Enoch

The wife and I will be staying in. It has been a while since the jacuzzi tub has gotten any use...

Thats... disturbing. But it's not at all surprising that people find it entertaining-- throughout human history, there is copious evidence that people get entertainment value from observing acts of competitive brutality.

Weird. The figure on the right is shooting lefty. Never seen that in an ME screenshot before.

I have a cousin who works for the WWE (video editing and such), and according to family members and friends who have gotten tickets through her, the live show is actually quite entertaining. You have a beer or two, shout some insults at the performers, chuckle to yourself at the crowdmembers who take it too seriously, and watch the spectacle. I think I can understand the appeal in that way-- bottom line, those guys are showmen who know how to entertain a crowd. Granted, the people I've talked to both had good seats and got the tickets for free, so that probably colors their observations a bit. And this doesn't extend to the mysterious appeal of the televised product.

What a fantastic typo. I'm not big on non-RPG Star Wars games, but I would totally buy a game called "The Force Unlaced." In spite of my fears based on tales of weak gameplay and thematic misogyny, I caved and bought The Witcher from the Steam holiday sale (for about $13.50). Just spent an hour running around the prologue getting used to the controls.

I'm not through it yet, but so far Machinarium deserves some mention here, along with the usual lineup of more mainstream titles. And Canabalt is everything I want in an in-browser free flash game.

More Raymond Chandler: a collection of shorter works entitled The Simple Art of Murder, which includes as introduction the essay of the same name famously published in The Atlantic, pointing out how lousy most mystery fiction is while defending those rare bits of well-written, realistic, "hard-boiled" mystery fiction (Dashiell Hammett in particular).

I'd guess that the game sets a variable for "romance initiated" that flips to "on" when you first make a pass at an NPC and that starts the "love triangle" dialogue as soon as you've tried to start more than 1 romance. I don't see why Lel shouldn't be mad at you making a pass a Zev, regardless of his shooting you down, but if the dialogue doesn't account for that, then it probably is a weakness in the writing/scripting.

Back from California. Luckily, nearly all of the snow had the good sense to melt while we were gone. Now about the business of adjusting back to East Coast time before work tomorrow...

Oh, Dogfish Head 60-Minute IPA, you are too beautiful for this world.

Stupidly dangerous thing I did today: We'll be flying to Cali to visit the in-laws for x-mas tomorrow. I've become increasingly worried about how the roof is going to handle the large mass of snow sitting on it, melting slowly (and refreezing every night). The slate roof in the front and the high part of the roof over the bedroom (asphalt roll-roofing) are beyond my help-- I'd have to have a death wish to go climbing up there. But I can do something about the relatively flat metal roof over the sun porch on the back of the house. So after work tonight (and after dark), I climb out the bedroom window onto the sun porch roof (which also handles half the moisture from the high part of the roof) and shovel the snow off. I had my 'good traction' boots on, but it did get quite slushy after I had removed most of the snow from an area. The neighbors must have seriously thought I was crazy, but I got it done. Also, best wishes for a speedy recovery, Hurlie!

The higher you get in the difficulty level chart, the more important it is that you be that random aggressive berk-- the AI gets heavy production bonuses higher up, so the only way a human can keep pace is to abuse the fact that the AI isn't particularly smart at waging war. Also, cities really don't need all that much infrastructure if you specialize them-- get a couple of hammer-heavy cities that build nothing but a granary, barracks, stable, and then nonstop units (plus whatever is necessary to keep the happiness level high enough for all the mines to be worked, and the Heroic Epic in one of them), and the rest of your empire can safely spend all their time building their universities and markets. I'm alternating between Mass Effect and toying around with the beta restored content mod for KotOR2.

Part of me wants to say that if a gameworld has to rely on the vicarious implied knocking of boots in order to make the protagonist want to save it from certain doom, it doesn't have much going for it to begin with. (It's not like the videogame audience is hard to please in this manner-- something as simple as "the Archdemon has some great l00+" or "the princess is in another castle" is probably enough.) But I see your point in that the sort of relationship-simulator-style romantic interactions that Bioware fans eat up probably work better with the game's overall narrative if they're done with non-party NPCs than they are with party NPCs. It allows the writers to keep the whole of the PC-NPC reaction scripted, to use the romantic connection for dramatic purposes (Virmire gets close to this, but it doesn't do it particularly well, IMO), to inject some conflict into the relationship besides the cringe-inducing "all three of us worship you and want to boink you repeatedly, but we're going to make you pick one" chat that pops up in Bio's writing, and to prevent the player from viewing the character as simply another list of abilities and equipment that he/she can use in the game's tactical aspect. Of course this all runs into the problem that Gromnir always points out with CRPG romances-- they're going to stink so long as the games are written with them as an optional side-quest. To create an interesting and possibly moving romance involving the PC, the writers are going to have to have the stones to make it a main feature of the game's central plot motivation. (E.g., You don't get to decide whether Guybrush likes Elaine or not; and, although this isn't quite the same thing, you didn't get to decide how past-TNO felt about Ravel or Deionarra.)

