Zimbra

Lottery reform gets soundly defeated at the BoG meeting. 13 teams voted against, much higher than the 7 that were predicted beforehand.-

I was less-than-entirely-sober Friday night and ended up buying Distant Worlds: Universe off of Steam and I think it's already my favorite 4X game. The genius of the game is largely in how much of the gruntwork you don't have to do. While you represent the government, your empire has a private sector that operates more-or-less independently, and takes care of things like mining resources and moving goods and people around. Everything else can be automated as much as you'd like as well. Just want to focus on exploration and military? Let the computer take care of research and the economy for you. If you like you can sim everything and watch the game play itself. There's also a nice sense of scale and progression. A 'medium' galaxy has 700 systems, each with 0-10 planets plus moons and asteroids, and then there are black holes, gas clouds, supernovae and other features. I started as a single pre-warp planet and I've now spread to about 2 dozen colonies across one arm of the galaxy. It's real time, and I find it quite relaxing to zoom out and watch all of my ships flit from place to place. Anyway, it's really good and you should play it, despite it being stupidly expensive.

It worked on my Dad's Verizon S4, which is apparently one of the more locked-down phone/carrier combos.

Will Bynum to the Celtics for Joel Anthony. Boston saves about 900k in the deal. I thought Bynum was still playing overseas so I learned something today.

Yeah, I like it so far. I'm playing as Nisha and her action skill is basically murder mode. It took me two uses to absolutely destroy the first boss. I think she'll be kind of squishy later on, though, as there isn't much in the way of defense in her skill trees. The writing is pretty good, too. I dig the framing device with Athena, and the dialogue between Nisha and Janey has been pretty funny.

The 6 & 9 are officially announced, and they're exactly what the leaks said. Pricing hasn't been announced yet. Android L is looking sexy as hell, though. EDIT: The 6 is apparently $649 off-contract.

Nah

Hey Sabin (and anyone else)! Pretty sure I'm firing this up for the first time tonight if you'll be around.

Diablo 3 had a double-XP weekend, so I played a metric shitton of it the last 3 days. I got my Demon Hunter up to 70, plus got her a sweet Helltrapper and the first bit of the Marauder's set. Now it's just nonstop bounties and rifts until I get the other 5 pieces.

I remain convinced that Melissa McCarthy is just Kevin James in drag. Actually, that would be Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan;

I believe they've said it won't acknowledge the original movies at all, it'll be it's own thing. Which is probably the right way to go.

My fantasy casting would be Fey/Poehler/McCarthy/Aisha Tyler with Kristen Schaal in the Louis Tully role and Aziz Ansari as Janine Melnitz. I would watch the hell out of that movie.

Which one of you let Louis CK take DMT and get on Twitter?

He'd better, or I'm going Elvis on my TV. My non-news news: I've been stuck behind a train three times over six days. Driving across town the a couple weeks ago I got stuck behind the same train 3 times in three different spots. It was more than a little maddening.

Face scan for NBA 2k15 has...issues.

Somebody didn't make it all the way to the end of the story:

9 new episodes, on Showtime, Lynch is directing them all.

Good news: Flex scheduling for Thursday/Sunday games! Bad news: They're already laying the groundwork to fuck the players!

I'm waiting to see if they sorted out the streaming issues before I drop the cash on League Pass this year. My cable company doesn't offer it so it's no good to me if I can't watch online. I'm irrationally excited about the Pelicans this year. I don't think they'll be good, but I think they'll be weird and I am always excited to watch the shit Anthony Davis does.

Woo, it's First Preseason Game Day! Our long national nightmare of no-basketball is finally over...kinda. Anyway, Pelicans at Heat tonight in Louisville. No TV, but I think the radio feed is streaming somewhere. Swaggy P is out 6-8 weeks with a torn thumb ligament. Not a real auspicious start for the Lakers' season.

The other two games in the bundle (Hearts of Iron III and Victoria II) are quite a bit more spreadsheet-y than CK2 and EU4, but are still interesting experiences. Plus with these 4 games and the magic of save converters (and some tweaking) you can play the same game from 1066 to almost the present day. So that's cool. Crusader Kings 2 is also free to play all weekend for anyone that might still be on the fence about it.

Trophies and cheevos are one of those gaming things I just don't understand the appeal of at all. Different strokes, etc. I still have a couple of weeks left on my sub, but my WoW experiment is pretty much officially over as I haven't felt the urge to log on in several days. Maybe it'd be a different story if I knew other people who played, but the basic gameplay just isn't enjoyable enough for me to use my limited gaming time on it. I'd much rather play almost any single-player CRPG than WoW.

Kinda love the new KU uniforms:

I'll be getting it for PS3 on release day, but I'm not sure how much time I'll have to play during that week.