Players across Azeroth have recently embraced a new, very personal achievement: leveling a character "Iron Man" style. What started out as only a small movement, this bare bones, no-frills style of play has now transformed into a community-wide call-to-arms known as the Iron Man WoW Challenge, inviting World of Warcraft enthusiasts to see how close they can get to level cap with only the barest of necessities. The goal of the Iron Man WoW challenge is simple: reach level 85. The catch, however, is that you must accomplish this task without the assistance of talents, class specialization, stat-improved gear, professions, buffs, item enhancements, or other players. And if you die? Well, then it’s back to square one. Here are some of the latest rules: THE BIG ONE: If you die, EVER, that character is removed from the challenge. [...]
- Chris Topher
There is no way I would attempt this on a PVP server
- Chris Topher
They should make a server that handles this. No buffing of strangers, no dungeons/raids/battlegrounds/arenas, obviously no PvP. If you die, the character gets reset to level one, and inventory is lost.
- Jimminy, CoG of FF
Jimminy: also: no heals (except self-heals), no transfer of money / items between players (directly or by mail), no grouping, and the only player who can damage a target is the player who tapped it (and will get xp credit for the kill).
- Tudor Bosman
"I was in clinic when I heard the overhead STAT page to the emergency room. As I sprinted down the stairs, I ran through the possible scenarios. I wasn’t on call, so the day to day gynecologic emergencies weren’t my purview. I hadn’t operated on anyone in the past few weeks, so unlikely to be one of my own patients with a complication. Logically there was only one conclusion."
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
"A vascular system so traumatized by sheer blood loss that it had run haywire and lost the ability to clot. Disseminated intravascular coagulation. This is how many young women die when an abortion goes wrong."
- Tudor Bosman
I'll editorialize: If we outlaw legal abortions, women will die. It's simple.
- Tudor Bosman
"The worst resolution to the Valentine Prisoner's Dilemma when YOU decide not to give your partner a present but your PARTNER decides to testify against you in the armed robbery case."
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
Anyone else find the sexism in MMOs getting more and more blatant? In SWTOR female characters get less companion favor then male for some things. There is no companion that has less affection when a male character gives them a gift.
I haven't noticed that particular issue at all...what I have noticed is that SW:TOR has more female high-ranking NPCs (and in my class storyline, the women are devious and engaged in pursuits typically given to male characters in other games I've played) and I haven't had to encounter (so far) skimpy outfits or and I can play with raw ambition and I'm pretty unapologetically powerful....
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- joey
Apparently you can marry a companion? And same sex marriage is supposed to be implemented eventually.
- <3Heather<3
Oh, I'm disappointed that it isn't already :(
- joey
I am really glad that there aren't any pieces of gear that are insanely reveling (like the WoW bras). That's an issue that made my blood boil. Although I haven't been to a canteena without a dancing Twi'lek holo. It's such a back and forth with taking out some sexist things and adding others.
- <3Heather<3
The outfit is fully moddable, so you can wear it from level 1 to level 50 if you swap the mods.
- Tudor Bosman
I didn't know about the difference in companion affection based on whether the player is male or female. Source? Companions do like "courting" gifts differently based on whether the player is in a romance with them or not, and you can only be in a romance with certain companions of the opposite sex. Each class gets 1 male romanceable companion (for female players) and 1 or 2 female romanceable companions (for male players, depending on class).
- Tudor Bosman
The wikis aren't fully updated I guess and I jumped to conclusions. One site had stars for how much companions liked gifts and female characters had fewer stars for some stuff. But we found another source (oldrepublic.net) that says anything labeled with affection level "love" is based on opposite gender from the companion. Then I found the moddable "slave" outfit for the Empire yesterday. >.<
- <3Heather<3
"Ever wonder what’s in those delicious dumplings? What gives them that special tang? The flavor that cannot quite be named? Wonder no further! For the secret has been revealed. And the secret is…boneless pork rectums, finely diced. All the hush-hush is over because, through carelessness, these boxes were allowed to be photographed just before they were hustled into a restaurant in Taiwan. But now that their presence has been revealed to the world, the silence surrounding dumpling recipes can be broken."
