Keyrock

Darkspawn are easily some of the least imaginative enemies ever devised. They're basically copy & paste orcs and goblins, without being remotely as interesting as orcs or goblins. At least with orcs and goblins there is potential for inter-tribe relations and intrigue and they have motivation beyond just "must kill everybody". Darkspawn are just a blanket copout enemy that mindlessly kill everyone for no purpose other than to kill everyone. With no semblance of personality and no complex motivation whatsoever they're set up as mindless pincushions for you to stab guilt-free.

Now that I'm done with Tesla Effect, I'm going to fire up some Gothic 3 w/ 1.75 patch, content mod 2.6.2, and quest pack 4.2.

At the moment this is what I'm leaning toward for a motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157503 What I like most about the board: 3 x PCIe 3.0 (x16, x8 x8, x8 x4 x4) - There's almost no chance I'll ever do 3-way SLI, but it's nice to have the option, just in case. 8 SATA III ports SATA Express - I don't plan to get a SATA Express SSD, but it's nice to have the option 3rd party controllers Very affordable The cool blue color on the heatsinks doesn't hurt either.

Probably Aumaua for my first character. After that, I'm open to playing anything, other than elf.

In fairness, a group of 6 priests should, by all means, be the bane of the undead. I'm definitely leaning toward priest as my first character. Nothing really surprising, they're pretty much how I envisioned them, which is fine.

I doubt I'd make it through even a single episode.

At lev 18 Ravenous Ghouls will be a struggle, they were for me. The game will absolutely let you wander into areas you have no business being in at your level (and promptly get mercilessly destroyed). On my last playthrough I wandered into an area with multiple elite earth elementals when I was still not nearly high enough level. With no one in the group to cast Purge, I couldn't stop the elementals from healing themselves via regeneration spells and my damage output wasn't enough to significantly outpace their healing. I really thought I'd have to revert to an earlier save, but several tries and a good chunk of my potions later I managed to kill the elementals and ran back to town just as fast as I could. The game gets noticeably easier sometime between lev 20-25, when you start getting promoted and grandmastering skills.

Man, I don't know what to think of the Pacers. They struggle and just barely beat the Hawks, who aren't even a mediocre team. Then they come out flat for game 1 of the series with Washington, after that they turn it on, win 3 straight, look impressive at times, and I'm starting to think, maybe they figured this out. Then last night they just dropped an EPIC stink bomb. Yes, Washington playing well had something to do with it, but the Wiz didn't play THAT well, it was mostly Indiana being flat out awful. Just awful. Who is this team? Miami has to be loving this. Their path to the Finals couldn't possibly be any easier. I'd be quite surprised if they lost a total of more than 3 games before the Finals. On the Western side of things, what a crazy finish in OKC last night. After the Thunder gave away a game 4 they absolutely should have won (they were up 16 with 10 minutes to go), the Clippers gave away a game they absolutely should have won (they were up 13 with 4 minutes to go). Yes, there was some questionable officiating in the final few seconds, but that doesn't change the fact that the Clippers flat out stopped playing the final few minutes. It will be interesting to see how the Clips react to such a crushing defeat. OKC picked itself up off the mat after the epic game 4 collapse, can the Clips do the same?

PipBoy first the vault and finally nuclear rockets. I'm pretty sure we already have those, entirely too many, in fact.

Finished up Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Joint: I managed to achieve maximum detective rating: My ending was different from IndiraLightfoot's I also managed to get all 16 Mike & Ike Candy Comics netting me a "Day 13" I wonder what's in that save game?

I'm at, what appears to be, the end game portion of Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Joint. I'm happy to report that I managed to snag all of the Mike & Ike Hammer Candy Comics along the way, hopefully that nets me some kind of (point?) bonus at the end. I guess I'll find out soon enough. Edit: Finished the game. I liked it quite a bit, had me entertained throughout. It's a Tex Murphy game through and through and it packs a ton of fan service. If you're a Tex Murphy fan, you'll definitely enjoy it. If you're a point & click fan you will most likely enjoy it. If you don't like point & clicks, this game won't change your mind. I'll play it again in a few months to get a different ending.

Sad Xenomorph is sad.

Still playing Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Joint. I'm about 11 hours deep and on Day 8, so I figure I have to be nearing the finish line.

I'm not at all worried about DirectX 12. There are 2 reasons for that: a) I'm moving away from Windows anyway. I'm building the next rig very much with Linux (SteamOS) in mind, hence why I'm all about Nvidia and not even taking AMD GPUs into consideration (I like AMD's hardware, but their proprietary Linux drivers, although improved from where they were 5 or 6 years ago, are still far behind Nvidia's proprietary Linux drivers in terms of quality [Nvidia's Linux drivers are virtually the same quality on Linux as on Windows]) b) DirectX 12 is not coming until the very end of 2015, presumably with Windows 9, at the earliest. You're not going to get DirectX 12 games immediately. My most generous estimation of DirectX 12 games actually showing up is mid-2016. That's 2 years from now. I'm not worried about 2 years from now. 2 years from now I may be upgrading the GPU anyway (or not). Too far away to worry about.

