Well, I was browsing, and saw a 'click through' flash ad that asked if you'd go back to school if you could get a grant.
IN the ad, the 'main graphic' was sort of 'Super Teacher'.  Tights, boots, gloves.  Sort of a bob hairdo, but specifically, that 'Mitre boad' hat you wear at graduations...  the one thats a flat fabric covered board sort of attached to a fabric skullcap.
We dont have anything that could remotely fake that sort of hat in game, do we?
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

I wish had something to start a new thread with, but I don't  So consider this a placeholder.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Louann Rockel, My GF of 15 years is missing.  She was last seen when we stopped by our apt to change clothes prior to going on to my mothers.
She decided that she was going to stay because she was tired.  That was 5pm Pacific Daylight last night.  I returned at 8:45 and she wasn't home.  She took our cat Boots with her and she still isnt home yet.  I've notified the police (both last night and this morning) and am now in a total emotional meltdown.
I need to go out and look...  I NEED to do something besides just sit and hope and fear.
in the meantime...  Prayers and hopefull thoughts from those so inclined would be greatly appreciated.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

Quick question. My sisters just got my mother a small laptop as a birthday gift (an Acer AspireOne), but my mother only plans to use it when she's going to be away from her home for a few days (which only happens every few months), since she already has a desktop for home use. She was wondering if she should pull the battery when not in use (it can apparently slide right out without difficulty), or if she should just leave the thing in.
----------------------------------------------------

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

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/n ... 10524.html]NASA Concludes Attempts to Contact Mars Rover Spirit

They're finally letting her go...
--
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

The house was quiet when Glacia got there. Not that it should have been otherwise, because there was only one occupant other than herself, and her sister Infernia’s reputation for being a chatterbox tended to only apply when there was someone to talk to. More aptly, perhaps, it could be put that the house was still. And that, certainly, wasn’t normal.

Glacia didn’t mind the stillness. Calm moments had always relaxed her, as far back as she could remember. The rampant lively chaos that had been her sister growing up was one of their main reasons for never really getting along. Where Glacia preferred to sit at home reading a nice book in an easy chair, Infernia wanted to be out and about playing with all the neighborhood kids, and kicking their asses at just about any sport you could name. Inevitably, that started the early conflicts. Infernia, or more accurately Antonia back then, inevitably tried to drag her twin sister Anastacia into whatever game that the kids were playing, because hiding alone in the house obviously meant she was lonely. Staci inevitably did not want to go out and play, leading to an argument between her and Toni, and sour feelings all around, because Toni felt like she was letting her sister down and Staci just wanted to be left alone.

The change to supervillainy was similar. Toni becoming “Infernia” hadn’t surprised anyone when her powers manifested, but Staci’s powers were much more subtle and she hadn’t told anyone. They’d drifted apart, though Toni kept in touch fairly regularly, always trying to salvage some of their old childhood camaraderie. Staci, for her part, didn’t really bother. She’d always been cooler and more detached than her sister, so the fading of any feelings of affection between them wasn’t particularly mourned. These things happened.

But Staci’s first explosion of power was a complete opposite of control. Faced with a gun pointed at her head and nowhere to go, Staci let loose with her own powers, freezing the man solid before he fell and shattered...and also catching other patrons of the restaurant in the backblast. More than a few were significantly harmed. While her public defender did the best he could, the recent rash of such “untrained heroics”, like the infamous Frostfire case, led to some judges feeling a precedent needed to be made, and Staci received ten years for involuntary manslaughter. Toni fought the sentence herself, tried to appeal, but just couldn’t find the right levers to move to get Staci a less stringent sentence without resorting to illegal means. She’d talked to Staci every chance she’d got, but inevitably, it’d become clear that Glacia was bound for a relatively comfortable but lengthy jail term. And for the first time in many years, Staci felt angry.

