I had the same situation with FF12.. I bought it and played it for about 3 hours or so and just couldn't get in to it. I don't know if it was because the story took a little while to really take off or what, but I put it aside for half a year or more. One day I got a craving for FF, popped it in and gave it another shot. Something about it gripped me and I played through the entire thing, usually playing for hours in the evening after work. I thoroughly enjoyed it too. I got one of those FAQs from GameFAQs and used it sparingly to find side-mission/quest stuff too. I probably put a good 90+ hours in to the game. The only other console games I've put that much time in to (and enjoyed as much) was Dark Cloud 2 and Final Fantasy 6 (US3). And of all the Final Fantasy games, 12 and 6(US3) are my favorites, far above and beyond the others by a large large margin.

Having "some" people (some being a value that should be as close to zero as possible) on the government dole is fine and unavoidable, unless you live in anarchy I guess. The number on the dole seems to increase as the federal government gets more and more power. There is a trend towards more and more people being on the dole for more and more reasons. It's gone from being a system with the purpose of helping folks out temporarily to get through a tough time period, or helping a segment of the population that is unable to care for itself, to being a blanket safety net for anything that might ever possibly go wrong in a person's life, and without regard to whether or not that person is in the situation they are in because of circumstances out of their control or because they made stupid decisions. Even if it was out of control, why is the default viewpoint "everyone else must be forced to take care of them?"

Fundamentally I just disagree that the role of (federal) government should have anything to do with providing social services in any form whatsoever. It should be left up to the states to decide how they should handle it.

I was actually talking about euthanizing the guy who told me I was a "piece of shit", not you (you being the person with the disability).

He didn't specify in his original post he was disabled. I also know of at least 3 "disabled" people in my own little world who are just bullshitting and don't want to work, and continue to draw benefits from the government despite being fully capable of finding and keeping gainful employment.

And even having said that, I don't think euthanasia is a solution for this particular person. You, I'd make an exception for though.

No, it's not any more complicated than that at all. For the cases where someone is physically or mentally incapable of providing for themselves, we have programs and such for those people. For everyone else, you get off your ass and you work. You work two jobs if you have to, you learn to live without things. If you have food, water, and shelter, you can live. It is not my responsibility to be forced to subsidize your life, no matter how downtrodden it might be. People lived and prospered without health insurance and they will continue to do so until the end of time.

The real problem is people have come to expect too much to be handed to them, or that they are entitled to have certain things. If they don't have them, then by God it's the government's responsibility to make sure they do. How does the government do that? By forcing someone else to give up some of their property so it can be redistributed to those "in need."

You're happy? Great... you're a leech. You're part of the "entitlement" and "free hand-outs" crowd.. you're useless and borderline worthless. You live off the government tit and contribute nothing of value to anyone. You're part of the reason why tax payers like myself have a public debt of around $140,000 per citizen. Some bleeding-heart liberal douchebag politician promised to bring some of the loot confiscated from working Americans to his district in exchange for your vote. And he promised he would use that loot to subsidize your "lifestyle" if you can even call it that.

Have some self-respect and get a job.

After being thoroughly satisfied with Borderlands (and I still play it regularly, can't wait for the expansion this month!) I think Gearbox is the best developer to finish up DNF. BL has lots of similar humor and is probably in my list of top 5 favorite games of at least the last 5 years.

Having said that.. I'm still going to wait until it's been out for a few days or weeks before buying, to see if it's worth it. I don't doubt Gearbox's talent but I do think DNF has enough negative "vibe" around it that there is a chance it won't live up to how fun the original was. And that's really the ultimate metric in my opinion...is the game fun? Nothing else really matters.

I'm in the exact same situation. When I was younger, single, and had a job instead of a career I was able to dedicate hours each day to multi-player gaming. I enjoyed single-player gaming also and would mix them up, but the majority of my game time was spent either playing an FPS online or an MMORPG (EQ, WOW, and DAoC throughout the years).

