Keyrock

Hopefully Memphis closes the series out Thursday.

All the art looks great. I particularly like the beach area, it looks so lovely. I'm really excited for the next update as both Priest and Chanter are near the top of my list for first character to make (I'm leaning toward Priest at the moment). I'm fully expecting Priests to be extra awesome, just for me (and the other players too, I guess).

I reached Pripyat via the tunnels, full squad intact. It's not quite as intense a journey when you've been through it several times, but still enjoyable. The Monolith ambush was quite fun. I brought Lynx along for the ride (in addition to Strelok's SIG 550 and Predator [i had forgotten you get it for killing the chimera]), so the Monolith snipers never stood a chance. I can snipe better than you, fellas. The end game is drawing rapidly near. Next order of business is getting both sets of calibration tools.

I wouldn't go so far as outraged, but, yes, I'm pointing out that the same owners who turned a blind eye to Sterling's previous transgressions, which were far worse than the phone conversation, mind you, are now taking the "moral high ground" because this became a highly publicized story, and also pointing out that whoever recorded the phone conversation should go to jail. Part of me is happy that Sterling is (likely) getting ousted, because the guy is a scumbag, I'm not happy about the manner in which it happened. I guess one's view on the situation depends on how much one believes that the ends justify the means. Anyway, my stance is known and clear on the situation, I'm done discussing it. Back to actual basketball. I'm thinking Washington closes out the series tonight.

It's funny that Sterling didn't violate the "best interest of the league" when he was discriminating against minority tenants and denying them their rights or when he was being sued for sexual discrimination. But that illegally recorded private phone conversation sure did violate the "best interest of the league". All those owners who turned a blind eye to those transgressions earlier (most of whom are still owners now) can now puff out their chest and get all vocal about what an outrage this is and how they would never stand for this. Good job owners, you're all a bunch of hypocrites heroes.

Sterling is a scumbag and the NBA would be better off without him, but that doesn't change the fact that he's been wronged here. This is the modern day equivalent of a witch-hunt. This is far from over. I can almost guarantee lawsuits are incoming.

Slow Jam Pokemon Slow Jam Duck Tales

Here's a really well written piece by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar about the Sterling situation not only condemning Sterling, but also all the chest pounding moral outrage bandwagon jumpers: http://time.com/79590/donald-sterling-kareem-abdul-jabbar-racism/

/marks Hurlshot's words

Did you KS ToN? Its exactly the multi-hour navel gazing that made me sprint in the opposite direction of that game. Ive never played any of the Divinity games, so Im not sure what I was expecting, but I was hoping for a game in the vein of BGII (high fantasy, good combat). ToN? Yeah, supposedly, the vast majority or all of the combat will be avoidable in Torment: Tides of Numenera and the devs have said there will be no filler battles whatsoever. That's music to my ears (whether they actually manage to meet those goals and implement them well remains to be seen). I know a lot of people consider filler battles and trash mobs a "necessary evil" and "integral to RPGs" but I, personally, think that's a bunch of horse****.

First you download the game. This can easily be done through the GOG Downloader. After that you install the game, you can even set up the downloader to automatically start the installation process when it finishes. Once the installation process finishes there will be an option to launch the game. Alternatively, you can go to your Start Menu, scroll down to the GOG.com folder, open it, scoll down to the game folder, open it, there will be a launcher in there. Hopefully that helped.

Got me an Amsel Striker in Call of Pripyat. I'm partial to the Predator, personally, but it's highly unlikely I can get one of those before reaching Pripyat. I'm as prepared as I can be for the journey through the underground, my favorite part of the game. I've already begun assembling the team, just need to get Strider on board and then it's on.

The Child of Light reviews are coming in and they're positive. 2 more days to go. /rubs hands together

Just have each of your characters defend for a turn.

The bladedancer is a good way to get around/disable blocking, just by sheer volume of attacks. The other way to get around blocking is two-handed grand mastery, which I think Barbarians are the only class that can attain that. When my barbarians in my last party reached grand master two-handed it made a huge difference as I now suddenly had two characters (I had 2 barbarians) that were completely unblockable. If I ever do a 3rd run through the game, I'll likely go with an all-hybrid archer-heavy party.

Watch Dogs certainly sounds really cool, but I'm trying not to give in to the hype and keeping my expectations low.

Archery is a lot more useful now than it was when the game first released. My last all-might group I ran the game with regularly took down some enemies before they could ever reach me as long as I had several tiles between them and us at start, or, at least, they'd be very hurt by the time they reached melee. When the game first came out archery was heavily underpowered. It's not superpowered now by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a lot more viable. I agree that straight damage dealing with casters isn't very good. I mainly used casters for healing, buffing, and debuffing.

Project CARS vs. Real Life at Laguna Seca:

Sucks. Chitlins be some doggone tasty goodness.

Far from impossible, the Grizz have always been a thorn in the Thunder's side and always play them tough. Plus, they're not really a 7 seed, they fell that low when Marc Gasol was injured, with Marc Gasol healthy they're one of the 6 or 7 best teams in the NBA. It was really the worst possible draw for OKC to face the Grizz. This series is going to go down to the wire.

What constitutes a good apple? For me golden delicious are tops.

This whole weekend has been on and off rain, squashing and bike ride plans I had, so instead I've been hitting the weights. Yesterday I did legs, today I did biceps. Today was the hardest I've hit the weights since I got back into it a couple weeks ago. Not nearly as hard as in my heyday, many years ago, but baby steps and all that. I lifted weights regularly for about a decade straight, pretty hard for the first couple years, looking to build some muscle, and mainly just maintaining after that. Over the past year I got lazy and got out of it, consequently getting out of shape and developing a bit of a gut. Now I'm trying to get back to where I was a couple years ago. It will be a lot harder than wehn I was younger, but it's all about persistence.

Played some more of The Golf Club today. Since the last time I played (several days ago) they've put out a couple of patches. Nothing earth shattering in the patches, but there was some optimizations, and, at least on my end, they were significant, as the game is now smooth and playable on medium settings on my lappy whereas it was choppy before and only smooth on low settings. The biggest difference between low and medium settings is the water is shiny and reflective rather than flat and ugly. Too reflective if you ask me, but still better than the flat and ugly water on low settings. Also, the distance at which trees go to higher quality models is increased a bit. I spent most of the time designing a new course, called "The Thicket" and playing through it, testing it out, then jumping back in to the editor to make tweaks based on my play experiences. I made a 9 hole course this time. I spent almost as much time designing this 9 hole course as I did my previous 18 hole course. I put a lot of care into each hole and I'm pretty proud of how it came out. Particularly I'm quite proud of a couple par 5s where the green is absolutely reachable in 2 to entice people into going for it, but hoo boy will you have to make dangerous shots to do it. Good luck trying to get that ball to stop on the green with a 5 wood and if you miss the green there is some unpleasantness awaiting you.

By the time we discover this inclination in said AI, which, for the sake of simplicity, I will hence forth arbitrarily refer to as Skynet, it may already be too late to "pull the plug" so to speak. In fact, the very act of attempting to "pull the plug" on Skynet may produce repercussions.

I'm glad I didn't pull the trigger on Dark Souls 2 yet. I almost did, got a far as having it in my (virtual) shopping basket and starting the checkout process, before I balked. I'll wait until I build my desktop rig, scoop it up on sale, and this will give time for Durante and others to work their magic.