Cleaning Up The Books (Tradecraft)

I am not an accountant. I can barely keep up during my annual conversation with my accountant. I had a year of accounting in high school, probably to avoid some nastier math requirement. I know just enough to understand double entry and the difference between receivables and payables. From talking with my accountant and a business broker, there are a few areas I'm now a bit more cognizant about, things that show value or indicate problems that are often about something simple, like categorization of expenses in your accounting software. That's the exciting topic for today. Let's clean up your books.

Cost of Goods used to be my dump stat. If you have a high cost of goods, it shows your business is not very efficient. It indicates maybe you don't have a handle on shrink, or you haven't negotiated good terms with your suppliers. It might mean you're a bad buyer. A high cost of goods may indicate an industry problem, which is bad if you're trying to sell your hobby game store to someone uninitiated as a kind of toy store thingy with tables.

I actually track my cost of goods daily, so when I saw the difference between my real, spreadsheet cost of goods, and my fake, Quickbooks cost of goods, I had to figure this out (also Quickbooks is always realler). When I presented my income statement, my business broker gave me a disapproving look with my high COGS. What happened? What happened was I was dumping miscellaneous charges into cost of goods, which is a major no no. Be extra careful about what goes in this category, since it indicates so many possible problems with your business. If you have to dump something into a category, do it into a discretionary one like office supplies.

Office Supplies are pretty discretionary. Everyone thinks they could come in as a new owner and reduce waste of office supplies. My accountant encourages me to put anything consumable, anything not clearly durable, into office supplies. Office supplies also gets depreciated immediately, unlike durable goods, which are depreciated over years. so if it's in a gray area, it's office supplies. Not sure what it is? Office supply. Never use miscellaneous. Miscellaneous is a question mark. You don't want questions in your books. Answer the question!

Payroll should be broken into multiple categories. Payroll expense, taxes, payroll processing and insurance. Each of these have different tax consequences. Each expense can be attacked to drive them down in a different way. Speaking of payroll, have you given yourself a raise recently? Your pay is a discretionary expense so brokers don't care. It reduces your end of year tax burden and saves for your retirement with social security payments. It forces your business to compensate you first, unlike profit distributions which happen last, when it's convenient. You deserve a raise. You're welcome.

Rent is one category that should only ever include rent expenses. Your business value is backstopped or dragged down by your lease. No successful business can predict continued success if it has to make a costly and unpredictable move, and if your rent expense is dragging you down, there's likely nothing to be done about it. Personally, I can't imagine any business would sell with a month to month lease. I would insist on a lease as long as your earnings multiple from the valuation. If your business is valued at 3x your earnings, I would want to see at least three years left on the years. I wouldn't invest in a business until I saw a copy of the lease. Someone believed in you to be around for years. I want to see that. Heck, I want to at least see your name on that contract, especially if I have to approach the landlord to assume it.

The main take aways here are be meticulous with your books. Make sure fixed expenses and discretionary expenses are not mixed. It's easy to get sloppy. My credit card bill averages around $15,000 a month and it's painstaking to make sure every line item is categorized properly. I download reports, try to figure out each charge, and I'm especially careful with those cost of goods, since they can look like other things. It doesn't really matter if it's just you in the business, if you ever want to sell or bring on partners, you'll want to be meticulous and you'll wish you had done it years before.

New MacBook Air Laptops Could Appear As Early As Next Week - Ars Technica

New MacBook Air laptops could appear as early as next week

DE: Archon Bubbles And Vehicle Deployment

School's in session.  Listen or die!

Alright, I hope my crappy ass camera with Primsa edit made this a little viewable.  At least the table is the right size so things should be better in scale.

The point of this article is to show off a few tips here and there about deployment and about how to successfully wrap your powerful attack vehicles around your 6" Archon bubbles.  You would be surprised how easy it is to actually get your Archons into a good position so you can start utilizing these massive benefits.  While I completely get the frustration that certain players have that you can't use this aura while inside vehicles, or the fact that our Venoms are still stuck at a 5-man capacity, I'm here to tell you that everything is going to be OK.

It doesn't have to be this extreme.

First, I want to show off this deployment type.  It doesn't have to be exactly like this, and of course, this is a bare naked table with nothing on it, but I want to showcase the long and thin deployment.  Our vehicles are extremely thin and our threat range is extremely long.  Our most powerful weapons such as Dark Lances and Dissies both have 36" range and we have obscene movement on all of our vehicles.  With a 14" move on the Ravager, this gives us a combined threat range of 50" base without any Obsidian Rose or Flayed Skull buffs.

