I'm making forward progress in terms of body composition but I've stalled on weight.  I've stacked on serious muscle and have good tone forming.  My blood pressure went down from borderline hypertensive to 117/97.  My muscle endurance has bumped up dramatically but I'm still sucking wind. I'm hitting martial arts regularly on Monday / Wednesday, and heavy lifting/interval training on Tuesday / Thursday.  I'm thinking I might have to take up swimming or something to try to build my cardio.   (My ankles are destroyed from my military accident, so running is pretty painful)  It's frustrating to be able to crack out 500 crunches but have trouble running around a small building without feeling like my lungs are on fire...

And to preempt the inevitable "But...but...FREE MARKET!" cry, I'll ask how you plan to comparison shop when you're on your way to the ER in an ambulance.

I don't have a problem with a highly skilled surgeon / doctor / specialist / GM, whatever making a solid wage.  I don't want the "Discount brain surgeon".  That said, looking at the surgery my wife recently underwent I'd love to see the justification of 1/3 the cost OF MY ENTIRE MORTGAGE for a 2 hour procedure.  There certainly seems to be a bit of a disconnect.   I'm so very, very thankful that I have insurance...I can't imagine how somebody who doesn't would tackle this...

Is it ethical to put your name on game reviews you didn't write?

Hey, at least your reviews still show up.   

Working on that too.      One botched move with no rollback is making for some unpeasant cleanup afterwards.

Well that's the issue then. You need more peasants.

outsourcing!

And that's what I did.  All of our game records are fixed.  next up, all game reviews.  We are in the data gathering portion and then we move to the fixing phase. 

Is it ethical to put your name on game reviews you didn't write?

Hey, at least your reviews still show up.   

Working on that too.      One botched move with no rollback is making for some unpeasant cleanup afterwards.

30% off until May 17th:


$6.99

Worth every penny.  Purchased!

Renewed for a second season:

http://www.eonline.com/news/417338/defiance-renewed-for-season-2-by-syfy

Sweet.  I'm enjoying the show.  Shame the game didn't turn out better, but knowing Trion Worlds they'll hammer it out eventually.

Section 8 wasn't bad, but we already had Tribes as a F2P shooter by the time they shoved it out the door.  I got to play with the guys from Timegate once - it was a pretty great experience.  I hate to see a company go out of business, especially one that brought us the awesome Kohan series as well as F.E.A.R. 

Timegate did not make F.E.A.R., only the expansions which were non-canon and not that great (I just played them in the last year).

Ahhhh, yea, good point.  Well, Kohan was cool hehhehehe

Is it ethical to put your name on game reviews you didn't write?

I know you wrote those for us at E3.  As Mike said, they got jacked up when we did our import so it defaulted to me.   It's easily changed.   Give us a little bit and you'll see your name on them shortly.

On the technical side of things, anything generated for the site is owned by me, the sole owner of the site.  Bylines can be revoked at any time and the staff is aware of that.  The only time I've used that is when I've terminated someone for cause - I essentially erase their existence from the site because I'm a spiteful son of a bitch.     (Theft, plagiarism, unethical behavior, etc.)

So this is what Volition looks like when the leash is off?  I like it.  This looks so far over the top that it'd be hard to not use it as easy 'go-nuts' stress relief. 

Section 8 wasn't bad, but we already had Tribes as a F2P shooter by the time they shoved it out the door.  I got to play with the guys from Timegate once - it was a pretty great experience.  I hate to see a company go out of business, especially one that brought us the awesome Kohan series as well as F.E.A.R. 

Watching Phoenix transform from fruit farms to urban sprawl is kinda nifty too.   It's amazing how many farms still exist on the outskirts though.   Very cool. 

This can't come as a surprise...



I started getting into drumming and there is nobody better.  (though Portnoy comes close!)  It still serves as one of my absolute favorite albums of all time. 

While in the more recent past it's been squarely in the crazy-fest Fox News department to invent stupid and untrue shit using "Sources say..." as their sole citation (even if the "sources" is a janitor that said it), more recently we've seen this stupid practice spread to nearly (if not all) news sources.  CNN has gone full-retard with "satellite" feeds from the same parking lot, MSNBC alternates between this reality and some other one.  I know that it was Reagan who pulled the plug on needing to be truthful in journalism.  Here's my question - is it gone forever?   Is there any way to restore ethics and journalism to an industry that has clearly turned into an entertainment industry?

I feel I need to apologize for taking my bad mood out on the people here. I happened to be browsing GT when my husband brought a letter from our health insurance in for me to read, and I just got  rather shocked, and yes, angry, so I typed what I did when I usually just read and get on with things.

Appreciate that.     