Contrast that with my life today.. I have a career, a fiance, and I'm older. I have an additional focus on becoming a musician. I get maybe 0 minutes to 2 hours of "free" time on any given night (it's usually 30-45min). The games I play today are almost universally single-player, allow me to jump in immediately and enjoy it for a brief period of time, and then save and jump out at a moment's notice. I'm currently playing through Dragon Age Origins, albeit very slowly, dabbling around with Spore + Galactic Adventures again, some Borderlands here and there, and considering starting a new character in Fallout 3 to try the expansions out. These single player games alone will take me months to complete at 30-45min every other night or so. The only one of those I play online is Borderlands, and that's just with my brother and another friend, and not very often.

There's huge value in being able to hop into a game, have fun for a little block of time, save that progress, and hop out. It becomes much more important as one gets older and priorities are shifted around such that gaming goes from being a "lifestyle" to being a fun hobby or diversion.

You just brought back a lot of (fond) memories of EverQuest for me. I too played it for a long time, from a month after release until right before the Omens of War expansion. My first character was a wood elf bard. I made a bard because I found out before I started that they learned a song that increased your run speed dramatically. Not only was it a convenience advantage by reducing travel time, it had a major survival benefit by being able to easily outrun things. Some of my greatest memories were the first few months of playing the game, traveling around to the new places and just exploring the world.

Even after I had seen everything at least once, it was still fun to travel. For me, it became something I would try to plan ahead. If I needed to make a long distance trip to some part of the world, I would find out what other things I could get done in the area I was heading to. That way it wouldn't be like I was going all the way from Qeynos to Kelethin just to turn in some random quest only.

Before the instant travel portals in the Plane of Knowledge, the best way to travel was to become good friends with a wizard or druid (I eventually did, but later I just made my own druid). If you needed long distance travel and they weren't busy, it was a simple matter of "Hey Bob, if you're not busy could you pick me up at the Western Commonlands druid circle and take me to South Ro?"

I miss a lot of things about EverQuest. It's mostly nostalgia I know, but being my first MMORPG, it really did create a lot of fun memories.

-Aaul

There's a simple solution to all these nonsense bills that keep coming up... in 2010 we vote every last incumbent out of office, and start demanding term limits be implemented for all public offices (the Senate and House especially). When the allure of a life long career as a politician is taken away, these positions might actually start attracting people who are interested in protecting the Constitution rather than those who are interested in doing whatever they can to stay in power, including trampling over our rights.

That's why we need term limits for ALL politicians and in a court of law

Totally agree with you here .. term limits would solve a lot of problems (probably a lot more than might be created, if any WOULD be created). This "career politician" bullshit has got to stop. These public offices are meant to serve the people and get important, constitutional (as opposed to unconstitutional) work done. They were not created to be a ladder of power some nutjob can climb to become wealthy and gain celebrity status. Unfortunately it looks like the only way term limits would ever happen is through a Constitutional Convention because the Congress damn sure wouldn't pass that amendment (same deal with the Fair Tax, which I support).

This whole mess is just another reason why if I ever have a kid I'm going to home school him or her. With public schools just becoming less about growing up to be a productive, free-thinking, intelligent person and more about training little lemmings who are afraid of and never question government (and think this country is great because of government rather than in spite of it), it's just too much of a risk to let your kid be indoctrinated in a public school.

James

One of the consequences, at least what is supposed to be a consequence, relies on the people. When our elected officials do stupid things like create unconstitutional bills it is our responsibility as citizens of the nation to take notice and use our only power: vote them out of office. Unfortunately there are not enough people who take that responsibility seriously these days. The people are part of the checks and balances just as much as the executive, judiciary, and legislative are.

Note, I do realize that it can be damn hard to vote some of these idiots out, especially in areas of the country where they are firmly ensconced and have a constituency that is larger either clueless; or worse, in agreement with some of the ridiculous ideas they come up with.

You might be interested in reading this then - Steam Cloud. It's supposed to provide exactly that functionality.

-James