Enoch

As a holiday preparation, I made some pie dough over the weekend. I plan to make 2 fruit pies when my in-laws are in town, and my wife requested that I also make a chicken pot pie to eat this week. So I roasted a chicken on Sunday night and put together a pot pie with the leftovers after work on Monday. The filling is ... just OK-- a bit too runny and under-salted, but with a good amount of celery/carrot/mushroom/onion/peas. But I think I really hit it out of the park with the crust. I'm now seriously looking forward to those fruit pies. I've got some pitted sour cherries that I put in the freezer back in the summertime, but they're not quite enough to make a whole pie. I'll find something to combine them with. And the other pie will, I think, be apple-pear-ginger.

It appears that Dungeons of Dredmore is the standout among today's deals, no?

Same. Holiday sale acquisitions for new PC now include that, The Witcher 2 (GOG, $24), Shogun 2 (Steam, $10), and Arkham City (came with video card). I'll be looking for a discount on Human Revolution in the coming weeks. And I'll probably give in to the temptation to grab some cheap retro games from GOG. But even if I don't, that should ensure that Games-to-Play > Time-to-Play-Them for a good long while.

I was thinking of grabbing a HoMM game in the GOG sale-- is III the consensus-best of the part of the series that they have available (which I think is 1-4)?

Arkham Asylum, still. Just about ready for what I assume is the endgame sequence. I was playing it because I wanted to finish the game before playing the sequel, which came free with my video card. But then Shogun 2 showed up as the Steam deal of the day yesterday for $9.99. That was on my "grab this in the holiday sale" list, and I've been itching for a new strategy game, so I bought it. Once I wrap Batman up, I'll likely be spending what little free time I have this week between work and "get ready for the in-laws' holiday visit" chores attempting to conquer feudal Japan.

I clicked through that link out of curiosity, to be reminded that I never actually set up any kind of profile for my Steam account. It has my actual first name filled in as a default (uncapitalized, oddly enough) and no further information. Upon reflection, I'm okay with that. (In my experience, their "time spent playing" metric is pretty screwed up, anyway.)

Yeah, the Quecha and the Praetorian are overpowered enough to be considered broken in my book. As Rome, you're best play is nearly always to rush to reveal Iron, then conquer 2 or 3 neighbors. With the Incas, your Quechas are essentially a free pass to gank your nearest neighbor, which puts you on a good start for every victory condition. (Although, ironically, they're stronger at Prince+ difficulties where the AI civs start with Archer garrisions, rather than Warriors.) And Huyana's strong trait combo (which the Roman leaders generally lack) only accelerates that lead. Going for a specific Victory Type from the start is just much more effective than deciding later on. I have no problem with playing a random leader or map, but I will decide my strategy from turn 1. I don't necessarily agree. I think it's best to get the lay of the land first-- see how much expansion space you've got, who your neighbors are, whether an early rush is advisable, etc., before you commit to a targeted victory method. The multiplier effects for strong early-game play are just so huge that you never want to box yourself out of taking the strongest move in the early turns because you made a decision in turn 1 to "go for culture" or whatever. Make an interim decision after you've explored your immediate surroundings and researched the first worker techs that you need to develop your capitol. (E.g., "I'm going to build 8 axemen and use them to wipe Asoka out, then settle down and develop. I'll decide whether to keep conquering or aim for Science/Diplomacy after I have my core cities up and running." or "I'll chop all these forests to rush-build the Oracle and research Code of Laws for Courthouses and the Confucian holy city; then I'll figure out whether to leverage those advantages for war or for rapid peaceful expansion.") If you're going for a Cultural victory, you probably want to make a decision earlier rather than later, because you'll want to aim for certain early Wonders of the World. But otherwise, the map dictates the opening moves moreso than the eventual strategy you want to pursue.

Indeed. How is a proper evening complete without some before-dinner ****tails (whiskey- or gin-based, depending on the season), proper wine pairings with dinner, and a bit of cognac after the meal?

For Oct. 2011, US average was $0.13 per kWh. Link. Hooray for plentiful domestic coal and natural gas, I guess.

By "recruit," you mean "feed to One of Many," right?

Not only that, but American cheese is barely cheese at all! Judging by my relatives, the 1940s-1990s were a dark, dark time for the cooking of vegetables in America. The predominant logic seems to have been to cook it all into a uniform grey mush, and then eat it "because it's good for you"!

It's not a crime because consumers and consumer advocacy groups lack the political pull of game, music, and movie publishers. If you're going down that road, there is no end of officially-illegal activity that you can justify as morally permissible. "Child molestation is only illegal because NAMBLA lacks the political pull of the local PTA!"

