unclevlad

They should be thankful. Those Oregon colors are painful. IIRC, not quite as bad as Baylor's, particularly basketball, but not far removed. Georgia's jerseys are classics, OTOH. Excellent red shade.

Another aspect is that many of the major villains have some really big Summons, or Followers, where the intent is that's what the master villain throws at the party. They don't confront him directly. Can't remember which, but one of the major villains has 2-3 different types of summons for different things. No one person can be a world-dominating tyrant without a minion army. They also tend to have a dozen different attack powers...NOT all of which are in an MP, for example. Even if they are, the slot costs won't be cheap. The MP may be big enough to use 2 attack powers at once, too. And as Grail said, efficiency is not a design principle.

Leadership is also given as an example of a new skill. 6E2 300 is the cite in the index. Generally, I've got no issue re-skinning Persuasion for Leadership, or Erudition for Oratory. Especially the latter...some people are much better crafting words on paper, than speaking. For a combat leader, I like Leadership, Tactics, and Analyze: Combat. Teamwork is nice, but IMO not required. The leader identifies what's going on, determines countermeasures, then communicates them. Things like the levels usable by others is something a bit different...that's the inspirational force, the rallying point. That's not a Cap, definitely not a Cyclops.

ECU missed a 34 yard FG vs. NC State to win it....AFTER missing a tying PAT with 3 minutes left. And remember, the college PAT is still from the 2. Guess which unit's going to be tripling up on their practice time this week. Georgia is showing the Big 10 why adding Oregon is mostly a waste of time....21-3 with 3 minutes to go, Georgia with the ball again....and Georgia just made it 28-3 with 21 seconds left. Iowa scrapes by with a 7-3 win over South Dakota State. Yes...it was 5-3, ended 7-3. 376 yards combined by both teams, 21 punts. Only 124 total plays, 67 rushing...almost old school, but massively inept. As in...1.6 per attempt for Iowa, 1.1 for South Dakota State. Not a game for the season's highlight reel, I'd say...

14-7 for the mighty Hens in the 4th, but Navy has the ball. Along similar lines...Power 5 vs. a quality FCS team. Iowa-South Dakota State. 5-3 Hawkeyes with about 11 minutes left. Apparently the weather is good, but both offenses have been shut down hard. 270 yards COMBINED, 50 minutes in. 17 punts.

Va Tech/ODU, NCST/ECU, and NC/AppState are all in-state opponents, so it may be that there's home-and-home games getting scheduled there. Quick check...App State plays in Chapel Hill next year, week 2. The state may have pushed for this; I know they pushed for CU and CSU to play each other, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's behind CU/AFA somewhat...altho they can't push that too hard, they can encourage it. NCST hosts ECU in 2025...and goes to ECU in 2028. So this looks to be at least a short-term, intermittently played series. And NCST and App State have a home-and-home for 25 and 26. So...I'm definitely thinking the state's pushing for more in-state games.

And with the ship, extending LoneWolf's point, if it's there basically to facilitate the storyline, then you can just give them the vehicle; it need not cost points. Or perhaps it comes with certain obligations or duties, to reflect the fact that it is a particularly expensive item. That gets to character and campaign backstory.

Ummmmm...I'd have to re-read the fine print, but I believe your scenario is correct. AND, it massively suggests Notre Dame is going to seek to join a conference because right now they *cannot* get that bye as an independent. Oh, for those non-night owls....... The Buffs are getting slammed. TCU had problems and were sleep-walking...8 pm scheduled start, 35 minute lightning delay. 7-6 Frogs at halftime. Then the roof caved it, and it's 31-6 now, with TCU having the ball with 6 minutes left. So much for covering....... <sigh> <EDIT> An ESPN writer tweeted CU's next 3. Air Force (in the Springs), Minnesota, UCLA. Not looking pretty. And the TCU line just created a massive hole, letting the back go for 40. It's looking......soooo not good....

Alja was SOLID, especially on her backhand. She was CRACKING them for winners from the baseline. The oddsmakers had Serena at, I think, 14-1 and about the same chances as Gauff. Personally, I never bought that. She would've had another non-seed in the round of 16...but Samsonova's showing has her at #28 now. Then probably Jabeur, then Gauff or Garcia in the quarters. Tough road to hoe. And these matches were draining...this one was over 3 hours, her 2nd round was another tough 3 set affair. Kontaviet made the final in Qatar (a WTA 1000) in February...but lost her first match in 4 of 8 tournaments entered, and 2nd match in 2 others. So she hasn't been on form for most of the year. Not gonna argue her mental toughness at all but I wasn't seeing it.

John Wick, or Pink Panther/Clouseau?

Alja Tomljanovic plays perhaps the most memorable and difficult match of her life against Serena. First 2 sets are split, 7-5 Alja, 7-6 Serena...in over 2 hours. Serena breaks and gets out to a 40-15 lead, but Alja comes back to break. The rest of the set is a battle, but Serena *just* misses a couple shots that would've been winners. Crowd is ECSTATIC every point Serena wins, and they're winners....Alja's not giving points away. It's great tennis. Alja gets out to a 5-1 lead. Down 2 breaks, Serena plays an epic game...she has 2 break points, she fights off 6 match points...... ....but in the end Alja holds, and wins. 3 hours and 5 minutes. Crowd gives her a nice round of applause; they were never against her, just completely pro-Serena. Medvedev has to try to play a late match now. it's gonna start close to 11 pm there.

Well...the good news is that Minnesota decided to practice its running game last night, mostly, running on 57 of the 80 plays they ran. This was good, as the clock ran. The mighty (pathetic) NMSU Aggies ran 33 plays for less than 100 yards...and it was much worse. Minnesota scored with seconds left in the 3rd to go up 38-0; the Aggies managed a 10 play drive against (probably) the Gophers' 3rd string, going 54 yards...and throwing a pick. Note, that was out of 33 plays and 91 yards for the game. Well, we shall see how fare the UTEP Miners...playing Oklahoma. Another Borderlands train wreck, most likely... Should Utah State's game even count in the standings??? I mean, isn't playing UConn a bye week?

Slept in my David Bowie t-shirt and the radio stopped working......

Just announced: CFP will expand to 12 teams. No later than 2026; as early as 2024 or 2025, but there's logistics involved relative to dates. The plan is here: https://twitter.com/RossDellenger/status/1565796575452053505 It's small text, so it won't show that well here. First round has 4 byes...given to the 4 highest-rated conference champions. Note the 2 conditions there. The other games are played at the home facility of the higher-rated school...which assures massive attendance. This also makes for massive arguments...the difference between 3rd and 4th non-byes and 5th and 6th, is often not at all clear, and now it's huge. The six highest-rated conference champs automatically get bids. The Pac-12 gets no preference, and there's no minimum rank per se. This can make conference championships VERY interesting...when Oregon was a top 5 team, say, but whoever won the Pac 12 South wasn't even top 25. Well, if they pull off the upset...they may still NOT get in. After those spots, the other slots are based on rank alone. So there's 4 games at conference sites, probably the 3rd week in December, at the home fields of the higher ranks...which could be...interesting in its own way. Think Michigan or Penn State in mid-December, and what could be the case. The 4 winners advance to play the top 4 seeds in bowl games. The 4 winners there go to the semis; we can presume that will be the New Year's bowls. That points out the issue to be resolved...how to split out the 4 second-round games, which will be the equivalent to the non-CFP New Year's bowl games, and what they'll do with the major bowls now. Because if your game isn't a CFP game...it'll be secondary at best. Doesn't matter what your bowl is. So this is gonna be a mess.

They don't go into details about how it happened, but deep frying a turkey results in some very serious accidents every year. Hot oil is never something to take lightly. The good news is, while they're painful as heck, they're not that extensive and should heal without problems.

