...because of the http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/11/2 ... updat.html]economic update that th Finance Minister tabled in Parliament today.

The important bits:

• They're holding wage increases to public servants (including MPs and senators, which helps blunt this annoyance) to 2.3 per cent for last year and 1.5 per cent for each of the next three years (we've been negotiating a new contract for slightly over a year, and my union's been asking for roughly double that - not that I ever expected we'd get what the union asked for);
  
• They're bringing in legislation to prevent us from striking until 2011; and
  
• The other person at my level in my group is the building's shop steward.
  

Cartoon network had a Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends float in Macy's parade, and seemed to have puppets of the characters ready to sing the Theme
from The Courtship of Eddie's Father... suddenly there's a record scratch and out of the middle of the float steps Rick Astley....
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Aaaaaaargh. Stupid Yuku.

So, I downloaded an update for my antivirus, and now, whenever I try to
play any sound (game, system, music, or video file) after letting my
machine go to sleep, it BSODs and restarts itself too quickly for me to
read what's going on. When it comes back up, Fucking Vista claims that
my (built into the motherboard) 'Audio Device is not installed'.
Rebooting the machine does not get my sound back, but shutting it all
the way down and bringing it back up does. Once I have it back
it works fine until the next nap.

Now, I was planning to nuke my current system back to the bare metal at
some point anyway, but when the system comes back up after the
crash Fucking Vista's 'let me find a solution for this' box tries to
pin it on the hardware. I wouldn't trust this OS if it claimed the sun
rose in the east, but it seems wisest to see if anyone has a way to
make sure before I start my rebuild.
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

To give a quick idea, Doyenne is currently an armored blaster. She has respectable defenses, two single-target attacks, a single target hold, and a cone - all
Psi attacks.

I've been traking her through Tesseract's Ouro arc, and I've come to this realization:

Me vs practically any minion/lt (hold resistants excluded): Yawn.

Me vs hold resistants and bosses: Hmm, this may be tricky...okay, no it isn't.

Me vs ANY EB: Oh my GOD, the attacks, they do nothing!

This last one was evidence by me trying to take out Liberty and her Mom. Ended up dying twice and going through almost 50 insps.

Finding myself a little short of money going into the christmas season, I've decided to sell my copies of GURPS Wild Cards and GURPS Aces Abroad (both of
which are based off of the Wild Cards shared-world anthology series, the 19th volume of which is coming out in December).

http://cgi.ebay.com/GURPS...A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318
----------------------------------------------------

"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV

The invites had gone out a while ago. Music, food, dancing... it was a party, for no apparent reason other than to throw a party. When the night arrived, it
had begun slowly, but more and more people were steadily trickling in, and by the end of the first hour it had transformed from a friendly gathering to a
full-blown friendly riot. Eva sipped at her punch and watched with a curious grin as several men of the Legendary were dragged, pushed, and otherwise cajoled
into seats in front of the makeshift stage by their respective dance partners. The rest of the crowd formed a respectful half-circle and waited expectantly as
the last notes of the music died away to be replaced by ominous silence.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" boomed Mag Flashlight's voice. "We're going to shift gears a bit here and invite a few of the lovely ladies of
the Legendary to the stage. Gamma Emission! Emerald Blast! Bella Fuego! Space Mage! Come on up!"

There was movement on the darkened stage as the men in the chairs suddenly put two and two together. Terrence and Morgan and Marcus just barely had time to
share panicked glances before the house lights dropped and the music started.

It was a fast, driving beat, with a piano line over the top, and only a few beats before a pencil spot leapt out and nailed the women on the stage. All four
of them began to move forward, slowly, their very presence pressing the men back in their seats.

"Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods?" Space sang in a clear, slightly tremulous voice.

"Where's the street-wise Hercules to fight the rising odds?" Gamma and Emerald put in.

"Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?" Bella added with a hint of fire in her eyes.

"Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need!" they all sang at once. "I need a hero! I'm holding on for a hero 'til
the end of the night... he's gotta be strong and he's gotta be fast and he's gotta be fresh from the fight!"

"... help...." Terrence whimpered as the women stepped off the stage and slowly approached the chairs, still singing along with the fast-paced hit
from the 80's. A part of Terrence's junk-drawer mind identified it as the Bonnie Tyler cut.

"It's every man for himself," Marcus declared in an undertone, making as if to rise, only to be stopped by Space Mage, who reached out with one
hand, placed a finger against his chest, and pushed him effortlessly back down into his chair.

