30 Slots Filled!
The Secret of Hildegards
Help Abigail Hildegard find her father and wake Adalar from his dream in The Secret of Hidergards, a fun Hidden Object game! After her Uncle Talbot betrays the family and succumbs to the dark side, it’s up to you and Abigail to defend the family and prevent the evil from being released back into our world! Explore amazing locations and stop Talbot from opening the dreaded Gates!
Mystery Chronicles 2: Betrayals of Love
After the Countess is discovered dead, it’s up to you to follow the clues and find her murderer in Mystery Chronicles: Betrayals of Love! After Commissaire Jean Bertineau asks for your help in this high-profile murder, you travel to France and hope to get to the bottom of this gruesome murder. Upon arriving, you discover that the Count has gone missing! Get to the bottom of the case before the Count ends up being the next corpse you discover in this dark Hidden Object game!
Save on Car Insurance
Paying too much for car insurance? Get a girlfriend. However if you are married you might want to reconsider this advice. Wives are usually not open to those kind of arrangements.
Jesse Levey recently saved $200 a year on car insurance by having a girlfriend. The 31-year-old Californian, who works in marketing, recently got the pleasant surprise when he added his girlfriend to his auto insurance policy.
"They ran the quote and said it was $200 less per year," he says. "She has a good driving record, but so do I. She is going to be using my car some of the time. We live in the same place."
Girlfriends can lower a car insurance rate because they're often “less risky” than their boyfriends. Insurance companies generally see women as safer drivers, and couples are better risks than single people.
We now return you to your regular reading assignment.
Disability Month ahead...
23 Slots Filled!
The Leviathan Crusader seems to be the most popular at the moment and many orders have included extra weapons.
Please keep in mind the Crusader comes as pictured and any extra weapons will not have the added armor for the optional arms... If you need to have armor for these optional arms, pick up an Armor Upgrade and specify what weapon arms you need armor for. If you had allready placed an order and need to add this item, send me an email so that I can send you an invoice. That way your not paying full shipping fees for the added item.
Just a reminder, you may need to clear your browser cache if your not seeing this, when you go here.
IE has a nasty habit of not showing new content if you have visited a site before ;(
All the best,
Mark-
Fruits Inc
Brooke is studying business administration when she inherits a fruit farm from her grandmother. She has big plans for it and needs to start learning everything about fruit farms! You will help her fulfill her dream of creating a fruit empire by selling her products to the entire state. Go along with Brooke in this great journey! Expand into the neighborhood as you sell fruits and grow as a business, always taking care of the people and the environment. Roll up your sleeves and make Brooke's grandmother and family proud!
Cavalcade of Risk #130: Call for submissions and CavRisk News
NB: We're trying out a new submission tool:
The BC WorkAround
Once there, you'll be asked to provide:
■ Your post's url and title
■ Your blog's url and name
■ Your name and email
■ A (brief) summary of the post ("Remarks")
At the bottom of the form, you'll see a drop-down menu; simply select "Cavalcade of Risk" then press "Submit" and you're good to go.
And PLEASE remember: ONLY posts that relate to risk (not personal finance tips and the like).
The Road to Valve
Allora and The Broken Portal
A powerful wizard has been sucked into a portal and is lost! Only you can save him from a terrible fate in Allora and The Broken Portal! Approached by an Elf girl and a rodent friend, it is up to the eyes of a human to solve perplexing puzzles and collect the valuable crystals that power the portal. Use your Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure talents to travel to Faraway Forest and collect the necessary items and save the wizard!
Hotel Mogul: Las Vegas
To many people, Las Vegas is known as "The City of Lights", or "The Entertainment Capital of the World", or simply "The Strip". To Lynette, Las Vegas is a city of opportunity! Be her guiding hand as she creates a hotel empire in the heart of the city, complete with five-star accommodations, restaurants, casinos, and more!
About those "sick notes"
"UW Health doctors who wrote sick notes for protesters at the Capitol in February face penalties up to a loss of pay and leadership positions, the UW School of Medicine and Public Health said Tuesday."
[ed: "UW" is "University of Wisconsin"]
Nice to see the University taking a principled stand.
DreamForge-Games is now accepting orders!
*If the new content does not display, you may need to delete your browser cache files to view the new pages. I have tested the site with Firefox, IE, Chrome and Opera. If you have any issues with the website, ordering or any questions at all, you are welcome to contact me at this address.
Please read the blurb on the main models page regarding orders.
To all of those who have patiently waited for this release, I thank you!
All the best!
Mark Mondragon
DreamForge-Games
From the Mailbag: Thursday Linkfest
■ Regular readers know that we're big fans of transparency in both the delivery and financing of health care. To that end, we're pleased to pass along the news of a new online database called Fair Health Consumer. Eric Hendrickson tells us that the site's purpose is to "provid[e] consumers with information they need to navigate the very confusing world of health care reimbursement; one service offered deconstructs the benefit forms that insurers provide us with anytime we visit our doctor or other healthcare provider."
That's been available since the beginning of the year, and they've recently added a new "Consumer Cost Lookup function" that lets health care consumers "view charge estimates for various dental procedures within their geographic area." And come August, the site's adding "costs associated with medical procedures ... Patients will be able to conduct their searches by procedure or service, by diagnosis (in the case of medical), or by utilizing the appropriate medical or dental terminology codes."
■ Long Term Care insurance is another favorite topic here at IB, and Genworth Financial's a major player in the LTCi market. According to email we received from Clint Kaminska, the carrier's put together a new "Genworth Celebrates Caregivers program," which includes "Long Term Care resources aimed to support families and caregivers in talking to loved ones about big issues like aging, money, health and planning for end-of-life care."
It's a website with a variety of resources, including articles, advice and links.
■ Daniel Kessler, a professor of business and law at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, has an interesting piece at the WSJ that explains how ObamaCare© actually punishes the productive members of our society:
"This new entitlement ... will damage the country's long-term fiscal outlook. It also will introduce far-reaching negative effects on rewards to work and bizarre new inequities into American life ... There is also the likelihood that ... income taxes on upper-middle income families will have to be raised ... to finance the cost of the subsidy, the Medicaid expansion, and other provisions of the new law. Both of these effects exacerbate the law's negative work incentives."
It's a chilling and eye-opening look at this trainwreck.
The Adventures of Aladdin and the Magic Skull - Unrar & Play
The Orient is full of legends and fairy tales, including a story about the mysterious Floating city. Join Aladdin as he goes on an exciting adventure to find this famous city. Along the way, he will meet a unique cast of characters and amazing animals from Arabian fairy tales, who will help him to beat many challenges and find his dream city.
Voodoo Whisperer: Curse of a Legend Collector's Edition
Lillian is a remarkable girl with a strange talent. She can speak to ghosts. Apprenticed to one of the most powerful voodoo priestesses in the world, she is learning to use her abilities. But a dark force has settled over New Orleans and Marie Laveau, the world's most powerful voodoo queen, is missing. Much of the town has been placed under a curse. Now young Lillian must uncover the dark secrets of voodoo to save her master and free her friends before it's too late.
Is there an app for this? (Stupid Government Trick)
"State regulators in California and Florida say they will be looking to see how well life insurers are doing at determining when the life insurance policy insureds have died."
There are, in fact, several issues here, and it's not necessarily as "open and shut" as the authorities may wish it to appear.
The first problem is that, contrary to what the state bureauweenies may wishcast, it's not the insurance company's responsibility to keep tabs on its insureds: it's the insured's responsibility to keep the carrier apprised of his (or her) location. In fact, I daresay that privacy hawks would be mightily put out if an insurer was proactive in this regard.
And I call BS on this one:
"John Chiang, the California controller, says his office has been auditing 21 insurers to evaluate compliance with state unclaimed property claims.
The audit has found widespread problems with efforts to locate beneficiaries of life policies and annuity contract death benefits."
So. What?
If you care enough about your loved ones to buy a life insurance policy, then you darned well ought to make sure that they have a clue as to:
a) It's existence,
and
b) It's location.
Sheesh!
Worksite Woes
Those days are long gone, but the need for these kinds of plans still exists, and that market is now served by so-called "worksite marketing" programs. Some are well-known (Aflac); many aren't. The basic idea, though, remains the same: small face amounts, simplified underwriting and easily-budgeted premiums (the agent collecting his debit has been supplanted by payroll deduction of premiums).