Ranked-choice only matters in a multi-way race. And there? I think it MUCH more accurately reflects things, particularly now when people very often vote against a given candidate.

Yeah, that's not unusual. Different stages play out differently, especially as the race moves into the middle and latter stages. Winning the overall event is much more important than winning the stage, so the team with the overall leader can be perfectly content with non-contending riders breaking away and winning by 5 minutes...when no one in the breakaway is closer than 30 minutes, it doesn't matter. Flat stages generally end with a bunch sprint, and the winner there can be a bit of luck of the draw. Not to say there isn't skill; there's a lot, but sometimes the best sprint teams get caught out of position, or misjudge the last few hundred meters. And yeah, losing 20% of the riders will affect things. It can be argued that Pogacar lost the Tour to Vingegaard because Vin had stronger support throughout...partly because Pog's team lost some of its key support riders.

Oh yeah. For a lot of things, hard drives still work just fine...a co-worker had a personal web site set up with his personal music collection. This was...15 years ago? And it was rather sizable. For that, hard drives are fine. I've got a terabyte SSD for the system drive, and a 4 TB hard drive for anything non-system. And for anything that's static...like my Hero PDFs...Google Drive.

TCU-Colorado, I suspect the line's driven by 2 things. #1, Colorado's Pac-12 where 4-8 says you stink. TCU's Texas; got to think there's money going down on them just for that alone. I'd actually be tempted to take the points and the Buffs, at home, at night (a weird time tonight...it's the late ESPN game). The big thing is, of course, it's week 1 and no one knows what's gonna happen. Might see some rain, but chances aren't very high, and that probably means not much if it does. Folsom's a weird stadium to play in for visitors, too. Ohh...I see. The line's moved TCU's way the last 3 weeks, probably because Colorado's still not named a #1 QB.

Eh, Wal Mart was getting scammed as well. They can't track everything across their marketplace. Both they and Amazon act simply as a promotional vehicle. And, yeah, I just got a 1 TB external SSD because my HP SSD had weird issues. IIRC it was about $50. Prices tend to go UP for extremely large drives, and 30 TB would be well up there. TechRadar has a story on this...the biggest they found is 100 TB. And it's $40,000. Not exactly a home unit; drives like this are for the seriously massive data centers where speed is also critical. Think Amazon...those pages aren't small with the amount of graphics involved, and there's *sooo many* products. Or Facebook...it's reported they generate 4 petabytes a day. A petabyte is 1000 terabytes.

I agree with CRT, at least for starters. Some things, especially tactics, can come later. My big issue with going all the way back to 3rd is the funky way non-combat movement's computed. The skill selection's kinda sparse too, and horribly expensive. Might at least tweak the costs. Plus, I really dislike figured characteristics. But to avoid that, you gotta go to 6th...at which point, you're looking at stripping a LOT out. Many, if not most, limitations, all the complex advantages (charges, most UOO, damage over time), numerous powers. So that might be even more of a PITA....

No fear, they put Clouseau on the case.

I dunno, it's not clear that he's even the worst owner of a New York-based NBA franchise... Oh, wait, the Russian guy got enough money laundering done and sold the team. But that was before the start of the '19 season, so we can put the Kyree debacle on the new guy's shoulders. The combined track record...might rival Dolan's, but the new guy hasn't had long enough to mess up to the same degree. Give him time. Oh wait...blame Mr. P. I gotta see your residency man...are u a New Yorker? Gonna haveta cancel this vote if you are....

Wow. To amplify that last point...23 riders have had to pull out from positive tests. 17 riders were forced out of the Tour...and we thought that was high. 184 riders started; they're down to 147. 14 out from non-Covid...23 from Covid. Field's down 20% with a lot of riding to go. Got to figure this is a serious concern for all the grand tours. There's no reason to think Covid is going away any time soon.

Slept in my Rolling Stones t-shirt, covered in moss. Returned it as defective.