Enoch

Yeah, I really don't think that Obama being black makes serious assassination attempts any more or less likely. Yeah, there is still a meaningful amount of moderate racism in the US, but only the most devoted of white supremacists would take their hatred to the level of presidential assassination, and those type of extremists probably don't see much difference between a president who is himself black and a president who, say, appoints a black Secretary of State. These people have been royally pissed at every president as far back as Truman. Edit: It looks like the Obama administration is planning to have current SecDef Gates stay in his position for at least the first year of the new administration. WaPo. At least on economic and international/defense issues, Obama seems to be gathering advisors who are decidedly more to the political center than most of his more fervent supporters in the campaign were.

There are other forced companion quests, though. Off the top of my head, you need the Ranger for the rescue quest, and the Cleric when you're gathering the ritual powers.

Yeah, the NPCs aren't a great crop in the OC. (I liked Grobnar, though. He was irritating, but his reaction to one major plot event I won't spoil was very worthwhile.) The Paladin (who you should meet soon) is bearable but a bit dull. Sand (who you've already met) becomes an entertaining joinable companion. Much later, you'll get a Warlock who is interesting, and a Cleric who has some interesting dialogues, but who speaks in a rather annoying fashion (and who is compulsory for a few excursions).

As I understand it, the designation of a lead character at the start of the game (i.e., the first character you create) is only important in that you can never switch this character out of the party. For the purposes of the overland map skills and the teamwork benefit feats, you can designate the nominal leader of the group as whoever you want. Anyhow, my game is currently being delivered to my home, so I should get to try it out this evening. The group I have dreamed up is quite similar to Gromnir's. The human Ro/Sw/Ra and the halfling wizard are essentially the same (might do a 1 level rogue dip on the Wiz), but I was thinking about making the Cleric an Elf (for bow proficiency and for the 'group trance' teamwork feat) and the fighter a Genasi of some kind (because I haven't played one in NWN2 yet), angling towards some Frezerker levels.

Yeah, I often use gallon-size ziplocs for marinading cuts of meat. I just didn't know they made 'em big enough for a whole turkey.

@ GD, Sounds good. I love me some smoked meats. I hear you about the football-- with the QB chaos going on in Philly, I'm not holding out much hope that the Cards-Eagles game will be particularly competitive, and, while I hope that the Seahawks can give Dallas a close game (like they did to the Redskins yesterday), I don't think that it's particularly likely. Detroit is a disaster. I'm planning to give the turkey a nice long brine before cooking (water, salt, brown sugar, veg. stock, and some aromatic spices). However, the vessel in which to do said brining has caused me some concern. At my parents' house last year, I used a giant pot intended for canning. I have no such pot, and doing it in our cooler would require a ridiculous amount of brine to cover the bird (or some method of displacing the extra space). I considered picking up a simple 5-gal. bucket, which should be large enough for a 13 lb. bird, but that type of plastic is hard to properly sanitize, and I'm not very confident in the cleanliness of something I grab off the shelf at the local hardware store. However, I found a perfect answer at the Target yesterday-- a giant ziploc bag (the kind they make to store sweaters and such). I can put the turkey and the brine in the bag, stash it in the cooler, and cover it with ice to discourage any bacteria growth.

every single round? so they don't keep attacking the assigned target until it's dead? how lame! That's not true, unless SoZ changed it. In my experience, puppeted characters will continue to execute an "attack" order with any ranged or melee weapon. (Frustration: Warlock eldrich blast attacks are coded as spells, so if you've got a Warlock, you've got to queue them up every round.)

Keep in mind that this is a cross-platform title. What you're describing would probably work well with a mouse, but it would be nightmare on a gamepad.

The Thanksgiving preparations have begun. Did a load of shopping today, and made the cranberry sauce this evening (3 parts (by volume) whole fresh cranberries, 1 part water, 1 part brown sugar, 1 orange (peeled, seeded, & minced), 1 cinnamon stick, and some freshly grated nutmeg, cooked in a big pot until the berries all popped and it reduced to a good consistency). It can hang out in the fridge until Thursday. Anybody else doing the cooking? I'm only serving 6 (Me, the wife, and her sister, brother-in-law, Mom, & Dad) and I think I have most of the planning done.

can anyone tell me why party members aren't following my PC, whilst my PC does follow other party members? have I toggled something? Did you use the party selection screen outside of the Inn/Keep? If so, you need to use the command that tells you party members to follow you. I can't remember it's exact name, but it is there together with stand your ground, guard me etc. It's a bug that drove me crazy and made me put it on the shelf for a while in the beginng. You can actually drag those commands (from the voice command menu, which I recall is hotkeyed to "v") onto a hotbar and activate them with one click. Big time-saver.

