anyone else having issues with page timeouts or other wonkyness?

it started late last night for me and has yet to resolve itself.

Given that their 'site temporarily down' message last night made mention of vague dns propagation issues I'm not sure if this is something local that is just effecting me, or if other people are seeing it too.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

While getting ready to go to bed, this
started to bounce around my brain so there you have it, people, a
quick little thing about Yukiyo's return to Paragon City.

---

Apparently, in hell, temporary
reassignment didn't mean, as Yukiyo had thought, that you were sent
somewhere else for several weeks and then sent back to where you had
already done quite a bit of good work so you could finish the job.
No, apparently, they meant nearly two years. Still, that was done
with and she was finally back to Paragon city. Apparently, the only
reason she was even getting sent back was that, suddenly, the amount
of people summoning demons and daemons had suddenly increased.

Whatever the reason, though, it was
really great. The war walls were as shiny as ever, the city as noisy
as ever and Statesman was on a rooftop with the rest of the freedom
phalanx in new costumes and was cackling evilly and saying something
about Praetoria, whatever that was. Wait... that was new... Oh well,
things were bound to change after all, “Hey Statesman, love the new
outfit!”

As she flew off, the firey mage didn't
see Emperor Cole's flabbergasted expression or noticed the barely
restrained chuckles from the other Praetorians.

---

By the time Yukiyo managed to take care
of all the paperwork related to her sudden return, night had already
fallen. Really, the mage felt it had been far too long but apparently
there had been an invasion of some kind in progress and that had
delayed the already slow bureaucracy of Paragon city to a glacial
crawl.

She'd eventually been given all the
equipment and identification she'd need to continue her heroing
career and, looking forward to some sleep, the mage returned at last
to the Legendary's base. It had changed so much though and Yukiyo
simply had to explore, marvelling at all the new things, there was
even a POOL now. Still, once all was said and done, she really needed
some rest and, yawning, she went to where her room had been and hit
her first snag.

The tiny room she'd used to sleep in
was gone, replaced by an office of all things. True, it was a very
nice office but still... Dejected, the mage wandered the base for a
time, trying to think of a solution when she noticed a room she
hadn't explored yet. Curious, Yukiyo peeked in and was greeted by a
well stocked library. Her lips stretched to the sides nearly on their
own as a wide grin split the firestarter's face and, before long,
she'd set up a collapsible bed in a corner, lit a lamp and had begun
to read, determined to see everything this new source of always
treasured knowledge had to offer.

It wouldn't be before people began to
move around the base that she'd realise that she'd spent the entire
night reading instead of sleeping as she'd intended.

MiniMac 3
Processor: 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400 w/ 256 MB of VRAM
Display: Sony 40-inch digital TV running at 1920x1080 resolution.
Recommended graphics settings?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

Is this Satire? Somebody please tell me this is satire. San Francisco discusses law to ban the sale of pets

Quote:The ban was put on hold last year after animal advocates broadened it to include anything with fur or feathers. Now it's back, with a new name and a new strategy: More is more. The Humane Pet Acquisition Proposal is on its way to the Board of Supervisors, and it hopes to protect everything from Great Danes to goldfish.

Yes, goldfish. And guppies, gobies, gouramies, glowlight tetras, German blue rams. No fish, no fowl, no reptiles, no amphibians, no cats, no dogs, no gerbils, no rats. If it flies, crawls, runs, swims or slithers, you would not be able to buy it in the city named for the patron saint of animals.

