Because you then lose concentration on the food and focus entirely on dealing with the sensation? Doesn't quite work well if the taste and texture of the food is an afterthought, as the heat ends up becoming a distraction.

As the other dude said, the sensation releases endorphins which gives them a bit of an adrenaline rush, and enough of it can opt for a hallucinogen (ghost peppers are known to do this). There's nothing wrong with getting a bit more stimulation outside of what your tastebuds have to offer, but yes, a lot of people go overboard and do it for the rush solely and don't appreciate the food.

As for your case, you probably are dealing with generic hot sauces that are designed with all kick and no flavor, and often they fail to deliver on both counts. If you tried any local or specialty hot sauces (the good stuff), like some natural hot sauces, you'll appreciate the flavor it adds to the food, and the heat you experience should never get to a point where it washes out the taste but instead gives it kick that you can feel beyond your tongue. I don't mind tricking my body into thinking something tastes "potent" when I'm able to enjoy it.

I can relate to you. I have a rather sensitive palette myself - I tend to forgo sweet stuff, I love carbs (breads are my favorite food) and salty foods, and enjoy anything that tastes light. I believe it's because I have such a "distaste" for taste that I enjoy spicy foods so much. It allows me to appreciate foods considerably more without having to opt for foods that have such overbearing taste to them. Maybe it does muffle the taste, even so I wouldn't be bothered, and would in fact prefer it if it means not having to deal such foods on their own. I for one cannot see myself eating mexican food covered in cilantro if it wasn't for hot sauce taming that bitterness (and perhaps accenting other flavors to boot).

It's quite evident some people are willing to get the hottest sauce possible just for the wild sensation it produces and not for the purpose it was originally designed for, that being to accent the taste of food. Novelty extreme hot sauces/additives are nice for the occasional dare and prank, and can also be used with very finite amounts to simply add spiciness to a big pot of chili or something. But outside of that it seems rather irresponsible and asinine to go all out with it just for the experience alone. Sure, everyone can eat however the please, yet if I was the chef, having someone lather my food with hot sauce just so they can taste absolutely nothing and get a thrill would probably rub me the wrong way. It's the equivalent of prime steak hidden under a pool of A1 sauce. A touch of A1 or alternative (Worcestershire sauce is great) is great to perk already existing flavor and add some zest to it, but it's a mockery on good cooking when the food ends up being nothing more than to add texture to the sauce they so liberally apply. Like any sauce, hot sauce should be applied and used conservatively, and should be designed with flavor in mind to improve food, not overpower it.

As for personal recommendation, so far I've been enjoying Big S Farm's Tennessee Lightning. It's got just enough perk to never be overwhelming regardless how fast you eat, nor is it too mild to be unexciting, but has loads of flavor that I've found works with a lot of different foods. I've found various brazilian and mexican sauces to also be impressive (look for brown and green sauces).

Oh, and just to get this out, Texas Pete is pepper water, not hot sauce.

Easily the best change was the level scaling. Yes indeed, the level scaling of damage certainly doesn't appear to be nearly as crippling as before. In the previous game, enemies only a few levels above were impossible because the damage inflicted was in single digits. Now the disparity in level does not seem to be all that oppressive, and the enemies won't always just one-shot ya either. It makes for very open gameplay and allows you to free roam into more dangerous territory without it being overwhelmingly punishing.

What are you using, a single-core Pentium? There's so many internal kernel changes to thread/core scheduling in Windows 7 from XP that accommodates multi-core systems that anything with 2 cores or more will greatly benefit compared to XP's shoddy outdated makeshift scheduler. Don't forget filesystem driver changes, memory manager updates, and object handling alterations that removed ugly bottlenecks, all of these designed to streamline processing on modern configurations. If you have a much older system, indeed, Windows XP works wonders, like with its smaller disk footprint, but anything that's been made in nearly the past half decade will be sorely limited by its presence.

Also, yes, as a tech, I am very much aware of hardware vendors already phasing out XP. Driver support is becoming far more difficult, to where I have had to limit purchasing good quality components and substitute with older less efficient parts because there just isn't viable support for them on an XP environment. This is especially evident with OEMs, which is something you're just going to have to deal with in corporate environments.

They need to preserve the glitch where your crowbar gets stuck in animation and hits the enemy a million times a second.

Won't get quite as much money patent trolling a misspelled word, but good luck with that!

Looks like a job for the Possum Lodge Institute of Science and Technology.

Since you're also posting, I guess that means it took one to know one, and my reply here at Slashdot does only to confirm the validity of my accusation.

An ultralight, some loudspeakers, and having his antics displayed on television sets and subsequently joked about on the internet. Is this not enough tech-related material for you?

The space program is an effort to combat poverty, by providing opportunities to get those poor, homeless PhD-carrying souls into a proper workplace!

I just took one look at the picture and thought the guy made it with 8 iPads. I felt a sigh of relief to know that no one would've been that stupid, but also paradoxically felt bummed that they weren't.

So I take it we'll be seeing the next president riding around in a wood-sided grocery getter?

Don't you see that the OP is just disgruntled because his workplace doesn't properly consider his disability?

Honorable Judge Dredd can tell you that DNA evidence isn't reliable enough to convict someone.