stuffes (edited, but not importantly)

Okay, things going on in my life.
1. I owe less than 100 dollars directly to Oregon State. This is not student loans, this is money I owe the school. This is a big deal because last year at this time it was nearly 2000 dollars.

2. I currently have 27 dollars and some odd cents. This is dreadfully short of the hundred dollars I need. I'm working on bridging the gap.

3. I've been playing Master of Orion 2. There are a lot of things I like better about that game as compared to the third. On the other hand, the fact that it hates NT and likes to stop working at random blows, as does the relitively small size of the galaxy.

4. In the above mentioned game, the racial trate "telepathic" is awesome. I believe that it gives you +10 percent on your spy rolls which is cool, but it also lets you take over planets without troops and without having to worry about little things like converting them to your way of thinking with alien management centers and the like.

Here's my racial loadout currently (you subtract point values):

10 points to start
Trellarian Picture (They are the most annoying race in the game, so I use them to get rid of them.)
Feudal -4 (this govenrment has few perks, but your ships cost 2/3rds what they usually would and if you research the advanced form they now cost 1/3rd of the normal price.) It does hurt research, but that is really only a problem if the Psilons are in the game.)
Research+1 +3
-20% Ship Attack -2 Tech fixes this.
-20% Ship Defense -2 You will be getting tech to take care of that.
A space academy cancels this penalty.
-10 Ground Combat -2 Don't really need it, tech and telepathy take care of it.

Creative +8 This is expensive, but damn it is nice to get all of the tech for any research tree.

Telepath +6 It improves diplomacy and spying, allows immediate use of captured ships, and allows the instant troopless capture and assimilation of enemy colonies. Oh, the spying bonus is the same as the 3 point spying trait.

Lucky +3 this is not a great ability, but I like it. It cuts antaran attacks and makes good random events more likely for you.

Omniscent +3 This ability lets you see all of the ships and planets on the map. With omniscent you never have to scout, you know when the opponents are massing, and you can target your expansion at special sites early on (like splinter colonies and artifacts worlds.)

Oi, I was going to talk about other tings too, but that will have to be for later.