Enoch

The obvious answer to which is, if usefulness is lost in translation, don't bother to translate it. Yeah, you might offend some D20 fanbois, and you lose the ability to brag on the box about having "over 1200 spells to wield," but you'll make a game that will be more fun because it saves everyone the time spent reading the description of "Polymorph Sandwich" before concluding that it was completely freakin' useless.

"Gotchas" in character stat/skill/ability selection. Options presented to the player in character creation/leveling up should be of approximately equal usefulness. Far too many RPGs have options presented to the player which no sane player with experience in the game would select (outside of a masochist run as a gimped character). Examples are too numerous to mention, but include a few skills in the Fallout games (First Aid; Outdoorsman), at least half the spells included in the various D&D games, about 80% of the character options in Arcanum, and the "Thief" class in Baldurs Gate 2.

Here's a new one: She billed the State of Alaska for flying her kids around. Apparently, little Piper Palin had to conduct a lot of official state business during her mom's term in office.

Yeah, I remember thinking that Carolina might just win that game when I saw how many of SD's starting offensive linemen would be out. I'm actually a bit upset that I didn't get to see more of it-- my local Fox affiliate made the quite silly decision to stick with the DAL-CLE blowout until the final gun.

Condolences to Kelv, but the ending to that CAR-SD game was freakin' awesome. Brady's injury sucks for his teammates and the fans. But I don't feel too sorry for Tom himself-- it just gives him more time to stay home with Gisele.

I think we have a winner. (I'm also really shocked at the lack of "All your base" jokes in this thread.)

Yay! Football's back, and it started where it left off in February-- with a Giants victory! The Redskins' offense looked pretty awful. I know it's the first game under a new system, but there wasn't much room for optimism in that performance.

That's fair enough, slug. Different people have different tolerances for indebtedness. I'd be lying if I didn't say that looking at the amount of debt that we're going to be assuming shortly can be very intimidating. But the alternative is continuing to pay rent every month-- at least with a mortgage, you're building your ownership interest, and any appreciation in the value of the property is yours and yours alone. Rent, on the other hand, gets you a place to stay and nothing else. Plus, the portions of the mortgage that make up interest and property taxes are completely tax deductable, which is an enormous help. Fixed-rate mortages are a little over 6% right now. The tax deductability effectively reduces it by whatever your marginal tax rate is, then you figure that 2-3 of those percentage points represent the projected annual inflation rate (more inflation is actually good for fixed-rate debtors). Then you factor in that home prices are unusually low right now (we're buying for less than the same property sold for 4 years ago), and it doesn't look quite so "stupid and retarded."

Well, it's very nearly official. They agreed to our last counter-offer on price (which was only a few thousand less than their supposedly "best" offer), but they changed the provision on the dates by which the inspections (general home inspection; radon inspection) have to happen. Once we sign off on those minor changes, we will be officially under contract. It's a relatively long escrow (Nov. 7 settlement date), but that'll give us some time to save additional funds and increase the down payment. I'm still a little bewildered. Part of me is dreading all the various work that now has to get done (finalizing financing, setting up and attending the inspections, preparing to move, and such. Other parts of me are also fearing the financial burden of a quite high monthly mortgage, closing costs/down payment that will soak up pretty much all of our savings, and the subsequent expenses for furniture, rugs, window treatments, etc. But it's also pretty damned exciting, and I'm certainly looking forward to getting out of the packed-full 1-bedroom apartment we're in now.

The Clash-- Spanish Bombs The stretch of London Calling from "Bombs" through "The Card Cheat" is really fabulous.

