Randox

Week 85 - May 7, 2013 [hide] [/hide] Visit the Teaser Discussion Topic!

I'm pretty sure if your listening to recordings of your ex, that's entirely your fault. Nice warm day here today, even though it still gets cold at night. My room has managed to hit 25 degrees to the 17-18 outside, which isn't really cool of it (pun not intended). I've never had the thermometer before during the summer, so it will be interesting to see how bad this gets with actual numbers, rather than just 'if I so much as twitch a muscle, my skin instantly turns shiny'.

That's a fair point about the bullet, though not an insurmountable problem. Not a thought experiment I really want to walk through on a public forum though, because I plan on getting on an aircraft again in the future.

Well I can certainly see how that would rock someones world. Just wow. I'm glad that things seem to be going so great for you with this, that you get along and all that. I can't really imagine what it would be like during that first meeting. For this kind of scenario, it always brings a smile to my face when people embrace the new family, not everyone does, so I hope things continue to go well between you and your new family, as well as your old. Your family just got that much bigger, and that's pretty awesome.

Today I looked at Netflix and saw Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn. I mist live in a cave, though it seems it hasn't been out that long so I guess it's forgivable Considering that it is a web series, even as a movie it's pretty good, especially since Microsoft is standing there enforcing cannon. They better do a full live action film though now that they have teased me. Also, love the Warthog. I feel like that's the one that got built years ago, and it's nice to see it in action. I also watched Thor, as part of the ongoing campaign to make Avengers make just a tad more sense (having gone into it being only familiar with Iron Man). I feel like I might have to watch Captain America too, which is fine I guess. I'll probably enjoy it more than I am expecting, I just need to get to the part where I actually sit down and watch it (to be clear, I am a fan of none of the comics, I just favor Iron Man because I have a huge weakness for awesome suits of armour, which also accounts for a third of my love of Halo). Actually, it occurs to me that since the Xbox is finally in the house, I could actually rock some Halo now (Combat Evolved of course). This is going to be an emotional moment, I have not touched the Xbox except to get a disc out of it for moving in at least a year, maybe two. If only I could play Mario Kart on it too :lol:

Just a couple of points, from a purely observational point. First off, that's actually pretty cool that someone figured out how to do that. I do admire the creativity. I am impressed. Second, the barrel isn't rifled (I assume), which makes it quite inaccurate. I look forward to seeing what they can do with this past the proof of concept stage. Such a weapon would be useful in a small confined space, such as an airplane, where it has the edge of being able to get through a metal detector (the firing pin would be a breeze to hide in something else). Can you say pat down by the TSA? I do also hope that the irony of this situation is not lost on other people.

No experience with the PC version, but a quick google search and hitting up youtube suggests that most of the modded stuff in multiplayer is going to be maps, not overhaul level stuff. So yeah, it mostly looks like you can have mods, or multiplayer, but there doesn't seem to be any large multiplayer modding community going on, at least publicly, since that usually tends to jump out at you.

Hmm, that one is my mistake for misreading. That's a 95% survival rate if your heart is still beating when you hit the operating table in the ER. That wasn't speaking to the greater survival rate. 15-20% fatality sounds about right overall now that I think about it, since that would be in line with the portion of your body where being hit with a bullet tends to be fatal, now that I have done a bit more looking around while not sleepy. Bernice, thanks for that summary as well.

I forgot that I was also watching Bates Motel over the weekend, which is a prequel of sorts to the 1960 film Psycho. Another title might have 'a series of terrible decisions (by crazy people)'. It makes sense in the context of a prequel. This is about the childhood of the bad guy in Psycho, it's pretty much a given he didn't get that way by being raised in a normal environment. It could also be titled 'how to raise a psychopath (by being crazy)'.

