Raithe

And for more TOR updates.. http://uk.ign.com/ar...epublics-future?

And from what I've heard with Congress starting up.. a bunch of the moderates on both parties lost their seats. So gee, it should be even more extreme partisan politics in the struggle to get anything done...

Well woke up from a few odd dreams, trying to uncrick my back from whatever awkward way I was apparently sleeping... Switched on the pc to check email and the first world news that pops up is the Argentine President once again demanding we hand over the Falklands to her. Everytime she needs a popularity boost in her country she turns around and does this.

Well there is meant to be a whole batch of stuff transplanted in from the Silmarillon and such. Elements that aren't in the book of the Hobbit "properly", but helped set in motion the things that happen in Lord of the Rings. Jackson apparently wanted to make all those connections clearer for the Hobbit film being a prequel by making it about more then just "this is how Bilbo found the ring". I'm not saying I agree with exactly how he went about it, but I can see the logic to a lot of those choices. Of course, that's also a large reason why it got pushed from two films to three... So there's possibly another side to the logic for that as well...

Ah yes, North and South was an adaption of a piece of literature over here. Industrial revolution setting.. Kind of Pride and Prejudice type of thing.

Heh, I now have the grand title of Managing Director since the old one got headhunted. Of course, there's absolutely no income to the company, and I don't have a wage from it, and there's no-one else who handles any of the work full time, and everyone else is (like me) paid on project work basis. So I get to do the administration of it, pay off the accountants from the company account when they send me the tax notice and that's that. Still, I guess it looks good on my CV now.

I think it also stood out that they weren't "stumpy" or "squat" dwarves. Of course, I found it amusing that the moment Thorin comes on screen women over here in the UK pretty much all sigh and smile. Ever since Richard Armitage appeared in North and South he's been one of the romance heart throbs of females all over this isle..

In other worlds, all the things that people say "time will heal it" and time never freaking heals it.

Heh, I realised that I haven't uninstalled Alpha Protocol from my machine since i first installed it when it originally came out. It goes months without me playing it, but then I'll start it up and have another poke at it again...

Saw Jack Reacher. Not a bad book adaption, although a fair bit was shifted around for the film. And I have to say, taking a main character that's a 6'5, 240 lb former Military Policeman.. and having him played by Tom Cruise is an interesting choice. Since he's played as a fairly controlled, intense and not heavily emotional guy, it actually works fairly well. A little crime, a little conspiracy, a few misdirects, and some rough housing. Entertaining in general, but nothing too overly flashy.

It is surprising how.. aggravating it can be not to hear from certain people over Christmas that you'd expect to hear from.

Had a brief start on the Imperial Agent on TOR. Interesting as it starts, had to go with Operative when I hit fleet since the Sniper skill tree's are a bit too close to my Smuggler/Gunslinger. Want to have a different feel and explore different style of play with each different class...

Got the Doctor Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog on bluray for christmas so I sat down and went through it and the special features. I have to say, "Commentary - The Musical!" is genius.

The government can screw me over slowly, regardless. The banks and corporations can do the same. Whether I have guns or not. But the moron down the street can't casually shoot me by accident nor can his kids get hold of a gun to play with when he forgets to put it in the gunsafe properly since he can't easily get hold of a gun in this country. Most democracies run on popularity contests and spin rather then actual ability, and they have for awhile. I've learnt to accept that. People tend to be morons, I've learnt to live with that. Not having to worry about most morons I meet being able to carry guns is something I'm perfectly fine with. Personally, I don't care so much on the gun control issue in the US because it's not the underlying cause of those problems. It's just one of the easily reached solutions when those causes push things along. Until you get a better grasp on the reasons why those people snap like that, and ways to deal with it, taking away the guns only limits them, it doesn't stop them. The question of whether that limitation is worthwhile and just how much it might slow down or prevent such occurances... That's more of a valid argument.

They made an interesting trilogy of Batman films, but the thing that did disapoint was that at no point did they explore the element of the Dark Knight as a world class detective.

One of those yearly things we have is one of the neighbours always drops around on Christmas day. Now, this wouldn't be a problem, but they tend to loiter for an hour or so regardless of what's going on , even if we have other family visiting. I guess that's partly the trouble of being polite rather then kicking them out the door. But then again, this year they lost their mother this last month... But anyhow, they'd mentioned they were going to drop in this morning, so rather then get caught in the middle of family moments and unwrapping of presents we thought we'd have a slow morning and then when the neighbour had been and gone, then do our family thing. Time passed, no neighbour. Finally a little past noon we decide to give up delaying our christmas, divvy the presents up , sit down and open them together. We get the piles sorted, fresh cup of tea.. and then neighbour turns up, sits down and promptly ensconces in the middle of present piles.

So Merry Christmas from Merry Olde England..as it's slipped to the 25th here..

I guess one element of trouble I have with the idea of guns being freely available to most people... Is that most people seem to be morons. I wouldn't trust them with my finances, with looking after my kids (if I had any), so why should I trust them with actually learning correct and proper gun safety and control and a roomfull of lethal weaponry? I can see how you can approach it with the whole "gun control is like insurance. You probably won't ever need to use it, but if you do and don't have it, you'll regret it." But I'm also thinking of some of the utter idiots I've been exposed to in my life, and just whether I'd be happy knowing they could be armed.....

Well my mother has athrisis issues in her hands as well as a bunch of other things, which was giving her problems reading the books she enjoys (such as her regular re-read of LoTR), so a couple of christmasses ago I got her Amazon's Kindle when it first came out. And she's been delighted with it ever since. In fact, I'm getting her the Kindle Paperwhite for this xmas since her old Kindle is getting a bit worn and battered now. I've snaked it a few times when I've been away for a few days and it's certainly works nicely. I still prefer having a proper dead tree copy, but the kindle is nice to slip into a pocket and carry around, especially if you're the type to read a couple of books whilst travelling on the train...

A little TOR here and there, a bit of doodling around on SimCity4...

Hm, I think I've got about 25,000 tracks on my ipod now. Just thinking that if anything takes down my pc drive, the joy of getting all those cd's out of storage and the various nooks and crannies I stashed them in and then re-burning them... The mind boggles.

So the question becomes, were the mayans really crap at predicting the future? Or were they just incredibly good at pranking people?

FR basically started out as the Dalelands in a campaign Ed Greenwood created and ran as DM for his gaming group... As he came up with further stories, he added bits to the map as they were relevant to the plots , stories and characters he was running. Which is one of the reasons FR is just a wee bit madly put together. Not that it isn't fun with a fair few good ideas in there.

My annual income this year is under five grand. I think the "fondly" might be overstated..