Edgwyn

A lot of people who always have cel phones with them no longer bother to wear wrist watches. Cel phones never require setting, there are apps for all of the different functions you might want (stop watch, count down, etc), there is not a lot of point to buying and wearing a watch. I still do out of habit and because there are some situations that I am in where having a cel phone out is not socially acceptable. I am curious if a certain segment of society will eventually embrace wrist watches the way they have pocket watches. Of course it will take a while for wrist watches to be dead. Too bad I did not accumulate a collection of swatch watches that I could hold on to for another forty or so years and then sell when wrist watches become cool.

I wear a watch as well. I am used to traveling a lot and so DST to me is no more memorable than changing timezones on a trip, it is just something that you do. As a sometimes sleep deprived adult I do not enjoy the loss of an hour of sleep in the Spring, but I know that I will get an extra hour of sleep in the Fall.

All of that is available in the Avadon 2 Strategy Central section. There is an item entitled comprehensive item, quest, etc list that has the quest giver's and their locations.

Essentially, that is what DST is, a changing of schedules, except it is uniform instead of haphazard. If a business changes its schedule it has a large impact on its employees who happen to be parents unless the schools and day care centers change their schedules as well Likewise with people who work multiple jobs.

I routinely see items marked in UTC and then translate to local time. I am not interested in giving up local time, because I like consistently knowing when sunrise and sunset are going to occur (within an hour or so at least pending on how far North or South I am from the equator) which drives so much other activity. We haven't been able to convert America to the SI or metric system which might have an economic benefit, I do not see how we could get folks to change time systems without any real benefit. Theoretically, daylight savings time generates some energy savings and therefore some reduction in green house gas emissions.

I would be curious if someone with the data mining ability and access were to do it, what the average post rate of the top 40 posters in say 2003 was compared to the post rate of the top 40 posters in 2013. One key point would be to identify the top 40 posters based on posts in that year, not in overall post production. I am sure that both Lilith and Goldenking's points are accurate as to the cause of the reduction. Then of course you have Alorael putting nightmare's in my head about the size of a stack of punch cards that you would have to have for these boards and what would happen if you dropped them, black diagonal line or no black diagonal line. If he keeps creating unsettling images like that, I may have to stop posting :-)

While I tend to pick the side of good or law (not necessarily the same thing) in RPGs, at least when it is clear, in games like Civilization I routinely conquer other nations. A:EftP is fairly easy to play as a "good" character. The Avadon series you can easily play as a "lawful" character, "good" might be a little hard to manage. But in both of these, there is likely to be some morally ambiguous acts, which do make it more realistic. Computer games have a degree of escapism to them for many players. For example in Call of Duty or Halo you can be that super warrior that few actually are in real life. There are games where you can be a race car driver, a fighter pilot, a railroad tycoon, a superhero, a martial arts master, etc. GTA is escapism just like these except you are getting to play as a criminal and live that fantasy. In general there is not a lot wrong with escapism as long as you remember what the difference is between fantasy and reality and as long as things are not too extreme. With all of that said, I choose not to play GTA because of its moral issues. I do play civilization where in every game I probably kill a few hundred thousand enemy soldiers and civilians.

I look at some of the post counts and they work out to two or three posts every day for years. I am curious as to what you all were talking about why back then to generate such high activity.

I am looking forward to it. I like the engine and i like the story so I am expecting a good game.

I think you have made the right call, there are plenty of other "smart, driven and beautiful" women who do not happen to be your boss. If she pushes the issue, she could put herself in a very bad situation. The book/movie Disclosure provides one of the worst case scenarios.

For human society in general, I would say that science is more necessary to the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and literature/stories more important to the top part of the hierarchy. With archimedes screw, I can irrigate my fields better, produce more food and survive the winter better. With literature/stories, the winter is less dreary and I am happy that I survived. I am not particularly interested in trying to survive without either. Dikiyoba added well to my point that I did not state particularly well. There is tons of art and literature that I can enjoy without training. There is however, some art and literature that I would need training to enjoy (Faulkner, James Joyce, Modern Art, etc). Acquiring that training is a luxury, when you consider that I only need it to appreciate 10% of the total art and literature that are available, the other 90% is accessible at the level of training that I received in grade school. I do believe that many classics are accessible such as Shakespeare, Homer, Sir Walter Scott, though obviously putting them in modern english helps. There are lots of people who society considers brilliant, that I believe are incapable of communicating. Some of them are artists, some writers, some directors, some physicists. My idea of a brilliant writer is someone that makes their book accessible enough that I want to read it, while still making me think.

Lilith and Randomizer both have excellent points. If your current job is at all important to you, a love or lust triangle is one of the worst things that you can do. One day of flirting may be nothing, she may be interested in you and drop the boyfriend, or she may have you firmly in the friend zone. In any case, starting anything with her is a bad idea. Even "friendly" flirting can get dangerous in a work type environment. Her boyfriend can get jealous and make things socially awkward in the workplace. If she is really into him, he can force her to go to HR and state that you are harassing her. This is a lot of potential drama for a person who you are not even sure that you actually like.

I do believe that an ideal market would definitely have room for criticism of literature and studies of historical fiction. I also believe that the ideal market would have room for beautiful prose, but I find it having room for the appreciation of prose less likely. I am not sure that training someone to like something (wine, prose, art, n-dimensional physics, etc) will ever be anything other than an enjoyable exercise for those with excess disposable funds. I believe that a good writer is either innately capable or can be trained to write prose that I do not need to be trained to enjoy. After all, without any training (much of my english classes would count negatively to enjoying prose and I had zero art appreciation classes), I am capable of enjoying Shakespeare, Monet and Rembrandt.

Congratulations or condolences, whichever is more appropriate, and thank you for maintaining these forums for all of us.

Killing the beast will be a special activity after you have had several encounters with him where you do some damage to him but do not kill him. You are definitely not to that point yet. If I remember correctly, the trap door in the SW of the Beast's woods map opens after you have driven away the beast from the woods after you have talked to Kasch. Have you talked to Kasch yet?

Most of the changes in the LOTR did not seem to be as much for the purpose as turning it into a Hollywood blockbuster as did the changes to the Hobbit. It seemed like the intentions in the Hobbit were to turn it into an Indiana Jones movie (the scene in the mines) or Transformers or Avengers, not a screen version of the Hobbit.

My answers would have been a lot different before I graduated from college.

Maybe because I am used to it I tolerate major details being dropped out of movies that have been made from books a lot better than I tolerate lots of new material being added, much of which seems really different from what the book intended (a bigger problem in the Hobbit, but present in Jackson's version of the LOTR as well).

Now if only we could get the GIFTS to say "G'Day Mate", though I am now struggling to remember if I have ever heard an Aussie say that outside of a commercial.

Since the topic disappeared, I read War Maid's Choice by David Weber A Rising Thunder by David Weber A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson The Road of Danger by David Drake Star Wars: Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn So, two Space Operas with a lot of politics, two fantasy (I enjoyed the way the WoT ended) and one Star Wars version of Ocean's Eleven. I still have some catching up to do, so I have five star wars novels on the shelf (I keep finding it hard to get through the Fate of the Jedi). I am not sure what I want to get next, a fantasy series, a historical fiction series or a real history book.

My perspective is from someone with a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Management, so a "hard" degree and a "fuzzy" degree if you will. While the EE degree taught me a lot of fundamental concepts, it did nothing to prepare me to actually work in design/construction, that all came from on the job training, using the fundamentals that I learned while getting the degree. The MS, being more focused (MS vs BS) did have some classes with more direct application to my career as a manager, such as labor law. I believe that training in one's primary language (english to a fair number of us on this board) is necessary to make that complete, competent individual. That of course does not require an actual english Department to accomplish and in fact, an English Department may well be worse at it than a History Department or a Liberal Studies Department or especially a Communications Department. I believe that most college graduates need to be able to articulate their thoughts properly in oral and written form. Having successfully avoided humanities classes in college (AP classes + Engineering Major), the best communication training that I received in High School was from History Class. The drill of doing five paragraph essay after five paragraph essay taught me far more about how to frame and support an argument than trying to find the symbolism in a Faulkner novel ever did. Ultimately, I am not interested in being trained for creative writing, I want to be trained for effective writing (I never expect to publish a short story, much less a novel), but there does need to be a place for those who wish to study and pursue creative writing (as a profession or advocation). I believe that the "fuzzy" classes have a very important place in college as part of the quest to produce culturally literate students. Unfortunately, too often, the minimum humanities requirement does not aim for cultural literacy, it serves as either a stepping stone into a humanities major, or aims for indoctrination in a politically correct school of thought. My college had what we (tech majors) referred to Physics for Poets, Rocks for Jocks and Stars for Studs where "fuzzy" majors could get the concepts of science without having to learn calculus. Unfortunately, there was not an English for Engineers or Political Science for Physicists geared to develop cultural literacy in technical majors without all of the extraneous garbage. That said, when I did my Masters, I found it depressing as to what level of mathematical competency was sufficient to graduate from college. The three classes that my "fuzzy" friends found daunting (and took a GPA hit in) required math no higher than pre-calculus. So, what does it require to be that literate or truly educated adult? English? Math? Physics? Poli Sci? History? Economics? Communications? Physical Education? Psychology? Ultimately I believe that they are all important and while our undergraduate degrees are broad in our field of concentration or major, they are not necessarily broad enough to truly educate us. Finally (I promise), what is a "useful" degree? If useful means leading to meaningful employment of your skills, then a two year degree in dental hygeine or fire science is more useful than an under grad (four year) degree in English, Psychology, pre-Med, pre-Law or Physics. On the other hand, a four year degree in teaching, engineering or nursing is very useful. Some career paths are open without a degree, some with a two year degree, some with a four year degree, some with a masters and some with a doctorate. With enough specialization, any degree can be "useful".

I suppose that would explain the whole stereotype that men like dogs and women like cats as well.

In AD&D 1st Ed, a good fighter had str as their highest skill, but did not neglect Dex and Con. Each characteristic in AD&D represented far more things then just one attribute. One roll of the dice in combat represented a full minute of thrust parry counter thrust dodge etc, and in all of that time, you (if you rolled high enough) got to roll one die for damage. And then, the results could mean different things depending on who you were hitting. For example, rolling an 8 for damage with a long sword (the max) against a typical first level character or monster equated to a successful strike that penetrated the chest cavity or skull resulting in quick death. Against a typical tenth level character or monster, that same 8 damage represented a moderate laceration of a non-vital area, but get enough of them and the creature or person would die of a death of a thousand cuts. A character with high constitution and a high level, therefore high hit points cannot physically take more damage than a blue whale, they have just become far more adept at avoiding damage. The different attributes represent far more than just their titles and game balance is far more important than conceptual consistency, One of the things that we all tend to forget when trying to imagine what fantasy combat is like is that the rules assume that most people are wearing some sort of armor or have unnaturally tough skin. One could certainly program a CRPG where high strength helps your blows penetrate the armor of an opponent, high dec/agility helps you hit the opponent more often, having a low endurance results in your blows getting weaker the longer that a combat lasts, high strength allows you to hit more often because you can more your sword faster, etc, but you would have to hide all of that mechanics from most players, because it would be just too darn complicated to track and deal with. The general conventions that get used for determining if a attack hits are greatly simplified, but a lot more fun than real life.

Yes I do, it is debatable if I have salt on my french fries or french fries under my salt. Fortunately, I do not eat french fries very often.

I was wondering what was taking so long. As to the shoveling snow, why bother, there will just be more soon the way this winter is going.