Unfortunately, even that affordable market is now facing a major challenge:
"U.S. sales of voluntary group insurance products and individual products sold at the worksite fell 2.9% in 2010 ... The drop between 2009 and 2010 “is the first decrease that we have seen in the industry since we began tracking sales in 1997."
Although life sales in general seem to have picked up, sales of these plans have plummeted: "The top carrier experienced a 5% drop in sales."
So what's behind this precipitous decrease? Well, if real unemployment stands at almost 16% (and it does), and folks are somewhat soured on the economy (and they are), and gas is approaching (or over) $4 a gallon (and it is), then something's got to give. And it doesn't seem a stretch to conclude that at least part of that something is more life insurance.
Dumbing down the biz...
ALW was eventually supplanted by Primerica, which carried on the former's ignoble tradition. Both models depended upon one thing: new warm bodies, which must be licensed. The failure rate for these agents was enormous (in fairness, it's never been all that terrific for the industry as a whole: contrary to popular belief, being a successful agent is often quite difficult and requires years of persistence).
Now it appears that the folks at Primerica are facing an even greater challenge: getting those warm bodies licensed in the first place:
"About 80% of Primerica recruits don't actually become insurance agents, often because they flunk state licensing exams ... That's a problem for the company, which, more than any other insurer of its size, depends on agents to sell policies."
No kidding.
And their solution?
Oh, you're gonna love this:
"Make the tests easier. [Primerica] asserted to state regulators that the exams aren't only too hard in some places, but might also be racially biased, putting African-Americans and other minorities at a disadvantage."
Whoa!
Did they just play the race card ?!
I believe that they did.
So the insurer with the "country's largest life-insurance sales force" just said that black people are too stupid (and/or uneducated) to pass a licensing exam. That must come as a shock to the many talented, bright, hard-working and successful black (and women) agents I've met in my almost 30 years "in the biz." This is more commonly known as "the soft bigotry of low expectations," and it is no less offensive when applied to minorities in the insurance industry than in any other context.
The reality, though, is much uglier; this isn't about "fairness," but greed:
"Some regulators worry that simplifying the tests could open the door for unqualified people to sell complicated policies. They say the problem isn't necessarily the tests ... but Primerica's own recruiting program. While some companies require candidates to have college degrees ... Primerica is different. It lets almost anyone sign up, so long as they don't have a criminal record and can pay a $99 fee to cover training and licensing costs, among other minimum standards."
So a pulse and a c-note gets you in the Primerica door. And there's the real story: according to the company itself, Primerica has "processed" over 900,000 wannabes over the past five years. That comes to over $89,100,000, or roughly $17,820,000 a year in "fees" from folks who may - or may not - actually pass muster. That's a lot of incentive to make it even easier, no?
[Hat Tip: Doris F]
The Portal 2 ARG Postmortem
Having come to this decision we were not sure if we would be able to travel though. Two years earlier it had become mandatory to have a visa in order to enter the US. Remembering the trouble we had with visas for our trip to Moscow, we feared that we would not receive them in time. Luckily, it turned out that that as soon as you pay for your visa, you are free to go. No wait or anything like that. And thus, Jens and I were ready to cross the Atlantic!
Seattle (or Bellevue to be more exact) lies at the western American coast and it takes about 24 hours of travel, from door to door, for us Swedes. Needless to say it is quite an exhausting trip. Added to this is a nine hour jet lag, that caused us to lie fully awake in the middle of the night (sleepless in Seattle, har har,...). And as if that was not enough I also managed to blow my left eardrum, forcing me into the weird habit of turning my right ear to face whoever spoke to me. I digress though, enough of our troubles and on with the fun stuff!
The morning after the arrival we went to the Valve headquarters, situated at a 15 minute or so walk from the hotel. At the lobby we were greeted by an automated gun turret which we barely managed to sneak past, only to get ambushed, caught and forced into a meeting room full of indie developers and a few Valve employees. Everything started out with nobody, not even the Valve people, seeming to have a clue what it is all about. It was all quite ominous to be honest. At this point Gabe entered and explained the master plan, which finally made us understand the purpose of our visit. The gist of the idea was to make the community release Portal 2 and do so with the help of a bunch of indie games. Basically, a nice way to make the users take part in the release of the new Valve game and a boost in publicity for the other developers involved.
