Enoch

Dierdorf is indeed awful, but I feel I must point out that Simms' parting with the Giants' organization wasn't exactly amicable. He hasn't shown much in the way of emotional attachment to the team since they unceremoniously cut him.

Why not just buy regular broth and toss a hunk of ginger in with it, to simmer for awhile? I regularly do this with more standard ingredients. Store-bought broth/stock isn't great (although some brands are better than others, and, in my experience, Swanson isn't one of the better ones), but you can make it better, if you've got 20 minutes, a few kitchen/pantry staples, and the willingness to wash an extra pot. Just simmer it with a halved onion, a carrot or two (cut lengthwise in half, for surface area), a celery stalk, a clove or two of peeled and slightly-crushed garlic, any fresh herbs you've got handy (or even just the leftover stems), and any appropriate whole spices (peppercorns, allspice berries, etc.). Let it bubble for a bit, then strain all that stuff out and use as you will. The flavor improvement is dramatic. Were I tailoring some generic stock for Thai-style use, I'd simmer with fresh ginger, garlic, lemongrass, and maybe some coriander seed, red peppercorns, and/or cardamom pods if I had any. And if I were planning on cooking shrimp in it, the shells I just pulled off those shrimp are getting blanched in this stock before I toss them in the trash. (Also, buy the low-sodium kind and add salt to taste if needed. Salt is cheap, and this gives you more control of the dish.)

They had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to grind out a drive and ice the game and they failed every time. The only reason they won is because Manning threw yet another pick. They didn't close out anything, the G-Men handed them that win, even after the Cowboys tried to hand it back again and again and again. There is a difference between closing a game out and having a game handed to you. I've been watching the Cowboys for decades. In the last several years it's been the same story again and again. They get a lead and head into the 4th. At this point a good team would grind out a 6 or 7 minute capped off by a score which would kill the clock and ice the game. The Cowboys regularly fail to do this and more often than not lose because of it. The Giants simply tried to lose harder than the Cowboys this time around. I'll serve as the local Giants fan to ratify this. (Volo doesn't count. If I look around a bit I'm sure I can still find a thread where he called Coughlin the worst coach ever. R00fles!) Hidden factor: A live ball hit the ground in contested situations 6 times in that game. (3 Giants fumbles, 2 Cowboys fumbles, and 1 onside kick that ended in a loose-ball scrum.) Every single one bounced directly to a player wearing a Cowboys uniform. Say what you want about "hustle" and "awareness," none of that gives a team the ability to telekinetically direct the bounce of an oblong ball. Every statistical study I've seen has concluded that fumble recovery is basically random. Going 0-for-6 (or 6-for-6) on recoveries is not likely to recur in a given season. Both teams played a pretty lousy game last night. That said, I am somewhat brightened by the areas where the team exceeded my expectations. The secondary held up better than anticipated-- their top priority was clearly limiting Dez Bryant, which they did quite well, even after their best CB left with a concussion in the early 2nd half. And they established in their passing game that they have 3 WRs who can pretty consistently beat single-coverage (even from pretty good CBs). That last element is big part of what got NYG a championship in 2011. (Were I a Cowboys fan *shudders*, I would be happy with the W, and cheered by the strong performance from depth on their DL, and that their interior OL was not as awful as feared.)

Zor's argument that the mainstream story about WoMD attacks done by pro-Assad forces makes little sense on a certain level does have some logic behind it. But I can't put much weight in an argument presupposing that pro-Assad forces are bound by the confines of what is in that ruler's logical best interest. Wars (especially civil wars) get people really ****ing angry. People who are really ****ing angry sometimes do illogical things that are counter to their best interests in the long run. To the extent that we can get information about the facts on ground from reliable sources, I put a whole lot more trust in those than I do in this kind of theory-casting.

The U.S. has shown that it doesn't especially care about a power vacuum in Syria. If they did, they'd have acted long before now. (See: Libya, and the quiet support for military leadership in Egypt.) But there is a strong international norm against the use of nerve agents, and the POTUS has explicitly warned Assad & co. that their use would have Consequences. It's looking like a Kosovo-style air-based intervention is the likely next step. Given the lack of a prominent Syrian faction that America/NATO/whoever can actually back, a purely aerial engagement targeting Assad's military command and control is probably the most practical and proportionate step to take. The question is how far to take it. I.e., what goal can be accomplished that would signal the end of the western military involvment? A simple smackdown to deter future use of chemical weapons is unlikely to work, because finding all that stuff would be really hard and because the Assad regime is unlikely to be effectively deterred from anything, given the existential threat it faces. You're not going to accomplish much of any worth unless you weaken it to the point of toppling. And what then? There are no particularly good outcomes here, for the West or (especially) for the Syrians. But an outcome wherein nobody backs up the broad taboo against the use of WoMD that has developed over the last 60 years is probably one of the worse ones.

