Enoch

My grandfather really enjoys fantasy CRPGs. The early Wizardrys and Might & Magics; the Gold Box games; the IE games, etc. He's not a stupid man, but the details of game rules systems are not a strongpoint. I still have nightmares about looking over his party when he told me how impossible he was finding some of the late stages of Icewind Dale. Several characters using weapons they weren't proficient with; a cleric with a WIS that limited him to 4th-level spells; carrying the wrong ammunition for his ranged weapons, etc. I would very much like to give him a copy of Eternity, and I hope that the game would be a little less easy to screw up, mechanics-wise.

"Gear hauling"? Scandinavian litigation is weird.

I did make a lovely meal for some guests on Saturday. Pork tenderloin (lightly seasoned, browned, then roasted), with a simple balsamic sauce (1/2 cup each balsamic vinegar and chicken stock, plus 2 tbs of honey, reduced in the pan that I browned the pork in), scalloped potatoes with mushrooms and goat cheese (make a mushroom cream sauce, add soft goat cheese, stir until smooth, fold into thinly sliced potatoes, then bake, with extra cheese on top), and some steamed vegetables. Last night, I made a pot of jambalaya. I plan to eat some more of that shortly.

In most cases, tree stumps have too much retained internal moisture to be especially flammable. Unless you bring some serious amount of fuel to the party, they get scorched around the edges and just outlast the fire. I guess you could try to dry them out by digging the dirt out from around them and leave it exposed for a few months (somehow keeping the rain off and preventing the ditch from filling with water). But that would take a lot of time and work, with no guarantee of success. I think GD should try to scorch the stumps in a low O2 environment, to make his own charcoal for BBQ'ing purposes. For my part, I'm coming off a busy weekend, with some of my wife's family around. My neice (the very premature one, now weighing in at 1700g) is scheduled for some surgery this afternoon to hopefully address her intestinal problems.

Try Shoshone if you've ever been frustrated by garbage results from ancient ruins and early barbarian problems. Massively OP civ for the early game, that confers a big advantage, especially in science, right off the bat (scout replacement unit is as strong as a Warrior, gets to choose Ancient Ruin yield, only balance is a short cooldown on each reward.) I found that Venice was pretty strong as well though they take longer to build up steam. Double trade routes provides a ridiculous amount of money once you get them going. The only non-standard setting I habitually use in Civ games is ancient ruins (or huts or whatever) off. It just feels way too random to me to have early-game strategy-defining advantages land in your lap like that. Edit: As to trade routes, I still haven't quite worked out how high I priority I should be placing on getting them up-and-running.

I don't know how age affects things, but based to the various women with whom I've been close enough to have knowledge of their shaving practices, the acceptable time for not shaving (or, well, shaving only for special occassions) is known as "winter." I can see how that might not work so well in California. Also, I should add that some of us have facial hair growth patterns that look faintly ridiculous when not supressed. I'm a month into my present beard, and "rock star" isn't exactly a term I would use to describe it.

I don't know how age affects things, but based to the various women with whom I've been close enough to have knowledge of their shaving practices, the acceptable time for not shaving (or, well, shaving only for special occassions) is known as "winter." I can see how that might not work so well in California.

Taking a first shot at Civ V with the Brave New World expansion. Of the newly added Civs, I figure that Poland is a good one to start with, as its unique benefits seem pretty strategy-neutral.

Nice kitchen. Unsolicited advice: Invest in a quality orange liqueur. That plastic-bottle triple sec is okay if you're making slushy margaritas for undergraduates, but I wouldn't recommend it otherwise. A ****tail made with Cointreau or a quality curacao (no, not the awful blue kind) is going to be light-years better. Also, if the price of a bottle of vodka (x) is > $20, you're getting $20 worth of vodka and $(x-20) worth of bottle. If you need to be pretentious and bring out the Goose bottle, do the dive-bar switcheroo and pour some sensibly priced vodka into the Goose bottle when it's empty. Or just stop drinking it-- any vodka ****tail can be infinitely improved by changing the base spirit to either gin or rum. (Speaking of which, where's the gin?) I've just finished a lovely Old Fashioned, made with Bulliet Rye, a homemade ****tail cherry, an orange slice, a demerara sugar cube, and angostura bitters. I'd go make another, but the wife is a little touchy about seeing me do the drinking that she isn't allowed to. Edit: ****!

Rums like Myers are made for mixing with Ginger Beer. Add a twist of lime and you've got a Dark & Stormy, which is a lovely drink.

Probably not adviseable with a pregnant woman living in the house.

Hooray! Heat issue resolved! And it was only the thermostat, so the cost is not all that bad. I'm sure we're paying something of a premium for the same-day service call in their busiest time of the year, but it's worth it when they've got the part you need in their truck and can get everything up and running in an hour. And, compared with the "you need a new boiler" prognosis I was fearing, this is nothing. Plus, the previous thermostat was quite old-- it was the kind with a bubble of mercury in it, which probably violates all manner of health codes these days.

And, our heat isn't working. ****. I hate having to call a contractor at the moment when his services are in the highest demand for "it needs fixing now" work. Also, I'm cold.

