Reading some of these posts makes me glad to be in the Southwest It's still pretty cold (20 degrees or lower at night/early morning) but at least I've got my little heater. My dad called this morning from New Mexico and he said when he woke up it was -6 out! Its weather like this that makes me want to pack my things and head out to Puerto Rico!

I swear we can't have more than an 1.5-2 inches of snow and ice 'round my part of town, but that's all it takes to close down half the businesses. On top of that, school's out for the rest of the week 'cause it ain't melting for awhile. It's such a freak occurance for snow to stick in Texas that we can't hardly function.

I'm in central Illinois and I just had 2 days off! the university closed!

It froze up here last night but in a freak turn of events the council actually gritted before it. Having gone six weeks without a rubbish collection eariler in the winter I'm not so keen on snow... but it's back to normal now (windy and wet) so life goes on.

It sounds like the US is getting it fairly hard just now, wrap up warm and enjoy the time off school/uni/work, I certainly wouldn't say no.

Revan - you'd be amazed, 2" here and people insist on crashing their cars, and we get it every year.

I'm cold again. Waaaaah!!!

The weather talk has jinxed me...we are having an ice storm as I type this...Can I get a vernal equinox please?

Can't help you, Naughty Haute has sent us her snow now.

Well someone helped a little...it is just rain now...a very COLD rain...and I get to go work in it here in a few minutes...BLEECH!

***************

EDIT - Boss just called and gave me the choice of working in 37 (F) degree rain or working on a Saturday...guess which one won? ( Hint - I'm staying dry! )

Blech! I'd try and avoid the cold rain too!

For the last couple days it hasn't even made it to 40 F here and it was in the low 20's at night. Going above 50 today, then looks like a much more tolerable week of the mid 60's ahead.

I just feel horrible about everyone suffering with the cold weather.

Mrs Acadian is still enjoying her escape home to Western Australia and avoiding the winter altogether. She has had to dodge cyclones though.

Just can't win, can we??

Anyone got any Advil? Just a smidge of a hangover this morning and I have to be at work in less than 90 minutes. I really should know better than to imbibe on a work night...

Well, Thursday night was your Friday night, but you didn’t know it until Friday became your Saturday making Saturday your Friday, right? I say give yourself an extra Friday night to make up for it.

@Rick: Guess you didn't stay dry, after all . . .

Superb pun...just sayin. At least it was a short work day. I am taking Grits' advice (rather than Advil) and having a proper Friday night tonight...

A (very) belated Happy New Year to you all. I am finally emancipated from several unavoidable entanglements and an annoying bout with the flu (I won’t bore you with details)! The forums have certainly not lacked for material in my absence. It seems I have a LOT of reading to do! It may take me awhile, but I will catch up with the exploits of Buffy, Maxical, Teresa, Julian, Athlain, Awtwyr, Jerric, Ada, Edward, Maya, Ra’jirra, Wrothken, Zalphon’s latest, and not one but TWO chapters of Aradroth’s adventure (who lit the fuse under Winter Wolf? ). I also look forward to discovering the new gems that now grace our forum. Not only that, but I think it’s about time I posted a new chapter of Interregnum. For Acadian’s sake it will include a review to bring everyone back up to speed.

@Captain Hammer: My silence on the subject has been unforgivable, but I have spent the last MONTH thinking about your character profiles in the last chapter. They were, in a word, brilliant! I have a copy of it tacked to my bulletin board and I am grateful to you for bringing to my attention things about these characters that even I didn’t know!

A warm welcome back to you, my friend! I'm sure I'm not alone in saying how much we've missed you.

Yaaaaaaay! Happy New Year, Destri!! I am so pleased that you’re back!

Welcome back, Destri. And thank you, your comment nearly made me blush. "Nearly" being the operative word. I like to think I have more self-control than that. I hope.

Hopefully, though, we'll see Interregnum finished before ASoIaF.

The race is on again, the interregnum of Interregnum is finished and it's back in the race to see whether it will finish before BotM...

Happy new year and all that. RL can be a right pain.

Ditto!




Ditto!


- you really haven't missed much on me, since you were last on here I've only added 4 chapters, lol. Didn't want it to get overwhelming to catch up for those that went away for the holidays.



*

Welcome back, Destri!

Yaayy! Destri's baaaack!

Soo good to see that ol' avatar once again in the thread.

Ain't RL an umbrella seller?

Can I just jump in here, and quickly say thank you to all the members who have been reporting the spam links we've had recently. Haven't had so many pm's in years...

Thanks guys, it's much appreciated

I don't know what's going on with this, I've been seeing a lot more spam posts than I thought I would here lately. Maybe they've found a new way to crack the anti-robot systems you put in place during account creation? That, or some people are just really dedicated to their shady advertising tactics.

Anyway's you're welcome, and thanks for being so quick on the uptake deleting those posts, too.

I noticed a few more spam posts than usual, I've reported quite a few myself within the last month or so.

So I posted a Happy Birthday in the birthday thread for Zerker this morning and looked up his age for the post. According to this site's info, today was his 14th birthday. It caused me to reflect to when I was 14...1976...and to think about the changes and inovations since. This might be better in a thread all it's own, but it's a cool topic for discussion. Stuff that has become common place and/or taken for granted since the USA celebrated it's 200th birthday.

For example...no personal computers in 1976. No cell phones. The very first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, was rolled out of it's hanger and hadn't flown yet. Etc., etc., you get the picture....

Wait, did they have video games in 1976?

I think the Atari 2600 may have been out...not sure. When I was 11 (1973), my father bought a video game system for the family as a Christmas gift. It was made by Motorola and was called "Odessy". A version of "Pong" was one of the games. There were translucent plastic overlays that you would place on your TV screen, held on by static electricity, to provide the "graphics". Like for the Pong-style game, which they called "Tennis", the overlay was a tennis court. The actual game graphics were just white light sprites on a gray background.