The two days planned at Valve HQ were then all about figuring out how to go about doing this. Here Valve had no clear guidelines and just basically wanted us to brainstorm all kinds of weird ideas that could be used. My and Jens' crucial question to this was of course: "Do we need to worry about age rating?". When answered with a negative, all kinds of strange ideas started brewing in our evil heads. For instance, one early idea was to have live-footage of someone being tortured (all acted of course, promise!) and make that into massive Milgram-kind-of experiment. This was scrapped for some other ideas though, which I will get back to in wee bit!
An important note here is that all these meetings took place without us having to sign a single NDA. This is pretty much unprecedented when dealing with big companies, who all normally require all kinds of soul-selling documents to be signed in blood before anything can be talked about. Valve also gave us full access to their IP, usage of assets for Portal and whatnot. During the visit they also allowed us to roam around the office (no ep3 found, sorry), try out an early build of Portal 2 and let us in on some other secrets (no ep3 there either, again sorry).
When meetings were done on Friday, there were tons of ideas on what to do, a very basic outline of the event flow, but still nothing very concrete. The plan was instead to let everybody think about the things discussed and to set up a wiki and mailing list where the discussions could continue. Now all what was left for us was to go home the next day. Except that did not happen. Instead Heathrow got overwhelmed by some flakes of snow and canceled all flights. We were now officially stuck and had worries whether we would make it home for Christmas or not. Fortunately, we contacted Anna at Valve who put pressure on the booking agency and got us new flights home for the very next day! In business class! Now all was good except that my ear started leaking some strange liquid (and continued doing so for the following two weeks), which I was forced to wipe off every ten minutes. Despite this we managed to get home somewhat alive on Monday night.
After some rest and ear-drainage, we started to lay out plans for our part in the ARG. As we were in a tech-development phase of the next, super secret, project, the artists did not have that much to do and we figured we could let them focus on the ARG instead. This led to us coming up with the idea of a Portal game set in the universe and style of Amnesia, with the addition of a juicy perma-death mechanic. The main reason simply being that we wanted to see how it affected the level of scariness and had high hopes we would mess people up.
With the above set, I threw together a basic design for the game; a sort of Saw-like trial run orchestrated by a, Báthory-inspired, mad young lady. At this point we did not worry too much about of the ARG puzzles, mainly because there was nothing decided, and figured we could just add it later on.
My design of the add-on story "Justine" started out very basic (and honestly quite dull), but through great efforts by the rest of the team it managed to get really nice. For instance the puzzles, especially the first one, were not all that great at first, something that Jens managed to fix when scripting. Mikael, our writer, added quite a lot of depth to the initial plot and our artists, Marc and Marcus, created very nice levels and graphics out of my crummy sketches and often non-existing descriptions. Because of their endeavors me and Luis managed to stay focused on the tech most of the time, only chipping in a bit at the end.
The ARG really picked up pace once Jeep from Valve put together a document outlining the basic steps of the meta game. It was here that the guidelines for each of the three updates were set and now we started contemplating how to add the clues to Amnesia. Our first idea was to release the "Justine" expansion at the start of the ARG and then add new elements to it at each update. Mikael was put on designing these puzzles.
As the ARG was getting closer, we started to realize that we would not have "Justine" ready until the meta-game's start date. This forced us to re-think how the different hints were added in our game (meaning the puzzle work done by Mikael had to be thrown out). Amnesia being a serious game that is all about atmosphere, we did not want to add cheeky out-of-place stuff scattered here and there; instead we wanted all hints to fit the game. The idea was now to have all of the updates in Amnesia, but to have them as elements that an unsuspecting player would take for a part of the game.
In this new design, we had all three clue updates in the normal Amnesia: The Dark Descent and then for the final "crescendo" event we would release the "Justine" expansion, with the goal of having X amount of people complete to unlock our final part of the ARG. Our, somewhat sadistic, hope was the people would reluctantly force themselves through the game to complete the final part of the ARG.
However, it turned out I had missed that this part of the ARG had changed (which Dan of Dejobaan pointed out to me), and was now just all about playing games instead of achieving certain objectives. This forced us to release "Justine" a bit earlier and also moved a hint, meant for the normal game, into "Justine" instead. Again Mikael was put on the task of creating the puzzles needed.
The day before the ARG started, I put together a cryptic blog post, with the intent of introducing the community to a character that might help and confuse them during the ARG. Our initial plan was to keep everything "in-character" according to our own sub-story, with forums posts complaining about escaped animals and the like, hopefully with people wondering what was true and what was not. Unfortunately, it was figured out very quickly that the whole thing was an ARG for Portal 2 (or at least the general Internet-consensus was this) and instead we just used the character to hand over some hints.
Finally the ARG arrived and people threw themselves over our update. This first update was really just meant to contain very little of interest, essentially only displaying a special glyph, a letter and peculiar sentence. To pad out the update a bit, and to hide the hints from people searching the new files, we added some un-exciting assets from "Justine" and a few fake hieroglyphs that were only visible to those not looking for the glyphs in-game. It turned out that almost no attention was paid to the important content though, instead most people were extremely excited about the "Justine" assets, some even convinced that a new secret level was hidden somewhere (and found several plausible locations for this lost place). The hieroglyphs also turned out to be more interesting than the correct glyph, and people even started to decipher their meaning. I actually felt a bit bad about this, and even though no ancient Egyptian expertise would be needed, we decided to use the glyphs somehow in later updates.
This brings us to the second update, in which we were supposed to have some minor Portal hints. Our choice of hint was to project the shadow of one of the Portal 2 robots onto a wall in the start menu. My hope was that people would take a screenshot, and make photoshop-enhanced images, ala big foot footage, with heated discussions on what it look like ensuing. That did not work out as planned of course, and instead someone found the actual texture, where the portal 2 robot was clearly visible, even before it was spotted in the menu. Our evil plan was spoiled. Lesson learned: always hide the fun stuff!
The shadow of a robot was not all that was part of the second update though. We had also added some clues, that lead up to a special steam overlay and a password for Rush. At first these clues where all simply in a note and a clear voice message. But as we thought it was so fun to watch people trying to crack the riddles and search our files at the first update, we decided to add more content and make the puzzles a bit harder. This was accomplished by encrypting the (already cryptic) text with a non-standard substitution cipher and by adding some noise and effects to the voice message. Along with this we also added four rar files, one of which could be opened by solving a puzzle involving the previously mentioned hieroglyphs and some knowledge of the Cthulhu mythos. The first rar then contained a password to the next rar and so on. Each rar file also contained a text and image that would tease about the soon to come "Justine" add-on story. Unfortunately, pretty much nobody bothered about discussing these bits. Either people were too caught up in solving the puzzle (only seeing the texts and images as means to an end) or they were not that interested into solving the puzzle and did not pay attention to what was uncovered.
As we added these new stuff, especially the hieroglyph-related puzzle (that was written on a wall) and the encrypted note, I think that we might have disturbed the atmosphere a tiny bit too much. The encrypted note uses a cipher that could have been used in the 19th century, but still feels a bit out of place. The (hidden) writing on the wall is even worse as it does not really makes sense in the game's world. I think they did not interfere with many (if any?) people's experience in the end though. Still, it is worth thinking about the impact that this kind of stuff has on the normal game, even if it is just a for a limited time.
A few days later it was time to release update 3, which meant putting "Justine" online. As the ARG hint was unlocked by making a perfect run through the game, some precautions were put in. First of all, the maps and script files where compressed and encrypted, thus not allowing any editing or peeking. This together with some other safe-guards also ensured that the maps could not be chosen individually and needed to be played in the set order. Finally, some important assets like the game config and enemy files were given CRC checks to make sure they were not meddled with. Even so, someone figured out that enemies could be disabled by renaming their folder after the game was booted (when the CRC checks had been made). Tricky bastards...
With update 3 out and us having checked that it ran okay (we added some fixes the day after release), we could relax more and did not take as much part in the ARG as we had earlier. A few days later the final crescendo part of the ARG started, where all the games taking part in the ARG needed to be played in order to awaken GLaDOS. It was really fun to see how our game's bar went the slowest. People afraid to play = mission accomplished!
It has been great fun taking part in the Portal 2 ARG. Being on a project together with other indie devs and Valve, trying to figure out tricky riddles, lurking in IRC channels, etc, have all been awesome. Apart from all the jolly good fun, there have also been financial rewards to this. Amnesia sales alone went up a lot during the ARG, and we were on the Steam 20-top for quite a while. The first two days of income pretty much paid for all work put into the "Justine" add-on story. Now as the ARG and sale is over, our daily sales have almost doubled, so not only did we get boost during the event, it also had a lasting effect on people's awareness of Amnesia.
If you are interested in reading more about the puzzles that were part of Amnesia or any other game's updates for that matter, head over to the ARG Wiki.
Also make sure to check out the other postmortems written by some of the developers that took part in the event:
Two Tribes (Toki Tori and Rush)
Teotl Studios (The Ball)
Hidden Path (Defense Grid)
Gaijin Games (Bit Trip Beat)
Lazy 8 Studios (Cogs)
Here be indies!
(photo cred: Dan Brainerd)
A final note: For those that do not have Steam, "Justine" is coming... soon...and there will be surprises!
DreamForge-Games is pleased to announce the release of the Leviathan Crusader!
*Not recommended for the novice model builder.
*Instructions for assembly are a web published PDF format.
2) I will give 30 days before closing the pre-orders, this may happen much sooner if the volume of orders is high and we reach our maximum 50 slots. (Limit of two kits per household)
3) Pre-orders must be paid in full with Paypal.
6) You will be sent a tracking number when your order ships.
Delivery to Canada or Mexico $32.15
Delivery to the rest of the world $48.83
Senji Studios, with more incredible terrain.
Interview posted on Apocalypse 40k
Quick: Duck!
After auditioning well over 12,000 would-be duckmeisters, the worksite insurance behemoth has given the nod to a Minnesota radio sales manager and father of three, 36 year old Daniel McKeague:
"McKeague recorded a 30-second clip at radio station KQRS in Minneapolis, where he works, uploaded it to Aflac's website and later did a more formal video audition.
After learning early Tuesday that he was selected for the gig, McKeague said he's known for doing silly voices."
Gotta love a happy ending.
Dear Agent
To: (local agent) Subject: anthem sucks..HSA 841******9
Hey (local agent)!
I sent Anthem the form to change my insurance agent to you and they never took action.
They are now jacking up my insurance rate,again...from $412.(HSA plan) to $509. I cannot stand this company.
Is there another company out there for me?
I will be 64 in November. I do have existing hashimotos (hypothyroid) disease and skin cancer (basal cell). I know that pre-existing cannot be used against me..at least openly.
Any thoughts? I have until June to make changes within Anthem. I cannot figure out which change, if any to make.
God bless Obamacare. These companies are having a field day.
(Dissatisfied Customer)
(we spoke last year. you gave me great advise that helped me reduce my monthly ins. bill.)
Agent's response . . .
You’re going to hate this but much of the price increase is because of Obamacare. Possibly the worst piece of garbage legislation ever passed.
As an example, companies now have to insure all children regardless of health and can only increase the otherwise low premium by 2 times. So a kid with cancer is now insurable and you don’t think that will affect everyone’s rates. Furthermore, group health plans must keep adults on their parent’s coverage until age 26. So lots of married “kids” now can get the insurance companies to cover their maternity even if they are married. Another “benefit” of what had to be passed before so we will know what’s in it (thanks Nancy Pelosi).
So please put at least some of the blame on the socialists in charge of our government.
That being said, because you do have pre-existing (and YES, it can be held against you until 2014), you have virtually no options except to pay the premium until you are eligible for Medicare.
However, even with the rate increase Anthem is really at the low end of insurance carrier pricing.
Since I am not your agent, I am not earning any commission on your policy. It would help me financially if I could re-write you elsewhere. But at age 64, it’s never been an easy task, and with pre-ex conditions (and likely medication), it’s damn near impossible.
Lastly, 25-33% of your premium is government mandates imposed upon insurance companies. At least $100 of your premium is not the fault of insurance companies.
The bottom line is that until the underlying prices (doctors, hospital, drugs, etc) are kept under control, health insurance premiums will continue to rise.
You don’t like it now, you’ll REALLY hate it when the government becomes the only insurance company available.
Sorry for the rant but I feel I have an obligation to present the real cause of the problem – and it’s not the insurance companies. It’s the jackasses in DC and Sacramento.
By the way, because of all the stupidity, I have re-focused my career. I no longer am looking to write health insurance (except for nice people like you) and am focusing on Medicare products and more importantly, long term care insurance.
Wish I could help.