[Don't rain on my parade!]

I did the same thing. When I finally got it to stick was when i stopped dieting (read starving myself and eating cow food), and slowly changed my eating habits over the course of a year. I *slowly* gave up stuff, and replaced it (that's the key) with healthier food that I also liked. For example, instead of pizza, I'd go get a healthy mexican or italian dish. I'd go get salads that actually tasted good (the kind with meat and cheese in 'em) instead of hamburgers. I started drinking iced tea instead of sodas/ That kind of thing. Hard as hell to do, but after two years, I'm 30 pounds lighter. Keep tryin' man, you'll get there.

[Mactels On The Horizon]

Interesting. I hadn't heard about this. I'm going to take the plunge myself soon with one of those Mac Mini's. I wonder if the hacking community will open up the mac user groups a bit. If they hack OS X to run on a PC, I wonder if we'll see more games getting 'unofficial' mac ports, like so many do to Linux. I think you guys are right about it being a good, long term move. Using a widely used, mass produced chipset might knock the prices down across the whole range of their products as well. Be interesting to see what happens.

[My E3 experience.. finally]

Nice pic of you and Garriot. Facinating guy. I sure miss the Ultima days....

I don't think I've enjoyed and RPG that much since. Glad you had fun!

[My brother]

Yeah, family stuff like that is hard. It's really one of those painfull lessons we all learn at some point: you can't change anyone but yourself. I work with people who have disabilities, and there are so many of them who would have so much more happiness in their lives if they just would change something, but it usually doesn't happen. I'm sorry to hear about your brother, that's gotta be rough. Maybe he'll get it one of these days, you know? I have a really awfull grandmother who was nothing but pain and misery for everyone who really turned it around. At 84. Keep your chin up, and I'll put in a word with the Big Guy for your brother.

[Where's My Xbox's Soul?]

I entirely agree with you on the Xbox lacking soul. It does have some good games, but mostly the market today reminds me of the movies: hundreds of soulless ripoffs and a few good movies. I think it's because the focus has shifted away from the indicidual programmer, and to the (expensive) team-based approach. I think the 'soul' you are referring to is that creative spirit that goes into something when the creator (writer atist etc) actually loves what they do. Most of the homebrews on this site have it, because they were a labor of love. Occasionally you get that in modern games, but mainly they are like the movies: shallow, predictable, and lucrative.