Enoch

I DL'ed this today and played for a few hours as a new thief character. Fun stuff, although I still suck at the combat. And I'm totally hopeless at the tightrope-walking. The flavor text/Easter eggs are as entertaining as I remembered, (I'm avoiding buying my Saurus just so that I can keep talking to the dealer) and I the added content for the update meshes well.

Yeah, that really really sucks. For all the talk about what a genius Spagnuolo (the def. coordinator) was, the real secret to the Giants success was simply having 3 pass rushing linemen who required a double-team to block effectively. Now 2 of those 3 are out for 2008. They get Matthias Kiwanuka back (who was on IR for the playoffs last year), so he'll probably play a lot at Osi's spot on passing downs. But there's no way that defense will be as effective without Umenyiora in there. Well, I guess we can still hope. The starting DTs have been looking very good in the preseason (Barry Cofield in particular looks much quicker than he did last season), so maybe they'll be able to compensate for this loss on the outside with a stronger push up the middle.

Sweet. I recall getting stuck fairly early on in QFG2 (and, this being pre-internet times, getting stuck ended up being permanent). I had beaten QFG1, despite the fact that I was really awful at the combat system, but I think the subsequent titles were too demanding for the PC I used at the time. By the time I upgraded, other games had caught my eye. Anyhow, Roget the Saurus, here I come!

Is there an OEI Forum FF League I don't know about?! Considering that Henry was signed shortly after Chad suffered a knee injury, and that Henry will have to serve a 4-game suspension before he can actually take the field, there are concerns that Chad's injury is much more serious than anyone has let on just yet. (Teams aren't actually required to publish accurate injury data in the preseason like they are in the regular season.)

That's one poll result, and so far it looks like an outlier. But the race does seem to have tightened up. Anyhow, the national poll numbers don't tell you much at all. To really understand the race, you've got to look at the numbers on a state-by-state basis. I like http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ for this.

I'm surprised I'm the first to comment on the last pic. Chick with beret, sunglasses, camo trousers, midrift shirt, visible lacy red bra, kneepads, and enormous effing gun? That's laying it on a bit thick, but I can't say I don't like it.

Sadly, I think copyrights will stand in the way of using a true Myron. Existing characters in the franchise were probably part of the license that Bethesda purchased. (And, if not, they're still owned by Interplay.)

Well, the fraudulent enlistment kinda sucks. Since it's a court martial procedure, it's something you're probably going to have to explain on pretty much every job application you fill out for the rest of your life. Would it be practical to fight it? The elements of the crime do require you to have been in a certain state of mind-- either knowingly lying or deliberately concealing.

Springsteen -- For You We were both hitchhikers but you had your ear tuned to the roar of some metal-tempered engine on an alien, distant shore So you left to find a better reason than the one we were living for

Sun Ra -- Lullaby for Realville

Sonny Rollins -- Wagon Wheels From the album entitled Way Out West

Here's one I'm surprised you missed, Kelv: The Giants placed former Charger T Shane Olivea on IR, with the intent of releasing him after an injury settlement has been reached. Guy had had some trouble with prescription painkillers, which led to his being cut from SD. The Giants took a flier on bringing him to camp. He looked good for awhile, but hurt his back and hadn't been able to practice since.

haha yeah it's great pretty much everything that can go wrong, does go wrong I wouldn't necessarily say that. It's just that Martin has a different category of characters he's emotionally invested in than most fantasy writers. He doesn't fit his people into the traditional "hero"/"supporting cast" categories. Instead, interesting characters live, and boring characters die (or perhaps have something happen to them that makes them interesting, as with Bran right at the beginning of the books). I wasn't surprised by the because was never a particularly interesting character-- . had been interesting, but by the middle of ASoS, she was just a drag. It's the same throughout the series-- ? Boring. He dies. ? ? ? Fascinating. Despite numerous brushes with death, they live.

Hmmm... Being ashamed of doing "things" with a lady friend when your brother walked in? Well, if it was just "normal" sex then I don't see why you would be ashamed. Typical males tend to cheer one on when they score, just without the pom-poms. Now if you were tied down and she was whipping you, then I could see you being some what shamed. Of course there are even more shameful and humiliating acts that you could have gone through but I think it would be inappropriate to describe them here. Also of potential import here: The age of the brother.

That would be alarming. I don't see any mention of illness on his LiveJournal, though. In fact, he is recently back from a trip to Europe, which I can't imagine he would have undertaken if his health was in question. I'm between books right now. I think I'm going to pick up McCarthy's The Road next.

Speaking of DC, another story for ya'll: Today after sneaking out of work a bit early, I hitched a ride with a co-worker and went to play in an office softball game. We play on the fields just between the Potomac and the Tidal Basin, which is a stone's throw away from both the Jefferson and FDR Memorials. Anyhow, after the game, I decided to walk home. I walked up past the FDR, along the path through the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin, across the old Polo Grounds, to the reflecting pool on the Mall, around the Lincoln Memorial, and over Arlington Memorial Bridge. From there, I walked north along Route 1, right around the edges of Arlington National Cemetery (the perfect geometry of the headstones always gets me), past the Marine Corps Memorial (usually called the Iwo Jima Memorial), where some kind of parade was going on. Then it was just over the footbridge across Route 50 and up the hill into my neighborhood. All told, about 3.5 miles and just over an hour of walking on a beautiful evening. We've been looking to move further out into the 'burbs, so this is the sort of thing I've been trying to take advantage of before I miss my chance.

Today is exactly one month after my wedding. To celebrate, the wife and I (still getting used to saying that) went to Ray's the Steaks, a near-legendary steakhouse in our neighborhood. It's a tiny spot in a strip mall, next to a liquor store, with no decor or ambiance to speak of, but with the focus quite properly put on delivering the customer with the highest quality meat as cheaply as possible. (Despite the lack of ambiance, it is often lauded as the best steak in the DC area, and costs significantly less than you would pay downtown.) I had an extraordinarily good NY strip, although if we go back (and we certainly should), I want to try the hanger steak, which is the house specialty. We also ordered a bottle of Malbec, which I drank about 2/3rds of and am consequently pleasantly buzzed.

I've moved around a bit in the last 5 years, so I've jettisoned a lot of my older games. So here's the list of the PC games I've got with me that I haven't beaten. Bioshock (Got sick of the gameplay after 3 hours) Oblivion (Played until it wasn't fun anymore) Morrowind (see Oblivion) Arcanum (Plot was uninteresting, gameplay was awful) IWD expansion (Scouted a few areas, saw the grind-tasticness, shelved it) Dark Messiah of M&M (Came with my video card, never installed) Also, I've only beaten short campaigns in Medieval II Total War

Restarted the house-hunting after the wedding break. Saw 4 places in the general DC area. Really liked one in Bethesda (which, oddly enough, is not the home of the RPG development company-- they're out in Rockville), but it's about $40K over what our preliminarily-estimated price range is. It's pretty big, with a finished basement, a huge master bedroom/bath/closet, a kinda small but well laid-out kitchen, and is about 0.7 miles walk to the subway station. We can probably qualify for a big enough loan to swing it at list price, but what the banks are willing to lend us and what we're comfortable paying every month aren't necessarily the same thing. So we'll have to look at some comparable recent sales to see how much we'll be likely to be able to talk them down (in today's market, nobody pays list price), and go over our budget to figure out what we're comfortable with paying. This sort of thing gets my wife very excited about all the good homeowner stuff, but it all looks like work to me, and the prospect of making so many big decisions fills me with dread. Sometimes it isn't particularly fun to be a pessimist who is a bit lacking in the ambition department.

Springsteen -- I'm On Fire Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul

Yeah, but for GB, the only games they have that are different from the rest of their division are the @SEA and DAL games. CHI, MIN, and DET all have to play those tough games, too. The winner of that division might only need to go 9-7. The Jets have much tougher competition for a playoff spot. The division title is pretty much out of reach unless someone backs a truck over Tom Brady. And they're in the AFC, which makes the wildcard a much tougher target (remember Cleveland last year: 10-6 and no playoffs!). They were 4-12 last year. 4-12! And that wasn't because their QB play was terrible-- it was mostly because their OL stunk and their couldn't stop the run. They've made some moves to fix that, but I don't think it's enough to get them into serious playoff contention. QBs are important, no doubt. But offenses supporting casts are important too, and GB has one of the very best offensive supporting staffs in the NFC. Jennings, Driver, and Jones, along with Lee at TE, make up an extraordinary set of targets, and their OL is a great pass-blocking unit (the only one that consistently handled the Giants' pass rush in the playoffs last year). These guys made Favre look good last year at least as much as he made them look good. Now Rodgers gets the benefit of that personnel, while Favre is behind a leakier line, with less accomplished receivers to throw to. Then there are the defenses. The Favre trade doesn't do anything about the fact that GB's personnel on D is far stronger than NYJ's. Also consider that Favre has to learn an entirely new offensive system in 1 month. He's not going to be entirely up to speed on what the coaches expect of him until the season is well underway. And when Favre doesn't have clear direction (see: Sherman, Mike), he tends to go into the "just chuck it up there" mode that got him the NFL INT record.

He's not better than Favre, but he is better than any other QB in that division. And, given the overall superiority of his offensive supporting cast, I wouldn't be at all surprised if his 2008 stats end up looking better than Brett's do.

I think the Pack should still be favorites to win their division (although the injuries they've suffered on the DL are threatening that). The Jets look 7-9-ish to me, but maybe Favre lifts them to 8-8.

Arcanum. Interesting setting, cool music, acceptably intriguing inciting event... But then the gameplay and the character systems sucked so hard I was embarrassed for the designers just playing it. (Seriously, did Troika hire a team of retarded rhesus monkeys to design their character and XP systems? Because if they didn't, they should have tried it-- it couldn't have turned out much worse.) I stuck around long enough to see if the story and characters would redeem it, but they fell well short of expectations, too.

Beatles -- Baby You're a Rich Man