Randox

I think I might have played FF7. It would have been one released on the PS, probably towards the end of it's run. I think I remember something about a cruise chip at the beginning, the teacher (?) with laser eyes (some sort of scanner), and a fire God, I think starting with a D. I think the Gods you could call had something to do with trading cards. That sound about right? I played maybe 3 hours of it, and these memories would be about 12 years old or so I think.

A little mad today I suppose. Went to go see about getting a new phone, and this is when I realize that blackberry doesn't make anything like the torch anymore. I refuse to buy a touchscreen only, because typing on a touch screen is approximately as enjoyable as using sandpaper instead of toilet paper (it's all paper right?). The Q10 on the other hand has exposed keys, which means it would spend the entirety of it's life trying to butt dial people. It's also huge. My first blackberry was like that, and I would very much like to never go back to that style. For the immediate term, the solution is to go online and nab someone elses torch that they don't want anymore, but I'm a little worried about down the road now. I'm looking around and the slide phone seems to be on the way out. It's all exposed keys and touchscreen only. Perhaps I should be stockpiling torches and batteries?

As cool as the mod looks, not sure it's quite I am looking for. To me, there is a very clear distinction between hard to survive, and the zombie horde, even if the latter can cause the former. There is an...image in my head, and I am waiting for a game that can make it a reality. If I can make a shameless plug of my own of sorts, I described the game I want here (in just over 2800 words!). I do think I could polish the idea still, but you get the idea of what I want. I want to build the base, in a combination of risk taking and relative safety, then I want the big theatrical guns blazing zombie attack, and then I want to defend my base as it gets invaded. I think it's telling that that's probably one of the longest pieces I have ever written on the subject of anything, and that I don't require there to be an actual victory condition. I am trying to replicate that feel of the L4D horde rushing down on you, crossed with base defense. When that horde first comes, you pump bullets into it, and they fall, and all is awesome. But then they overwhelm your bullets, and get all up close, and it's suddenly more like "omg omg there are a dozen zombies manhandling me omg omg". I'm not sure if a game like this will ever exist. If my head were a little more accommodating, this is what all my dreams would be.

Another one of my cousins is down visiting, with her children. Have to say, they are pretty adorable, not something I will say about many children. The daugher, 4 years old, is a total clone of her mother too. Went biking with my, cousin in law? I don't know what his title would be. My first ride of the year, and he could probably run a marathon, so that was fun. I'll be lucky if I can walk without limping tomorrow, but on the plus side, better muscles. Probably could have done it without a jet skiing in the big waves the previous day though, which had already done a number on me. So all in all, a pretty good weekend. In less awesome news, my cell phone has died by water, though I have some hopes that it's built in memory might be retrievable. Going to be a fairly large pain if I can't recover some of the information on that in retrospect. I have another phone until I can get a replacement for it, hopefully tuesday. My sentimental side is a bit bummed that it didn't live to retire though. That phones been through a lot of good times, so definitely sad to see it dead. I'm also a bit irritated that the radio I was listening too earlier doesn't track their playlist on Sundays apparently, which seems rather incredible given that they only do music Sunday. It's the only day of the week where they do literally nothing else, so you would think they would be all over that. There were two songs I wanted the names of, and there is no way I am going to remember at least one of them. Check that, managed to remember a line of one of the songs, found it that way. Arguably the song I wanted to find more too. Of course, if I had remembered the one that came on before it, it would have prompted the memory for the one that came right after. Still, take what you can get.

Despicable Me 2. Liking the comedies. I really don't watch enough of them, but there are not many I like to see more than once. Also something about The Heat getting a sequel. Not really sure how that will work, didn't hit me as setting up for that, but if it does, I'll see that.

Nah, I'm Atlantic provinces too, so metric is awesome (unless you're building a house or measuring your height). I would definitely not complain about milage like that. Even my parents Mini isn't spectacular. I think it averages about 8-9L/100km, though if you only take it on rural roads and highways, it will do 7L/100km (that is, the difference between driving around the city and a highway is about 150km over 50L of gas).

What I'm hearing is you can't park on an incline or brake too hard :P As an aside, it bugs me when people give me their gas milage in units of time. If all I did was drive to the nearest beach for work everyday and the grocery store once a week, I could get a month out of Hummer (or a Tank). I know they tend to get good milage, but about how far would it be traveling? Also, how big is the tank? (I'm interested in how good it actually is) Started working on learning the dvorak keyboard. Guess I'll find out when I wake up if any of that work took. If it did, I should know the home row, and maybe a few other keys as well. Also delighted that there is a programmer version of it (a couple punctuation marks are moved, an the number row is entirely redone to make things more convenient, though I'm not entirely sure why the numbers end up ordered that way. I'll probably do it as a custom and skip the number reordering. Looks like a rainy week. Very happy about that. First day in like 3 weeks it hasn't hit 30C in my room all day (28.6!), and I'm all like awesome. I finished up season 8 of Criminal minds. So happy that they don't spread their season finales over two seasons (that is, end on a cliff hanger). I think it speaks volumes about their confidence. They don't need to be like to get people coming back. Other shows I'll lock up the final episode until the next season comes out.

That's something that has given me grief. They are not particularly well documented, and all the controls lists I have found are wrong. The number row selects the unit (or all of them, which is how you start). F1 brings up the movement controls. I think stand ground (which can be used to place troops if you hold it down), follow, charge, advance 10 paces, fall back 10 paces. F2 and F3 also bring up menus. I think F2 covers formations, and F3 covers attack commands (like fire at will), but I might have them backwards. I think F3 also contains weapon selection (you can see what everyone is doing by hitting backspace, and it will say things like stand ground or charging, and using weapon "any" and so on). I should see if there is a tutorial for it. For enemy archers, I have a lot of infantry with shields (who should be split up between shields and spears because they are good for different things), and I can use them to advance on archers distracting them while I bring around a cavalry charge from the side or back. I use a similar tactic for towns. The infantry collectively take the front, the main attack, while all the horse run around back and get the archers. Was taking a look at how I might go about becoming my own ruler. It looks like joining up with someone else is a good way to start, so that's awesome. I also saw the part where you can have armies in the thousands going at each other, which could be interesting (though getting through all that could take a long time I'm sure). Also having some trouble deciding how to specialize people, aside from the medic who will also probably be the engineer. Kicking myself a bit for having a point in most skills. Didn't need to do that, but oh well. I think I favor horse archers who are also competent on the ground, so most of my heroes will probably be like that. Also want a couple normal archers.

Some things to consider I suppose. The thread is a sub community, one that is living with some of the lessons learned from the last sub community we had residing in a single thread. I'll have a look through more of the reports when I have a good time to get a better perspective on this myself, but the current stance is more rigid than perhaps is normal, which flows both from tangents turning into flame wars, and lessons learned. I am not particularly inclined towards special cases that involve rule exemptions. In this case, threads having topics is a core mechanic of how forums function, but also because pulling back our moderation would invite more active self policing, which is an issue neither side needs (since it invariably ends with rules being broken and us taking action, raising tensions all around). Any discussion will have a natural evolution, a form of passive topic enforcement if you like, something that comes out of group interaction. We will take a look and see if we are allowing enough room for the thread to evolve or not, and how long we allow tangents to live before stepping in. If people have specific examples, or rather, can point me to specific examples (ideally the author of the removed posts) and why think it should have been allowed, that would probably be the most helpful to us in getting a good perspective.

The melee combat may be superb, but I do find that I spend much of a given battle on my horse shooting arrows at people. It's definitely weird using the computer people so much, but I do enjoy being the commander. With a slightly larger force, I would like to have a smaller cavalry unit always following me. Right now I'll either lead or send them in, and I won't call them to follow until the battle is wrapping up, or if I need them for whatever reason. I expect as time goes on I'll start to specialize more units and whatnot. I managed to pull myself out of the rut. I probably couldn't take on a lord on my own without serious losses, but I can handle anything else (anything else runs away from me). I am now running a 50 man army, including 7 mercenary cavalry (I don't have enough of the villagers who can be turned into cavalry, and that particular country does send it's armies after me), and it costs north of 700 per week now. Good thing I'm rich. Looking forward to maybe joining in on a siege or something. I am also hoping that I can join up with a faction, and then later make my own. It's going to be a while before I am really a match for the lords. I have a lot more wealth to acquire first, and a lot more soldiers to train.

Tried our Warbands today. It's not an easy game. I was doing pretty well early on, up to all of a thousand gold (not bad for the first half hour or so I think), and then the game kind of hit the fan. More than once. Essentially, I was alright if I could avoid combat by riding around people shooting bolts at them, but that tactic doesn't work very well against larger crowds (like if you're the only person left), or when they have a lot of archers, and my forces were getting decimated by anything other than the weakest enemy, and then I would get knocked out and captured. The primary income in the game comes from trading, not looting, which you need money to do. I did finally sit down at the training camp, and that helped me figure out the combat system, and my combat style. I'm still dead in a 3+ vs 1, and a good chance in a 2 vs 1, but I just might be able to hold my own in single combat. It's a beautiful combat system, but you really do need to understand it, or it will murder you repeatedly. I seem to be doing alright now. I have a healthy fear of just about everything, but I also have a marginally competent militia. Without funds, I can't really hire the mercenaries (I think I have one left right now, from 3 or 4), so I'm stuck taking volunteers from villages, who naturally all die if you go up against anything but the weakest foe. So I have a few of them with the first upgrade, and a couple more at higher levels. I also scrounged up enough money to get other companions, who won't ever die, but I could lose them if I get captured again (that would be bad). Right now I'm sort of working up the courage to take on some cavalry perhaps, or some better bandits at least, since I need some horses and I can't afford them. I also need some archers. Badly. I have one, though most of my forces can throw rocks or something.

I love typewriters. Beautiful machines. Not sure if it's still around, I know the proper typewriter isn't, but we had an electric one that had a ball with all the letters on it, and that's what it would use . The nice thing about that was that you could change the font by giving it a new ball, and it was at least as entertaining to watch, if in a different way. Copying is a pain. I can create thoughts much faster than I can read, though I suppose I could learn to read faster if it ever became important. Mostly on that front I have feared that I might apply it to novels, which would suck a lot of the fun out of them I think. The two big ones I know are teaching your eyes to move consistently, which can be done by moving a pen or pencil under the line as you read (to keep yours eyes from locking on each word individually), and learning to no read aloud in your own head. Would be nice to reliably read faster when I want to, though I have some ability to drop the internal dialogue. Actually just trying it with this post, the tracing, and I think the trick would be getting yourself to remember anything while reading like that.

Urugh, I was going to buy one of the mount and warband games for $5 and forgot, so now I have it for $10. Still pretty good, but blah. Actually, went for the whole pack since I want both warbands and fire & sword. It's double the price, so that seems fair (and get the DLC and original game for bonus). Might have to start watching some Zemalf again, that's where I know the games from. I also suggested that the guys I play Wasteland with buy GTA 4 because awesome, and because I want to play MP with them in that game as well. I'll probably find out tomorrow if that idea took or not. And I wasn't aware that anyone had played Sim City 4 yet :P

That's fair. I'm not suggesting you keep your parents marginally happy forever though. I'm saying that, if it's a lost cause, it might as well pay for school first. There will always be one more thing, but that's the milestone presumably to making independance significantly more viable. As for the excuses thing. I think that still comes back to accepting the situation. I imagine that's your parents game, they are trying to create tension so that the two of you break up without them having to force the situation (which also means that if you stick together, they are liable to escalate down the road anyway). I do also have to appreciate her point of view, because people not being in the same place in their lives at the same time is a big issue for me, and has certainly ended relationships for me. That is, I'll wait for a while if someone needs some time, but I'll not throw good time after bad. I suppose a piece of relevant information would be, is she supported by or living with her parents, or does she have financial independence? It's just interesting for my own perspective. Anyway, I can appreciate the anger, but I still don't think it's justified beyond the situation. She understands that your not complying with their excuses still ends in the same place. In the short term, he controlls the car, thus your primary access to her is at his leisure.

I'm more interested in potentially less arm strain and fewer typos, and perhaps just a more comfortable rhythm. As for forgetting qwerty, I have to assume it depends on how much you use it (and I do work on other computers). In the words of the guy who gave me the idea: That said, while I type fairly fast, typos aside, I can't quite match the spoken word. Imagine your friend who talks pretty fast. I think about that speed, so it would be nice if my fingers would keep up. I also do not have a great typing style, I never learned properly, which makes it harder. I'm not sure if I'll ever unlearn that, but a new layout where I will go slow enough to watch what my hands do is my best chance, and if not, not having to move them as much will help. And just because I really like the quote, and because I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment:

Muggi's prejudice against monogamy aside, it is something worth considering that major sacrifices so early in a relationship are often...ill advised, especially since it can breed resentment down the road which will kill the relationship. There are many people on this planet that you could be happy with. You only have one set of parents. Don't burn that bridge. For dealing with your parents, assuming that you don't want to burn that bridge, you are going to have to walk the line between obedience and defiance. You need some measure of defiance just to prevent them from closing ranks on you, assuming even more control. You seem to have some level of leverage, at least for now, and that's buying you some obvious latitude since they haven't come out with the 'us or her' ultimatum yet. As for her, I am of two minds with this. The position is incredibly selfish, that you should give up your family and set your dreams back by years so that she can see you more often and more regularly. Read that outloud a few times. However, I find that many people are mad at the situation, and will simply direct their anger wherever they can. She can't direct it at the situation itself becuase it's an abstract concept. She can't direct it to your parents either, so she is angry at you. At some point though, she is going to have to actually think about the situation you are in, accept that the situation exists, and deal with it. If she is legitimately angry at you for not doing all of that, then this is not someone you should be dedicating your life too. Really at the end of the day though, it's a cost-benefit analysis if you like. You stand to lose substantially more by getting kicked out by your parents because you'll lose something that you can never get back, something that is immediately much more valuable for setting up the rest of your life.

Had a thought over the weekend, and I have to credit cracked for getting me to take a look at this. I have thought in the past about getting a different style of keyboard, but I hadn't even considered that there are other layouts that use the same keys as a qwerty (just arranged differently). Given that I am planning to make a living programming (typing), and how much I do it anyway, it makes sense to get something better than a layout that was expressly designed to make typing slow and awkward. So, over the remainder of the summer I will be teaching myself the dvorak layout. The trick will be that I can't look at the keyboard while learning it, since all my keys are obviously wrong. So that's going to be fun before my fingers learn where all the keys have gone. Should be fun, and ultimately well worth it.

Had this done at my university. I'd have to figure it was a bit more comprehensive, and I remember being quite strongly INTP. I remember at least one letter was weaker, maybe 30%. I'll have to look for the results, or at least my post about them. Describes me to a T though. I am finding the similarities and differences of the INTP and INTJ types. In particular, the former is compelled to understand, where the latter is ultimately compelled to do. Superficially quite similar, yet ultimately almost the exact opposite. I think one of my best friends growing up was INTJ, which in addition to being quite smart, would probably explain why we got along so well yet argued incessantly. Not only could we follow each others thoughts, but we cared to. I would however probably get along better with an INTP.

Each approach to university funding has its ups and downs. It's an easy way to influence the proportion of various educations. You need other things, like the trades as well. We use it as an incentive to school in your own province, and it is substantially more expensive to coke to Canada from other countries, though we have no shortage of foreign students, even Americans coming north to save some money, or because they like our schools. I think all huskys sound like they are being killed when they're upset. They aren't much for whining as a breed, prefering to sound like they're being attacked. I don't miss that. Found out why our collie looks like a bear keg most of the year. He was originally shaved because his fur got super tangles from swimming, and it would take more than an hour just to comb a few square inches. As a result, they had to shave him all the way, was to tangled to cut, and as a result his guard hairs have never grown back. Guard hairs are the ones that lay down, and without them all his fur grows strait out. By the time he gets shaved for the summer again, it's adding nearly two inches width to each side of him. I didn't realize that's why his fur was like that, I just assumed he was naturally fluffy for some reason.

I feel like Canadian Universities are substantially more subsidixed. My classes are about $3,500 a term (it's ~700 per course), and would be about that, maybe a bit more, for residence and meal plan (meal plans are not optional). I might also feel that way since I essentially board for free (housemates pay my mortgage and utilities).

Saw The Heat a couple days ago. Loved it. I wasn't sure going in, but it's one of the funniest movies I have ever seen, and possibly one of the very rare comedies I might like to see more than once. I also saw the trailer for The Conjuring. I would like to see that, but the most realistic way for me to actually enjoy that kind of movie involves having a boyfriend to watch it with. I'll see world war Z at some point just because I've been dying to see another zombie movie. I've pretty much exhausted all the zombie movies that seemed like I might enjoy them (actually, so far I prefer 28 days and weeks, even if they aren't zombies in the most true sense), and have been waiting for some new material for a while.

I love this, how well and how quickly this sort of thing incorporates into a dream. The other one I love is my old alarm clock with the snooze button. Sometimes the reflex to make it stop would trigger before I finished waking up, and it would always seem like I started moving before the alarm went off.

Be warned, GTA IV ruined every previous GTA title for me that came before it, in the best way possible. Needy Friends Simulator and lack of planes aside, I love the game, and the feel, and I would love to have a more powerful GPU that could enable me to run it how it should be run. I hear you on the combat for Alpha. I think I can see what they were going for, and I actually sort of like it, but it's also very much at odds with what I am used to.

That's alright, because I feel like the only person who played Myst :lol: Weird thing is, my Mom picked that one up, thought I might like it. I probably never would have discovered it myself, and Myst 3 is one of my favourite games (I love Riven too, though I wish it had the Myst 3 3D engine). So yeah, I didn't just get it, but everyone should totally try them (I have played either the 4th or 5th, and didn't like it nearly as much though). I'd say 3rd might be the pinnacle depending on how you feel about the second ones graphics. I'm not sure if there is anyway to make the first one stable on a modern computer.

I will say, Misery loves company. It's nice to see that my 36C room is not the most ridiculous thing going on (under 34 now). Moderate climate for the win, even if ours seems to be broken. Going to be the new Ottawa at this rate, and I suppose Ottawa will be like a volcano or something.