Randox

Only 48% of americans pay income tax? Err, dare I ask what percentage is on welfare?

I would like to let you all know that there has been a revision to Rule 1.3 in light of things that have come up on this thread. The long and the short is that all pictures are now considered under the same rules as RS Screen shots have been. You can read the forum rules here. The Opening Post has also been changed, with the specific guidelines we want you to keep in mind when posting pictures here. And I would like to thank you all for your patience while the moderating team sorted this out this rule change.

Thinking about the welfare where I live (and it is the 3rd largest segment of our provincial budget after Healthcare and Education), one of the problems is that if your on it, and you do get a job, they subtract the entirety of your paycheck from the welfare you receive. While it makes sense on the surface I suppose, what it actually does is remove the motivation for people to go get a job, because until they get something full time, they won't actually be bringing in any extra money at all. If we could go to some sort of sliding scale where they start out keeping half their paycheck, and then cutting it back as they make more, to help encourage people to not go on welfare for the rest of their lives.

I bet that was a fun day. I am not happy about the hour of sleep I lost to daylight savings. Well, actually, I got all my sleep, I just lost an hour of daylight instead (oh the irony). Now I don't want to go to bed, but I must, and the sleeping pill I took at midnight is starting to work (I started taking melatonin again because within 30-60 minutes, I wont want to be awake anymore).

Had a lot of fun in the smaller, secondary chat (we we're about the same when we started, so either less dedicated peeps or people were sneaking back into the main chat :D). I know at one point the chat was just spitting out the names of people who died. I managed to burn up 2 rings of life (one in the first 30 seconds of the event), and die once, where I had to make a new necklace and an enchant tablet, but I still got back in time. I don't think I missed anything when I left after about 3 hours to eat the supper I should have had when the event started.

On the topic of incenst, something worth pointing out is that we are desensitized to people we grow up with, if you spend enough time together, which as a biological mechanisim (since we normally grow up with our immediate family) does quite a bit to prevent us from becoming attracted to those people, which prevents incest (it also means your not very likely to ever be attracted to any friends you have had since you were say 4-6). If you don't grow up with your family, then obviously this doesn't happen. Also, different places put different limits on it. And as a point of interest, a family tree chart with % gene sharing. Even first cousin is not likely to be a problem, as long as its not done repeatedly over successive generations.

I'm outright camera shy, so I don't have very many pictures, and I never take them of myself. Every once in a while someone talks me into having a picture taken, but most of them are done by ninjas who give them to me later.

Can we just use hide tags? Nope. What's happening is that the rule does not apply equally to all images, and its been pointed out that this can cause a lot of confusion. The first category of pictures are RS screenshots, which provided they are put in hide tags with a warning, are allowed to contain language normally censored here, provided it is not excessive or offensive. The second category is everything else, ie this thread as opposed to the RS screenshot thread, where language in pictures is considered to be subject to our language filter, which means that if it is posted here, profanity is censor evasion. So right now we are asking you guys to be mindful of what your posting, and to edit the pictures as needed.

Just a reminder that the forum censor applies to all pictures as well. If you have something really funny but it has censored words in it, then please run it through paint or photoshop and blank it out as needed. Posting a picture with censored words is considered censor evasion, and can result in edited posts, removed posts with warnings, etc.

I have only really used my voice at full on two occasions that I can think of. Once was as part of a performance/competition, where we would have lost points if anyone had held back. Took me a minute to warm up to the idea though. The second was at the very end of the day in Disney's Hollywood studios, in their extra magic hours. My last two rides on the tower of terror had 2 and 1 other person in them beside me (almost got a solo run on the last one :lol: ). I was tired enough to be willing to yell as loud as I could to make up for the lack of people. After the last one, the people who were in the elevator the two of us opted out of were looking at the picture and laughing cause it was just the two of us. In general though, I am too shy to scream/yell, and I resent people for trying to make me. Its like singing, I have to be tired, or drunk.

Sent you a PM, but for everyone's benefit, it actually is against the rules. However, we don't monitor PM's unless they are reported.

I don't actually watch TV, because after a year spent having my computer handle that, comercials anger me far beyond reason. If I did though, the channels I watch are: Discovery, History, A&E (only for criminal minds), Showcase (on occasion), Space, and National Geographic. I'd also watch Comedy if my parents had that one.

This discussion stops, and it stops now. At this point, who is right and who isn't is irrelevant, because neither side is going to budge. This thread is for people to post their grievances with the world or with people in general, it is not to here to criticize fellow TIF users, and it is not a forum for debate on how people post. If anyone wants to continue this, then please start a private conversation. If not, the forum has an ignore feature, and everyone is welcome to use it. If people believe they are dealing with a troll, then the best possible action you can take is to deny them what they want most, which is attention. Trolls need attention either for their own amusement, or for emotional verification that people notice them and pay attention. They can not be reasoned with. Any further remarks directed at fellow users, either overtly or covertly, will be removed and dealt with at the discretion of the moderator staff.

As an aside, I've read all the cracked zombie articles that I know of. Why a zombie apocalypse is possible, why it would fail, and survival techniques that would get you killed. I also dislike sleeping in, even though I rarely get out of bed until I have to. It really messes with the sleep schedule though.

You my good sir, should never get a motor cycle. Apparently spiders, along with other insects like wasps, just love motor cycles. Read the first entry of this article for a good laugh. After reading halfway in the spider bit, it was enough for me to not want to ride a motorcycle. Once it got into the wasps, there is no way I am sleeping tonight. Thank you for another tacking another sleepless night as a result of the internet with that link, Randox. :sad: Humph. I hold that as one of their best articles ever (right after my favorite, which also starts with a spider). I laughed pretty much the whole way through that one when I re-read it tonight (been a while). I also hold you slightly responsible for seeing an entry named spiders and not turning back if they bother you :razz: You should not read my favorite article (though I feel like you already have), or that one about insects that I can't remember the name of. In recompense, I offer you a link to this, about zombie survival tactics that will get you killed. No spiders, but there is a great picture of an angry squirrel with the best caption ever (in context). This article shall be my bedtime story tonight. And I hate how long clothes take to dry.

My understanding is that your 'magic defense level' is 30% defense and 70% magic. I have no idea where the information for that came from though, or how true it is.

You my good sir, should never get a motor cycle. Apparently spiders, along with other insects like wasps, just love motor cycles. Read the first entry of this article for a good laugh.

I could really go for a rendezvous tutorial. The two things that are throwing me off are duplicating the orbital plane exactly (though if I don';t mess up, I think I can do this, seeing as I did it the first time). but the other is the transfer orbit. I don't know when to perform the transfer to meet up with my satellite. The closest I have gotten is 12.4km.

The highest wages in the world belong to business graduates. Specifically, the handful who are willing to sacrifice their family life, and are ruthless enough (read idiopathic tendencies) to make it to CEO. Also, the worlds top actors. The next tier down are going to be the absolute top lawyers, engineers and architects in the world (and when I say top, I mean you could probably fit all the people who are in this category in your living room at the same time). Then you have the higher end medical professionals (surgeons and anesthesiologists). Then you have the rest of the medical world interspersed with the high end of the other professions, and the top people from every other industry (fashion design, computer programming, economists (also actuaries), political scientists, DARPA researchers, etc.). After this point your looking at people making less than $100,000 a year before taxes, aka most of the world. That's my rough guess at least.

I've always taken the phrase 'everything in moderation' actually mean 'no excesses'. Essentially, realize that you can have too much of just about anything, and that you should have some balance in your life. People really think that phrase is meant literally? A phrase is "A small group of words standing together as a conceptual unit, typically forming a component of a clause.". It's short hand for a concept. Rather than have to explain the whole concept every time in full detail, we just say "everything in moderation".