I'm continuing on my path of reacquainting myself with vegetables that I thought I didn't like. This time, it's cauliflower. As a kid, it was prepared one way: steamed (sometimes topped with slices of American cheese). Steamed cauliflower is not good. I am discovering, however, that cauliflower that has been tossed in olive oil, with a little balsamic vinegar and a good pinch of salt, and then roasted (about 400F for 30+ minutes) is excellent. I could seriously eat a whole head of the stuff in one sitting. (Next experiment: Replace that olive oil with bacon grease.) Also: one frustrating thing about having a new home-assembled computer is that it makes you hyper sensitive to any kind of tiny little sound that any of the fans make. Additionally, this is my first experience with computer that has an SSD as the system HD. When the spinning-disc drive I have for storage actually goes into action, my first reaction is always "WTF is making that NOISE??!"

I think you mean "tchotchkes."

I actually revisited the Witcher at the urging of a friend and warmed to it a bit. Yeah, the misogyny was still off-putting, the combat gameplay was pretty lame, and the first 2 chapters were boring as hell, but the thematic content and quest design got a lot more interesting in the 3rd chapter.

Well, the new computer is ready, so now I have to decide what to do with it. Spend most of my weekend free time doing installation and file transfer tasks, so once I clean up all the packaging material around my office, I should be good to game. I think I might wait a bit on jumping into Skyrim, given how much the patches and mods that are likely start flowing early next year will improve the experience. My video card came with a free copy of Arkham City. And I've actually never finished Arkham Asylum, so I will probably put at least a little time getting back into that. (The swoopy bits were fun but gave me a little motion sickness, and I never found the brawling to be especially enjoyable, but the sneaky bits, the treatment of the character backstories, and the puzzle-solving were certainly worth revising. I'll probably just start a new game on "Easy" and breeze through the actiony content.) I also need to wrap up the last F:NV DLC. Otherwise, it looks like I'll be watching holiday/post-holiday sales for discounts on many of the past year's releases. It looks like GOG is going to have Witcher 2 for cheap later this week, so that might be the first buy. I'll look for Portal 2 (avoided at full price due to likely motion sickness issues-- I could take the first one in small doses, and I want to play the sequel, but it's tough to justify a full-price purchase of a game that I can only play for 45 minutes or so before I need to take a break and look at things that aren't on a screen), the Shogun remake, and Deus Ex: HR to pop up in the coming Steam sale.

New build success! (Well, success so far-- I haven't gotten the chance to really put it under stress yet.) ASUS P8Z68-V mobo i5-2500K w/ stock cooler 2x4GB G.Skill PC3 12800 RAM SeaSonic X650 Gold PSU EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 128GB Crucial M4 SSD 1TB Samsung HD ASUS DVD drive of some kind Cooler Master 690 II Advanced Case Acer 23" 1920x1080 monitor Had some stress in getting the BIOS set right. The mobo has a graphical BIOS interface, and for some reason it wasn't listing all of my drives as selectable in the boot priority. When I first flipped it on, the SSD was the only hard drive in there, and it found that just fine. I installed Windows without a hitch. But, after I put the storage drive in there, it displaced the SSD in the boot priority menu for some reason (as in, it wasn't just in there in front of the SSD-- it was in there and the SSD wasn't). So to boot into Windows, I had to bring up the BIOS every time, go into the advanced settings (where I'm mostly out of my depth) and force a boot from the SSD. It took me many tries to figure out that a particular item in the Advanced BIOS menu was clickable, and could be used to alter which HD shows up in the boot priority list.

That was my reaction too-- this could be an interesting opportunity to lump together elements that parody every other RPG out there. (And, given how many other genres have taken on RPG elements, other games, too.)

Ultima VII now available.

Oh, man, Starflight 1 & 2! Nostalgia overload incoming.

Keep in mind that what "democracy" there is in Pakistan is essentially dressed-up feudalism. When there's an election, the Sindhi patriarchs make sure that all the peasants from Sindhi regions vote for them; same goes for Punjabi leaders, Pashtun leaders, etc. There are essentially 2 socially acceptable options outside this: Islamists and the Army. Islamists have some pretty reprehensible policies, but are really the only populist movement in the country that resists the major parties. The military, by comparison, is the only thing close to a meritocracy. I'm guessing that the banning of "Budweiser" is more because alcohol is forbidden by the Koran.

The rule of thumb I've always heard is that reds go into the fridge 20 minutes before serving, and whites come out of the fridge 20 minutes before serving. I figured out how to nicely saute brussels spouts earlier this week. I was one of the millions who were traumatized as children by boiled sprouts, so they spent a long time on my "why would I want to eat that?" list. But they can be pretty darn good when cooked competently. (I hear that roasting works, too.)

Any song with a tempo in the general vicinity of 120 beats per minute would work.

Well, aside from Gauss rifle and some DLC weapons all energy weapons are useless. I found that I could get through 1 or 2 Deathclaws with the Q34 and a lot of crit-boosting perks. And Pew-Pew is probably the best way to go when they get close. But, yeah, get a Gauss. Preferrably the unique one, although, IIRC, that's only available if you don't have Wild Wasteland on. Also, if your stealth is good, I think you can get to a couple sniping locations above the quarry from where you can fire and not worry about them getting to you. (On the crane?)