Hurlshort

The only thing wrong with the Deus Ex pre-order campaign was it was too complicated. It was just some advertising group trying to figure out a way to increase pre-orders, and it fell flat. I feel like people take the business of games way too seriously. Most of the complaints are pretty petty, and consumers have the power to change the practices of these companies with their dollars (and often do. EA has done a ton to try and change their image. They aren't handing out all those free games on Origin for nothing.) I'd say the only criticism I really tend to sympathize with is the plight of the employees. If a company is mistreating their employees, then I get my hackles up. But Rockstar is notorious for their bad treatment, and no one ever really gets on their case because they make good games without DLC.

I've encountered zero bugs in 20+ hours, except for one countdown ticker on the map that went into the negatives for a day.

I had that bug in the same area too. I just restarted the game, worked fine afterwards.

Very nice to see Manning get that 2nd ring. The defense is a monster.

My gunslinger has been pretty awesome. The free and retaliation shots he get add up to some great moments.

You can expect a bit more humanity from local and small businesses, but huge corporations rarely have time for that. They have shareholders to keep happy. But setting aside the hyperbole, what has EA ever done that is borderline sociopathic greed? They release playable games, for the most part. They may try and nickle and dime you with dlc, but they only do that if the market supports it. Which it apparently does. The consumers are as much to blame there.

EA is a business. You can trust their priority will be to turn a profit, and the market will dictate their business model. Not sure why you would expect anything else out of a business.

My troops are always getting injured, and I've got about 5 folks shaken up. So when Xcom EU came out, I thought it was a decent reboot and replaced my need to play the original every year. EW improved upon it. Xcom 2 might be good enough to replace my yearly Jagged Alliance 2 playthrough. It is fantastic. Every mission feels special.

Probably because she is a minority.

None of the hippies can afford to live in SF anymore, so it's not the same.

Yes, thank goodness we have this important research being done by this benevolent group. It will really shed some light on the industry.

I agree with GD, it has a lot more to do with the city than the state. Flagstaff, AZ is a world of difference from Phoenix.

Rad the Mad? And he is the 4th?

I was a pretty decent fan of Chris Christie until I read all the crazy stuff he said about teachers. But I might be willing to overlook that stuff if I think he can make some decent pushes against government spending.

I have. It involves me moving to Canada. Hah, feel free to leave. Odd that you would flee to a country with higher tax and universal health care to get away from a democrat, but what-evs.

I've always found it pretty bizarre how we try and demonize our political opponents. Anybody who has actually served the 4-8 years to be President has sacrificed for the country, regardless of politics. It's an incredibly difficult job. That's why I'm so puzzled about Trump running. He doesn't strike me as the type to take a paycut to do one of the hardest jobs on the planet.

I'm super stressed about armor. I sold a few of my advent trooper corpses, thinking 3 would be enough for most things, but now it turns out I need 6 to upgrade. Bleh.

I have also learned a lot about what to invest in early, right now I feel a couple steps behind on armor and weapons and think I wasted too much time and resources on some stuff. But I am hanging in there at normal difficulty. Hardest part will be keeping the avatar from completing.

Nah. I mean if you want to waste time pondering ridiculously far fetched and vast conspiracies that would require a tremendous amount of people to be in on it and has no real motive, feel free to. I'm busy.

Hot damn this game is good. Put 10 hours in on a workday.

So not a fan of math ? Funny you should mention that, one of the math teachers brought up that a couple years ago she tried a new homework format. The students only had a couple questions a night, but they were supposed to watch these Khan Academy videos that cover more theory. It was a creative idea, but the parents flipped out. They wanted the drill and kill stuff.

I feel like I didn't add enough detail to my peed hat story. This wasn't just some ballcap, it was my leather Indiana Jones hat that I've worn on all of my great outdoor adventures. Thankfully it is pretty durable. Today I sat in a staff meeting, where I planned on zoning out, but then I got really into a discussion about homework. I'm of the opinion that most homework is garbage, and unless it is personalized and allows creativity and choice, it's a waste of time. So that is always fun to debate.

Huh, every parent I know has some sort of horror story like the ones Oerwinde has mentioned. Not necessarily at the frequency he is getting, though. When she was 4, my daughter took my favorite hat and peed on it, then ran to show me her handiwork.

4 years is very young to be diagnosing anything, this is hopefully just a stage he is going through. A lot of 4-year olds are total jerks, they usually grow out of it by 7-8.

So to prep for my upcoming Vegas trip, I thought I might try some card counting strategy drills you can find online. Yeah, I might not have the brain for this. Keeping track of the count over multiple hands, decks, and still actually keeping track of basic strategy is not easy.