We'll see. I am mostly pretty liberal but with (I think) a pretty healthy dose of skepticism— I used to consider myself more of a libertarian and haven't forgotten about that perspective on things. In any case, I also understand that the military has an important role to play (even though it's got its share of…

Well, I will have to look into the guy. But I am extremely wary of exceptions to this kind of thing, and to the ever-expanding power of the presidency in general (yes, this includes a lot of Obama's executive actions along those lines). Slippery slope, and all that.

There's "people who voted for Trump because generic Republicans > generic Democrat", which I guess is the group you're talking about. They are still wrong because (a) Trump is not really a Republican on most of the usual core issues, and (b) Trump is a horrible, willfully ignorant con man and manipulator who they…

We all know that the alt-right crowd identifies with the Empire now. And let's face it, the Emperor always told it like it was! (sigh)

I can tell you that I have a close family member who votes Republican and is pretty high-ranking in the military (Brigadier General)… and he is positively appalled by Trump. Haven't had a chance to talk to him yet about Mattis, but I wouldn't be surprised if he likes him except for the "retired less than seven years…

Heh, I originally thought you were just kidding about the level of stress a kid's iPad would be under, but come to think of it, they have done some damn stupid things with the iPads when angry, and your Otterbox story sounds pretty impressive. We used to have a "smart case" or whatever from Apple for the iPad 4, but…

SUPER COLON BLOW!

Thanks, my brother-in-law is in charge of the Maryland Army National Guard (plus his daughter, my niece, is 10 and a big iPad fan), so I'll see if I can get military wholesale rates on those.

A friend of mine pointed me to this, and now that I've had the kids' iPads repaired (both smashed to bits in recent, unrelated events), I can actually download something for myself for the first time since The Room 3. Right after I make room for it by deleting these 200 random selfies and screenshots of really boring…

Read the post again… He didn't say he was incompetent. He said he went on a long vacation/leave of absence, and his female co-workers took up the slack. It's also implied that management considers those women's roles in the company less important than his, hence the pay difference, but that he disagrees. So, he's a…

Not sure, clause 1 there refers to a "public offense".

So bitchin' awesome.

With MGS, I guess you never know. Tell you what, I'll grab a copy and go with "Josef K." as my name, and we'll see if I end up playing as an enormous cockroach.

Thanks for this! I'm supposed to be working, but I can never resist hanging around WAYPTW on Fridays…

By coincidence, the name that he freely selected turned out to be the name that was already written into the game, is how I understood it.

Let's see, in chronological order (of reading as well as publishing), I read:
- Bleak House: surprisingly good! way too freaking complicated! but hey that's Dickens for you.

Yeah, it's the desert temple. I figured it was more or less a bottleneck— I've run into that before where there is one "impossible" one in the middle of a sequence, but having busted through it, the next ones aren't so bad. Sigh.

Well, shit, that is indeed the place, and the specific issue I'm having with it. I'm sure there's a "think outside the box" moment waiting for me there somewhere, but so far the only other advice I've had on this was "Oh yeah I ended up brute-forcing that one." Which sounds awful.

Thanks, that's reassuring. There are a number of mechanics and/or specific puzzles that are looking a bit annoying so far, like one where apparently I may have to align a windmill in a specific position without being able to directly see where it is when I start and stop it. I think it was a mistake to start running…

Well, Fallout 4 and The Witness are still definitely on the list, although I've gotten a little bit stuck with both.
— With The Witness, I got stuck on one puzzle in a sequence (the hexagon patterns— a bit involving raising and lowering water levels to be able to see how to solve each puzzle), and then I ventured into…