Dewar

In my book, it is appropriate when it's the last game of the season, and that's it. Kind of a "this field is now closed for athletic competition for the year, and fans are allowed on it now" thing.

In America, that's the only language we have that anyone in power cares about.

Thor in particular is an interesting story because it could be told with anyone in the "new Thor" roll. The first Thor movie had a bit about him not being worthy to lift the hammer anymore, and I think it's happened a few times in the character's past, though I don't think anyone has specifically become Thor, rather than just lifting the hammer and using it briefly in his stead. In some ways it's good that the "this could be any character" slot was filled by a woman this time, regardless of the reasoning. It's irritating if it's done for the press, but if it happens enough it becomes a habit I guess?

Ah, I definitely agree with that then. That seems to be a problem with a lot of animated sequels. A lot of different cool ideas that either got left on the cutting room floor from the last movie or new ideas that new directors bring in all get combined together and don't really quite mesh. I suppose it's a problem with all sequels, just that animated films seem to almost always get at least one direct to DVD movie these days, I guess to try and extend the value of the assets?

I'd imagine that some of the worst BS in every religion isn't necessarily universal. Just like Protestantism, some places you go are pretty crazy Christian, and others are at least somewhat more chill.

Yes, most comics are that on-the-nose. I enjoy the occasion when they manage a more subtle joke.

Preserving pasta is tough because if you freeze it and thaw it later, it often turns to mush. Generally, it keeps a week and then I toss it. Pasta salad is generally called that because it's supposed to be served cold, or at least room temp. Nuking food to warm it back up is fine, but it comes out a lot better if you heat with your microwave at 50% power and stir a couple of times. Finally, you can buy pre-stocked spice racks on Amazon for around $30. The spice is generally pretty ok, and then you can re-use the jars and keep everything organized. It's great if you don't really know what spices you should have around.

I partially disagree

While I understand what you're saying, I think the majority of people who have not played it would assume a badly selling game isn't that good. Of course that dovetails in with the metacritic discussion going on in another thread, in that I'm sure a lot of people see a bad score on Metacritic and assume the game is bad too. Neither is wise in my opinion, but I can't fault people for not wanting to spend the time I do keeping up with my hobby. This particular comment though, I guess i was thinking more money people as Latrine suggested. All I'm basically saying is that a publisher like EA is unlikely to give a deal to someone whose game performed poorly, regardless of the quality or reasons.

Probably less actually. Are you running with the right sized power supply? Poor power condition is about the only other thing I can think of off the top of my head.

I think we all have these sorts of mood swings.

I don't think most people will assume that, I think most people will just assume it's a bad game, and most money people won't care why it didn't sell, just the sales numbers.

There have been several publicized instances where bonus pay or job retention is dependent on Metacritic scores, which certainly isn't Metacritic's fault, but started this weird hate spiral. Also, it encourages stratification of gaming press (who's on Metacritic and who isn't, and also who gets top billing,) as well as forces companies to keep around review scores who would rather get rid of them.

I'm glad I'm training up on the bow

A few things can increase the amount of hard drive work being done and lead to faster HDD failure. 1) Running constant torrents as they tend to fragment data on the hard drive and thus require a lot of read/writting from random areas of the disk 2) Excessive vibration, maybe from an off balance fan or something else in the room 3) Running with too low of memory so that the machine is constantly having to cache memory to the hard drive. On that last one, a few friends and I had fun back in college installing XP (new at the time) to a machine that barely met the requirements, then pulling out all the memory sticks but one and letting it run. The HDD access light was on solid the entire time the OS was running, and the next day the hard drive let out a horrible screech and died instantly.

I remember when Cryptic sold City of Heroes, one month's team update was all excited for new features and how awesome the game was, and then the very next was Cryptic saying they couldn't do what they wanted to do and CoH sucks so we're going to go play with a new toy over here (champions.) I never played Champions until very recently because I was so upset at the way they treated that transition. It really is possible to leave an old project behind gracefully "it was fun to work on, but now we want to try something else."

I bought a set of 4 Victorinox knives on Sweet home's suggestion as well. They don't come particularly sharp, but are still twice as sharp as any other knife in my kitchen. I'm looking forward to taking them to get professionally sharpened (whenever I try to sharpen knives myself, I always manage to mess it up.)

Maybe the fact that a friend of the site made it kinda balances it out? I dunno, I'm going back and forth on it. I guess I'll wait for it to come out of Early access and then decide.

Watching the Giant Bomb video right now. I'm very tempted. http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/unfinished-offworld-trading-company-02-19-2015/2300-9959/

Combat with the proper enemies can pay out well, but otherwise yeah, it's easier to avoid it if possible. The ship is pretty much the last thing to upgrade. I got the first housing upgrade first (so I could take care of my child) and the best deck gun second, as both can be passed on to your next captain should you die. The majority of money ends up coming from completing quest lines, while most of the rest of the rewards in the game basically help you break about even. I keep a big written list of things that are required to advance stories at each port, and try to do at least a couple of things on each trip. Sometimes they pay off, others they don't. There are several quest lines that pay off on the order of 5000 echoes though. That being said, there are definitely huge troughs where it feels like you're not getting anything accomplished and are just barely holding on. They can be miserable.

I dig the layout and themes on the Hopes and Fears website. Is Leigh a regular writer for them?

To be fair, I'm not a fan of Jon Stewart when he does this either. Stewart is at his best when he has a guest on that he sorta agrees but also disagrees with, so they have some common ground to have some real discussion.

Ah, I have signatures turned off or I would have probably seen that I'll take a peak tonight.

Hmm, Kickstarters I regret? I regret backing Amplitude, because it was mainly on the back of Giant Bomb nostalgia and John Drake, who left for Sony shortly after the Kickstarter ended. I wish Harmonix the best, and I hope that the Rockband rumors that have been circulating are true, but I have no attachment to Amplitude at all. There's Novus AEterno, which I guess I always knew was going to be a mess, but had even less content than I expected. I haven't logged in recently, maybe it's decent now? Shadowrun Online is looking to be a disaster at this point, and it's also the game I've pledged the second most to in my history. To be fair, I haven't actually played it, just heard the buzz. Maybe I should try it out this weekend. There's a few others that don't look like they're going to be successful or just don't interest me anymore, but I put low enough amount of cash in that I'm not terribly troubled.

I got to do that with my first car a few years ago. It is definitely nice to just not have to worry about it. I still have my crappy (but also lovable) 1986 Toyota Pickup around for emergencies or if my wife as the car, but it's such a rattle trap that I refuse to take it on the highway these days. On the plus side, cars back then were so simple that I can climb under that thing and replace just about any part. Unfortunately, the thing it really needs right now is a transmission, which is going to cost more than the truck is worth just for the part.