Randox

I just turned my computer back on because I need to send some stuff to my playbook, and since I see we need some laughs around here, I thought this was kind of funny: How to Play 'Diablo III' While Cuddling Your Boo

Just a note, that really sounds like a scam to me. If I were a phisher, that is exactly the sort of email I would be pumping out like mad. It's not often they get a chance to send a message that can't be declared a fake instantly by an educated user, so when they get something new like this, they are going to take advantage of it.

No, that didn't happen. I think everyone was too "Oh shi-" to see who did it. Luckily I avoided the hallways when this happened and moved through the storage rooms between science labs. One of my friends got hit in the foot with a bleach balloon. Our valedictorian got hit directly, but I don't know with what. Probably just as well. Not sure what your school is like, but I am thinking of our high schools, and if you did something like that and got caught, you'd be leaving the school in an ambulance for sure.

I feel like there is a law against throwing either of those things at people. And if there isn't, there should be. Please tell me someone pined them down while everyone else peed on them?

Hmm. I think I'll always be a blackberry fangirl myself. Still, its a nice phone. And now that I have the time, it was a nice day today, so I decided to go up on the roof (because its easy to do in this house). And then I thought, this view is freaking amazing, and I should take some pictures of it. Unfortunately, image shack will not upload 5.5MB pictures (JPG), so I had to downsize them to 'still really big'. The pictures were taken from the flat patch at the bottom edge of our roof where it has interior access. On sunny days, it nice to go out on to it and lean against the roof, and just watch the world. For anyone trying to get a sense of flow, the pictures are taken from left to right, in the top to bottom order.

A note that several posts have been removed from this page for driving the discussion away from the point of the thread, so the bottom half of this page is going to look a bit disjointed. Ideally, there needs to be some sort of balence between turing this into a debate on how to debate, and having people say whatever they want without any kind of reasoning to back it up. I would also remind everyone (even though most of you are old hat at this by now) to try to keep a cool head on this thread. If you start getting angry, please back out of this thread, go look at some pictures of fluffy kittens, and count to 10 slowly while taking deep breaths. Come back when your feeling a bit more mellowed out. And if I may be allowed to indulge in some personal backtracking, why would the distinction between moderates and fundamentalists is irrelevant? To me, saying that they are all the same would be in the same vein as accusing all Islamists of being terrorists, or at least wanting to be terrorists. What your doing is taking the craziest radicals, saying 'look how crazy these people are', and then assuming that everyone from the parent religious designation is like that. The Methodist and Presbyterian Churches (both quite moderate) have about as much in common with the westborrow Baptists than they do with Orthodox Judaisim (actually, much less). It's not about what people believe in the sense that I believe Jesus was the son of God and he doesn't. It's all about how what you believe steers your life. My point being that assuming that all Christans (or people of any other parent faith) are the same, or even similar, is just a demonstration of ignorance in regards to understanding the actual religions. What I am starting to see is an underlying assumption that if religion just didn't exist, that the crazy religious fanatics wouldn't be crazy people anymore. The assumption that someone only hates gay people because they believe that God wants them to hate gay people. While a lot of prejudice is probably a combination of learned behavior and fear (which aren't mutually exclusive), you don't need religion to foster intolerance. We are perfectly capable of being intolerant without religion. In the same vein, you don't need religion to seek meaning in the universe anymore than religion would impede the search for meaning. Many researchers are religious. Some of them have faith that doesn't prohibit the idea of scientific exploration, and some of them are actually trying to do gods work by expanding their understanding of his creation. Does religion do bad? Yes, sometimes it does, and I will happily conceded that religion has been a major part of many conflicts (and still is in many areas of the world), and it still is. But religion also does good, encouraging people to be generous and charitable, and even encouraging people to build a better understanding of how the world works will could mean research, or even just personal information and understanding gathering. Many religions preach tolerance of all fellow human beings regardless of ethnicity, gender, or racial orientation. You just never hear about it because the headline "x Church encourages followers to not beat up women" doesn't sell. But at the end of the day, my observation is that humans like to group themselves. We identify with a flag, or with a religion (or lack therof), or whatever else, and then a portion of every group wants to beat up everyone from other groups. I truly believe that is human nature, and I truly believe that if religion were not a concept that existed at all, that we would have found something else to beat each other up over, and we would war over that instead.

Had a camera on hand when bringing the dogs in a couple days ago, so I snapped one off of our younger border colie doing the 'border colie stare' in an attempt to herd our older one. And here is one of the two of them together.

Have Fun!

I've been hearing about that since yesterday afternoon and couldn't believe it, until I saw pictures of it, which cannot be unseen... Am I the only person I've talked to not weirded out by the photo? I considered it cool to see, bad to be the guy who had it. Haven't seen a picture of it yet. On a related note, if some crazy person is eating me, and I'm not already dead, I'd like the police to shot at him a whole lot sooner than after 'several warnings'. I'm thinking more like one warning. Tops.