I might be going to the moon again too. The autopilot should help wonders during landing, by making my lander controllable, and apparently I just suck at orbital rondevouz. It would be easier if I had a piece that would deorbit any stages I ejected though (I'd settle for self destruct). I am constrained by my unwillingness to clutter my orbit with more junk, which is limiting my options for orbital maneuvers. If I take more fuel, the extra weight causes me to require more fuel and so on. But with a self destruct, I could use rockets the size of my Thor model. With some extra SAS, they might be able to reach such and orbit, specially with, again, the new autopilot preventing it from spinning out of control when I turn SAS off (that's all that holds the thing up, and this might allow me to lean it). Something to avoid needing to use my final stage to finish the initial orbit. Might ask around their forums tomorrow and get some pointers. To the Mun! EDIT: That program has a lot of trouble tracking retro burn during approach for some reason. After 3 failed attempted to program it for strait up, I finally remembered (that's 90 pitch. 90 heading means sideways). I was able to track the retro spot manually well enough during the last 2km to pretty much put it strait down. I allowed autopilot to take over for the last 100m, and it really freed me up to keep the speed down around 5m/s. I even have a picture: I did however make what turned out to be a very fatal assumption. I believe when they made the accent and decent tanks, the idea was for the entire lander to take off, and launch the decent engine at height, since even though I was situated very nicely, I lacked the fuel required to break Mun orbit, and having left my RCS on the final non lander stage, there was nothing that could be done. It went up to almost 200km, and it came back down. Hard. All hands were lost in the first fatal mission (that I saved). The next rocket will be carrying 2 accent tanks, in the hopes that this will be enough to break Mun's gravity well. The part is going to be redesigned to triple its weight and volume, since that is what I estimate I will actually need. Anyone using the stock half tank and small engine will probably be fine, especially if it only handles the last 2 or 3km. That engine uses half the gas as the ones I have, and the tank holds twice as much as my accent tank (so that's like almost 4x the fuel even after considering my second engine and tank for decent). Also, since stage 3 handles most of the decent and braking thrust, I only eject it 1-2km up. I left the engine set to high, and it was still decelerating, which meant when I blew the separation joint I was still stuck to it. Had to flare the decent engine and then hit x really fast to cut it out, which shoved the 3rd stage a couple meters off my hull, and sent it off course (and out of my way). Was really fun considering I was only like 8 seconds away from starting to ascend, and of couse using my engine to knock it away lost me a lot of speed too. Glad to see I can still think fast though. I also learned I need a null stage so I can set the thrust for accent without turning the decent engine on.

I've never really cared for all the lolcat pictures, but I do have a special fondness for monorail cat. Also, the picture I use in my profile was chosen because it amuses me. I'm not sure who made it, I found it in a cracked article (there is also a great one of a squirrel). I want this as a stuffed animal though.

As another point of interest, I know a few arts students, including those in the fine arts, and they are in some of the most demanding courses you can take. As far as University courses go, the music classes (not stuff like music appreciation, I mean things like composition and performance courses) are quite possibly the most demanding courses offered, easily on par with Engineering, Law, and Medicine. Most of the people who are either taking some sort of performing art class, or work in one of the support roles (such as costume design), work their asses off, and their work consumes their lives. My point being, a lot of people assume the arts are easy, because there are a whole bunch of bird courses in them (music appreciation being the worst offender I have ever seen). But the people who are in arts only stick with it because that is what they are passionate about. If your just getting a degree, or your there for fun, your probably in psychology or political science (the former being what is probably the most underused degree ever, in terms of people who have it vs people who use it).

I started writing many a story in my free time, but I try to write them in a way I might want to actually read them again some day, which means I get bored in all the detailed stuff, or I just loose focus in general. I can also never decide between sci-fi, and fantasy (they normally alternate with each attempt), which is unfortunate because those are not easy genres to meld together and maintain coherency. My next attempt might end up using a trick from Sabriel, where magic works in one land and technology in the other, or something similar (I am not terribly creative, so I normally pull ideas from multiple sources and pool them).

No, but my computer isn't anyplace close to the recommended specs either. You might try turning down the graphical quality (do this from the main menu, more options). And I also found this today. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=8021.0 I have yet to meet up with my satellite (didn't help that I lost control of stage one by setting that auto pilot to the wrong button). Even if you don't use the autopilot function, the data it provides on your orbit can be noce to have from both screens, rather than just the map.