I'm Irascor.
Just wanted to say hello, not sure what I can contribute right now, but I wanted to say hi and thank Bob for letting me join.

O'Neill Station - 13/Jul/2012
The physical structure of O'Neill Station was built by an external contractor, under various provisions for secrecy.  Staffing was an initial problem, but eventually an 'Arthur' produced the goods, and initially ran "Lagrange Recruitment".  Arthur was supervised, except for his early work, by a line manager, 'Ms Jones'.
There are no files maintained about Arthur, on O'Neill Station, or various other low-level resources, which is what Arthur started as.  O'Neill probably doesn't even know his name, he just knows they've got someone who can solve problems.  Ms Jones isn't near the top of the ladder, she is a middle-level resource, herself, and her higher management is in Earth-based offices, in Australia.
The seventy-odd attractive young women who are permanent employees on O'Neill Station fall into three groups: The Angels (Sarah, Jane, Kelly), the humanoid remotes of the ten AIs, and the 'normal' (englamored) humans.
You shouldn't forget O'Neill Station runs as a private home, an estate.  This is different from Stellvia, which has major elements of service industry and commercial enterprise.  O'Neill will have offices in his home but will likely be careful as to which of his staff have access to them.  It is likely Jane will have access, Sarah will have her own office, and limited access, and Kelly will have no access at all.  A number of the general crew will have access in line with their duties, which include cleaning and maintenance, as well as clerical and administrative work.  There are no administrative AIs; the AIs on O'Neill Station run infrastructure.
The relationship between the Angels and the O'Neill Station AIs - that is more difficult.  It's not clear that the Angels would regard them as 'sisters', they are certainly biologically different.  The Angels to all tests are biologically human, without a biomod.
The AIs are not immobile, Arthur made sure of that.  Their humanoid remotes are quite capable of going and unplugging their AI cores, which will cheerfully run on batteries for tens of hours, and travelling off the station.  That's the way they arrived, and they could leave the same way.  Leaving chaos in their wake.
For details of the 'normal' humans, see the "Hollywood Machine", for the AIs see "Uncanny Valley".  The existence of the Hollywood Machine (AKA 'The Machine') is one of the secrets of the station.  The Angels might bear a suspicious thematic resemblance to improved(?) versions of "Charlie's Angels", but this isn't talked about.  At all.  It is, of course, completely unclear who "Charlie" might be.  Bloody murder might occur if someone makes a bad suggestion.
Actually, there is a Bosley.  She's a heavily-built, though glamorous, woman in her early 30s, who lied about her age being 25; she did have the looks, and forged paperwork, to get away with this.  Her name is Alison 'Lee' Kay, a divorced engineer (and not a spy or investigator), who works in Maintenance, doing the awkward heavy lifting.  Kelly befriended her first, and introduced her to Jane, then Sarah.  They affectionately call her 'Boz' (when they're sure they're alone) and she tries to mother the Angels, and anyone else she can get her hands on.
Lee actually died in the Hollywood Machine.  She was the first one they put through the process after Kelly had gone through, on an experimental basis.  The Machine took the usual half-an-hour with Kelly, but she came out apparently unchanged, though she complained about strange dreams, and flashbacks.  The Machine decided there needed to be a Bosley.  Unfortunately it isn't designed to do casting.
Kelly worked for half a day to save Lee, and waved up some extraordinary Steam Punk medical tech in the process.  After two days in bed, Lee was ready to return to duty, and the only change was she'd acquired a 'Mother' aura.  And now has some investigator skills, and an interest in, and skill with, firearms (copied from Kelly).  Kelly wrote a report on the incident, which pointed out they hadn't got as much as an operators manual for The Machine, and one day, it might go rogue.  She strongly recommended that the original designer and builder, an 'Arthur', be asked to provide any available documentation, and if it didn't exist, create it.  This report was apparently completely ignored.

Query:  How in Arioch's name do you make a hidden spoiler show up so you can read it?  I've been reduced to copying the "blank" area and then pasting it into a random document on my computer, which is a ridiculously cumbersome procedure.  If there's instructions for this somewhere on the Forums, I wasn't able to figure out the right place to look.
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

Looks like a "where are they now" retrospective rather than a new episode, but hey... http://www.wired.com/geekmom/2012/07/ne ... v-special/]new Firefly show on November 11
--
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

Some details drifting out of the latest Coffee Talk.

Presence still doesn't strike me as a pool I'll take much. Punch/Kick now actually mildly useful and new T5 uses both of them to essentially give you an entire secondary attack chain if you own all of them. 

Nuke. All. The. Things.

That is all.
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"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

Especially the ice cream shooter in Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep.

That is all.

