Peg and I are home, along with my mom, whom I picked up from her home much closer to the landfall point than we are.  We are still very close, but Sandy is hitting the Jersey shore well south of us.  Both of us are working from home, Peg on a day-by-day basis and me through tomorrow at least.
We were away in West Virginia all weekend, in case anyone was worried about not seeing me in the forums for the last four days.
So far we still have power, gas and lights, and we're at the top of a goodly hill that has been far more than sufficient to isolate us from earlier flooding events (we're at least 100 feet above the highest flood levels predicted for Sandy).  We're well-stocked with emergency supplies, and have a small butane burner to cook with if we lose the gas, thanks to Kat and Joe and Scott.
And almost every tree that could fall on our house already has in previous storms.
Anyway, we're hunkered down for the next 36+ hours, and expect to come out okay no matter what.  We're hoping everyone else in the path of the storm is safe and well and continues to stay that way.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20068927
About cold calling.

Just a few images taken from the Tunnels of Frigga









Rather captures the atmosphere kind of well..... fifty-kilometre tunnel blasts through gloom and dust with an assortment of vehicles. Pictured here are an Aston Martin, a Ferrari and a Lamborghini..... Also present were a bunch of other oddities, including a Freshly restored Shelby GT500 owned by the Con Director, the Highway Star.... a whole clutch of various motorcycles, a number of Supercars, even more muscle cars, a few HGV's, a Tachikoma, and more than a few standard models that may have been launched along with Unreal Estate and kept for whatever reasons. Along with one or two of the more modern wave-modified machinery being produced by the car manufacturers of the world.

All out for three days of free-running, enthusiast get-together, petrol-head headonism. Even if you didn't bring a car or bike, there was bound to be someone willing to give you a ride....

Meanwhile, in the civilised parts of the rock, a Concours d'elegance, alongside a custom vehicle show, film-car replicas, mixed with a trade hall selling various spare parts and addons and tools, one or two manufacturers who decided it was worth their while to sent a model or two all the way out, and a fuel station operated by Stel-oil providing lubricants and fuels... and various standard gas-station cuisines.

Security was provided by a a few Bailey's rolling around in a Ford Falcon XB coupe, painted up in MFP colours.... And an old Dodge Monaco Police Special.

(Actual source is Top Gear driving under the People's Palace in Romania)
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

At least that's what it says on all the signs.
Anyway, I'm back. Morgantown has been deceptively warm and sunny; I expect winter to attack at any moment.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

Cat Empire is an Aussie band with lots of fun songs.One Four Five:

Quote:Oh listen doctor I've a pain

That grows inside myself

So help me please

I just can't ease the pain

I need some drugs to help

Ah pollution fills my lungs

And convolution fills my mind

Ah my legs do ache

I contemplate

That living's less than fine

My spine does tingle

When I think of being

Freed from this curse

But what is worse I feel

Life is a bubble

Blown until it's burst

Oh doctor I am desperate

To get rid of this feeling

Oh doctor I am desperate

For some good soul healing

The doctor turned and gave a grin

And reached into his bag

But instead of an injection

Got a record with a tag

That said listen to this daily

With hip shaking and such things

Then he puts the record on

Grabs a mic and starts to sing

You need some

One four five

To make you high to make you high

To make you high to make you high

When heaven falling from the sky

To make you high to make you high

Oh, doctor I am feeling better

What was that you sang

Did you write it or recite it

Or just steal it from a band

Ah my bones are feeling stronger

And my spirit's feeling fresh

Ah that dose of 145 has put the life

Back in my breath

'yes yes yes' the doctor said

Then he sat me down and say

'young man don't think I wrote

These chords they're written in your brain'

And when you hear them

There's a shakedown that begins within the mind

Cos these three chords make people

Feeling better all the time whah-oh

They keep repeating

Like a scratch on a CD
But it's quality cos these three harmonies

Breed positivity

Protecting against insanity

Of modern insecurities

Believe me when I tell you

All you need is to be hearing all that

One four five

To make you high to make you high

To make you high to make you high

When they said what and you said why

To make you high to make you high

The doctor turned and gave a grin

And reached into his bag

But instead of an injection

Got a record with a tag

That said listen to this daily

With hip shaking and such things

Then he puts the record on

Grabs a mic and starts to sing

You need some

One four five

To make you high to make you high

When you could not count to pi

When you're told you can't fly

To make you high to make you high

Times like these you need some

One four five .... Hmmmmm

Quote:Songs and melodies change and change and sway

But they still stay the same

The songs that we sung when the dark days come

Are the songs that we sung when we chased them away

If I ever found a pot of gold

I'd buy bottles untold of the nectar of the vines

I'm going to die with a twinkle in my eye

'cause I sung songs spun stories loved laughed and drank wine
CHORUS:
Tomorrow is another day

The cats are out to play, to play

That old rusty spaceship wants to sail

Into the milky way again

On a river of red red wine
Run (x13)
Let's have some
Fun (x15)
We'll
Drink (x13)A toast to theSun (x15)(Repeat from "Run")

In summer the bushfires rage and rage and rage

On such beautiful days

And we fight them with water that runs through the cracks

Water we're desperately trying to save

So I'll just live on wine and water my vines

And sleep on the wind with the fires right behind

And sing on the beaches and swim through the night

Oh we'll cry 'pass the wine, pass the wine, pass the wine'

CHORUS

Oh what a beautiful day today!

Today's a day to celebrate

Grab your bucket, grab your spade

We're heading down to Half Moon Bay

I saw a plane go into a cloud

I'm drunk I'm happy I'm singing and loud

Two o'clock in the arvo, but hey that's allowed...

I'm having a good time and of that I am proud

Quote:[Chorus:]
Lord unchain my hands
Let me sing inside the crowded trams
Let me dance among the traffic jams
We're going to sleep on the St Kilda sands
Lord unbind my feet
Let me mingle with the good people we meet
Water rising up into the street
Unbind my feet

'The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet black bough"
Ezra Pound found the formula
Our houses are rectangular
But life is curved not angular
So when things start to strangle ya
Remember
Rain still falls on the halls of power
New babies being born every hour
And the eagle keeps watch on the old clock tower
Over me...
[Chorus]

On the train I refrain from sitting with head and shoulders bowed
They told me time is of the essence
No wandering allowed
But then I saw a pretty girl
Whose features stood out in the crowd
Went ten minutes past my stop waiting for her to look around
I'm just another clown kicking around in Melbourne town
Cooling out, relaxing, watching the world go round
So if you ever got the time
And you want to go drink some wine
I'd rather greet you with a smile
Than greet you with a frown...
[120% more bombastic chorus]

Quote:He had a thousand ideas
You might have heard his name
He lived alone with his vision
Not looking for fortune or fame

Never said too much to speak of
He was off on another plane
The words that he said were a mystery
Nobody's sure he was sane

But he knew
Knew more than me or you
No one could see his view
Where was he going to?

He was in search of an answer
The nature of what we are
He was trying to do it a new way
He was bright as a star

But nobody understood him
"His numbers are not the way"
He's lost in the deepest enigma
That no one's unraveled today

But he knew
He knew more than me or you
No one could see his view
Oh, where was he going to?
And he tried
But before he could tell us he died
When he left us the people cried
Where was he going to? Oh....

He had a different idea
A glimpse of the master plan
He could see into the future
A true visionary man

But there's something he never told us
It died when he went away
If only he could have been with us
No telling what he might say

But he knew
He knew more than me or you
No one could see his view
Where was he going to?
But he knew
You could tell by the picture he drew
It was totally something new
Oh, where was he going to?

Given that Youtube is apparently trying to (slowly) phase out the old embed code, which we need to embed videos here, I thought I'd post it up here for the day when the option is removed from all videos.  The code works just fine with videos that lack the option, you just need to copy the unique ID part of the url into the code in two places. 
http://www.youtube.com/v/[enter ID code here]?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0

Just paste this into the html view, remove all the red text, including the brackets, and replace it with the gibberish ID code from the end of the url of the video you want to embed.  You can also play with the viewer size at the start of the code.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

This is actually my first post to a forum - here goes nothing. Thanks again to Bob wor welcoming me to the community.
While this is my first post, I've been catching up on things since I found the forum and wiki. While things are pretty well fleshed-out in Earth-Luna space and the Belt has received quite a bit of attention recently, Mars seems to have been overlooked a bit. Hopefully, these three posts - and can someone else add them to the wiki; I haven't got the faintest clue how - will correct that. Opinions, suggestions, criticisms, and, of course, compliments are all welcome.
~~~

Pavonis Arcology

Pavonis
Mons in Tharsis is home to not one but
several interconnected, quasi-subterranean communities that operate under the
banner of the Pavonis Arcology. All
of them were built and are still supported and partly managed by the NERV
Foundation. They are each a part of the multi-phase plan, Project RED EARTH,
that is the main focus of the foundation's Natural Environment Re-creation
Venture. It is worth mentioning that, similar to Canada, Pavonis is bilingual
in its signage and education: English and Japanese, reflecting its founders.





Flag of Armitage III Mars, used by Pavonis

Using Binford's super-hardy
construction material vulcanocrete – a ceramic material made up of the lava
rock of Pavonis herself mixed with ground-up quartz and something else (generic
plaster mixed with pure handwavium, it's not a very good secret) – the NERV
Foundation successfully carved several Martian settlements into the extinct
volcano.

While originally rather bare of
settlers who didn't directly work for NERV members, the arcology had a boom in population
once construction on RED EARTH Phase Four started in March 2011 when the Elies,
at least for the foreseeable future, threw their lot in with Pavonis. It also
saw a slight increase during the Boskone War of Belters, but the majority who
went to Mars instead of cislunar space went to Port Lowell and Helium, instead.
The arcology' biggest population boom to date was after the opening ceremony
for New Port City when a surprising number of Japanese immigrants moved there.

[table]

<Berlin, "Take My Breath Away, 4:13>

you wanted to be specific/literal, I'd go for gradual asphyxiation. That's just boring, though.

My preferred interpretation would be the ability to create vacuums (not vacuum cleaners, but absences of air). This would work for literalism (and be a remarkably quiet way to kill someone), but might also have some utility uses.

If you wanted to get metaphorical, it makes Doug as breathtaking a sight as (meta)humanly possible.

<deadmau5 ft. Kaskade, "I Remember", 9:53>

first, I was thinking of a 'reverse amnesia' effect, but Doug already has that.

Maybe eidetic memory for the duration of the song? If Doug caught enough of the lyrics, I'd make it a retroactive effect- sort of a 'You can remember any events in your entire life with perfect clarity for 9:53'.

Otherwise, I'd see it as making it impossible for him to forget anything that happened while the song was active.

<Bachman-Turner Overdrive, "Takin' Care Of Business", 4:54>
way I can see this one going. Maybe the ability to blend into an office environment perfectly, as though he belongs there? Or maybe a time dilation effect- a way to get in a full workday in a much shorter amount of time?

Either way, it's a classic song.

...Evangelia has gone on undercover assignment in the Rogue Isles.
In other news, she racked up almost a hundred badges tonight. 
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Sadly, the copy I came across does not support "old-style" embed code, so I can only provide link to it.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.