Because he said to make a new thread about it.
So anyway, when I said 'tips' I didn't mean on the Senshi.  I was speaking about what I was consciously thinking about when I was writing the fight.
I'll summarize, and you can ask about anything in detail.
1: The fight does not exist in a vacuum.  People WILL react to it.
2: The environment is a character, treat it like one.
3: Write assuming the fighters are smart and everyone is trying to win.
4: Keep track of all threads of combat that aren't being seen as if it were a tabletop game.  (IE: Everyone is doing something.)
Number four can be a bit daunting when you're applying number three to it and have more than four or five people going.  Because even if you don't see it, the people in the background are still trying to win.  A lot of fights I've seen in fiction: Movies, Books, whatever...  seem to be centered around duels/superduels.  Where in the fight you're watching is important, and all the rest of the fight is treated as 'background effects' at best.  It does not take into the account that Joe Random can snipe the main character at any time, and in fact, would be attempting to do so at any given oportunity.
As a result, the fight you watch isn't a battle, but a collection of duels with 'battle effects' going on around them.  After you've seen it enough times, you come to notice it and just get bored with the same old formula.
Of course, it's understandable because quite frankly.  Writing an honest to Washu BATTLE is... Rather hard.  For the battle in this latest chapter I released, I only had eight combatants, but spent a month just figuring out who goes where and does what.  And that's before adding in reactions to the environment.  For that, I actually used google Earth to pull a map, trace distances, and get the location of buildings.  And the entire time I was writing, we had a running discussion as to what the local response would be like in Tokyo.  And just as a hint... The response is coming, it just hasn't arrived yet.
In contrast, the superduels are exceedingly easy.  As people can just keep track of two people (or sets of two people independently) and handwave anything else that goes on offscreen.
Welcome to GP Aerospace Academy.  I will be your instructor.
Please read the course silybus...  You will need to know the basics of flight,
and orbital mechanics before we can continue.

Just thought I'd let everyone know, White Wolf is producing a pair of special 20th anniversary editions of Vampire the Masquerade that compile (and occasionally update) ALL of the info on Clans, Bloodlines, Disciplines, etc. from the old World of Darkness. One will be available at September's Grand Masquerade in New Orleans (but must be pre-ordered beforehand) while the other is available online (must be preordered by July 1st). Both sell for $99.99. More info at: www.vampirethemasquerade.com
----------------------------------------------------

"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV

The finance law in question works like this: if you are a publicly funded candidate in an election, and one of your privately-funded opponents gets a hold of a large source of cash which he starts using in his campaign, be it his own stockpiles or a wealthy corporation, you get an amount of money equal to the amount by which his source of cash exceeds your public funding. In other words, publicly funded candidates have monetary parity with privately-funded candidates. It didn't do anything to prevent that privately funded candidate from blowing a bunch of cash on his campaign, it just removed his ability to massively outspend publicly funded ones.
Sounds like a good idea, right?
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/06/27/29 ... z1QW4JdlCx
Not according to 5/9 of the Supreme Court.

After more than a year (getting close to two) stuck with a computer that couldn't run City of Heroes, I've recently upgraded and am returning to this game once again. I was a bit surprise, upon logging in as Yukiyo, to find out that she's still in The Legendary. I'm quite thankful about that, this has to be my favorite guild/supergroup/thing on any MMO I've ever played.

I look forward to seeing old faces again and meeting new faces.

And now, for the call for help. I started drifting out of the game way back during the time when Ouroboros was new. I remember talk of a soon to come thing, I think it was called Midnight Squad, but never actually saw it. Since then, the game has probably changed a great deal, so I'd like to know if anyone would be kind enough to tell me about it.

Things I've noticed while reading around this forum but have no idea what it is:
-Leveling Pact
-Incarnate rewards, merit rewards, maybe even incarnate powers? (No idea what the whole thing is/means)

Oh and, any architect missions to recommend?

Hoping to see people around,

The Hunterminator
@Glalev
a.k.a. Yukiyo

Justice Scalia proves to be far more than his detractors caricature of him as a conservative reactionary dinosaur would have us believe. His writing of the opinion striking down Californias violent video game law is a classic piece well worth quoting. Full opinion here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/08-1448.pdf
And his examples are spot on.
Excerpt below:

Quote:California’s argument would fare better if there were a long standing tradition in this country of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence, but there is none. Certainly the books we give children to read—or read to them when they are younger—contain no shortage of gore. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed. As her just deserts for trying to poison Snow White, the wicked queen is made to dance in red hot slippers “till she fell dead on the floor, a sad example of envy and jealousy.” The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales 198 (2006 ed.). Cinderella’s evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves. Id., at 95. And Hansel and Gretel (children!) kill their captor by baking her in an oven. Id., at 54.

High-school reading lists are full of similar fare. Homer’s Odysseus blinds Polyphemus the Cyclops bygrinding out his eye with a heated stake. The Odyssey of Homer, Book IX, p. 125 (S. Butcher & A. Lang transls.1909) (“Even so did we seize the fiery-pointed brand and whirled it round in his eye, and the blood flowed about the heated bar. And the breath of the flame singed his eyelids and brows all about, as the ball of the eye burnt away, and the roots thereof crackled in the flame”). In the Inferno, Dante and Virgil watch corrupt politicians struggle to stay submerged beneath a lake of boiling pitch, lest they be skewered by devils above the surface. Canto XXI, pp.187–189 (A. Mandelbaum transl. Bantam Classic ed.1982). And Golding’s Lord of the Flies recounts how a schoolboy called Piggy is savagely murdered by other children while marooned on an island. W. Golding, Lord of the Flies 208–209 (1997 ed.).4

This is not to say that minors’ consumption of violent entertainment has never encountered resistance. In the 1800’s, dime novels depicting crime and “penny dreadfuls” (named for their price and content) were blamed in some quarters for juvenile delinquency. See Brief for Cato Institute as Amicus Curiae 6–7. When motion pictures came along, they became the villains instead. “The days when the police looked upon dime novels as the most dangerous of textbooks in the school for crime are drawing to a close. . . . They say that the moving picture machine . . . tends even more than did the dime novel to turn the thoughts of the easily influenced to paths which sometimes lead to prison.” Moving Pictures as Helps to Crime,

N. Y. Times, Feb. 21, 1909, quoted in Brief for Cato Institute, at 8. For a time, our Court did permit broad censorship of movies because of their capacity to be “used for evil,” see Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Comm’n of Ohio, 236 U. S. 230, 242 (1915), but we eventually reversed course, Joseph Burstyn, Inc., 343 U. S., at 502; see also Erznoznik, supra, at 212–214 (invalidating a drive-in movies restriction designed to protect children). Radio dramas were next, and then came comic books. Brief for Cato Institute, at 10–11. Many in the late 1940’s andearly 1950’s blamed comic books for fostering a “preoccupation with violence and horror” among the young, leading to a rising juvenile crime rate. See Note, Regulation ofComic Books, 68 Harv. L. Rev. 489, 490 (1955). But efforts to convince Congress to restrict comic books failed. Brief for Comic Book Legal Defense Fund as Amicus Curiae 11–

15.5 And, of course, after comic books came television and music lyrics.

California claims that video games present specialproblems because they are “interactive,” in that the playerparticipates in the violent action on screen and determines its outcome. The latter feature is nothing new: Sinceat least the publication of The Adventures of You: Sugarcane Island in 1969, young readers of choose-your-own adventure stories have been able to make decisions that determine the plot by following instructions about which page to turn to. Cf. Interactive Digital Software Assn. v. St. Louis County, 329 F. 3d 954, 957–958 (CA8 2003). As for the argument that video games enable participation inthe violent action, that seems to us more a matter of degree than of kind. As Judge Posner has observed, all literature is interactive. “[T]he better it is, the more interactive. Literature when it is successful draws the reader into the story, makes him identify with the characters, invites him to judge them and quarrel with them, to experience their joys and sufferings as the reader’s own.” American Amusement Machine Assn. v. Kendrick, 244

F. 3d 572, 577 (CA7 2001) (striking down a similar restriction on violent video games).

Reposted from some random blog, a poem detailing what sucks about English spelling:

If you can correctly pronounce every word in this
poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native
English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said
he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Try
them yourself.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

- B. Shaw
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll