Edgwyn

Based on the future destruction angle, than it probably is the North American Indian raven. I tend to think of that Raven as the trickster, but it was the creator as well in that mythology. Apollo had a raven that was similar to Odin's pair. Irish mythology also had a goddess turn into a Raven, so it could refer to the fall of the ancient Irish culture as well.

—Alorael, who isn't sure not having a girlfriend is really dodging a bullet. Nice for you if you don't want one, but plenty of people do. And unlike bullets, girlfriends are pretty easy to not have. Why, well over half of all humans have no girlfriends or wives!

Based on my biases: dodging bullet = good thing, dodging girlfriend = less fun. Of course with the second sentence I prefer having both a girl friend and bullets.

As SoT said, College is a great time for pairing up, but it is not the only time. Most of my friends and I did not marry our high school or college sweethearts, we married people we met a little bit later. Out of college, there is a lot more variety, it is just a matter of finding someone as you are no longer being pushed into a situation with a lot of single people your own age. Hobbies and activities are a great way to meet people. Also, many (though not all) of the people who are past college age have reached a level of emotional maturity that makes dating simpler, even if their life is more complicated.

Lilith, that would definitely make the story even more fun

Changing my watch is always easier then changing every other device in the house that displays time. I always have difficulty remembering how to change the time on the Washing Machine, Microwave, Oven, Car Stereo, etc, but never have problems with my watch.

Was she engaged the last time you worked together or did the engagement happen since then? If there has been a change in her personal status, hopefully she will be less into flirting this shift which will make it easier for you. If on the other hand, she is acting out because she is engaged, you definitely do not want to be involved with her.

To paraphrase Slarty, you have to be able to separate those of your hot co-workers that you can have a relationship with from those hot co-workers that you can't.

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.