Posts made by BetterJudgment

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I've got a couple friends who play on Eternal Crusade and have told me it's better now that several staffers who were (by their accounts) terrible have left.

Is this the original group of staffers that was banned four months ago--

@Crysta said in Current Games:

The head admin of Eternal Crusade has banned about half the staff, so if you left because of them, you can give it another go. We're in a bit of a flux right now because they played most of the plot-driving characters.

--or is it a new group of staffers? Mind you, the problem I had was with the owner (Mycol?), who was the only one doing apps at the time, so I'm not going to be interested unless he has passed the game on to someone else entirely. More generally, though, if two groups of staffers have been shed within six months, then people likely should know that before trying to app in.

@Patty said:

Eternal Crusade MUSH is active, though significantly smaller than it was several months ago. It's in a little bit of a summer lull at the moment as several admins are on vacation, but there are people and events still around and happening.

It's a great place if you want to have the one borderline rude person who handles apps ignore yours utterly for weeks.

@spasticgoat said:

@BetterJudgment said:

By my memory, several bottles should have been finished by now.

Considering how much you've been drinking, I'm questioning your judgment.

I don't (can't) drink at all. Of course, that I'm here and perfectly sober is good reason to question my judgment.

By my memory, several bottles should have been finished by now.

There is HellCore as well: http://hellmoo.org/wiki/index.php/HellCore.

@Tempest said:

Are there currently any active fantasy-esque MUSHes/whatever? Stuff with knights/witches/elves/dragons/whatever. (And not Game of Thrones themed.)

Does Tenebrae count? I've never gotten into it because the one time I tried to play D&D online was painful, but it does seem to be active. There is also a surprising lack of grotesquely muscled male figures on the front page of the game's site, but I don't know if that's significant.

I've been lifting weights 4x a week for six weeks now. Before you get impressed (if you were going to), that's basically just two full-body workouts split between two days because I'm so short on time that I can only spend 30 minutes each time. I'm also dieting some, although that is mainly just adjustment since I'm so strict on my diet anyway.

The good thing is that I've definitely gained strength, which I desperately needed to do; I'm over 50 and have never exercised consistently like this before. (I invested in a set of Olympic weights, bars, and a bench, and it's far different than using the Nautilus machines at the gym.) The frustrating thing is that even though I've made these changes and continue to walk briskly the mile to work in the morning and the mile back, I'm not making headway on the 20 lbs. I need to lose.

I guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet, get up 45 minutes earlier each morning (which means 5:15 AM some mornings), and go speedwalking. I'm not running because I don't think my knees will take it. Too bad doing this stuff is so freaking boring, but if I can get rid of my gut it will be worth it.

@Silver said:

@Glitch I wonder if that would work if I flew out of Mexico, since I live much closer to that border than to the Canadian one.

Then again who the hell wants to go to Mexico, even for a little while? Even Mexicans don't want to be in Mexico.

"Baby, let's to Mexico!" says Sir Douglas.

@HelloRaptor said:

@BetterJudgment

I can't find any references to Sea-Med or to this alternative to balloon angioplasty you mentioned.

Really? Because it took me two googles and a couple of click-throughs worth of effort to find out that the company was called 'SeaMED' and got acquired by and folded into Plexus Corp, and the device was called the Rotoblator Rotational Angioplasty System, whose patent was sold to and is now held by the Boston Scientific Corporation.

From other articles it looks as if it's not strictly an alternative in the sense that a lot of doctors aren't trained in its use anywhere but in the US, and even in the US the balloon method is still pretty common because the rotational system requires a lot of training, and the original method 'works well enough'.

I will admit to conformational bias. My bias is, frankly, that much of the time you're just talking shit.

Maybe you're bad at google? That or you just didn't try very hard because you just wanted an excuse to justify your knee jerk attack on somebody who dared to criticize the Canadian health care system.

This isn't Canadian boosterism as much as it is that I think Shebakoby often repeats half-understood things as gospel truth, and I've thought that for a while. This was just something that seemed worth calling him/her out on.

I honestly didn't find "SeaMED" because I was preserving the space in the name. Once I didn't find that, I started looking for angioplasty alternatives and found nothing. I'm glad you found references to the Rotablator when I couldn't, though part of the problem I had was that the device wasn't developed by SeaMED but instead by Heart Technology, which was bought by Boston Scientific. SeaMED just did/does instrument assembly: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=480403.

