Thumbs up or down? I haven't seen it yet. A friend's kid gave thumbs up, but I need a more senior opinion.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

Okay, we got the word in email -- our laptop is finally coming from Dell. It took freaking long enough. In any case, that means it's time to move from
the old wire-bound ethernet router to a wireless one.

So... what's a good wireless hub? There's a Linksys I was looking at a few months ago, but I can't recall at the moment the model number. What
have people had good luck with, and bad luck with?

And what do folks think about USB wireless cards? I was figuring that might be the easiest way to add wireless connectivity to the desktop.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Two updates in the last week (both at MangaFox):

http://www.mangafox.com/manga/mahou_sho ... oha_vivid/]Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha Vivid is now at http://www.mangafox.com/manga/mahou_sho ... /v01/c003/]Chapter 3.

http://www.mangafox.com/manga/mahou_sho ... he_comics/]StrikerS The Comics now has http://www.mangafox.com/manga/mahou_sho ... mics/c015/]Chapter 15. Signum and Nanoha going at one another.

Specifically, http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainm ... story.html]Bob Dylan's recording a Christmas album.

Which begs the question: Just how does one mumble "fa la la la la"?
--
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

Never trust a bar that feels it necessary to have an animal on the premises. It is a gimmick. It could be a snake in a tank. It might be an old, faithful, dog.
It might be a parrot. Parrots are the worst. To start with, they are loud. Unlike popular pirate culture, which pictures them as largely silent shoulder
decorations, who occasionally erupt with a cry of "pieces of eight", "beware the black spot", or "Please Mr. Silver, don't rape me
poor Jim-boy bottom again". They are loud, social birds, who will screech out, imitate or otherwise warble with the force, volume, and high pitch of a
four year old running around inhaling pixie sticks through both nostrils. If pirate parrots acted like real parrots the origin of bird-shot would be much more
obvious and the British Navy would have been prying beaks out of their hulls more often than Lady Hamilton knelt for something other than a passing monarch.

Derrick's Place had a parrot.

It was not a gimmick.

If was an affront to nature.

Thibor considered this. He considered this carefully. As a werewolf, his status as a affront to nature was already well established, but he wasn't sure
that he was entirely willing to share that status with the bird. No. The parrot was not an affront to nature. It was not even a red headed bastard step-child
of nature, to be occasionally slapped as the situation warranted. That was giving it far too much credit. Abomination. No. That didn't do it justice. It
was something far more horrible.

The parrot stared back at him, yellow and black eyes meeting his. It shuffled back and forth on its perch, lifted one avian leg, farted prodigiously, shook
itself, and then with a coughing noise, leaned forward and explosively vomited a mouse skull out onto the top of the bar. Derrick, if that was his name, snaked
an arm in gingerly, keeping as far away from the bird as possible and wiped up the skull and small pool of seed studded vomit. He drew back quickly.

The parrot was green. Well that was an oversimplification. Its wings were mostly green, with a few red highlights, the tail had some green and blue. The few
feathers that dotted the head were green. The neck and chest were bare and whitish pink, a few stubby feathers sticking out in viridian clumps. The beak was
black. It was far larger than any parrot had a right to be. Bigger than most macaws, but without the long tail to give a sense of balance. It smelled. Not
overwhelmingly so, but even without his lupine senses engaged, Thibor could pick up the hint of carrion about it.

Without warning the parrot exploded from its perch, wings spreading as it flapped across the room to where a large man was dealing with a jug of beer and a
plate of Derrick's highly questionable deep fried cheese sticks. The man froze as the parrot alit on the table. Not with the grace of a dove in a John Woo
film or a biblical parable. It alit with all the grace of a three pound stone being chucked over an overpass. The table shook and beer sloshed in the jug, the
patron having lowered the beer level enough that it did not spill. With deliberate graceless steps, the parrot stalked towards the man, who remained frozen in
place. It reached out with its beak and gently turned over the medical alert bracelet on the man's thick wrist. Then it turned its head to the side and
leaned in close, the yellow and black eye held a few scant millimeters over the writing. Satisfied, the bird turned, defecated hugely, and flapped back to its
perch. It landed heavily. Settled back down, scratched under one wing disinterestedly, but kept one yellow eye fixed on the large man. The long black tongue
reached out and explored the beak, as if licking its lips in anticipation.

http://www.champions-online.com/exclusive_specials

$200 is alot to place down on a game little have seen anything of other than screenshots

A "monolith" strangely similar to the one from 2001 has been spotted in a photo from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Discuss.
Of course, the story is in The Sun, which is reputedly somewhere below The New York Post when it comes to journalistic standards...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Not kidding. Someone managed to DoS Twitter.

http://status.twitter.com...denial-of-service-attack

Bets on how long it's going to be until there's an all-out hacker war?

Tell me if you can see at least two things with this article that should be screaming "RED ALERT".

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

So, I've been a bit scarce the last week or so. Here's the story.

On Friday evening, I was all set for Double XP weekend.

Then at around 8:30 Pm central, the thunderstorm rolled through. A very fast moving, unexpected thunderstorm with lots and LOTS of lightning. I had actually
checked the weather not an hour before and thought it would be clear, but this thing boiled up out of nowhere.

The first hint I had that something was amiss was when I heard a crack of thunder that made my windows rattle. No sound of rain (that came AFTER the
lightning), just the thunder. I tried to do a normal shutdown of my PC, but before I could really get started on it, another lightning bolt hit. This time even
closer to the house.

The lights flickered and I heard a very distinct *POP* at the back of my computer.

Aw crap...

I got it shut down and unplugged while the storm passed. (Which only took 10-15 minutes.) When I booted back up, my onboard network card wouldn't work.
Nothing I did could get me back online.

Next day on Saturday, I borrowed a friend's PCI network card that he wasn't using. Installed that. Computer recognized it no problem. But I still
couldn't get online. *SIGH* So something on the motherboard OTHER than just the network card was fried apparently. But it works fine in every regard
except getting online. I'd detail everything I tried to fix it, but frankly there's no need to regale you with every frustrating failure.

I called dad up and told him the bad news. Explained all the steps I'd taken. And asked if we could go shopping for a new motherboard for my PC. In
response, Dad instead said words to the effect of "Hell son, it's been 4 going on 5 years. Lets just get you a new computer outright. Call it early
Christmas."

In my defense, I did mention that we didn't HAVE to do it like that. That I could probably make a new motherboard work. But he insisted. I didn't
complain THAT much.

And it's not as if he doesn't get something out of it. His PC has been giving him problems for awhile. He wants my old computer in trade. And he uses a
USB WiFi to get online on the rare occasions that he feels the need. (And we confirmed that that option still works on my old computer). And I know this system
inside out practically. If anything DOES go wrong. I'm that much better able to help him cope.

SO! Now I have a new PC. An Acer with a Quad Core, 3/4 Terabyte drive and 8 Gigs of RAM. Been spending yesterday and today getting things transferred over with
the help of a friend's 1 Terabyte external drive. And installing various other things, like City of Heroes.

Holy Crap... If I thought CoH looked good on my old machine once I added the new video card, now.... JOYGASM...

The acid test today: Rikti Mothership raid with all graphics sliders at Maximum. Framerate never went to slide show. It dipped into the 18-22 FPS range from a
high of 60 FPS. So it REMAINS at just about movie quality even under that kind of load.

So yeah. I missed Double XP weekend. But Karma has been kind to me in return. ^_^