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  Donutmania strikes in Dublin City.
Posted by: Dartz - 10-07-2018, 04:09 PM - Forum: General Chatter - Replies (3)

Irelands capital gripped by Krispy Kreme Fever.

It's been nearly two weeks since a Krispy Kreme opened in Dublin and donutmania shows no signs of abatement. Queues of more than an hour have formed around the newly opened shop with eager drivers loudly honking their horns until two o'clock in the morning in anticipation of late night donut goodness.

Neighbours of the popular donut emporium have been less than enthusiastic.

A franchise that has spread across the world, has been forced to change its business model by a people who don't just jump on the bandwagon - but hold it up with a shotgun then strip it of everything that is joyful and good leaving only a shelll that was once something interesting in its wake.

Krispy Kreme has since been forced to close it's 24 hour drivethru to avoid the publicity (Between the hours of 11 and 6 anyway)


Link

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  Microsoft pulls Windows 10 October 2018 Update
Posted by: SilverFang01 - 10-06-2018, 08:39 AM - Forum: General Chatter - Replies (5)

Quote:Microsoft has stopped distributing its latest Windows 10 October 2018 Update. The software giant started rolling out the update during the company’s Surface event earlier this week, but some Windows 10 immediately noticed their documents were being deleted. “We have paused the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) for all users as we investigate isolated reports of users missing some files after updating,” says Microsoft on its support site for Windows Update

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/6/17944...ate-paused

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  HP: Button-Holed
Posted by: classicdrogn - 10-05-2018, 03:01 PM - Forum: Other People's Fanfiction - Replies (1)

I'm fairly sure I never posted this except on SB... or remembered to save a local copy until today, when I had to search it up again myself Tongue

--------

Button-holed


Kieran Giltsetter wasn't thinking about the Triwizard Tournament - the first event had been weeks before, and while having foreign students around might be novel he'd only known Hogwarts as it usually was for a single year before, and they were all way older anyway. Now and then there'd be a fuss over something in the paper, but those were not on his mind either - the overwhelming dilemma occupying his thoughts was that he still couldn't manage to produce a proper button in Transfiguration. Spying a beetle crawling on the wall where Harry Potter and his friends had just been passing, he slipped his wand out from under the watch-strap that held it up his sleeve to get a bit of impromptu practice in, far more frightened of McGonnegal than Filch, especially when the sour old man was no where in sight and Kieran would be facing the stern professor in his next class.

As he'd been dreading, the spell failed again - he didn't even get the fat green thing to turn flat or make any holes through it. He sighed and hung his head but was about to give it another go when an enraged screech shattered his thoughts, barely even able to look up in time to see a blonde witch in bright green brandishing her own wand, before the world went all topsy-turvy and strange and he was nauseous and his arms felt weird and everything tasted of rice pudding and he hated rice pudding and...

While young Mr. Giltsetter could not recommend the experience, he was quite glad to be added to the list of people Harry Potter had rescued over the years, and Mr. Potter and friends quite enjoyed the opportunity to hex Rita Skeeter silly. They even managed to get away without being massacred too harshly in the Prophet over it, since the woman had been assaulting a second-year in the halls and had made far too many enemies in influential positions to escape censure of her own when a moment of weakness appeared.

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  Matilda vs. Trump
Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 10-03-2018, 12:00 PM - Forum: Politics and Other Fun - Replies (2)

Roald Dahl’s Matilda Stands Up to Trump Statue in England

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  Another "new" planet discovered
Posted by: robkelk - 10-03-2018, 08:31 AM - Forum: General Chatter - Replies (2)

And it has a big orbit. See that ring around the big body at the far-right end of this image? That's the Kuiper Belt.

[Image: dwarf-planet-2015-tg387.jpg]

Image source, and details about the discovery.

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  [IC][BBS] California Compliance Requirements
Posted by: Dartz - 10-02-2018, 04:00 PM - Forum: The Attic - Replies (1)

From: @33Stars_Band
33 minutes ago.

Hi...

Since we have followers in California, This applies to us

Every member of this band is an artificial lifeform pretending to be human.

--------------------------

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  Well, THAT Power Idea Didn't Work Out...
Posted by: DHBirr - 10-02-2018, 02:15 PM - Forum: The Game Everyone Loves To Play - Replies (2)

I had the notion for an amusing but not enormously useful power from the song "Gloria," Laura Branigan's 1982 remake of an Italian song.  I pictured it as basically being a fun party trick.  And then I thought a bit more about some of the ramifications, and can you say "Gamebreaker," boys and girls?