Are you serious? That is a huge deal. That's like completely unheard of in the U.S not to have a home inspection. What most homeowners don't do though is get enough inspectors. They usually get a general inspector (usually a mediocre one if they are lucky) when they should get that and others that are specialists in other areas. I mean we are talking about cumulative 1 grand, maybe a tad more if you don't shop around, for something that could potentially save you tens of thousands of dollars or more. Unless you know the general inspector is really good and they have the option of a deeper inspection I'd recommend foundation, plumbing, electrical, chimney, pests/mold, and general inspector. The key with home inspectors is 1) Get one with an ASHI certification, and 2) Don't hire the one your realtor recommends. Realtors, at this point in the process, simply don't want anything to happen that will kill a deal. They don't have any incentive to care whether you're happy with the place after you've bought it-- they just want the sale to happen. Thus, they tend to get chummy with the inspectors who let things go and avoid freaking out the buyers. For my part, I doubt that the home inspection will be a major hurdle in this particular deal. The current buyers in this house only bought back in '04 (they're actually losing money on the sale), so it presumably has been inspected fairly recently. Also, the state we're looking at buying in has very pro-buyer disclosure rules. If the sellers know or reasonably ought to know about any fact that would materially affect the sale, they can be liable for not telling the buyers.

Yeah, it is a concern because there is a home inspection provision in the contract. That is, once a price is agreed on, we hire a professional home inspector, he gives us a full report on the property, and we then have the right to back out of the contract if there's something we don't like. Often, when a home inspection reveals something unexpected, the buyers go back to the sellers and ask them to either fix it before closing, or knock the price back a bit to compensate. Being jerks at the negotiations stage would not be conducive to getting cooperation in addressing anything the home inspection turns up.

Oh, we're pre-approved for a fixed-rate mortgage to cover the price that's on the table now, as well as enough saved to make a reasonable (10%-ish, depending on how high the closing costs end up) down payment. It just means that we're going to be paying a lot of money every month (more than double the rent we currently pay). Right now we have the piece of mind that, if something happens to one of our jobs, the other can cover the rent and other bills by themselves. That's going out the window with this move.

Springsteen -- I'm Goin' Down

The wife and I are getting very close to agreeing to buy the house we've been looking at. It is frighteningly expensive-- we're essentially skipping the usual "starter home" step and taking advantage of the weak market and one large drawback this property has to get a much larger and nicer house than we would otherwise be able to afford in the community in question. Apart from that one drawback (it has a 10-story apartment building about 30 feet from the back fence, so there is little-to-no privacy in the backyard), it has everything we would need to stay in it for the next 10+ years, and is within walking distance (about 3/4ths of a mile) of the subway, which is a priority of ours. We've already gone back and forth a few times with contract counter-offers, and the sellers have reached what they say is the lowest price they can offer. We (by which I mean "I"-- the wife is pretty convinced we should accept) are now trying to decide whether additional negotiating gamesmanship would get us a lower price without risking that we lose our chance. As usual with big decisions, the imminent prospect of home ownership has my wife very excited, and me very nervous. To top it off, my parents (who work in real estate in a much less expensive market and have a bit of sticker shock about what we're potentially paying) are very insistent that we should essentially be jerks in the negotiations, threatening to walk away and all that, to get the price 1-2% lower. (They're also probably a little worried that committing to such a big mortgage makes the prospect of grandchildren more distant.) I recognize the logic behind their arguments (except for that last one), but the risk seems larger to me than it does to them, and I really really hate to be "that guy."

that's a pretty ill-informed statement. look at the demographics and you'll see two things that stand out: 1) the democratic party base is "labor," which generally implies uneducated and 2) the republican base has traditionally been the upper 20% income bracket, which generally implies educated. pretty standard demographics. taks 50 years ago, those demographics might have been correct. But, seriously, if the GOP base were really the top 20% income wise, they'd never win any elections. The same with the "labor" base for the Dems-- it's a rapidly diminishing demographic (about 12% of the population and falling). With its post-Nixon "Southern Strategy," the GOP has left its original power bases in the pro-business northeast, by appealing to cultural conservatives in the South and Midwest (i.e., Hicks). The modern party is essentially an alliance between the remaining pro-business wing and the more rural voters it won originally with its opposition to Civil Rights and kept with its strong support of Christian "values" issues. The Democrats, in turn, have expanded beyond their working-class roots, with strong support from minorities and women of all economic classes, and growing support among younger white-collar men who aren't in-tune with the GOP's social policy positions. If I recall correctly, analyzed independent of income, higher levels of education actually correlate with liberal voting patterns in the U.S.