Your welcome Gabe. Sort of glad you got me to remember that site anyway. Even under popular, there is still a lot of crazy, but some of the stuff they are calling for seems reasonable and well thought out, so it can be fun to browse every month or so. I'm sure that was not what you wanted to hear at all Albel :( Today I put about a ton of gravel in our trailer so it can be taken to my parents cottage where it will eventually be used for something. Can't remember what they want it for. Takes several times longer to get it in there than it should because its full of weeds that needed to be picked out so that it all doesn't start growing again the second it gets spread out over there. The weeds are ridiculous. Their hardly growing in any soil at all, just pea gravel.

There is a site (well, probably more then one) that have petitions for the US government. Maybe take a look through that and pick one you like. In fact, here is the site I am thinking of now. I think its run by the whitehouse itself. Be forewarned, most of it is trivial or totally stupid, but you might be able to find something you can use here. EDIT: Searching for popular weeds out most of the BS. This one caught my eye strait away as something that is a good issue that your group should enjoy, but is also not going to be too complicated. It's a call to make it mandatory to label foods containing genetically modified ingredients.

Your nicer than me. I too hate the food thing, and keep most of my food in my room for that reason, though the people I lived with this year were pretty good about it actually. But this also extends to my room. People do NOT go in my room without an explicit invitation from me to do so, and my invitations are one use only. You do not go in my room, and you sure as hell do not touch my stuff, especially not my computer, or anything resembling a computer (so gaming consoles, phone, and playbook).

Shouldn't you be outraged that you're paying 35k/year rather than hating on people who pay less? The Quebec students are fighting hard for every inch, they've been going at it for months and not giving in. If the gov had their way the prices would be higher but they know they can't [bleep] with the students - they'd never let them get away with it. While students in other countries have bent over to paying ridiculous prices and are being trapped in an endless wheel of debt. You're the ones that should be up in arms doing something but you're not. If anything there's a lesson about spirit to be taken away from this. Maybe if you got angry a little more often you would actually change something. I guess the question becomes what gives the students who are upset the right to be violent in their protests, and to bar other students from being able to get an education, causing them to lose the term (and about 6 grand, and possibly their scholarships as well). And democracy doesn't mean you get what you want. It means the majority gets what they want (ideally, though not always in practice). When the majority says no, you've had your say, and its time to accept it and move on. I have no issue with the protests in an of themselves, aside from the part where they didn't stop when it became clear that the only people who cared were a portion (lets say half) of the student body and literally no one else. At least, the rest of the students didn't care enough to stop (trying) to go to school, and the rest of the province told them to shut up. At this point, its become a matter of democratic principle. If the government caves, then they proved they will yeild before what is essentially a group of bullies. They. Can't. Yeild. The protests have now backed the government into a corner where their only choice is to arrest everyone to prevent civil unrest. And the violence was never justified. My support for any cause is void when people resort to violence like that. And as I already said, the part where they barred other students from their exams is beyond despicable. And speaking of anonymous, all they are is a bunch of bullies. To me, it doesn't matter if they are supporting the students, or protesting an actual worthy cause. I don't like bullies, and I will never support them or their methods.

Yeah, I do that too. Right there with you. The only time I have needed anything but the Prtsc button was when I recorded all the diologue in the Shadow Robe miniquest. I did the first few like that, cropping them into a collage, then I realised how long that would take, so I started up hypercam and used that instead, focusing it where the text would appear. So someplace, probably on my laptop, is a collage and a 90 second (maybe longer) movie that contain all the chat from the quest. To view it, I just set the playback speed of WMP really low, and then I can double click the play button to advance it by a frame. I think someone already pointed this out. If you had comprmised swift kit, the easiest way to take advantage of that would be to redirect it to a phising site mimic of the log in screen if you had one set up. This wouldn't cause anything to show up in a scan. And do a full scan with MSE whenever you want to really be sure. The quick scan completes very quickly by only scanning what are probably the more critical parts of your hard drive, and places where viruses are likely to show up, like your download folder. It's good for a routine check, but once a month, and whenever you suspect something might have gotten onto your computer, you should do a full scan.

There are inequalities, in both directions. Women tend to have cheeper car insurance, which I'm sure many people will agree that this would seem to be ass backwards from your observation of other drivers skill levels as they relate to gender. Its typically the type of driving that causes other people to have accidents though, rather than get the driver into them. Women are paid less than men, on average, for doing the exact same work, as an example from the other side. When I think about it, I think sports kind of nailed it with the segregation of genders in sporting competitions. There are reasons why you don't see mixed gender football teams, and its because there are differences in gender. To hear some people go on about the feminist movement, they would have us ignore the fact that genders do exist, and that there are differences. The goal should be to not discriminate arbitrarily because of gender, not to try and convince people that the differences don't exist. In a broader stroke, I have issues with many anti discrimination policies, because they are themselves a form of discrimination. While the intent might be good, I watch people who are highly skilled lose jobs to less skilled workers because the employer is afraid they are going to look like they are discriminating. For certain ethnic and gender combinations, certain jobs are closing in on free ride because they are so under represented (which also is getting to the point where it ignores that there are not an equal number of all ethnicities). One of the great mysteries of life is why other people aren't able to accept that there are differences, and then not discriminate based on them. If I were hireling people, I want to be hiring based on who I think is going to give me the most value for the money I am paying them without needing to worry about having gender balance and minority representation (and that isn't to say that I think people from the majority do the best work, my point is I couldn't care less what part of the world they came from as long as they do the best work I can get). I guess I am just anti political correctness, because to me, we are volunterily handicapping ourselves because we see things that aren't there. If only we had some magical test for discrimination that we could use to solve such accusations, and make PC a thing of the past.

