Found You.

Anywho,

I used to be manytales00. I still tend to post as unspeakable Eldrich Horror, that likes play as a Limbless Blue Kitty, with telekinetic abilities, act as a Ship's Cat, and part time Gunner.

Once I figure out how to edit my avatar to proper size, I'll put it in.

This past Saturday morning, my Dad had severe abdominal pains, and whenever he tried to urinate, it was quite painful and there was blood in the urine. He was sent to the hospital, and scans found that one of his kidneys has a cancerous lump the size of a fist in it. His urinary troubles were caused by a blood clot that had come loose, and after several attempts to flush it out at home he went back into the hospital, where it was successfully flushed out.

The cancer is apparently at least at Stage 2; however, the scans also picked up a spot on one of his lungs. This isn't actually an uncommon occurrence where I live due to allergies (and so it may be simply unrelated), but it's also possible that the cancer may have metastasized there, indicating it's at Stage 3. We're hoping it's the former, but we won't know for sure until we get back and subsequent test results related to it.

This came as quite a shock to all of us (Dad most especially), even more so since this mess started only a few days before his 58th birthday.

However, since (as mentioned) the cancer doesn't seem to be terminal, there's still plenty of hope for him. The current plan is to have the affected kidney removed within a week or so (give or take, depending on any subsequent changes in his condition); depending on the state of the cancer, it may be possible that he'll be completely done with it after the operation and thus might not have to have any subsequent treatments done (knock on wood!).

Of course, Dad is a hard-driven man, which is how he's become quite successful (he currently runs his own financial planning business); given this, it's rather fortunate that his work has been in a slow period that is likely to continue for some time, as he'll basically be forced to not move much for the next several weeks.

We've been trying to convince him (quite well, thankfully) that he can make it, as some people have survived worse cancers, and he--we--can make it too.

I ask of you to keep him in your thoughts. If you're of a religious persuasion, please say a prayer for him. And regardless of your religious/non-religious leanings, please offer some kind messages for him. I intend to post this not only here, but also several other forums of which I am a member, and I also want to show him these threads so as to let him know that, if even complete strangers (to him, anyway) can offer moral support, then he can certainly make it.

Thank you all.

CBC News: In the Trump era of fake news, more U.S. schools focusing on media literacy

In order to help youngsters become better able to distinguish fact from fiction online, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Mexico, and Washington state have all passed laws requiring media literacy be taught in schools.

Of course, programs require funding... and mister "fake news" controls the purse strings at the moment.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Trump firing FBI director was a huge mistake, Steve Bannon says

They're quoting from the 60 Minutes interview aired on the weekend of September 10.

He points out something that many people don't understand: the FBI cannot be changed simply by changing the person in charge.

<yawns>  I was up about two hours later than I should have been last night, getting the last of "Other People's Fanfiction" from the initial scrape loaded.  Between dealing with about 30 or so threads that failed because of the string concatenation problem (requiring me to back out the failed thread, find the missing content, reconstruct the insert statement, and re-run, followed in a few cases by repeating the process because I introduced a new error) and getting caught up in reading some of the oldest content when I should have been paying attention to the DB tasks, it took me a good 8 hours or so.

"General Chatter" has something like three times as many threads as "OPF" does.  I'm warning people now that it's not going to happen in one night.  (One good thing is that as far as I can recall, "General Chatter" is unlikely to have many posts in excess of 43.5K in size -- the point at which that string problem kicks in. As a result, I should have an overall faster throughput on the transfer. Fixing the failed inserts is the largest time overhead in the process.)

Oh, also, fair warning, folks: to minimize lost threads/posts, I'm going to lock the forum before I start the move (which is really how I should have done it for the other fora, but oh well...).  So basically starting tonight, everything is going to be closed over on the old boards.

Jerry Pournelle has passed away.

"If you
wish to converse with me, define your
terms."
     
  --Voltaire

Alright, so this happened in a chat in Discord where we were discussing Kino Makoto - how I dislike how people have been drawing her like a bodybuilder as of late.  Yes, she's tall as hell.  Yes, she strong as fuck.  But she's a healthy young lady who's undoubtedly impressive six-pack is covered in a soft layer of skin.

I then mentioned that I would totally date her if given the opportunity.

And then I got to thinking...  What would I be like in the Sailor Moon universe?

As a straight up SI, no real changes to what I am or who I am.

See, the thing is that a long time ago I had a wiccan girlfriend and lived with her and her wiccan roomies.  And they were all in agreement: i had the magic equivalent of ECM.  No one could ever sense me, and line of sight rendered me as magical static and white noise.  And good luck charms that were in my possession frequently either broke or became disappeared.

It can be turned off, but it's like a cat in this way: it only 'sleeps with its belly exposed' when I feel super-secure and at ease.

Now, apply that to Sailor Moon.

Has your jaw hit the floor yet? 

So, here's how it would work.  We plug my birthdate directly into SM (Sep 28, 1980) and that makes me 11 years old.

To make this work, we'll say that dear old dad never got out of the Air Force.  And being the highly qualified cryptotech it would only have been a matter of time until he got sucked into a billet in Japan.

Right about then was when my younger brothers started to get REALLY troublesome - destroying models that I'd assembled, killing my pet fish, and generally causing problems for me.

And at some point Mom and Dad, with the help of a psychologist, would have figured out that I do very well in a fast-paced learning environment.  (Keep in mind I had a 12th grade reading level at this time.)

So, off I would go to a special boarding school for foreigners meant to prepare them for a Japanese high school.  Probably somewhere in Juuban.  I can still make regular visits home - it's not that far off - and I'd still get to have special learning experiences like helping dad work on the family car or mom with her work in the garden.  I'd also take classes for Okinawan Karate because I saw Karate Kid when I was small and wanted to be like Daniel LaRusso.

Given how seriously I'd take something like that, I'd advance pretty quickly and in just a few months I'd be a blue-belt.

Having the freedom to move about in Juuban, I would eventually find the Hikawa Shrine and run into the girls as they arrive for a study session.  I would know just enough Japanese to get by (barely) and they would immediately twig to the fact that I speak fluent English and OH MY GOD THAT ENGLISH TEST IS TOMORROW HEEEELLLP!

And so it would go.  11-year old me, bishi as all get out because I take strongly after my mom, and a bunch of girls three years older than me are practically fawning over me.  I'm being an energetic bundle of ADHD, excited to be helping out all these pretty girls and they think that I am absolutely the best and teaching me all kinds of things in return.  Not only just Japanese, but pop culture stuff that is 'cool' because as pretty as I am, I absolutely gotta be cool, too.

And then I accidentally find one of Rei's ofuda.  Which promptly incinerates itself the moment I pick it up.  Nobody knows what the hell just happened, but the cats do.... they're staying quiet for the moment.

And then later, after several days of meeting up with my new friends, I run into my first youma.

It does not go according to the youma's plans.  I no sale their macguffin-of-the-week and they take it personally.  At witch point I no sale their attacks and begin to beat down the bastard.

Cue the Senshi showing up.

"Ah... guys?  What's going on?  And why the costumes?"  Yeah, he'd see through their glamour.  At which point they bring him in (after dealing with the insensate youma) and after trying a few things at the Moon Cats direction, Artemis drops the bomb.

"He's a voider."

"What?"

"He voids any and all magic he touches - complete dispelling of all thaumaturgical energies.  Pure magic attacks don't hurt him, healing spells don't work, and forget about altering his perceptions or controlling his mind.  And any malicious spirit that tries to possess him is in for a nasty surprise.  These guys were considered abominations by the Empire back in the day."

"WHAT!?"

"Well, think about it.  Magic spells keeping all the air breathable... one little slip up from someone like him and suddenly everyone is sucking on Lunar vacuum.

"His kind were also the reason why we were in a sort of cold war with the Earth Kingdom.  While we were hunting them down, the Earth Kingdom was welcoming them with open arms.  Granted, most of them had to live in a state specially set aside for them.  They were damn good with machines since they couldn't use magic.  But one of them was able to control his ability.  The guy was like a boogeyman - scared the crap out of everyone because he could actually project his nullifying ability.  He was the reason why Earth remained habitable during the collapse of the Empire.  Not even Metalia wanted to take him on head-on.  Instead they dropped a small asteroid on their state in the opening salvos.

"Except he wasn't home at the time.  And he went out and got revenge.  It was not pretty.

"We're not sure what happened to him after that, but I'm pretty sure we're looking at one of his descendants right here."

Just imagine the horror that the Shitenyou would experience if they ever kidnapped me in my sleep... only to break out of my cell by touching the magical forcefield and just going around and fucking shit up everywhere until the Senshi show up - By then I've broken the geass that's been on the Four Heavenly Generals all this time and we're all like, "Welcome to the party!  Grab a weapon and let's finish clearing this hell hole out!"

Oh, and I would be a mere three months older than Hotaru.  Guess what's getting butterflied to hell and gone again?  

So, thoughts?  Input?  Kvetching?

So, the forum has a +1 feature. (And a -1 feature, which I hope I'll never use.)

I just discovered that it can be applied to members as well as to posts. But I can only give five of those ratings per day, and I wanted to give a +1 to seven members... But that's what tomorrow will bring.

In 1945, Dundonald Park was where RCMP officers watched Soviet agents ransack Igor Gouzenko's apartment, "officially" starting off the Cold War.

In 2017, Dundonald Park was the site of a portable meth lab. (Yeah. A meth lab, out in the open.)

It's a nice little park... too bad it just can't get a break.--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

For some reason video embeds -- whether imported or created here -- work inside the editor window but don't when displayed in a thread.  A quick search indicates a couple of possible reasons.  

I've put tracking this down and fixing it on my to-do list.