I will confess to my typical M.O. here. I played through the campaign... until the main plot reveal ( ) and haven't yet had much of an urge to fire it up again since then. Lacking a core mystery or any characters who I had a reason to care much about, I didn't find the gameplay experience compelling enough to continue. I do this a lot. (For example, as memorable as parts of MotB were, my playthrough stalled after the conversation with what's-her-face's mother/clone/whatever, and I really had to force myself to revisit it and play out the ending a couple months later.)

You can actually tell Morrigan to pike off and she does. Though I don't know if she returns to offer the dark ritual or not. I think I knew that at some point, but it's been a long time. The first time I played the game, I kept everybody around for purely meta-gamey reasons. I didn't want to miss any potentially interesting content. If I ever do feel the urge to replay DAO, yeah, Morrigan is getting ditched, and Zevran is getting offed. I can do without that one dragon fight. PC Mage, Shale, Wynne, and whoever is most plot-relevant for the current quest. (If none, Sten.)

Joker is one of the few characters I actually liked from ME. My take was that commanding officers in a Marines-type culture don't often get along too well with inferior officers who are disrespectful of the chain of command, who are clearly physically unfit for service, and who go by ridiculous self-applied nicknames, but who get special treatment because they can do fancy techy things well. (See, e.g., USMC's attitude toward the Navy; everybody in the military's attitude towards military pilots.) Not to mention the fact that his insubordination was clearly responsible for Shep getting spaced in the ME2 intro. He was so clearly written to get the player to like him, that I felt it was my duty to roleplay Shep more faithfully as a Marine, rather than as an avatar for a nerd playing an RPG. "Shep hates Joker" actually works reasonably well as a counter-narrative to the series.

This is a good portion of why I'm not in private practice.

Have I mentioned lately how disappointed I was that Morrigan was one of the few jNPCs who had to survive DA:O? (Although, to Bio's credit, even when they write a character who they just know their audience will love, they still usually build in an opportunity to rebuke them at some point. It was pretty satisfying to finally tell M just how insane I thought she was, to unload on Joker for his lack of professionalism and military decorum, and to watch the "drunken loser" Alistair epilogue.)

The amazing thing is that it's a rewards program that makes money for the seller. (Well, revenue, anyway. There is, of course, some cost in setting up the system, running the marketplace, etc. I have no idea if the revenue Valve sees from its vig on the transactions is sufficient to cover this cost and generate net income.) I have ignored the stuff they've thrown at me (mostly CK2 cards, and a couple things that I think I got for spending money in the summer sale). But that's nothing new. I've still got 2 whole games sitting in my steam inventory that Valve gave me in the 2011 holiday sale. (An Oddworld game and something called "Lightfish")

Today my new boss switched offices, so as not to be a half-block's walk from the folks he's working with everyday. Unfortunately, this puts him in the office directly next to mine. His desk chair has a clear line of sight to my office door. I like the guy, and I have no reason to suspect that he's going to be a **** about silly details like "showing up on time" and "not spending a large portion of one's workday reading crap on the internet," but I'm still fairly confident in my prediction that this is going to be a Bad Thing. (On the other hand, overheard conversations in one's boss's office can be very educational.)

Flying Lotus - Do the Astral Plane http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDDBxT9uqBk

I played about 2/3rds of the demo of DA2 and decided that I wasn't going to be interested in the game unless it got some sterling praise from sources I trusted.

DAO = Glory? *laughs hysterically* Someone's allowed nostalgia glasses to tint the derp roads and the Tower, at the very least. Oh, that forest sucked too. And Awakening... still doesn't work? Glory, indeed. I love the tower. It's a surreal Metroidvania mini-adventure. A world where people take the shapes they want to take, and the dead think they still live. And you run around collecting powerups and new abilities to unlock other areas. I actually agree. The Fade was my favorite part of DA:O-- the one part of the game that I can distinctly remember keeping me up well past bedtime because I wanted to see where it was all leading. I can see how folks with less of a taste for surrealism and for puzzle-game elements disliked it, but it was right up my alley. And the character-based payoff of seeing what your companions have dreams/nightmares about at the end was really solid. (Especially Wynne, who is awesome.) The other main criticism it gets is that it's a chore to replay. But the rest of DA:O never really interested me enough to want to replay it for long, so that's a non-issue in my case.

I'm going to guess you meant Kaua'i. In which case, good choice. Of the 3 Hawai'ian islands I've been to, it's easily the one I would most like to go back to. (Although I haven't been to the Big Island, which sounds intruiging.) Unless you or she is absolutely terrified of heights or small aircraft, definitely spring for a helicopter tour. It is totally worth it.