Despite all the well-meaning rhetoric and kind words, Toni had abandoned her. Sure, she’d tried to appeal the case, but she’d always had a line she wouldn’t cross. Not for anyone, even her own sister. As much as Toni said that she’d do anything for Staci, when it came down to it, she wouldn’t. She could have broken her out easily enough. Talked to the right people outside of legal channels to get her sentence commuted. Staci wasn’t so naive as to think her sister didn’t know people of that sort. But she hadn’t, and that made Staci angry, through the layers of ice-cold control and reserve she’d always had. Beneath them all, she had loved her sister and thought that they were close....but now it was apparent that wasn’t true.

So be it.

“Glacia”’s explosive breakout made headlines, the savagely efficient use of her powers marking the signature of her coldly analytical mind. Her sister tried to stop her, to bring her to her senses, but Glacia was far past that point. The warmth she’d felt for her sister was buried to prevent it from affecting her. All it would do is result in her sister betraying her again. The rivalry lasted for years, as Infernia and Glacia became well-known as each other’s arch-nemeses. Over time, the facts had gotten lost to the common Paragon citizen regarding how they’d become enemies, but Glacia never forgot. Deep within her, the cold, hard grudge that she’d nurtured for years just grew harder. But despite it all, Infernia never gave up on her. She refused to hate her lost sister. Perhaps that was what kept Glacia from ever being able to cross the line and try to kill her.

The Rikti War a few years later turned the world upside down, and no one proved it more than the Vanguard squad assigned to the twin sisters. They barely talked, but everyone knew about their grudge. In a way, it was inspirational and frightening at the same time. The pair managed to swallow their fight for now to fight the Rikti, but more than a few soldiers wondered if even the aliens could keep these two from each other’s throats. Glacia, for her part, simply took in the situation logically. The Rikti would kill them all, and as much as she wanted to pay Infernia back for what she’d done, now wasn’t the time. It could wait until after the war.

But the war was hardly willing to make it a foregone conclusion that they would both survive it. Glacia barely remembered the feeling of the Rikti plasma lance that took her arm. All she knew was white-hot pain and waking up in a hospital to cold metal at her shoulder, and the doctor describing a situation Glacia couldn’t accept as possible. That her sister, despite a bleeding eye due to shrapnel from a nearby drone exploding in her face, had made it to her, cauterizing the wound with her powers and dragging the two of them over two miles of no man’s land to the Vanguard lines for medical attention. It seemed a fairy tale until she saw Infernia again, this time sporting a bright red patch over her right eye, her left arm hanging in a sling. Despite the impossibility, it seemed that what the doctor said was true, and for the first time in years, Glacia felt the ice cold lump in her chest start to thaw.

When Infernia volunteered for the Omega Team, no one was surprised. But that she did so side by side with her sister Glacia, that shocked almost everyone. Perhaps Hero-1 was the only one not to be surprised, because he simply assigned them their positions in the raid and steadfastly refused to question Glacia’s reasons. In a way, that made it easier for her. Glacia couldn’t entirely explain to herself why she was unwilling to let her sister go alone into the seeming suicide mission that the Omega Team was being assigned to, but some part of her just knew that if she stayed and Infernia never came back, it would no longer be a world that had a place for her. And so they charged into the portal together, fighting the swarms of Rikti alongside their fellow Omegas, and finally, inexplicably, survived.

Trapped on the Rikti Homeworld, the twins had to band together for survival, because the final explosion of the portal’s collapse scattered what remnants of the team were still alive. Yet even the strange laws of portal physics saw fit not to separate them, and in those years, the two managed to reconcile some of their differences. Some things had been said and felt that wouldn’t be able to change, but perhaps if they got back home to Earth one day, they could move past them.

Almost as if to laugh at such plans, the universe gave them their wish.

Bringing down Dra’gon, the twisted former Vanguard scientist turned Rikti converted madman, was a pleasure, and there was a flood of applause when they walked back into Vanguard HQ and reported to Lady Grey. But it was to a different world that they returned, in terms of history if not dimensions. So many things had happened since the Rikti War, and their arrival was in the middle of a Second Rikti War that was almost as fierce as the first. And on top of it all, Glacia had no trouble identifying the secret weapon that Hro’Dtohz brought out at the end of his scheme to break the seal the Omega Team had placed on their dimension. Through the mutations and tortured speech patterns, their Honoree was still Hero-1, which twisted Glacia’s stomach even as she watched the video feed.

But despite the war, the worst was when they returned. Infernia’s old apartment had been demolished by a massive earthquake known as the Faultline Event, and their old family home was now sealed behind the massive blast doors that marked the borders of the cursed Dark Astoria. The Vanguard officer that debriefed them was circumspect about what had happened there, but a little research brought the truth to light, and Glacia felt a pang for the fact that her parents would never know she and Infernia had finally managed to move past their old feud. And Infernia...

Infernia was the reason that the stillness now felt unnatural. Even when silent, her sister had always had an air of energy that was easy enough to feel as she bustled her way through life. She never sat still, always moving or walking about while she did something, which used to drive Glacia near-insane when all she wanted was a moment of quiet. But now, all Glacia saw was her sister, curled up in a ratty old T-shirt and shorts that were in their stored personal effects at Vanguard HQ -- that were now their sole remaining possessions -- staring into the fireplace of the apartment without moving.

“Infernia?” she asked softly, walking up behind her sister, reaching out with her flesh and blood left hand, though she hesitated before actually touching the redheaded woman. “Are you all right?”

There was no movement or sound from her sister, and something in Glacia’s mind noted that that was a profoundly wrong state for the universe in general, despite her wishing for it many a time as they’d grown up. And at this moment, Glacia wished for nothing more than to return to those old annoyances, in a world where nothing else was left of those days.

“There’s nothing left...” Infernia said softly.

“...Infernia?” Glacia inquired at the sound of her voice...before slipping the rest of the way into old, long-forgotten patterns as she sat down beside her sister in her own sweater and sweats, putting her hand on her shoulder. “...Toni?”

“They’re all gone, Staci,” Infernia...no, Toni...said, her voice rough. “Everyone on Omega Team, Mom, Dad, Grandma, my neighbors...everyone. There’s no one left. We went away and they left without us.”

Staci felt herself melt a little more at the words, trying to think of a response to what her sister had said. Cold logic helped her little here. Toni was right. Their parents, their family, their friends were all gone. In the end, there was no way they could get them back. But even as logic failed, Staci remembered the feelings from a lifetime ago, when she’d felt abandoned and lost. What she’d wanted, truly wanted to hear.

“Maybe...but not everybody’s gone, Toni...”

Toni turned, looking at her with a sense of desperation that was almost palpable, before Staci wrapped her arms around her, pulling her close. “We’re still here. You have me, and I have you, sister. We’re not alone.”

It was illogical, emotional, and utterly pointless in the face of the losses both had sustained before, during, and after the war... but as Staci felt her sister squeeze tight against her, the first tears she’d held back finally beginning to fall, the cold woman felt that, perhaps, it could be enough, on its own, to just be Toni and Staci again.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

Check out this hoverbike.

I wonder what Doug's Magegift would make of Randall Thompson's settings of Robert Frost's poems?
The Telephone, a dialogue for five voices

Quote:'When I was just as far as I could walk
From here to-day,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
You spoke from that flower on the window sill-
Do you remember what it was you said?'
'First tell me what it was you thought you heard.'
'Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned my head
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word--
What was it? Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say--
Someone said "Come" -- I heard it as I bowed.'
'I may have thought as much, but not aloud.'
'Well, so I came.'

Quote:A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"
In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."
And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."
It was not enough of a garden
Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.
She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,
And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.
A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees.
And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider-apple tree
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.
Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I know!
"It's as when I was a farmer..."
Oh never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.

Quote:Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Quote:I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

Quote:As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music -- hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.
Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.
The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush's breast.
Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went --
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.
But no, I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn't been.

Quote:O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Quote:Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

"Sludge batteries" are simpler, more efficient, and use more of the battery volume for energy storage than current technologies.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2 ... oft-kinect]Holographic projection -- on your coffee table.  Now Leia can call for your help.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.