Enoch

Man, I've had Arkham City on my to-play list since I built this system, about a year and a half ago. Still haven't gotten around to installing it. (Asylum gave me minor motion-sickness issues with the swoopy bits, but the background details and puzzle-game elements were a lot of fun.) I've been trying to get through a New Vegas save in the early parts of *Honest Hearts*, with an eye toward finally playing through *Lonesome Road*. But I have a feeling that the copy of Dishonored I bought in the Steam sale might jump the queue.

How'd this get off the front page of the forum? Anyhow, I am not a religious man, but there are a few rare pieces of music that make me wish I were. Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday" is one of them, and this version of it, a duet between Eric Dolphy (bass clarinet) and Richard Davis (bass), is amazing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqt-qPrP7yo

The new kitchen project is actually starting to shape up. We have painted walls and tile floors and cabinets in. Countertops will come sometime next week. Gotta go buy appliances and faucets this weekend. Then it's detail work like finished electrical, finished plumbing, final inspections, and touch-up paint and trim. It will be quite nice to have an actual kitchen with a stove again, after a couple months of cooking everything either on a propane grill, or on a toaster oven or microwave in the basement. (Of course, a perk of our current location is that we can walk to dozens of restaurants.) Work has been interesting lately. The guy who got the job as my boss (a position for which, as you may recall, I applied, but lost out to a gentleman with measurably more managerial experience) has been quite deferential. And he's also an Army reservist, and happened to have his 2-week stint of annual duty scheduled just after he took the job. So I've been operating with a somewhat atypical level of independence, for an entity as bureaucratic as my employer is.

I make it a rule to avoid wasting my time paying much attention to the news media's periodic obsessions with particular individual criminal cases, and I'm certainly no expert on criminal law in Florida. But it's a really tough road for prosecutors to get over a self-defense argument when the only living witness to the act is the suspect being tried. When you need to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, it's really hard to get enough evidence that the dead guy didn't somehow put the suspect in a position of reasonable fear. As such, an acquittal is not surprising. This is the kind of result that you get sometimes when you enact idiotic machismo-driven policy like Florida's "stand your ground" law.

Does he kill me like everyone else? There are two ways thing work out with you: 1) Player shoots you (perhaps to acquire your stylish glasses because they took the "Four Eyes" trait and haven't found any others), or 2) You run off into the desert and are killed by radscorpions. You just need to accept it, dude. Winning that forum contest did not grant you eternal life.

There is precedent applying the 3rd Amendment to the National Guard. But it's pretty much the only federal case whose holding has rested on the 3rd Amendment, ever. So the question of whether it applies to ordinary local police officers is an open one. Engblom v. Carey. There was a strike by prison guards in upstate New York in 1979. The governor activated the National Guard to keep the prisons operating. One particular prison had staff housing for some of its officers. The prison officials kicked the striking officers out of their staff housing and let the Nat'l Guardsmen stay there. The court (2nd Circuit Court of Appeals) stated without much explanation that the Guardsmen counted as "soldiers" under the meaning of the 3rd Am. The difficult part of the case was whether the striking officers had a sufficient possessory interest in their residences, given that the apartments were owned by the prison. They ruled that there was a sufficient interest, and that the officers were entitled to 3rd Am. protections. (Also, the court applied "incorporation doctrine" to the 3rd Amendment, applying it against a state government for the first time. Feel free to ignore this point unless you want to get into a long discussion of jurisprudential history.) I haven't looked into this in any kind of depth, but Wals' account sounds like one credible approach (but not the only one) that an American court might take. Also, if even half of what the complaint says actually happened, the plaintiffs have all kinds of legal theories they can use to recover, of which the 3rd Amendment is almost certainly the most tenuous. (Also, it's quite silly take a slanted account of one action by some local cops in one town and blow it up into a statement about the "irrelevance" of an entire national Constitutional right. The 2nd Amendment doesn't disappear every time somebody gets arrested on a firearms charge.)

