This. Does it qualify as curing my ills? Is the terminality of the human condition an "ill?"

I really hope there's something interesting after we die, but I kind of suspect not, so I'd really like to take part in this universe for longer than my ~100 year human allotment.

If consciousness is just a sum of the parts, we should be able to create it in a machine... Again, I kind of hope not, but it would be pretty interesting.

I have used Talari, it rocks. Multiple Internet path aggregation between Talari appliances and instant failover when links have problems. I haven't really seen anyone else do this, but I've heard that Fatpipe and possibly Riverbed are playing in this space now.

One other thing I liked about Minecraft for my kids was that it's not as polished and easy to use as most modern games (and console games especially). The players actually have to struggle and figure it out and tune their settings and figure out how it works behind the scenes a bit. This is so much better and they learn so much more than just sticking in a disc and having the game run!

If you don't mind hating your friends after the game, Mario Party can be fun.

We have a good time with bananagrams as well, I just have to remember not to be too happy when I do better than my kids.

I absolutely loved it when my 9 year old daughter would beat me at set. Well, after the initial pain of losing went away.

Anyone else like Rummikub? Similar to these games, anyone can play and do well, it just takes a little bit of a different way of looking at games when you can re-arrange the tiles to suit your needs...

My family and friends have had quite a bit of fun with pandemic. It's nice not to have only 1 winner (when you win), it can reduce the stress imparted by games like settlers of catan (which we love so much it gets hyper-competitive). Agricola is almost a middle ground, there's slightly less direct competition, so it doesn't get quite as heated.

We've only played the base version of Pandemic. I would appreciate feedback on the expansions. Has anyone played those? Are they worthwhile?

Government surveillance needs to include a significant component of surveillance of the government to protect the sovereignty of the people!