Got hit by Amazon this year because they have a warehouse in the city.   I imagined it'll happen eventually, but I'm not nuts about it. 

So......Guild?  Are we building one?  Are we all joining The Wanderers?   What are we doing? 

I watched the whole season. To me this is a show that would have been much better on a network like HBO or Showtime. Let them really go for the brutality. Still it was worth watching. I'll watch season 2 for sure.

Seriously though?  2014?!   I want it NOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW.   seriously, I liked the show. 

Listen...I like remote control helicopters as much as the next guy, but seriously.....   

I think if the news presented stuff like this instead of the usual doom and gloom I'd watch ever night. 

I love the internet.  Everyone thinks they're Jonathan Swift. 

I don't, but by Jupiter's cock I AM IRON SPARTACUS!

Literally LOL.   Well played, sir.  Well played. 

How is it racist because everyone in the line up is black?  Or because they're all black and in there with a goat?  I'm not sure I've ever heard a racial thing about blacks and goats.

What's the deal with the goat? Is that MD's new mascot?

Either way, it's the stupidest commercial I've ever seen.

Can I direct you to the other thread with the Jack in the Box commercial? 

I have to say that GTA V seems to be a similar engine to IV, though.

Yup,they both use the Rage/Euphoria game engines the only difference is that they have 5 years on GTA4 which is why it looks better(although some character models in backgrounds look like they have been lifted right out of GTA4...the 'party girl in a boat' picture for one,that guy at the front with the 'plastic' hair)

holy shit, it has been 5 years hasn't it?

Went back and installed ICE and all the other mods to IV and it looks pretty damned sweet, but for the love of the FSM they absolutely MUST improve the bouncy ass driving physics.  Gah....just horrible.   I hope they went back and re-played 4 so they could remember why we all hated the driving so much.

So I just went from a 19" to a 27" and boy does it feel odd.  I pushed the monitor back to the wall, so it is about 2 feet from me, and it is just an odd feeling having such a huge monitor.  This thing is bigger than the TV I had in college.

My eyes are having a bit of trouble adjusting to this thing, am I not far enough away?

Also is there any point in "installing" the software the monitor came with?  It is a Samsung, not sure the model.

You might unlock a few new features (refresh rate, additional resolutions, etc.) if you install the software, but typically it's not required per se.   Speaking of refresh - that tends to mess with my eyes if the refresh is low.  Might check that.   Otherwise it's probably just you adjusting to something that more completely fills your field of view I'd guess.

Pulled the trigger and bought all of the books at once.  This show is fantastic!   I do have to agree - the episodes feel like they fly by so fast. 

you can also earn Zen by doing surveys found here.  the length and amount given varies, but if you're bored at work you might be able to score some free Zen.  I've found hitting refresh sometimes gives you new free survey options.

about the only drawback is you may not be eligible for one. or you might get a bit into another and find it saying 'sorry, you're not qualified' due to the last answer, which can make them seem like a puzzle as you try and figure out what they want to hear.  All the ones I have done haven't asked for personal info; if they do I just skip them.

I've gotten about 200 zen from it by doing a couple of them and wasting maybe 10 minutes, enough for a lockbox key.

Wow.  I went through all of the top ones and was DQ'd from all of em.  heheheh

IMO the graphics are good for a MMO that released in 2007, but the game is still 6 years old and it shows. As it stands, I can't run the graphics on full with my ancient gaming rig, so it doesn't bother me too much. My son who has the uber gaming rig in the house on the other hand, didn't care for them at all. It's engine was built on Unreal 3, so there's apparently quite a few tweaks that can be made to it to enhance the graphics.

I agree about there likely never being a major graphic update. The game's management team is more concerned about putting out all that content that the game never got, mostly due to a very poor launch.

I remember being pretty amazed at the draw distance.  I installed it and cranked it up for kicks and giggles just because and yea....it does show it's age a bit.  Still, it tried some cool stuff (the 'combat' diplomacy was always fun!) and in a vanilla world of MMOs that's pretty cool in my book. 

It wasn't a playable demo. It was a carefully choreographed presentation because the whole thing would have broken apart if anyone got to actually play it. The game also had a review embargo/delivery to reviewers that prevented any reviews until after the game was released. You might think it's okay for companies to lie to potential customers in order to sell products they know are inferior to what's being promised. I don't, and I strongly doubt most other people do as well.

The embargo thing is a frequent component in this industry.  Many games arrive at your doorstep with only a few days (sometimes hours?!) before release. Games like Blood Dragon where the game is worthy, those games show up usually well in advance.  Games like Colonial Marines show up the day before.   When I started playing this and realized what was going on I took a day off of my regular job to power through it and the review so people would get adequate warning before they put their hard-earned cash on the table for it.   

