majestic

I don't play them any more as much as I... load them up with cheats enabled and skip the missions and simply enjoy the story/dialogue. That reminds me I still have Wing Commander Saga to play through. But that's... uhm. I know it's just a mod campaign but it really is 5 minutes of gameplay and an hour of reading Wing Commander fanfiction.

I suffered through a terrible heartburn episode the entire night. It's still not entirely gone. When I speak I sound like Bonnie Tyler after ten packs of cigarettes and a night full of booze. My throat feels like it was washed in acid... well... not much of a surprise since that's pretty much exactly what happened. I haven't had heartburn for a while now. Certainly not to a degree where I could feel the acid reflux just below my larynx. Ugh. It's still not entirely gone. When I lie down I can feel it creeping further up. 'twas probably the peanut and chocolate mini cakes I indulged in. At least I hope it was, because the only other thing I ate today and yesterday were lintels... and I love lintels. More than chocolate and peanuts, really. If it doesn't go away soon I might go and snatch my mother's GERD medication the next time I go and feed her, uhm, yeast culture. She's got plenty left over from after her gastric sleeve surgery. Hell knows what would happen if I went to a doctor complaining of a sore throat and a cough right now. Eh...

Huh, how did I forget Wing Commander and Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi. Must be getting old...

Even at the risk of sounding like SonicMage117 StupidSeal here them early 3D Shooters with no innate mouse look are hard to play these days. So go ahead and count them as classic even with with mods. I wouldn't play say Dark Forces without the upgraded engine to have mouse look. Sure it is strictly speaking not necessary because it was developed without mouse look in mind after all but ugh. That's like going back to tank controls in early survival horror games. Oh, that brings me to another classic that I love and replay every now and then: Alone in the Dark. Graphics haven't aged too well but the atmosphere is still tight.

Mega Man 2 on the NES. Donkey Kong Country on the SNES... the first X-COM games on PC. JA2 is probably also up there. If we expand the the late nineties we get two of the best games ever: Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and Planescape: Torment. Although I don't replay either. Feels like blasphemy to do so.

The pay raise I put in for in March was finally approved after a lockdown induced hold. I didn't specify any amount during my talk with my boss (we do that once a year, have lunch on expenses and talk about work, what's up, what's good, bad and potentially ugly) but I did mention that it's not really pay as much as a monthly insult. He was a bit taken aback and apparently immediately panicked and thought I want to quit. Which in fact I don't, I'm more than happy to trade being a little underpaid for the other advantages of my job (short commute, great work/life balance when the world isn't ending due to a pandemic, interesting things to do, etc.). Underpaid in this context means that I would get more for the same job at other companies (i.e. not being part of an in-house development team but a dedicated software company), not that I wasn't already paid very well already compared to average and median incomes in our region. I thought I'd get a bit more. Turns out I was wrong...

I almost wanted to ask what disaster Doom 3 was but then I noticed... well, never mind then.

No, definitely not. I knife everything that's knifeable (is knifeable even a word?). RE4 was particularily ridiculous, I ended the game with something like 36 Magnum rounds left over.

We're back to mandatory home office or at the very least an office rotation that makes no sense for our team of three people. I dunno. I like being at the office more. It's less convenient but it's a lot easier to absorb what everyone else is working on, who they were talking to and picking up bits and pieces here and there. We interact a lot on Teams but that's not nearly the same. Well and the other two guys have the video conference discipline of five year olds. The absolute highlight last week was a short talk where one of them went to make himself a coffee on a frickin' freight train (or at least it sounded like freight train running through my eardrums) and the other one had his mic attached to his shirt. Which would be okay if that thing had any noise cancellation, but it doesn't, so it was a litany of rhasping sounds whenever he moved. Which.was.all.the.god.damned.time. It's occasionally hilarious too. Like Friday when one of the guys got told off by his wife for making too much noise. She just showed up and talked to him like he's a retarded five year old. Ugh. I'm beginning to understand why recruiters like to see MMO raiding experience on resumees. Pull off something like that on TS or Vent during the raid and it's a f'ing 50 dkp minus and the bench for repeat offenders.

