Coby Karl has been called up from the D-Fenders to the Lakers. How confusing to hear, I’m sure.
Do you have a Mac? Would you like to have Red State on your Dashboard?
Enjoy this Red State widget then.
It’s very simple, only covering the front page and not the diaries or Red Hot, but those will likely come later. I’d just like to release what I have now though, in case anyone wants it.
Missed exercise again today. Three days now I’ve missed, all thanks to Phantom Brave.
Via Fire Joe Morgan, Flotsam Media quantifies grit. Seriously, it’s real math. And sure enough, David Eckstein is actually one of the grittiest of all time.
I’m just getting so caught up in Phantom Brave, the last game in my queue before I pick some up soon, that the last three days I’ve stayed up way too late.
I’ve been driven to get a Fusionist, thinking I had to level up all these jobs. But, having noticed tonight that I have the Fusionist and Blacksmith available (in monster version), that’s set, and I have a plan for making my the main two characters invincible:
Step 1: Level all my characters but Marona quickly by going into Random Dungeons of high level, but with the Failure title set. Pick up great items while I’m there. Step 1a: Use those great items to make ideal items with Fusion and Blacksmithing. Step 2: Level Marona quickly by going into Random Dungeons with normal titles, winning using all those very high level characters from above. Step 3: Use my very high level team to start creating two very very good titles (one for each of Ash and Marona), by starting with some great title,t hen putting it on a random dungeon, clearing that dungeon, then putting it on another dungeon, etc. etc. Step 4: Move on to the second map of the game, and proceed from there to win.
After California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fought Republicans for months over their pesky demands that we cut spending to prevent a disastrous budget deficit, it turns out that gee, we’re facing a disastrous budget deficit after all! The conservatives were right.
So how does the Governor want to go about saving some money that we can’t afford to spend? He’s weighing the early release of 22,000 of the state’s 172,000 prison inmates in order to save a few hundred million dollars we would spend keeping society safer.
Says the San Francisco Chronicle:
The idea is one of many that have been presented to the governor by his departmental budget directors, and he has not decided if he likes it or not, Schwarzenegger spokesman Bill Maile said Thursday. But if the plan were to be put into action, it would constitute one of the biggest early releases of prisoners in U.S. history.
“The governor asked his department heads to work with their budget managers to find ways to cut the budget by 10 percent because of the budget crisis we are facing, and this idea was one of many that was floated in reaction to that request,” Maile said. “It’s not a proposal yet, just an idea.”
Recidivism rates in California run upwards of 70% according to criminology professor Erick Hickey at CSU Fresno, says the Chronicle. So now, we have evidence that the free-spending ways of Governor Schwarzenegger and his left-wing Democratic buddies are not only bad for our economy, but they’re also bad for our safety and security.
Next time, Governor, listen to the Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate, not the Democrats. It takes three to tango in our state’s budget process. If you team up with the conservatives, you can force concessions from the Democrats. You ran for our nomination last time, and we gave it to you. So why won’t you work with our other nominees who won office in Sacramento?
It’d beat being the biggest girly-man on crime in the state, wouldn’t it?
I’d heard that at some point Bob Barker was finally going to retire, but it’s still so very, very odd to see Drew Carey on The Price is Right.
He should be playful enough to be a worthy successor to Bob Barker I guess.
Overall, it was a great game. I’m a sucker for Link to the Past throwbacks, and this game is full of them. So the ‘plot’ is covered.
Game mechanics mostly work well. A few things are just annoying (mostly the specialty events like jousting or escorting the wagon, and the final two battles especially with their total guesswork and luck elements in different phases). But the bulk of the game is very nice.
Camera control is nice. It was very rare that I was blocked out, maybe three times the whole game, and all three times were brief, though of course infuriating for those brief moments as camera problems always are.
I picked up all 20 hearts. I haven’t done that since Link to the Past, not feeling like doing it in Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker. That says something I suppose.
Recommended wholeheartedly. I can’t even imagine dumbing this game down for Game Cube. Be prepared to be annoyed a few times over the course of the long game, though.
Only game left on my queue is Phantom Brave, though I’ll probably be picking up a DS and some games soon, re-lengthening the queue now that it’s empty, heh.
“The largest business tax increase in the hsitory of California.” That’s what Irvine Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore calls key parts of the plan concocted by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in conjuction with California Assembly Democrats to create ‘universal medical coverage’ for Californians through subsidy and mandates.
The plan has a long way to go though. It has to pass the Senate where Democratic leader Don Perata who, unlike the Governor and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, seems to realize that we just can’t afford this plan, even with tax hikes and hoped-for federal money.
Then after that, the voters have to approve parts, including tax hikes. Then it has to survive court challenges, where in the past similar plans have been thrown out (according to the Sacramento Bee).
So I’m not quite worried yet.