VPs don't use prescription medication to be up at all hours, they use cocaine. This also one of the reasons that most VPs are insane.

It's a game. It is supposed to be fun. If you want gritty realism, why are you looking at a Star Wars game? Go play America's Army

There is offline single player. I am a bit miffed on the space battles thing. However, the space-based combat in BF2 was hardly the end-all-be-all of Star Wars dogfighting. X Vs Tie or Rogue Squadron it was not. As for the Prequel era stuff, They more or less said it will be DLC While I hate EA's DLC practices and it is pretty shitty they can't include them what is a $70 game, if they can bring back Gungan genocide mode, playable Palpatine, and the Naboo and Mustafar maps, I might consider buying them.

Either way, Battlefront 2 is still on steam and still works very well on Windows 7 (and Wine for the Mac / linux gamers) in 1920x1080.

I was there. In school, I was horribly depressed thinking about all the different ways my life could quickly turn south, in spite of every parent and teacher saying that I will practically be the next Bill Gates. I also couldn't help but dwell on the ephemerality of everything I loved to the point I was more-or-less a nihilist.

At some point, I realized it was just wasted energy that not only did nothing to help me but actively hurt me. It made me a serious, dour person that nobody wanted to be around. Worse, there is only so much time and energy to spend on thought that using it for what amounts to little more than self-loathing is just pissing away what could be used to focus on my real problems. After much hard work, and many ups and downs, I like to believe that I am a happier, more likable, and more successful person than I was 10-15 years ago.

It isn't about living for the moment, tomorrow be damned or making decisions with little information. It is about refocusing your introspection to where your real problems lie instead of dwelling on what you have no control over. Turn your gift of analyzing your situation and sussing out the truth into an asset for success instead of a depressing curse. Ask yourself, "Why am I unhappy" and attack those areas with ruthless abandon.

There is a possibility that there is an assassin in your house ready to kill you. There is a possibility that an asteroid will strike you. The probability of either of the situations being true is practically zero, but not impossible. You can waste your time wallowing in those situations which will either never happen or you have no control over or you can use your intellect to root out the real problems in your life and solve them.

This is not about giving up on truth, this is about tackling the real issues instead of "What ifs." Any time spent on thinking about losing loved ones is time that could have been spent with loved ones. Any time spent thinking how they will leave you is time taken away from focusing on why they might leave you and how to prevent that from happening. And any time you think about a loved one dying who isn't at this moment fighting for their lives is not about them, it is about you wallowing in self-loathing whether you admit it or not.

Priorities.

That has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with outlook and perspective. Lets just say, I'm a pretty smart guy and the best piece of advice that I was ever given was to focus on the now. It is easy to foresee problems and possible scenarios and it is good to take measures to prevent the obvious. However, the sooner you realize that shit happens that you will never be able to plan for or there are simply various inevitable outcomes that will be sad and painful that you simply will not want to deal with, the sooner you will realize that there is just no point in worrying about them.

It has almost become a catchphrase for me, "Cross that bridge when you get to it." Focus on what can be dealt with now. Try to keep yourself in the best possible situation that you can and don't worry about what is around the corner until it is within sight to actually deal with it. Friends will come and go, loved ones will leave you, cars and tools will fail you when you need them the most, at some point your job will end, and eventually you will die. These are simple truths of life but if you spend even a second worrying about any of them before there is anything you can do about them, it is purely wasted energy that could be put to use tackling the problems that you do have.

I'm not saying it is easy to change the way you look at the world. It can take some work if not serious effort and it is easy to let yourself fall into ruts of depression and self-loathing. I know, I was there. That is nothing but perverse mental masturbation that does nothing but waste your energy and destroy what little happiness you can achieve. If you can learn to refocus yourself to only what you can affect, the happier and more productive you will become.

Just outside of Philly. Worse, I am what is essentially a permanent-temp. The only good thing is because I am paid hourly, I am usually not asked to do overtime. Much better than the poor bastards who work there getting paid much better money in salary but are pretty much expected to work 8:00 AM and leave 10:00 PM or later, weekends included.

Many of the actual permanent people don't go home until after 1:00 AM because it is what is expected. After 3+ years there, even if they would offer me an actual job, I doubt I would take it as I could never work those insane hours without wanting to jump off a bridge after a month or two.

Same here. I'm an American engineer doing c++ system programming with PLC and robot programming and vision system design mixed in. I am barely breaking 40k and no benefits or sick / vacation time. At least I would be getting a small raise!

I take it you work in the public sector. There are actually two schools of deception in play in the private sector, The Wall Street School and and the Hollywood School. The Wall Street school is about making it look like you have more profits than you do to get your stock price up higher. Higher stock price means bigger bonuses for the people at the top at the expense of reducing head count and squeezing the remaining employees for all you can get out of them. Then you have the Hollywood school of cooking the books to make it look like you are taking massive losses so you can write off all your expenses, get out of paying profit-share contracts, and get massive tax breaks.

The problem with third party skins is I don't want to install anything that has to patch or hack system files. One, I don't trust any code the modifies system files for security reasons and Two, next time windows decides to update those specific files my OS has the potential to break.

I hate having an OS that looks like it was designed in 1992. Flat colors suck. Even XP's Playskool color scheme was (slightly) more stylish.

Yeah, but 38 year-olds don't want to work 90+ hours a week for the minimum amount of money that the company is willing to pay. Typically those 38 year-olds have thing like lives and families that these companies hate seeing in workers because it distracts them from working long grinding hours for little pay.

Those 25 year-olds are young, impressionable, and best of all cheap. They will do whatever you tell them because, "this is the way it is everywhere and if you don't like it, you are just not cut out for this profession and can be quickly replaced by someone who is."

No, it when you leap into tho body of someone who is already at the office. Unfortunately, your boss is a hologram that only you can see or hear.

Do you remember when $1300 for a laptop was considered obscenely cheap? I sure do. Even with all the options, it is only ~$2500. Sure, computers have gotten so much less expensive in the last 30 years but don't think for a second that the new Macbook is some ungodly expensive device only affordable by the top 1%.

I understand that it may seem overpriced for someone who just checks email and Facebook just as I find that a $10,000 DSLR camera to be unjustifiable when my cell phone camera works just as well. However, that doesn't mean there isn't a market for people who can justify the price of either.

If you can't see why having a thinner, lighter, laptop with a usable monitor and keyboard would be appealing, then it isn't made for you. I know plenty of business travelers who would love an ultra-thin laptop with an all-day battery. They don't care about having a hundred different ports, only how much crap they have to lug from client to client.

If you want a full featured desktop replacement, get a Macbook Pro (or any other laptop on the market). This is for people who want a full featured ultra-portable and willing to pay the premium.