majestic

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.

Sure is, but we're making the best of a SonicMage117 StupidSeal troll thread. So there's that...

The beauty of using Imoen is that you can drop a party member for the added experience gain without missing out on anything. Except access to traps, but I'd rather timestop and nuke everything on screen. It's less annoying to set up and much more of a spectacle. But yes, she's not the best thief nor is she the best mage in the game (although how much mage stats matter in BG2 is an entirely different discussion - it ultimately boils down to two extra spell slots for Edwin compared to being able to wear the Amulet of Power), but she's - imo, obviously - the best of the two for one options when it comes to thieves. No, but I had 10 attacks/round fighter/thief player characters with Foebane +5 and multiple Assassinations. It's probably not as funny as using Mislead to repeatedly backstab but it puts out a lot of raw damage and you can hold your own in fights with completely obliterate enemies that are immune to backstab. I'd put using Mislead like that in the same category as using Simulacrum to circument the summoning limit. It's interesting to do but in terms of convenience nothing beats sending your buffed up meele whirlwind of destruction into the fray and watch everything on screen die in a round and a half. I mean, sure, we're talking about a game where outside of modifications you can beat every fight solo with the most underpowered classes in the game, so that's pretty much purely academic. You sure you're talkin about Imoen here? Because that romance arc is only available in a mod, and it is a contender for the worst modification in the history of ever.

That's all well and true - but only if you assume that you really want a thief character in your party that levels as a thief and it is not going to be your Fighter/Thief player character that can make liberal use of the Assassination HLA bug (that I presume is fixed in the EEs and certainly fixed in all the fixpack mods anyway) and has faster acess to more traps than Jan (due to the way HLAs work in BG2). That's fine, but then we're well past the point of "who is she going to replace who is more useful than her" in terms of raw power and we're back to roleplaying or finding NPCs annoying or not, or silly limitations like avoiding rest-spamming. Whether she replaces Nalia or Jan doesn't really matter. She has enough thieving skills to handle the rest of the game - unlike Nalia - and she fires more and better spells off than Jan at the same experience level, and she's not limited by being an Illusionist with no access to Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting. So, nah. I honestly don't know if the EE introduces an extra thief NPC, but... I'd pick none of the available ones for their thievery skills. But I will pick a Tihef/Mage DC over an MC every time.

Funny, in the sea of suboptimal NPCs that the Baldur's Gate series has Imoen is one of the more useful ones. You can make her useful in BG1 and she comes as useful right from the start in the second. Annoying VO aside, in terms of raw power added to the party she's kinda hard to beat in BG2. Not counting mod NPCs of course.

Radio waves and light are both EM radiation of different frequency, i.e. all EM radiation travels at the speed of light in a vaccuum. So... yes. But signal strength diminishes very quickly (squared to the distance traveld if I remember my high school physics correctly, it's been a while).

Back to mandated home office against the background of rising infections. Also super stoked about launching the largest customer project in years from home. 's exactly what I need, my brain beginning to associate the place where I usually relax with crunch.

Don't feed him. Especially past midnight.

Seals, hedgehogs, dogs, communists, it's hard to keep track after a while.

I think I need to rewatch that. Too bad the DVD's locked away somewhere in my cellar.

Started reading Dune Messiah. I'll try to continue Also sprach Zarathustra afterwards. Try being the operative word. Oh boy.

I can still see what you did there, you dawg.

Finished Wasteland 3.

Silly me was giving him the benefit of the doubt after the reaction to Eye of the Beholder 2, but I guess that thread just settles it then.

Eh, wow. Currently at the very end of Wasteland 3 and it's not entirely what I expected. And by "not entirely" I mean... not at all. Holy crap I done made a mess out of that.

I'm usually a fan of getting to know a system on your own but in WL2's case I really recommend reading up on how CLASSIC stats interact with each other and how initiative is calculated. The combat's kind of unforgiving so playing a suboptimal stat spread isn't impossible but potentially not a lot of fun.

Maybe, but I've lost so often it barely matters any more.