Still, what Shebakoby said was that "Canada still doesn't have this [Rotablator] technology" as proof for the statement, "There's maybe only one thing that the US system, as flawed as it is, has over the Canadian system. Money available for R&D." There's no direct relationship between these two things. This technology has been researched and developed, and what I read says that it is an alternative when stenting is not effective (though it sounds like it's tricky - a 2010 article talked about having to do emergency surgery after the drive shaft broke off in a patient's coronary artery). It could be that it's not used in Canada because it's thought to be too expensive, or only used at major medical centers because of the difficulty or the cost, or any number of other things, some of which certainly would point to flaws in the Canadian health system. What was offered as evidence, though, doesn't match that.

Hypnagogia and sleep paralysis suck. I've had them both periodically since I was around four years old.

My nightmares are always similar. I dream that I'm in my house, alone, and it is dark. I walk over to switch on a light--the switch doesn't work. I try several others--they don't work. I realize that the darkness is intentional and threatening, and that I cannot do anything about it. Back when I had a television, this would generally be joined by the television (which cannot be turned off) playing something full of static that shows talking figures at desks talking about how something is going to happen to me. At its worst, the dream ends with me lying in bed, paralyzed as if crushed under a heavy weight and unable to breathe.

I have trained myself to recognize that when light switches don't work and I'm seeing the world in this twilight, distorted state, then it's "another one of those damn dreams." That used to immediately increase how threatening things felt, but now it makes it bearable instead.

@TNP said:

@WTFE At first I thought it was an egg, perhaps aged. But seeing that reddish end, I'm going to guess it's something's testicle.

Naw, that looks like an egg. I think the red (brown) color is the reflection of the chopsticks.

@Shebakoby said:

@Ganymede said:

@Shebakoby said:

I'm not saying American health care is perfect, or anything close. Far from it. I have relatives in the states, so I have heard a few horror stories on the other side of the border. But neither am I saying that Canada's sucks (or sucks worse). The US system has pros and cons, and same with the Canadian system. But we shouldn't pretend that there are no flaws, or that the flaws are insignificant, in the Canadian system.

So, then, we concur on this point.

Canada's problem with access in remote (or rural) areas is a huge problem. That's not what is raised down here in the United States as an issue, though. Americans are paranoid for all the wrong reasons, which is why I feel it is important to point out that those fears are insubstantial.

It's a little different down here because there are large populations where access isn't the issue; cost is. And yet, there are still access issues in places like Nevada, Wyoming, and Montana.

So, if I were to trade the American private system with Canada's public system, I'd take the latter because the American private system still suffers from the same problems as Canada's.

(Edit: My brother is a Canadian physician who has worked in Vancouver and now Ottawa. He gives me updates from his end, along with my schoolmates that are also in the medical profession.)

There's maybe only one thing that the US system, as flawed as it is, has over the Canadian system. Money available for R&D. One of my relatives who lived in the United States (now deceased) used to work for a company called Sea-Med. That company developed something that my relative referred to as a "roto-rooter" for blood vessels and it was superior to balloon angioplasty in removing fatty artery blockages. It drilled right through it, leaving the artery wall undamaged because it was designed to not damage the artery. We saw a video about this device back in the early 1990s.

Canada still doesn't have this technology.

The biggest problem I have is the resistance to change in the system, changes that would improve the system. My community, about 15 years ago, had a HUGE kerfuffle over a CT scanner. A private citizen donated 60,000 dollars to the local hospital. They said the money should be used to buy a CT scanner. The government at the time (NDP) refused to allow the purchase, because OMG PRIVATE MONEY (even though it was a charitable donation) will ruin the system or some sort of invalid slippery slope argument like that.

Two separate MLAs fought each over the issue, each wanting credit for bringing a CT scanner in before they would consider voting to approve one, and both ended up quitting politics forever (one before the other, though). The Hospital did eventually get a CT scanner (though via the provincial government, not the money donated to the hospital).

Some fear that any 'taint' of "private money" (rather than from tax dollars), including charitable donations (which is CRAZY to oppose), in the health system will ruin it forever, but we could have had a CT scanner way sooner than we did if they weren't so ideologically rigid and stubborn.

I can't find any references to Sea-Med or to this alternative to balloon angioplasty you mentioned. I also couldn't find anything like the second story and didn't expect to, but I did run across an article for 2004 about an Alberta woman receiving a provincial-wide award for charitable activities that included raising funds for " the acquisition of a CT scanner for the Hinton Hospital."

I will admit to conformational bias. My bias is, frankly, that much of the time you're just talking shit.

