gontleman

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Everything posted by gontleman

  1. I cannot remember how long it's been since I've actually had a problem with a MS product. I cannot remember how long it's been since I've had to do anything to rebuild my computer that wasn't caused by something I consciously did that I was aware could be potentially destructive. Why, after 5 years of never running virus protection or "open-source" applications like Firefox or Thunderbird, have I never had a problem like those "everyone" seems to be having with MS products? I'm of the camp that people bash on whatever it's popular to bash on. The reality is that MS is a big company, and it's immensely successful. If they make a mistake, they are pretty quick to fix it. They also support their products better than any other software developer that is even competitive with them. Ugh, I just get sick of people talking about MS as if they only make devil software that is out to destroy your computer or leave it vulnerable. They are the best at what they do, or else over 80% of household desktops wouldn't be MS-based.
  2. 4 words. Scene from Point Break.
  3. http://www.aina.org/news/20070425181603.htm Link that includes some shoddy videos of the Kurdish girl who was stoned recently. Frankly, I find little in life that is more pathetic than cultures where this kind of behavior is prevalent. Maybe I'm a bleeding heart, but asking people to maintain codes of conduct that directly conflict with naturalistic desires and impulses is, frankly, barbaric. Note that I'm talking about desires and impulses that don't result in someone being hurt. Stoning a guy for cold-blooded murder is a wee bit different than stoning a girl for dishonoring her family and converting to a different religion.
  4. Oh the cliche'. If the rogue hack and slash ever gets boring to you, create a druid. Druids have the most diverse playstyle in the game IMO. Their learning curve is higher, but it was the only thing that kept me playing the game. I have not logged in to my character since 2 weeks after TBC. He's stuck at level 65 and I'm selling my account. I just got burned out like I do. Any other class would have made me quit a lot sooner. Also the sad thing is that unless you just love leveling characters (i know a few people like this) the game doesn't really take off until you hit 70 and get into PvP or end game PvE raiding. Everything between level 1 and 69 is just teaching you how to play your character.
  5. There was a game that had a brief run called Battletech 3025. I was in the closed beta for it. It was a simple concept that essentially needed something else to make it stick. The map of the Innersphere was broken up into individual systems and you would pick a system to do battle. It was essentially mech death match 2v2-4v4 I believe. Had it not had to compete with the MechWarrior community, it would probably have done well. MechWarrior has such a hold on the pc flavor of the genre that until they make a MW MMO, you're pretty much screwed. As far as space sims go... there is a newtonian physics direct-control mmo called Jumpgate. Your problem there is that the only people left in that very smally community are the types of people who would get together and set up their own knockoff server if the official servers were shut down. What I really want to see is an MMO that combines the command element of Homeworld and direct-control space sim combat. Imagine being the commander of a fleet of real people who were actually flying the ships. The only thing stopping this would be hardware and network limitations.
  6. From what I've gathered in all my reading... the next appropriate picture would be the one with the look of frustration upon your face while packing it.
  7. Is that the same thing as an exact estimate? Ballparks (literally) are distinctly defined areas. For instance, training will average somewhere between say.. 750 on the cheap side and 2k on the expensive side. You can tell people "it will likely fall within this range." I've commonly seen people say gear will run you say.. $2500 used to around $6000 new. (Acceptable variance implied) So you have distinct ballpark figures. I wasn't being a total idiot when I said that.
  8. A little bit of research gathering will give you a pretty distinct ballpark figure for the costs of getting into the sport (getting licensed/acquiring gear). But I figured someone (more or less curious as I am) might want to get the low down on what kind of expenditures you are consistently going to find while participating that go beyond the cost of training, rig, and jump tickets. For example, time-mandated reserve repacks.
  9. Working on the participation variable. Participation is subjective. You change your odds of dying in a year by how many incidents you subject yourself too. I'm running the numbers to factor in participation. BTW I didnt mean to bump this thread... thought I was PM'ing someone
  10. Lets get some numbers straightened out. Take an estimated 2 million skydives made per year (just for the sake of having a round number and based on the last thing I read from a skydiving publication). Out of those 2 million skydives, factor in a 10 year average of 35 deaths per year. That leaves you with 1 in 57,xxx skydives result in a fatality. According to the NHTSA, in 2004: there were 6.1M accidents which resulted in 42636 fatalities. breaking down to: 33134 "occupants" (car/truck drivers and passengers) 4008 "motorcycle riders" 5494 "non-occupants" (e.g. pedestrians) and an estimated 2.9 trillion vehicle miles traveled. This equals out to 1 fatality for every 68 MILLION miles accumulated by all vehicles in travel. This means your chances of dying are 1 in a cool million that you will die in 68 miles of driving. Chew on that.
  11. Skydiving training... not job training They pay ME during job training I do need to get my A+ though. I failed to get it in high school when it would have been easy, so I have to study up and take the test. However, they pay for that as well.
  12. It's been a while since I've been on dz.com (not that I'm renowned or that anyone noticed) but I've been focusing on taking care of the standard personal business, blah blah whatever. But I'm finally going to achieve my goal to get into skydiving, this year. Starting May 29th, I'll be working for Dell making $6/hr more than I do now. Besides all the neat benefits (which you get from day 1 btw.), this means that all the loose financial ends I needed to tie up before I begin throwing money and myself out of planes are going to be taken care of by the end of August. I'm down to my final $4k to pay off, but I will begin the training process when I get down to $2k. Training will be paid for in cash and I'll be able to cram as much of it in on the weekends as is reasonable. Gah I'm just horribly excited. Being able to skydive has been my primary focal point and inspiration to better my financial situation and my life situation in general. I'm just glad to see the work coming to fruition. I already pushed it back 1 year, I would hate to have to do it again. But all lights show green at this point. I can't wait
  13. The real question is if I go to court, what the hell do I say and how do I say it? Hah. This is all new territory for me.
  14. pay the ticket, pay the court fees, and pay for driving school to keep it off my record. 13 over, 53 in a 40. I wasn't even aware that I was speeding at the time (tired, on my way to work in the morning) and it's my first time being pulled over for speeding in this state since I started driving. (pulled over in minnesota 3 years ago in a hurry to mount rushmore during a road trip) If it's not going to bump my insurance up that much if any than I'd rather not deal with the whole mess. Does anyone have a ballpark idea on how much it would go up? Just looking for the best option for the time/money involved.
  15. A continent with some of the richest natural resources on earth, and these people have been living on the edge of death for centuries. Sounds like a personal problem to me. With that logic, all people who work at the front line of any resource harvesting industry should be rolling in money. But alas, it's the Big Oil CEOs, NOT the rig workers, who make the real money. This ties in to the earlier post about 946 people who are willing to work for the money. Those at the bottom who literally scrape by squeezing blood out of stones work harder than most anyone else. But someone lied to them early on by telling them hardwork pays off. It might pay off, but it doesn't pay well. Work smarter, not harder. And then again, that doesn't even factor in for evironmental circumstances. Regardless, you're not going to see a wealthy diamond miner in South Africa. And hell, as far as "disproportionate tax rates are concerned"... the rich pay more in taxes because, IMO, they benefit the most from the society they support. And a rich man is nothing without his peons. Take care of the peons, lest they chop your head off. Viva la France!
  16. So what about the canaanites and the fact that they were all to be murdered as an order from god himself? For jesus to be so adamant about loving everyone... His dad sure has some homocidal tendencies. Hell... God threw a fit when they didn't slaughter everything as they were told. The commandment says "thou shall not kill" when it should say "thou shall not kill unless i tell you too". and before someone jumps on the notion that god was talking about murder there... Explain to me when committing genocide goes from murder to NOT murder. Ya know... When is it "ok" with god?
  17. How does she know this? The nurses/doctors told her after she came to.
  18. So last night I came home and my mom stopped me before I even made it to my room to tell me about her day. (A wee bit o backstory here would be that my mom gave blood a couple weekends ago. After doing so, she was loopy for about 3 days. She finally recovered but I was pretty concerned for her.) Apparently she went to the doctor to have some blood work done. They apparently needed 3 vials, and a finger prick's worth of blood. They poke one arm, no blood coming out. They poke the other... nothing. They boke both of them again in different spots... nothing. So they move to the finger prick. She wouldn't bleed. They had to squeeze the blood out drop by drop to fill the little tube. Another nurse comes back to do some crazy IV type thing to get the rest of the blood. They get 1 and a half vials before her vein pops. Shortly after, she blacks out. (Unbeknownst to her at the time, her heart stopped) She told me that she "woke up" in a place that all she could tell me about was that there were a lot of people, and she was happy, and everyone else was happy. She remembers thinking, while she was there, that maybe she was happy because she thought her mom might be there (died 2 years ago)m But then she started getting called back by the nurses and doctor. So as far as my research indicates, that is a classic near death experience though limited compared to other stories. So I read up on it as it's been a while since I've read anything of that nature. A huge resource would be www.near-death.com Fair warning about the "religious" bias of that website. It would appear that the guy who runs that deal is someone akin to myself and my more respected friends as far as beliefs go. His existential theory relies on a greater collective consciousness/spirit which equates to "God". A lot of what he believes is directly in line with my theories so it struck a chord with me (not that it matters to you all ;-) ) But that doesn't really give cause to discount the stories and some of the theories presented so check it out. (Funny that the guy claims he used to be a fundie Christian. Also struck a chord with me as I claimed myself to be that way as well.) My original point in starting the thread was to get a feel for how people believe about the afterlife. As I've grown older (and a LITTLE wiser) I've come to the conclusion after much searching, questioning, reasoning, etc., that reincarnation (in the sense that the website given presents it) is pretty much how it goes. Of course this is totally dependent on the belief in a collective consciousness or spirit realm. I essentially reasoned out about 3 years ago that all that exists is a single entitiy, infinite in scope, which you can call god if you want, and that it has a consciousness/awareness of its own that we all share a part of and contribute to with our experiences. On another note... has anyone had an NDE or known someone who has had one?
