It's Personal...

Aharon · Post by **Aharon** » Sun Apr 28, 2013 6:08 pm

Well, they are not exactly the same, but german Studentenverbindungen share some of the characteristics of fraternities (gaining members by offering cheap housing, more duties for younger members, membership restricted to university students).

Most of them have a bad reputation, but mainly because of their conservativism, which borders on nationalism for some and crosses this border for a few.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Mon Apr 29, 2013 12:02 pm

I love Pandemic. My wife and I like it quite a bit, and only recently managed to win on six epidemics. I've had a lot of fun with the On the Brink expansion. The new roles are a lot of fun, and I really like the versatility the Archivist offers to the game. We actually just played last night with her family, and she won as the Bio Terrorist.

Koumei wrote: Also, the friend I travelled with bought Pandemic, and we managed to get more than ten games in. It is in fact ideal, and it took us all of ten minutes to learn the rules, and we also quickly figured out the broken player combinations. (2P: Medic + Dispatch. 3P: Research+Scientist+Any. Quarantine+Dispatch is also a total boss).

What is Quarentine? Is it in the normal game, or an expansion? I'm wondering if there are slight differences in the US version of the game.

I agree that Medic and Dispatcher work really well, especially once you start getting cures. My wife and I played a game with those two once, and we had eradicated (not just cured) three diseases, and ended the game with just one blue cube on San Francisco.

Koumei wrote: That had very unfortunate implications about "curing" blackness though.

Yeah, we noticed the same thing. You can talk about trying to work together to get the blue cure, red cure, or yellow cure, and no one bats an eye. Everything gets weird when talking about working on the black cure.

It's like Pandemic's version of wood-for-sheep.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Mon Apr 29, 2013 2:27 pm

Remember when streaming video was a solved problem and functioned reliably, if a little slowly?

Those were good times.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 1:14 am

name_here wrote:Remember when streaming video was a solved problem and functioned reliably, if a little slowly?

Those were good times.

Youtube and a lot of other major video/streaming services have agreements with ISP's that let them run caching servers on the delivery end, in order to minimize the number of connections your youtube video has to hop through to get to you and theoretically serve the video up faster. But sometimes those caching servers are fucking awful and can't actually handle the traffic they receive, and they provide you content slower than getting it directly from google's datacenters. For example: if you have Time Warner Cable, this system does not fucking work for you, at all.

But if you block the IP's of those caching servers with a firewall, the youtube player defaults to sending you the video directly and it actually loads faster. I went from youtube on 240p with minutes at a time of zero activity and load speeds slower than play speeds to 720p/1080p with no pauses and no hangs. I.e., what it was before this bullshit started happening.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 7:35 am

The campus has had some Magic players for years, but with the student center remodeled, I actually hang out around them now. Also, my friend who was a Yu Gi Oh player since High School (no clue why) recently started playing magic.

Last week I finally remembered to bring my deck (Slivers) to school, but when checking through it later, I couldn't find Sliver Queen or Sliver Overlord, kind of the crown jewels of my deck. So far as I could tell, they hadn't been stolen, because I still had 60 cards, and it's implausible that a thief would have the foresight to pull out enough cards to make a deck seem like it was still a full constructed deck.

Well, I just found them. They were in my other Sliver deck.

Forgot I had two.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 8:22 am

I had a nice chat with the DM about Mr. I'M CHAOTIC NEUTRAL. The rest of the group agrees with me.

The game is going better, but they seem resentful that I tend to take a lot of damage in combat despite me also dishing out the most. They don't believe me when I say that one more point of AC won't make a difference when your AC is shit. They fancy themselves powergamers but say things like "fireball is the best spell". I did get a hooked lance over a longspear though. But I did buy a mithral waffle iron because it was the most useless thing I could find.

Nebuchadnezzar · Post by **Nebuchadnezzar** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 11:46 pm

RobbyPants wrote: I agree that Medic and Dispatcher work really well, especially once you start getting cures.

My friends and I call that combo Jesus and His Travel Agent. In the basic game it's really the best one. The On the Brink expansion has a couple of good roles, like the revised Operations Expert (You may build a research station in your pawn’s current city for one action. Once per turn, for an action, while your pawn is at a research station, you may discard any city card to move to any city.), although ideally you can change from that role after a turn or two, the Generalist (5 actions/turn), and the Field Operative (can remove. cubes as samples and produce cures with a combination of cubes and city cards). Honestly, though, nothing beats being able to give the Medic double turns, although it has the worst potential for one player to dictate others' actions.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed May 01, 2013 8:56 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote: If Jesus comes to take my friends to hell, then Jesus is getting fucking cut if I have anything to say about it.

Sigged.

Also, Koumei, I really want to visit Melbourne someday. My publisher (and a lot of other cool people) are there.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed May 01, 2013 10:50 pm

So, as I'm sure you all remember, I had pre-ordered a reissue Fortress Maximus somewhere around January 1046 A.D.

Well, it has finally been released and shipped and I will be receiving it Friday, and I am well aware that you are all as excited about this as I am because why else would I be putting telling you?

