taks

i finishhed MoW last night, er, early this morning. i liked it a lot. here's a quickie review... bad or not very good: wretched AI. i know, not a MoW problem directly, an NWN2 problem (even with tony K's stuff), but they could have fixed a few things. for example, kicking off a cut scene right when you walk in a doorway. not so bad if it is just a conversation, but bad when it starts a fight. this is exacerbated by forcing your lead character into the talking position, which results in him being placed right in the middle of the foray in spite of the fact he was in the back of the line to begin with. i played a mage, which made such fights frustrating at best. as a result, i played in wimp mode (normal rules) simply becuase the tactic cheat wasn't worth ruining an otherwise good game. companion choice leaves something to be desired. the companions are actually pretty well written, and i'll discuss that below, but the party mix makes it very difficult to really get a jive going. you're always pissing someone off. i chose the good path, and oddly enough, the only one i gained any influence with was the neutral evil chick. some of the influence points made no sense at all (i asked a question once, and my neutral evil chick got all pissed off saying "i can't believe you're going to do this" - i wasn't, i simply wanted more information). in the end, i think they all had seriously considered a dagger in my back. minor quibbles: some cut scenes were a little confusing, skipping around a bit often making it hard to know who owned the text on the screen. the ones that were voiced over were a bit easier to follow, however, but a limited budget also meant limited voice overs. the shops run out of gold too quickly. later in the game, you have do buy/sell meta-gaming to sell all the lewt you're getting. as far as i can tell, there is only one shop that doesn't cap at 5000 gp, btw. fortunately, gold is not really an issue in this game. the game does not auto-save at logical points that i could discern. not bad per se, but beware and save every time you enter a brand new building you think might be a battle. the game might not have even saved the last time you transitioned town areas. the ending is... lengthy, though i haven't decided if this is good or bad. i'm not going to spoil it because it is not at all obvious. good: the writing was quite good. in general, i thought the story was very interesting though the ending has me left sort of... hmmm. not sure. at any rate, the ending was not really obvious, or at least, i didn't figure it out an hour into the game. as i said, the companions were actually done well. there is some interesting banter that goes on between them. i can only wonder what would have been said or how differently things would have turned out if i had managed to actually influence one of them. the voice overs, though limited, were excellent. some of the best in any NWN game, or any crpg that i've played, actually. who did these? i was impressed. since i played in wimp mode, i cannot attest to the difficulty of the game. i think it would be difficult on hardcore, but not to the point of frustration. the hardest part was the damned cut scenes which forced certain positionings and the all to famous ambush cheat (one guy walks through the door and suddenly you're all surrounded in the middle of the room). aside from those cases, where occurred occasionally, though not too frequently to make me quit the game, it seemed like there was plenty of challenge to make combat worthwhile. next time i'll play through in hardcore mode on the "evil" path and i'll get a better idea. oh, i was a weezard 5, ASoC 10 at the end of the game (i liked the ASoC, btw, and this was my first time playing one). the quests were pretty cool. not many were really fedex. even the more fedexish quests were complicated in ways that made a bit of sense. supposedly the evil path has different main path quests, which provides at least one replay for your money. the game does not really hold your hand, however, so if you lose track of where you're going or who you are reporting to, you may be consulting the message boards for help on occasion. i don't think this is a bad thing, just pointing out how it is. i played mostly while i was exhausted, which probably caused me to lose track a time or two. overall, the game took probably 12-15 hours. since i was in wimp mode i did not have to reload often and i did 6 hours straight yesterday. playing in hardcore, finishing all the quests, i could see someone spending more than 15 hours on this game, though not much more. the only reason i ever consulted the message boards was because of losing track of where to go, or in once instance, an object was expected to be used but only indirectly. it was one of those objects that did not have a use option, but you had to use something else that brought up the "do you want to use this stuff on that thing?" question. in short, while there are puzzles, none of them are too difficult or overly ambiguous to make the game frustrating. overall, definitely worth $10, maybe even more. taks