I don't think I could show that level of restraint. I'm pondering this over my breakfast toast. We know that Neil Gaiman likes reckless enthusiasm, because he's crazy about his wife, AFP. We also know that the strong characters in his books are usually effortless and suave. We may assume therefore that he is a little shy, and not always self-composed. You were therefore correct. He should not be disturbed while he is eating. I suggest - somewhat idly - that the correct approach would be to bribe the waiting staff to inform you when he is getting up to leave. This is a moment of setting forth, with a confidently full stomach. In addition, if he looks irate at the intrusion then you can apologise and deftly offer to pay for his lunch. Well, we had just finished eating at a place down the street, and none of us think that quickly on our feet. My B-i-L first spotted Neil as he walked by, while we were eating at a different outdoor cafe. When we finished and walked towards the parking garage, we went right by their table. Neil, AFP, and 3 other folks. I take this as confirmation: https://twitter.com/amandapalmer/status/361636604760170496

My brother-in-law and I are fairly certain that the gentleman we saw having lunch at an outdoor cafe here in a trendy DC suburb was in fact Neil Gaiman. We were too dignified (and restrained by the presence of our wives) to approach him.

I'd say that booze and Skyrim are a poor mix, but, without booze, I'd never have started an Argonian named "Climbs-Tall-Rocks." And I now regard him as the absolute perfect character for a Bethesda RPG. He doesn't care about these silly "quests" apart from "see what's on top of that mountain," and if those silly Nords want to call him funny names because he can talk to dragons (clearly, they've never seen an Argonian and a dragon together before), he'll play along just long enough that they let him climb the tallest rocks. What could be better??!

It's the bees knees. But I am a huge fan of Shadowrun and loved the SNES version, so this was in my wheelhouse. As somebody who never played the console game, and who knows Shadowrun only by reputation, I'm having a good time. The campaign is very linear, but (so far) it's a reasonably well written mystery story. The combat mechanics are solid, the writing is good by vidyagames standards, and I haven't seen any serious bugs or other screwups yet. I'm playing as a dwarven mage. I just got through my first seriously tough combat (read: my first 2 actual combat deaths). It was a fight . Steam has my playtime at about 10 hours, but I'm prone to leaving games paused and doing other things, so that may not be especially accurate. It feels like I'm close to some kind of conclusion, but I have no real way of knowing whether there's some other twist waiting.

As an American, I feel completely justified in mocking Brits for letting this particular crowd of clowns mince about in the public eye and with the public fisc. But it's a good-natured kind of mockery. Like how you would make fun of a friend who develops a premature bald spot-- you don't actually think ill of the guy, as it's just the way he is. Were I British, I'd probably regard the Monarchy as an indulgence, but an acceptable one as an homage to the nation's history. "Sure she's a weird ol' gal, and her heir is a dimwitted ponce, but we sing 'God Save the Queen' because that's what proper British folks do, dammit."

Anyone else feel like a stick insect who has just had the life and works of Albert Einstein explained to him? Yip I was honestly a little shocked that I could still do this kind of thing. The last math class I took was sometime around 2000. I went about it slightly differently than Amentep did. There's a post-it in my office with something like this written on it: 2x/3 = x/2 +7 2x/3 - x/2 = 7 4x/6 - 3x/6 = 7 4x - 3x = 42 x = 42 Today, I'm working from home, so that I can be here to take delivery of the appliances for our new kitchen. The countertops will also arrive and be installed later today. (The appliances will be installed some other day, when the plumber comes to do the final hook-ups.)

I've been messing around with New Vegas again, giving Honest Hearts another go. I had forgotten that Zion Valley was the only area in FNV where I had repeated stability problems. Crashes to desktop and quicksaves failing to load are an unpleasant combination. It's not insurmountable, but it's annoying. If I remember, I'll tell Steam to start downloading Dishonored before I go to bed tonight.

My first thought was "of course not," but then I thought about what 2/3rd of my age was and it creeped me out. As I recall, the accepted formula for this kind of thing that the partner must be at least (your age)/2 + 7. So, solving for a 2/3 ratio, Ros must be at least 42 years old in order for this not to be creepy. (Wow, it's been a long time since I've done algebra. Somebody double-check me.) That said, "creepy" doesn't necessarily mean "morally wrong." If the proposed partner is of sufficient temporal, emotional, and intellectual maturity that he or she knows what he or she is getting into, it's not morally wrong in my book.

Well, the two bigger-name games I was hoping to get cheap both showed up with a sale price around $10. So I'll be playing XCOM and Dishonored at some point in the relatively near future. I came close to grabbing Don't Starve, too, but I suspect I won't have the time/inclination to play that anytime especially soon. And it'll be on sale again at some point. I might still grab The Walking Dead. I generally dislike horror-type themes, but there really aren't enough non-twitch-based character-driven games around to be so picky.