My issue with people, civilians, responding with a gun, is that people in a state of panic don't make good choices. The brain is able to cut out a lot of the logical and analytical processes to accelerate action time. You body is on a hair trigger to respond to life threatening situations, but the systems controlling your actions are now the unconscious systems that handle information preprocessing, that is you are running on bare bones instinct. Cops and soldiers train so hard because when their brain goes into panic mode, the idea is that rather than blindly firing at everything that moves in a panicked frenzy, their training has become their instinct (much like training for many sports where you need to move faster than you can normally think) and they do something useful. It also hits me that a single gun shot wound has a fatality of about 5%, assuming timely medical attention. As long as you don't take a shot through the head, or directly through the heart, then chances are your heart will still be going long enough to be beating when you hit the ER, which seems to be a defining point in living or dying. So if you take a single shot and manage to fall to the floor, thus probably being assumed dead and not getting shot again, you have a pretty sporting chance of walking away from the hospital in a couple days. If you draw your gun, you are going to get shot way more than once, and you are almost certainly going to die because your chances of living drop off very quickly with each shot (though the record seems to be nearly 40 shots over 6 hours, which probably means they are a prototype terminator). It is also worth thinking about making them panic. People gunning down a crowd are probably in a pretty tenuous situation upstairs already, so if you cant make that kill shot (which between not really thinking, and being dosed by enough adrenaline to make the shock you are about to go into life threatening doesn't seem like a good chance), than all you have really done is made them more aggressive which only makes the situation worse for everyone. It's a revenge fantasy, one I don't see very many people being functionally able to make good on. That's my two cents. My thoughts on gun control are that it weeds out the spur of the moment stuff. As with suicide, if you can delay people even a day or two, the spur of the moment stuff mostly goes away. I think that's pretty awesome. Mostly, it actually just means no hand guns, or smaller automatics and other fire arms that can be easily concealed, because to work with anything else probably means planning, which gives you the delay. Sure people can still get their hands on them, but you need to wait a day or so to get them from the store, and to get one off the street you need to know the right people. Most people don't have those kinds of contacts, and it's going to take time as a result. Bernice, since you talk about the system in Panama so much, I am interested if it's different than the States. Are their cases of civilians (that means no police or military, present or former, because they have training) being able to successfully intervene in shootings? I am also holding criminals stopping a shooting as an exception on the grounds that they would likely be better conditioned to deal with the situation through experience than an ordinary law abiding citizen, though I would still be interested in examples of that as well, since at the very least it shows potential for the concept (excepting criminal on criminal violence without third party civilian intervention).

And another timely response from me... I suppose the getting used to chemicals does make sense for mood swings. Prednisone makes me interesting. Another medication I have been on gave me euphoria though, and at the end of the trial week, and I did not stick with it because quite frankly it was scary how awesome that was. Eight months down the line, after consuming 70mg of a non physically addictive substance over a week, and I still want it. This is why I never tried street drugs, and why I never will, and why I have made no effort to enjoy gambling beyond the monthly $10 round of texas hold'em. Not even that I don't trust that I couldn't quit (though that would probably be a huge issue), but that I don't want to spend the rest of my life knowing what they are like while not enjoying them. Moving on to other things, my parents are finally getting the house ready to go on sale so they can build the next one (you and I live on food and water, they live on building houses in their spare time). But that house really needs to get sold because it is way too much for them (once it's sold, probably after we move out, I will actually put up pictures because it's absolutely beautiful and kind of mind boggling when you realize it was built by two people except some of the electrical). As part of that, I have taken some of my stuff that I was keeping with them so they have a bit less to deal with, which means for the first time ever I have my Xbox here (that's an actual Xbox). I also got my hands on the hard drive out of the family computer when I was still in elementary because I just want to go through it and see what it had, some memories and stuff. I also have it's predecessor for some reason. Dad wants it to run a security system at the camp, and Mom wants to through it out apparently, so the computer has been granted asylum in my room. I might spend some time with it to see why it got so slow, and see if I can't breathe some life back into it. Of course, the hard drive spelunking does assume that my computer can even read the hard drive. I'm sure the data is fine, even though that hard drive is physically on the ropes, but being I think 15 years old, I'm not sure my motherboard actually has the right port. I know from memory it's not using the same one my other drives use. Oh, and I found out we have a full DVI monitor cable, which I will be using now on my main monitor rather than a VGA adapter. Not sure it makes any difference to the quality or anything, but it just seems more appropriate to use that cable if I can (the monitor sure doesn't care, it has both ports).