I remember getting an Atari, if you used their games it was just like you said - but you could also put codes in it to make your own graphics and sounds - by 10's:


10
20
30

etc. Of course, they were still in black and white.

The only one I was ever able to do was lightning flashing and crackling across the screen - then a message of my making flashing on the screen. I looped it so it would keep going - and there was no way to save it, you had to put it back in each time I think.

Woke up this morning. Realized the Packers were still Super Bowl champs.

Not a good start to the day.

I have felt that way everyday since Seattle beat my Saints a month ago...

Certainly on the Atari 400 you could hook it up to a tape deck to save stuff. There's something that's vanished though - tape. The 4kB of ram was a bit of a nightmare though, as was the weird varsion of basic it used.

I can still remember when poeple didn't have PCs (over here anyway) in the early 90s and then the excitment when you got over 100MHz processors. My first had 133MHz with 64kB of memory and a 500MB harddrive... and I'm not even that old.

On the subject of spambots is it just me or have the last couple not actually been advertising? There was the one which copied the top post and replied it on ancient topics and then the one which told you how great the site was - what purpose did they serve to anyone? (What purpose does any spambot serve - has anyone ever followed the link and bought stuff?)

EDIT: if we're going to talk sport do I get to whinge about the six nations results?

Clicking on the link loads the spamware onto your PC. The one that was praising the site showed the link as Google (dot com) - but if you click on "reply" you can see the entire link - it did not take you to the real google site, but a copy page of that site.

Never click on these links unless you know and have tremendous faith in your Anti-virus/anti-spamware/anti-adware - etc.

PS: Whinage is always welcome! Lets hear it !!

Woke up this morning, and realized that the Jets weren't Super Bowl champs.

Bad enough that Green Bay had to knock my beloved G-Men out of the playoffs. Another twist of the knife when Gang Green lost to the Steelers. But a victory by the Steelers would have made the close loss by the Jets look better by comparison, and my wrath over the NFC Wildcard was still unabated.

Well, here's to next year, and prayers for a Giants-Jets Super Bowl.

Or use something secure for browsing such things, like freeBSD

As for whinging, I'll leave it until after next weekend (not that there's any doubt over the results...).

This is my 3rd winter in Alabama. We are under yet another Winter Storm Warning for tonight into tomorrow. The part that cracks me up is that the "warning" is for 1"-3" of snow. This would have been cause for just a "Winter Weather Advisory" back in New York. I know they don't have the equipment to deal with snow here, but it still amazes me how the locals freak out and close the schools before the first flake hits the ground.

Winter advisary was for six inches of snow here, we ended up with nearly 3 feet so far. I'm stranded and its showing no signs of letting up.

Well, school's out again here in the Metroplex. The snowfall isn't half as bad as the first time. Oh well, count your blessings, right? Maybe I can actually go out and do something this time.

Winter wonderland, round 3, a whole inch of snow. Didn't stick on the roads, so the commute will just be horrible instead of horrific.

We’ve had the perfect little snow dusting here. Pretty and fluffy on all the trees, just a little wet on the road. It’s the kind of day that makes me relentlessly cheerful.

Currently pleased with myself for rounding Mass Effect 1 and 2 on insanity, earning that coveted last achievement needed for bragging rights, so if you guys and girls will excuse me I need to finish a few story updates and play some more Morrowind.

Welcome back telli, glad to hear you're doing alright.

WOO HOO !!! TELLIE IS BACK !!! WOOOOOOOT !!!

Welcome back, always good to see forum veterans 'round here.

Thanks Revvie, I've missed you and your reviews, hopefully you'll continue writing stories yourself. See you in the RP section at least.

Ah yes...the Saturday morning head...to paraphrase Olfand, "...Please excuse me. I had a little drink-up last night. Still a little muzzy..."

I'm muzzy too, but without the benefit of the fun night before. I blame mine on dogs that partied last night till the wee hours and kept me awake with their racket - then got up early this morning for a little (hair of the dog).

It starts like this: A neighbor lets their dog out to roam about. (BFE, this is what happens here). My dogs feel an urgent need to go out and defend their territory from these marauders. (Or just brag about how many bones they got today).

Mine have to be seperated because the female is in heat - so only one dog is let out to bark it up with his buddies. The one left inside has to shout their encouragement to the lucky one who gets to party.

My female puppy is turning into a barkaholic...and she is a LOUD drunk.

Is there a cat whisperer out there that can explain the concept of "sleeping in on Sunday" to my cats?

Heh, not sure on cats. When my great dane (he died several years ago) was young, he would grab one of my feet and drag me out of bed in the morning. As he got older though, he slowed down and his Texas-sized bladder found him often sleeping in 'till tenish or so. Lol. I miss that big old boy.

Gotta love a big dog.

So Saturday I dragged Grits the Youngers out to a dairy farm to visit the baby goats. This required a long trek to break free of our suburban enclave. IPods were approved for the first part of the journey, then I expected human contact from the Youngers once there was something interesting to look at out the window. Like Oreo cows and a cinderblock building that is both a game room and a bait shop. A brick ranch-style house that offers hair styling and taxidermy is another favorite. Anyway, here’s how it went:

“All right, we’re out of the city now. I suggest you quit playing your games and take in the rural sights,” says Grits.

“What are rural sites?” asks Grits the Youngest.

“Country. Rural means we’re in the country, take a look at the country sights.”

“I can’t.” She’s getting frustrated.

“What? Why?! Just look around!” I would gesture, but I need both hands to keep the wagon on this bumpy road.

Now she’s really ticked off. “I can't because I don’t have an internet connection!!”

D’oh! Kids these days.