Divinity: Original Sin is the one soon upcoming game that I'm drooling to play. I've had to use maximum willpower to not play the Early Access, which, as a backer, I could do right now without paying anything extra. It's been touted as the closest thing we've had to a spiritual successor to Ultima VII, which makes me go I'm also pretty excited for Shovel Knight. It was supposed to already be out, then got pushed back an unspecified amount of time for final polishing. Right now the release date is only "Spring", which, I guess, boils down to "Before June 21st" I'm in wait and see mode for Watch Dogs. I don't know what to think about that game. Based on what I've seen recently it could land anywhere on the quality meter from "well, they sure ****ed that up" to "holy ****, this is awesome!".

Don't get me wrong, I would love to get Maxwell instead of a Kepler card. Even the ones that have come out so far, like the 750Ti and 750, are quite impressive, matching (on average) the performance of the Kepler cards they are replacing with far fewer cores. It's just that I have no clue what is happening with the higher end Maxwells and when it's going to happen. There are so many conflicting reports out there, most of them probably straight bull****, that it's impossible to plan ahead at all. Some reports are that TSMC can't get their **** together and 20nm ain't happening this year because they're getting bad yields. Other reports are saying that 20nm is doing just fine and will arrive this year. Other reports are saying that because of the bad yields at 20nm Nvidia had to alter its plans and taped out the GTX 8xx Maxwell cards at 28nm sometime in April. From tapeout to cards appearing on store shelves is generally about 6 months, if everything goes perfectly. That would put the GTX 880 (Nvidia generally leads with the x80, then introduces a x70 and x60) at October at the earliest. But I've also seen reports that the GTX 880 is going to drop around June or July. I don't know what to believe. I'm going to operate under the assumption that the GTX 880 ain't happening until very late in the year, if it happens this year at all. If firm, trustworthy news come out before I make my build roughly a month from now that the GTX 880 is coming much sooner than that, then I'll hold off. Otherwise, I'll just get the 780Ti and be happy with it (that card is not exactly lacking in power). If something comes along where the 780Ti is not enough for my tastes (/glances in CD Projekt RED's direction), then I have options: a) get another 780Ti for SLI b) eBay the 780Ti and get a newer card (presumably 880) Whichever fits the budget/is more economical. Or, I turn the settings down from Ultra to Very High or High and be happy with what I got until Volta or Pascal comes out a few years down the line.

Not going to wait for Maxwell? Unless firm news of it comes before I make my build, and it's due to arrive much sooner than thought, then no. As it's looking right now, we might not see Maxwell until very late in the year, like November or December. I'm not going to play the waiting game, that's a perpetual game.

So, I've done some calculations and I'll have the cash put away to build my next rig next month. The plan at the moment is as follows (I don't have it narrowed down to certain brands/models yet): 27" 1440p monitor i7-4790K Z97 Mobo w/ 2xPCIe 3.0 slots 16 GB (2x8GB) DDR3 (probably 2400 or 2666) GTX 780Ti 480-512GB SATA3 SSD (I also have over 1 TB of 7200 RPM HDDs left over from my defunct old desktop build) Case with 2x120mm fans, or better 700W PSU In my calculations that fits my budget, and the hardware should be able to run almost everything at 1440p maxed out. It also leaves me potential upgrade path in the near future, both in terms of CPU (Z97 motherbord will work with Broadwell), picking up another 780Ti for SLI, and filling the 2 open RAM slots with another 16GB of DDR3.

Indeed, checking in with a doctor is a sensible precaution. I find that when you start doing strenuous regular exercise, after not doing so for an extended period of time, you're going to feel extremely sore the day after, even two days after, in some cases, for a little while. That will pass if you stick with it as your body gets used to it. When I was in my 20s, it was generally only about a week and a half long period until my body adapted. Now, in my late 30s, it took my body about 3 weeks to adapt, to the point where after strenuous lifting the day before I don't feel really sore the day after, it actually feels quite good. Also, proper nutrition is always suggested with strenuous exercise. That doesn't necessarily have to mean sucking down a protein shake (though that is an good, easy way to get a bunch of high quality protein quickly) and popping other supplements, but you should definitely at least eat a good hearty meal with a good bit of protein in it within an hour of finishing exercising.

I feel like that describes every Spiders game ever made. How does this game compare to Mars: War Logs? Obviously, the setting is completely different, but in terms of quality and depth of the combat system.

So, there is word that the i7-4790K and the i5-4590K will both drop on June 2nd, no surprise there. What is surprising is that supposedly the i7-4790k will be getting a 400MHz (to 4GHz/4.4GHz max turbo) upgrade rather than 100MHz, like the non-K variants already out or the i5-4590K. That sounds great, but keep in mind this information is coming from wccftech, which is about as reliable a source as a Daewoo Lanos. I guess we'll find out for sure soon enough.

A Japanese comic. They may or may not involve tentacles.

I'm playing Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Joint. I just got to day 4 and