@fstltna said:

Thanks. I will try working on a description and put it under the documentation link, or do you have a suggestion as to where I should put it?

If you are trying to promote your game, then I think it should be the first thing people see when they link to the web site for your game. Right now, I can't tell from your site what you're trying to do (sell an RPG system, sell subscriptions to your game client, offer files to developers, or something else).

@fstltna said:

The external documentation is in PDF format for reference. All the docs are also available within the game itself using the "doc" command. For instance "doc imp" to get the main introduction and "doc files" to get a list of all the doc files available. The "communication" file talks about how the players interact with each other in chat and telegrams etc.

The introduction file is a work in process but reading the files listed as being for players would be a good idea. There is also a forum which would be good for asking other questions in case others have the same issues... Let me know what else you need!

What I need is for you to be able to say up-front on your site what your game is like to play--what the setting is like, how my character interacts in-character with other characters (because, like most people on this forum, I am primarily interested in games where my character interacts with others, not in games that are video game simulations)--before I spend time with it. Without that, why should I bother? Right now, what you have looks like a CMS full of stuff that requires me to dig to figure out what it's for rather than a description of the game, such as the one at http://noreturn.closetgamers.com/ (just as an example - I don't play there).

If you want feedback on your game, then there is some.

Again, there's a lot of talking past each other going on.

It seems to me that having your character die for good makes sense either in a non-RP game where you're just putting another quarter in or on a RP game where combat is rarer, more considered, and more serious. If that's the case, then any MUSH on which I've played qualifies as "permadeath"; it is just much harder to end up dead as opposed to injured/maimed/out of commission for a while. When I've had a character die, it was as the result of choices made before and during the scene and with the understanding that it ended my playing that character. It was done with my consent--really, at my suggestion--and to enable the character who killed mine to further his character's story, but that didn't make the death any less permanent.

Really, the "permadeath" requirement for listing on OR is addressed to MUDs where the resurrection mechanic is essentially OOC, so it should have nothing to do with other kinds of games where resurrection either makes sense IC or doesn't occur. The king and the mercenaries almost surely wouldn't happen even on a Lords 'n' Ladies MU* because the players immediately call shenanigans.

@fstltna Since this forum is used primarily by people engaged in text-based role playing games, can you give some idea of what role play is like you your game? I've logged in to your game and glanced at the documentation, and I can't figure out how players are supposed to interact except by attacking each other. There's an introduction file (and why in God's name are all the info files on your site PDFs that have to be downloaded?) that cuts off without describing any game play except waiting a day after the first time you log in to see if your ship is charged up enough to do anything (?).

Maybe this is just something too far outside my experience for me to get, but I have no idea what you're trying to do with this game. Is it an ASCI simulation of a video RPG? You might try describing it and the actual gameplay before requiring people to download doc files, but I'd bet many people won't bother investing any time without having any idea of what they'll be getting.

I'm sure that Thenomain (who is, after all, a smart, skilled, and experienced game coder) was joking about not recognizing a prompt and not joking about having the character's HP etc. shoved in his face in a RP-centric environment. It should be possible to eliminate the prompt, but from my memory of similar situations on MUDs, people have really not understood why I would not want to see it when I've asked about doing it.

The last time I had a problem with most commands not working was on TrekMUSH: ATS, and the only way I could get things to work was raw telnet. Oddly enough, that was the most MUD-like MUSH (in terms of both game and attitude) I've been on in a long time.

@Jeshin said:

Character Concept Contest (any setting, genre, or game)
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=198.0

This might be the breakout contest for musoapbox users to take 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. No more pesky restrictions or game mechanics in it. Just good old character pitching.

Does this include character descriptions? I've managed to dig up a classic one I might want to flesh out and submit. (I think the character's name was Ishtar.)

It's probably too late to step back from this particular abyss, but to clarify I must have tried The Burning Post nearly ten years ago. My curiosity mainly arose from the game being old and having gone through a couple of iterations, and I was wondering if that represented different approaches to the setting and story, to game play, or to something else. I'm not really interested in round four of "RPI FTW!," but it's my own fault for asking.

@Sunny said:

So, the whole blow-up with my sibling and his wife was over my mom's wedding ring. They wanted it -- apparently took it off of her just after she passed -- and my dad said 'no, give it back', and explosion. The reasoning behind my being an awful person is that I apparently did not make my dad give it to them nao.

Christ. I would have been an awful person for calling them a pack of vultures.