Mr. GOH!

You forgot to add this, TME: #nothumbleatallbrag

I love that one of the most powerful units in the game is essentially techno-knights mounted on weird alien monsters. It reminds me of this:

I really like how fast my Win10 laptop with an SSD boots. My desktop takes a few minutes to fully get up and running, even after I disabled a lot of the programs that would launch on startup. It was also just time to get a new main HDD. MBM - I think there are some posts in the PCs for dummies thread about how to migrate the OS and games to a new, smaller SSD even if all the programs on your current HDD wouldn't fit on the new, smaller drive.

Finished a game of Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth: Rising Tide on Normal over the weekend. Beyond Earth is much, much, much, much, much better with this expansion, even if you don't particularly care about building cities in the oceans. The completely revamped diplomacy system is the best in any Civ game so far and gives the player very clear and logical feedback regarding how the AI civs feel about the player and why. For the first time in Civ, the player can actually why another civ hates them and whether another civ is cooperative because it loves the player's civ or because it fears the player civ. If anyone relly wants to know more about how the new diplomacy works, ask about it in the civ thread and I'll go into details. The bottom line is that it's almost entirely different from vanilla Beyond Earth and is unlike the system in any Civ game I've ever played. The new hybrid affinities are pretty neat, too. I think some of the more powerful endgame units are the hybrid affinity versions rather than the single-affinity units, although ultimate units are just as powerful regardless of the upgrade path you choose. I played one of the new factions as Harmony, but my Supremacy and Purity levels were also pretty high, so I had a few hybrid affinity units near the end. Affinity level is also made much clearer, including how many affinity points you need to get the next level. The tech tree also actually tells you how many points a given technology will get you for a given affinity (or two!). In general, the UI, while not totally redone, is much better at telling the player what's going on and why. With this expansion, Beyond Earth finally feels like a complete entry into the Civilization line of games and I highly recommend it for fans of Civ.

The 500GB version is $139.99 on sale at Amazon today, so I finally pulled the trigger and paid for it using credit card reward points. Going to migrate my OS and newer PC games over to this for the improved load times. Considered getting the 1TB drive for $269.99, but I couldn't cover it with the amount of reward bucks on my credit card. I'm hoping it will also help with pop-in in open world games, too.

Rebels shouldn't be able to do an orbital bombardment during the Battle of Hoth.

It annoyed the hell outta me.

I got Beyond Earth: Rising tide and it's a vast improvement over vanilla beyond earth.

8GB of RAM should be plenty since the graphics are mainly limited by vRAM and not system RAM. I mean, 8GB RAM is enough for every modern great-looking game I play, so I'm not worried about FO4's system requirements. The problems will be the patented Bethesda Open World Bugs . Edit: Here's the Intelligence video. And, holy shit, does it imply that there will be driveable vehicles in this one?

The Revenant FUCK YEAH. I'll see anything by Iñárritu.

Spent an hour or so playing on the Sullust escape pod CTF map and enjoyed it. I quit for a bit then tried to get back into a game and I kept losing connection to the EA servers, which is what I guess I should expect from a pre-release beta. The game looks beautiful on high settings, but it's too bad it's MP-only. I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really want to play a new single-player focused Star Wars game that's good (unlike the dumb Force Unleashed games).

Yeah, I remember mostly being worried about my employer somehow having a problem with it since I log on from my work network. In the years since I have learned that my employer does not care about these sorts of forums, but I forgot the members page even existed until Ethan moved the codes there. I had thought it got shut down a few years ago around the time the branding shifted to PXOD.

RTGs also most likely would not have been sent on a Mars mission that seemed to have plenty of power from other (mysterious) sources; they're too valuable.

Grabbed the 3rd Origin code.

Oh, was that New Vegas back in the day? Yeah, I'd like access. I'd like to try the Battlefront beta.

I guess I'm not a member, because I don't have permission to access the Members-only area.

Eh, there are a good number of science problems with the book and movie, now that I've read more about it. I think it was an io9 article that pointed out that Watney would be dead from radiation poisoning fairly quickly since it does not have a magnetosphere strong enough to protect him from solar radiation and the type of habitation used in the book and movie would in no way help protect the inhabitants. If we ever do establish even a short-term base on Mars, it would most likely be underground or dug into a mountain.

The dumb part at the end Dan refers to is dumb and not in the book but it does not truly affect how good the rest of the movie is. The Martian is a good movie. Go see it.

The smartest thing I have ever read about MGS was a wrong answer in a nonsense quiz on Clickhole. "The Metal Gear Solid series is defined by paradox, with one-of-a-kind game design undermined by pervasive misogyny, trenchant anti-war messaging muddied by a fixation on paranoid conspiracy, and a fragmented chronology that not even a dissertation could tease out"

I don't think many Americans differentiate between mixer showers and power showers; most newish homes don't have power showers, but I have definitely taken showers in homes in the USA with showers that had their own pump to increase water pressure. It's not common at all, but there are some places in the US with low water pressure.

An electric shower sounds dangerous. A power shower sounds like a sex thing, or maybe an industrial cleaning-type shower. The guy who posted to Facebook was from Florida, where it is normal for people to carry guns everywhere, not be polite, be afraid of their neighbors and the government, hate and fear foreigners, and Bush is considered a hero and Obama an idioFlorida is both the South and a million times worse than the South. Most of the population is high on fundamentalist Christianity and/or methamphetamines/bath salts/the hot new cheap degenerate drug of the month. It is America's shitstick and non-USAns should be aware that white Floridians are, as a rule, dumb and evil motherfuckers or retirees from the North or both.

Irons is a great character actor who can bring the weird intensity. He was perfect as Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune. He's also been in complete shit like Eragon.

Yes, we use the same measuring spoons here in the US of A. We have three or four different sets in our kitchen at home.

Yeah, American recipes that are not put together by doofuses assume you fluff the flour first. The name-brand-in-a-recipe thing is a sure sign you got a recipe promoted by a brand at some point. All sorts of prepared/semi-prepared food brands (like oreos, cake mixes, and so on) have published cookbooks and loads of recipes for over a century and it was very popular in the 50s and 60s too cook with such recipes. I avoid most such recipes unless they are for a dessert or you know and trust the author. If it's a recipe from a random internet site, find a different one.

Really, they are all terrible. Go see The Martian, people.