which I am not. The whole reason I went with the bag I did was to purge the demons of the Finnish army backpack, the most horrible travesty of load carrying equipment known to man. Well, maybe after the Veshmeshok.

Sure, the most essential stuff is in your "every day carry", the next setup in a bug-out/72hr bag etc. In my case my "EDC" is (in) my attache case (crucial meds, good small led flashlight, spare USB battery... and I really should add a good book or the ipad to it), which I keep in the office since I live in the same building where I work. It'll have to be a fairly epic emergency for me to not be able to take the 90 seconds it would take to grab the bag from home... That said, I now have one of these and I'm looking at grabbing suitable gear for 'er: (And yes, I know this is the wrong way to do it, but I now will nod understandingly whenever a woman explains to me about how something spoke to her when she was shoppin. )

While I won't comment on whether preparing for the end of the world is crazy or not, preparing for JUST it certainly is. From a fire, to a gas leak, to some idiots who can't store explosives properly* (never mind weather and earthquakes in some less fortunate locations) there are a ton of reasons why you might spend a week or two on somebody else's sofa or on the floor of the local high school basketball court. That's my focus, not the collapse of civilization, as seductive as it might appear. *Happened close by a while back, big evacuation zone..

FANBOY!!!

I hear there's a new edition from 2011 that needs to be checked out...

Streaking in concreto? I'll get my coat.

Well, at least you'd have somebody trying to sneak the channel tunnel into the French direction, for a change...

You could always shove it all in your wheeled luggage. Just include an inflatable raft ... never know when you'd need it. Wheeled luggage takes up too much room on pavements. And it makes you look like a tw**. I'd rather starve. I hear golf carts are popular alternatives...

When you hear about some doomsday preppers, you think they are nuts, they spend their life in service to the sad hope that doom strikes, BUTit pays to be prepared, and if it's just a small effort so you have 'something, just in case' then brilliant. Besides, if I ever become a rich eccentric millionaire, you bet your ass I'll have some crazy ass doomsday fort in the basement It's just common sense to have a 72hr bag, in case of evacuation or something. I'm working on keeping my camping gear set up so that I have food, water and something to sleep in/on in case I have to bail and it takes a couple of days for the emergency people to get themselves sorted. In seismic areas, it's more than common sense, a necessity. In fact, just got the bag I'm going to be using for it, today.

Yeah, I just had to walk home from the office and grab a copy of my dissertation, since I'm actually working a case on one of my specialties and can't remember what I've written about this thing. :D You have that thing where you read something you wrote years ago and think "Why the hell don't I write that well any more?" In this case it's more like less than a year ago...

Xbox 360 seemed to be a success, though I don't know how much money they lost because of the "three rings of death" issue. It seems that for every unit they sold they had to replace at it least once,not to mention repeat cases(which explains their earlier losses) . Still, by the end they were on top of the market despite hardware setbacks. But with this current gen they don't have the factors that gave them an edge on the previous one; for one both systems are being release around November with a similar price tag and MS doesn't have enough exclusive titles to tip the scales on their favor. Add to that the scandal over DRM measures, always online, no used games, ect, ect.. which hurt their PR and it seems doomed to failure. Though I think ValueAct might be just fulfilling their own prophecy. 'cept Microsoft aren't releasing in November in some smaller, but high purchasing parity markets, like the Nordic countries. The amount of Nerdrage here is causing a lot of die-hard x360 Halo fanboys to either jump ship or at the very least get a ps4 first.

Yeah, I just had to walk home from the office and grab a copy of my dissertation, since I'm actually working a case on one of my specialties and can't remember what I've written about this thing. :D

Sad but true, I do most of my reading on the ipad these days, as well. Of course heavily related to living in the boondocks and not having access to the good bookshops.

Or bookshelves with glass doors, like what I have

I loved that game when I was a kid Good memories. Same here... I was really hoping it was THAT ducktales...

As there was already in da2. Imo bith of the two mentioned were da2 alternatives. If it's of major importance, probably a choice, so makes 2 vos relevant even for non-importers.

Eh, why? Or do you mean that anything that Bioware does results in a lot of upset? I thought it would be cool in a ballsy way that I haven't seen in ages, if ever, in game design. I mean that lots of people would be upset to see Hawke being an uncontrolled NPC, as it would very likely defy the character the Dragon Age 2 players made him to be. And there's nothing really for Bioware to gain from that.True, doing it right would require 6 different versions of dialogue based on which hawke (snarky, straight edge or nuts) was played... Tbh, hawke never felt "mine" in the sense that I'd mind him as an npc at all, in fact I''d much prefer that to any of the alternatives I can imagine.