@interests

Ahh thesis writing - one of the best couple days in my life. A bottle of wine, 362 note cards, and 12 hours of typing lol.

Grand Marnier is a Cognac (technically a whiskey) infused with (what are basically) tangerines. Typo in the first post :( lol

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Grand_Marnier_Bottle.jpg

I can appreciate other types of whiskey, I drank a lot of bourbon in college to make short of it, but if I'm gonna splurge on a fancier whiskey, we're going straight to Grand Marnier. It tastes like an orange popsicle - the kind you buy in the plastic baggy things.

One of my best friends is a real gin connoisseur so I picked up a lot of that from him, I'll have him track down some rusty blade for experimentation. Higher end gin tastes fine on its own - low end gin... well you may as well just drink a bottle of Christmas tree smell spray. It'll be cheaper and you'll at least have a fun story to tell the ambulance. If it's Tanqueray or below I'll mix it with tonic and a lime. A lot of whiskeys basically have to be mixed with water to make them tolerable if you intend to drink it (unless you can handle drinking a camp fire without retching - I'm looking at you Jack Daniels).

As far as history goes it depends on what sort of subject matter tickles your fancy. The majority of stuff I read is relating to the modern era (say roughly 1910-1960ish). Although older history can be really fun sometimes too.

The topics that interest me the most are Middle Eastern/West Asian history and Russia of course (being as that's what I got my degree in lol). But I've also done a lot with Italian, French, and British history. For a good perusal of topics finding used copies of older 100 level into textbooks is VERY easy and cheap. Then if you find any one thing you'd like to learn more about you just pillage that book's bibliography. I like West Asia and Russia in particular because any major movement that occurs in the population centers of Asia (India/China/Japan) and Western Europe will eventually make their way through those areas, along with the indigenous culture, so you can often times see rehashes of older ideas from other places more clearly here (it's like a historical laboratory lol).

As far as actual works of historical significance that I've really liked:

Nikolai Kuznetsov's Memoirs are probably the *best* I've read on the whole Stalin era from a martial perspective: http://admiral.centro.ru/start_e.htm (English translation available)

Molotov Remembers: interviews with VM Molotov by Felix Chuev is really interesting as well, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you're very well acquainted with the history of the era, because Molotov purposefully, and knowingly, lies several times, and even admits to it at times.

Any work by Ivan Maisky (Soviet Ambassador to the UK during WW2) is pretty exceptional too and are widely available in English

Behind the Urals by John Scott is another great work on the Soviet period (John Scott was also a double agent - working for both the OSS (CIA) and the OGPU (KGB).

Orientalism by Edward Said is a *really* handy book if you're interested in West Asian history, because it deals with *how* the region is looked at in Western historical texts, and how that particular vocabulary and those expectations, influence what scholars think and write about in relation to West Asia.

As far as literature, I'm a HUGE sucker for Dostoyevsky and Gogol. The Brothers Karamazov (Dost.) and Dead Souls (Gogol) are both wonderful.

As a side note, if you want to see just how weird 15th Century French people were, read Gargantua and Pantagruel: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1200/1200-h/1200-h.htm

I also read a lot of Marx, Engels, Lenin etc. If you want particular suggestions there I can provide, but won't do so in the interest of time.

As far as alcohol goes:

My favorite drinks

Red wines: Chilean Cabernet Sauvignons and Rhone red wines
White wines: It's all about the Reisling although Eisewein is pretty good (too expensive)
Fortified Wines: Port Cherri is the best hands down.
Beers: I tend to favor Stouts over everything else (although some German stouts are kinda fruity and thus not what I want)
Whiskey: Grand Mariner hands down
Vodka: Asbolut is the best budget vodka, it mixes decently, and tastes better than Stolis straight. Stoli Elit was prolly the best Vodka I ever had, but it's like 200$ a bottle so, it sure as fuck had better been ;)
Tequila: fuck Tequila
Gin: Willow is the best I've had, but Tanqueray will do most times.
Brandy: Slivovitz Raki'a is pretty damn good :D
American Beers with food: I'm up for whatever, Bud Light
American Beers for drunk: It's Miller time.

I've always loved history and literature and by extension foreign languages. I'm always working on some language, and reading some subset of three books (I put them in different places so if I happen to be in an area then I go for it lol). Particularly since sonny boy has gotten older I've found I have quite a lot of time for reading.

Video games and alcohol exploration fill the rest of the free time.

I can't speak for other folks who cast, but if I'm not doing the camera (say any situation where it's not just me slapping some shit together for my YT channel) I never once go into 1st person mode - I'm always way up in the sky or at least focused on a particular, relatively small area. So, you're basically bound - especially if it's stuff on the flank - to end up with caster-camera desync, because your best bet, as a caster, is to watch the pocket because they'll be getting the uber or at least the majority of the heals 90% of the time. You could maybe work out a relationship where two casters are going, where one guy watches the flank and one watches the combo, but in the majority of games that would cause a bit of chaos if two particularly important things happen at once, and also likely murder the caster who is stuck on combo duty, because 1/2 the time the flank won't do anything productive in the early phases of a push (if there is even a flank to speak of).

I'm happy with where it is that the camera occasionally captures neat stuff happening that the casters totally miss.

I think it mainly depends on what kind of audience you're trying to appeal to.

Folks who can generally look at a situation and tell what's going on probably only need rounds for and against and some way to tell who has advantage. The rest can be handled by the casters who are probably looking at things up in the sky.

If you're aiming for people who have no idea what's going on, you'll need your casters to go about things in fairly simple terms, and I'd be more in favor of a more explicit hud that explains who the casters are, what the map is blah blah.

I myself favor a pretty spartan hud, but that's pretty much just my personal preference.

I have here leaked footage of dumbbrain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0JCB24Ld8

fun fact: sdogg2m is the only tf2 player I've met IRL.

Heyo so I need somebody to play rocketshoot-get-healed-occasionally man.

I'm going to attempt to acquire an IM ready roster if possible, but if not we'll simply play in open.

Information: team will be a resurrection of the Dheroes, containing: Dumbbrain on scout, smooth on roamer, and our ol buddy JOE playing as well. We may or may not have a second scout lined up.

Contact me if you want to play. We won't be scrimming or doing anything seriously for a while until the season starts. We also don't intend to scrim *really* hard once the season starts - so as to prevent burn out. We also likely won't be doing tryouts - you'll either get the job or you won't.

Things I'm looking for:

-ability to handle a swole mumble environment
-ability to tell me when to pop uber when I'm hiding behind a wall
-ability to shoot ground
-willingness to be dropped for the good of the team
-some experience in shooting the ground on other teams

I mean, on the one hand it's completely outside of the LoTR story line. Like what the fuck is a half-wraith? lol.

Anyways yeah, it's just assassins creed bits stacked onto the older Lotr themed beat-em ups, canned, shipped, and sold for 60$.

Actually more to do with this bopper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_experimentation_in_Africa

The other issue, particularly in Liberia where the outbreak is at its worst, it was initially believed that the whole thing was just a conspiracy from the super corrupt government to get money from the West. That's partially why the aid response has been complicated, because you can't just drop money all over the problem (which is the preferred method for dealing with this kinda stuff) because the money would just end up in somebody's closet.

disgusting

6'0

Well the reason the national rail system is state-owned is because it'd simply be too expensive for a private company to build and operate, so you really have no choice there. It's why the good ol' US of A doesn't have a national rail transport system for passengers. I mean I'm sure you could *find* trains if you lived in the right cities, but it's nowhere near anything in Europe and it's definitely not high speed, and it wouldn't take you coast to coast in any timely manner.

It's honestly quite shocking to most Europeans who come here and see how very backwards many parts of the US are. Virtually every person I've known who has gone outside of the US to live in Europe almost immediately participates in that country's healthcare system to get a full check-up something that would cost over 1,000$ (a full course of blood work, cancer checks, x-rays, DNA screen, etc). Not to mention the often state-backed telecommunication companies. When my x spent a year in France, in order for me to call her it was ~15$/hr just to talk to her, however she only paid something like 50$/month and could call me whenever she wanted, and had internet service that I could only dream of lol. Not to mention the transportation options - basically if you don't own a car here, and don't live in a major city, you're fucked and can't go anywhere lol.

But indeed, governments do mismanage funds from time to time, particularly if the bureaucracy that operates the systems is allowed to start doing wacky things simply for the sake of demanding additional funding.

You would be correct in that case ;) The social discontent also hasn't been of a character to actually affect any meaningful change in any case.