Soul Train

I'd love to get in on this as a collector... as long as there's tolerance for the more racy artwork *cough*

professorblues.deviantart.com

Now... that's a RAID.

Totally wasn't expecting this.




And this reminds me... JAY! We need cornrows for the ladies!

Philosophy degree, hrmm?





<< has one, and somehow became a server admin ...

Hey! Welcome back, Logan!

Have some eggnog. No, that's nutmeg, not almonds. NUTMEG.

Pugs: Because God used up all the cute with the kittens.

Basset Hounds: cos God used up all the cool with the pugs.

Chihuahuas: "Senor Dios, I found a leetle bit of cute left! can I have eet?"

Disconnect it and try. It's unlikely, but it could (!) possibly be a factor.

Also, in the time since you've played, has anything else been upgraded? Have you changed, upgraded, or patched your operating system?

Television advertising is extremely expensive, especially during "prime time" when a lot of people are expected to be watching. There's also the problem of demographic - of the people watching, how many are interested in the type of product you're shilling?

This is why you see ads for vocational colleges and injury lawyers during the day, and ads for cars and furniture in the evenings... and ads for adults-only party chat lines late at night.

For a game like City Of... the ad money would be better spent on short ads on YouTube videos, specifically in gaming and machinanima categories, or ads on gaming blogs/review sites. Product placement in geek/gaming related TV shows is also good. The idea is to narrow down your audience to those people you KNOW would have an interest... because as much as you want to get new players in, the return on investment in general-audience ads will be very low.

Blizzard and World of Warcraft are a VERY special case. By all demographic studies, the game shouldn't be as successful as it is... but it is a well-designed game that has a lot of appeal to gamers young and old, so it breaks the rules.

Of course, if a well-known Hollywood "geek" persona were to show up on TV wearing CoH/V swag, or do an 'advert' video and post it up, the buzz would probably attract considerable attention. I'd just not spend the money to pay someone to do it.

This jumped out at me:

Def. vid driver related - I'd advise running the nVidia control panel after the system comes back up from reboot; if WinVista 64 doesn't require a restart, restart it manually Just To Be Sure[tm]. Use that to verify the version you've installed.

I have NO idea. I gave up my sysop spot about a month ago.

I can ask around.

*is puppy-trampled*

*wanders in* Hey sweet thMMMPH!


*spends several minutes getting snow out of hair and off of face*

Tried using the Sinister shoulder plates on a female character, and they were actually BEHIND her shoulders, as if they were sticking out of her scapula. Am not thinking this is how they are supposed to work.

*sashays in and looks down*

Oh dear. You shred a pillow, Neko sugah?

*soulhugs everyone, Rook twice, and Detra gets hers off-camera with lots of interestingly intimate noises*

... right. Hi hi sweet thangs!

I have never and will never recommend a wireless connection for gaming. It's RF (Radio Frequency) which means that even if someone doesn't have access to your network, they can still interfere with it by transmitting on the same radio frequency.

Combine that with the sheer number of WiFi access points (I count twenty-three other devices in range of my laptop at home, and ten at work) and the chances of two wireless access points using the same frequency goes way up. Those two devices will interfere with each other, causing dropped packets, retransmits, and ultimately, lag and disconnects. You might not care when you're websurfing, as HTTP is a connectionless protocol (it assumes data is delivered, and has no "yah I got it" acknowledgement or handshake) but games almost always use some kind of handshake to ensure data gets delivered in a timely fashion. If your connection is unstable, gaming apps are one of the first to show it.

Cable those comps up to your cable router with Ethernet. I foresee a vast improvement.

Details would be useful. Post some Real Numbers(tm) so's folks can see if it's the power that's broke, or something else.

How come no one's mentioned Scott Blair as a pinup artist?

We're talking bomber-art caliber. Fun rockabilly style too.

And then there's my personal fave, Russ Platt. He tends to draw women with *ahem* generous proportions, but he's quite good.

Candra is effing AWESOME, and does really well with "pretty" male subjects.

As someone whose high point in 'art' was perspective drawing, I would say that guidelines are not only appropriate, but sometimes required!

I can't draw human figures or faces or anatomy, but hand me a t-square and a sharp pencil and I'll whip up some buildings for you, no prob. Altho' I do mostly digital fooling-around, now. Still, you need to have the Basics down, and guides are, like, where you start out.

Nothing wrong with using them. They keep you honest.

SoulTrain 2020 is a time-traveler, and an Ouroboros 'Acolyte' (I figure she's 'in training' or otherwise at a provisional status.)

The story is, at some point in her childhood, her parents actually took her into Time to find a spot in the space/time continuum to raise and train her, without the risk of Rikti bombs in the living room or undead in the backyard. Then when she became a full-fledged heroine in her own right, she traveled BACK to the day of her conception, to fill in for her mother so that she could be properly cared for as an infant.

Cause and effect is a little odd with this one.

Well the assumption is that the problem is on the network, not at the client. The test was to find out where things would 'break down' - it matters not which client you're using, you SHOULD see the same symptoms on both.

And TWC is bullshitting you - if they receive enough complaints from customers for a specific site, subnet, or backbone connection, you can be SURE their Network Operations staff will call the responsible party. The trick is getting past their 'customer service', which is only concerned with getting you onto and through their network. Kind of sad for an 'Internet Provider', that all they support is their network, but at the same time, if the problem is off their grid, they can neither fix it nor guarantee service for it, so I can see why they'd want to say no in regards to inquiries.

IN regards to the traceroute data, this is your last hop:

63.218.83.242 = [ 63-218-83-242.static.pccwglobal.net ]

(Asked whois.arin.net:43 about +63.218.83.242)

OrgName: Beyond The Network America Inc.
OrgID: BNA-42
Address: 450 Springpark PL
Address: Suite 100
City: Herdon
StateProv: VA
PostalCode: 20170
Country: US
NetRange: 63.216.0.0 - 63.223.255.255
CIDR: 63.216.0.0/13
NetName: BTN-CIDR5
NetHandle: NET-63-216-0-0-1
Parent: NET-63-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS.CAIS.COM
NameServer: NS2.CAIS.COM
Comment: ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE
RegDate: 1999-12-09
Updated: 2004-11-12
OrgAbuseHandle: PAD13-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: PCCW AUP Department
OrgAbusePhone: 1-703-621-1637
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse.ops@pccwglobal.com

OrgNOCHandle: PUN6-ARIN
OrgNOCName: PCCW US NOC
OrgNOCPhone: 1-703-621-1637
OrgNOCEmail: usnoc@pccwglobal.com

OrgTechHandle: CDO54-ARIN
OrgTechName: Downes Chris
OrgTechPhone: 1-703-621-1619
OrgTechEmail: cdownes@pccwglobal.com

OrgTechHandle: PUN6-ARIN
OrgTechName: PCCW US NOC
OrgTechPhone: 1-703-621-1637
OrgTechEmail: usnoc@pccwglobal.com

(This is from the WHOIS lookup at SamSpade.Org). I would say, your next call should be to the PCCW US NOC number, above. Cite ALL the symptoms you've seen so far, including the spikes in packet loss during certain times of day. If they object to an end user calling them directly, tell them that you tried to get your provider to assist, but they have a strict hands-off policy with support outside their network.

Also, I would grab a traceroute to the same target host on the provider that works (the DSL connection) to use as a comparison. If it goes through the same backbone provider, just a different system, then you can use that to illustrate your point. If it goes through the same SYSTEM, then the problem is at the divergence point between the two - it may be that TWC and the DSL provider connect to the same edge router, but one of them has a bad port on their connection, for example.