Hurlshort

I'm happy with the weightless ammo because there is plenty of other junk that always caused me inventory issues. Of course, my strength was 3. I really actually liked the weapon degradation. It kept me busy switching weapons and trying new things. I thought real life weapons do have issues with jamming if they are kept dirty?

Awesome. I assume this is an easter-egg quest from the Moria expansion, correct? Yep. So far it is simply fantastic, and I haven't even got into Moria. They now have epic weapons that level with your character. So instead of throwing out your gear every few levels, you keep them with you, name them, and even assign traits to them by doing special quests. Which, in retrospect, seems like the way to go. It's ridiculous to think that Sting is going to become a useless dagger after a certain level. (sting isn't available, just using it as a famous example of an epic weapon.) Right now I'm helping the dwarves clear a path to the Moria gate, so they can start reclaiming the halls.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

I put $55 into my gas tank his morning, which is down from about $80 a few months ago. I'm not going to sweat paying $30 here. I'm waiting for Christmas anyways, I just have too many games already and not enough time.

He deserves it, he's one of the more reasonable and less insane people on these forums. Congratulations! What are you going to blow all that money on?

Remarkably positive. You know, even the NMA review isn't all doom and gloom.

I'd imagine it depends on what university. A Harvard professor is probably doing pretty well compared to a state school professor. But I'm not all that familiar with college level pay, I know it's tough to get tenure.

Depends on the school, but typically private is considerably less. The salary level might be similar, but usually health care and retirement funds in private schools are not anywhere near what you get from a public school. My first teaching job was at a private school. The pros were I had 10 students in my class, I had no teaching credential, and I had some freedom with the curriculum. The negatives were I made $11 an hour, had no teaching credential, and had no idea what curriculum I should be teaching. But that's a example of a bad private school, there are many private schools that attempt to hire credentialed teachers and pay them decent salaries. They won't make more than public school teachers, but if you are a devout Catholic then a Catholic school might be your preference to teach at. I've done workshops with private school teachers and many are above and beyond dedicated to teaching.

I'm trying to help Bill the Pony get home in LotR Online.

Anything by Bernard Cornwell is pretty great historical fiction.

Teachers only work 9 months per year. Unless your position is that those nine months are so packed with hours they make up for the 480 working hours of the remaining 3 months? Where are you getting that? I'm paid on a 10 month salary, and that really is what I work. But during the school year I work 10-12 hour days and usually 6 days a week. My wife is a High School teacher and she works more. This weekend we spent to entire weekend, Friday night to Sunday afternoon, at a cheerleading competition. She gets a few hundred dollars as a stipend for coaching, but I worked it out and it doesn't even cover the gas she spends driving to all the events. But I do love having my two months off. I work summer school every few years, but those two months are huge for recharging. Teaching is like giving five major presentations every day to an audience with no attention span. It's not a job everyone can do (well) and it has a high burnout rate.

That's an interesting chart, but there are a ton of factors to take into account here. I only feel I am underpaid based on where I live. I am in my 5th year of teaching, I make 55k a year and an extra 5k or so in summer and extra duty pay. That would be fantastic in most parts of the country, I could buy a nice house for my family and I might even be able to allow my wife to stay home and raise our child. But I live in the Bay Area. My wife needs to bring in a similar salary just so we can afford the mortgage on our 2 bedroom condo. We commute about an hour so we can afford even that. Now if we decided to work where we live, we take an instant pay cut of about 10k each. That means the districts in San Jose pay 45k starting, and thirty minutes out of San Jose pay 35k. That's a huge drop in salary. Many small town districts pay their teachers around 25-30k a year. Statistics don't tell the whole story here. But hey, it also doesn't account for the fact that their are a fair amount of horrid teachers out there. They would get canned in most other jobs, so they end up teaching and luck into tenure. It's a shame, but for every lousy teacher there are probably a lot more that work hard to educate and raise children up to a higher level.

But if you compare teachers to other highly educated fields, they are way behind the average. Teaching requires a four year degree and at least a year of graduate work. It also requires continuing education units in order to maintain a teaching credential. As for taks and Aristes, I'm really not disagreeing with you. It's not a perfect system, there are major flaws. I'm just not sure what the alternative is. I'm not a big fan of my union, but I'm also not a big fan of my district office. It's basically fighting fire with fire, but the alternative of no unions is much worse in my opinion.

that's the problem, hurlshot. everyone excuses a crappy system because of the conditions that the crappy system itself created. if there was genuine competition, this would not be an issue. taks Are you talking about competition among teachers? How do you gauge that? A teacher in downtown LA is never going to meet the same performance goals as a teacher in Beverly Hills. It doesn't matter if that teacher is way better, they are serving a population that has numerous outside factors against them. There is already an issue with low economic areas being able to hire qualified teachers, if you start forcing them to meet performance goals to earn their paycheck, you are going to see a field that already has trouble getting people to work dry completely up.

It's interesting to hear the negative comments on the teacher's unions. I'm not saying they are perfect, but they are absolutely necessary. Teaching isn't run like a business. Realistically a school district has absolutely no motivation to hire qualified teachers. They make the same amount of money no matter who is in the classroom. The performance goals just don't affect the bottom line. If a school has low test scores, the government isn't going to stop funding that school. And it shouldn't, because that's punishing the students more than anyone else. The union protects teachers as they move up the salary schedule.

I think that's Final Fantasy Online. Cool. Llyr has finally gone over the edge completely.

Unions are also a breeding ground for corruption and strong arm tactics. The mafia used to be very involved with the unions. But I love being part of a Union.

Um, FDR did not cause the Great Depression. Maybe I'm misreading your post taks.

Yes, lets argue over the definition of the vague phrase 'went under'.

Eh, I've never been dumped, so I'm not able to help here. My advice is to always be the dumper. Sometimes I write a letter that illustrates all their character flaws. That usually makes me feel better, and then I share it with everyone I know.

Uh...you are grasping at straws here. It was forced to close its doors for a few days, the majority stockholder filed for bankruptcy, and they went into a receivership status. I'm not sure how else you want to qualify "going under". Going under doesn't mean dead.

I went on my first raid in LotR Online. It was fairly exhausting, we beat a few bosses but I didn't get anything neat. I'm not really sold on raids, but I might go back again. I was glad to see that despite my n00bness, there are always bigger morons in a group of 24 than me.

I agree that sales don't necessarily equal quality, but if the Beatles couldn't turn a profit, we wouldn't have had so many great albums from them. You need to turn a profit to keep on going here. Plus, Fallout 3 is not only garnering solid sales, it also is garnering critical acclaim. And I'm not just talking about the gaming media that everyone likes to rail against, I'm talking about many folks on this forum who were pleasantly surprised at how good Fallout 3 turned out.

But Might and Magic IX was the ruination of the series. It drove the final nail into the coffin and it took years before we saw another attempt at a Might and Magic property. Same thing happened with the last Ultima game. Fallout 3 is the salvation of the Fallout series. It is selling fantastically. Fallout was a dead series before it came out.

Of course it wouldn't. I meant even that would be above F3. Nope. I suppose we could take another poll with FO:T included, but I doubt it's necessary. I voted for Fallout 3. I enjoyed FO:T, but I wouldn't change my vote. FO:T is very much a niche product, moreso than the first two Fallouts. Great for niche players, but not for the mainstream audience that game companies need to thrive.