//Delete this later

I think we can agree that Conservatives have shown up to this fight with guns. That’s what they always do. They take shots, personal, political, and oftentimes, downright insane. The progressives, as usual, have shown up with baseball bats. And they don’t even have a good strategy for how to use those bats effectively.

And in reality, the progressives could still win this fight…they’ve got a powerful leader who can really distract their opponents most effectively. However, they’ve decided that the best strategy is to turn those bats on that leader and pound him on the shins, demanding him to pull out his gun and fire back.

Now, a winning strategy would really be for that leader to distract those conservatives with guns while progressives sneak up behind them and club them with baseball bats. But that doesn’t apparently appeal to some of their very simplistic sensibilities, and I suppose that’s okay…but that renders them effectively useless in the battle to get our health insurance system right, to get our environment cleaned up, and to get some freaking jobs for all these unemployed people.

The real problem is that there is a small group, maybe 5% of the overall population, of people who identify themselves as “real progressives”. Ideologues…not to say that’s a bad word, but they’ve decided to stake out their position consistently to the left of the President, and they figure that will somehow make him “move to their direction”. They use their influence over left wing radio and the netroots to try to “gin up” the liberal base, and figure that if enough liberals get mad, it would “scare” the President into doing what they want.

That’s an utter and complete misunderstanding of the typical liberal psyche.

People don’t become liberals because they’re like conservatives. Scaring them into doing what they want doesn’t work. Fear is something that drives people to be conservatives. Liberals become liberals because idealism makes them feel good. The majority of the people out there look for a leader that can embody those ideals, because they don’t feel that they, themselves, can make their ideals a reality themselves. When they don’t have that leader, they shrink back, identify with a wide variety of different people, and generally climb back into their shells and give up. When you kick that leader down, all you end up doing is deflating the base when you should be INFLATING that base.

The key for those “real progressives”, which in truth, are typically alpha personalities that think they, themselves, can solve everything with their own ideas and really don’t truly understand why people wouldn’t always agree with them. They are very, very different than the people they’re trying to motivate. There’s a couple ways to do this…you can facilitate the organization of individual people by making them feel that their leader is right…and from there, help them take more progressive stances. If a leader has an army of people behind them that are cheering them on to do the right thing instead of jeering at them for doing the wrong thing, there’s a better chance that leader will be stuck doing the right thing regardless of the influence around them. A mob generally can overwhelm the barricades, so to speak…if they’re willing to work together to push them aside.

And THAT is how, when your idealistic leader is negotiating with the other side to keep them from firing…you sneak up behind the other side and club them over the heads. The battle is won with no shots fired, and no one dying needlessly. You get in a firefight with ideals built on fear and try to fight fire with fire, positive ideals die.

It might be okay, I guess, and it might be useful for some people who want to improve their email responsiveness but don’t want to utilize instant messaging…I guess. If they have laptops or a phone that doesn’t deal well with email. I don’t know…email oddly enough works surprisingly well for what it does, and that’s to allow a person some time to craft a response that involves more thoughtfulness than an instant message, comment, or tweet. There is certainly a place for that in our dialogue. I see Wave as kind of a tweener technology that will probably have to give up some of its instant messaging features in favor of more conventional email features…and probably will eventually be incorporated as Gmail’s “optional” email client.

It’s just that it’s a johnny come lately to a crowded social networking field that doesn’t really bring anything spectacularly different and necessary to the game. Like Google hit the sweet spot with search, Facebook seems to have hit the sweet spot with social media. Twitter kind of is its own niche altogether…even though Twitter and Facebook “want” to compete with each other, they really don’t. They’re complementary technologies that really would be best served working closely together to deliver an even better product. Twitter does status updates far, far better than Facebook. Facebook does the whole “me webpage in a can with a photo gallery” better than anyone else.

LinkedIn, though, is an entirely different animal. I think most people would rather like for their LinkedIn to be separate from their personal stuff…even though all that personal stuff can be surfed up if you want to read it. I know full well that my employers can do that, and honestly, if I knew I wasn’t hired because they didn’t respect my political or technical opinions even if they disagreed, I think I’d kind of hate working for people like that anyway. In that regard, if social networking websites REALLY wanted to own the market, they’d do a better job of letting their users track the people who visit their sites, and block anonymous services that let them snoop on prospective employees without those employees knowing. I’d also like to see labor laws written that absolutely require employers to disclose whether or not they’ve been snooping on employees or prospective hires. It IS technically an invasion of privacy…if your boss intentionally followed you home from work and looked through your garbage to see if you were buying a competitor’s product, wouldn’t you find that just the least bit creepy?

Anyway, I just don’t see Google Wave, as it is now, really breaking the market open. Google has been desperate for something to really blow everyone away since they got their search out there. They have shareholders that they have to trick into thinking that their stock is worthwhile keeping there. That’s kind of the peril of letting your company go public…if Google were a private company, they could just settle with being the biggest search player out there, and having a sizable chunk of the web mail market. They wouldn’t have to overstaff in an attempt to churn out new ideas and try and branch out into crowded markets with products that just can’t improve on what’s there.

Bottom line, it’s just an example of why corporations need to de-merge, break up, buy up their own stock, and become private. If more companies did that, they’d be able to operate far more efficiently (though they’d have less of an ability to offshore jobs effectively…that’s not so bad too) and overall, you’d probably be pretty impressed with the overall monetary outcome of all of those spun off businesses.

Bill Clinton came out recently in an interview and said there’d be no repeat of 1994 in 2010 as far as the Republicans kicking the Democrats out of power in Congress, because the Republicans are much “weaker” now. I presume it’s really saying that the Republicans can’t stand on a soapbox and say that the Democrats had 40 years of control over Congress, and had become corrupt…since the Democrats have only held it for about 4 years when 2010 rolls around. That’s just one Presidential term (took FDR 3.6 terms, by the way, to get the New Deal through…and that’s with a system that was infinitely less bureaucratic, lobbyist controlled, contentious, and media corrupted than today’s government). Not a lot of high ground to stand on yet for the GOP.

The twist is that the Democrats will do anything and everything they can think of to lose in the process. You need to understand that there is an entire generation or two of Democrats that are used to being the minority party. When you’re in the minority and the country is going down the drain, you are allowed to be self-righteous. When you’re in the majority and you’re dependent on being self-righteous, you do silly things like start third parties to protest your old party, decide to stay home on election day in disgust, and do many other things that end up putting you right back in the minority, where you can be comfortable feeling self-righteous while the country slips down the tubes. That’s precisely how the Democrats can lose…because both parties are full of crazy people. Unfortunately, the type of crazy that pervades the left is the type of crazy that causes people to become passive-aggressive and check out of the system. It’s good crazy, mainly, but it’s not that great in terms of getting things done.

Now the right, that’s scary bad crazy. That’s marching in line, violent, uncomfortable, repressive crazy. But that IS crazy that gets things done. They use hate and fear to get united and motivated, instead of self-righteousness and idealism. Self-righteousness and idealism might be annoying to most folks, but hate and fear is far worse to surround yourself with.

While the influentials on the right will lie, cheat, steal, and scare their way into getting their sad, damaged people in line, the left wing influentials will, if they do not get what they want or do not feel good enough about what they’re getting, will intentionally demotivate theirs. They know what they’re doing…they’ll rationalize is any way they can, but then they will undoubtedly flog themselves and curse when they let the organized mass of fear driven righties run them over and run ramshod over the system in a thinly veiled smash and grab by people would couldn’t care less about the people who follow them or the country they live in. The bottom line is, if the left wants this experiment in Democracy to succeed, it’s got to do a whole lot better job of keeping their people motivated, marching, and voting.

People have been blogging repeatedly about “what happened to the Obama online campaign machine” that was so effective in 2008…it’s not gone. The organizers are still out there, still sending emails, still holding phone bankings, still trying to get good policy that helps everyone in place. Unfortunately, the left wing influentials have pushed a message of discontent that has deflated so many supporters of the Obama presidential campaign from last year that the online organization just doesn’t have enough people to remain effective. Every time you read a comment, hear a caller on some talk show, or hear someone on the street say “I don’t know about this Obama. I think I’m giving up. I don’t think he’s going to do what he promised. I don’t think he’s going to deliver good health care policy, I don’t think he’s going to end the wars, I don’t think he’s going to end extreme renditions…”, you’re hearing another person who probably has heard so much negative opinion that they’re going to give up, back down, stay at home, and let their chance that they voted for last year pass them by. They might figure “we’ll have another chance in 3 years, it’ll be fine.” Then they discover that they won’t have another chance for 16 years…but that whole time, they’re sure pissed at and self-righteous about the right wing government as it perpetuates a smash-and-grab by a handful of wealthy corporate slobs who just want to take the money and run before the whole thing falls apart.

What this is about is about the latest craze sweeping up all the beaten dogs that comprise the remnants of the “Republican Revolution”. That’s right, “Czars”. They’re crazy about this and think they have something they can hit back at the President with. I’ll say one thing…they’re crazy stupid.

Czars in this sense aren’t Russian dictators. They’re not autocrats. What is a “Czar” in the sense that that what are these people they’re so fired up about?

The term “czar” is an invention of the “media” and a term of “branding” that has been used in place of a person hired reflexively to deal with a particular problem that requires the attention and focus that an elected official or an official that has to undergo congressional approval doesn’t have the time or focus to deal with.

Corporations hire these people all the time. Their job is to come in as a specialist when a team is underhanded, overworked, or underqualified to do a particular task and get that work done. Most companies have budget room for these people. In fact, I happen to be this sort of employee, hired to help facilitate the release of a product or to tackle a difficult part of a project where I can bring more expertise to the game.

A “czar” is, essentially, an undersecretary to an undersecretary. They do a very focused task, such as coordinate with the police about drug policy, work with corporations in regards to air or water pollution policy, and other things like that. In short, they’re gophers. They’re underlings to underlings to underlings. They don’t have a lot of ultimate power. Their job is to sit in an office and do paperwork, occasionally make some face time in a meeting, and generally deal with the sort of crap that has to be dealt with, but is too important to risk slinging at an intern or some other unqualified staffer. In that sense, they’re a GOOD thing. Many leaders would just throw that work to interns, and the results can be disastrous for everyone involved if this is just some kid trying to play suck up to his politician boss. Instead of getting in that situation, they find some guy or lady whose written books about the subject, who clearly has a passion about the subject to handle that work with the utmost care, thus probably getting better quality government for everyone and a better bang for your tax dollar.

Do you honestly think Congress has enough time to stop everything they’re doing every day and approve some assistant to an assistant in some branch of the Federal Government? Absolutely not. Every session, there are piles upon piles of unfinished work because of ridiculous nonsense like this. The position is a reflexive one, requiring that you need to be able to put someone in charge of that work and get it done with the least amount of disruption to everyone else. But if you enjoy paying more for less government, then feel free to make Congress vet every single peon that the Administration hires. They never suggested nor considered doing it during the entire 8 years of the Bush Presidency where he was appointing people who gave him a “whole hell of a lot of money” to these jobs, but hey, you can’t count on a Republican to ever bring up the issue if there’s a Republican President. That’s why they’re out of power right now, by the way, and why they keep losing elections. The American people have them figured out, but right now, they’re pissed because the Democratic Party couldn’t ride right in and clean everything right up for them because the Republicans continued to make a big stink in the room like they do with a new non-issue every week.

For articles like this one which I found through there. I’m not the type to normally read GQ.

Even though the writer is totally historically wrong about Carter on page 6. Those long lines at the pump, unemployment, inflation? Brought to you by the folks who brought you the Vietnam War and those who set up a puppet dictator in Iran so that the auto industry could build Cadillacs that burned 10 miles to the gallon. We were paying back for the Vietnam war, when we got sucker punched in our major industrial cash cow industry of the day…the auto industry. How did Reagan solve that problem? Switch over to another puppet dictator named Saddam Hussain to get his oil, and fund Hussain’s war against the guys who overthrew the old puppet dictator. That set up the first Gulf War that killed the economy in 1992, which drove Osama Bin Laden to start Al-Qaeda and use brainwashed kids to blow themselves up by crashing planes and killing thousands of innocent bystanders, and start the Afghanistan war. Which we’re still in and still paying for, which set up the second Iraq War which has doubled the size of our debt. That was Ronald Reagan’s solution to the problems that Jimmy Carter faced. Compound the problem by about a zillion. The debt was nothing in comparison to what it is today, and that debt isn’t just going to “go away”. They freaking set up the whole economic mess we’re in today. ALL of it. And it started with Reagan.

Anyway, that bit aside, it’s one of the most believable insider views of the Bush White House I’ve ever read. For those who still think Bush was secretly a genius, read that article and it’ll change your mind. That said, it’s especially hilarious when he knocks Sarah Palin. It’s like the second stupidest kid in the class calling the stupidest kid an idiot. That said, in that moment, the second stupidest kid in the class had a sudden moment of brilliance in comparison to the smart kids turned idiots around him. Smart people can spot a smart person. Idiots can spot an idiot when smart people sometimes cannot.

So yeah, most people who know me know I’m prettly liberal/progressive/whatever. I don’t march in lock step, and frequently veer in strange directions (does that make me a drunk liberal? I think it does)…but I’m not above the time honored liberal tradition of kicking other liberals in the shins.

I go to Huffington Post at least once a day. There are a few people who blog there that I’m interested in who write interesting stuff. Robert Reich, Johann Hari, and a few others off the top of my head.

That said, Arianna has made a website for famous people with big soapboxes to have yet bigger soapboxes. Occasionally her people “deign” to allow “little people” a say in things, but typically, those posts get cleared away fast in favor of her favorite socialites’ ramblings. And very few of them seem to paint a picture that is different from her own, which has always made me suspicious of their vetting process.

Not to say that her own posts that get highlighted repeatedly aren’t self-indulgent ramblings. They are. Frequently.

Arriana Huffington is a person who has built a career on complaining about things. It’s how she connects with people who have similar complaints. Unless its HER or one of “her people’s” ideas. Obama gives a tremendous speech about health care, takes ownership of the public option, makes it perfectly clear that this thing is his and he wants it to work…and this is what her response is. She waits for some people to start nitpicking it because they didn’t hear exactly all the bullet points they wanted to hear, and she opens up by saying “the public option is dead” and as usual, infers that Obama is no better than George W. Bush. That’s just what she does. If she doesn’t get exactly what she wants, she throws a little online tantrum and throws stones from her glass house. It’s no surprise, given that she’s essentially built a big chunk of her life on complaining about things. Whether it was Bill Clinton back in her old conservative-independent days, or George W. Bush when she had a “change of heart” and became a progressive, and now Obama because he isn’t “progressive enough” or “doing enough”.

That’s a common complaint. After all, we’re just a bunch of little kids hoping daddy can make everything all right, right? Some of us are just less mature about it than others, I suppose. Of course, daddy’s trying to make things better while there are rifles pointed at him from every direction, poor folks running around with signs who were spun around by deceitful corporations with the intent to cause “disruption” by astroturfing a pseudo-libertarian “movement” with the ultimate goal of causing the “change” to be “good change” for their bottom lines. And what does Arianna do with her big soapbox? Kick daddy in the shins for not getting her that triple scoop ice cream and only getting her the single scoop because that was the most he could get out of the store. The problem isn’t “daddy”, the problem is those people making daddy’s job pretty much impossible.

Arianna could be using her soapbox to consistently push for getting everyone in this country who works independently, the self-employed, the unemployed, to join up with a union or unions. The reason why corporations were held in check in the old days was because there were big, tough unions that could take down any politician who veered too far into the corporate mass. That said, they balanced each other out because the corporations could donate to campaigns. That balance is what kept this country going for decades…it’s no surprise that politicians became totally corrupt when the unions went from having 30% of the workforce unionized to 8%…where they hardly even matter anymore. It’s really that simple. If a union could offer group health care plans through its own union based health care co-op, you could afford health care as part of your union dues. But Arianna has decided that co-op is a bad word, so there. I’d love single-payer too, unfortunately, because we disrupted the balance between the democratic institution of unions and the autocratic institution of corporations, we basically made that impossible in this political climate.

There has been a lot of change, it’s just that a whole lot of Arianna’s people wanted a whole lot more and didn’t get it instantaneously. A lot of that is predicated on irrational fear of problems so complex that you really can’t wrap your brain around them. That fear leads to two different points of view, typically…change everything, or touch nothing. The result of that causes extreme polarization, with one side thinking the other side is trying to destroy everything. It’s a problem as old as humanity itself, and it rears its head every so often in times of crises such as this one.

