Does the release date of Half Life 2 affect the proposed release date of Vampire: Bloodlines? Can we realistically expect it this year?

I managed to pick up one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=17-146-174&depa=0

A few months ago. I use it to either shuttle patches around LAN game events or bring music to work.

But depending on what your needs are, this could make a serviceable external drive.

The good thing about it is that if you eventually upgrade, you can just swap this hard drive out and put a DVD or CD burner into it.

It's also real good for people that have a lot of old hard drives laying around. You can just bop them into this and figure out what is on them without having to yank apart your PC and trying to get it booted back up.

didn't they just change shipping options recently?

IIRC, you can have it shipped for $1.99

And I see Leisure Suit Larry has dropped ANOTHER $10 - now $19.99.

I remember actually laughing out loud at this one from BG:

"I grow tired of shouting battle cries when fighting this mage. Boo will finish his eyeballs once and for all, so he does not rise again! Evil, Meet my sword! SWORD, MEET EVIL!"

As a point of clarification - King has said he's done *publishing* for a while. He has maintained that he will continue to write. In fact, he's gone so far as to say he needs to write.

*Spoilers*


Quick question, was Dandelo supposed to be Pennywise the Clown from It? Or at least the same type of creature it seems.

I don't think so. In the "Road to the Dark Tower" book I'm reading now, the author points out that both IT and the creature in The Regulators live in todash - the spaces between worlds. He likens them to rats crawling around in the walls of a house.

Dandelo has similar powers at Pennywise, but I think Dandelo is just a special type of vampire.

I knew there would be deaths. I just didn't know when. Even as I could sense them coming closer, I still felt like someone punched me in the gut when they happened. Even when it happened to Oy - a character I never really cared for - I was really choked up.

I would tend to agree with Atta - Roland Book 7 is a different character than Roland Book 1. Hell, he changes drastically from book 1 to book 2.

And that's what this is really all about. Not the tower. It's Roland's journey there.

At first I was a bit confused and didn't like that King included himself in the book(s). After finishing it, I understand WHY he did it - and think it was a great idea.

The only real version of the story is the original book, "Do Androids dream of electric sheep?". At least it's a better Philip K. Dick conversion than Minority Report.

Absolutely. Read that book before entertaining any thoughs as to whether or not he's a replicant.

One of my Top 10 stand alone stories.

I'm about a 1/3 of the way through the "Road to the Dark Tower" book and am amazed at what a good job the author did in summarizing each book, cross referencing King's other work.

It's pretty detailed and a great way to come down off the Dark Tower.

Went to a Sandals resort in St. Lucia.

We're going back this March for our 5 year wedding anniversary to the newest Sandals resort on the island.

Two words for you: ALL INCLUSIVE

I would be happy if science could figure out how to replace my blood with Magic Hat #9

Dammit. Now we have to all move AGAIN.

 :wink:

More important that having a forum to discuss R&P is having people willing and able  to moderate it.

It's not as simple as "opening up a new forum" here or anywhere else. As we all know, some people are rather passionate about their beliefs. And when people start pontificating over "which person has a better invisible person" or "why candidate X is a sneak", things can get ugly.

My only concern is that someone will interpret a posting / comment as religious or political in nature and it will result in all kinds of bans, based on this board's policy (which is fine - your house, your rules).

For example, I was hesitant to comment on a thread on Malthus - not because I think it's political or religious - but maybe someone does. Am I crossing the line by talking about Malthus or Quinn?

If I can talk about Quinn, can Running Man talk about his passion for L. Ron Hubbard? There are some fuzzy lines.

The one thing I liked about GG (and this might be what morton was making reference to) is that people could speak their mind on just about any topic.

It rounded us all out has human beings - not just some random poster that likes Deus Ex or Daggefall. I know more about some of the people from Gone Gold than I do about my own neighbors.

All because of the well rounded nature of the community forum.

That being said:

(1) I respect your decisions and your effort to accomodate
(2) I will do my best not to cross any lines, with respect to religion or politics.

Believe it or not, the ending to the series is actually hinted at within the first 50 pages of The Gunslinger (IIRC). It's definately in the book (not positive on the page number).

Pretty amazing considering it took King 34 some-odd years to meander there.  

While I cannot promise you'll love the ending of the entire story, you'll at least have closure.

Well..if you want to read exactly what he wrote, check here:

http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/malthus/popu.txt

What a lot of people don't realize is how much of an influence Malthus had on Darwin.

I guess the argument for "Malthus was wrong" will depend on who is trying to argue it. I've heard all kinds of interesting interpretations, that's for sure.

But yeah, in a nutshell Malthus believed human population would soon starve.

Also - if anyone cares - I found a book that apparently just came out called:

The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0451213041/103-2361595-8545416?v=glance&s=books

From the publisher:

"With the full cooperation of Stephen King himself, The Road to the Dark Tower examines the epic journey of the author to complete a story that threatened to overwhelm him. In this indispensable companion, Bev Vincent presents a book-by-book analysis of each volume in the series, tracing the Dark Tower's connections to King's other novels including The Stand, Insomnia, and Hearts in Atlantis, and offering insights from the author about the creative process involved in crafting his lifelong work-a work that has consumed not only Stephen King, but his legion of devoted readers. This is essential reading for any Dark Tower-or Stephen King-fan. "

As long as giant rubber bubbles don't start chasing them around the island, I'm hooked.

I think everyone is conditioned for a quick payoff.

Sit back and enjoy the slow build.

It's not that non-gamers don't understand us.

It's that we're all crazy.

Seriously. Just read that dialog. It's the ramblings of a madman - and we all do it.  

"Kate Botello, Hot Or Not" may have been the time I laughed the hardest at GG.  I've never really watched Tech TV, and had no idea who the heck she was, but the rapidfire responses of Morton (pro-hot) and Simon (con-hot) were amazingly funny.

I present to you, the archive of that thread

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rcmerritt/GGarchive/kate/KateBotellolovers_page1.htm

(fyi except for the page numbers, nothing else works.)

It makes me sad just to see the format.  :cry:

how large are you talking? Those thumb drives have some serious space now.

If it wasn't for Rich, we wouldn't all be talking to each other now.

I hope all is well with him and someday he surfaces again.

The loss of GoneGold (at the risk of sounding melodramatic) is significant. There was a pretty large corner of the internet carved out.

Smoove Reading List: 2004 (as best as I can remember)

Bad Medicine : Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Distance Healing to Vitamin O
The Mists of Avalon
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
The Salmon of Doubt
The Logic of Failure
The Da Vinci Code
The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Science of Good and Evil : Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule
How We Believe : Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God
Neuromancer
Prey
Lovecraft (Hans Rodionoff)
Neverwhere
Sophie's World
Into Thin Air
Snow Crash
Inviting Disaster
At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea
Parasite Rex
Dark Tower Book 6: The Song of Susanna
The Black Company
The Black Company: Shadows Linger
The Black Company: The White Rose
I am Legend
The Writer's Journey (2nd ed.)
Dark Tower Book 7: The Dark Tower

Working and archived.

even recently did a copy/paste of the massive "Smoove_B was the first mammal to wear panties" evolution thread (just the initial post, don't have any of the responses or followups)

yeah, I'd hate for THAT thread title to die.  

I heard someone hacked into the server and stole the source code.

Gone Gold should be released in about a month.

I also just e-mailed slambie (and her husband by proxy).

The mind races to remember names and e-mail addresses/websites.

Everthing you've read about the Sandman series is probably not doing it justice. I would have a hard time even describing the series as a whole.

I read it all about 5 years ago, and something tells me that if I sat down and read it again, I would pick up different things and certain points would have new meaning.

Get it. Especially considering that a sort of "prequel" was released about a year ago called, "Endless Nights". I don't think you should read it until you've read the entire Sandman series though.

I've read a number of his novels as well which I can also recommend:

American Gods
Neverwhere
Smoke and Mirrors

BH - there might be a job out there for you.

Spam e-mail proofreader!

'There is no federal funding for my lawn sprinkler system.  Is that a ban?'

I almost want to start a conspiracy thread over that one. LOL

I e-mailed the good doctor (and his wife by proxy).

Yeah. That's great.

What about the thread with our captions for the Government emergency response pictures?

I run a site that's hosted off of http://valueweb.com/

I haven't had any problems with them in 4+ years.

I fully endorse RM9 being responsible for the lack of GG at this point - especially if we can tie it to a Quinn discussion.

Whoa.  I haven't read past the Wasteland.  Please explain the end in a *little* more detail, or I am going to have to drive to B&N RIGHT NOW.

Rhino

Wowzers. I woould love to tell you how it ends...but I don't really think the story is about the end - the Tower is a MacGuffin of sorts.

It really is all about the journey.

I'd say get back into it - there's never been a better time. And Book #4 is easiliy one of his greatest stories ever written.

I just finished book 7 about 10 minutes ago.

Between finally understanding what the series was about and the demise of Gone Gold...I think I might need to start therapy.

Has anyone else read the series to completion yet?

I do wish I had the opportunity to rescue a handful of threads from Gone Gold.  There are some that represented a lot of information.  My Morrowind mod and Game Update threads, the Games Finished thread, a couple of others.  I'd hate to lose those.   If anybody has a recent backup of any of them, let us know.

You're not kidding. The "Books Read in 2004" thread was how I was planning on finding books for next year!

Now...I have never met Rich - only ever exchanged e-mails with him a number of times. But based on what I know about him, it doesn't seem in his character to just pull the plug and walk away.

Granted, things might have changed in his life over the past year or so while he wasn't around very much, but still, I do find it hard to believe that he'd just walk away from the community he created.

With that said, as more time passes without anyone knowing details or the Chief surfacing somewhere with some type of message for the community....I'm not left with a good feeling about it all. Perhaps Rich really is in "a bad place" mentally, and didn't want to host GG anymore.

By not updating the site and even going so far as to chang the front man for a while, maybe he felt the community at large would just die off. But we didn't. Gone Gold didn't wither and die (as some have suggested) so at that point, I guess you'd have kill it all at once? I don't know.

I'm thankful for the time we all had there and very thankful to the CGers for allowing us to resurface here and try to get our bearings.

I hope Rich and his family are ok and that we can hear from him soon.

You do realize I am just busting chops here.

It will all be figured out. And those responsible will be forced to watch Tyne Daly movies.

So we have two imposters confirming each other's status.

How interesting.