Enoch

Two spaces is still the rule in a some environments. I'm thinking specifically of court filings in many jurisdictions-- judges have a lot in common Old-school Professors. To thoroughly change the subject, the personal issue I had mentioned a couple weeks ago in this space is resolved, and not in a particularly happy manner. By the time we got to the follow-up/second opinion last Monday, the little guy's heart had stopped beating. We had a good amount of warning that this was a likely outcome, and we take some solace in that unhappy resolution now is greatly preferable over an unhappy resolution 3 months from now. The associated medical stuff (induced labor, delivery, recovery from such) has also all gone well so far. But, of course, we're still sad about the whole thing. We've had a lot of family around, which has helped. And my admiration for Mrs. E has only increased with how well she has handled all of this (her immediate family too-- those folks rock).

Thanks, everyone. It's a rough thing to go through, but I think we're handling it as well as can be expected. It probably helps that our expectations have been adjusted somewhat gradually. From 2 weeks ago's "he's smaller than we would expect, and some of the bloodflow reading aren't ideal, so go on bed rest and see if it helps him grow" to 1 week ago's "genetic testing is all OK, but the best case scenario at this point is probably delivering 2+ months early in an ICU," to today's "no growth over the 2-week baseline, and bloodflow readings getting worse." The folks at the Dr. office today seemed to be afraid that we were going to lose it any second, and I think both of us were getting annoyed that their tact was getting in the way of the medical advice. I really had to press to get the obstetrician's honest opinion of the chances of a not-terrible outcome when all she was offering was overly gentle statements like "you can get a second opinion" and "we'll respect however you want to proceed." (And this was at an OB office that specializes in high-risk pregnancies.) Our eyes were by no means dry, but we were there to get what hard information we could, rather than advice on the emotional impact of the choices before us. So, we are going to get that second opinion, and if that prognosis is better, that'd be great. But the Doc we're going to see also happens to be affiliated with a hospital team who can handle what has to happen when a pregnancy goes bad this late in the game. The (relatively) good news is that there's no reason to believe that this is anything genetic or specifically related to my wife's participation in the gestating process. So, based on all available information, it's not particularly likely to happen again and is also unlikely to cause any lasting physical harm to Mrs. E.

Given your employer I'm not surprised. Hang in there, though. Actually, this particular run of ****tiness is not work-related. Yes, stuff is tense at work given that the agency is essentially being asked to keep doing the same quantity and quality of work (if not more), but with less money and fewer staff. And I am breaking in a new supervisor in the midst of all that. But this particular instance of personal stress is the kind of thing that puts the work stress in perspective. Short story is that the wife is about 5 months pregnant, and it looks very much like it's not going to end well. Some sort of problem in the placenta is suppressing the umbilical bloodflow such that the little guy just hasn't been growing.

Things have been pretty ****ty around here lately. We'll find out more info tomorrow, but I'm not optimistic at the moment.

You can only edit a post for a short time after making it. Once it has been up for a while (I think it's something like 15 minutes or a half hour), the edit button disappears.

I've been using a similar mod. It doesn't affect the XP gains, but the thresholds for level-up are increased by a set percentage. Setting them at 130% of the default, I think, makes for effective pacing on a reasonably completionist character.

I wasn't really talking about the uber-items. More NWN2-style "We made character options for 18 different weapons specializations, so now we need to put +1 variants of all 18 in places where players will find them by level 5, +2 variants where players will find them by level 9, etc., etc." Some kind of Diablo-style transferrable bonuses eliminate that problem.

