MissInformed

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Meh, reading the lefty, tolerance-dripping write-up seems like it'd be worse than passing a few

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Maybe to you it's not a big deal. I imagine the gay kids he's being so cruel to don't feel the same way, nor do the families of the soldiers whose funerals he ruined. It's not ok just because it's not happening to you.

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Sad but needs to be put up.

Young hero died protecting sister from molester

A seven-year-old boy who died defending his older sister from a potential rapist has been honoured posthumously. Zhenya Tabakov's mother received the order of courage medal on behalf of her son.

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That's.... somehow both numbingly tragic and yet very uplifting. That somebody so young could find the strength and courage to take up arms against an attacker many times his size out of love for his sister. I think it goes to show how important character and belief are in a person growing up today. I know that everybody wants to believe that they would do the same thing in such a circumstance, I know I would. But until it happens, you never know how you'll react, or if you can summon up your faith and courage to do what you think needs to be done. I'm glad this boy was able to do that, and I wish that it didn't have to cost him his life.

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I'd respond with something of my own, but I doubt anyone could say it any better than Meg just did.

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I still question the wisdom of the whole one night stand thing.

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I always have and always will. There is such a thing as being too careful, but not when it comes to being in a position of complete vulnerability with a stranger. My longterm safety is always going to trump temporary gratification.

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Officials nab traveler with pigeons in his pants

I'm still trying to figure out what he wanted the pigeons for

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Forget that, what's with the "undeclared eggplant?"

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I get the feeling a lot more characters will be getting Teleport with the 60 month reward in place >_>

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I dunno. I usually take some other travel power and then only take Recall Friend from teleportation. I find it more useful than teleport. But for Tanks and anyone using teleport in combat, this will be fantastic.

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"I watched you die in my arms" - Jack Bauer to Tony

Huh? Jack Bauer jumping the shark? NNNNOOOOOO!!! Jack would bite the shark and then torture it!

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My stupid DVR didn't record the first 2 hours of the 24 season premier. I plan on catching up online this weekend.

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Just fyi (for anyone else concerned), you can also get caught up here.

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Thanks! I haven't tried fancast before, but I see it's linked to hulu.com. Yay hulu! I know a lot of shows can also be viewed IMDB.com these days (also thanks to hulu). I like having options. Some of the players the different networks use are terrible! ABC has a good one I like very much, but the one CBS has is terrible. Not that I use the CBS one anymore now they they don't have full episode of The Big Bang Theory.

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I heard about Ricardo Montalban on my way home from work last night and literally had a hand over the mouth "oh no" moment. I know he's Khan to many here but he will always be Mr. Roake to me.

Move over, Saint Peter. When I get to heaven, I want Ricardo Montalban to welcome me to Fantasy Island.

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I read your post to Somber and and at the St. Peter part, he just nodded his head approvingly and said, "Yes....yes..."

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"I watched you die in my arms" - Jack Bauer to Tony

Huh? Jack Bauer jumping the shark? NNNNOOOOOO!!! Jack would bite the shark and then torture it!

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My stupid DVR didn't record the first 2 hours of the 24 season premier. I plan on catching up online this weekend.

I heard about Ricardo Montalban on my way home from work last night and literally had a hand over the mouth "oh no" moment. I know he's Khan to many here but he will always be Mr. Roake to me.

Move over, Saint Peter. When I get to heaven, I want Ricardo Montalban to welcome me to Fantasy Island.

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She's currently on the rebirth cycle and is bouncing through time as an infant with her "son" Cable, who's like 50 and was born from her clone who is now the queen of a demonic dimension.


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This is why I don't really read a lot of comics. I don't watch daytime soap operas, either. I can suspend my disbelief for all kinds of crazy things like laser beam eyes and using a move called Head Splitter to "arrest" someone, but I can't cope with evil twins and mothers being raised by their own sons. That just speaks of desperate writers. Next thing you know, someone wakes up in the morning and a "dead" person walks out of the shower to tell her it was all just a crazy dream.

Matt Groening once said that when a TV show adds a new character for new reason other than to try to regain some audience (He specifically named The Great Gazoo, but this includes Cousin Oliver and whatever the name was of the kid Leonardo DiCaprio played on Growing Pains) and not advance the plot, you know the show is going nowhere and he identifies that as the "Jump the Shark" moment. For me it's usually whenever they "kill" someone and have the person come back from the dead. (E.g. Denny on Grey's Anatomy this season. WTF!) Comics bring in new villains and I don't think that's a bad thing. Killing off the main character is what, to me, screams: "We are totally stuck here and desperate for a reset or some way to dig ourselves out of this hole/rut we're in." I guess I can't judge them too harshly, though. It's gotta be hard to come up with something "new and different" when you're working on a franchise that's been around as many decades as these characters have.