Springsteen -- Magic The title track (and best cut) from his most recent album.

Well, my Amazon delivery didn't arrive today, so it looks like I'll actually be getting some work done around the house this weekend. (Which is probably for the best, since the in-laws will be in town for Thanksgiving, and I'll be doing the bulk of the cooking.)

Make your own. All you have to do is boil water, add teabags, and sweeten it with a simple syrup (which is anywhere from 1:1 to a 1:2 ratio of water to table sugar, heated until all the sugar dissolves). The either let it cool or pour over ice (if the latter, brew the tea a little stronger). You'll have to experiment a bit to get the little things right, like the amount of tea, the brand of tea (Luzianne is the prototypical southern brand, but may not be available up there), and how sweet you like it. But it's cheap and easy to make in pretty large batches.

I don't think it's hard to figure out the impetus at all. Marc Rich gave Bill Clinton $400,000 for his "library". Marc Rich gave Hillary Clinton's senate campaign $70,000. Marc Rich gave the DNC $1,000,000. Marc Rich gave the Clinton legal defense fund $10,000. All of it BEFORE receiving a pardon in the dark of the night on Clintons last day in office. Still having trouble figuring that one out? Rich bought a pardon for $1.48 Million Dollars. Or more accurately Bill Clinton sold a pardon for $1.48 Million Dollars and our new Attoney General Designate Eric Holder brokered the sale under the guise of doing his job. I'm quite certain some of that money found it's way into his pocket. Ah the good old days when the democrats ran the show, corruption was rampant, and I had my taxes jacked up to pay for it all. The good old days are here again. Oh, I don't dispute that the whole thing stank of purshased influence. I was more referring to the role that Holder himself had in the affair. According to his version of events, he was mostly passing on recommendations about Rich that had been given to him from others (most notably, Israeli PM Ehud Barak). Recommendations with that kind of juice got Rich around the normal DoJ screening process, and to Clinton's desk. But the ultimate decision on the pardon was Clinton's, and the beneficiary of Rich's largesse was Clinton. Hard to see how Holder had enough to gain or lose in the matter that he would be susceptible to any kind of influence. Sure, he probably should've paid somewhat closer attention and given the Prez some better advice ("Uh, this isn't going to look very good, boss..."), but it's tough lay much of the possible corruption at his feet. It's a concern, but I'm willing to give him a chance. Assuming that money "found it's way into his pocket" is, IMO, taking cynicism and partisanship to rather destructive ends. When we automatically assume the worst about the motivations of people just because happen to sit on the other side of the aisle, we destroy any chance of reasoned compromise. (See also: the "Bush/Cheney are being bribed by Exxon!!" crowd.) Hell, if money was a serious motivation for the guy, he would have never been a prosecutor in the first place-- he'd be making 5 times his salary as a parter at a major law firm.

Shorting is how you make money by betting that the market is going to go down. Essentially, you're borrowing the asset and immediately selling it at the current price, with the promise that you'll buy a replacement at a defined later date (when you think the price will be lower). I think Lewis explained CDOs a little bit. Collateralized Debt Obligation. It does get rather complicated, which is part of the point of the article-- most of the people selling, buying, rating, and valuing these assets didn't really understand them.

It was the House Financial Services Committee. Past hearings both there and in Senate Banking would be good sources.

If you're interested in the governmental angle, the WaPo did a great story a few weeks ago on how the head of one small agency tried to impose regulation on the financial derivatives market, but was shouted down by the powers-that-be. Link. That, and read the transcript of the Congressional hearings that've been held on the subject. There was one yesterday, but I don't recall which committee.