Mileage standards haven't moved much in a while, but the price of gasoline has changed rather a lot in the last decade or so. And, yes, the decline in domestic natural gas prices due to the fracking boom has had a huge impact-- it's fairly easy to switch a coal-fired electrical power plant over to burning natural gas instead, and natural gas burns far cleaner than coal does. Frankly, it's a competitive advantage for the U.S. Due to transportation difficulties, natural gas is not the global market that petroleum is. (I.e., there are huge variations in the price depending on where you're buying, which isn't nearly as true for a barrel of Crude.) And cheaper domestic access to NG and related products produced through fracking spills over into other industries, like chemicals production. It may come with some longer-term environmental costs of its own, but it's not like we were using North Dakota for anything else of note...

Add some small red potatoes and onions around the chicken. They will cook in the chicken grease and will brown nicely. So you end up with main course, two sides and desert all at once. I prefer to keep potatoes separate. They suck up fat and flavor that I want for my gravy. I'd prefer to cook them in a separate dish in the oven, or make mashed potatoes on the stovetop, then serve them with the awesome gravy I've made from pan drippings. The onions can stay, because they contribute flavor to the gravy. As do other aromatic vegetables (carrot, celery) left to roast in the pan under the bird. Even if you use limp old veggies and toss them after cooking, you'll taste them in your gravy. (I usually don't bother using a rack for a my chicken, and instead rest the bird directly on some carrots and celery ribs. Racks are a pain to clean.) Apart from aromatic vegetables, the secret gravy ingredient is a good splash of white wine, preferably one with a prominent acidic quality. The decendants of teetotaling Midwesterners will tell you to use milk as the liquid addition to pan juices for gravy construction. Wine works so much better, it's not even funny.

These discussions always leave me with conflicted emotions. On the one hand, it illustrates a lot of the problems faced both as a matter of national policy and as a matter of empathy for others in tough situations. Which is depressing. On the other hand, I look at these numbers and am reminded that I'm pretty freaking rich. Yay me!

I agree, although I really really want to see the reactions of Eagles fans if Andy Reid wins a championship in his first season with a different team. Starting Josh Freeman after a whole week and a half to learn the system was... an interesting decision. About a third of his throws came in roughly 8 feet over the receivers' heads. The Giants actually had a pulse last night for 1 offensive drive. Normal starting Center David Baas was actually playing for their first drive last night, and they marched down the field, had some nice runs, converted a bunch of 3rd downs, and kicked a FG (after a Hakeem Nicks drop in the end zone). Then Baas hurt his knee, and it was back to the comedy offense that we've seen for the rest of the season, featuring defensive tackles consistently in the backfield 1.5 seconds after the snap. (Apart from interior OL, the team's other big problem is Special Teams. The defense isn't that bad, so long as the offense/STs aren't constantly handing the ball to the opposition.)

In other news, Project Furlough Beard has survived the return to actual work (minus a little clean-up along the neck and cheekbones) and has just completed its third week. An exact quote from my wife on the subject: "I think I like it, but I'm not sure how I feel about it being on your face."

Something in the HVAC/lighting/electrical/whatever system here at work is making a constant high-pitched ringing noise near my office, and it is driving me nuts.

Batman: Arkham City. I played Asylum a number of years back, and have had this in my to-do list for about as long. So far, I think the game suffers a bit from the transition to open-worldiness, as, to me, it calls attention to the rails that the plot is on. I can't help imagining how much cooler this game would be if I could feel some kind of ownership over the progression of the storyline. (And if there were fewer "walk into an obvious ambush" plot-points/cutscenes.) For whatever reason, Asylum's hub-based world design made following the plot train more palatable to me. Still, lurking in the shadows and picking off goons one-by-one remains incredibly fun. (The brawling, I could do without.)

Most of that last exchange flew over my head, but I appreciate the responses. Are there options regarding receiver form factor? I'm old and can't help picturing a whole-shelf-in-a-stereo-cabinet kind of unit, which would be difficult to fit in the setup I am envisioning.

So the receiver goes "in between" the PC and the TV for both audio and video? Or would I need a video card with 2 HDMI-out slots, one to 'feed' the receiver and one to 'feed' the TV?

Thanks for the input. I haven't looked into amps much yet, so I may have further questions as I get deeper into that. By "computer speakers" in that context, I was referring to anything that I can plug into a computer. I honestly don't know whether I can buy "living room speakers" of any respectable quality that can interface in that manner. Budget is going to depend on what I can pitch to the wife, and how I can balance where additional investment would be most fruitful (PC components, speakers, amp, etc.) $350 just on speakers is probably optimistic at this point, but we'll see.

For those folks who have been following the continuing story of Enoch's Reproductive Drama, we are now past the point where stuff started to go horribly wrong a couple years ago. 20 weeks in, and everything looks normal. (This is roughly the halfway point of a pregnancy, and, at least in affluent American obstetrical practices, it is treated as a point where more detailed ultrasound assessments of the kid's internal anatomy, growth, etc., become more accurate and useful.) We are now beginning to face the likelihood that there is actually going to be a living baby at the end of this. Which is terrifying, but a different (better) kind of terrifying than what we had been dealing with.

Oh, by "contract writer" you mean "creative writer, to be hired as a contractor" rather than "person hired to write contracts." Almost got my hopes up there. I'm much better at avoiding lexical ambiguity than I am at making up stories.