So I'm thinking to myself this afternoon, "how many page views do I have left for the boards?"  And I sit down once I get home and take care of my immediate chores and look.
28.
Dash to the Admin/Contributions page, make a quick purchase of 270,000 pageviews, and back to the boards.  Look at the Contributions page to make sure the views are there.
270016.
12 views in the time it took me to make a credit card purchase...  if I'd been 15 minutes later, there'd've been another "I'm seeing ads!  Why?" thread...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

The Declaration of Independence names three natural rights, believed to have been granted to each and every human being by God.
Life?  Avada Kedavra.
Liberty?  Imperio.
Pursuit of Happiness?  Crucio.(Hard to be happy when everything you know is pain, eh?)Not sure how Bob can use this (or how Doug would react to this), but it struck me as interesting.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/new ... -sale.html]James Bond's Lotus is up for sale.

Probably a bit out of my price range, even with no minimum bid set...
--
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

So...  who else backed the Kickstart for this and got their copies four days ago?  I installed mine pretty much immediately, and let me tell you it's gorgeous.  They could have used a copyeditor on some of the text, and I've definitely spotted a bug (or a systematic error of some other sort) in the screen for hiring runners for a team (I saw entirely too many heavily-cybered characters with 6 essence), but overall the look is amazing, the music is great, and the story material I've gotten through so far has been top-notch.
Speaking of which, I wasted almost my entire weekend on the initial story arc.  I'm still not done with it, because I keep accomplishing the main goal but dying anyway in the final segment.  Has anyone else gotten all the way to the end, and if so, do you have any advice for living through the last bit?  Thanks.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

"Flyaway"

"Going Dutchman" - floating away from your mek/ship/etc untethered and with only your vacsuit's air - is the not so secret terror most spacers refuse to even speak of. Not so Flyaway, after experiencing it once by accident that crazy b* does it for fun! (S)he's not stupid about it, always takes a spare patch kit, beacon, and bubbletent, but apparently being alone in the black with the hab lights just another distant star is 'just enough sky' for 'elbow room.' Flyaway's agoraphilia never quits!
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

They're out - you know what to do! It's like that GEICO Camel: "Hump DAYYYY!!"

http://www.pinoyanime.tv/space-battlesh ... -2199-ova/

In their never ending quest to impede anyone actually using the site and turn any worthwhile features into unuseable crap, their latest update has now made it impossible to log on with the psp browser, hence to add items to my favorites list, the one and only goddamn useful feature aside from basic hosting of pages.

I fully expect they will find a way to screw that up as well soon enough, censored censored censored so censored hoo boy censored.

Censored.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

I came across this in the midst of an essay on why Hufflepuff is the best house.


Edit:  revisiting the link, I finally noticed the essay's author gave credit for this image to "Tumblr user littletude."  
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

Okay, the thing to understand here is that while a *soul* is asingle object, it is, like most everything else in the universe,made up of smaller bits -- "soul atoms", if you will.  Those inthe know -- gods, friends of gods, certain professionals, amongothers -- usually call these soul components "Forces".
(Why "Forces"?  I haven't the faintest, and the gods I've askedhaven't been too clear in their answers.  Belldandy said it was"difficult to explain in less than 8 dimensions".  Urd just wavedher hand and said I didn't need to know the details as long as Ihad the basics down.  Skuld rattled off something I think was anexplanation, but it involved math beyond anything I'd managed tomaster.  Marller agreed with Urd.  And Chris said his "How To BeA God" correspondence course hadn't gotten to that lesson yet. 
There are a half-dozen to a dozen good metaphors for what a soul
*is*, but none of them are actual explanations, and none of them
involve anything involving the usual meaning of "force".)
Anyway, there are three kinds of Forces -- Ethereal, Corporeal,and Celestial, and how many your soul has, in total, ranks you onthe scale between amoebas and gods.  (In case you hadn't guessedalready, humans are on one of the bottommost rungs of *that*
particular ladder.)  How many you have of each particular type
says a lot about what you are and what you can do.  Ethereal
Forces, for example, are somehow connected to both your
intelligence and your sanity; if you somehow lose Ethereal
Forces, you will lose one, or the other, or both.  Plants have no
Ethereal Forces.  Animals have almost none.  Humans have a couple
more than animals.  Gods need a big bag to tote all theirs in. 
You get the idea.
Corporeal Forces have some strange correlation to how physicallypowerful/adept you are, although how that gets expressed varieswith the type of critter you are.  In mere mortals, a loss orgain of Corporeal Forces translates directly into a degradationor improvement of your body in some way.  For Celestial beings,to whom 3-dimensional physical bodies are akin to a finger cotwith a face drawn on it, it reflects how much physical power they
have available to exert through their avatars, regardless of
their size or apparent physical fitness.  (Practical example: 
Skuld could effortlessly bench-press a tank if she were inclined
to do so, and disabled whatever it was that limited her to a
more-or-less human level.) It's weird, and part of that thing
that was "difficult" according to Belldandy.
I never did get a good grip on what Celestial Forces were about.I know they have something to do with perception and intuition,and they definitely provided some kind of link to your choice ofside in the Big Game the Celestials are playing.  Beyond that,
well, I'm clueless, although I have some guesses.  I *think*
they're kind of the framework on which all that makes you *you*
is hung, the metaphysical equivalent of a skeleton.  But unlike a
skeleton, bits can be added and removed without too much fuss. 
Most of the time.
And that's another thing.  Celestials can add Forces to -- andremove them *from* -- lesser beings' souls just like snapping
Lego pieces on and off a model plane.  That's what Skuld did when
she took Megumi as a Servitor -- she took a Celestial Force fromwho-knows-where and added it to the Megster's soul.  This wasapparently enough to elevate Megumi from "mere mortal" to
"incredibly minor Celestial being".  (Senbei outranks her
easily.)  And if Meg ever does anything to seriously piss her
off, Skuld can take it right back again.
"Okay," you're saying, "that's all positively *fascinating* I'msure, but why are you telling me all this?"  Well, bunky, it'sbecause of Voldemort and soul jars.  Mortals have a couple waysthey can knock individual Forces loose from their souls.  Becauseof the way these things work in 12 dimensions, they're not reallydisconnected fully, not like a Celestial would make it.  They'remore, um, orbiting?  Loosely linked to?  Occupying a probabilitycloud around?  Something along those lines in relation to thesoul they got knocked off of.  In four-D space-time they can be
light-years away from the soul they came from, but in the other
eight dimensions they're still *right freaking there* and part of
the soul.
And if you attach them to something that has no Forces of its
own, like a diary, a ring, or four or five other things that
*can't die* because they're not alive to begin with, well then,
when you die, your soul can't go anywhere -- because the loosebits of your soul are nailed firmly to the universe and hold youthere.
The only problem with this method is that each of those loose
bits don't actually work very well with the others any more, so
every one of these anchors you make screws with you in some way. 
Do it enough, and you'll end up a brain-dead cripple who can't
even conceive of what they did to get to that state.
This is why *competent* practitioners only move their *entire*
soul in one piece to a protected anchor.  Because what good is
immortality if you're going to spend eternity in a basket,
drooling?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

I've sort of been on a Spacebattles archive binge for the last month or so.  At some point along the line, I got thinking.
...yes, I know that that's a scary proposition.  Quiet.
The idea got stuck in my head- well, ideas.  There have been a few of them.  I ended up using a few, and saving the rest for later. 
Be warned- this is mostly unedited, and will also take some time to reach the good bits.  Stylistic, grammar, plot, and spelling critiques are welcomed.
**********
Entry 1 (Day 1)
"...that's odd.  I don't remember a forest being here.  Where the heck am I?"
The last thing I remember before the forest was getting on the freeway after work.  It was a really nice day- blue sky, fluffy white clouds, just the right amount of sun and breeze and coolness- the sort of day that  you can't help but enjoy the drive.  So I did.
It was easy enough to let the world around me just fall away, leaving nothing but the road in front of me, my three mirrors, the needle on my speedometer, and the wonderful cool breeze coming in my open window.  I couldn't tell you how long I spent like that.
What I remember is noticing that the cool breeze I'd been enjoying had become fifteen degrees (Fahrenheit, of course- I'm an American) warmer, the off-ramp I was expecting was just the slightest bit *missing*- oh, and there was a *tree* where I was expecting a road.
...one swerve and a lot of frantic braking later, I'd brought my faithful four-door to a stop in a grassy field, of all places.  There was a forest in my rearview mirror.  This wasn't exactly impossible- I live in a very green, very forested area- but I'd've had to go quite some distance to get to the nearest one.
Quite some distance in the other direction, that is.  Through a city or two, and possibly over some rivers.  Needless to say, I was quite confused.
So I ended up taking a walk back along my path, following the ruts I'd dug in the dirt.  Those tire tracks vanished a few hundred feet into the edge of the forest- and I mean *vanished*.  They literally came into existence in the middle of a big muddy patch.  I spent two hours looking for any way- ANY WAY AT ALL- that I could've gotten there except for the obvious.  No dice.
I'm lost.  Worse than that, I seem to have been made lost, by some agency beyond my ken.
...now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to curl up into a ball and whimper helplessly for a while.