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
Louis Gray: Which is it, sir? Is it "Thou shalt not check in and drive" or is it "I [...] have always been willing to bend the rules a bit, through [...] drive by check-ins"?
It's against the law to text & drive in CA (or operate a phone without a wireless headset), Mo.
- Spidra Webster
What if traffic is completely stopped, as it often is at the 237 & 101 interchange?
- Tudor Bosman
I don't think the cops would count that unless you're actually pulled off onto the shoulder and the parking brake is on. They're even ticketing people who juggle with a meal while driving. They're cited under "distracted driving".
- Spidra Webster
Yeah, Spidra's right, and red light usage is also illegal -- no cell phone usage while the car is running.
- Stephen Mack
from iPhone
Interesting. Dialing and selecting a contact from your phone's address book for the purpose of making a call are specifically allowed (if you use a hands-free device, or your phone's speakerphone): http://dmv.ca.gov/cellula... "This law does not prohibit reading, selecting or entering a phone number, or name in an electronic wireless device for the purpose of making or receiving a phone call. Drivers are strongly urged not to enter a phone number while driving."
- Tudor Bosman
There's a GPS function exemption too, if I remember correctly.
- Stephen Mack
from iPhone
Can you customize him to have a face visor?
- Victor Ganata
I made him the race with no eyes (I forget the name) with the very slim rectangular sunglasses type shades.
- Chris Topher
I've been meaning to make a Miraluka (the race without eyes, who sees through the Force) Jedi and call him Geordi LaForce. (you get to give your characters a last name when your first character finishes act 1, around level 30 - 35) Unfortunately, I only thought of this hours after I'd picked a (different) last name for my characters.
- Tudor Bosman
"When a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a defendant's competency hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall wear a cone-shaped hat that is not less than two feet tall. The surface of the hat shall be imprinted with stars and lightning bolts. Additionally, a psychologist or psychiatrist shall be required to don a white beard that is not less than 18 inches in length, and shall punctuate crucial elements of his testimony by stabbing the air with a wand. Whenever a psychologist or psychiatrist provides expert testimony regarding a defendant's competency, the bailiff shall contemporaneously dim the courtroom lights and administer two strikes to a Chinese gong"
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
"Meet John Fleming, the unfortunate Republican U.S. Representative from Louisiana who made that wonderful and all-too-common mistake of thinking that an Onion article was real and telling his Facebook followers to read it. Fleming's Facebook status was posted by Literally Unbelievable, a Tumblr that collects images of Facebookers who think Onion satires are the real deal and post them on their walls. Below is an update Fleming posted (from Friday, according to the blogger) for his followers to read about Planned Parenthood's "wholesale" approach to providing abortions:"
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
"Your will be led to judgement like lambs to the slaughter--a simile whose existence, I might add, will not do your species any favors."
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
"Daniel Radcliffe has announced that he is no longer a supporter of the Liberal Democrats after emerging as one of the party's most high-profile celebrity backers ahead of the last British general election, and will probably vote instead for Labour under its "genuinely leftwing" leader, Ed Miliband."
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
"Radcliffe said that he wished more educational establishments, especially in the US, were not in thrall to religion, stating: "I'm not religious, I'm an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation. We need sex education in schools."
- Tudor Bosman
Okay this is weird. First a WoW friend buys SWTOR for Heather, and now I find out today that Gamestop has it for $50 instead of the normal $60......a roadtrip might be in order.... #theuniverseistellingustoplay
We will have to split time b/w that and our friend's server as empire :P
- Chris Topher
Tentatively on Zaalbar I have Kytty the Jedi. I'm playing the mirror class on our friend's server so I might reroll, but it will be the same name. If anyone's interested, the other server we're on is Naddist Rebels and my name is Medini (Sith Inquisitor).
- <3Heather<3
Signs I live a little too far east in the East Bay: Valentine's Day ad: "Largest Gun Shop in the Tri-Valley: Nothing says "I love you" like a brand new gun"
5:20, 6:30, 7:30. The first one I shut off immediately. The 2nd one I leave the snooze on to bug me every 10 minutes. The last one means I'm late.
- Rodfather
6:30am.... snooze sometimes until 7:40am. >.> I plan my outfits the night before so it doesn't take me long to get ready unless I need to flat-iron my hair in which case I snooze only once. Or twice. ;)
- Zulema ⋅ spicy cocoa tart
5:45AM with 15 minutes of snooze and up at 6.
- Alan
Our alarm clock has 2 different alarms you can set on it, so when the twins (high school) are home, my wife uses an alarm set for 5 a.m. When it's just the little one (elementary school), she uses an alarm set for 6:01 (I accidentally went past 6:00, and didn't feel like changing it). On days when I commute into work, I use the 6:01 alarm. On days when I telecommute, I have my phone set to go off at 7:45. On weekends, we usually don't use an alarm.
- Curdy G
6:00am atm on weekdays. Random on weekends, if at all. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
7 am - out of bed sometime after - in the office by 9
- Jason
What D said. I usually set it for an hour before I have to be at work (30 min to get ready, 30 min commute) but I'm typically awake and lying around in bed before it goes off anyway. My internal alarm is set to 7:30.
- Penguin
from iPhone
6:20 - please tell me someones going to throw these into a table and make a graph :)
- Eric Sizemore
"In addition to stopping funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business, Komen for the Cure has also quietly stopped funding embryonic stem cell research centers, another concern for pro-life advocates."
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
"New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has entered the controversy over America's largest breast cancer advocacy group's cut in funding to Planned Parenthood by vowing to make up $250,000 of the missing funds out of his own pocket."
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
Bloomberg is a rich-guy Republican, not a religious-nutjob Republican. No trap.
- Tudor Bosman
"Bloomberg supports abortion rights, stating: "Reproductive choice is a fundamental human right and we can never take it for granted. On this issue, you're either with us or against us." He has criticized pro-choice politicians who support pro-life candidates. Bloomberg supports governmental funding for embryonic stem cell research, calling the Republican position on the issue...
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- Tudor Bosman
It baffles me how large organizations still expect to keep sleaziness secret in this day and age. The truth eventually comes out, and it will make you look worse than if you had sheepishly admitted to making a bad/forced/unpopular decision in the first place.
Re: http://www.theatlantic.com/health... -- "Sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process said recent policies were adopted specifically to cut funding to Planned Parenthood."
- Tudor Bosman
We had some networking issues that were causing packet loss over the past couple days that (we think) have been resolved. If you noticed the site being a bit sluggish, it should be improved now.
"Let's take a hike on the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles to visit our friends in Newport Beach. I'll whip out my map and draw our route down the coast. The line is about 400 miles long, we can walk 4 miles per hour for 10 hours per day, so we'll be there in 10 days. We call our friends and book dinner for next Sunday night, when we roll in triumphantly at 6pm. They can't wait!"
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
The Big Sur factor is too often unaccounted for.
- Laura Norvig
from iPhone
Top maps could help with that problem.
- Brent
from iPhone
They should have planned for alternative modes of transportation :-)
- Shakeel Mahate
Brent, what is the equivalent of topographical maps in this analogy, I wonder.
- Laura Norvig
Would better more detailed specifications of desired system be that topo map
- WarLord
Laurabrarian: I honestly don't know lol. I don't know enough about software development. But, while reading the article, I was reminded of my orienteering and bush-work days. Top maps provide the necessary detail, and you adjust your pace for elevation and geography. Plan accordingly.
- Brent
Notice that that the detail/quality/kind of the map is only one of the problems. Changing requirements, unforeseen issues that only crop up once you start, and not being experienced enough at the start were additional contributing factors. I found this to be a good analogy.
- Andy Bakun
Andy++ If the guy in the parable totally understood fractal coastlines, _he would still have been in huge trouble for all those other reasons_.
- Andrew C (✓)
Andy: me, too. Please don't misunderstand me. But even the things you mentioned correspond to the issues faced when planning a trek or a route march. I think we're working from the same map.
- Brent
Someone had their way with this page: "Jedi Sentinel is one of two Advanced Classes for the Jedi Knight, the other being the Jedi Drone." [...] "The most important stat for the Sentinel is strength and butthurt."
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
"A worker checks in a special room where the Parma hams are hung to dry in Langhirano near Parma. Prosciutto di Parma can only be produced in a very restricted area of 29 sq km (11.2 sq mile) around the town of Parma in the region of Emilia Romagna, just north of Tuscany. Around 10 million hams are sold every year, of which about 2 million are exported, mainly to France, the United States and Germany, which each consume about 400,000 a year. (REUTERS, file photo from 2009)"
- CW✔
from Bookmarklet
"The Bridge Is Over" - Shania Twain (I had to post this because it made Kisha react like an electric shock went through her. I now retire.)
- Moody (Sweet FA 4 Life)
"The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973. It was published in the journal Science under the title "On being sane in insane places." The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis. Rosenhan's study was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients" (three women and five men) who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had not experienced any more hallucinations. Hospital staff failed to detect a single pseudopatient, and instead believed that all of the pseudopatients exhibited symptoms of ongoing mental illness....
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- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
"Despite constantly and openly taking extensive notes on the behavior of the staff and other patients, none of the pseudopatients were identified as impostors by the hospital staff, although many of the other psychiatric patients seemed to be able to correctly identify them as impostors. ... one nurse labeled the note-taking of one pseudopatient as "writing behavior" and considered it pathological."
- Gabe
"It's a boy! And he's five. Beck Laxton, 46, and partner Kieran Cooper, 44, have spent half the decade concealing the gender of their son, Sasha. "I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping," Laxton said. I'm confused. Is being stereotyped as a boy worse than being stereotyped as a court jester with an extra chromosome? "Wha--! That is so offensive!" Agreed. So why did she do it?"
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
"What drove her to using her child as a you-go-first skydiving partner is the desire to be something coupled with the terror of doing anything-- which results in ambivalence and inertia camouflaged in a consumerist lifestyle full of meaningless choices. This leaves a lot of unused emotional energy left over for me me me. She's had 46 years to obsess over her identity, and this is what she came up with, a hail mary pass in the second half of a mid-life crisis."
- Tudor Bosman
"And so a person who knows not what to do with freedom, a person afraid of power, has a choice: either the transgressions are filtered through a proxy that has proven it can stand it-- modeling your bad ass self after someone already bad ass, or projecting your impulses onto someone else; or you pretend that something else, entirely artificial, is what frustrates you. Knowing where the...
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- Tudor Bosman
"This is why I know that while Beck seems like a hippie-atheist-feminist-freethinker, she is undoubtedly a completely ordinary middle class housewife, no different than the Kansas PTA members she would hatefully roll her eyes at for voting Tory instead of Labour. Her life has been marked by nothing eventful, nothing challenging, nothing unusual, nothing difficult, so she will have...
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- Tudor Bosman
" 'Sasha's gender was almost revealed when he took to running around their garden naked, but Beck was resolute and encouraged him to play with dolls to hide his masculinity.' Hide it from whom? The kid knows he's a boy. If he wants to play with dolls that's one thing, but evidently the dolls aren't for him, for his benefit, but as a signal to other people. Not wanting other people to...
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- Jimminy, CoG of FF
It's not that she didn't want to impose a gender on the child, it's that she hates the gender that he is. If it was a girl it would not have happened. She encouraged him to act feminine. There's no evidence that she encouraged him to partake in any masculine activities. She didn't want to avoid a gender stereotype, she wanted to impose the gender that she wanted him to be.
- Glenn Slaven
"A judge on Monday ordered a Colorado woman to decrypt her laptop computer so prosecutors can use the files against her in a criminal case. The defendant, accused of bank fraud, had unsuccessfully argued that being forced to do so violates the Fifth Amendment's protection against compelled self-incrimination. "I conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer," Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ruled Monday (.pdf)."
- SteVe C
from Bookmarklet