I see the prime usefulness of crafting as a way to accomodate the game's loot stream to differing character builds. If an RPG allows a wide-range of classes, skills, specializations, etc., the campaign almost has to be Monty-Hall-ish in order to ensure that every potential character build is going to find something useful (which is important not only for player gratification, but also for difficulty scaling as the player progresses). Crafting systems offer a way to get around this: Award the player with more generic resources, or equipment that can be broken down into more generic resources, and let him or her fashion gear to suit their character(s). Of course, in order for crafting to be an integral part of a game's loot balance, it has to be user-friendly enough that pretty much every player can be expected to use it. If it isn't, the testers will hit balance problems-- player who use the system will breeze through the game, while players who find it too involved will ignore it and get frustrated. IMO, both KotOR2 and NWN2 suffered from this problem. (Well, neither game was particularly hard to begin with, but the use of the crafting system did make an enormous difference in the difficulty experienced by players.) Edit: one good point for The Witcher 1 is that they inform the player when selecting difficulty level that crafting can be optional on easy, but necessary on harder difficulties. That's one way to get around the "TL;DR" problem. But, given that variation in character builds in that game was quite limited, it doesn't really suit my criteria for a useful system, other than as character/world flavor. Better to either make it very user-friendly and expect it of everybody, or take it out entirely.

Because it was (and, as far as I know, still is) free on GOG, and because it pre-dated my interest in games that pushed boundaries, I'm taking a shot at Ultima 4. I doubt I have the time or patience to really take on an 80s-style CRPG, but so far it's worth a dip to get the general flavor of the game. (I'm also hampered by the fact that the game's opening quiz made me a Mage, which is probably the class most dependent on the learning and micro-managing of the rather involved magic system. Who knew that "Honesty" meant "Wizard"?!) If you do get the free GOG version, be warned: The materials on GOG do not include the reference card, for some reason. I had to go to the internet to get the list of commands that the game recognizes.

You missed the metro tunnels? I don't understand this comment. It almost sounds like you think the metro tunnels were a positive feature rather than a negative. The FO3 metro tunnels were a positive-- they were just massively overused (and unavoidable), such that everyone got sick of them. If they were more varied and not necessary gateways for many game locations, you wouldn't see the complaints that you do. Also, as someone who spends about an hour every workday in the actual DC Metro, it was fun to see a rather humdrum part of my routine transformed into an opportunity for adventure. I am lousy at action games, and easily frustrated into quitting them. Everybody seems to criticize Arkham Asylum for being too easy, but I've hit a difficulty spike that had me walking away from the game. It's the fight that takes place where the electrified floor toggles from one area to the next-- I just can't handle it once there are 2 mooks weilding those freaking shock-prods. I've tried it about 5 times, and I'm getting closer to getting by (putting explosive-spray "mines" at the transition areas to set off at opportune moments certainly helped), but my patience is running thin. Can't I just go back to solving riddles instead?? When AA frustrates me or makes me woozy (I have some motion-sickness issues with it from time to time), I've been going back to advance an old BG2 save. I'm essentially re-playing with the same setup I first ran through the game over a decade ago-- a multiclassed F/M, Keldorn, Anomen, Jahiera, Jan, and Rotational/Imoen-- and just arrived at that town outside Spellhold.

So now you're reading the minds of judges? How is it possible to figure out whether a particular outcome is "purposely misinterpreting" as opposed to merely mistakenly misinterpreting, or applying an interpretation that, although it may not agree with the one the reader favors, is nonetheless a reasonable alternative, given available information? I was reading "tyrannical" as meaning associated with an authoritarian form of government. One could argue that unelected judges striking down the actions of a representative legislature as a tyrannical action (or at least an oligarchic one). I'm not sure I follow you. Of course Congress is limited to the enumerated powers. But those powers are broadly stated-- Congress is explicitly granted the power to raise an Army and a Navy, but they don't need a constitutional amendment in order to fund the Air Force. And two of those enumerated powers include regulating commerce and spending public money for the general welfare of the nation. The details of what is and isn't included within the scope of those terms are far from clear.