I'm dredging this thread up. Not because I want to revisit all the silly "Socialist Dog!"/"Capitalist Pig!" arguments. But because I want to heartily recommend this fantastic article on the collapse of the investment banks to everybody who is at all interested. It's by Michael Lewis, who first made his name by writing Liars Poker, a book about Wall Street in the late '80s (and since made his name bigger with Moneyball, a very influential book about baseball). It's a pretty understandable, well-written account of how the high-finance house of cards (that lots of very smart people thought was rock-solid) came crashing down. Anyhow, here's the link.

wow, that's pretty silly, even for you. it was because of people like rahm that the dems got the boot in the first place, now he's being brought back for round 2. and, better policy decisions... clinton's staff? right. The baseline we're talking about isn't the Clintonistas, it's the Bushies. The hash that the current administration has made of things has caused rather a lot of Clinton nostalgia around the country. Generally, most observers expect Obama to draw from a mix of experienced folks and newer faces. And, since there has only been 1 Democratic administration in the last 28 years, that means bringing in some people who worked for Slick Willie.

no, i think he's simply pointing out the hypocrisy of the "change" concept, as did i. i wouldn't have expected anything different, either. Well, if the "change" in question ends up being from "Beltway insiders who make lousy policy decisions" to "Beltway insiders who make better policy decisions," I'd say that he's held up his end of the bargain on that particular end.

GD, are you actually suggesting that the White House Chief of Staff be someone other than a "Beltway Insider"? It's a position that demands the ultimate Beltway Insider. Like it or not, getting things done within the government is a skill that takes some practice to learn, and it's a skill that the President's Chief of Staff needs to have. Exclude all the "insiders" and, well, you get the Carter administration. From what I know of him, Holder's potential appointment seems OK to me. One of the biggest challenges right now for the new AG will be restoring the morale of the rank-and-file in DOJ after 8 years of overly (and overtly) political management. Appointing 'one of their own'-- a career prosecutor/judge-- will go over well within the agency. The Rich pardon thing is a little troubling, but I don't think that anybody who wasn't in the room really knows who provided the impetus for that particular blunder. I don't think that the potential Hillary appointment is a particularly good idea, though, so for now I'm left hoping that it's a "crazy like a fox" move, and that Obama's people know that the full disclosure of Bill's donors, etc., will either be refused or will unearth something that would disqualify her from the post. (Which would make the rumors a lovely magnanimous guesture to her supporters, at no cost to the administration or the country.)

The edit deadline on my post has passed, but I just noticed that the "She is" in the 3rd sentence of paragraph 1 should be "This is."

As you may recall, the wife and I moved two weeks ago. We have a cat, who is slowly becoming accustomed to the new digs. She is both a good thing (e.g., she used to get freaked out and hide whenever anyone made the hardwood floors creak) and a bad thing. This morning, just as I get out of the shower, my wife comes upstairs and says that she can hear the cat whining, but can't find her anywhere. It turns out that the enterprising little beast crawled into the intake of the house's air conditioning system. The house was originally built in 1936, and heat is provided via radiators, so, when AC was added decades later, they had to cram the vents into closets and such. The intake is in a coat closet-- the closet door has a screened panel to let the air in, but the vent itself has no grate or screen. The door had been left slightly ajar, and the cat apparently climbed in, and either climbed or fell down into the basement next to the main AC unit. So, once we actually found out where she was, I removed the system filter, pulled a couple screws out of the side of the AC unit, and took a panel off. Luckily, that exposed enough space under the coils for her to climb out. (Otherwise, I probably would've had to mutilate some of the duct work.)

I defer to your experience but according to this chart they arent doing too bad. Of course Im not sure what youre referring to by "working counterparts". taks' experience is probably with other engineers, where the private sector is almost certainly more lucrative than the ivory tower. In 'hard skills' fields like engineering, math, the sciences, statistics, business, economics, law, and medicine, most college-level teachers could be making larger salaries outside the academic world. But it's tough to talk about teachers as one group, because that pairs this group with instructors in the humanities, history, philosophy, literature, languages, etc., who don't have a particularly vibrant market for their skills outside of a collegiate setting. Anyhow, we're getting pretty far afield from the original topic here. It's presidential transition time, people! Latest leaks have Tom Daschle as the pick for the Health & Human Services job (and a lead role in the administration's plans for reforming health insurance), and Eric Holder as the lead candidate for Attorney General.

To summarize: 1) Oblivion with Guns!!1! 2) RPG fans are lobster accountants