Randox

Was reading the news yesterday, and noticed a piece about the Halifax International Forum, which is something I've definitely heard about before, but totally forgot that it exists. The piece was mostly about how no one representing the Russian Government showed up this year (and they normally do), and why that probably was. Anyway, the International Forum was started by Peter MacKay, Canada's current Justice Minister back when he was our Defence Minister, and more than anything, it really made me miss him in that role. Oh, and just absolutely delighted to read a bit about the latest AC game from Ubisoft. I've been conflicted in my hatred of Ubisoft because, like it or not, they make nothing but awesome games. Ghost Recon Phantoms might be the game that made me swear they would never again receive money from me, but it's also at it's core the best online shooter I have ever played, and by a considerable amount (at least as far as cover based shooters go. I don't really like run and gun style). If they weren't hellbent on ruining that game, it would be perfect. Now that they seem to have given up on releasing finished games though, I don't need to worry about what I might be missing anymore, and seeing their stock value take a hit makes me oh so happy.

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Our forums are quite flexible in regards to our ability to create new bbcodes. I've added the following to our forums: [note]Text you want visible when editing[/note] The code will prevent other bbcodes inside it from executing, and will prevent any contained text from showing up in your post unless you are editing it (will also be visible to anyone quoting your post). This code can now be found in the special bbcode box.

Got myself into the closed alpha test for World of Warships, and am hoping to get into closed beta for Armoured Warfare (that one is a lottery draw). I've never had the chance to play a game so early in production before (I've done closed beta for WarThunder Ground Forces and Elder Scrolls Online), and it's certainly an experience (in a good way).

Just how early did you show up?

They were obviously all mesmerized by how well and how fast you run :) And yeah, after not biking for what might have been a couple years, I was able to sustain 25-30km/h on level ground (on crusher dust).

Farming Simulator 15, because apparently I am becoming a boring person. I don't care much for the farming, but I do like the forestry enough that the game was worth a buy.

Was expecting my house mates to invite 40-60 people over for the Halloween party. Turned out to be more like 100. Have to love the Europeans though, no damage to the house. Just a very sticky kitchen floor. I gave up on the party around midnight after I'd had my fill of talking to dozens of people I've never met before, and apparently a half hour later the cops showed up at our house. Something about once they shut down 3 other parties in the area, people could suddenly hear ours too. Fortunately, one of my very diplomatic housemates was downstairs and was able to clear the house for the police, so no one got any tickets, so yay on that front. Might be an end to the parties. If not, we're putting in a 60 people max rule, and a few guys offered to be bouncers for us, because late year university parties (and their guests) are way more awesome than early year parties. The costumes were great to. I think there were only two people in the house who didn't have one. And apparently someone took out their go-pro, so there is a chance we might get footage, which would be nice since none of us thought to take pictures. And congrats on the job Tim. That's got to feel good.

Today I slept through my alarm and woke up just in time to get ready for class, so that's nice. When I looked at my phone to check the time, I thought it said Thursday, which had me mildly confused because I didn't remember doing anything on Wednesday, but I went along with it (fortunately, my tuesdays and thursdays are identical, so I was getting ready for the correct class). It was not until an hour later as I was leaving the house that I checked my phone again, and noticed that it actually said Tuesday, which is both very comforting and a little alarming. The thing that jumps out at me in this scenario is that I said I couldn't remember Wednesday. I didn't say anything about Tuesday. At no point during this hour of time when I thought it was Thursday did I put together the two pieces of knowledge that my last memories were from Monday, and that Thursday is the third day after Monday. As another example of personal brain farts, on a far more spectacular time scale, we have world of tanks (which I have played for nearly a year now). In the game, there is a range to target that pops up whenever you aim at a tank, and I noticed that this feature vanished from my client a few months ago. Yesterday, I decided it was time to address this, and after being informed that I was the only one who lacked this feature, I went around fixing what I assumed to be the problem. It was only at this point, when I expected the problem might be fixed, that I noticed the range indicator in my reticle, not at all where I expected it to be. I can't say with certainty that I didn't fix an actual problem, since I have no screenshots from this time where it would be visible, but I did restore my client supposedly to the state it had been in when I couldn't see the range indicator. This suggests that a few months back, I simply forgot where the range indicator was supposed to show up during one of the patches, and was unable to see it because it wasn't where I thought it should be. It was only when I expected to be able to see it, that I was once again able to notice it. Please grasp the scale of how long I was unable to notice a feature that is 2 inches from the center of my screen in this game. I have been under the impression that I have no range indicator for something like 2000 games, representing probably 180-240 hours over a number of months. The Human brain is a wonderful thing, and it's ability to screw up when reality doesn't line up with it's expectations is nothing short of breathtaking. Sorry to hear about your parents Gabe. I can see some upsides to it, but I don't think the middle of studies is an ideal time to have to deal with that for sure, especially if your mother is being...weird about it.

Started planning out my computer upgrades for the year as a break from endless midterm studying. As some people on the internet kindly pointed out, I was planning on spending about $250 on the most marginal CPU upgrade in history, and I will instead be making the jump from AMD to Intel processors (I was planning on getting an FX, but they barely outperform my current Phenom II in a number of important aspects). This is assuming that the upgrade budget will take a very sharp price increase. Assuming I get what I want, my computer will be getting an i5-4960k, a new mobo to mount it on, and a new case to house it. I should have gotten the new case last year, would have balanced out the costs better.

Cooked my first Turkey ever for (Canadian) thanksgiving. Wasn't much of a feast afterward since most of the house was away, but it turned out pretty good (I didn't screw it up), so yay me. I sort of feel like that's one of the milestones in life, knowing how to cook a turkey without making it so dry that it sucks all the joy and moisture out of you when you try to eat it.

I am a good ways through Dragon Age Origins on my first go, and have logged like 105 hours on that game. Whether or not I am simply the slowest player at this sort of game is up for debate, but I am having a blast (steam might also have goofed the time played or something, because that seems a little too long). My plan for the super max wing is pretty much what Nine outlined. As my prison grows, I will be building a new kitchen in a position where I can have a separate entrance to the super max wing, and I'll use a timed door to isolate a small section of the canteen for supermax use around the times they will be using it. They will also have their own shower, yard, and so on. I like the idea of giving them all solitary doors. I am unsure if I want to patrol it at all. Normal guards can't deal with them, and same for dogs. But if I put in armed guards, a deadly can take them out and go on a shooting spree, so I was thinking that I might suck up the costs and just send the armed guards in shooting whenever they get in trouble. I'll see when I get to that point I suppose, but my prison is at least 100 grand away from starting construction on the super max wing. Protective custody will be done last.

Started up Prison architect again for the first time in I think 6 updates. It has been...interesting. My prison is about halfway to its maximum planned capacity, and the updates since I last played have forced some design changes I hadn't anticipated, so the prison will actually end up being larger. My prison actually made a very smooth transition, and then I looked at my finances and decided to get clever. I noticed that my very few high security prisoners were making me a lot of money (they bring in double), and I figured that if I dedicated one of the new wings of my prison (new prison building just built, about 40% complete with recent design changes) as high security and brought some more of those people in to supplement my healthy license plate money. What I got was a legendary prisoner I am in no way equipped to deal with properly, and a lot of prisoners and a few guards have died because he starts a fight almost every day, and the only solution seems to be losing half my guards or opening fire. I choose to let the prisoners die, not my staff. Once the prison is done I will have a super max wing that is isolated and can deal with this kind of prisoner.

Picked up Receiver on a whim. Not sure it's worth the whole $5, but it is a neat game. Was created in 7 days as part of the competition, and the game focuses on complete control of each part of your gun. Once you get the controls down, it's pretty neat. The game creates a new map randomly whenever you die (there is no saving), and you get one of 3 weapons with a random amount of ammo. You can get a 1911, a Glock (17?), or a Revolver. The revolver is easily the simplest of the weapons, though I hate it for being difficult to keep track of the number of shots you have left, and needing to use all of them before reloading it (or you'll waste ammo). Your only enemies are stationary machine gun turrets and flying stun drones. Your objective is to find 13 cassette tapes without dying. Not an easy task.

I love that game. Took me a while to beat the first level, and forever to beat the second. Then I got older and better at games and I absolutely adore the villa level or whatever it is called (where it's just two of you). Not sure I ever beat it on anything other than easy mode though. Game is hard, and I have trouble with it now since I never play console anymore and can't aim with anything but a mouse.

Apparently the threat of selling buddy's car was enough for him to find someone to come and move it from our driveway. I'm still not sure we could have legally sold his car anyway, and I'm just happy it's gone (though I could have possibly used it as my car, as I'm the only one here who can drive stick. But that'd have been some work making sure the insurance was all in order and stuff). Happy Birthday Gabe!

One of my housemates had a friend from tree planting over the past few days. As far as I can tell, he wasn't invited and just sort of showed up. Anyway, he left for Europe today, which is I think just fine with everyone because he doesn't really fit in with civilization 100%, and he left his car here. So apparently we get to sell it, so that's nice. A few hundred dollars to continue funding our international student (and others) parties that we seem to be having every other friday.

That does look kind of neat, though outside my price range right now. Also, I'm not entirely sure my PC currently meets the minimum requirements. I don't think my 6 core 2.9GHz processor has enough per core power to meet that.

Nice to know I'm not the only person who does this. I actually take a deep breath and slowly exhale, since smelling it makes me want to throw up.

I've started playing again over the last week (that SkyRe game). Added a couple more mods to reskin elven and glass armor. Nothing too fancy, they're just recolors instead of remodeled armor. This makes it very easy to put them in and take them out, since they aren't part of the load order, and they won't stand out too much from the vanilla armors. One of them turns elven armor black and silver, and one to make glass armor look more frozen. Figured if I am going to end up using light armor, I might as well make it not look stupid, and I really don't like vanilla elven or glass (or dwarven). Also looking at a mod that would allow me to take Spellbreaker apart and use it to turn other shields into (even stronger) spellbreaker shields. I am unsure how this will work in concert with SkyRe though, which must have stronger ward spells (I've not looked) to account for the increased damage, and I bet that won't carry over. Might still give it a shot.

What is this Event? RuneFest In-Game is an event taking place this year in the game of RuneScape for all those people who are unable to attend the real world RuneFest 2014, and will be hosted at the same time as the real world event. For more information, you can visit event creator Poly's thread on the RuneScape Official Forums, which can be found at [qfc]199-200-133-65468006[/qfc]. Time and Location: Date: Saturday October 11th, 2014 Time: 9am GMT Other Time Zones: CET (Central European Time): 11am US Eastern: 5am US Central: 4am US Mountain: 3am US Pacific: 2am [pending]red_1413018000[/pending]

Actually, I might have hit a turning point for Michael. One of the last episodes in season 3, Womens Appreciation, probably the funniest episode I've seen so far (just wrapped up that season). Really liked Michael in that. Don't know if it will stick, but I certainly enjoyed him more in the episodes following. My money is on me timing it so that I really start to love his character right as he gets phased out of the show. I have absolutely no idea what happened to Kaida. Last I heard from him was a little over a year ago, but his account has been active much more recently than that, so I think he is still alive. Maybe something happened, I'm not sure, or maybe one day he woke up and decided he wanted to move on. Maybe one day he'll come back and tell us stories about what he's been up to since he left. That'd be cool.

I don't know how to describe it. Examples would probably help. It's prolonged awkwardness, or just a really awkward character that gets under my skin. Something like that. Where it usually comes up with me is any sort of movie romance. On to the third season, and I'm finding that better. I even like Michael a good portion of the time. I also think I finally figured out what is bugging me about him. Everyone else on the show I identify as an office worker of sort, realistic or not (I refuse to believe that anyone would actually hire Dwight, for example, or that he could sell food to a starving man, and that makes his character that much funnier). But Michael is a child (I'd say he has the mental and emotional development of a six year old), and I think I'm finding that distinction...really out of place. It's like his character belongs to a different show sometimes, like the humor is coming from a different place, and that's what bugs me. Don't get me wrong though, I find the show funny, and binge watching it is getting me through a cold, so yay for that. Also, today it sounded like one of my hard drives was clicking (so, failing). Turned out to be the DVD drive, which was apparently attempting to eat GTA IV. So theres that going on too :unsure:

Started watching The Office (US) this week. Decided to skip the first season about 10 minutes into episode two, and I'm still having some mixed feelings in season 2. For the most part, I really like the show, but I'm having trouble with Carell's character (Michael Scott, the Boss). I just feel sometimes like all his character does is interfere with the show for me. He does a lot of stuff that is either humor through awkward situations (which as a rule I despise), or he just becomes this terrible person who just creates a hostile work environment (I'm not sure why, but every once in a while he hits too close to home, and it's like "not cool man"). But at least so far, the rest of the show is funny enough that I can put up with it. A little bummed that I don't like Carell in this though, since I actually started watching this version specifically because he is in it. Not going to bother with the UK version though I think, since that would lose the benefit that I at least like Carell (which I can use to offset some of my dislike of his character), where as I do not like Ricky Gervais at all.

The Editorial Panel is Hiring! About The Editorial Panel The Editorial Panel is a group of people composed of authors and editors. Together, we work to produce a weekly publication called the Tip.It Times, and we are recruiting! Do you enjoy discussing and debating RuneScape-related topics in General Discussion? Do you have strong opinions about RuneScape updates? Do you enjoy writing fictional stories? Or do you have impeccable grammar and spelling skills? If you can answer "yes" to one of the above, a job with the Editorial Panel may be just the thing for you! You don't have to be an incredible writer to join the team because our editors will proofread your articles for spelling, grammar, organization and flow. We're looking for people who can stir discussion, provoke thought and encourage debate. So even if you don't normally find yourself writing articles but often create threads to discuss ideas and issues in General Discussion, this may be the job for you! About The Job This is a volunteer, non-paying job.Authors and editors are typically given an assignment once a month (2-5 weeks notice), for which they must meet their deadline. Authors may select their own article topics.Editorial Panel members' work is published for thousands of users to read, discuss and enjoy. Available Positions There are two positions available in the Editorial Panel: authors and editors. If you have the necessary skills, you could even do both! We are looking to take on new people for each position. Continue reading for descriptions on each role. Authors Authors are responsible for writing editorial or fiction articles for the Tip.It Times. They choose their own topics and work on a deadline to produce their article for a specific publication. They are usually given about 2-5 weeks notice for each deadline. Authors may write about anything they want, as long as it is RuneScape-related and follows a few basic rules (such as appropriateness). Editorial articles should be blog-like, controversial, original, interesting and thought provoking. They reflect your personal opinions (or what you notice that other peoples' opinions are) about RuneScape updates, features or general happenings. Fictional writers create stories that occur in a RuneScape setting. Stories should be engaging, exciting and related to the game. All authors must be able to accept constructive criticism from both their team members before the article is released and from the Tip.it community after the article is published. Word count for articles is flexible, but is expected to be a minimum of about 600 words. Editors Editors are very important parts of the Editorial Panel. They are responsible for reading, editing and commenting on articles before they are published. They review articles for accuracy, quality, spelling and grammatical errors. As such, they are required to have good writing skills and knowledge of grammatical rules. Editors are also encouraged to comment on and critique the content of the article and give suggestions where they see fit. They are also welcome to provide topic suggestions to authors. Editors may also write their own articles if they wish, but authors are given priority time slots. How To Apply Everyone may apply to join the Editorial Panel! It doesn't matter if you have applied unsuccessfully in the past or hold another staff position; if you are interested - submit your application now!PM your application to @Arceus - do not post it here!Put Editorial Panel Application as the subject.Take your time to make a good impression. Do not rush or put in half effort.Read and answer each question thoroughly and to the best of your ability.Even if your application is not chosen, we will keep it on record and contact you at a later date if need be. Deadline: October 6th [pending]blu_1412611200[/pending] Note: The official deadline is October 6th, but if you are still interested in applying after that date, you may submit an application. However, priority will be given to those who apply within the deadline. Application [hide=Application Read Only]** NOTE: You are required to submit a piece of writing with your application. Authors must submit an article that could potentially be published in the Tip.It Times (so it must be RuneScape-related). Editors should submit a writing sample (any subject) that demonstrates their spelling and grammatical skills. ** General Information 1. Please provide a link to your profile: 2. Which position are you applying for (author or editor)?: 3. Which Tip.It Forum boards do you read/post in most often? Qualifications 4. Are you currently playing RuneScape? If so, how much time each week do you dedicate to playing? 5. Do you feel comfortable being given a writing/editing schedule and working on a deadline? 6. Please describe your writing and/or editing experience. i.e. Have you written/edited for a school newspaper? Do you write for fun? Are you studying literature in school? etc. 7. How much time do you have to dedicate to writing/editing articles each week? 8. Explain why you want to be an Editorial Panel member and how you would benefit the team. 9. Is English your native language? If not, would you consider yourself to be a fluent English writer? About You! This section does not necessarily factor into your chances of getting accepted. It just helps us get to know you a little bit better! 10. What is your age? 11. In what country do you live? Time Zone? 12. What is your RSN? Link to the RS High Scores or provide any self-updating stat-signature. Or you may edit your username into the below link (change USERNAMEHERE to your username): http://services.runescape.com/m=hiscore/compare.ws?user1=USERNAMEHERE 13. Tell us anything else you'd like us to know about you here! Favorite color, hobbies, sports, education, etc. Let us know who YOU are! Writing Sample Please paste your writing sample below. For author applicants this is a RuneScape-related article that could be published in the Tip.It Times (fictional or editorial). For editor applicants this is a writing sample on any subject to help us get a sense of your spelling and grammatical skills.[/hide] [hide=In Code Tags - Copy From Here!] [/hide] REMEMBER - Just be yourself. Take your time and put effort into your application. It is better to go into too much detail than to not put in enough detail. Applications are not being run on a first come, first served basis, so there's no need to rush. All applications will be reviewed by Tip.it Administrators and the current Editorial Panel team. Questions If you have any questions about this application process, please feel free to post here or PM me directly. We look forward to reviewing your applications. Good luck to all! :thumbsup: