Hello, everyone,
It's been a while for me since I last was on this board, so I hope all's well with everyone here, including our delightful hosts.
Anyhow, here's a little something I just wrote tonight.  The muses are being silly with me today.
Cheers!
Fred
**** **** ****
The Loon and the Ladies from
Avalon
by Fred Herriot
**** **** ****
Based on Drunkard's Walk,
created by Robert M. Schroeck; and Phoenix From the Ashes, created by
Fred Herriot
**** **** ****

Local date:  Unknown,
Location:  Unknown

I woke up in a tall field of
grass.

Blinking as I noted the sun
high in the sky, I then sensed some dirt lying on my face and touching my
lips.  Spitting out same as I reached up
to wipe my face clean, I then moaned as I slowly boosted myself into a sitting
position with my elbows.  Looking through
my helmet's eye protectors, I was quick to notice that I was in what appeared
to be a well-trampled military training reservation.  The worn-down track ruts – while quite fresh –
clearly indicated this was some sort of tank range.

Before I could take a
detailed look around, my ears then picked up something.

A tank's diesel engine.

Sensing the slight tremor in
the Earth under my butt, I quickly turned to look where the noise was coming
from . . . and then gaped on seeing a very impressive-looking machine come out
from behind a thick stand of trees, racing down a nearby path at a VERY good
clip.  On recognising said tank as a
Leopard 2 – the main battle tank of the German Army and a few other armies – I then
blinked as nearly-forgotten briefings on such machines came back to me.  Leopards were diesel-driven machines; they
didn't have the turbine engine an M1A1 Abrams possessed.  Yet this machine here . . .!

I then winced as said machine
suddenly came to a screeching halt – a "combat stop" as it was called
amongst regular Army boys worldwide – and then the commander's hatch popped
open to allow said commander to lean out and look my way.

Whoo, boy . . .

"There you are!"

I perked on hearing that
shout from somewhere to my left, and then I turned . . .

. . . to find a small group
of women walking towards me, visibly armed in what seemed to be fighting order
and clearly out for a wonderful constitutional in the boonies.  While not recognising the actual pattern of
their camouflage shirts and pants – not to mention their web gear and even then
boots! – I was quick to see the low-visibility flags on their
shoulders.  One with a simple design of
dark sides with a pale middle the same width as the flag's height, a stylised
maple leaf placed there.

Okay.

I was somewhere in Canada.

Or possibly in Germany
butting in on a NATO exercise being run by the First Canadian Infantry Division,
whose 4th Brigade was – as I barely could remember in my universe – based in
the Black Forest of Baden-Württemberg near the Rhine River.

A glance back at the tank.

Yep.  Black maple leaf on the turret.

"I'm in Germany, aren't
I?" I then asked the person whom I believe called out to me.

A shake of the head as a too
cute for words smile crossed her camouflaged face.  "No, you're currently in the exercise
area of Canadian Forces Base Niagara, sir," she answered in a polite voice
as she slung her rifle – an M16A2 derivative, not the Canadian-built FN FAL
rifle soldiers of that nation used when I was last on my Earth – over her
shoulder.  Her friends were also relaxing
as they slung their weapons.

That struck me immediately as
odd.

Unless . . .

"Am I home?" I
whispered.

Sympathy seemed to flow out
from all their faces.  "No,
sir," the woman who had spoken to me replied, looking as if she wished to
take personal responsibly for my decades-long separation from my home dimension
and my wife.  What the heck?  "Haida detected the space-warp
that brought you onto the exercise range about ten minutes ago.  We were busy enjoying some time out in the
field after coming back to rejoin our battalion after graduating from trades
training at the Valcartier Garrison."

I smiled.  "Vandoos?!"

A grin came back.  "No. 
Canadian Guards.  First
Battalion."

A nod.  Canadian troops assigned to the Warriors
often came from that youngest of the Dominion's six full-time infantry
regiments.  "A unit worthy of its
hire," I then complemented them, which made them blush to their toes even
under the camouflage.

"Thank you," she
replied as she gave me a knowing look. 
"I assume you come from a universe where the Regiment also
exists?" she asked.

"It does,
Guardsman," I replied, noting her rank slip-on on her front was blank over
the unit tag CG; obviously, the short-form title of the Regiment of
Canadian Guards.  "Sometimes frowned
on by the old boys in the Vandoos, the Royal Canadians and the Princess Pats,
but they do their job and take good pride in it."  I then moved to stand.  "I apologise for butting in on your
exercise.  How is it . . .?"

Turning to gaze to the
southwest, I stopped . . .

. . . on seeing HER.

"Oh – my – GOD!"

The guardsmen all grinned.

"That's Haida,"
the one who had been talking to me proudly declared.

I blinked, gazed on her for a
moment, and then turned back to gaze on the cigar-shaped starship
floating serenely over the ground in the near-distance.

One honkin' HUGE starship to
boot!

And incredible as this is
going to sound . . .

. . . it had the Canadian
flag painted on the hull aft of amidships.

"Yeah . . .!" I
breathed out.

THIS was going to be
different . . .

*    *   
*

Local date and time:  Sunday 9 May 2011, 1322 hours EDT
Local location:  Over Canadian Forces Base Niagara (east of
Welland, Ontario),

"Hey!"

I perked on hearing that
voice, and then looked up to see a smiling Navy medic – I assumed she was Navy
given her nearly-black work dress uniform, black beret with the badge of the
Canadian Forces Medical Services on it and the blank rank slip-ons on her shoulders,
though those were decorated with a very nicely-designed unit tag with the word HAIDA
in orange-gold on a dark blue field surrounded by ship's rope and topped by a
British-type naval coronet – gazing at me. 
"Yeah?" I asked.

"You sure you don't need
to get into Sickbay?" she asked.

For the fifth
time since I got aboard this rather LARGE shuttlecraft – it was called a
"Star Flare" and looked like a weird mix of a Lambda-class shuttle
from Star Wars and the Gemini-class shuttle from Battlestar Galactica
– which had, some minutes before, picked up Mrs. Sangoir's only son from the
exercise field now over a kilometre below the keel and was now taking me aboard
Her Majesty's Canadian Starship Haida.

Yep.

You read that right, folks.

Starship.

In the Year of Our Lord
TWO-THOUSAND AND ELEVEN, to boot!

How the HELL that was
possible, I couldn't BEGIN to guess.

Still, it was a change of
pace compared to other times over the last several decades that I've initially
arrived in other dimensions.

Clearly, the tech – which was
WAY above Earth baseline for MY own dimension, not to mention all the other
places I've been to in my travels – could sniff out dimensional breaches with
great ease.  And clearly, whoever was
controlling the tech in Canada was either knowledgeable enough or experienced
enough to make going out to find my lonesome self quite easy.  Even better, I didn't have to cook up false
identities and find some way to fit in while I waited for the chance to find a
proper Gate song to move onto the next step of my journey.  That told me one good thing about these
people.

They had experience in
dealing with dimensional crossings.

How that would benefit me, I
couldn't begin to guess.

But I hoped to barter my own
experiences for all the help they could give me.

Noting a pair of very lovely
green eyes staring knowingly at me, I gave the medic – her family name was SASAMOTO
as stitched on her left chest under the twin-headed thunderbird ship's crest of
Haida – a smirk.  "When I
normally drop unexpected into a new dimension, I'm normally quite whole and
healthy if not conscious at the time the transition occurs, Ordinary Seaman
Sasamoto," I explained.  "I'm
just glad that after doing my latest Gate jump, I came to a place where I could
get help right away in lieu of being sneaky about it and being forced into
quasi-legal and sometimes-immoral acts to forge a false identity so I could
interface with the local population."

"Wow!  He's roughing it, isn't he?" the
guardsman – I spotted her name, CROCE, on her tunic – said as she
exchanged a knowing look with the medic.

"That he is,
Henrietta-chan," the medic answered.

I then blinked.

They were talking in Japanese
. . .

. . . while my ears picked up
their words in clear English.

"Translation
field?" I asked in Nihon-go.

"Omni-translation
field," the medic stated as those green eyes of hers sparkled with
amusement.  "It can interpret any
language a sentient can speak and translate it automatically into the native
language of the speaker.  So if you're
more comfortable speaking English, sir, speak in English.  We can all understand you."

I nodded.  "How come you're travelling from
dimension to dimension?" Guardsman Croce – I felt it a little improper to
call her "Henrietta" even if she struck me as being about twenty
years of age – then asked.  "Are you
an explorer?"

A sigh as I decided to honour
their obvious concern with the truth. 
"I'm a metahuman warrior who serves in a group working for the
United Nations in my universe," I explained.  "In a battle many decades ago in my
time-line, I was propelled into an alternate universe.  Over the following years, I've travelled from
universe to universe in hopes of rejoining my friends and my wife."  I opened up my jacket and pulled out the
necklace bearing my wedding band. 
"It's been quite interesting, but believe me . . . HEY!"

The "hey" came from
something that reminded me a little too much of Minakami Wataru's twelve
half-sisters – save Chikage, of course – and how they reacted whenever
something their "Big Brother" did or said broke their hearts.

An honest-to-goodness Hug of
True Love from the medic and ALL the guardsmen!

I tried not to blush TOO much
on feeling that . . .

*    *   
*

The landing of the Star Flare
on the upper flight deck of H.M.C.S. Haida was pretty much like the
landing of any shipboard helicopter aboard any navy vessel that wasn't a
purpose-built aircraft carrier:  Come to
a hover over the green flight deck with the yellow landing lines and the white HA
at the aft end, square off on the centre of the deck, and then gently drop down
until solid rubber tires kissed metal deck. 
Even better, since the ship was only about a kilometre above the Welland
By-Pass that split its home base from the urban part of the Rose City of
Ontario, the outside atmosphere was quite breathable . . . as witness the
opening of the Flare's cargo doors aft onto the deck, thus allowing myself and
my current escorts – with Guardsman Croce and Ordinary Seaman Sasamoto having
wrapped one of their arms around one of mine – to walk onto a very clear day
over the Niagara region, with Lake Erie in the near distance.

As soon as we were aboard the
starship – and my mind was STILL boggling at the idea of a NATION on Earth
having a STARSHIP of all things! – proper, the group around me paused as they
straightened to attention, and then saluted the large ensign flying off what
appeared to be a sensor vane sticking up from the fantail of the ship between
the exhaust ports of a pair of ramjet-like engines that could swallow a whole
AIRCRAFT CARRIER from my universe with room to spare!  Realising that despite these girls' quite
friendly attitudes that they were still-serving soldiers and sailors of the
Queen of Canada, I straightened myself and gave the flag – a Canadian version
of the British White Ensign with a blue cross and the Maple Leaf Flag in the
canton – a Sandhurst-perfect salute. 
That caused my companions to all blink in surprise.

"Are you a serviceman?"
OS Sasamoto then asked.

"Technically, I'm a
colonel in the United Nations Metahuman Peacekeeping Force, code-named
'Warriors Alpha,'" I explained. 
"The rank is honorary to me but to those who care for it, it's
quite real."  I gave her a
wink.  "I assume British shipboard
rules still run the Royal Canadian Navy? 
Or is it still Canadian Forces Maritime Command?"

"MARCOM for now,"
the medic stated, a smirk crossing her face. 
"That might change in the near future; you know how RUMINT can be
at times."

I smirked.  RUMINT: 
Rumour Intelligence, sometimes the most reliable information one could
get in the military.  "Indeed I do.  And . . . "  I straightened myself as I properly saluted
her.  "Permission to come aboard,
Ordinary Seaman Sasamoto?"

She returned my salute.  "Grated, Colonel . . .?"

"Douglas Q. Sangoir,
code-named 'Looney Tunes.'  Call me
Doug."

She smiled as she lowered her
arm.  "Ordinary Seaman Sasamoto
Narumi.  We use proper Oriental
name-order in the United Nations Earth Defence Force.  Welcome aboard."

I shook her hand . . . and
then perked as someone came walking our way from the large hangar deck
structure forward, where the Star Flare that brought us aboard was now being
wheeled into to join three sisters already folded up in their parking
spaces.  Said person, I was quick to
note, also appeared Japanese . . . even if her brown hair was done up in a high
beehive on the back of her head and she had amethyst eyes.  She was in the same uniform Narumi wore, but
her shoulder boards had the single gold stripe – with that funny circular loop
British navy officers wore on their uniforms – of their equivalent of a United
States Navy ensign over her ship's unit tags. 
She also had the badge of the Naval Operations Branch of the Canadian Forces
on her beret.

"Our traveller from
another dimension, Narumi-chan?" she asked, smiling.

"Hai, Tomomi-chan.  May I present Douglas Sangoir-taisa of the
United Nations Metahuman Peacekeeping Forces in his dimension.  His battle-name is 'Looney Tunes,'"
Narumi then stated.  "Doug-san, this
is Yoshino Tomomi-shoi, junior ship's combat warfare director.  In case you don't know, her rank in Canada is
'acting sub-lieutenant;' I can hear the London accent in your voice even if
your words are clearly American."