Wouldn't anti-depressants control mood swings? Just seems like if they are working, that's probably how it should work. Anyway, my final exam is over and done with, so that's nice. Also got to see my brothers new house, which I really like. I also like to see houses so I can think about what I want and what I don't. For example, I rarely open the curtains (well, the privacy ones) on street side windows, I suppose because I grew up in a rural area where there was no traffic and you're so far back no one has a good view in anyway. That means aside from having a lot of windows on the back side, I want the back side facing south so that the windows I use get the most sun.

I'm surprised he let you do that. From my experience with Huskies, I would expect something more along the lines of pawing until everything came off, shaking, and then laying down with their back to you for the next 15 minutes until you were forgiven :lol:

Week 84 - April 27, 2013 [hide] [/hide] Visit the Teaser Discussion Topic!

Tried out the wasteland mod for Arma II combined operations (no downloads or anything needed, just need to pick a Wasteland server), and it's an unreal amount of fun, even though I am astonishingly bad at the game. At first I got team killed a lot, but I did find myself an excellent server, and settled into a role as a medic, because if I can't shoot anyone, at least I can help out the other guys. As a bonus, a lot of the people on that server use mics, so the pace is a lot faster and everyone works together quite well. The last session was pretty much the ultimate experience. I grabbed helicopters twice, both times being shot down before I could prove that I am only doing a very convincing job of pretending I can fly while actually being clueless. We also went through a number of bases, in some very inconvenient locations. Highlights included forming a special squad to attack an airfield, where we had a sniper and spotter duo backing up the commando team (with me, pretending to be a commando and not just the person who was going to get shot first), where I got shot second while learning a very valuable lesson about not assuming that because you can't be seen, you can't be hit (bushes aren't bulletproof, and leaping behind one is a terrible idea). We also staged an attack on a smaller airfield where I got to field test an M8 assault rifle, using the sharpshooter variant, which because ridiculous because the M8 can accept drum ammunition, giving me a semi automatic sniper rifle with 100 round magazines. This proved to be pretty good against vehicles where you have a good chance of missing, including lighting up a plane attempting to flee. Someday I hope to actually be useful in a firefight, but in the mean time the game is stupid fun, and anyone with Arma 2 should totally check the mod out, and anyone who doesn't have it should watch some videos of it, then buy it.

You really cant be so sure of it. But tot hem playing runescape is how they socialize and thats how they met each other, their rationality makes sense to them. While I neither agree or disagree or condone of their actions I guess whatever makes them happy right? But setting goals like that just sets you up for dissapointment. Especially if they never have met in real life or skyped or called or even texted. How do they even know what each other looks like? What if they arnt the gender they say they are? I'm just glad I know my girlfriend in real life (we go to the same school) but we do play a lot of games together (mainly Diablo 3) tl;dr for the tiny one paragraph mindless rambling; its hard to understand people rationality and perspective when you are on the outside, as far fetched as their beliefes souns. Whatever floats your boat. The way I see it, it's another platform in which to meet people, and while I think going into a game to find a relationship is a terrible on idea in every way, it doesn't hit me as particularly odd that as a game friendship moves on to things like skyping with each other in and out of the game, that it could continue to progress. From there is voice chatting, and after that I suppose meeting up in real life at some point.

I like that I have been back long enough to have been here when the people who are coming back to poke their head in like (Bows) left in the first place. Whay did no one ever tell me about Wasteland servers for Arma II? You know I don't just magically know these things, people need to keep me in the loop. Screw DayZ, I watched a vid where the guys first ever time in wasteland ended with him on a roof in Elekro as an independent while a team rolled into town with a wheeled tank escorting a Hummer. He died when they found out he was there and they distracted him while they got another sniper into a position that could hit him (the tank made a good effort too). The second video is a live stream where the group is cruising down the road in a turreted Hummer and a fighter jet goes roaring past them. It flies back and fourth a few times (enemy team flying it), and then it freaking buzzes them full out, nearly hitting the turrets, and so close to the road it is throwing up dust. A little while later, the live stream group has formed a freaking convoy out of their team using local chat, and they are just rolling down the road with 4+ vehicles (this happens a few times). I've also seen a group numbering over 10 holding the airstrip, and attempting to respond to an attack by launching a helicopter gunship (it gets shot down). Vehicles are common, quality weapons are obtainable, and most people are on red or blue. Once I clear exam season, I need to try this. To be clear, my major gripe with DayZ is other people. I don't like the slow grind to collect decent gear, with the ever present fear that I am going to be shot any second. It's the same reason I will never play EVE online, just too much investment to be losing it all without notice. If players are going to be the biggest threat, then I want guns and trucks too. This is also the first entirely PVP oriented game I have ever really wanted to play, aside from a recreation of goldeneye I have on steam (and it's a pretty good spiritual recreation). I have a soft spot for vehicle combat.

I hope the NIS system takes advantage of a nice opourtunity to change how 'hit enter to chat' works. The ideal solution for most players would probably be an option to reverse that, or make it a toggle key so that you can jump in and out of action bar mode at will. If they don't plan on making the action bar bigger, I assume the function keys are now unbound and could be used instead, and shift function to double the range if they make the bar bigger. I just hate the actionbar system because I find this a social game, and using the bar is a barrier to talking. It also steals all input when in chat mode, so you can't use abilities at the same time.

TTanT, sounds like you did just fine. Isn't this the girl you work with? If you breaking any advice, it's probably about not dating your co-workers. @G550 I think it's a tough spot when a relationship comes between you and a friendship. If he is out of the picture in a couple weeks, waiting is perhaps not the worst option, though you might want to speak to her about it so that she doesn't wonder what is going through your head during that time. Quite frankly it's like someone handed you a get out of jail free card. As for going with a girl who has a child, I guess just echoing what Iamdan said. You are talking about walking into very serious territory full of very serious commitments. Don't rush, know what you are getting into, and make sure you understand the consequences. Not that you need to avoid anyone with children, just...make sure you are ready to have a child if this is the road you want to walk down.

Looks like a really cool update which I might never try out :lol: Not a gambler, I don't have any armour I care to risk that wouldn't be liable to paint a bulls eye on me in any friends chat dedicated to the D&D. As much as my clan is into distractions in general, most of them wont set foot in the wild I think, so the prospects for us making a trip in full rune or something are probably not very good, which is a shame because they are pretty much the only group I would trust to not kill me.

I had the unexpected log in the second time I went to get into the beta. Something about changing world, which was fantastic becuase you need to log in to do that. For me, it fixed itself, though you could always try clearing the browser cache I suppose. That's fixed every other problem I've had logging into RuneScape I think.

Bigger things being Speeding Tickets? :P Today was a lazy day.

Sure, I still have it. It was never anything anyone had to sign, it was part of the beta agreement they posted and was promptly removed from said agreement, I suppose once they decided the bad press it was generating was worse than people seeing the BETA before it was really properly functional. But remember this has already long since been revoked, so it can't be broken now anyway.

I don't think people having a psychotic break are the best example of who deterrents work on. Chances are someone who was as far out it as he was wouldn't have backed down from a tank. As for a camera, it would probably be fine. Flash memory is a lot tougher than a human, and as the windows blow out, all the pressure would be able to escape. The bus itself wouldn't take that much damage past the immedaite point of detonation, and barring being hit by shrapnel, the camera might even still work. If you're trying to kill people, the bomb will be at least a third of the bus back, so the camera is not that close as far as metal and silicon are concerned I think.

I might have to eat my words. When I tried the beta client today (I was going to orb of oculus spy on priffidinas, but as noted that's been disabled) the zoom feature wasn't working. However I am positive that it was working on release day, so either the location fouled it up, they disabled it, or I am just a little bit crazy.