Enoch

I'm playing an Energy Weapons character-- currently with a skill in the high-80s at level 17 or so-- and I have consistently had trouble with high-DT targets. The Laser Rifle is my sniping option, but it does very little to armored opponents unless it criticals. The Q-gun is my heaviest hitter right now (it's the only named energy weapon I've yet found), but I'm pretty terrible at aiming outside of either VATS or long-ranged stealth sniping, and the 'plasma delay' doesn't help that much. That said, the combat is still not all that challenging. I can't take on packs of Deathclaws, but I'm only 60% of the way through the level progression, so I shouldn't expect to yet.

Original properties are riskier. When publishers have an appetite to put money towards original properties, they are more likely to trust in-house developers. However, as pretty much the only publisher-independent developer with a track record of making western RPGs, they are the among the first people who get called when a publisher has an established property that it wants made into an RPG, but doesn't happen to have sufficient in-house capacity to do so. E.g., "We want to do more to monetize our current rights on the Star Wars/D&D/Aliens/Fallout/Dungeon Siege IP, but we don't have the manpower to make another game right now. Call that Urkel-heart guy and see if he has a pitch to make."

Had a food mishap this morning. Made some oatmeal, which I usually flavor with a bit of cinnamon and ground ginger. About 5 seconds after adding the spice, though, the smell hit me, and I realized that I had grabbed the garlic powder from the cupboard instead of the ground ginger. Had to scoop the top third of the bowl into the trash. So, as it was a lighter breakfast than intended, I went for an early lunch. A sandwich on a small toasted roll, with tomato, mustard, hot sauce, a squeeze of lemon, and a canful of sardines.

I'll take issue with the 'set of knives' bit. Unless you're doing some tricky stuff that requires specialty tools (boning certain types of fish, etc.), most of what goes into a set isn't going to be used all that much. What I'd do, knife-wise: 1) Get a high quality 8-inch chef's knife-- pick one that feels 'right' in your hand. Treat it well. 2) Buy a honing steel and use it regularly. 3) Buy a half-dozen cheap paring knives. Treat them terribly (read: feel free to store in a drawer and wash in an automatic dishwasher). Toss and replace when they're no longer useable. 4) Buy a cheap serrated bread knife. The $2 ones will slice a bagel just as well as the $50 ones do. (Maybe a set of steak knives for the table, too. But, again, cheap ones work fine.) That'll cover 98% of what you need. Take the portion of the knife-set cost that would've gone towards the carving knife, boning knife, scaling knife, etc., and sink it into the chef's knife. (And if you find that you do need one of the extras, just buy one a la carte. The boning knife is probably the next one I would recommend, if, for example, you buy a lot of whole poultry and piece it up yourself.) For a good generalist cookbook, I like Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

Tab is what some guitar players use instead of real music. It supplements the "G-7" "Db dim." "E7 #11" and the like that work just fine for the people who play all the other instruments with grids filled with dots.

A good place to start is with soup. Find some bare-bones recipes for a soup you enjoy, and try variations. (Different proteins, different vegetables/aromatics, different stocks/liquids, different herbs/spices, etc.) And if you're staring with store-bought stock (perfectly acceptable, but you will want to try a few and pick a quality low-sodium brand) and pre-cooked (or leftover) proteins, it can be very quick and easy. My go-to "I want something good in 30 minutes with ingredients I always keep on-hand" is a simple spicy black bean soup.

Veronica is way too "Whedon-esque peppy, nerdy, sarcastic chick" for me. That's more a writing than a voicing critique, though.

I just found one in one of the towers of the Old Mormon Fort in Freeside.

Well, we know that water chips are prone to failure. Maybe overproduction is more common than just shorting out?

Good to know. That was purely a first impression based on looks and based on his bonus perk-- I haven't fought anything tougher than a Freeside Thug since I got him.

I've delayed the Strip, but not to that extreme. Popping in on quests halfway through bugs me a bit (e.g., I've got the head of a named Fiend in my pocket), and I figure that a lot of the quests originate in Vegas. So, I'm currently level 15, and playing pimp in Freeside for a little while before going in to the Strip. (I could've passed the credit check easily, but the "80 Science" option to trick the guard robots seemed more fun.) I also picked up Arcade. Seems like he'll be a more interesting fellow to have around than Boone or Veronica was, but he also seems to be comparatively useless, combat-wise. I'm feeling a little naked since I lent my Eyebot to the Followers.

Well, the reality is that the biggest problems the country is facing are the result of an economy that has been allowed to mis-allocate resources at a fundamental level for the past several decades. If you want to pin blame on Presidents, there's some for all of the last five or more. And a lot more for their economic advisors and the academics and business leaders they listened to. As for Tig's question on the TP'ers, well, there really is no such thing. Its a fun name adopted by some Republican voters (whether they're registered as such or not) who are generally on the rightward arm of the party as far as political-economy issues go. (The GOP is largely an alliance of religous social conservatives and economic conservatives-- many Republican voters are to the right in both areas, but not all are.) The TP-related fanfare has certainly gotten these people more excited and boosted their turnout for the election, but the longer-term effects are tough to divine. The 2012 GOP presidential primaries are going to be very interesting.

I did the Repconn HQ last night, and afterwards I finally switched my loadout to 100% energy weapons. I had been carrying around a few conventional firearms for utility use, but I realized that it had been a long time since I had actually used them. Now I'm running around with a Laser Pistol, a Laser Rifle with the 2 good mods I've found, a Laser RCW (haven't used it much yet, but it's just so damn cool!), and the unique Plasma Rifle from the Repconn HQ. I did have to switch out my Laser Rifle once, though, because I mistakenly installed the "beam splitter" mod that does nothing but make the weapon demonstrably less effective. It splits the LR's DAM into 3x(smaller DAM), kind of like a shotgun, but without the spread of pellets. I could see it as an interesting choice, if it actually added up to a larger aggregate DAM v. unarmored opponents. But when I had it and a slightly-inferior-condition unmodded LR in my inventory, they had the same DPS, and the "3x(smaller DAM)" was within rounding distance of the DAM of the unmodded rifle. Something is broken with how that particular mod works. I'm now level 14, and started heading to Vegas for the first time before going to be last night. Ditched my human companion before doing so, though. Veronica was irritating (and I don't trust the BoS all that much), and Boone doesn't seem like the kind of guy you want to have along on a weekend in Vegas.

Hitting the debt ceiling would limit Treasury to payments that are no more than present incoming revenues (which vary wildly based on the time of the year). Just about all of the visible day-to-day activities of the government would stop. The debt ceiling issue is something that a lot of congressmen will rail about in TV interviews and floor speeches, then quietly allow to pass after it's attached to some guaranteed-to-move piece of legislation. (Like, say, the DOD appropriation.) Some iconoclasts who value ideological purity over actual governance will get to vote against it, but that'll be meaningless symbolism. IMO, the voters as a whole aren't really all that mad as hell. (The opinion leaders on either side of the ideological divide are madder than they've ever been, but the polity in general doesn't really follow them.) The results swung strongly towards the Democrats in the last 2 election cycles because the Bush admin's various screwups pushed moderates a little leftwards and because of increased turnout among usually-apathetic groups who the Obama campaign effectively reached. The GOP's likely gains this time are mostly the turnout effect disappearing and the crappy economy pushing moderates in an anti-incumbent direction. By and large, the people who are extraordinarily pissed off at the present Democratic rule are the people who would never have considered voting for them in the first place.

He found me when I was creeping through the little Coyote Den near Goodsprings.

Well, the system isn't designed that way, and work certainly still gets done, unless we reach the point of a federal shutdown.* But it essentially represents an operative transfer of power to the unelected bureaucracies-- they keep doing their jobs and interpreting the laws that are on the books as they see fit, while gridlock on the Hill prevents the Congress from changing their missions/authorities/interpretations/decisions/whatever to check that authority. There are some more serious consequences, though. For example, the backlog of un-filled federal district court judge vacancies has gotten large enough to seriously impact how the judicial system is run. The prospects of any improvement there dim significantly with a more evenly-divided Senate. * Which means that a present budget for day-to-day expenses of agencies hasn't been passed, so they all have to cease operation until Congress gets them an appropriation. I know a government shutdown was postulated in the article WoD linked, but I still don't think that the GOP is dumb enough to try that again. It backfired on Newt & Co. pretty badly back in the '90s.

This was my first time voting in my current state & county, and sweet jeebus, do these people like their elected offices. Besides the big-ticket races(Governor, Senator, House Rep, etc.), there are apparently 3 state legislature seats for my district, a State Comptroller, a State Attorney General, a County Executive, a district-based County Council seat, 3 at-large County Council seats, both district-based and at-large Bd. of Ed. seats, 6 local judgeships, a few other yes/no questions as to whether a sitting appellate judge should stay in office, a State's Attorney, a Sheriff, a Clerk of the Circuit Court, and a Registrar of Wills. There was also a question on a proposed state constitutional amendment (raising the amount-in-controversy requirement to get a jury trial in a civil suit) and a county-level question on whether to start charging ambulance fees. I mean, I understand the County Executive, County Council, and Board of Ed. positions. (I'd argue that, in smaller jurisdictions, there's no reason why the Bd. of Ed. needs to be separate from the county government, generally, but in a big county like this, making policy for the schools is a daunting enough job to require the full attention of some officials.) And I guess having multiple at-large positions and 3-member statehouse districts instead of single-member districts has some salutory effects on making people feel more represented (although it would be better if I could allocate my multiple votes for the position all to one candidate, which I couldn't). But the election of judges is a hilariously stupid public policy. Same for a Comptroller-- a position that demands a neutral auditor, rather than someone who has to shill for votes. Structuring an appointing process for positions like this is important and difficult, but direct election is one of the worst ways to solve the issue. And the net effect of having so many picayune elected offices is that virtually nobody is going to be making informed decisions about most of them. I mean, what the hell does a Registrar of Wills even do? How is there any kind of policymaking discretion in the position that the voters need a say in? And although the multiple seats for a single district helps people feel more representated, it multiplies the due diligence that an ordinary voter has to do to the point that a very very slim minority of voters will bother. In effect, this wave of candidates makes most people into straight party-line voters, and, for the minor offices, often turns incumbency into a job for life, absent colossal screwup. All of the judgeships, half of the minor offices and a even few of the major ones (like the State AG), featured unopposed candidates. The end result is, ironically, much less accountability and a much less smoothly-functioning government than you would get if it were structured with a few high-level elected offices, whose occupants have the authority to appoint (and for-cause authority to fire) the Clerks, Attorneys, and all the rest.

Eh. Overall, I've been unimpressed with the VO and dialogue writing, but I wouldn't say it's bad. It's really really hard to have a dialogue not sound stilted when one character is voiced and the PC isn't, and when the conversation always cycles back to "so, what else do you want to talk about." Some of it is worse than others, though. I just had my first long chat with Veronica (I had somehow missed her the first time I passed through the location where she hangs out), and I couldn't wait to kick her out and go get Boone again. Although that just may be my general dislike of her particular nerd-culture character archetype (i.e., the aggressively peppy sarcastic chick).

Hey, it gets hot out there in the Mojave. Wearing anything heavier than a skirt (or one of the more scandalous raider outfits) should give the player a penalty to their hardcore-mode H2O meter.

Huh. I remembered it mentioned in something I read pre-release and assumed that it was revealed at some in the game that I haven't reached yet. It would strike me as a little odd if it wasn't. I double-checked on the wiki, which confirms, but has a [citation needed].

I think the great advantage that Mr. New Vegas has over Three-Dog is that Mr. NV sounds like

I did that over the weekend. It was great. Rare to see a 'dungeon' in these days whose payoff almost entirely narrative (only 1 fight of consequence and almost no useful loot) and yet is completely satisfying. The core conceit of V11 is hardly original, but the way it unfolds to the player exploring it is really well done. Edit: Plus, the historical developments within the Vault make perfect sense from a game-theoretical point-of-view: .

I had to stop myself from wearing the spacesuit helmet everywhere. It's still the best helmet I've found, DT-wise, but I was giggling way too much whenever a slo-mo shot or an accidential brushing of the mousewheel gave me a 3rd-person view of my character.

Anyone know what the initials are supposed to stand for in the "Laser RCW" weapon?