DarthTofu

Did you accidentally bombard one of the planets in that sector and destroy a civilian facility? That'll drop loyalty, but it should be for every planet in the sector.

and where might I find a link to this mod/how might I install a mod?

72 years young.... you know that the average life expectancy for a non-beaten up, regular-stress guy is 78, right? http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card

I want one! Really, really, really bad! Seriously, that's going to be what I drive in, like, seven years. Yes, I say in seven years, because there's no need for a car in college, and because I'm way too cheap to buy the factory-new model if the old one turns out as good as it looks like it's going to be- ten minutes, 186 miles... that's insane. It'll make Road Trips take a bit longer, but I've really no objection if it means that they'll cost as much less as it looks like they would. If electric cars like that keep getting cranked out, the world will get smaller again, and oil companies will finally stop making such gross profits. Breaking the Saudi Family's hold on the world economy? Way to go, guys!

Eagle: It's spelled "education." I know that seems kinda weird, considering the pronunciation, but that's still how it's spelled. I'm not chastising you or anything, I'm just letting you know. Nuclear power... say, didn't Obama advocate adopting the cookie-cutter nuclear power plant idea? Do far as that Executive vs. Legislative stuff goes- Where's McCain's executive experience? For that matter, where's the executive experience of most of our former Presidents? Governors of individual States, yes, they had Executive experience, but many of them came straight out of the House or Senate, with nothing but legislative experience. Hell- we elected Carter and Reagan on the platforms of "We have little to no experience!" Some of the Executive "add-ons" that these governors give- such as "I balanced the budget in my State!" are silly; you have to balance the budget in your State. There's no other way to do it, and 49 other Governors managed it, too. (That's a shoutout against both Clinton and Palin for using that line, BTW) McCain's only seventy-three... I could've sworn that I remembered hearing that he was announcing his VP pick on his 77th birthday for some reason. *Shrug* Guess I misheard. All the same, McCain is quite old, and he's had health problems in the past. The office of the President of the United States has been known to negatively impact a fellow's health, and in McCain's case, I'm inclined to believe it could result in his death.

Woah, there, Tex- Obama has specifically stated that he is not allowing any of his sanctioned campaigners to attack that girl. He's made it very clear that family members are off-limits, and has reminded the press that he was born to an eighteen-year-old mother. While Palin has more Executive experience than Obama, she only has one year as governor of Alaska, I believe. Compared to Obama's two years in the Senate, I rank them roughly equal. Quite frankly, I take McCain's VP choice very seriously; the guy's pushing eighty. I don't care how great our medical system is- I have a feeling he's going to die in office. Stress, old age, failing health, cancer, etc. I'm still looking up info on Palin, so I've not passed judgement on her yet, but she's very important in my decision-making. I won't be able to vote, but you can bet your bottom dollar I'm going to be trying to influence eighteen-year-old apathetic friends in their voting. So far as the daughter thing goes, I agree with you: We shouldn't judge Palin on it. A certain amount of how a child behaves is the result of the parent, but a much larger part is the result of the kid. She's seventeen, she's inclined to be rebellious, and all of the details of her pregnancy aren't know. I mean, don't get me wrong- I say that we should definitely have better sex-ed than that abstinence-only batch of scare tactics, or the abstinence-free safe sex education- but I don't think that we can judge a woman on her very-nearly-grown daughter's actions. People who claim that a mother who can't control her own daughter's thighs will fail to control the country effectively are the equivalent of someone trying to predict Michael Jordan's golf scores based on his basketball records. The two have some relation to one another, but not much at all.

5 hours last night. Well, just around five. To sleep at 1:30, up at about 7:15 in the morning. I've discovered that I have a strange ability to deactivate my alarm clock in my sleep. Also, without waking up, I can very convincingly assure anyone who asks that I am awake and that I'm getting dressed/brushing my teeth/using the toilet.

I have a friend who swears by the Wii version of the game. She praises it as one of her best Wii games, and called it terrifying. *Shrug* To each their own.... I just really, really want to play that game again, already!

So Resident Evil IV is a freaking awesome game... just thought I'd toss that out there. My friend bought it for PS2 a while back, and went nuts when his memory card wouldn't save his games. He had to borrow mine (I probably could have gotten his entire game library in exchange for that memory card, he was so desperate), and literally stayed up for fourteen hours straight playing the game, clear through 'till 4 in the morning. He let me play it for a little bit, and I must say that it impressed me. The camera angle started out as somewhat annoying- quite frankly, it remained that way- but then I got over it. The shooting was a ton of fun, and I loved the effect of the shotgun. Graphics were great for a PS2 game, but of course nothing next to the NextGen consoles. I only played a short ways, but it was a ton of fun while I was playing it. Apparently the folks you kill aren't zombies, and there's a massively escort mission-esque feel to later portions of the game, but I doubt that's going to matter. I'm borrowing it when my friend has finally gotten his full "fix" in (he's had the game for over two weeks, now; He'll be able to part with it in a few more days, I think). Anyone else ever played it? Anyone excited about Resident Evil V?

lol! Ace work as usual, Eagle!

Are you having fun lobbing off heads and the like, Scath? It's the whole reason I still play that game whenever I get bored and have nothing better to do. I've played the whole thing through on hard strictly for the sake of killing more Reborn on the penultimate level a couple of dozen times than I would otherwise get. It's so much fun! On a side note: I've reinstalled KOTOR I, and I'm playing it through on the dark side this time, just because the Dark Side has so many powers that are more fun to use. Anyone have an mod suggestions to make?

I'm not sure if this should go in "general" or "outside interests," but seeing as general always gets the short end of the stick in terms of new threads, I thought I'd try to cheer the poor, malnourished section up with some love. In any event: Who here is a fan of both roleplaying and the X-Wing Rogue and Wraith Squadron books? Because if you answered yes (or even "no and yes") to those questions, there's a great RP site out there that you'll likely enjoy. http://www.erality.com/sites/rs/board_2/index.php They didn't ask me to post this up as an advertisement, but I felt compelled to, since we have a few good writers on our board, and because if people suck and realize it, they'll hopefully drop off of the face of the boards I just posted. The writing quality is pretty high, and the planning is... well, the planning's a lot deeper than what we get on this, I'll say that! They have their own database, the Plotpedia, that has been really handy for me as a new member (I'm Azazel on the boards; I still need to work on my article, to update it with the single post I made containing my drunken Zabrack character), and the folks are sort of like a community composed entirely of Elassars, Wes Jansons, Hobbies, Faces, and Ton Phannans. You really can't go wrong with a group like that.

? What's so bad about iTunes? Admittedly, I don't use the program on a regular basis, but it works fine whenever I want to use it. The only annoying bit is that I can't transfer songs from iTunes to Windows Moviemaker without first running them through a converter, but somehow I doubt you have the same bothersome issue.

If all goes well, it'll be a rehash of The Clone Wars animated series. I never accepted that the show was good until a friend literally made me watch it. Then I finally believed him that it did help to give a scope to the Clone Wars... but I think it worked, more than anything else, because of the high stylization of the characters.

Don't worry about it- most people associate folks yelling "Yee Haw!" with jackasses.

How's that?! You don't consider that spam?! It's called "sarcasm," Scath. Don't take it as an insult that I'm explaining this to you if you already know what I'm talking about- some cultures actually don't have a concept of sarcasm, and I don't know which ones don't. Sarcasm is the act of saying something strictly for the purpose of irony, because the difference between what you've said and what the true situation is makes it somewhat funny. For example, an example of weak sarcasm would be to say, "Nice weather outside" when, in fact, a raging storm is going on outside. This doesn't mean that the speaker enjoys raging storms- quite the opposite. The speaker is using sarcasm, and highlighting the bad weather with irony.

Indeed, it is... I suppose we can turn this thread into a place where students can b*** about their classes as needed. Personally, I'm not caring too much for my AP MacroEconomics and AP Lit classes right now. AP Macro is one that I hate for the class- the teacher asks nothing but easy, simplistic questions, like "what is the point of diminishing returns when you're eating dinner?" or something like that, and I'm the only person who will answer! There's no hand raising involved... the class is just full of sheep. If I'm willing to allow a good solid minute or two (literal minute or two, not exaggerated or expression) someone in the class might grow the cahones to whimper an answer that's usually right, but it takes so long that it annoys the crap out of me! AP Lit actually hasn't been that bad yet. Why do I hate it? Because I had that teacher last year. She is made of evil! You think I'm kidding/exaggerating. This teacher has called individual students idiots on several occasions, and has also called the entire class a collection of idiots! Oh, and did I mention that 100 percent of us "idiots" got a passing grade on the AP Exam last year? As in, we were competent enough to get at least a C or higher in college-level courses, and most of us got a grade of a 4 (equivalent of a B). So, yeah, that's my whining all done, now. Anyone else care to let loose?