When you deploy, depending on where you set up and where your opponents set up, you will almost always have the ability to nullify a lot of their firepower if you deploy on the board's edge.  In Pitched Battles such as this one, deploying on the edge can give you some serious advantage when it comes to outranging their most powerful weapons.  Remember, the total vertical length of the table is 48", and distances will only increase once we start getting into diagnols.  Whenever I get to a table and look at the terrain, I go full rainman for what my opponent is fielding and where he puts them down so I can deny his every advantage.

Also, please note that the Archon was able to get out of the Raider and move 3"+8" for 11" total movement on the disembark.  Look how far he's able to make it up to the table when a Raider deployed behind the Ravagers in the middle/right of the table.  This is without him Advancing, so you can just imagine how well Dark Eldar can move on foot compared to others.  Learn this, remember this, and don't be afraid to Advance for some extra range just so you can get his bubble into play.  With enough experience, you will be able to move him first after doing a quick measure of your furthest vehicle, so you know that if you move that, everything close will be in range to move towards your Archon's buff.  Don't worry, this will come more natural the more you play.

Taste the salt.

Take a look at this picture here.  My friend is measuring distance for Hellblaster units behind his Land Raider.  The upset look on his face is when he realizes that I parked 37" away from his Plasma Incinerators.  Why does this upset him?  Because even with a 6" move and 30" range, no matter what he does, he will not be able to engage me with those guns.  This right here is what every experienced Dark Eldar player does since the old days of Night Shields (-6" to opponent's range), and why this is an exceptionally important skill for all new generals to learn.  The best form of denying damage is by giving them no chance to deal damage at all.  It sounds almost like a joke at first, but I'm absolutely serious when it comes to understanding your opponents' most lethal weapons, the ones capable of destroying your vehicles, and then countering them with attention to range detail (anti-threat).

Measure twice, move once, that's the rule.  The same could be said about my Razorwings on the opposite sides of the table.  Aside from his Land Raider, there was nothing in his entire army that had the range to reach them.  I absolutely cannot stress this enough:  I don't care if you have to measure every single gun (within reason) from the other guy's army, ask them the weapon ranges (you will learn in time) so you can deny damage while planning to counter-attack on your turn.  This is why movement, weapon range, and thus effective shooting threat range is so important.  It's so you know how you can inflict the maximum amount of damage while taking little to no damage in return (by outranging, by denying LoS, or by gaining cover).  That's pretty much a mini-game in itself for Dark Eldar generals.

Now you see me..

Another deployment trick I like to do is isolate pockets of fire and line of sight.  I purposely pulled some tissues up to block the sail, but I wanted to show you the difference between deploying wider vs. narrow.  It's extremely important for Dark Eldar players to examine the terrain on the table in relation to their greatest threats.  Directly in front of the tissue box (immediate left of the Raider) is a unit of Devastators at ground level behind cover.  In this first picture, the Devastators can draw onto the Prow and the Aft of the Raider, just catching the rear sail.  It's important for you to analyze at all times exactly why you're seeking shelter and from what weapon specifically.  If there were bolters on the other side of this tissue box I might not care as much.

Now you don't.

When you straighten the Raider out, he can no longer see you at all unless he moves, and even then, only a few guns will be able to draw Line of Sight.  This is also hugely important for Dark Eldar players:  Force your opponents to MOVE their heavy weapons.  Unless they have some amazing rule that allows them to stabilize their weapons, they will suffer an aiming penalty.  We can move and fire most of our heaviest weapons for free for a reason, and that is a HUGE boon to our army compared to many others.  Not even our Eldar cousins have this luxury, and this should not be forgotten nor underestimated.

Look at that range!

Ignore the Dark Lance from the Ravager for a second and just look at how long 6" actually is.  For your reference, the Raider above the Archon in the middle is within 6" and so is the Raider on the bottom.  The only thing that is not in range is the Raider on the lower left.  Keep in mind that Raiders and Ravagers have the Hovering rule; which lets you measure the distance to and from the model's hull for the purposes of the bubble.  You don't count the gun (although some people argue against this), you only count the gun when you shoot, but since all of our vehicles are a mile long, you can get quite a bit of range if you fly your vehicles in a certain way.  You can literally fly them backwards if you want because 8th Ed. is designed to be.. immersive and engaging?

If your opponent ever gives you shit about Ravager's gun placement, show him this:

Please turn to Pg. 57 of your Codex for maximum salt.

And yes, I even bookmarked that shit for you (pg.57).  It's from your book and it's fluffy.  In case you're wondering, a Raider is about ~7" long from Prow to Aft depending on if you're counting the rear sail or not.  This allows you to be in bubble range and extend your weapon range out pretty long distances while still getting the benefits from the Archon's re-rolls.  Realistically, you can pull off some pretty ridiculous bubbles such as this one.

Look at everything in the army that gets Living Muse!

I literally fat-stacked my entire army into the range of the bubble except for that one Raider on the bottom left of the screen.  Oh, and that stupid Ravager that's still pointing his gun at the Archon threatening to kill him.

Real game example.

Here is another example of what this looks like in an actual game.  The red circle is the Living Muse and the yellow circle is another Archon.  At this point, all my Dissies are in range of the 6" of the Living Muse and only those two Raiders at the top of the picture are out (but within range of the other Archon).  When you have this much speed and maneuverability, you can pretty much do anything.  For the Razorwings especially, once you make this convergence on the first turn to benefit from Living Muse, they will fly away from the rest of the game pretty much.  That's fine really because the first turn when you converge should be the turn where you inflict the most damage.  This is especially true with flyers because you'll probably never get a second chance.  Your first turn should be your greatest opportunity to inflict a massive Alpha Strike with a shooty list.

Counter-deploy against cheeky assaults.

The last picture I want to show you guys is some flyer hacks and defensive deployment shenanigans used against those pesky alpha assault armies.  Some important numbers in here depending on who you're fighting.  Assuming that we're playing Pitched again (every mission/deployment is different), we're going to turtle up into the corner like this.  The reason for this is to outrange as many of their guns as possible on the opposite side of the table.  Next, we're going to concave our fighters around our ships as much as possible.  You do it just enough so that the distance from your closest Raider is outside max possible charge distance (12.1"), and then you give yourself some more distance with the Razorwings.  This pushes their deployment of 9" out further from your vehicles, making the only targets they can realistically charge the fighters.

If they don't have Fly, like in the case of Genestealers, they're screwed.  Against Flyrants or Blood Angels, you push out your Fighters more so even with pile-in and consolidate (7.1" total), they can't reach your Raiders.  If they do commit, make sure you punish the hell out of them.  What your opponents often don't realize is that closing in on all those Blasters and Poison shots is actually beneficial for you.  Don't forget that in massive counter-attacks against over-extended foes, it's almost always worthwhile to disembark with your Warriors and unload on them with Archon buffs active.

Detroit: Become Human Review (PC/Epic Store)

Written by Alexander O. Cuaycong and Anthony L. Cuaycong

Title: Detroit: Become Human
Developer: Quantic Dream
Publisher: Quantic Dream
Genre: Action, Narration
Price: $24.99
Also Available On: PS4

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Gamers have long learned to be wary of releases trumpeted as "story-driven" experiences. Time and time again, these titles have proven unworthy of the hype; lacking focus in gameplay elements, they wind up being little more than amusing distractions. And such seemed to be the fate of Detroit: Become Human when it first hit store shelves in early 2018. Written by noted developer David Cage and published by Paris-based Quantic Dream (which he not coincidentally founded), it seemed consigned to suffer the same fate of other games in its genre. After all, it did fall into the same traps, showing, on the outside, an ostensible over-reliance on quick-time events (QTEs) and button prompts, a devaluation of photorealistic graphics with wonky controls, and predisposition for heavy-handed messaging.

For all the misgivings, however, Detroit: Become Human actually manages to stand out. Even as it does struggle on occasion, it delivers on its promise to keep gamers who brave its rougher edges immersed from the get-go. It certainly tells its story in compelling fashion: Androids have become widespread in use, practically serving as the titular city's workforce — albeit not without complications. Friction with humans during this tumultuous period is seen through the unique perspectives of three androids: Connor, an investigator hot on the pursuit of rogue elements; Kara, a housekeeper forced to put up with her abusive owner; and Markus, a crusader bent on freeing other androids from virtual enslavement.

Each branch of Detroit: Become Human provides a compelling vantage point: Scenarios alternate from character to character, giving gamers the opportunity to shape the stories as they please. By interacting with objects, choosing dialogue replies, and succeeding or failing in QTEs, they wind up influencing important parts of the overarching narrative; who lives, who dies, who gets hurt, and so on. It's far from a novel concept, and Quantic Dream has explored it before — in Heavy Rain, released in 2010, for example. While the gameplay is similar, however, the impact of choices now appears more pronounced and more pliable to change and interaction.

Indeed, Detroit: Become Human offers a whole swath of alternate storylines, each fully capable of leading gamers down many different, smaller paths with their own variations. It even goes out of its way to underscore the disparity in choices, showing glimpses of what could have been instead of what is. Needless to say, it winds up highlighting its immense replay value. And, in this regard, it is aided in no small measure by its oppressive atmosphere, engaging dialogues, and outstanding audio-visual presentation. As good as it may have looked and sounded when it debuted on the Sony PlayStation 4, it provides an even better experience on the personal computer. It runs at a smooth 60 frames per second, and offers both controller and keyboard support.

To be sure, Detroit: Become Human is far from perfect. In fact, it suffers from a variety of flaws that are hard to ignore. As is typical of Cage's outputs, it focuses heavily on its story and movie elements rather than gameplay, and the bias shows. While the narrative does allow for independence of action, there is a decided lack of flair and precision in execution. Most of the interaction is possible only through QTEs, or through the efforts of gamers in awkwardly nudging the particular character they're controlling against the environment until a button pops up. Neither makes for spontaneity.

Parenthetically, Detroit: Become Human can be ham-fisted. While admittedly engaging, the story suffers from a very glaring lack of subtlety. For instance, the drunken cop that Connor partners up with has about as much nuance as the abusive father and owner that Kara must serve. That's not to say that the characters aren't interesting; they do have their own arcs that depend on gamer choices while serving to further the enveloping narrative. At the same time, they bank on tropes seemingly plucked from a tome of cliches.

Still and all, Detroit: Become Human stands out as Cage's best work by far. It presents a captivating story built around oppression. Never mind its decision to chuck subtle beats in favor of maximum impact. For all its haphazard storytelling, it does an outstanding job of sucking gamers in at the outset and keeping them engrossed until the very end. And, at $24.99, it gives excellent bang for the buck as a 15-hour ride showcasing the best technology has to offer.

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THE GOOD

• Great story beats with interesting characters
• A plethora of alternate dialogue and paths to take
• High replay value

THE BAD

• Fairly unimaginative gameplay, with majority based on exploration and QTEs
• Cliched characters and story set pieces
• Relatively short length

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RATING: 8/10

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Crysis 2

System Requirements

OS: XP/Vista/Windows 7

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo with 2Ghz, AMD Athlon 64 x2 2Ghz

RAM: 2 GB 

HDD: 9 GB

GPU: NVidia 8800GT 512Mb RAM, ATI 3850HD 512Mb RAM

Download The Game Here

Status

Too long without a post.

Hopefully this  won't be the last post on the blog. I am still in draft three of a book, and don't seem to be getting much writing done or even seeing many movie. Distractions and all.

I still have an unfinished story. An unfinished book of parsha shiurim. Several half-baked and nearly baked game designs on the shelf.

However, I am still employed, having a social life, going on a vacation next month. My daughter is married and thriving, my son is thriving, too. Which is all good.

Still have weekly game nights and still get new games occasionally. I just got Concordia, Sushi Go Party, and I am expecting Gentes Deluxe and Haithabu. I am expecting a few thousand new Magic cards soon.

I and my boss have been playing games with three non-gamer coworkers at work every Thursday. It's been half a year, and, aside from Codenames, we have rarely repeated any games. Looks like we may start soon.

The magic of games, those little points, seem insignificant, but it's astonishing how they take a play activity and make people focus on a goal, a start, and an end. It's almost hard to understand why, but it must have something to do with: not only feeling great when you succeed, but wanting others to have a chance to feel great, too. If it didn't, the whole concept of multiplayer games would just fall apart. As long as we still play games together, I think humanity still has hope.

Peace.

Age Of Empires 2: HD Edition Free Download

Age of Empires 2: HD Edition - is a real-time strategy game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh, it is the second game in the game series.

In Age of Empires II: HD Edition, fans of the original game and new players alike will fall in love with the classic Age of Empires II experience. Explore all the original single player campaigns from both Age of Kings and The Conquerors expansion, choose from 18 civilizations spanning over a thousand years of history, and head online to challenge other Steam players in your quest for world domination throughout the ages. Originally developed by Ensemble Studios and re-imagined in high definition by Hidden Path Entertainment and more.

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AGE OF EMPIRES 2: HD EDITION DOWNLOAD LINKS

      

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Temporarily disable your Antivirus or Windows Defender to avoid file corruption & false positive detections.

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(Your PC must at least have the equivalent or higher specs in order to run this game.)

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 | Windows 8.1 | Windows 8 | Windows 7
• Processor: 1.2GHz Processor or any faster processor for better gaming experience
• Memory: at least 1GB System RAM
• Hard Disk Space: 2GB free HDD Space
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Supported Language: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese-Brazil, Dutch, Russian, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Japanese language are available and supported for this video game.
If you have any questions or encountered broken links, please do not hesitate to comment below. :D