Randox

For the record, I was reffering to Mod Stevew who currently heads the Customer Support team that deals with player moderators, as well as the changes made and being made in their Community Management counterparts.

Long live the parachute. I think I'd still enjoy playing with it, given an opportunity :lol: One holdover from childhood that should never die.

Aside from the meat comparison, I agree. If she is sleeping around, then you have a free pass to consider it nothing but sex and keep going, assuming all parties involved are on the same page (that is, assuming your friend knows as well). From what you said, she isn't after anything but fun, so it really comes down to doing what makes you happy. If you can still have fun with her, go for it. If it's not fun anymore, stop. Simple as that.

Sinkholes look neat, though they hold no personal appeal with me. I think I'll give that a miss. The quest is what has my attention. I am no fan of quest fights, so the lower the cb reqs the happier I am, and for major lore quests in particular, I'd just as soon see them be open for more of the community and then reward the high levels after the fact. Might even get my quest cape back after that one, since it's been a couple months. Looking forward to the re-homing, though the prince and princess (royalty in general) would not have been my top pick for people I want to meet in the enchanted valley. Unless they are still frogs of course (it doesn't seem like a place where humans should live). I am more looking forward to the museum in draynor, and the update to the Varrock Museum. Always a highlight for me when more stuff is added there. Not sure if I care about the slayer tower. Might try to get a task there lined up, just in case.

We had rubber inflatable balls. Heavy enough to be useful, but light and soft enough to be harmless. The best were the pink volleyballs.

On the other side of the field, I am content with Jagex for the moment, since at least one department has made pretty sincere efforts to reform itself to better do it's job. Now, Jagex does have a history of moving it's team leaders around with Dilbert'esque frequency, but at least the changes will have gone through before that happens. The other thing is, with enough interest, they might actually try some of these ideas out, just don't expect to see them until 2014. This year is already done, the resources already allocated. The plannign for '14 should be starting right about now, and will probably get laid out sometime in March and maybe into April. It also depends on what large items are in store. Things on the scale of skills now take at least a couple years work, so if one of those is arriving in 2015, there will be less available for these kinds of ideas now.

I rode the tail of crazy awesome gym classes, especially in Elementry. The gym teacher I had from preschool through grade 4 was amazing. In grade 1 (the only thing I can remember about preschool gym was that he was the teacher) the highlight were these little square platforms with coaster wheels, and we'd run around the gym and ride them, or push each other on them. There was also of course the legendary parachute, which is a lot more fun when your little. That school also had a fantastic playground with a few slides and an epic swing set. I had him again for at least the next couple years at a different school, which had a really nice gym that had gymnastic equipment bolted to the walls that could fold out, and 4 giant rope swings which were particularly awesome. It was just great having a teacher who was great with kids, and loved his job. Then in grade 4 or 5 we got the non stop talker who routinely spent half our 30 minute gym classes talking to us (one of the very few times I have gotten in trouble was for timing how long he talked). My teacher made the comment to my mother once that it was the first time she had ever had a class that didn't want to go to gym class. His incessant talking totally sucked the joy out of it. After that, until highschool I had your more run of the mill gym teachers. Not terrible, but not amazing either. Gym was fun, though probably mostly due to not being work. While I never again got that feeling of walking into the gym and seeing the actualy gym gear out and realizing that it was going to be an awesome day, junior high was really good with the track and field stuff. High school also had it's high points. I do like badminton, and I also like pillow polo (big foam sticks to whack a ball around). We also played tag more than once because my class was awesome like that. Meanwhile, new schools were no longer allowed to put in swings, I'm sure my elementary has lost, or at least been forbade to use, most of the gymnasium equipment. No word on them banning cheerleading yet, which hits me as odd because much like any other form of gymnastics, getting seriously hurt is inevitable. Also is your school not determined by location in Europe? On a much lighter note, I was looking through the book How to do Everything by Red Green, and I got to the back and found something I had totally forgotten about. I hope at least most of you know the Man's Prayer. Red Green (Steve Smith) also wrote The Handyman's Prayer: (just in case anyone though Scott Adams was my only hero) O Heavenly Father, be with me this day, For I am sore afraid that I will hurt myself again. Let Thy hand guide the hammer towards the nail and away from my thumb. Grant me the wisdom to wear safety glasses. Give me the patience to measure twice and cut once - or measure at all. Let the saw blade always be somewhere in the vicinity of the line. Bless my drill bit with sharpness so that it will bite into the surface rather than dance across the countertop and fall into the sawdust bin with me close behind. Let me show restraint when using my nail gun. Give me the maturity to put screws in with a screwdriver, not a hammer. Grant me the courage to change the things I can, accept the things I can't and the good fortune of my wife not realizing I can't tell the difference. Thank you, Lord, for helping my rec room look better by creating dimmers. Thank you, Lord, for safety chains and fire extinguishers. Thank you, Lord, for all that stuff and hear us when we pray... Our Father, who art a craftsman, Perfectionist be thy name. Thy power tools hum, They walls are plumb, Upstairs As they are in the basement. Give us this day A utility shed, And forgive us our borrowed tools As we forgive those who borrow tools from us. And lead us not into renovation, But deliver us from moving. For thine is the hammer And the Skilsaw And the duct tape, Forever.

I was actually specifically thinking of this. For the schools that aren't banning tag because it promotes violence and might hurt someone, many schools across north america are getting rid of recess and any other recreation to make more time for classes, under the No Child Left Behind philosophy (that also dictates that students can't be given a failing grade apparently). As I've said before. I'm pretty sure that when people look back at this time in history, it will be our education (at least in North America) that stands out as the craziest thing we were doing at the time, and hopefully people will be marveling at how we ever made it out of this hole we are digging.

I prefer woodsball. Trying to decide which would be safer for a child. Speedball is played with a harder projectile, and at a faster speed, but you also wear a lot more protection. The matches also tend to be much shorter, where in paintball if your good you can be out on the field for an hour or more strait (or at least until you run out of spare ammunition or air). Unfortunately, if swings and dodgeball are getting banned, I don't think there is much hope. For added exercise, my favorite course is on a reasonably steep hill, and is more for a defend the castle type of play unless the match is contained to the village at the bottom for close quarters combat. It is great exercise though if your there for a day, and the adrenaline rush might even be a good substitute for other risk taking behavior. It is kind of sad though about how they are scalling back gym programs and taking away all the stuff that was fun anyway (so that they not only get less exercise, but learn to hate the exercise they do get). Unless someone invents a negative calorie food, it doesn't matter how much you replace their food with healthy stuff. They'll still be fat. Woodpulp is a good start though, that might actually be negative calories (yeah, they put wood pulp in food. Because they can).

I'm not convinced they are worse. Even if they are different levels ("higher" or "lower") from the norm when we were that age, by definition the average person will have average social skills for their age bracket. It's still relative, and I think we can count on primal urges to keep things to keep things getting to far out of whack, since the skills need to be good enough to satisfy certain urges. Kids were sexually active all the way back to at least grade 7 (probably 5 or 6) back when I was in those grades. My understanding is that it's pretty much the same now. Certainly not the best measure ever, but the best I could think of off hand. Our species will live on. On a related note, I keep hearing that the majority of children in school are fat now. Now, that's always about the states, though I understand Canada is expanding pretty nicely as well, but I just can't imagine it as a majority. I'm going through my memories, and I'm sure it was worse than I remember it, but most people easily fell into thin, normal, or just above normal. I'll have to pay special attention tomorrow, but just going through memories from the week, the healthy weights have an easy super majority. Amazing what difference a decade makes. I also have to wonder if the schools put a moritorium on running or something. I propose we introduce paintball to gym class, it's fantastic exercise :lol: It's also the best fps ever, thus helping solve that computers ruining our children thing. In other news, today we have a brief power outage (maybe half a second?). It was enough to black out the monitor and reset my stereo naturally, but apparently not enough to wipe my PC ram, since my computer never shut off, and when the monitor came back a second later my computer was still running as if nothing had happened. Thought that was kind of awesome.

Tim, that reads pretty much like a classic emotionally abusive relationship, at least to me. The control and dominance are all there. So yeah, your goal in life right now should probably be setting yourself up to be able to leave, and don't go into another relationship for a while. You need some time on your own (and this would be an acceptable time to get a pet if you can truly care for it, while your still with Brett, not so much) to be happy, and feel good about yourself. With some real confidence and esteem backing you up, you'll be in a much better position to find someone you can actually be happy with.

Can you actually get more than a few seconds dizzyness from blood pressure issues? I would think your heart would always be trying to work to restore pressure when it drops, so you would never have an issue for more than a few seconds (until either your head get's pressure again, or you collapse which causes gravity to help out).

I have really low blood pressure and stuff like that is an everyday occurrence for me. Maybe your blood pressure is low today? You could try having a coffee or tea and see if that helps at all. Usually this is very short term though isn't it? My blood pressure is lowish, and used to be lower. I remember coming very close to passing out a couple times from standing up to fast, but it was always something that passed in, at least what felt like, seconds, before vision, hearing, and balance went back to normal (it's not a particularly awesome problem to have, but it is kind of neat). If it doesn't come back, certainly something to note for your family doctor the next time you see them. Maybe make a little note someplace so you can give a more detailed account to them. Off the top of my head, inner ear issues can certainly cause balance issues, as can reduced blood flow in your upper legs I think (in particular, people who wear pants that are really tight around the thigh can suffer form a few symptoms, one of them being dizziness). And speaking of medical stuff, apparently I get to have an EKG done in the next little while to make sure certain medications haven't done anything weird to the way my heart works. Actually makes sense, considering the medications.

Randox was the name of my first Diablo 2 character, a necromancer (it was a suggestion from a friend). I liked the name, and when I started RuneScape, I decided to take it as my web handle (my RS character effectively being the second Randox ever). It's proven to be a pretty nice fit to use as my own handle, since I have a certain streak of pragmatism myself, much like my necromtic namesake. Actually, I like to think that if I ever gained magical powers that I would be a necromancer, morbid as that may sound (I have no particular fascination with the dead, I just think animated skeletons are awesome). People seem to like it when my name means something, so I have taken it to be a portmanteau of Random Paradox, which I like very much, and Randox is easily my favorite web handle.

My dad is pretty much a clone of his father (one of his brothers also looks like their dad, but not quite as much), just a younger version. They have been mistaken for each other a few times.

Going to go with this. There is a huge difference between calling out someone who types like they are having a stroke, and calling out the single mistake in a well crafted post to make yourself feel better, or as an excuse to dismiss a point someone is making. If minor mistakes actually annoyed you that much, you wouldn't be here to complain about them, you'd be in jail after having been driving into a homicidal rage the first time you visited any forum on the internet. For the most part, it's a thinly veiled excuse to try and boost your own ego, or as a defense mechanism against another persons argument, which is also why every religious debate on this board has devolved into a dictionary battle. There is also no obligation to be rude about it. If you see someone consistently make the same mistake, then politely point out to them what the mistake is and how to fix it. If you come at the situation putting other people down, then we get to assume your doing it for yourself. If you do it politely, then we can assume your doing it for their benefit, which if you actually cared about the language would be your goal. If you become angry and correct people out of that anger, then you have become the very thing you hate. Another person on the internet who seemingly exists for the sole purpose of making our species look bad :lol: Oh, and even as one of the top posters here (especially given the age of the thread any many of the tops don't post here anymore), I think I stand as an unusually difficult person to annoy, at least on the web. If I could be annoyed by the concept of people who type like they are actively being murdered, or who would register on a forum to announce that they think people who play video games too much should be put to death, I would be a very miserable person. It's why I am such an advocate of understanding other perspectives on life. I don't have to view these as the acts of terrible people who are out to get us. I save all my dismay for politics :D

I normally play who and whom by ear. No one has yelled at me for it yet. I'd look the difference up, but it wouldn't make any difference. And a question to the people who lose their bannanas when someone put's a your instead of a you're, or a their instead of they're or whatever. Are you a wizard or do you actually think about the letters you type? I give most of my posts a cursory proofread, which is why I don't confuse them too often visibly, but I am only thinking about the words in my head, not how to spell them. I haven't really payed attention to the letters I am hitting in years. I just think up the words and assume my fingers will figure it out. The downside is that for some words, I normally just type the default spelling, with 'your' being the worst. The only words I almost never have trouble with are two, to, and too, and I don't know why I am always able to choose which one I want.