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But those fashion statements seem less risky than a BlackBerry; it's harder to hack pants.

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Not really. I know plenty of pants that can be hacked with a "Hello" and a nice smile.

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They make thermal underwear...

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Yeah... he said they are too bulky, but many companies make thermals that aren't bulky. Personally, I can't stand wearing pantyhose (Binding! Ugh!) and I can only imagine how uncomfortable they'd be with legs covered with hair. (More Ugh!) And while I dread the idea of men wearing "mantyhose" with garters, I've long men jealous of men's sock garters and would love some of those.

I really enjoyed GM Lloyd's article and I'm very much looking forward to future columns. Terrific idea.

Loved the Oz base and the Task Force comic, too.

Amazing! Thank you so much for posting this!

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Good workaround... *Wonders how your team mate didn't notice he had clicked the Pocket D power in the whole interruptible time period with the obvious glowing hands*....

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Perhaps he thought he was using the base teleporter vet power (which has the same animation, and I believe brings you back to the zone you came from when you exit the base.)

In that case, he could very well have not noticed the error until after finding himself in the Tiki Lounge.

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Leaving the zone in any way usually throws someone off a mixed team.

And no matter which teleport option you use, there's a delay and an effect and the power can be canceled before you actually get ported. I've nearly done this many (many!) times and have always been able to cancel it before I left the zone. The player may not have had game sounds on and may have been distracted or gone AFK as soon as the button was clicked though.

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Picard. No question.

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Agreed.

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As amazing as this may be, I've never been on a vBulletin site. I don'tknow anything wrong with the current one, although since I've only used this one and one other (*gasp* Yes, I've tried WoW *shivvers* ) I don't know how bad it really is.

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You really don't need to see a vBulletin site or have used any other forums to know that there is something wrong with these ones.

Over the years I have often gone days/weeks a time when pages are extremely slow to load or sometimes just time out and give me an error. The search is epic fail - if it doesn't come up with a response or you spell something wrong, you get the message "You cannot make another search at this time. Please try again in a few minutes." You have to wait or click any other thread and then redo the search. This is after after just one search that didn't give the results you wanted; that sort of defeats the purpose of a search. People very familiar with the internet are using the Google search instead of the built in search because it works so much better. Whole forums sometimes go missing - this isn't the first time. And when they do forum maintenance to purge old threads, the forums are down for hours. The calendar sometimes drops birthdays off or says there are no events on a day when people have birthdays and have their settings showing the information should display.

Experience with any website* should send up flags saying something isn't right here.

*Geocities and other free websites that shut down if more than three people look at them in 20 minutes don't count.

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Well considering there are some people I've dealt with on many message boards over the years that have the attitude;

"I have a bigger post count then you, therefore your opinion doesn't mean a thing", I'd prefer no post counts and no stupid stars or any other rating system at all.

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Holy cow, sign me up for that. No more post counts! Shoot, I'd cheer for doing away with registration date, too! (Stars, meh, I can take 'em or leave 'em.)

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I'd prefer they be kept. Yes, I know some people like to think they're special because they have lots of posts and I don't care. I have a lot and that doesn't make me any better than anyone else. HOWEVER, I do use the reg date and post count to help me determine how much information I give someone who asks questions. If the question comes from someone with a low post count and a recent reg date, I will take care to spell things out before I simply use acronyms and will be more likely to spend more time responding. I will also link to specific things or provide more detail on finding the info instead of assuming the person will be able to find it on his or her own.

If someone ask a question and has been registrered for over a year and has a few posts to his or her name, I may have a shorter answer and will more likely use abbreviations instead of spelling everything out.

Ex: Someone asks how to get to Zone X, which was added with the last update. If the person has an old reg date and more than a few dozen posts (arbitrary number, I may also check posting history to see if they were all posted in the last 3 days), I might say something like "Take the PI Ferry or an SG teleporter." If someone has a new reg date and 2 posts, I might say, "Go to Talos Island and look for the Peregrine Island Ferry, marked on your map with an F. There are two ferry boats, so make sure you check for the Peregrine Island one. Peregrine Island (PI) is a level 40-50 zone, so be careful if you are low level. If you are in a Supergroup, check to see if the group has a teleporter that goes to the new zone."

It's possible that the person with a recent reg date and one post has played for years, but I'm better off assuming that person needs more information than less.

I view a low post count/recent reg date as someone who wears an "I'm in training" badge at store or restaurant and it's very helpful to me.

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Before TonyV get's here... I just wanna say, I love the idea of the Booster Packs. I plan to purchase each and every one of them just to support my favorite game, hoping the funds will continue to make this the best MMO of all time (as it already is)!

I've been itching for more costumes, which is why I bought the Cyborg pack. I'm excited to see what they have to offer and yes, I will be using the "Police Belt"!

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I will only buy the ones I want, but that may still be quite a few. If I want something enough, I don't mind paying a little more for it if I think it's worth the value. The add-ons I've bought have mostly been worth it. (The wedding pack was a little on the expensive side in terms of cost/value.) The GvE edition pack was worth every penny I spent on it and is, for me, the best add-on pack they've offered.

It may support the game, but if I don't want to be, say, a giant snocone, I'm not going to buy the Snocone Booster Pack.

I'm actually more excited about it now. I really respect the fact that they want to get it right and are setting such high standards instead of pushing something out that isn't as good as it could be just to satisfy the teeming masses.

It seems a lot of companies these days value "now" over quality. I'm happy to hear that quality comes first, even if it means I have to wait longer for something I've been looking forward to.

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Anyway, I do like the option for dualling... it means that I save an entire character creation slot when confronted with the dillemma of having two builds for one specific powerset combo.


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This is a great point! Additionally, it may bring more people into the PvP realm. One of the reasons I don't want to PvP is because I built characters for PvE, which is where I spend all my time. I didn't want to respec out of builds I love in PvE just to try PvP a little or spend maybe 10-20 percent of my time. Giving me the ability to create a PvP build without having to sacrifice the build I love may be enough to get me interested and into a PvP zone.

You can't PvP with no one to PvP with, so it makes sense that more people willing to try it is a good thing. I can't believe I am the only one who would be more willing to get in there and try it out now that I won't have to alter my character to do it.

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I gotta say, I'm not that pleased with finding out that we'll have to buy enhancers for each character build ... especially since most of my often-played characters are red-side, and the black market is insanely out of whack a lot of the time.


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I think that seems like a fair trade. Aren't the IO sets most helpful in PvP? I don't see why people wouldn't make the PvP build the one with the more expensive set pieces and use regular IOs or even SOs in the PvE build. That seems like an efficient and cost-effective way to do it.

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Then a dark voice whispered to me that my blasters could double-nuke.

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Once an hour. And you'll be dead, which is inconvenient. This power, while it looks pretty spectacular, isn't the same as an actual Nuke. It's really mostly for show.

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It was using a USB headphone mic, recorded in my closet with the doors/windows closed, fan off, etc etc. I also didn't do anything in the way of post-processing.


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I don't know what your closet looks like, but I'm guessing it's not the best place for recording. You might be better off looking for a larger space. I don't do videos for CoH, but I do voiceover recording for computer based training. I do it in an office, so I look for a room in further inside the building with no windows and no one meeting in the adjacent conference rooms. I generally used a small room - let's say larger than your closet, but smaller than an average master bedroom.

I do several microphone sound checks. I speak at the same speed and level I plan to for the actual recording and make several recordings with different levels set. Also important is the placement of the microphone. Too close to your mouth or too far away and you're not going to get good results. I don't know about your microphone quality, but different microphones will produce different results, too. Hopefully some people here will have some good recommendations about microphones. I don't use a USB type and the one I have isn't sold anymore.

Keep in mind that different microphones also have differnt properties, as well. I've worked with a hand-held microphone that was terrible and required you to speak exactly into the front top of the microphone at all times. If you turned your head at all or shifted the microphone to even a slight angle, it wouldn't pick anything up or would only gets bits and pieces. My headset microphone is on a flexible piece that I can bend around to make sure it's in the best possible place. Experiment with different angles and see what placement picks up the best sound.

Make sure anything that can provide feedback or interference are out of the way (cell phones!) When you adjust the volume and recording levels, make sure you're hitting the right range. I don't know what software you are using, but some will show you a "safe zone." If you set it up so you're hitting the safe zone when you test, then speak more loudly or quietly when you record, you'll run into quality issues.

Sometimes if I start and stop or pick up and edit later, there will be a difference in volume levels. It pays to recheck everything if you've paused for more than a few minutes.

The Lady Grey or Imperious TF would help get you all to 45. I look forward to reading more.