it really had nothing to do with an NSA "endorsement," it was a requirement. i have no idea if that is still a requirement for certain programs or not. since fedora makes changes upstream, btw, i.e., there are no "fedora only" modifications, that means fedora (and RH by default) had what i needed when i first learned linux. as a result, that's what i use. actually, a more accurate assessment (from me) would be that embedded developers will use what is familiar to them, and every experience i've had has involved RH or fedora. in the beginning, RH/fedora-based systems were what i was using, so that's what i have stayed with. what actually goes ONTO your system will likely be not a whole lot more than the kernel anyway, e.g., who needs a desktop when all of your visibility is through a terminal? i have heard about a lot of people using debian, btw, but nobody i know. the guy i work with now that favors gentoo is almost a pariah in my eyes. i curse him regularly. to his face (not really, but gentoo causes me grief). did i state above that we actually are using ELDK for this latest project, which is apparently based on FC4? it "feels" familiar in every way to me so i like it. that and i'm a powerpc user so it has benefits. my last company, btw, had a broadcom MIPS-based chip in the system i was writing code for (i was writing a math/DSP library). nobody supported that sucker so it sucked all around. ugh. this is the reason, btw, that i had to tinker with the compiler. they had some of the processor rules written incorrectly. btw, as an aside, apparently there are 4 times as many packages available for RH/fedora than ubuntu. i did not know that. debian is on par with that number (debian is older than i realized, too). taks

i'd say vista is actually a derivative of win7, based on what i've read. not that it means much. personally, if i had to buy vista, i wouldn't. if it was given to me free, then i'd use it till win7 came out assuming i did not have an XP license already. otherwise, use XP till win7 is officially released. taks

i finished MoW last night, er, 2 am this morning. i suppose i should write a review. i'm too pooped, however, to it'll have to wait. overall, i definitely enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone. i only wish it was longer. taks

while bad, and often ridiculous, i think it is but a drop in the bucket for drugs. it probably effects the medical practitioners themselves more than anything, with overpriced malpractice premiums as the result. many end up leaving the profession because they cannot afford the insurance. better to be an engineer, like i chose, make similar money*, sleep knowing you didn't leave the knife inside the patient, and live without the ongoing threat of lawsuit. taks *the top-3 professional careers used to be doctor, lawyer, engineer, in order of average pay. you can't count "international banker" or "certified financial analyst" because they are really "business professionals" and get averaged in with the millions of run of the mill stock brokers that are all now broke.

oh, but still... why should one owner care if you want to sell your apartment to someone that is not a relative, at fair market value while he sells on the cheap? seems silly and would annoy the hell out of me. hehe, ultimately, however, money is still the motivation for their behavior. taks

um, no, this is not true. we pay more because we are offsetting the "deals" other governments have made with the drug companies. the "deals" with other governments are for drugs at pennies over cost to manufacture, so we in the states are left to pay all the development costs and the majority of profits. drug companies are forced into doing this since they'd lose too much business (likely to patent violations). since we are still pseudo-free market (w.r.t. medicine) in the US, consumers here wind up paying the difference. it's not just other governments, btw, it is our own, too (medicare, medicaid, government employee health insurance, and HMOs are all part of the problem). taks

true, but worth it in the long run. strange that you can arbitrarily set your "market value" in order to skew your taxes. the state is who decides how much my home is worth (fair market value) for tax purposes, regardless of what the true market value is. the state has been running at about 80% of the true market value, actually, until now. they went up and my true value went down, closing the gap considerably. taks

oh my god. that's insane. i guess, however, that big cities in the US are similar. what i live in would be several million in manhattan and i have a small yard (only 1/6 acre). the median home in COS is about 2200 sq. ft. (204 m^2), with a yard a bit bigger than mine (in the old days 1/5 to 1/4 acre was more typical), and only runs right around $200,000. up in denver things are much more expensive, and boulder is outrageous (median home there was at one point over $650k). boulder does not allow new building inside of city limits, as i recall, which helped to drive that madness. speaking of home values, in spite of the fact that i've lost at least 10% in the last year alone, somehow the geniuses at the assessor's office have determined that my assessed valuation should go up by about $8000 for next year, which will cost me an additional $200 or so in property taxes. yes, an appeal is in order. taks

hehe, not quite. it's 56 m^2 = sqrt(56) m x sqrt(56) m = 7.48 m x 7.48 m = 24.56 ft x 24.56 ft = 603 sq. ft. oof. taks

played MoW all day. good game, btw. getting ready to order some chinese for dinner. i actually get their thai noodle dishes (pad thai and thai curry) plus some version of low mein. taks

MoW, and liking it, though i'm stuck at the moment (something isn't triggering and i'm not sure how to proceed). since this game does not dump a bazillion quests on you all at once, getting stuck on one doesn't leave a lot of options. good and bad with that i suppose. taks

it's pretty good, actually. certainly worth 10 beans. taks

we're looking at more snow in the forecast for this weekend. this past monday was already the latest i had seen snow in colorado springs (or anywhere in my life, for that matter). several places in the mountains regularly get snow year-round, however. yay. i'm tired of the snow and cold weather as it is killing my allergies (which is sort of a new thing). the 8-week cough, non-stop sinus drainage, daily headaches, and beet-red eyes are getting a bit old. i'm ready for warm weather and camping. taks

actually, no, at least, every number i've heard has put it in the few hundred k ballpark. millions play it, however, as it is heavily pirated, particularly in eastern europe. anyway, that's not why i'm posting. i got WoW. started it last night. i haven't really done anything yet, other than whack some dwarf on the street and pick up a fallen paladin (he's a fighter now) that drinks too much (my kinda guy, another beer lunch for me today). well, i went searching for an inn since there doesn't seem to be one in the first area. the only comments i have so far are a) the writing, what little i've seen, seems fairly high quality, and b) the few VOs that they did are done well. taks

hit level 8 today. i gave myself 2 pupils and they both have a less than 10% win percentage. neither is worth a poop. one of them doesn't even give me experience when he levels, so i leave him alone. the other is 4th level now, and losing 3 out of 3 or 2 out of 3 every day means he doesn't contribute much to taksm anymore (like, 4 days for the next level), so i'm dumping him, too. taksm, OTOH, wins probably 75% of his matches, maybe even more (3 out of 3 is common). taks

that's sort of how it works with pros, correct? taks

my ski buddy was told he'd probably never ski on anything other than a green ever again after his knee was shattered. i learned from him, essentially, as he was first getting back into skiing. he's doing powder in the bowls now, bumps, and just about every other extreme skiing other than cliffs. i can no longer keep up with him - his knee healed faster than i learned how to ski faster. taks

hang in there and keep at the therapy. you may improve over time more than you think. it takes a loooong time for atrophied muscles with injuries to recover. taks

if i had changed the quote to "doing thing to me" you'd have a great case for that smiley. sorry, i'm bad today. had a beer lunch. a pint of guiness and a pint of 90 schilling at hooter's. taks

that settles it. grocery stores rule. everyone has to buy food at one point or another, correct? of course, gorgon is going for the employees of said grocery store, but i'm sure there are plenty of shoppers worth a look, too. taks

until i read the rest of the explanation, i thought it made perfect sense. ahem. taks

do you know what the NSA is? i listed several reasons, which you would have noticed if you bothered to read all my posts, including the one in your quote from me you didn't even mention. i never said red hat was more powerful, btw. taks

oh, i should add that i met my wife in a bar, a pool-hall to be exact. we play in the same pool league (american poolplayer's association, the APA), and she was on another team in one of the divisions i was in (at the time, i played in 4 divisions with the APA and 1 with a local league). it wasn't a standard bar-fare pick-up at any rate, which i did plenty of and mostly hated. taks

one of the best is actually a grocery store. gotta be careful not to pick the ones with rings, however. church events are also high on the list (as i've heard, not a church-goer myself), as well as the workplace. of course, the latter is like doing doo-doo in your cereal bowl before breakfast (in the long run), but common nonetheless. taks