I suppose that banging one's secretary is a little bit less creepy than putting the moves on inferior officers for whom one has direct command responsibility...

The view from my porch this morning: There's a car under there somewhere.

That would originate a poopstorm of epic proportions. Yeah, they have to let you change gender, class, and appearance, at least.

I'm in the same storm, only a couple hundred miles to the WSW, so we've already got almost 8 inches on the ground.

CANABALT

Voluntary vassaling is fairly common for certain AI civs when they are losing badly and have the tech needed for vassalhood. The more obstinate ones won't do it (Monte, Shaka, etc.), but the more peaceful, tech-focused rivals will do it surprisingly quickly. You've just got to be careful that they capitulate to you and not to one of the other Civs that joined in your war. (There is actually a "dogpile" variable in the AI's warmaking decisions-- they are likely to join in for part of the spoils when a rival is being crushed.) But if you're rolling pikes over with tanks, you'd probably be having more fun playing on a higher difficulty level.

Ever since I moved to the DC area and started my current job, every single snowstorm with sufficent severity to potentially close federal offices has come on a weekend. True to form, a big storm is coming tonight, and it's supposed to keep snowing through Saturday night. I need to stop for some groceries on the way home. The plan: while everybody else is grabbing milk, eggs, and bread (weirdly, these items always fly off the shelves when a storm threatens; it's like snow = universal time for French Toast), I'll go for the sausages, onions, and ale. I am also a little nervous about the condition of the slate portion of our roof. It's over 70 years old, and some of the tiles are spalling (flaking away), cracked, or slipping (the iron nails they used in the '30s sometimes rust out from under them). We've been meaning to get it looked at since we bought the place a year ago, but we haven't noticed any actual leaks, so I figured that we could chance another winter. 7-12 inches of snow up there-- cycling through melting in the sunlight and re-freezing at night until we get a good spell of above-freezing temperatures-- is not going to be good for it.

Just over 26GB. I generally order disk versions of the big, new games. Most of the stuff I buy from Steam is smaller (World of Goo, Machinarium) or older (Deus Ex, The Longest Journey, Bloodlines). A big hunk of that 26GB is Empire: Total War, which installed in the Steam folder despite coming off a disk.

Piecemeal armor is an odd choice for a high-tech gameworld. I can see the argument from a gameplay perspective (Moar L00+!), but it's tough to come up with a reason why manufacturers would focus on smaller modules, yet retain universal compatability (e.g., why should Elanus sleeves work on a Devlon torso?).

Yeah, I started a ME game yesterday, and I couldn't spacebar through the dialogue fast enough. I went with a Vanguard, which everyone seems to love. I've played an Adept enough to unlock Singularity as the bonus talent. The only character I've finished the game with is an Infiltrator, but I did some things on that run that I'd rather not carry over to the sequel. (I.e., in a moment of weakness, I decided to see what teh alien seksayness was like. I certainly don't want the game thinking that I want more of that stuff.) I could also try to finish off the aforementioned Adept run, but at some point I feel like I should try using a weapon other than the pistol. I got as far as earning Spectre status (I was home sick from work), and so far I've been avoiding committing much one way or another on the alignment meter. Which I'm sure is a rather sub-optimal strategy, given how it ties into your persuasive skills. I suppose that I'll go with generally being kind (as I like the paragon options in the game's "big decisions" better), except when being kind is ridiculous. Anybody care to remind me which JNPCs have sidequests? I know Wrex and Garrus do, but I seem to recall Tali's being built into the main quest. Are there any others, or can I safely skip spacebarring through the other crewmembers' conversations?

Shale is effective as such, and is certainly more versatile (I love the ranged abilities). But the lack of a knockdown-avoidance ability hurts, as does the fact that many of Shale's abilities are only available after switching to a non-Tank-focused mode (which takes time and reduces the "threat" level). Al, on the other hand, can get Shield Wall to keep him upright, and can Shield Bash and Overpower whenever he likes. He also benefits from stat-boosting items, runes, etc. Really, I think the best setup is to keep Al (or a Sword 'n Board PC) and Shale in the party. Shale in "Pulverizing Blows" mode is an arguably better DPS-focused fighter than Sten, Oghren, or the Dog. high hitpoints increase survivability substantially over those guys (although the lack of "Indomitable" still hurts), and the ability to swap elemental damage and resistances out on the fly is very nice.