At the back of the room Eva was doubled over in laughter, watching the spectacle. So was half the crowd, truth be told. She glanced over at the sound booth,
where Mag Flashlight worked the mixer board, giant headphones perched on his head while his cigar bobbed in time to the music. Beside him, wearing the same
model of headphone (which looked even MORE ludicrous on her) was Katy Kaboom, working the light board. Mag looked up and caught Eva's eye, and winked.
She drifted over as the song continued. The women were now draping themselves on the poor, tortured souls in the chairs, as the lyrics reached the line
"... Through the wind and the chill and the rain, and the storm and the flood, I can feel his approach like a fire in my blood!"

"What can I do for ya, boss lady?" Mag asked with a grin. Katy waved 'hello' but kept her eyes on her work, though her face showed she was
trying hard not to burst out laughing. "Got a song in mind for your set?"

Eva blinked. "Um, no, not really. What IS all this?"

Mag stepped out of the booth and took Eva by the shoulders, gently turning her to face the stage as the last notes of the song died out and the crowd roared
its approval.

"This, boss," he began quietly, then reached up and flicked his mic on. His voice boomed out of the PA system as Katy recognized her cue and flipped
a large red switch on her panel. "THIS IS THE LEGENDARY KARAOKE DANCE PARTY!"

Above the stage a rippling series of pops sounded as tiny explosive charges went off in quick succession, spewing confetti and streamers into the air and
letting a concealing cloth fall, to reveal a sign drawn in laser light that read "TANNING INVITATIONAL". Mag frowned at it momentarily and raised an
eyebrow at Katy.

"Oops," Katy said, and tapped keys. The sign melted and re-formed: "LEGENDARY KARAOKE DANCE PARTY"

"That's better," Mag muttered. He keyed the mic again. "DJ Mag is in the house! Who's next on the hit parade?"

Boomtown recently got an i13 related interview. Mostly stuff we've heard before, but I thought this portion might be interesting to certain folks:

Quote: Boomtown: The PVP changes in the next issue have received enormous attention and (not unexpectedly) massive criticism from the PVP community. How do
you deal with that sort of "feedback" from a developer viewpoint and possibly even from being a COH fan yourself?




Matt Miller: Issue 13 started off having all sorts of new features tied around PvP, simply because it was a system that we had not put as much attention
towards in the past. When we began to play these new systems, the feedback we got was that none of them were any fun. This was really disappointing, since
they looked good in design. When we drilled down to exactly why they were not fun, we came to the sobering realization that the lack of fun wasn't the
new systems' fault, it was PvP as a whole that was limiting. Certain powersets dominated. Certain ATs were impossible to beat. Certain tactics were fun,
but only for the person employing them. For everyone else these tactics bordered on "frustrating", "annoying", and a plethora of other
words that are antonyms for "fun".




PvP as a whole needed to be fixed. We'd let the current system get into a state where only a small handful of our players actually used it. If we were
really going to invest in these new PvP systems, we needed to get the current PvP game to be accepted and used by more than just that handful of players.
Floyd "Castle" Grubb and his team poured over datamines, made a whole slew of changes to the way powers behaved, and even went so far as to
pre-tackle sticky issues like many-on-one ganking.




As a player of CoH I am excited to see what my Dominator will bring to the table in PvP after Issue 13 goes live. The playtests have been nothing but fun
here in the office, and I hope that the efforts of Castle and his crew can be tried out by people who have been turned off by PvP in the past. I urge
everyone who found PvP in CoH to be frustrating and un-fun to come back and check it out in Issue 13.

There's a thread over on the SJGames Forums titled "2000 MORE Things I Am No Longer Allowed To Do In An RPG"

http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php? ... tcount=340]This is one of the posts in it.

So, exactly what's wrong with any of those things?

Quote:910: I cannot have a hero who has enough health to survive being hit by a tank.

Quote:916: "For what we do here today...Generations will place us on pedistals, they wil love us and cherish us as the heroes we wish we could be...They will remember...no...They will do more than remember, they will never forget!", "When we die, In Flanders Fields we shall lie with the heroes of another war...", "Let us sell our tomorrows to buy the world a future" or any War poems are not appropriate Battle Cries.

Quote:921: Demonically posessed Ex-WW1 Soldiers are never a Valid Concept in a High Fantasy Alternate history WW2 campaign and the GM will never let me play one again.

Quote:923: Even if we're losing the battle, using a meta-magic artifact to produce a mass area effect version of the true ressurection spell in the middle of flanders fields to ruesserect every person within 30 miles to return and battle one last time is not something the GM wants us to do.

No, this is not the plot of an anime.

------------------

Epsilon

Princess 1? Not as catchy a title.

ANN: AIC Agrees to Live-Action

Bubblegum Crisis Proposal

Hey, it worked for Sailor Moon...

Edit: I see OpMegs scooped me, but the completely uninformative subject

line he(?) used disguised that fact. Ah, well.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012