That reminds me of a NSFW comic strip: https://www.sexylosers.com/comic/283/ (that one's mostly harmless, still probably not a good idea to show it directly)

Man, don't compare German "German" to our beatiful language. Seriously. Pssh! The gall. I mean historically you're not wrong, but in a more contemporary view there's a huge divide these days. Might as well tell a Bavarian he's German and wait for the reply. It's going to be similar. You stay in Lech, one of the most ridiculous overpriced touristy trap locations you could potentially find on the planet and think Switzerland is overpriced? Heh. Okay. Why not. Sure Switzerland is more expensive overall, but Lech is not a budget destination. Not by a long shot. But no, I don't ski or snowboard. I did once, a long time ago, because our schools always had a week of skiing in winter and a week of hiking in spring/early summer as part of our curriculum, but then I had basic military training during the coldest winter of the past thirty years (-20° and heavy snow) and now I stay as far away from that hellish white stuff as I possibly can. We can discuss whatever you like. How about a fun little fact: Most years the most criminal group of migrants in Austria are actually... Germans. Even though they're by not the largest group of immigrants (not that there's that much of an overlap, you can just cross the border after all). They're sometimes beaten by Romanians. Yet when our politicians talk about importing crime through migration we're usually talking about Turks, or Afghans... sometimes Chechnyans. Oh, and people from Morocco, they're like all thieves for some reason. But since this is the political thread, you'd be in luck if you'd live here and have citizenship, you could vote for an actual successor party of the NSDAP and let out that inner facist of yours. Yay?

I'm not German. Lexx is. Ben was too, wherever he went. I'm living in what essentially amounts to a gentrified suburb of Vienna. My opinion on whether I would like the US or China to be able to collect my data, in which case the answer is easy: Neither. On how to deal with Antifa? Leave them be. Looters and people who damage property? Arrest them and deal with them according to the law. And... fix the underlying issues. Violent protests are a symptom, not a cause. Although that one is considerably less easy. *shrug*

Yes, every political dissident needs to be put in a hard labor camp where they can properly concentrate on becoming better citizens. So they can do their part. Like the Chinese do. Wait a moment, you don't really like the Chinese government, that can't be it. Are you sure you're South African and not Argentinian with German ancestry?

No, because then the grind would make sense. It's just random and with terrible drop chances. You can spend money on multiplayer, I think. Not sure, never tried, but it was possible in ME3 and Andromeda, so I'm guessing it's true for DA:I either. Too lazy to google right now.

So have you noticed yet that craftable weapons can be enhanced with rate components that are annoyingly hard to grind and that can have varying special properties? So finally finding that rare ore doesn't mean you'll be getting the one special you desire. Yeah. Loot in DA:I is like loot in an Asian grinder MMO.

According to the picture anyway. The God-President himself has giant laser eyes with which he blasts commie robots. xD

Let's hear what God-President Reagan has to say about that. Or sing?

Yeah, might as well chime in. I think I might have dodged the bullet that is having to inject insulin last year. At least for a good while. Last year in January I went to the doctor and got a full blood work up to check if anything might be wrong. Turns out there was a physical reason for me being tired all the time and having hyperphagic episodes. Most of my blood work was okay except for some minor indication of liver damage and an HbA1c of 9.1. Blood pressure was pretty bad too, but not as bad as Azdeus'. That didn't come unexpected though, all of my family on my mother's side has type 2 diabetes and the family on my father's side all have high blood pressure. I just had to pick the best combination for myself. Got a nice little leaflet telling me that I should change my diet, a prescription for Metformin (500 mg, twice per day) and a referral for an internal medicine specialist for some follow up checks including an ECG. Luckily those came up negative except for a minor enlarged heart, a common side effect of long term high blood pressure (or being an athlete, which, let's face it, I'm not. Hurlshot might have Athlete's Heart though ), so some medication against high blood pressure was added and told to come back after a three month observation period. I began with a low carb diet and interval fasting (of the 16/8 kind, I start at 11 - the exact time our work cantina starts with lunch and end at 7), added some regular excercise and three months later was back at a healthy HbA1c of 5.3 where it's been sitting ever since, the liver values are within normal range now as well. My fasting clucose levels are around 85 to 95 mg/dl and it's been well over a year since I had more than 130 mg/dl after a meal, even if I splurge by having something that amounts to a carb overdose (i.e. pasta and a sugary dessert or pizza). I dropped the low carb diet after the initial three months and replaced it with something a little easier to sustain. Resting blood pressure is down to 110/70 (pulse 60), without the medication now. I feel fine. Better than in a long while. Except for never... and I really mean NEVER feeling as if I had enough to eat. That's probably in part due to the strict regimen of really only eating one normal meal per day (a workplace necessity, while we have a really good cantina you don't get special diet food there obviously), some fruit in the afternoon (mostly berries, avoiding high sugar fruits like grapes) and an evening snack that I actually really measure with a kitchen scale. 50 grams of bread, 100 grams of protein and whatever vegetables of the low carb/low calorie variety I feel like having. I imagine that this constant need to walk over to the fridge and eat everything at once is what recovering addicts feel. Just with unhealthy food instead of alcohol or other drugs. Well, can't be helped. I could have listened to my doctor before it got to that point but hey, where's the fun in that? Can't have me doing something without a bloody boot up my arse first. Meh. I wonder of that ever goes away? Probably not. Anyway, good luck getting your diabetes into remission LC. edit: Forgot to mention, I'm still taking Metformin. Not sure if I still need to, but I can't get free blood sugar testing strips without being on diabetes medication. Stupid commie healthcare. ^^