Interesting, I'd never heard that before. Don't suppose there is a better option? I guess at the end of the day, I would still take slower healing over infection, but if there is something with an efficacy between say vodka and peroxide, I'd be interested to hear it. And sounds good writing a letter to the lady. No harm in asking for better living conditions. Just remember to be very polite.

Mind = Blown. Also, pretty funny how they included the Minecraft world size in there. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that. And its HUGE! I knew it was big, but that's just incredible.

I lost all my sympathy when they decided that democracy means if they don't get what they want, they have the right to become violent until they get it, regardless of the majority. That other people (mostly students from across Canada) are getting in on it disgusts me. The icing on the cake is that the protesters block access to the schools (or they were), which means they were interfering with other peoples right to an education because they are throwing a hissy fit. I have no time for people like that, and it saddens me that they are apparently form the same country that I am from. I would expect nothing less of anonymous though, then championing this kind of cause. Seems right up their alley.

One thing I will note, is that Blizzard is now pulling a Jagex and not telling their players what is going on. I wont blame their customer support, because they are probably just as helpless as the players ranting at them, but they need to find someone who can weasle a response out of the tech team. Even if they give totally ass backwards eta's, people like time frames, so that they can wander off and try again later. It won't shut everyone up, but it will shut up many. And I watched this afternoon as some players became unable to play the game, while others such as myself could, and Blizzard never acknowledged that they were even aware there was a problem. Questionable buisness practices aside, the game is still very fun, even if I am still in Act III normal. I have decided there is really just one thing that jumps out at me. The sell value for items to npc's is terrible. It is just abysmal how little money you get, even for rare items. It's an obvious ploy, along with the fact that every character can use just about any item, and that just about any item can be useful to any class, to support their auction house, and more importantly, their RMAH, which Blizzard gets a cut of. I don't object to Blizzard making boat loads of money, because it should allow them to maintain their games (someday this game will stop being playable unless they release the other portion of the game code when the servers one day go offline for good), and make more epic games that cost money to develop. But I will always object to crafting your game like this in a way that is inconveniant, just so that you make even more money. The RMAH would have made plenty, even without this I think.

Found this neat little flash program that helps you visualize the scale of the universe. Amazing and mind blowing. http://htwins.net/scale2/index.html And the mouse that came with my pc is wearing out. That didn't take long. Fortunately, I have my old wireless laser mouse, sanse battery cover, to step in for it. Should be made of much sturdier stuff.

The only one I saw in your list that I know is that the middle mouse button will open a new tab automatically, just like it does in I think every other browser (at least FF and I think IE)

Sort of agree, thorugh having something else lined up before you flip them the bird and drive into the sunset would be good, if possible. Or see if you can negotiate a couple days for the wedding or something. Reminds me of this article, though whether its still funny might rely on you not living there.

Biology is not my strong suit, and most of my hobby study of bio is the nervous and immune systems, so I hope I am not talking completely out of my ass here. My understanding is that there is a chemical that your body can use to rebuild the telomeres, and that the trick would be to activate whichever gene it is that gets your cells to start using it for that function (which is probably what the immortal creatures like lobsters are doing, except without the need for drugs). The point being, our bodies can rebuild them on their own (which makes sense, seeing as our bodies built themselves in the first place), you just need to get it to actually do it. And until we manage to do this, we can't really prove that it works. I guess we are still at the mice stage, and getting them to rebuild their telomeres does at least slow down their signs of aging, so even if it can't make us immortal, it can probably make us live longer (because there might be another ingredient that we are missing).

Wipeout is one I don't feel guilty about watching because it looks like legitimate fun (for most people at least), and I'd go on the show just to have a crack at the course.

Agreed on the soccer thing. I used to play out, then golie, then I stopped playing it. As the years go on, I started to dislike being constantly kicked in the shins, and having balls kicked into my face. And part of the confusion might be that everyone else refers to it as American Football and Football, and don't see why we can't do the same, except here American Football is just Football. Same problem with hickey sometimes. In some places (warmer places), hockey refers to the field game. In north America, Hockey always refers to Ice Hockey, and the field version is always Field Hockey. I actually can't get into field hockey either. All the sticks are right handed (its actually a rule), and I shoot left (I also golf and bat left, even though I am right handed). Besides, real hockey is more fun.