I remember growing up reading Gary Larson’s ‘The Far Side’ and Berkeley Breathed’s “Bloom County”. Even today when I go back and read these guys work I’m amazed by how damn funny and SMART it was. Where is the funny; where is the smart, today?

I read quite a few web-comics, and while I like them, I really don’t think they live up to the funny AND smart standard of Larson or Breathed. XKCD is probably the closest current running comic that comes close. I don’t score him quite as highly simply because he only works with stickmen, but the funny and the smart is certainly there.

What am I missing? Point me to your favorites!

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since it came out in August, and I must say it continues to be a lot of fun. My Elementalist is 65, my Thief is 49 and my Ranger is 43. I am only doing PvE so far, but I will eventually try out PvP. The dynamic events just MAKE this game sooo much fun.

But I wanted to discuss Guild Wars 2′s business model. To me, it’s ‘Buy to Play’ model, feels much more like a subscription game than a ‘Free to Play’ game. I’ve actually bought $20 worth of ‘gems’ since the game released. I used those gems to buy 2 extra character slots giving me 7 total. It was a spontaneous decision, and while I don’t regret it, I really didn’t need the 2 new characters it let me start. Because I’m only focused on 3 characters right now. I don’t feel any need to buy anything else right now. Okay, I’ll fess up, I may eventually buy one last character slot, because I’m an ‘alt-aholic’ and there are 8 classes to play(Gotta play’em all!). But otherwise the game plays just like a subscription game where the entire game is available to you and at most you have some extras you can purchase but nothing necessary.

Of the ‘Free to Play’ games I’ve tried, I’ve always found I was better off just paying their subscription if they offer one. LOTRO for example, I’d much rather just pay the subscription than figure out what new thing I need to buy to play ‘normally’ today. When I do go back to LOTRO I usually start my subscription back up too.  I’d probably play LOTRO a LOT more if I had a lifetime subscription(Oh, how Turbine must hate those lifers.) Tribes Ascend, is a free to play FPS, and while I don’t find it’s model as frustrating as LOTRO, it is definitely a more expensive game in the long run than a ‘buy to play’ game would be. They continuously put new skins(don’t care), and weapons (CARE CARE!) into the game. If I continued to play the game, (I’ve basically dropped it), they would be pinging me for 10$ here and 10$ there from now until I finally gave the game up. Being able to slowly gain the ‘xp’ needed to purchase weapons is nice, but I think they know exactly how to tune it, so that the normal player feels the need to drop them some cash, much like a subscription game would.

Overall, the game companies are going to get the money out of you, or they won’t be making games for long. Still, of all the various games I’ve played, I find I prefer the ‘Buy to Play’ model the most, with Subscription and ‘Free to Play’ a distant second and third. ‘Free To Play’ is my number three mostly because I find it is almost as expensive as a subscription (for me anyway) but WAY more frustrating to have to make time to make ANOTHER payment, while subscriptions don’t take any ‘time’ for me to set up.

Now that the distraction election is over, we(okay “I” not like anyone comments here) can get back to talking about football. MSU is a loser this weekend, what about Ole Miss? I think they can beat Vandy and be bowl eligible, but I don’t think Vandy is going to be as easy to beat as Auburn.(Never thought I’d ever say that. And I mean EVER.) Ole Miss may have a game on their hands this weekend and I think It’ll be a fun game to watch.

MSU, however, has been wearing clown shoes the last two weeks and I expect that will continue this week against a very pissed off LSU team. I guess State can hope LSU is more depressed than pissed off.

I don’t much like Alabama but I honestly don’t see them losing any games this year, so I guess it’ll be interesting to see who they get as the #2 team in this year’s BCS Championship.

Anyone wanna share their thoughts?

Generic part,

I’ve voted. Have you? If you haven’t get out there and vote slacker!

The Bitch,

My voting precinct’s voting machines should NEVER have been purchased or allowed as a voting device ANYWHERE. Not because they are hard to use, they aren’t. Not because they confuse users, they don’t. No, they should NEVER have been even considered as a voting machine for one SIMPLE reason. YOU HAVE NO WAY OF ASSURING A PERSONS VOTE!

They have no paper receipt. If someone has set up the machine to flip every 3rd vote for one candidate or another THERE IS NO WAY TO TELL! If the machine display shows you voted for Candidate X, it could have recorded a vote for Candidate Y AND YOU’D NEVER KNOW!  Without paper receipts to act as a permanent record to be compared by the voter to their selection and that can be used in the event of a recount the machine is BOGUS!

This is NOT ACCEPTABLE!

I’m surprised this hasn’t been taken to court yet. For a voting machine to even be considered it must at minimum have some way to keep a PAPER TRAIL of votes, otherwise it’s nothing. You might as well ‘trust’ your local snakeoil salesman to pick the winner.

My predictions:

1) Florida goes Democrat, they’ll win.

2) Florida goes Republican, as goes Ohio so goes the country.

Put your predictions here!

EDIT: It’s Thursday November the 8th and no-one has called Florida either way yet. In the end it didn’t matter and my #2 ended up being close enough.

I understand that partisans will argue about things. I understand that partisans need to spin things so that their ‘side’ looks better. But what I don’t understand is partisans jumping on someone for using math.

I know a lot of Democrats are going to be very sad, angry or confused if Nate Silver ends up getting his predictions totally wrong. And I know a lot of Republicans are sad, angry or confused at his predictions, period. But when you look at how Silver has been doing his blog, it’s not a partisan site. It’s a statistical site. Math.

I can understand how pundits (on both sides) would hate the 538 blog. It takes their “I know what I’m talking about, because I know people you don’t” position and basically makes it irrelevant. What high priest wouldn’t hate seeing their basic job being done away by someone with a calculator, instead of with their inside knowledge and goat entrails. Silver already did this whole song and dance with baseball. The smarter baseball reporters figured out they needed to understand stats a bit better, while the ones that refused to adapt were slowly phased out. I’m HOPING this happens for our political reporters as well.

If you don’t like the results of the 538 blog, PLEASE use math to tell people why. Otherwise your argument just sounds hollow. Hell, I’d bet Nate would love to find holes in his algorithms, so he can fix it. He ‘missed’ a bit on the 2010 elections and adjusted accordingly. He’s interested in statistically forecasting national elections accurately. The fact that those forecasts look good for a Democratic president is just a result of these particular elections and not a partisan move on Silver’s part.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by all the attacks on Silver. After all, the mainstream news NEEDS the presidential race to be a horse-race to keep viewership up. But some of the attacks have been downright stupid.