It is actually quite possible that I am totally making up the fail for stalling. I found a sample scoring sheet (no easy feat), which conveniently lacks any explanation of what anything is worth as a penalty or how many you need to fail (pretty sure any dangerous action is an auto fail though). However, here is the entire section for, what I am assuming are all penalties, the shifting gears section: wrong gear while turning (seriously?) rides clutch/looks down coasts with the clutch (*) too soon/not soon enough cannot shift other than intended coasts in neutral (*) dangerous action I am having a little touble understanding the ones I marked as (*). I assume the first is coasting with the clutch still engaged, which normal people like to call engine braking. The only objection I can see with this is that your brake lights wont be on. I seriously hope the second one means coasting with the clutch up and no gear selected, and not just clutch in. As for while turning, that's just unreasonable and also no fun. There is also a criteria in starting for stalls or trying to drive with the handbrake engaged. I also learned that only police and community officers are allowed blue lights, though now that I think about it, our ambulances use red and white. Not sure why I though they also used blue.

Ah driving exams... Not sure how you guys did it, but I did one of those driver courses, which aside from allowing you to take the exam sooner and being good for your insurance, has the benefit that your instructors know (in theory at least) how your test works. So I learned to drive in the area where I would be tested, in the car I would be tested, and I got specific pointers about the places they take you to try and catch you. Speeding is a particular one, you need to go slow enough that your clearly under the limit to someone looking from the passenger seat, since it's an instant fail (as is stalling if your testing in a stick shift). I'll never forget my test (which went much better than I thought I was doing at the time). For added pressure, I would have been the first person on Dad's side of the family to fail the test I think, though that really only counts back to my dad's generation since my grandfathers driving test consisted of going to the gas station and being told "oh ####, everyone knows you've been driving for years!" and giving him one. About on par with the motor cycle test my dad took where you go around the block, and if you come back in one piece, you get a license. Not quite so easy now.

My internet connection is starting to worry me. A day or two ago is just cut out. A couple of modem reboots later (maybe 5 minutes) it was back and seemingly faster than normal, easily as fast as the wee hours of the morning (by which I mean 3am when only the overnight torrents from other houses are running) suggesting that either the internet just seems really fast becuase I'm that happy to see it back, or it's fast because I was rebooting and one of the first people to re-establish a connection. I think this time it was down for close to an hour. At least 30 minutes. I don't know if this is something I am normally lucky enough to miss (I can remember it dying a couple times at night over the last couple years and being fine when I woke up) or not, but I really hate it.

Not at all. In reverse, you end up with all the waste heat the AC dissipates into the world under normal operation. In areas where it doesn't get to cold (I think around here is warm enough most of the year), they make better heating units than actual electric heaters because of their efficiency They work with heat that already exists rather than spend energy creating more, so as long as there is enough heat to work with (I think down to around -15C if you like your house at room temperature) they are effective and efficient If it get's colder than that, you probably want a backup system to help out. A bit more useful in the northern states than in Canada I think. Side note, a dehumidifier is an AC unit that dumps it's waste heat back into the exhaust air, with only a small net temperature rise (the heat generated by the pump itself).

I haven't done any more minecraft yet, but I did a lot of work in my head today. And so begins my posting both here and on my blog (relevant post). Two things happened today. I watched a spotlight on thermal expansion, and now that I know how it works, I am very interested in using it. It's well done, it works well with IC2, and it has fantastic power generation and storage systems which have rendered my entire combsution power plant to status as an emergency, explody, relic form another age. Everything is smart, scaling to both the power demand (engines), and power supply (machines). The engines jam rather than exploding (which is much easier to solve), and there is a box I can plug into the grid to either serve as a buffer like the MFSU, or as a battery so powerful that it can run a quarry at full power for 5.2 hours on it's own (600,000 MJ), because it's portable. That's cool, but not particularly clever. What is clever, is an elegant solution to a problem with redpower computers. Each computer will operate on a local network, running through an IO expander to control some local operation. I also want a base wide network running from a central computer that can operate any local system remotely. However, if a computer is left with any of the IO expander outputs in an on state, that can only be changed by interfacing with that expander directly. Now, more than one computer can control these things (I think), which unless I want someone to be able to explode the power facitily from outside the front door, means I have to travel to that computer, defeating the whole point. Instead, since each computer will have its own expander feeding into the same bundled cable to control the same stuff, I realized that before combining the expander outputs I could run them all through XOR logic gates. These are the gates that control any switches in your house where something can be turned on and off from either switch, regardless of the others position. Any change in either input changes the output. It will take up space (which is not an issue here), but it should work almost perfectly. It does however create a problem with any situation where the starting state of a signal is important, since I can no longer check the expander to see if something is on or off (because the output is now independent of either input individually, and can only be known if I know both). If the expander can connect to bundled cable from two faces (which I don't think it can), I can loop the outputs back to each one so they know the state of the real output. Since I am pretty sure they can't (would actually create a lot of problems if that were possible), then by only using half the available outputs, the other half can be reserved for feedback running back into the expanders to signal the output state, so that programs that need that state can check it. The programs to run on such a physical system should be pretty fun to work out too.

My first guess would be your laptop is simply not getting an ip address. Either it's not being assigned, or it's having trouble getting one. I can't tell you how to fix that off the top of my head, but you can try assigning it one manually. To see if this is the problem, when you connect and get the limited access, check the network status. In XP you right clikc the network icon in the task bar, and select status. For 7, left click to get the available network list, and right click your network. Vista is one or the other. On the status window there should be a details button or tab, which gives you a list of, among other things, your (IPv4) address, subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS server. If your unable to get an ip address, some or all of the numbers will be zero. Alternatively, open up command prompt and type in "ipconfig", hit enter, and you'll get a list containing those same pieces of information. Some of them will be blank, the ones I listed are the ones your immediately interested in. If your address is blank, or 0.0.0.0, then you have no internal IP address, and so no connection to the router. The first thing you can try is, in command prompt, type "ipconfig /renew" which will tell your computer to try and renew the connection. If it works, you'll have an address and a working connection. If not, your going to have to set one. To do this, you need to get to Wireless Network Connection Properties. On windows 7, from the status window where you can get details, there is a properties button on the bottom left (not wireless properties). Otherwise, you need to find the network adapters in one of the network windows (which like to change on every version of windows) and right click it for properties. Once you have this window open, there should be a box under "This connection is using" with your wirelss adapter listed it, and under it a larger box listing a whole bunch of items. You want "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)". Left click it once, then click on the properties button under the list. From here, you can slect to either get settings automatically, or set them manually. You want it to be manual. There are two get the numbers you need. You can reboot your modem and get a network connection, and then look up the 4 items I listed following the instructions above, and write them all down. This is the sure way to get numbers that will work. For the benefit of a situation where this might not be possible, even with a limited network you should have had an address other than a blank or 0.0.0.0 for the default gateway. This is your router ip address, and aside from being your default gateway, is also your DNS server. For your IP address, you need the first, second, and fourth numbers of your default gateway. On just about every router on this planet, that will be 192.168.x.1 (I'm not sure if it's allowed to be different). Where the x is, you can put in any number from 0 to 255. Here your going to have to guess. You should probably pick something in the 10's to 40's, and don't go to 50 or higher or you might be out of your routers valid range. If when you apply the settings you get an ip conflict error, try another number. Hopefully that is clear enough to get through. I used to use this trick on one of my laptops which could only get an ip address at school from an Ethernet cable, so I would get an ip address that way and then enter it in manually to use the wireless.

If your on a network, chances are you have two firewalls. Your computer has (or should have) a firewall, be it the default windows firewall or a program you added manually. A network router will also have a firewall it's own, and this is the one that typically gives people trouble. To get past the router, you need to access it (by visiting its ip address from any computer on its network, normally 192.168.0.1, 192.168.1.1, or 192.168.2.1) and set up port forwarding for the relevant ports, and guides for just about every router ever can be found here. Not sure which ports RuneScape uses though.

I would think running an AC to defog your windows in Australia would be sort of insufferable. Not hot enough already? One of my parents vehicles forces you to use AC mode in full defrost (your allowed to not do that if you split for feet and defrost). Yes, it's very fast, but it's also very hot, and can quickly turn the cabin into an oven while drying your eyes out, so you end up running it for only a few seconds. I like options. I also prefer being able to select the air temperature over ambient temperature control. Ambient control is a lot more awesome when you can't feel the air hitting you (or ideal for everyone except the driver).