  19. Semantics police here. As far as I am aware, there are 3 distinct elements of theorized existence. spirit, soul, and body. soul is what you think of as you, because what you think of as you, while taking place in a physical body, isnt quite a physical thing. You can argue about neural pathways from here on out if you please, but that's not what I'm getting at. The soul is popularly characterized as the mind, heart, and will or... thoughts, emotions, and volition. Those are the 3 fundamental elements of who we are as people. So... it's best, IMHO (yeah that's worth nothing) that you say there is no emperical evidence for a spirit. Spirit is the abstract extra-dimensional consciousness etc. thing that people don't believe in. There is nothing to "believe in" about a soul. It's just a personality for lack of a better word. Just my interpretation, but it's good to clear things up and put people on a level playing field.
  20. That's how you should have told that IMO.
  21. The only thing that stops us is other people being in the vicinity.
  22. My best friend's little sister and I are really close. Known each other for 6-7 years now. This friday I had a dream that I cheated on my current interest with a girl who I did not recognize. My friend's little sister had also a dream on friday that she cheated on her interest with a guy whos face she could not see. We are both kinda seeing people who both happen to be a bit jealous of the relationship that I share with her. We are also very aware and adamant about the fact that we are fused at the mind. Anyone else? This can't be THAT rare.
  23. Something we need to clear up here, for YOU specifically, is that evolution is not linear. "Man came from monkeys" is a linear concept. Evolution doesn't work in a straight line (except for that denoted by TIME). You say "If we came from apes why are there still apes?" Here's your answer and I hope you pay attention and understand this. Evolution explains origin. Today's primates all descended from a common origin. If you want to call that origin "monkeys" then yes humans came from monkeys. But so did gorillas. Evolution works like a tree. You start with a seed, grow a trunk, then branches and leaves. Chimps, macaques, gorillas, baboons, and humans are all leaves on the same branch.
  24. Wow, your theology sure is. Funny that you say that. Maybes it's just because my ideas can help or hurt either side. Laff. EDIT: What makes me laugh even more is that some of the things I address which appeared to have no notice given to them, show up in later pages of this thread. People keep asking for proof, other people say "what proof do you need?" The fact of the matter is that the Christian god cannot be proven for at least 2 different reasons. #1 God cannot be manifested physically. It's all dependent on observable experiences which are not "personal". Andy's earlier comment about how god could prove he exists was taken out of context. The only real way it would be proven is if he was picked up by the invisible hand of god, LITERALLY with other people watching, and taken up 12,000 feet and then dropped. Living through a fall like defies the odds. That situation actually playing out defies reality. #2 God so happens to not be able to be proved while there is a necessity for faith as a sign of love for those who believe. I ask all believers "How do you know god exists?" The only answer that suffices beyond those which only pertain to their personally internalized perceptions of experiences, is that they have faith. "I just know" isn't an answer. You have a reason and your reason is faith. Faith intercedes for a lack of knowledge. It also shows your god that you love it because you choose to believe despite the doubt. Is that some how inflammatory towards your personal beliefs? I don't think so. I think, if anything, it supports you and your beliefs. It also supports mine. Neat trick. You called my "theology" bullshit. This "theology" is just a collection of my ideas that have been turned over many times in my head to see how all the things I've been told fit together. I dont think your beliefs are bullshit. I understand why you carry them and they make sense to me. I just don't believe it.
  25. I don't believe my phone interfaces that way... Unfortunately.