I agree, although I also have an affection for "Tomorrow Never Knows" Eric Dolphy -- Out to Lunch

Sometimes I take a step back and look at the American political system and become quite disturbed. The people who have their minds emphatically made up already puzzle me especially. Citizens and pundits get very emotional about their candidates. Is it so hard to imagine that there may be occasions and circumstances where either one of the candidates might be better or worse than the other? Aren't both sides equally disturbing in their parade of inconsistencies, non-stop spin, pandering, and mudslinging? Isn't the fake-issue kabuki play of the campaign infuriating no matter which side you're on? The reasons that people use to decide where to cast their vote are, on the whole, amazingly silly and far too often driven by fear. ("All Democrats are socialists who want to take all your money and give it to abortion doctors!" "All Republicans are corrupt bastards in the pocket of Big Business!") I'll be the first to admit that I really don't have a reliable rational basis for picking one candidate over another. The problem is that there are probably only a few hundred people in the country who do enough information to do so, and people like me have no real incentive to seek out this information. (Sure it matters in how I cast my vote, but what is the likelihood that my vote controls the outcome of the election? Based on this likelihood, how much effort should I put into my decision?) Were I truly motivated to inform myself about the candidates, though, this is the kind of information I would go out and find: Who is in the candidate's inner circle of advisors likely to occupy the top 30 or so policy-making positions in the new administration? Are they competent? What are the long-term policy goals they have espoused in the past? The people who seek these jobs have usually spent the last several decades as advocates of certain policy hobby-horses. Once in power, they're going to try to enact these policies. (For example, Cheney and Rumsfeld pretty much laid out what became Bush's foreign policy and military policy in stuff they published in the '70s.) A minority of voters might have this kind of information on 1 or 2 policy areas. Almost nobody has it on both candidates in all the big issues. What little I know tells me that there are good and bad people on both sides.

uh, no. not true at all. bush's tax cuts are perfect example: revenues went UP from what was otherwise expected. remember, it's feedback. the tax money comes from the taxpayers. increase taxes and they spend less. they spend less and companies make less. companies make less and they slow down, hire fewer taxpayers, and dole out smaller raises. less pay means less tax to pay. it's not just my word, this has happened every time taxes were raised and/or lowered. revenues go up when taxes go down (in general, recessions, etc., can impact that). Sure, there is a feedback cycle between tax rates, economic activity, and eventual tax income, but it's not nearly as significant as the "dynamic scoring" advocates on the right would have us believe. The feedback cycle reduces the effect by a small percentage, but that is only if the tax cuts are paired with similar-sized reductions in government spending (otherwise, increase gov't borrowing increases costs for private borrowers and thus slows economic growth), and even then it doesn't come close to washing out the full effect. In general, when taxes go up, gov't revenues go up. When taxes go down, gov't revenues go down.

Mingus -- **** Cat Dues (Edit: The filtered word is a common slang term for a cat... and for something else.)

I'm playing a thief, and I'm not nearly as quick as you are. Probably because I haven't played it in 15 years, and never beat it back then, either. Anyhow, the freakin' game just Rickrolled me!

I think she'll be a great asset to the campaign-- she'll knock 'em dead on the talk shows and townhall meetings. And it helps McCain politically that she has absolutely no voting record on Bush administration policies. But I can't see voters getting too comfortable with the idea of her a heartbeat away from the presidency, and with a 73-year-old candidate who has had some major health issues, that's a pretty important question.

Play better games?

I see. Odd that they put a bargaining interface in for every other merchant but him.

Hmmm... I didn't get my saurus nearly so cheaply. I was expecting a bartering interface to come up when I used the "purchase saurus" option (by clicking the "talk" cursor on myself), but it didn't and I ended up paying about 50 dinars. Are you using the original text-parser interface?