Mad mixes "magic brownies?"

Dude, what? Eight hours of sleep and you're still tired? What's wrong with you? I got six hours last night (in bed at one, up at seven) and I did just fine. Granted, we weren't doing anything in second period, so I spent half an hour napping, but that's beside the point. Even without the nap, I'd have done fine, like I usually do on little sleep. Anything under six hours is warranted energy drink usage. Anything over it is not. Six hours.... at your own discretion. Heck, I know teachers who admit to only getting about five hours of sleep!

Let's see... Scath just broke 5000 posts, and Mad broke 7000 a few months back. I broke 4,000 in, like January, I think.... all in all, not too much. Spamming has actually slowed down since you left!

As a teenage boy, I think I have more of a right to be looking at that sort of image than you, Tex. After all, I'm young and can blame it on hormone imbalances and lobes developing in my brain. You, on the other hand... Heck, I thought you had a wife? Does she know that you look at such images?

Impressive. I always wake up at, like, seven on the weekends, because that's when my alarm clock goes off during the week, but I'm out again for another solid two or three hours after that.

He went off to Alaska for two long years! How quickly you all forget! Or do you have those weird "life" things that can drive info out of your heads? Welcome back, Xan! Did you bring me back a moose? 'Cause if you didn't, then we're totally not friends anymore!

Two movies to review: The first, which I liked less, is Tropic Thunder. Now, don't get me wrong- I thought it was a good movie. Two and a half stars was too little, but I'd not go above three and a half stars in ratings. It's certainly funny, and it does a great job making fun of dumb action movies. It actually is the perfect formula to have horrifically stupid action sequences that are still, somehow, amazingly awesome. When the humor works in Tropic Thunder, it works very well. Toward the end of the film I was splitting my sides laughing at some of the lines, particularly Robert Downey Jr.'s. I didn't think that his performance stood out that much above the other actors's, he just had better lines. Surprisingly, a no-name actor portraying the fourth actor on the Tropic Thunder team (IE the movie that the movie is supposedly making) pulled the best performance. He came across very much as the sort of no-name actor who was just in the movie to try to get some girls and some sex. Now, as I said, when the humor worked it was ace, and it worked most of the time... but about an eighth of it came off not-so-good. The "special guest actor" (Tom Cruise) was almost never funny, and his chief recurring joke just plain wasn't good. Didn't make me laugh, and it was overused. I giggled a bit when it started, but it went on for far too long. Cruise was either A) misused, or just B) didn't perform well. I'm not sure which. I give it three stars, personally. I can see people raising it to three and a half, but i don't agree with that. Certainly not four, and it really shouldn't be the number one movie right now. Maybe it's the best of what's out there, but it isn't A-level material. that being said, if you want a good, quick, cheap, slightly offensive laugh, go see that movie. The second movie, Smart People, is one of my new favorites. Instant classic- though maybe that's because of my upbringing. The movie centers on an older, middle-aged professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He's a professor of English, and a first-class prick. His students hate him, the faculty hates him, only his daughter really likes him. His son is estranged, despite the fact that he attends Carnegie Mellon, where his father teachers. The professor, being his usual prick self, shoves his estranged adopted brother away, declaring the guy an idiot (he's a "failure" who goes around putting up posters, working low-end jobs, etc.), and promptly needs his help. The prof tries to get his car out of an impound lot, and he gives himself a concussion trying to climb the fence. He meets a "hot" (not) doctor (Sarah Jessica horse-woman Parker), and she was a former student of his. She had a schoolgirl crush on him, and they try to hit it off and.... well, a lot of stuff happens. You have to watch it. The entire cast performs splendidly, and I really got the feel for folks who are very, very bright, and don't fit in as a result of it. The characters are over-the-top enough that it's not going to be like looking in a mirror for anyone, but you can still relate. They're brilliant on one level, and moronic on another. At a certain point, you find yourself wondering just who the "smart people" in the title are. I award the film four and a half stars out of five. Only four and a half because (semi-spoiler alert. Do not read on if you plan to see the movie), good as the "meat" of the movie was, the ending left a lot to be desired. It was open-ended, and I'm fine with that... but it just didn't have a good feel to it. There was the feeling that the professor was getting to be a better person, growing as a man, but there was no closure to any of the other characters, and that pissed me off.

A) How's it play, someone-with-a-next-gen-console? B) Here's how it looks: http://www.forceunleashed.org/2008/08/18/ign-exclusive-force-unleashed-gameplay-videos/