playing Fallout 3

I think I reported earlier how Fallout 3 installs ok, starts up ok, and plays ok *until* you get to this point early where your gf has just told you the cops are coming to arrest you. As soon as you exit your room, some script is triggered and the game crashes to the desktop for me.

So I let my son run it a bit on his computer (32-bit) and do some saves, so I could try to run from one of his early saves...which worked just fine.

In one sense, F3 is "Oblivion with guns". Except that I don't think it's as interesting...and my son has already finished the game, in just a few days...apparently when you complete the central quest sequence, the game terminates. Not interesting.

Have had some trouble with it, in terms of mouse-responsiveness, etc. It feels a little jerky in comparison with Big O.

I don't really/yet like the skill-leveling approach. Big O did this well...I.e., if you spend time sneaking, your sneak skill goes up. In F3, you have to get XP in order to level up, and then have skill points to spend to level-up individual skills. So there's little value to sneaking very much.

Son says you can read multiple copies of a skill-book and increase that skill multiple times.

I haven't gone very far yet, but it's not as interesting as Oblivion. It does have a lot of similarities, but the terrain isn't as interesting or variable (at least as far as I've gone). Looks like burned-out wasteland. Which of course it should, but that's all there is. I'd have definitely gone for more of the Wash DC buildings. It's not like that would be hard to do, since you could go photograph the outsides, and paint those results onto the models as wall textures...and a work acquaintance is telling me he knows how to extract a 3D point cloud from an image sequence taken as you drive past a bldg...instant-3D model!

Idiocy in Pakistan

Today is April 28, 2009. For reference.

What do you think the likelihood is of the Taliban taking over Pakistan this year? How about next year?

Personally, I won't be surprised if it happens this summer.

It *IS* going to happen. Soon. Not enough people there with a clue how bad that is going to be. Or how undifficult to solve. Hard to feel sorry for them...the only really bad part about this is that they'll probably have something in the way of a nuclear device.

Maybe I need to start a pool at work. That'd be interesting.

conservative writers

I do find it amusing reading the editorials in the Wash Post. Not sure if I've ever really changed my mind about anything based on them...Some are better than others.

in the Post, there are several conservative writers who appear regularly. Krauthammer and George Will are the most "prominent".

George Will wants to be William F Buckley the 2nd. You can tell this because he uses a lot of "buckley words" -- you know, the ones that cost $20. Buckley loved them. George does too.

So much so that you can measure the pomposity of Will's columns in "buckleys" -- i.e., how many buckley words he uses.

George Will is at his best when he writes about either baseball or First Amendment issues. The rest of the time, he's just a pompous, unhappy conservative.

But occasionally he's unintentionally funny, like a couple of days ago...when he wrote a column in effect showing what a geezer he has become, because he doesn't like the fact that so many people don't dress the way he wants them to, i.e., too many folks wear denim too often. And then he complains that too many people over 18 play computer/video games (probably would prefer that they listen to him pontificate [ooohhh, I used a buckley word]).

This reminds me SO much of the classic quote attributed to Socrates (approx 400 BC) about how the young people of "today" don't respect their elders and behave like their elders wish them to:

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.

(the full quote is better, but seems hard to find online?!)

Socrates was pompous, too.

Old people

What is it with old people and sticker bushes?

You know what I'm talking about. If you are older, let's say past 50-something, live in a single-family detached house, eventually you are doing gardening in your yard. At some point you decide that what would look good is a sticker-bush, so you plant one. Or two. Or more...

This has a pleasant side-effect: kids will now avoid your yard, so you don't have to go out and yell "get out of my yard!" at them.

But still...I hate sticker bushes. Partly because I remember being a kid having to go through yards where there were sticker bushes...

So a few years ago my mom decided she had to have a couple of sticker bushes. Guess who had to trim them when they got too big? They're gone now, thank you.

But still...am *I* going to want a sticker bush in my yard in 10 years? Kill me now.

another brilliant statement in the Wash Post

"Team cohesion and concentration on missions would suffer if our troops had to live in close quarters with others who could be sexually attracted to them."

The authors on this are a former SOCOM cmdr, former CNO, former SAC cmdr, former assistant USMC cmdr.

Who is being referred to here? Care to guess? When was this written?

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Can't have women in the military, can we? Troops might get distracted.

But this one is about gays in the military. Any real difference between the two groups in this case?