"Yes, I am American,
Narumi-chan," I said as I reached up to unbuckle and slip off my
helmet.  I was quick to sense the
appraising looks all the girls around me were giving, though Tomomi was quick
to see my wedding band.  "And
believe me, that I'm in the land of my homeland's brother born of the same
mother does my heart a world of good."

"Wonderful," Tomomi
stated.  "In the meantime, Hiromi-onesama
awaits.  This way."

She turned and headed to a
recessed stairwell in the middle of the flight deck close to the hangar.  "What do you want done with your
motorcycle, Doug-san?" Henrietta asked.

"Could you put it
somewhere safe, Henrietta-chan?" I asked in turn.  "And PLEASE, don't take it apart!  I had a nosy goddess of the future do that in
one of my longer stays and I prefer not to go through putting it back together
again."

"Which goddess of the
future?" Tomomi asked.

"Skuld."

A surprised look crossed her
face.  "From A Megami-sama?!"

I blinked in confusion . . .

*    *   
*

Somewhere, a different
dimension,

"AH-CHOO!"

"Bless you, Skuld!  Are you alright?"

A moan.  "Someone's talking about me, One-sama!"

Belldandy hummed.  "I wonder who would it be . . .?"

*    *   
*

This post on Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/.../06/26/506563/tv-tropes/
Which points at this post: http://www.themarysue.com/tv-tropes-rape-articles/
This is moving out of the somewhat rarified stratosphere and into the mainstream - as mainstream as ThinkProgress is.Brazil has decided you're cute.

I appear to have misplaced my links for decent (low-overhead, no-install, no-Flash-required) broadband speed test sites. A couple of weeks ago, the local phone company has had a small fleet of trucks in my neighbourhood, so my broadband speed may have changed.

Can anyone recommend a good test site or two?
--
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 here's the news about the new events. 

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

Neph: *looks at the casino heist* we need suits, shades and some epic music.

House Raising - 10/Jun/2012
Mid Spring, 2008, Luna.
Can you raise a house on the Moon?  If most of the bits come from Earth, is that a 'house falling'?  That doesn't make much sense.  But, if the Moon's above the Earth, it might still be 'raising'.
This and other nonsense went through Brains head, as he sat on the Lunar surface, looking at where home would be.  On land he owned.  On the Far Side of the Moon.
He'd spent nearly two months, over-working to get his plans and materials ready, since his 'day trip' up here.  Fortunately these days he'd the help of Brainless, who honestly seemed to enjoy the more structured (dare he say 'simpler'?) bits.  Though he'd almost nudged him out of his cottage workshop, to the one on the 'SS Champ'.
He'd come up with a new variety of 'paint'.  This took transparent mylar film used for a lot of his work and both strengthened it and made it convert about 25% of the light passing through it into electricity, while still making it almost invisible.  UV and IR too.  He'd treated the mylar pressure dome, the one he'd used to avoiding waving the clay pit, with this.  After tests he thought it ready for Moon duty.
Resources[1] was a major problem.  Theoretically handwavium must be capable of transmutation of elements, one reason he thought it was benevolent femtotech[2]. But, that was a can of worms he wouldn't open, just for his own convenience.  The results could be so horribly messy that it'd make juggling anti-matter look user-friendly.
The big problems were nitrogen, for his air, and carbon.  Oxygen was no problem.  Hydrogen was solvable if that mythical Lunar water was actually exploitable.  Otherwise it was asteroid mining time.  That'd give him water ice, and carbon, and he could hope enough nitrogen.  In the short-term he'd enough power to distil nitrogen out of Earth's atmosphere, and bottle it, or stock-up on ammonium nitrate.  And charcoal.
He'd waved the 'Recyclosaurus'.  Sometimes handwavium seemed to like silly things, and this was one of them.  An immense vegetarian dinosaur head and neck, currently attached to a bare frame robot body.  Uran called it "Nom Nom"[3], and insisted it was male.  He'd just slot in the cargo hatch of the 'SS Champ' and his chemical 'stomachs' reprocessed just about anything he ate, into useful feed-stocks.
Brains hadn't much use for Titanium, Aluminium, Magnesium, or even much Iron, at the moment, but something would probably come up.  Some nice stone walls for the garden were worth thinking about, and he'd need to make his own soil.  Plants in tubs would be a good start.
He looked over at the faint distortion where Nom Nom had been dug into the lunar regolith.  He seemed to be making good progress, the measures to stop lunar dust wrecking his works were holding.  That'd been a pain to fix.  The stuff got in everywhere.
Nom Nom's companions, the twin giant Beaver robot builders were doing well.  Following behind they took processed material and built then sealed underground walls.  Brains had named them 'Castor' and 'Pollux', but Uran said one should be called 'Teddy', though she wouldn't explain why.
A few more hours and they could seal the area where the dome was going to be raised, and stop relying on stored power.  The ship itself generated some power, of course, from energy it absorbed rather than diverted around, and the newly installed image system could provide a trickle, too.  Neither had a big enough cross-section, though.  Until he got the deep heat sinks installed this place'd show-up like an infra-red beacon to anyone who scanned it from orbit.  It was a risky time.
Uran had offered to help with the work.  But, the first part was mostly supervision, and he'd prefer to give her opportunity to play, rather than be bored.  He thought she was finishing reading "Harry Potter", at the moment.  Dipping into engineering and technical works when she wanted some diversion.  She seemed a competent programmer, but the subject didn't seem to interest her, in general.  Vehicles also didn't seem to catch her fancy, so she probably wouldn't become a 'Gearhead'.
'Ting!'  This time, unlike on the day trip, he'd brought a way to communicate with the others.  The display showed Pollux was saying they'd completed the first, outer, circle.  It'd seemed sensible not to make them too smart, and that'd worked so far.
Time to go down into the basement...
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

Bi-location - 09/Jun/2012
Eastercon[1], 2008, UK.
Sitting in a bar.  Even at a science fiction convention.  In a wheelchair that made you socially invisible.  Yes, Brains was willing to admit.  It was pretty lonely.
Things'd gone reasonably well.  He'd had to hire a disabled-adapted van, as he usually did for cons; his old Bedford hadn't worked for years now, and he'd never got around to getting it fixed.  Brainless clamped-down in the back as he'd driven down.  No police cars stopped them for having an invisible driver, as he'd joked with Uran before they left, but he certainly wasn't letting Brainless drive.
He hoped leaving Uran to poke around the village, and surrounding area, invisible, wasn't going to have any long-term consequences.
Brainless'd seemed almost cheerful when they arrived.  He'd picked up their con package from the desk, and pinned-on the badge, giving Brains a quick look as he did.  Brains nearly protested, then realised Brainless would be the one people looked at.
Getting the dioramas set up in the Dealers Room went smoothly.  No one seemed to notice that there were two, identical, heavily-built red-haired men in wheelchairs; they just walked around Brains, as usual.  Though, Roger came in after they'd set-up, gave the pair of them a funny look, before turning to a customer.
Brains hung around a while.  Brainless actually smiled, talking to someone, explaining the background to one of the SF dioramas.  After a while he couldn't stand it any more, and wheeled-off to the bar.
Thinking about things, maybe Brainless was so unhappy, around him, because the two of them being there meant he couldn't be 'Brian'?  That made some sense - his main reason for existence was to be a stand-in.  For a moment Brains had the nasty notion that he just pretended to be non-sentient to wind him up...
"Brains?"  A woman he half-recognised called across the bar to him, then swiftly strode in his direction.  "I know you're pretty fast in that wheelchair, but we've just come straight from the Dealers Room.  Wait here."
Brains heart sunk, as he watched her stride out of the room, then back in a minute later.  "There's two of you!  How'd you manage that?"  And she stood there, tapping her foot on the carpet.
Maureen, as he saw her name badge said, obviously wasn't just going to go away. While waiting she looked over at a stocky man coming out of the loo.  "Dave!  Come over here and talk to Brains."
Dave looked around the bar, then ambled towards them.  "Brains?  Didn't we just see him in the Dealers Room?"  And his gaze slid across Brains.
Brains remembered Dave, one of his better on-line friends.  He'd a partner called 'Maureen'.  Best as he remembered they worked together at a small biomedical research company.  One of the few people he passed handwavium on to.  Hadn't Dave said Maureen was unwell and not coming to the con?
"Here!"  Maureen slapped the back of Brains wheelchair; definitely a social no-no.  Dave blinked, then looked straight at Brains for the first time.  "How did you get here so quickly, Brian?"
"That's just what I was asking him!"  And Maureen raised her hands into the air in exasperation.  Other fans in the bar were polite enough to do no more than glance over.
"I'm invisible.  That's why I brought a visible version of myself as well."  Maybe the truth would get him out of this?  Dave went white.  "You waved a copy of yourself?  And it worked?"  He slumped into a chair, put his hands over his face, and shook.  Brains could tell he was resisting crying.
Maureen moved over, put one hand on Dave's shoulder, then started rubbing his back.  She gave Brains one or two annoyed glances, but most of her attention was on Dave.
Brains sighed.  Then stood up, his wheelchair folding to support his lower body, and stumped over to the bar.  On the way one or two fans gave him admiring glances, and he caught at least one flash of a quick snap.  Good job he was going to go live on the Moon.
Their story slowly came out as Dave and Maureen sipped their drinks.  Brains was waiting for his toasted sandwich to arrive.  Dave had taken the handwavium and fed it until he could wave-up all the medical instruments and testing tools he could imagine.  A bio lab provided good enough containment facilities that waving involved little risk.
His prize piece was a replica of the human brain, that showed all the same readings as an unconscious adult one would, and responded to drugs in the same way.  Obvious ethical issues prevented him going any further.  Unfortunately his employers, while impressed by his enterprise, didn't think that they could sell instruments that you had to literally coax into working.  The idea of needing to sing to, admittedly a fully comprehensive hand-portable, brain scanner wasn't on.
Then Maureen had her fatal accident.  Dave's instruments showed she was totally dead, with only some residual brain activity, so he didn't think he had anything to loose.  He kludged the brain scanner to transfer as much of her as was left into the synthetic brain.  Then concealed her death while he built a steadily more functional body around it, organ by organ, part by part.
"I don't know how I did it", he admitted to Brains.  "But I'm not doing it again.  The nightmares have mostly stopped now, and I'm only going to do enough to keep Maureen healthy."  "Probably still sell the instruments, but I've always fancied taking up farming.  What do you think?"
Maureen gave Dave a 'we will be discussing this further' look.
"We're going, soon", and Maureen pointed up.  "Will we see you?"
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