Quote:Gloria, you're always on the run now
Running after somebody, you gotta get him somehow
I think you've got to slow down, before you start to blow it
I think you're headed for a breakdown, so be careful not to show it

You really don't remember, was it something that he said?
Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?
Gloria, don't you think you're fallin'?
If everybody wants you, why isn't anybody callin'?
You don't have to answer
Leave them hangin' on the line, oh-oh-oh, calling Gloria
Gloria (Gloria), I think they got your number (Gloria)
I think they got the alias (Gloria) that you've been living under (Gloria)
But you really don't remember, was it something that they said?
Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?

A-ha-ha, a-ha-ha, Gloria, how's it gonna go down?
Will you meet him on the main line, or will you catch him on the rebound?
Will you marry for the money, take a lover in the afternoon?
Feel your innocence slipping away, don't believe it's comin' back soon

And you really don't remember, was it something that he said?
Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?
Gloria (Gloria), I think they got your number (Gloria)
I think they got the alias (Gloria) that you've been living under (Gloria)
But you really don't remember, was it something that they said?
Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?
Y'see, the power I had in mind is that this gives Doug the contact information for a person, especially if female, he's met but doesn't know the address, phone, e-mail, etc., maybe not even the name.  "I think they got your number ... I think they got the alias ... that you've been living under...."  

Except that then I realized, unless we add more limitations (starting with "it only works if played while the target is within his 33m range"), this is a way for the Loon to track down practically anybody he's met.  Even with that limit, it's still....  Want to know where the Dark Kingdom's agents have their base?  Just take 4 minutes 50 to play this during the next youma confrontation, aimed at the one who appears to be in charge!  (Note: some versions of the song cut out enough to only run about 3 minutes 50.)  Granted, that is 4 or 5 minutes that Doug can't use any of his other songs....

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Star [IC][Story][Arc 1] Rob and Brent's as-yet-untitled sidestory (Rob's #10, Brent's TBD)
Posted by: robkelk - 10-01-2018, 09:12 PM - Forum: The Attic - Replies (13)

No, you didn't miss "Rob's as-yet-untitled sidestory #7" (the big raid) or "Rob's as-yet-untitled sidestory #9" (the fallout from Rob and Hyoga repairing Hvergelmir) - I haven't written them yet. But my discovering a particular piece of fan art awoke my muse.



Blossom Apartments, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Friday, January 13, 2017
7:35 PM Eastern / 4:35 PM Pacific


Rob was using the big monitor in the common room for a videoconference with the Venice apartment. "Yes, the Rideau Canal Skateway will be opening tomorrow. I'd love to host everybody at once for ice skating, but we're already crowded - even with people sleeping on couches, we'll have to host visitors in shifts."

Tomoyo replied, "We do have an alternate option, Mr. Donaldson, if Sakura-chan would be kind enough to assist us."

"Yes, the Sakura Cards are quite versatile in her hands, aren't they? Are you thinking that she could use 'Little' on everyone and have our guests sleep in miniature bedrooms?"

"That is an option that I hadn't considered. My thought was to ask Sakura-chan to use The Twin on your building."

"Oh, of course! That card is certainly capable of duplicating an entire apartment building. And if Usagi would be kind enough to share the Silver Crystal with Miss Kinomoto, I suspect the two of them working together could create a permanent structure that would not draw upon Sakura's magic to remain manifested."

"That sounds lovely!" Tomoyo smiled. "I must design an outfit for Sakura-chan that would be suitable for such an undertaking."



"... and that'll give us enough room for everybody to have a proper apartment instead of something in the dimensional pocket that holds our onsen and sparring room, with a two-bedroom apartment for Accelerator and Mimi and another two-bedroom apartment for Touma and Index."

"Yay! Mimi finally gets my own bedroom!"

Rob winced at the torturous grammar that Last Order used - some kawaiisa speech patterns simply didn't translate well to English. "Right. Okay, everybody pack anything that you don't want duplicated, so we can move it outside. That definitely includes your bank cards and cellphones. Kuroko, would you be kind enough to help me move the boxes in my storage room into the dimensional pocket?"

"Certainly, just as soon as I've finished with my own packing."

As the others left to pack, Rob motioned to Rei Hino, who stayed behind. "What's wrong?"

"If this works, we're going to have a building filled - well, half-filled - with Misaka clones and Accelerator."

"And you don't trust Accelerator?"

"It isn't that; none of them really know how to live on their own."

"I think I know where this is going."

"Before you came here, you tended to an entire shrine with your grandfather."

Rei looked annoyed. "You could get Mii to move in with them."

"We asked Mii to move less than two months ago, to give Usagi and Mamoru the two-bedroom apartment. It isn't fair to ask her to move again."

Rei sighed. "All right. I'll move into the new building with our child soldiers and our resident psychopath."

"He's not... no, you're right. He is a serial killer. I'm asking a lot of you, I know, but I have faith that you can do the job. We'll get Kazari to wire up a panic button in your apartment, that will sound an alarm in my office if you use it."

"And Usagi's room, and Mii's apartment."

"And the common room. But nobody's moving until after we've hosted that skating party."



"Mr. Donaldson, I think you'd better come down here. There's something in the second storeroom that wasn't there a half-hour ago."

"What is it, Maika?" he asked as he headed down the stairs to the basement, followed by Ami and Ruiko.

"That." Maika pointed to a box on casters with a household satellite dish sitting on top.

"Oh dear gods," Ami whispered. "That's the Witches Electric Warp."

"The what?" Rob asked.

"The gadget that Mimete got stuck in?" Ruiko asked.

"Mimete? Of the Witches 5? Oh, dear. What's that doing here? How did it get here? And why now?"

"Rob..." Ami asked pensively, "What if Mimete is inside it?"

On the basis of better to be wrong than to be indecisive - especially if being indecisive meant possibly letting somebody die - Rob immediately started giving orders. "Maika, help me get this thing and a battery pack outside. Ami, go get Usagi and Rei. Rui-chan, go get Mikoto. Whoever's finished first, go grab a laptop. We meet outside the back door as soon as possible."

Three minutes later, everybody who lived in the building was gathered around the Witches Electric Warp, watching Kazari plug an old laptop into its serial port. "This is so old it doesn't even have USB. I hope this RS-232 kludge cable works."

"What were you doing with a RS-232 to USB cable, anyway?"

Kazari looked at Rob. "I thought it was yours."

"Trap?" Kuroko asked.

"Trap," Luna replied.

"Or a chance at salvation." Usagi was using her Neo-Queen Serenity voice.

Rob nodded. "Power it up, see whether we can purge the daimon from Mimete, and get her out of there."

"Unless Mimete is the daimon," Ruiko pointed out.

"In which case we take her down. Accelerator, would you be good enough to -?"

"No."

"Fine. Just make sure anything she shoots at you doesn't rebound into somebody else, okay?"

"Whatever."

Kazari stood up and backed away. "It's ready whenever everyone else is."

Mikoto stepped forward out of a huddle with the other girls, battery pack in hand. "And I'm ready."

"So are we," added Sailor Mars, charms already in hand. Sailor Moon stood beside her with the Crescent Moon Rod.

Rob took a breath, then exhaled slowly. "Do it."

Mikoto plugged the Witches Electric Warp into the battery pack, and kept hold of the power cable. Only Kuroko was close enough to notice she'd otherwise gone limp.

The laptop's screen flickered, then showed static which cleared to form a face - a familiar face to five of the Senshi. "Is somebody out there? Can you hear me? Please, get me out of here!"

"She's panicking. We have to help her!"

"Mii, she's as good an actress as I am," Sailor Venus countered.

"No! Please! Help me!"

"We can't just ..."

Jupiter cut Mii off. "We must."

"No! Damn you, Sailor Senshi! I'll strike you down where you stand!" The laptop started to glow...

... only to stop as Mikoto gasped, "I'm in." Her face appeared on the screen, opposite Mimete's.

"Who are you? How did you get in here?"

"I'm just a junior-high student with some skill at electromagnetics." The virtual camera panned back to show Mimete firing off a Charm Buster at Mikoto, who dodged it and returned fire with an electrostatic bolt.

"Nice touch on the camera work," Rob whispered.

"Thank you," Mikoto replied as she sent an artificial lightning bolt into Mimete's leg, causing the Witch to fall over onto a floor that wasn't there a moment ago.

"Oooooowwwwwwwwwww! You hurt me! You... you..."

"Bitch?" Ruiko offered, earning her a glare from Kuroko.

"Yes! You bitch!"

Rob leaned over to Kazari. "I thought that laptop didn't have a microphone."

"I think she's getting sensory input from the Electric Warp."

"That, or she's hearing through Mikoto's ears."

Mikoto dodged Mimete's half-focused attack, and shot her with lightning in both hands so that she couldn't attack again. "Stop that! I can't get you out of here if you keep attacking me!"

Mimete suddenly looked contrite and kawaii - and hopeful. "You're here to help me get out of here?"

"Yes, you idiot! Unless you like it in here!"

"I'm not an idiot!"

Mikoto stopped. "You're right. You're not an idiot." Then she zapped the floor beside Mimete, who was about to jump to her feet (which she'd re-grown in the cyberspace environment.) "And I'm not an idiot either. Stay where you are. Hyoga, are you ready out there?"

"As ready as I'll ever be!" Hyoga took off the necklace holding her AIM concentrator and placed it in Mikoto's hand. "You have it!" She immediately ran back to the Misaka Sisters, who surrounded her with their own bodies - and by extension their own AIM diffusion fields.

Everybody held their breaths... and waited, and watched, as Mimete faded from view on the laptop screen and into view above the AIM concentrator.