I had ostrich carpaccio once, like 20 years ago. We had business lunch etiquette training at school and it was the cold starter of the menu. 'Twas really good and I got some extra. My fellow students really didn't like the idea of eating ostrich, and raw to boot (the fact that you can actually pretty much tells how much not like chicken ostrich really is). The entire menu was ostrich carpaccio, cream of asparagus, fried asparagus with bacon and finally goat cheese with honey and strawberries as dessert. Plus a lengthy explaination of what the hell all those utensils and glasses really are for. Which I happily can say is knowledge I never needed in my entire life - and hopefully never will. Heh.

Speaking of BG2...

Just imagine the possibilities. Romances on three levels - planes, passengers crew. With a potential inter-level romance happening here and there, and an unlockable mile high orgy between several planes, the crew and the passengers as secret ending. The idea is approved. Obsidian, get going. Get help from BioWare if you're unsure about how to tackle the orgy part.

Well I don't speak French at all but guessing from the content here I'd say you're at the wrong forum. Obsidian belongs to Microsoft, yes, but they're not the developers of Flight Simulator 2020.

It's hard to come up with an AD&D 2nd Edition based game where a single class thief is a good choice. They're all best replaced by dual (where supported) or multi classes even in the old Gold Box games. A problem that's not limited to thieves though, clerics have the same issue. Being locked into a single attack per round with terrible chances to hit the enemy in games where hitting things and physical combat is most of the focus is... a bad mix. In that way it's good that 3E tried to mix it up a bit, even if they didn't always succeed (rogues are still super front loaded in terms of skills and in IWD2 that means a single rogue level at the beginnig is enough to carry you through the game if you take high intelligence and level as wizard).

Well you can do Watcher's Keep fresh out of Chateau Irenicus (at least up to the Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, farther if you don't mind cheese and rest spamming), and Kundane/Belm is available fairly early. Even with only the normal haste and prior to the final attack per round bonus you can trounce everything and it only gets better from there, and a party size of three or four characters makes sure you dip into HLA level... well, well before the Underdark. Fighter/Mages are better, sure. Whether it is your old buddy Koveras or a home made Kensai/Mage dual class, or even a plain old F/M MC. But an F/T is in my opinion the only way to play a thief character in BG2 without gimping yourself compared to everything else that's available. Except maybe single class clerics. Ugh. I'd rather waste time laying traps than that. Talking about the game is the only way I play it since Ascension came out. Combat being a chore is why my player characters usually end up having fighter levels and never venturing out with a full party of 6. DC or MC... doesn't matter that much. But that's also true for IWD. Start the game with three fighters that DC into a thief, a mage and a cleric (or druid if you feel lucky but that stat roll needed, whew) at level 9. Liberally rest until healed and just walk over traps until you can DC. The proceed to destroy everything a lot easier than it would have been otherwise. The IWD EE and IWD2 being exceptions of course. Bringing a sorcerer in IWD is just ridiculous enough to merit it's inclusion every time (bring a paladin, sorcerer and fighter/druid playing on Insane. Cheese yourself through the beginning and enjoy) and IWD2 is a whole different can of worms.