You start in the year 1066 or a date of your choosing thereafter (you can start earlier with The Old Gods DLC). At the moment you start the game is, for the most part, historically accurate. Once you start all bets are off and you make your own alternate timeline. There is no "campaign". You start as a king or duke or duchess or count or whatever somewhere. The game lasts for some 400 years (or less if you die and have no legitimate heir). You play as a family, a dynasty. The goal is to amass as much power as possible and hold on to it within your family. Well, technically, the goal is whatever the heck you want it to be. If you want to start a game as the Duke of Iceland with your goal of becoming Chancellor to the King of Hungary, you can give that a try.

So I am not going to be getting that promotion I applied for. However, I know who is getting it, and were I making the call, I would probably have picked him over me, too. He is objectively more qualified in most ways (less specific-subject-matter expertise, but more management/leadership experience and overall government experience), and although I've never worked with him directly, we've spoken at a number of social events and gotten along rather well. We share some mutual friends and common interests, and he seems to be a smart and decent guy. The ego-bruise for not being selected is pretty minimal, given the relative thickness or our respective resumes, and it is something of a relief that I'm not going to have to imminently assume large new responsibilities in the near future. A large part of my motivation for applying was to assure that the job didn't go to somebody worse than me, and I don't think it has.

The Narrows hike in Zion is awesome. I did it when I was 14 or so. Do they still have a big "Flash Flood Danger Level" sign that you walk by at the start? Nothing makes for a fun afternoon quite like the fear that a wall of water is going rush around the next bend at any moment, drown you, and wash your corpse out into the Pacific. I just got back from the other end of the alphabetical list of National Parks-- Acadia, in Maine. Lots of hopping from rock-to-rock along a scenic coastline.

Interviewed for that promotion today. I think it went as well as can be expected-- took the full hour, no obvious flubs or faux pas, and I think I came up with at-least-reasonable responses to all of their questions. I think I can say with some confidence that, if I don't get this job, it won't be because I bombed the interview. I should hear something the week after next, which is convenient because I'm going to be out all next week. By the way, it really is easier to do these kinds of things when the interviewers are folks you've worked with before. Gives you a huge jump on picturing them naked to diffuse internal stress. Now, I get to go home and pack for a road trip up the coast of New England.

I have had the exact same instinctual reaction to a pan of would-be brandy sauce that flamed up far more than I was anticipating. Of course, as the fire was fueled by about 3 ounces of liquor, it died down before I got to the back door, and didn't do much more than shorten all the hair on my right forearm (and make a nice au poivre). That didn't affect my initial "I'm moving this ****er to the patio before it burns my damned house down!" reaction, though.

Congratulations. Would that be a public bus, or a private shuttle?

I think you said that few people had applied when you did. This is Big HR at work, surely? They need a certain number of applications or they can't tick a number of *antiHR rant preemptively snipped* I have no idea how many actual applicants they got. I've spoken with a few folks I'm friendly with who I thought might give it a go, and they told me that they hadn't. We've got HR folks, of course, but for an internal promotion like this, the decisions are all handled by the chain-of-command within my group. It might be as innocent as somebody who wanted to apply getting swamped with their current responsibilities and requesting an extension. (It's not that urgent to fill the position immediately, and we wouldn't want to exclude somebody because they were really busy at their current job.) Or it could be a "we only had 2 applicants, and they both suck; let's extend the deadline and strongly encourage X & Y to apply."

We're a week into the remodeling project. It's gone reasonably well, I guess. Old structure demolished, new one framed and roofed, waiting on plumbing and electrical (and their related county inspections) before we can close in and do cabinets, flooring, etc. Some additional costs, but we planned for such, and there haven't been any showstoppers. For example, apparently, you shouldn't have 2 sinks and a washing machine draining into a pipe that is only 2" in diameter. Correcting this means jackhammering large holes into the concrete floor in the basement and digging down 2 feet to find the 4" main, so that you can connect a new 3" drain line to it (a.k.a., an extra $1750 in plumbing work, and $1500 for the concrete & tile work to fix the holes the plumber made). Also, the first thing the plumbers said in going through the basement was "hey, you know your water heater is leaking, right?" (They're going to get me an estimate on replacing that tomorrow. We knew it was past its expected lifespan and all, but the cost hitting now is a mite inconvenient.) No movement yet on the possible-promotion thing. They extended the deadline for applicants by a week a few hours after I got my materials in. I'm not sure if I should be reading anything into that or not. I'm expecting to be contacted about scheduling an interview any day now. I did reach out to the guy who had this job for my first 5 years with the agency, and we've scheduled a lunch in a couple weeks. So even if nothing comes of this, the fact that it pushed me into reconnecting with him is a positive, both on a personal and a long-term-career-networking basis. (I do like the guy, and his new job is only 3 subway stops away. I'm just terrible at keeping in touch with people who I no longer see in the regular course of my life.)

Hmm... It seems that you get cut down to 5th level in your current class, with random appropriate-ish reductions in skill levels, attribute levels, HP, SP, and spells known, but all skills that you have at least 1 point in will be available to the character in the sequel. Perhaps a revised lineup: Val -> Pri (Possibly dipping into one of the classes with Kirijutsu in between) Pri -> Val (Same) Fig -> Monk Bar -> Mag Alc -> Nin Thi -> Sam

I don't remember if you can switch back to a class you've already been, it's been a while. Since you keep skills when class switching, and since you can increase them even if you're now a class that wouldn't normally have access to that skill, as long as you already have at least 1 point in that skill, when class switching, getting at least 1 point in any new skill should be a priority. Weapon skills will train on their own as you use that weapon type, so no need to prioritize them. Make sure you pick up stealth skills and magic skills for all your characters at some point. Kirijitsu, Ledgermain, Skullduggery, and any magic skill are always a good place to put points into. Kirijitsu should always be a priority since it doesn't seem to go up on its own through use. A little more rudimentary experimentation: It seems that a best practice would be to multiclass within the same type of spellcaster. Also, there seems to be a cap on the Power Level of spells-- they cannot exceed the character's level in their current class. I'm not sure what having multiple characters with Ledgerdemain and Skullduggery gets you. Wacky party idea: Val -> Pri (designated Scout) Pri -> Val (change when 7th Spell Level achieved) Fig -> Monk Bar -> Nin (Lockpicker. Change when Lute becomes less useful, or later when requisites achieved) Alc -> Nin (change when 5th Spell Level achieved) Mag -> Sam (change when 7th Spell Level achieved) That said, I doubt I'd do it, as I don't know how imports to the Sequel work. I'm guessing that the program isn't rigorous enough to pick up levels in past classes, or skills unlocked that aren't kosher for the class. I wouldn't want to come into Wiz7 with a de-leveled Val-Mon-Nin-Nin-Pri-Sam lineup.

OK, I now see the character option to change class. And it seems that when I try it, my character does retain their established spells and skill points. (I didn't check attribute points.) So what should I be thinking about when planning profession changes? Can I change back afterwards? (E.g., a Mage that switches to Bard for some quick level-ups to gain spells and skillpoints, then switches back to regain his high rate of mana accrual?)

There is, of course, always going to be a culture gap between the civilian and military. But I'm not so sure that the authors are proving much by citing statistics for miliary service relative to the period when we still used conscription (not to mention their WWII references, when the entire culture was functionally militarized). For one thing, they treat the lower numbers of folks serving as the reason for the adoption of technological change, when the opposite is true-- the military adopts new technology because it is more effective, which has also led to declines in manpower needs. Plus, the 20% of members of Congress with prior military service is still far higher than that percentage in the population as a whole (7%)-- comparing to a time when the bulk of the ruling elite would've been draft-ready during WWII (and was far more male-dominated than today) is not a particularly helpful measuring stick. And the point about military families is wholly anecdotal and even the anecdotes are limited to Officers only. Yes, it would be nice if Congress were a little less eager to cede warmaking authority to the Executive, and it would be great if they accounted for the full likely costs of military action, communicated that honestly to the public, and paid for it up front. Good luck with that. And they do have a good point about how the military has largely cloistered itself in massive base communities, rather than the pre-BRAC dispersement of smaller installations. Clustering military stuff at places like Ft. Bragg is great for efficiency, but does reduce the scope of day-to-day military-civilian interactions. But I'm not sure that such squishy cultural justifications are sufficient to overcome the efficiencies of concentration. But their core suggestion strikes me as rather problemmatic: The bulk of the services' manpower needs during major military actions (i.e., the only time when they have trouble with volunteer recruitment) is good old-fashioned infantry. Does it really make sense to take our "best educated and most highly skilled" citizens out of their ostensibly valuable role in the economy to make them into riflemen? Sure, we did it in WWII, but there's a big difference between what we should do to address concerns over the how much "heed" is paid to military matters and what we should do to address genocidal global fascist aggressor nations. Also, however the "weighting" is accomplished, people are going to figure it out and devise a way to game the system.

Wait, you can switch classes? I don't remember that (or notice it in the manual this time around).

The "free sleep spell anytime you want" thing is awesome at the start, but my dim recollection was that Bards didn't scale well in Wiz 6. I could be wrong, though, and this might certainly be different in the later ones. (I certainly appreciated my Bard in Wiz 8.) Putting a Bard in place of the Alchemist would make for a solid group-- pour the Ninja's skillpoints more into spellcasting to replace the Alchy, while the Bard picks up lockpicking duty. Sit him in the back row with a bow, a lute, and his spells. I kind of love having 5/6 characters with at least rudimentary healing ability.

I know what you mean. The first bit of the game is brutal, even when facing weak enemies, because instadeath is just around every corner. If it makes you feel better, I had a party member with 2 hit points at start. I've taken a shot at this as well. The character creation system as a whole is just bonkers, from a modern perspective. You pick your Name, Race, and Gender, then get a "bonus point" roll for additional attribute points, which generates the list of classes that you can pick from. Most rolls are in the 4-10 range. But 1 roll in 5 will be in the mid teens, and I even got one role of 26! (My Valkyrie is fantastic.) Then you pick a Profession, and the game rolls for HP, and for Skillpoints. The assignment of attribute and skill points is mandatory, by the way, even if you intend to trash the character and re-roll. The other hilarious thing is the degree to which the game manual celebrates the fact that every player starts the game by spending an hour or two frustratingly generating characters. And this was a successful, award-winning game. The presumed audience for CRPGs in the late '80s was just... peculiar. Anyhow, yeah, my mage had only 3 HP, but the big deal is that I had a front-liner with only 4. Still, there was no way I was going to re-roll again to generate another Felpurr Ninja and hope to get another HP or two. Party is Dwarven Valkyrie, Dog-man (Rarwulf? Rawrulf?) Monk, Felpurr Ninja, Gnomish Priest, Dracon Alchemist, Faerie Mage. I'd probably could've done better by skipping the Alchemist (their spell list actually isn't that great, and the Ninja can learn it if I ever bother to put points in his Alchemy skill) in favor of a better front-liner (move the Monk back, but give him a 'reach' weapon), but I remembered having one the first time I played the game, so I stuck with it.

I've been in a "boundary-pushing jazz-based stuff" state of mind lately. Sun Ra -- Atlantis ; Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy (alternately, The Antique Blacks, if you want to hear the Ra's explanation of his cosmic myth-science ethos. Or Lanquidity for ease of listening) Charles Mingus -- The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady ; Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus Jimmy Smith -- Back at the Chicken Shack Miles -- Bitches Brew Oliver Nelson -- Blues and the Abstract Truth Rahsaan Roland Kirk -- The Inflated Tear Thelonious Monk -- Monk's Music Captain Beefheart -- Trout Mask Replica I think that's 10. And you may get 10 different selections if you catch me in a different mood. I do have my more rock-heavy moments (early Stones, later Beatles, early Springsteen, early REM, Bowie, Talking Heads, Radiohead, etc.), and the early, exploratory electronica stuff is near and dear to my heart (Herbie Han****'s Sextant almost made the above list). And all this is sadly lacking in The Funk, outside the passing mention of Lanquidity. But whatever. You asked for 10. (Also, there's a lot of great stuff that pre-dates the LP, but it would feel like cheating to pick, say, the 3-disc "Never No Lament" Duke Ellington collection, or a Charlie Parker boxed set.)

I'll take a couple "befores" after we clear everything out this weekend.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes. So far, not well-- the guy couldn't make the turn to get the dumpster up our driveway. We need to order a smaller one instead. On the job thing, they announced at 5:45 yesterday that the deadline was extended a week. Which was annoying, considering that I was up rather late Wednesday night putting my materials together.