After a long quarter-minute, she was out of the Witches Electric Warp - but wasn't yet solid. That didn't stop her from being hit on the forehead by Sailor Mars's exorcism charms. A daimon wafted out of Mimete, only to be hit with a Mercury Aqua Rhapsody, a Jupiter Oak Evolution, and a Venus Love and Beauty Shock all at once. The daimon dissolved into nothingness.

The ghostly form of Mimete was crying, still hovering over the AIM concentrator. "Thank you, oh thank you so much. That thing made me... oh, gods, it made me kill Eudial... and I attacked you so many times... how can you forgive me?"

Usagi stepped forward, her rod in hand and her gentlest smile on her face. "There is nothing to forgive. I give you a choice; go on to your next stage of existence, or have a second chance here."

Mimete looked at Usagi. "If only you could, but nobody can give me a second chance at life."

"Is that you choice? Then be ready." She stepped back, spun in place, and shouted "MOON HEALING ESCALATION!"

Mimete disappeared... only to re-form, in a fully human body.

"I... but how?"

Ami smiled at the orange-haired woman's amazement. "She did the same for us, and for the entire world, not too long ago by our own life lines. You have your second chance at life, Mimete; please don't waste it."

"Please, don't call me that. My name is Mimi Hanyu."

From off to one side came a muttered, "That's my name, Mimi Misaka pouts."

As everyone else laughed, Mikoto finally let go of the Witches Electric Warp, stood up, walked to her clone-sisters, and handed the AIM concentrator back to Hyoga.

Rob caught Mimi's attention, and pointed to the Witches Electric Warp. "What do we do with this? Other than the clothes you're wearing, it's all you own in this world."

"Destroy it. Please. I never want to see it again." After a moment, Mimi added, "What did Sailor Mercury mean by 'our own life lines'? And what did you mean by 'this world', sir?"

Rob sighed. "Here we go again. You aren't currently in the world you were born in." Then he held out his hand. "Hello, I'm Rob Donaldson, and it's part of my job to acclimatize you to your life here while we're waiting for some Goddesses to figure out how to make sure you have a home universe to return to."

"You're kidding... He's kidding, right?" Everyone else shook their heads. "He isn't kidding. Can I go lie down somewhere, please? I think I'm in shock."

Ami and Rob quickly helped Mimi into the building's lobby.

As everyone else returned to packing the belongings that they didn't want duplicated the next day, Minako took Kuroko and Luna aside. "I really hope she isn't still acting."

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  Do Not Play: The Bigger They Are by Machinae Supremacy
Posted by: classicdrogn - 10-01-2018, 08:01 PM - Forum: The Game Everyone Loves To Play - Replies (2)

Just one more from me for the moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o74GsmbSDpI

Effect: When at least half the duration of the song is played within range, it turns one recognizably intact corpse into a cyber-zombie constructed with the best tech and magical base Doug understands. The result will have partial memories of the deceased but does not have their original soul, and is invariably hostile to Doug and any allies present. He has no control over it, and the reanimation is permanent, though if he keeps playing the song (or someone else keeps playing it without access to his tuneplug or a similar jamming sound source) the zombie regenerates and can operate on what would normally be overload power for the remaining duration as the damage accrued recovers immediately.

Because despite all the helpful effects he discovers, sometimes Doug's power is just a dick, and there's no real way to tell the specific downsides of the "return of a friend you thought was dead" effect without trying it once, aside from knowing that there's always a cost to be paid for magic and usually threefold for things that mess around with the natural order. (In this case, the subject being implacably hostile, being as strong normally as he could make with unlimited time and budget, and being further empowered for the remaining duration.) Doug would certainly kick himself and swear he knew better all along after the fact, but hope is the cruelest emotion after all.

It might be better used as an object lesson in the cost of magic for him to talk about in the Buffy step, since Willow is teetering on the line of dark and light for the Glory season. Doug having been an accredited magical teacher for the HP step before would probably make him the best qualified in that area to try to curb those tendencies, since Tara is a little too nice even when she's being strict, Giles was on the darker side in his younger days and mostly stays away form it as a result, and Willow is entirely self taught otherwise in the "knows enough to get in trouble, only maybe to get out afterwards" sort of way. And I think Amy was still a rat at this point? I don't remember when that got fixed, just that she was briefly a problem again in S6 or 7.

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  Great minds think alike
Posted by: robkelk - 10-01-2018, 07:42 PM - Forum: Drunkard's Walk S: Heart of Steel - Replies (2)

According to the Sailor Moon Wikia:

Quote:Did you know?
The first fourteen seconds of Sailor Venus's theme in the Sailor Moon video game for the Super Famicom sound exactly like the first fourteen seconds of Bananarama's version of the song "Venus", which was originally by Shocking Blue.

(It's one of the rotating facts on the main page.)

So, yeah - we aren't the only ones to have linked that song with that character... and this is about as canon as you can get for a Senshi being liked to an existing pop song.

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