- dNN when a minigame makes you give up in frustration on the intro level, just maybe it should not be made into a mandatory plot checkpoint. Thank Primus for the Saves page on Gamefaqs, at least I can play the other two characters' stories and the epilogue.
--
"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

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news ... cousin.php

2x exp weekend

http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/top ... d-up-Anime

That's just one example, I've discovered several threads where every post past the first is telling me it cannot be restored.  I'm not sure of a pattern yet and am just wondering if this is a known thing or if there's been some wonky database corruption that's slipped by somehow.

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... 5808.story]Yahoo confirms 400,000 email addresses hacked

Quote:The company also said it is notifying other companies whose users may have been affected -- which may include people who use AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and many others.

Master Of All - 12/Jul/2012
Arthur felt a bit better in himself.  Since he completed 'Project Infrastructure'.  Maybe felt a little in control.  And he thought he sensed an air almost of respect, from Ms Jones, when she came and checked his accounts.
"You do seem a bit senior, Ms Jones, to be doing work like this" he remarked. When he thought about it later he realised she hadn't quite answered that, and shifted to inquiring where he got his accountancy training.  She wasn't completely believing when he mentioned a single college term, and, that after all, it was pretty straight-forward.
Looking back, he supposed Ms Jones wasn't his first manager.  That honour went to Kevin Wright, an 'investment manager', whose talent for taking small 'business development' loans and turning them into regular income streams was arguably impressive.  Arthur got his repair business, via him, as an elderly engineer retired due to ill health.  Called him the "Wright Stuff".  Where'd he gone?
Arthur had been reading his contract terms more carefully.  And, consulting a retired friend of his aunt, who'd taught the subject.  Yes, the retainer meant he couldn't work for competitors, but it specifically permitted his repair business.  That gave him some leeway, and work, seeing as Rod was still in college.
Making sure the Body Builder was his had helped.  Handwavium, particularly with the moral panic around it, scared a lot of people.  He supposed he was a bit fatalistic.  He couldn't stop himself dying, maybe tomorrow, in a car accident.  So, why worry?  If you treated it with respect you were probably OK, and wouldn't wake-up with a tail and a particular fondness for fish.
The humanoid robots made by the Body Builder were handwavium-free.  He'd got certificated proof of that, and, always checked it himself with a gadget he'd waved up.  Seeing as a hand and arm reportedly sold, on its own, for $100k to the space industry, selling his complete robots for $50k looked quite feasible.  He already had a number of enquiries.  Yes, conventional batteries didn't give much untethered running time, so they could fight their consciences about buying his waved Li-on ones, good for a few tens of hours.
The latest request from above seemed a bit... hurried.  It was also simpler than anything they'd previously asked.  Survey robots, for use in the asteroid belt, that could work with minimal supervision.  They didn't even need to look like cute girls.
It took him a little while, but he found out what happened to Kevin Wright.  The man was in his early fifties, but he'd had a stroke.  After a year and a half of recovery and therapy he could talk, reasonably clearly, again, and walk with the aid of a stick.  He might never regain full use of his hand.  He'd never had a pension, and was effectively retired.  While he didn't say so, Arthur was pretty sure his savings were running out.
Arthur saw red.  He pulled an all-nighter and built a custom nursing robot from scratch, using the Body Builder for the easy bits.  His time, his parts, his money.  Then, spent a few evenings looking at Mather's AI discs, or his copies of them, anyway (the originals were in a bank vault).  The man was a genius, but there were things about the file-names, even the directory structure, that disturbed him.  And there were PNG files of ritual diagrams, some of which hurt his eyes to look at.
Next, he bullied his way on board O'Neill Station, for an inspection tour. Checking the installed AIs, and the Hollywood Machine while he was there.  He found a few things to criticise, too.  Demanded new procedures to protect power systems from overloads, in case of faults.  Walked straight past Jane Dow and didn't even flinch.
He got his fifteen minutes with The Machine, unsupervised, to run his tests, and when it tried to intimidate him he growled back.  Interesting to watch it try and camouflage itself against the bulkhead.  Nurse Blake came out perfect.  He had a full set of readings of her glamorisation process.  When they complained he pointed out that he'd provided test materials at his own expense, and that it'd be on his invoice.
Arthur was shaking when he got back to his office.  The adrenaline was gone, and he was wondering if he'd ever work again.  But, he had proven skills.  The package from his lawyer was there, waiting for him.  "Wright Stuff Mechatronics" would soon be a going concern.  Nurse Blake seemed quite happy with the idea of working to assist Kevin Wright, and her AI core would live in Kevin's car.
Later, after the "Master Surveyor" was finished, which proved a reasonably trivial job (though he'd only waved up one complete set), he sat and thought.  He couldn't claim that the 'good guys' won.  He wasn't sure there were any good guys.  He wasn't one.  But, if they existed, Kevin Wright certainly was.
And now, Kevin'd have the money to get his lawyer to look really hard at his own new contract terms.  Arthur wanted him to be sure he wasn't being cheated.
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"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind