bscottsteve

I think a good litmus test for whether you've done enough research in a particular area occurs when you pick up a new book on the subject and don't learn many things you don't already know. I've about reached that point with Alexander the Great, at least involving his early life and his death and the general plotting of his campaigns, though I couldn't lay out the battle plan and troop movements for famous battles or read the source material in the original Greek or Latin. Even though Alexander rarely appears in Aristotle Vampire, reading about him is a good framework for understanding Macedonian politics and occasionally, Aristotle as a person. Aristotle as a philosopher, now that's a different story.

Update on my website: My refund demand must have gotten me somewhere, because my website is back up except for the all-important forums, which are at least displaying a different error page now. Yay!

I am totally stuck on the last area in Fallout 2. I even went to an earlier saved game, leveled up, and bought everything the merchants hand. For some reason, they decided to make the final segment of the game 1000 times harder than the rest of it, as I get viciously slaughtered pretty much however I go about the levels. I'm debating giving up entirely out of boredom. Getting torn apart repeatedly by the 20 power-armored guys (10 of whom are really unnecessary for instantaneous death) is not so great or fun.

EDIT: Beat the game with Paul's advice. I don't know how I would have done the mission without stealth and charisma. And running away from stuff.

In other news, if I sent you Aristotle Vampire and you have any intention of actually reading it and giving me an opinion, this month is the series cut-off, as I'm going to try to have a final version submitted to my agent before I leave for Israel.

I've been informed by Yahoo! that my email was recently compromised. I blame the channers. If you received spam from me, I apologize.

Happy Hannukah!