Two more days before I can use Fort Max as a blunt instrument to crush my little cousin's dollhouse! YAY!

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu May 02, 2013 1:23 am

Robby: core game (2Ed). Quarantine prevents cubes from being placed in their city or any adjoining ones. See: immunity to triple-outbreak explosions.

Nebuchadnezzar wrote:The On the Brink expansion has a couple of good roles, like the revised Operations Expert (You may build a research station in your pawn’s current city for one action. Once per turn, for an action, while your pawn is at a research station, you may discard any city card to move to any city.)

Sounds like 2Ed is using the revised one, yeah.

Honestly, though, nothing beats being able to give the Medic double turns, although it has the worst potential for one player to dictate others' actions.

True, which is why it says to ask for permission to move other players' pawns first.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu May 02, 2013 10:52 am

Koumei wrote:Robby: core game (2Ed). Quarantine prevents cubes from being placed in their city or any adjoining ones. See: immunity to triple-outbreak explosions.

Oh, nice. I don't have that one. I think the closest I've seen in Resilient Population from the core game (You take one card from the discards of the infection deck and remove it from the game).

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue May 07, 2013 7:31 pm

You know what goes well with finals week? Mild food poisoning!

Specifically nausea, diarrhea, and a possibly-unrelated headache. Which aren't severe enough that they'd prevent me from taking finals, because maximum annoyance occurs at a very specific level of sick.

Nebuchadnezzar · Post by **Nebuchadnezzar** » Tue May 07, 2013 11:28 pm

Honestly, though, nothing beats being able to give the Medic double turns, although it has the worst potential for one player to dictate others' actions.
True, which is why it says to ask for permission to move other players' pawns first.

I'm referring more to the tendency of games like Pandemic to have strategy dictated by the more experienced players, such that any permission granted is preceded by strong suggestion. Roles like the Dispatcher exacerbate this.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed May 08, 2013 12:07 am

I'm finally getting health benefits at my job I started in January... and apparently I missed a crucial detail when signing up, either that or the numbers were not given.

Today I got informed by our payroll lady that I would be having $560+ taken out of each paycheck to cover health insurance. Over $1100 a month. And I think the company is kicking in something towards that on top of what I pay to the insurer.

What the fuck? I just went through and applied to the same exact company for my family for a better policy and was quoted $650/month after doing our tawdry health disclosure.

While I spent the most of last year unemployed I had shitty insurance for about $400/month (which actually comes out to roughly the same as the $650 since my wife's prescription was another $300/month, whereas it is about $50 with the $650 plan).

I didn't use the company dental because it was about triple what I would pay through the company than if I signed up on my own for my family... so I signed up for my own. Given my ability to do this simple math I am pretty certain the only reason I didn't give a "LOL-NO" to the health coverage also was because I didn't get to see those numbers in the first place.

If I don't get any satisfactory answers as to what the hell is going on tomorrow I reckon I will have to cancel my health benefits and go back to getting coverage on my own.

Have other people encountered such ridiculous bullshit where their 'benefit' of being in a company group discount is to pay 2-3x the going rate of what you would pay as a normal customer? I cannot fathom why this is so.

[edit: Ah, a couple seconds with google splains it for me. Synopsis, company insurance is given the thumbs-up regardless of health of the insured, so they charge an extra ridiculous premium to make up for it. I'll be cancelling that shit.]

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Wed May 08, 2013 11:07 am

DSMatticus wrote:
name_here wrote:Remember when streaming video was a solved problem and functioned reliably, if a little slowly?

Those were good times.
Youtube and a lot of other major video/streaming services have agreements with ISP's that let them run caching servers on the delivery end, in order to minimize the number of connections your youtube video has to hop through to get to you and theoretically serve the video up faster. But sometimes those caching servers are fucking awful and can't actually handle the traffic they receive, and they provide you content slower than getting it directly from google's datacenters. For example: if you have Time Warner Cable, this system does not fucking work for you, at all.

But if you block the IP's of those caching servers with a firewall, the youtube player defaults to sending you the video directly and it actually loads faster. I went from youtube on 240p with minutes at a time of zero activity and load speeds slower than play speeds to 720p/1080p with no pauses and no hangs. I.e., what it was before this bullshit started happening.

Can I get some more info on this? I have the unfortunate position of being on TWC, and if there is something I can do to make YouTube stop shitting itself as a result, I am all over it. Where can I get a list of IPs to block?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed May 08, 2013 11:34 am

Grek wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:
name_here wrote:Remember when streaming video was a solved problem and functioned reliably, if a little slowly?

Those were good times.
Youtube and a lot of other major video/streaming services have agreements with ISP's that let them run caching servers on the delivery end, in order to minimize the number of connections your youtube video has to hop through to get to you and theoretically serve the video up faster. But sometimes those caching servers are fucking awful and can't actually handle the traffic they receive, and they provide you content slower than getting it directly from google's datacenters. For example: if you have Time Warner Cable, this system does not fucking work for you, at all.

But if you block the IP's of those caching servers with a firewall, the youtube player defaults to sending you the video directly and it actually loads faster. I went from youtube on 240p with minutes at a time of zero activity and load speeds slower than play speeds to 720p/1080p with no pauses and no hangs. I.e., what it was before this bullshit started happening.
Can I get some more info on this? I have the unfortunate position of being on TWC, and if there is something I can do to make YouTube stop shitting itself as a result, I am all over it. Where can I get a list of IPs to block?

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/ ... hrottling/

http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/how-to-st ... ows-guide/

It's the same info in each link, the second just handholds you through it with the explicit instructions for how to do it with windows firewall. If you aren't using windows firewall and are instead using some other software or your router or something, you'll have to do it a little differently but those are the numbers you want.

It is blocking a small range of IP's and it's very unlikely all of them are involved in the caching/throttling/whatever's going on. So it's entirely possible you'll block something completely unrelated to what you're trying to block and maybe possibly break something somewhere, but I've yet to see any weird behavior and it's not like it's hard to reverse - just disable or remove the rule.

Hadanelith · Post by **Hadanelith** » Wed May 08, 2013 4:05 pm

I have attempted this hack, with no particular result. I am led to a conclusion: the reason my Youtube starts sucking every day between 6:00 and 10:30 PM is because I live in an apartment complex, and people are coming home from work. This seriously has a tremendous effect - far more than the caching server. At non-peak times, even without the hack, it's smooth sailing. Peak times, even with the hack, lag city. Any thoughts on something I can do to fix this? The clogging of the tubes is irritating.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Wed May 08, 2013 4:45 pm

Probably not, until your ISP upgrades the tubes.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Wed May 08, 2013 6:03 pm

Hadanelith wrote:I have attempted this hack, with no particular result. I am led to a conclusion: the reason my Youtube starts sucking every day between 6:00 and 10:30 PM is because I live in an apartment complex, and people are coming home from work. This seriously has a tremendous effect - far more than the caching server. At non-peak times, even without the hack, it's smooth sailing. Peak times, even with the hack, lag city. Any thoughts on something I can do to fix this? The clogging of the tubes is irritating.

This sounds like you have cable internet? You may want to talk to your ISP about your speed. Back when we had cable, our internet would drop out just about every evening. A tech came out and discovered we were on a 12-way splitter.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu May 09, 2013 1:30 am

Hadanelith wrote:I have attempted this hack, with no particular result. I am led to a conclusion: the reason my Youtube starts sucking every day between 6:00 and 10:30 PM is because I live in an apartment complex, and people are coming home from work. This seriously has a tremendous effect - far more than the caching server. At non-peak times, even without the hack, it's smooth sailing. Peak times, even with the hack, lag city. Any thoughts on something I can do to fix this? The clogging of the tubes is irritating.

You should do bandwidth tests (not just youtube videos) before, during, and after this time period. If your bandwidth drops during peak hours, then it's a problem of physical load and there's not a lot you can do beyond call your ISP and harass them to give you more juice.

If your bandwidth stays the same throughout the day but youtube and/or other streaming services crumple under the weight, then you're probably being routed to a server that can't handle load during peak hours. If the above IP ranges don't successfully block the server, there's not much more I can recommend other than "are you sure you did it right? Try it again!" and "the firewall you're using to block the IP's is turned ON right?"

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Thu May 09, 2013 3:43 am

Worked perfectly. You are a hero.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu May 09, 2013 1:35 pm

i watched the new star trek movie, into darkness, in cinema in 3d last night . .
and i did not like it, does that somehow make me a bad nerd?
The camera was moving too much, there were way too many details on the screen all the time, especially in the 3D parts with random bits of little debris flying around . .
the 3D wasn't all that good to begin with, only the scene with the thrown spear was really good in my eyes . .
and oh my god the (lens)flares x.x

audio wasn't as good either, kinda flat and then too loud/too much bass all of a sudden . .

The action was okayish, but the story wasn't all that good for me . .
They changed to many things in my opinion. Which, due to spoilers, i won't go into here . .

please tell me i am not just getting too old/grognard to enjoy things x.x

MisterDee · Post by **MisterDee** » Thu May 09, 2013 2:56 pm

3D ruins movies. No matter what the studios want to claim, it's just not there yet.

(Personnally, I think it never will be. Stuff jumping out of the screen is immersion breaking, not immersion helping.)

The best 3D technology costs a fortune and so isn't often used (although I'm guessing it probably was for Star Trek.) But non superepic blockbusters in 3D automatically suck.

And even that super-expensive technology can only do depth-of-view stuff well (which, in fairness, really does help a movie IMO). As soon as they start having stuff jump out of the screen, it becomes just as jarring as cheapass 3D.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Thu May 09, 2013 3:08 pm

Stahlseele wrote:i watched the new star trek movie

All I want to know is...

Is it Kahn?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu May 09, 2013 3:48 pm

@MisterDee
i'm thinking the 3D wasn't the problem here actually.
it was the rest of the movie i am afraid. Visual effects overload.
too busy of an art-style and the cam never stays still ever it seems.
and the ships seem to be bigger on the inside than they are on the outside.

@shrapnel
depends . .

also, i am really not sure wether or not there was an reference to Fat Abbot in there or not . .