Keyrock

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.

Everybody has poor shooting nights, LeBron included. Having Tony Allen draped all over you all night long doesn't help the cause either. KD still managed to contribute to the game by snagging 13 boards, and also by drawing extra defenders constantly leaving Reggie Jackson open for shots. Memphis has always made life quite tough for KD, namely because they have Tony Allen, who's one of the very best defenders in the league. Also, having a coach that never runs any actual plays or any type of offensive system isn't helping the situation. Scotty Brooks is OKC's #1 problem.

Sergeant Vincent Lamar Carter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HESAu-pKmyE

Finished Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse. Good game. Started out fairly meh. Not bad, just not particularly exciting for a good chunk of part 1, but it really takes off in the second half of the game. Pretty much the entirety of the second part is great. It took me a little over 14 hours to finish, which is fairly long for a point & click adventure. The voice acting is all top notch and all the audio is quite good. The 2D backgrounds are gorgeous, and while the 3D character models are really good, they sometimes don't fit perfectly with the background, sort of popping out. Nothing really egregious, a solid job, but far from perfect. I consider this is the best Broken Sword since the first one. It's way better than The Sleeping Dragon or The Angel of Death, a little better than The Smoking Mirror, and not quite as good as The Shadow of the Templars. I give it 3 1/2 meeflors out of goojyflux on the arbitrary scale.

3rd straight OT game in the OKC/Memphis series. The western conference playoffs are pretty freakin' awesome, not an easy series in the bunch. Whoever comes out of the west is going to have to go through a murderer's row to do it.

There is a precedent and he likely will be punished, but I don't agree with it. Had he made disparaging racial remarks to one of his employees, like the Clippers players, management, or staff, I would be fully in favor of disciplining him, but he didn't. This was something said in private to his girlfriend(?).

For once, I agree completely with Volo. Donald Sterling may be a bigot, but things he says in private, like this, don't have any bearing on him as a team owner.

Sergeant Vincent Lamar Carter with the buzzer beater! Man that was an exciting game.

Tripe & Beans

The things George has to do to save the world

I liked Prey, though I kind of forgot about it. That may be the closest game to Unreal 1 since. Maybe not in terms of overall quality, but in being a somewhat similar type of shooter and letting you explore a weird, alien environment.

Serious Sam is a different animal altogether, it's the FPS equivalent of a bullet hell shooter. As far as games like Unreal 1, sadly, I can't really think of anything even remotely equivalent since then. Half-Life 1 & 2 is the closest I can think of, just to give you an idea of how far off even the closest thing I can think of is.

Resourceful woman. I would like to think that I too could be that calm and quick thinking is a situation like that, but, obviously, you can never know until it actually happens. Hopefully, I'll never have to take that test.

Thanks for the thread bump, Walsy. No longer necessary, but nevertheless appreciated. I wound up getting GeltabZ and they worked like a charm. Nice and soft and they have little nubs on them so your thumb doesn't slip off. They were cheap too (the shipping was more than the cost of the item) and it came with 7 pads, 6 regular size and a smaller one. If you're putting them over the existing rubber pads (like I did for the right thumbstick, just for consistency and aesthetic purposes, then they fit perfectly and stay put as if they were glued on (I didn't use any glue). If you're putting them (regular sized pad) on directly on the plastic (like I did on the left thumbstick), then they slide around, still function, but feel weird because they're on there loosely. So I has an idea, I put the smaller pad on first, then put a regular sized pad over it (double pad madness!) and it worked perfectly (stays nice and put like the other thumbstick). Now I have a controller that's super comfortable to use. Here's a picture of the product and my now comfy controller: You can't see the little nubs on the pads because I took the picture with my crappy phone camera, and also because I'm a terrible photographer, but they're there. Anyway, maybe this can help someone in the future if they get into the same predicament as I did.

Iron Maiden 1984 Better than your favorite band. Iron Maiden 2014 Still better than your favorite band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E50QazmwP7M ♫ Circle of fire my baptism of joy at an end it seems The seventh lamb slain, the book of life opens before me. And I will pray for you. ...Some day I may return. Don't you cry for me Beyond is where I learn. ♫

My body is ready.

Agreed, the Victorez is the only sniper rifle that is even remotely viable as a short to medium range weapon, the SVD is far too unwieldly for that, and it's a far more versatile weapon. My thought process is that for medium range, that's what my assault rifle is for. It's at extremely long range, where the target, even in the scope, doesn't look much bigger than an insect, where the SVD (and Gauss Gun) tend to be significantly superior to any other weapon. Knowing that a center mass shot, even on a soldier wearing a fully upgraded exoskeleton, is gauranteed to take him off his feet (with the Lynx, not sure if a standard SVD will guaranteed take him off his feet) doesn't hurt either. Plus, I kind of enjoy the massive recoil and thundering sound of the SVD. It makes me feel virile, or something.

I recall liking the special Vintorez more...I'm struggling to remember its name. Tide, maybe? Then again, I always liked the regular Vintorez more than the regular SVD/SVU. Tide is a quality rifle and it's a matter of personal taste and application. While Tide's rate of fire is slower than that of a regular Victorez (more than compensated for by highly increased damage), it still fires faster than Lynx. Another advantage of Tide is practically no recoil. Tide's damage is pretty impressive, though it's not as high as Lynx or the Gauss Gun. The thing that makes Lynx (and SVDs in general) preferable to me is that Lynx has significantly less bullet drop than Tide, making it a far more accurate weapon at very long ranges. Of course, if you get really good at calculating the bullet drop into your aiming then that becomes a much smaller issue.

Inception Dog

I got Nimble to get me a Lynx sniper rifle in Call of Pripyat, it's a modified SVD. I consider it to be the single best sniper weapon in the game. The Gauss Gun does more damage and has a better scope, but it's slow rate of fire and prohibitively expensive ammunition lose out to the Lynx's vastly superior rate of fire and only slightly lower damage output (The Lynx will still knock just about anyone off their feet with a single bullet and will insta-kill, to the best of my knowledge, anything with one headshot). Now I have arguably the best sniper rifle in the game, and arguably the best assault rifle in the game. Now I just need to get my hands on an Amsel Striker for maximum short range killing goodness. The SPAS-12 will have to suffice until I get my hands on one.

Well played. In other news, the defending champ Sawx have been flat out awful so far this year.