Vengeance is as vengeance does,
Sweet the taste when eaten cold,
Sweeter still to send thy ill
Back into thy face three-fold!
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire,
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire!
Shape the shield, above, below,
Shape it hard and shape it strong,
Power bending to my will,
Power to contain thy wrong!
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire,
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire!
Now within it, mirror-bright,
All thy surface facing thee,
What thou sense, reflect until
Trapped within, ‘tis three times three!
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire,
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire!
And within conceit sublime,
Make it clear as diamond air,
Let all wrongs to curse or kill
Return to be trapped also there!
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire,
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire!
(Bridge)
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire,
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire!
Be thou trapped in thine own curse!
Be thou caught in thine own wrong!
Be thou burned by thine own flame!
Be thou shattered by thy song!
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire,
Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
Mold thy power to my desire!
Mold thy power to my desire...

-- Heather Alexander, "Mirror Spell"
(lyrics by Mercedes Lackey, music by Leslie Fish)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

After several years of struggling with my computer I final got talked into getting a new one. Yes this is the computer with the Btx case. So I've wiped it back to bare metal and given it a friend as thier first computer.

It was running Windows 7 Professional 32bit. As it was the OEM version it didn't include the 64bit version, but it did come with Office 2007.... which is now in my friend's hands.

The new computer is as follows:
AMD Oct-8 core
ASUS/GIGABYTE
16GB Hyper X 1600 Ram
2000 SATA HDD
2GB (Hyper) ATI 6670
Precision Gaming case
Certified 600W PSU
Supet Multi DVDRW
Windows Home 64bit

So now I have to pay the Microsoft tax at least once maybe twice.
I need office as certain parties only accept Word Docs.
And do I just upgrade to Ultimate 64, or go buy the full version and have both flavours available? Or do I just leave it as is?

Don't you just love the Microsoft tax?

..and as part of the celebration, Peg and I are at the James Taylor concert at PNC Arts Center. It's intermission right now, and I just have to ask -- has James Taylor always been a huge goofball?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Folks at Google have notices that the WWW error code 403, "Forbidden", has started to be used in cases where it isn't user permissions on a system that forbid the serving of a resource. To remove the ambiguity of why something is forbidden, they've proposed an extension to the 400-series codes: "Unavailable For Legal Reasons"

The number they've suggested? Three digits, starts with a 4, brings to mind government control of ideas... (Yes, they acknowledge where they got the number from.)

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-t ... ude_text=1]Here's the current draft of the proposed error code, with the number listed for those who haven't figured it out yet.
--
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