Enoch

Are you trying to tell me that none of those guys have foil-wrapped zuccinis in their pants? Ornette Coleman - Lonely Woman

Wow.... just wow. Sometimes I forget just how believable This is Spinal Tap really is... then I see real, irony-free heavy metal lyrics like those. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I was thinking exactly the same thing. Unfortunately, no music for me right now.

Where's the option for "Gluttony and Lust?"

I used to have this poster on my wall:

You can download the entirety of the original Railroad Tycoon from the website for Sid Meier's Railroads. One of the best games of its era (and the progenitor of dozens of "tycoon" ripoffs).

Link for those interested.

He'd have better luck as Joe Montana, I think. (Hey, wait a minute... ) I prefer to just call him "New Mexico."

Update: It's guns. He's currently out on bond. I'd bet that any plea or trial will be pushed back until after the season is over.

You can't really "breach" common law-- common law just decides whether a contract exists and whether there has been a breach of that contract. Verizon's best legal argument is probably to argue that the contract never existed under a theory of mistake. The idea being that, if one party makes an offer ("I offer this apple"), and the other party accepts but believes that the offer is for something different entirely ("I accept your banana"), a court shouldn't have to decide which one to screw over. Instead, the whole contract is void because there was no actual agreement. Still, this would be a case of unilateral mistake, which is generally only honored if there's some serious unfairness or if the non-mistaken party somehow tricked the other party. Fun Sidenote: The classic case regarding mutual mistake is Raffles v. Wichelhaus, a 19th century English case involving a contract to transport goods on a ship called the Peerless. The Peerless, unfortunately, wasn't-- there were 2 ships called "Peerless," both slated to depart for Bombay on different dates. The court voided the contract because there was no real agreement (and neither party had reason to suspect that the other might be talking about a different Peerless).

Could have been worse. I had a roommate who was a huge Billy Joel fan. To this day, whenever I hear the beginning of Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, I want to beat somebody over the head with a bottle of red and a bottle of white. Thelonious Monk -- Bemsha Swing.

That's the nature of all improvements in a complex software project. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> True, but they seemed more noticeable in the gameplay for the R:TW patches than I've seen in other games.

More potentially bad news for Da Bears: Police raid Tank Johnson's house. Nothing confirmed yet, but the cops say they found some things that they were specified in the warrant. (Drugs? Guns? Whizzinators?)

You are correct. There is no 25th Amendment for members of Congress, and long periods of medical leave are not unheard of. In fact, even if they're not sick, there's nothing forcing them to show up for work. The only check against a Member not performing the duties of their office is the election process. By the way, all this is not a law that was created by Congress. Anything to do with the removal of Members is Constitutional in nature, and the drafters didn't address the problem of sustained illness on the part of a legislator.

The most deserving of the OROY award are Marcus McNeill (starting OLT for SD) and Nick Mangold (starting C for NYJ). But linemen never win. Thus, the race is between Colston, V. Young, Addai, MJD, and maybe Devin Hester (if returns count as offense). Bush has had a couple of great Sportcenter plays, but he's also had way too many runs for -2 yards. Given that none of the rookie pass-rushers have done much, DeMeco Ryans looks like a lock for DROY. Haloti Ngata (a name clearly meant to be sung to the tune of Hakuna Matata) has an outside chance.

Senators and Representatives get the same health plan options as other federal employees. Linky

This is definitely the next game I'm buying, but probably not until I'm through my current game of NWN2. Hopefully it will be nicely patched by then. (Although many of the patches for Rome seemed to have lots of unintended consequences, fixing some big problems, but creating other seemingly-unrelated smaller ones.)

Since you're an arcane spellcaster thy this: right at the beginning of the fight hit pause and quckly enable Defensive Casting. Next, try to hit with a Slow spell before he goes into frenzy. Since he's a warrior his Reflex saves are low so he's fairly susceptible to it. Follow that up with a Haste spell on yourself and the fight becomes ridiculously easy. In the end, just finish him off with a few evocation spells. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Nitpick: Slow requires a will save, not reflex. Although the point about warrior-types not being likely to save remains true. I'm still in chapter 1 (although at what I believe is the very end, in the Githyanki Lair), but I'm looking forward to this fight. I don't mind the spoilers that much-- it's pretty obvious from the cutscenes I've gotten so far that I'm going to have to deal with this oaf. The fact that it's 1-on-1, though, makes it more intruiging.

I thought it was quite clever. Although trolling for compliments after you've made a joke is the sort of thing that makes me want to channel Eldar and call you a "yutz." To bring us back to the topic, here's a Playoff Odds Chart based on Football Outsiders' DVOA statistic.

... so you're exactly as well-qualified as Schilling is! (Although he probably has a leg-up in getting the funding together.)

On a complete tangent, it looks like Dan Marino still has that competitive fire.

Missed this comment earlier. The reason that Denver's defense has declined is that it wasn't that good to begin with. For the first half of the season, the Broncos had an OK defense for 80% of the field, and an unbelieveably good defense when the opposition got inside the Denver 20 (the red zone, the gold zone, the green zone-- whatever you want to call it). They routinely gave up long drives that ended in FG attempts or turnovers inside their own 20. This lead to a really impressive "points allowed" statistic. As anyone with a statistical inclination would expect, the statistic with the larger sample size (defense outside the red zone) was more predictive of future performance than the one with a small sample size (red zone defense). Over time, their red zone performance declined to the level of their overall performance. That, and opposing teams started to figure out that Darrent Williams just isn't that good a cornerback.

I just found the constant media talking head man-love for Romo really irritating. Yes, he's been better than Bledsoe, but not to the level that most of the sports-talk world was saying. It was the most undeserved early-canonization since Vick put two consecutive non-horrible passing performances together and made everyone in the media think he had finally "gotten it." Speaking of which, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!11! (That's not the only thing Vick has!)

<Thread resurrection> Yay, the Giants are still alive. Not that I'm expecting much. They need to win 2 of their last 3 (PHI, NO, @WAS) to have a shot at the playoffs (they're definitely in if they run the table). But in the mediocre NFC, once you're in the playoffs, who knows what'll happen. The only game I'd be really scared about is if they had to play @ New Orleans. Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle are all very beatable, even with home-field. Yay, the legend of Tony Romo is fading! He's Jake Plummer II-- keep him in the pocket, and he'll hand you the game. The media hype he's been getting has been absolutely sickening. And how about those Saints, anyway? Drew Brees looks like the MVP to me.

I'm not playing it yet, but I'm downloading the original Railroad Tycoon from the website for Sid Meier's Railroads.

Bob Dylan - Thunder on the Mountain Neat video. As far as I can tell, there's no original footage. It's all cut together from older performances & live appearances.