We could go out and take everything back from the people who caused this mess by force. We could demand that no fossil fuel burning cars be sold in the US. We could demand a single-payer health care option. The other side sees it like this: If you try and take the cash that was stolen by all these mortgage brokers back by force, where will it end? Will we be robbing guys who didn’t realize it was part of their salaries? If you take every fossil fuel burning car off the market and I total my car…but have to get to work at this place that is not on mass transit, and the auto companies are charging a fortune for first generation electric cars…does this mean I have to quit my job? If we kill all the health insurance companies in favor of a single payer system, does this mean that my brother who has sold health insurance for 20 years and has no other skills is going to be on the street?

That’s why we make compromises. And maybe they aren’t enough. Maybe we have to work towards a more progressive goal over time. But even a compromise, at this point, IS change. Because we weren’t even discussing any of these things in the last administration. The Bush Administration had an agenda and they rammed it down our throats, whether we liked it or not. The fact that we can discuss and compromise and work things out IS change. It’s a hell of a lot of change from the virtual autocracy we had been living under for the past 8 years. These guys could go to war and they didn’t even care if they could get congressional support for it or not. They just would go and do it and to hell with the consequences. If they wanted to force some corporate giveaway on us, they just did it. If they wanted to make rich people who inherited wealth even richer, they just did it. They didn’t even care. Their right wing radio guys apologized for it, but they didn’t have to, really…except in a weak attempt to try and keep “everyone cool” for the next election.

We got plenty of change already. And if you’re too blind to see it, then I certainly can’t help ya.

I got an idea, and personally, I like it. You can keep your insurance companies happy and get people who are uninsured in one step (well, okay, maybe you’ll need to slap a little regulation on top, but you won’t need a public option here). But it’s going to scare the pants off righties.

Unionize everyone who is self-employed or unemployed. Everyone who isn’t getting health care should be a member of a union. While in said union, which would provide group plans that would reduce health care costs by roughly 66%, they would also qualify for placement services through the union, and would be able to join an affiliated credit union. Those members of the union who are unemployed would be provided with temporary coverage that would be paid out from union dues collected by everyone. Think of it as a big placement company. You’d want that union to be as big as possible in order to maximize the dues and the size of the pot, but you’d want it to have specialists that take care of employees on an industry basis.

That would effectively enable everyone to buy into the insurance system without the need for a public option. But it scares the hell out of righties. It would effectively put true headhunters out of business, help to prevent the big banks from screwing as many people over, and would most likely take a stand against the right wing’s long lasting anti-union policies. The members of the union vote for the union leadership, so it’s a democratic institution…just like unions are right now. You’d just need to consolidate the leadership of the various unions. It would, effectively, enable all the people who are getting crapped on in this country to gain enough power to be on equal standing with various corporate lobbies in regards to political influence…and possibly create a balance in a very unbalanced system.

So, you think government run health care would have a lot of “bureaucratic overhead”? Think it would surpass some of these jokers who have been ripping YOU off? These guys don’t even have the shame to stop dropping people from HEALTH INSURANCE for getting SICK…just so they can do more of the following.

Health Insurance Industry CEOs

You can look all the information up on Google finance. They have to disclose their earnings under the law. Aside, it also proves there is still wage inequality. Why is the only woman on that list making so much less than those other guys? Like that stock trick Hemsley pulled? Made everyone think he took a big paycut, but he slipped 3/4s of a billion into stock options. Sneaky.

That crazy money is coming out of your health premiums. They’re getting it because they…uh…do stuff? In an office? Sometimes?

Here’s a new one: Blue Cross Blue Shield Party bonuses

That money, right there, is money you pay into that company for your policy. If they drop your policy, if they change your coverage, if they make you go to a different hospital…if the reason for all that is to save money, it certainly looks like they’re not doing it by skimming less off the top like most companies do when times get tough.

They stay in business by keeping a stranglehold on the medical system. Our hospitals aren’t as good as many overseas in countries with single payer. I know that firsthand having worked in with medical technology, and knowing that the target markets weren’t always US hospitals…but rather, Dutch, English, German, French, and Canadian hospitals because they had the money to put down for more advanced equipment that could save them money in the long run. US hospitals are years behind everyone else. Years behind, far more expensive, and a mess. The overhead caused by the association between private insurance companies and hospitals is ridiculous, but the people on top are skimming off so much money that they couldn’t care less.

THAT’s why we’re having this conversation. Health care costs are going to be the major cost this country has in a few years. Take that, and add to the fact that we are NOT prepared to defend against a terrorist spread pandemic, and we are SCREWED if we do not do something about it right now. Even those health insurance CEOs can get sick and die. They have kids who know kids who might be carrying the swine flu. Or ebola. Or whatever new mutated supervirus might be out next. But they’re too rich, too wealthy, to see the mistake they’re making. These people are driving a bus while blindfolded. That bus is our country, and if the riders don’t get up and do something about it, it’s going to hit a wall.

So, the new player in the arena is the Palm Pixi.

Takes the form factor and accelerometer type screen of the iPhone, and puts a keyboard on the bottom like the Blackberry.

Either it’ll be a huge hit, or more likely, people will say “the screen is too small!” then proceed to complain about the virtual keyboard on their iPhone not letting them type fast enough to reply to people.

I’ve been doing this mobile thing for a long time now. Truth be told, bigger screen doesn’t mean a whole lot. It’s your goddamn phone. It fits in your hand. Here’s a trick…move it closer to your face. Amazing, I know. Can’t quite do that though with a virtual keyboard. You have to buy one and connect it to your phone if it doesn’t have one. Or, you could get a phone with one built on.

The Pixi is also 150 bucks, meaning, it’s competing with cheap, dumb phones. You can get a screen with an accelerometer, a phone with a powerful operating system and a lot of flexibility and hackability to play around with, for the price of a lot of dumb phones. And it comes with designer rubberized back plates (probably similar to the rubberized back plate for the Touchstone you can get for the Pre). Though it looks more rugged and comes in a lot of colors. It should also have all the multitasking that the iPhone doesn’t have, and all the special gestures that go with that as well.

I laugh at people who have problems with AT&T and have iPhones. I’ve never had a problem with Sprint, ever. It roams on the Verizon network when it’s out of Sprint network range. Never drops calls. The unlimited data plan is dirt cheap.

Sure, there are the apps, but even then, I’ve seen nothing for the iPhone that I really wanted. It’s all “been there, done that” type of stuff, but done in a million different permutations.

The Pixi makes me seriously wonder why people even bother with iPhones. iPhone OS is just not that great of a platform. It’s monstrously kludgy for the features it provides. My Pre just freaking works. I don’t need to install any desktop component…I don’t even need a laptop or computer for it (aside from software development, of course). The Pixi is the same way. I log in to Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, whatever, and it syncs all my address books together in one place wirelessly. It has universal search (that is blazingly fast, by the way) to pull out people I’m looking for. Comes with Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation, all the organizational apps, syncs perfectly with Outlook calendars. The update is really amazing…all done over the air, it even checks for applications you installed from the app catalog and updates them for you as well if you want!

The thing’s built on linux using web standards for the front ends. The apps are really small and efficient…the whole front end is a browser…but it’s uncluttered up like a desktop browser and is blazingly fast. With webGL, flash, Java, and C# support coming, it’ll do all the gaming you’d ever want. The javascript stuff already does quite a bit more than you’d expect.

All in all, the Pixi looks like a great deal. For those who were concerned about the build quality of the Pre, the Pixi is a simpler, more rugged looking device. Shouldn’t have too many of those problems that you have with moving parts, like a sliding keyboard and such. I didn’t actually think the Pixi was going to be all that great of a phone, but now that I’ve seen the pictures, if it were available when I bought my Pre, I would have had to think long and hard about which phone I wanted more. I still would have taken the Pre, I think, but it would have been close.

Okay, maybe that headline does real gamer nerds a disservice, as I only play one computer game anymore…when I have mental blocks and just don’t want to go outside for a bit.

So I play Fallout 3.  It’s the last game I’ve paid for (almost a year ago).  When you only play like one game, it’s got to be customizable or you end up falling asleep after 10 minutes.  Thankfully, it IS pretty customizable.

The mod community, for the most part (except for the hairpacks…why can’t someone who isn’t an anime nerd do graphics modelling?) is doing pretty good work expanding the game and making it more worthwhile to play characters other than “stealthy sniper guy” or “pyro melee guy”, the two character classes that seem to do best at a vanilla (unmodded) version of the game.

One such mod is the “playa” mod, and I’m talking about Seducing Women.  Holy hell, this is a surprisingly good and entertaining mod.   There’s a multi-part quest to hook up with lots of women, find pornography, and research the orgies of the upper class types.  Gives the charismatic type player a shot at getting enough experience to keep from being lunchmeat early on in the game.

The Weapons kit mod and RobCo certified mods help the techie players out a whole lot…both are reasonably imbalanced, but if you apply Mart’s Monster Mod,  you’ll balance that right back out.   That guy went and buffed up a whole lot of monsters wandering around the wasteland.

Raiders, Mercenary, Regulators, Talon expanded is an awesome mod if you want a little more diversity out of the game.   Adds a bunch of new combat armors, too, which is really why I dig it…combat armor is rad.  The Rivet City armor, especially, is great…black, helps your small guns skills out (built in speed holster or something?), and it doesn’t have Talon Company bad white eagle claw on it. Reneer’s Radio Mod accomplished a super simple thing that I wanted since I first started playing the game, which was just to change the radio station or turn it off.  I can only take hearing “Wonderful guy” and “Let’s go sunning”, along with most of the Enclave station, for only so long before I just turn off the sound altogether.

And if you play this game and you’re not using the mod manager or FOSE (script extender) then you’re probably missing out.  They’ll help you get all those various mods working together right.

Now if only there were a graphics modeler who knew how hair should look like 1. in real life, and 2. in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  The only good hair mod I’ve found for male characters is the bald hairstyle mod.  The ONLY one.  Every other one looks like a generic woman’s hairstyle that has been screwed up a little bit.  And the women’s hairstyles are totally not what you’d expect in a world where there aren’t any hairspray or gel factories.  In fact, I have no idea how the hell that hair was supposed to be held up.  Most were ported over from Oblivion, and to be honest, they looked like ass in that one, too.  They’re bad anime haircuts, people, I’m sorry you spent so much time rendering them, but they look like ass.  They look extremely fake and are way, way over the top.  The vanilla Fallout 3 haircuts are way better.  The only reason I make a deal about this is that there are actual NPC’s in the game who’ll cut your hair, and it’s a waste if there’s only like one hairstyle that doesn’t look like ass.   Bald makes a whole lot more sense in a radiated world than wood elf hair or emo hair, okay?  And it looks a billion times cooler.

Improved glasses and shades makes a lot of sense, and adds a use for one of the more useless clothing items in the game.  For that matter, Improved goggles is right in that same vein.  Makes sense something that protects your eyes from a hostile environment might make your vision a little better.   Galloping Gourmet makes food considerably less worthless.   Instead of “healing you instantly”, it heals (and maybe irradiates or another effect) you over time.

Then there’s Wasteland Whisperer.  No, I don’t want to spend 20 minutes walking backward, depleting all my ammo at a huge mutated crab monster only to get a little crab meat.  No, I don’t want to have to kill every dog I run across in the wasteland (makes the Animal Friend perk a little easier to get early on).  Yes, I like the idea of being able to lure animals into following me by feeding them snacks.  This mod is another great one for high charisma characters who don’t know their way around a pistol, by the way.

Eyepatch  Why the hell not. Next up is a crazy pirate mod. There’s a weird little shack in the DC ruins called “Pirate Poly’s”. I’d say that’d be a great place to start.

There are many more fan made mods that really add a lot more to the game.  Some fairly good quests…though not anywhere near as good as the official downloadable content.  I kind of wish these quests were made by real Fallout fans and not just Oblivion fanatics, as they generally stink royally of Oblivion (which, yes, I played, and yes, I miss the wildly insane jumping capabilities).   But the ones I mentioned just freaking work with the game.  Then again, I go so sick of several of the Galaxy News Radio songs that I manually replaced them with songs that didn’t annoy me so much…but probably aren’t very “1950′s”.  I can’t believe they opted for “Let’s go sunning” over Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife” or whatever.  I seriously cannot get into blowing away a bunch of cannibalistic, feral mutants in a sewer while hearing Tex Beneke.  I just can’t.  She ruins the whole mood by singing about being in love with some dude. There are some good music replacer mods, but they’re kind of hit and miss from my experience with them. Usually it’s because the song isn’t encoded just right or something.