I'd say it's more a case of deliberate ambiguity. Madison may have had a particular idea about what was meant by "to provide for the ... general welfare of the United States" and "to regulate commerce ... among the several states" (powers of Congress in Article I, sec. , but there wasn't enough of a consensus among the other 37 dudes at the Constitutional Convention to agree on more specific language. So, as with many things written by committee, they settled on language that each of them could reasonably interpret as supportive of their view. Which amounts to punting the issue for future generations to figure out. Also, @WoD, wouldn't a "tyrannical" judiciary be one that struck down acts of the elected branches of government, rather than one that let the people's representatives in Congress and the White House carry out the will of their constitutents?

Some of it is probably down to bits of stuff flying through the air at a bongzillion miles an hour. Irene rated low on the core-windspeed-based "category" system, but in terms of area covered, it was an absolutely enormous storm (like, twice the diameter of many hurricanes), it corresponded with the highest peak tides of the month, and it hit some heavily populated areas that don't see hurricanes often.

If you do Honest Hearts with a high-level character, you'll find a fair number of them.

I'm about to go out and secure the stuff in the yard that might blow about in the storm. We're inland enough that we're not going to get anything close to a direct strike, but it'll still probably be sustained TS-force winds for a few hours along with a lot of rain. And, knowing PEPCo, we'll almost certainly lose power for a while.

It's all in what you're expecting. And in what they have in mind in terms of acceptable tolerances when they build buildings, bridges, tunnels, and train tracks. Luckily, the biggest news so far in terms of real damage is that a finial broke off of the National Cathedral. I'm sure the first thought that went through nearly every DC resident's head was "Holy ****, was that a terrorist bomb going off??"

Yeah, that was entertaining. Not going to be a fun commute home today, though. I'm thinking of sheltering in place at the bar around the corner for a little while before giving the Metro a try. (It's running, but all trains are going only 15MPH until they're sure there isn't track damage.)

Again, "because" is too strong a word. Any movement large enough to threaten the stability of a country has a lot of different members. There are certainly Libyan patriots, democratic idealists, and people justifiably angered by the wrongs committed by the Q regime involved along with the more practical tribal patriarchs, and these patriarchs would probably have a tough time getting any revolution off the ground if their followers weren't inspired by the story of Tunisia and Egypt and the prospect of that happening for Libya. But it's also these practical people who line up the money needed for an armed conflict before they truly cast their lot in with it. And there's plenty of evidence that these would-be revolutionaries had contact with folks at places like Total and Eni. And these petroleum-company bigwigs are not stupid-- they're not going to sign on to support a movement unless they're pretty sure it has a reasonable chance of success. Also, beyond the simple influence of powerful oil companies, European governments themselves are susceptible to problems with petroleum supplies-- it seems like every other year, there's some trucker strike that paralyzes all economic activity in France, often driven by the price of fuel. France and Italy are particularly dependent on Libyan oil. Libyan crude oil is quite light, and French and Italian refineries can't really handle heavier crude without expensive retrofitting. So you have a situation where major NATO member states (with economies already in precarious positions) see an armed insurrection in a supplier state on which they are heavily dependent, funded largely by speculative contracts with their own domestic petroleum companies, striving to overthrow a capricious autocrat who they've tolerated but never been particularly happy with. And that armed insurrection is publicly rallying on a pro-democracy theme that makes for great PR and headlines across the world. The moment that autocrat signaled that he was willing to seriously jeopardize the country's oil infrastructure in order to hold onto power (and, yes, of course the rebels were baiting Qaddafi into hitting the refineries/pipelines/etc. Wouldn't you?), they got the rest of NATO on-board with helping the rebels out. This can be (and probably is) both a hopeful story about freeing a country from a pretty brutal autocrat and a cynical story about an opportunistic play for control of a valuable resource. And there's nothing inconsistent about that-- the world is a complicated place.

Thank you.

Could somebody please cater to my laziness and tell/link me the hardware specs for this game?

Well, I won't go so far as "created by," but "enabled," would certainly be fair. In the way of explanation, I'll start by quoting myself from back in the early days of this thread: A population that has little national identity and instead considers regional tribal identity as its first loyalty has been ruled for 40+ years by a fairly standard-issue petro-dictator. He has been oppressive of dissent, has encouraged a cult of personality rather than any kind of nationalistic ethos, but has been buying stability by putting people on the dole and, ever since his run-in with the U.S. in the '80s, has not been troublesome internationally. The outside world has been generally willing to let him be (and to let the oil keep flowing). But, population growth has put pressure on his ability to buy internal stability, and those tribal factions that are generally out-of-favor have been inspired by successful revolts against autocrats in surrounding nations. They were able to quickly contol some important regions and could effectively shut Qaddafi out of a large part of the oil revenues he depends upon if he didn't retaliate. So, retaliate he did. And not just on the people fighting against him-- he was willing to destroy important petroleum infrastructure to deny it to his enemies. At that point, Europe became deeply interested in getting this thing resolved. And there was certainly enough of a backlog of "Qaddafi's a bad dude" evidence to generate the political support necessary to wipe out Q's air superiority and air defenses. Is it, on the whole, a Good Thing for the people of Libya? Maybe. For the members of tribal affiliations most opposed to Q, probably yes. Less so for those who were more in-favor with his regime. Qaddafi is a Bad Dude-- look no further than his handling of this revolt for evidence that he values holding onto power more than he does the welfare of the Libyan people-- and the world won't miss him much when he's gone. We don't know that whatever succeeds him in power will be better, but on the whole it seems likely. And it also seems likely that the price of NATO's help will be some rather kind oil contracts with western interests. That brings a whiff of colonialist-type exploitation, but sometimes that's a least-bad solution to tricky problems-- once the revolt against Q got going, it became unlikely that any one faction was going to be able to provide stability in the country without some Western support. I'd rather a little quasi-colonialism than a civil war stretching on for years and destroying much of the country's infrastructure.

Want to set up a union? We could get fat paychecks for making them go on strike. Given that many (most?) of those drones are being operated by the CIA, I don't foresee a strike ending too well for the people who organize it...

Essentially, having the wheels that provide power to the car also be the ones that tell it the direction you want it to go is helpful in slippery situations. Even if you weigh down the back of a rear-drive car (and Wals has the right idea in terms of ballast), the back wheels getting traction doesn't necessarily mean that the front wheels won't decide to slide instead of rotate in the direction you point them. That said, rear-drive cars are far more fun to drive when conditions are reasonable. And driving on packed snow or ice can easily be avoided in most parts of the continental U.S. with sufficient planning. Just keep an eye on weather forecasts, and try to live within walking distance of work, school, and/or public transportation to such. Also, keep a supply of canned food, liquor, and good books in your house. Even if you can't manage a non-driving commute, unless you're in New England or somewhere subject to Great-Lake-effect snowstorms (and even in those places, the tough weather is offset by their having the best snow-removal road crews in the country), the situations when you absolutely have to drive in terrible conditions will be pretty rare. That's what sick time is for.

And the justification of that decision was simple: There really isn't any prospect of a U.S. rival getting anything in the air in the next decade or two that can come close to competing with the planes we've already ordered/built (i.e., the 180-some F-22s we didn't cancel, the F-35s they're still working on, and the legacy fighters we currently have). The Air Force is very stubborn about its fighter wings. Over the past 50 years, the easiest path to high command in the USAF has been via being a fighter pilot and commanding a fighter wing. Thus, most of the high uniformed officials in the AF are former fighter pilots, and have a lot of loyalty to that segment of the force. Despite the disappearance of the strategic need for lots of air-to-air capacity, they kept ordering more fighter jets and resisting the rise of unmanned drones.

Old news, really. Odd that it's getting another round of media attention. Anyhow, we all know that nations confined to oil platforms inevitably meet a grisly end when a mysterious wanderer happens by and sets off the A-bomb they keep in the basement.