The thing that bothers me is that Randy and co KNEW that what they were presenting was not possible with the engine, timeline, or current in-production game.  I feel sorry for the folks at Timegate who (other than their most recent failure of a shooter) have zero experience with shooters being handed a beloved franchise as sub-contractors but given absolutely no control over their own product.  Entire levels were uncoupled and shuffled like a deck of cards (hence why the weapon unlocks are so mangled and ass backwards), major story elements were changed, canon ignored, etc. etc. but since Sega was still happy enough to throw money down the Gearbox hole (which was, from all accounts, promptly used to make Borderlands and Borderlands 2) the end product was never going to be close to the thing that we were shown at E3.  I think him calling it "Actual gameplay" multiple times is what chafes my ass the most.  They showed us a top-tier 360 game and delivered a bottom-rung original Xbox game. 

I've played plenty of games that looked one way at E3 and came out completely changed at the end.  The difference here is that those changes were shouted from the rooftops - this was slipped in under cover of night and set on fire like a bag of flaming dog shit on my porch. 

Like the game or not, the Randy "Pitchfork" remark is tacky.

:/   Fine.

It's not about whether or not I like the game - it's his willful and outright deception of press and public alike.  He knew then it wasn't going to turn out like anything he was showing us.

http://gamingtrend.com/2013/04/30/gearbox-and-sega-get-their-very-own-lawsuit/

We all knew this was coming.  I seriously wonder what kind of impact this is going to have on E3.  If this lawsuit succeeds, or better/worse yet, becomes a class action lawsuit, devs/pubs will likely be a LOT more careful about showing anything early.

We've got two sweet videos on the front page.  http://gamingtrend.com/2013/04/29/watch_dogs-release-date-two-videos-still-awesome/

This game looks sooooo good. 

I believe this thread just became NSFLife.

They could have raised the bar by not using a title that sounds like another particularly high-profile shooter....but nah, CTRL-C, CTRL-V!

Sounds like they have encountered a few problems.

My expectations for this game just divebombed.   

This is where my heart sinks - SquareEnix is going to push them to get it done on time, and that means getting an E3 demo ready and then rapidly finishing it this year.  Will the team rise to the occasion or crack under the pressure?   I sincerely hope it is the former rather than the latter, but damn it...my expectations have divebombed too.  Sigh.

So wow there are some really bad quests on the Foundry.

I just did one, something along the line of "The Queen of Whispers"...First there were two doorways that if you turned in to them, you fell through the world and died.  I can forgive that, perhaps the tool is a bit finicky in building the map.  But otherwise it was like the author just went through and found monsters he thought were cool, and put them in a linear path of hallways to fight through.  Why exactly were there kobolds, intellect devourers, mind flayers, werewolves and bandits all in the same area, it just made no sense at all.

Did one called "Blood and Sand".  I killed a bunch of gladiators with names like Crixus and Crassus, etc. al.  The best part?  I got to the end and couldn't open the cages to 'finish' this horribly unimaginative mission. 

The only part I'm not liking so far?  I've got 4 characters I'm trying out and ALL of them get the distinct pleasure of playing the EXACT SAME CONTENT.  Bleh.  Guess SWTOR spoiled me that way....

I still use the word 'Griglings" to describe having kids. 

4-28


$4.99

I got this one because....well....because SimCity Intermittently Online was so damned terrible. 

I wanted the movie and caught it on....(sad trombone) HDDVD.  I need to replace it with a shiny BluRay.  It's so bad it's good!

My mom has joined Xbox Live!  (Gamertag: MickeyMouseJean)   She plays bass and guitar on Rock Band with us nearly every week.  It's a lot of fun and it helps her with the arthritis in her hands - it keeps her fingers nimble.  Well, she's got her own Xbox and guitar now, so I want to get her copies of the music titles.  She has Band Hero but I'd like to get her Rock Band 1, 2, 3 Guitar Hero etc.   Anyone have copies they don't play anymore?  Hit me up!

I unfortunately have heard "Totes" a little more than I'd like.  Cray cray as well.  It's pretty obnoxious.  Not sure when the shortening of words started, but I tell ya - we'll be speaking a cross between grunts and Valley Girl speak by the end of this decade...

http://gamingtrend.com/2013/04/27/beyond-two-souls-debuts-at-tribeca-film-festival/

This looks PHENOMENAL.   I have no Earthly clue how it'll play but I enjoyed Heavy Rain quite a bit, so I have high hopes for this one. 

The new Jack in the Box commercial where he's talking to his new social media person?  Yea, it's Idiocracy.  The fact that I saw the commercial while doing some writing as Idiocracy was playing in the background was just Inception.