tkdguy

Cauliflower pairs very well with cheese, my mom used to roast a whole head then serve it with melted cheese over the thing, man that was good.  I don't like people pulling the switcheroo on people "try it, its like pasta!"  Its better to get people to be surprised with how great something they thought they hated can be.

I find the juxtaposition of your sig line with the picture particularly jarring.

The Deep Fried Energy Bites and the Loaded Baked Potato Funnel Cake are just intriguing enough to make me think I could try them once. I'd have to be in just the right mood to try the Deep-Fried Chicken Cordon Bleu Waffles.
 
I'll take a hard pass on everything else, though.

Hm.  Mac & cheese can be a solid and tasty dish, but its real advantages are minimalist preparation and an ingredient list that includes a minimum of perishables.  Swapping cauliflower into it in place of the pasta adds more labor (dismembering the head), and bumps the recipe by one more thing that you need to have in your fridge.
 
(I admit I am biased against cauliflower and cheese preparations for generational reasons: Waaaaaaay too often in my youth there were cafeteria meals that featured cauliflower that had been boiled to utter lifelessness and then entombed in bad Velveeta-esque fake cheese glop.  Too much fat, almost no flavor, and a texture that belonged in the toilet rather than on your plate.  Even the dreaded blue box of oversalted unnatural cadmium orange pasta was much better than that.)
 
Our preferred cauliflower preparation now is roasting, with olive oil and seasonings which vary by mood and calendar date.

I never knew about this fruit until now.
 
 

Patti Smith, Horses

Hope you put in the part about an elk eating it, and you having to wait for it to pass through its system so you could harvest it from the droppings ... which of course were deposited in the middle of a lake ...

One of my brothers' grandparents-in-laws got too decrepit for their summer house up-country. They've sold it, but most of the bits and bobs they've parceled out among the family. They left a fair chuck o' stuff to my sis-in-law, and of course there was the wreck of a snowmobile that nephew O. was given a couple of years ago. Last Monday, bro A. and I went up there, to the quiet wilderness, to bring all the stuff home (bro A. and sis-in-law A. has actually bought a little farmstead, built in the eighteen nineties, but that's not relevant for this story. I am jelly, though.) 
 
As we were hauling and straining to load all the crap on the trailer (flippin' snowmobile weighed half a ton and wouldn't start, so we had to drag the *bleep*er), I had to take my jacket off. I folded it up neatly and placed it on a handy table, and later placed it in the back seat of bro. A's Volvo. Probably during this move, my Samsung fell out of the inner pocket. I noticed its absence somewhere halfway back to town.
 
No-one was left back at the cabin, and bro. A. had previous commitments so he couldn't ignore so he couldn't make another run up-country before dark. I had to borrow mom and dad's Peugeot and wake bro D. up to have someone keep me company and awake (I was getting pretty punch-drunk). We drove up in good time before sunset, bro D. found my phone before I even got out of the car, and drove home, errand done, XP earned.
 
But to have some fun, I've been texting bro A. about my adventures in questing for my Samsung. The adventure involves sleeping out under a wind-felled tree and in the branches of a huge pine, subsisting on lingonberries and longing for burgers, and running for my life from momma bears who objected to me trying to relieve their baby bear from their new toy -- my phone. I really enjoy the short form of text stories ...

October's draft is the first ever dungeon draft and is brought to you by Death Tribble with grateful assistance from Cancer who proof read the original transcript and amended it. Here is what you need to know
 
You are a sage and explorer, member of the Universal Geographical Society (UGS).  You are convinced you have found the most astonishing place in the world, and are trying to impress upon others that you deserve to be selected to receive this millennium's UGS Positronium Medal for Discover of Vast Previously Unknown Edifices at the next UGS Conclave.
 
You are investigating, and publishing your findings about, a dungeon in your world.  You do not have to fully map the dungeon to publish your findings.  Nominally, you are working with all of the other sages, with the goal being to document labyrinths in the same world. The competing/cooperating sages, and the dungeons they are exploring, all exist at the same time (though the dungeons need not have originated at the same time).  
 
The setting is completely blank.  You need not (should not) describe the world anywhere except within, and immediately surrounding, your dungeon. 

Here's what you'll need in your labyrinth.
 
Location, Location, Location. Where is the labyrinth? Recall the Tomb of Horrors created by Gary Gygax this was in the Vast Swamp and quite inaccessible. But yours can be a city empty or otherwise, beneath a city or in a volcano for example. The location pick is where the entrance will be that players characters would normally force their way in. The location pick need not be exclusive so you could have two demi-dungeons side by side like pyramids just not connected. You can have one floating in the atmosphere and another at the bottom of the ocean.
 
Who is in charge? This place was built for someone, but maybe now they are gone so just who is running the place now?  You can give sketchy details like ‘The Lich Maurice now controls the dungeon’ or you can give more details. This is a single exclusive choice.
 
Why go there? Dungeons are built to hurt people so why in the name of the Abyss would anyone want to go there. There has to be a reason such as an oracle, someone who has been kidnapped and is being held there, an artifact or vast wealth. This again has to be exclusive.
 
Five different featured highlights. Here you will list five specific areas in the dungeon and what makes them special.  Here you can place monsters or traps and you can list treasure. The traps and monsters need not be exclusive but if your ensemble is novel enough, you can make it so if you wish and declare this to be unique in the world (so that other draft participants cannot claim a copy). The outside world may or may not know anything about these locations prior to your picks.  The Draft Despot has Grimtooth’s Traps and various Monster Manuals so I should be able work out what you are plagiarising if at all.
 
Goals of the architect. Simply: why was the place built in the first place?  It is perfectly acceptable for the original purpose to be something besides punishing enemies; the corruption into a punishing pit would then have been retrofitted onto the original structure.  For example: Derek, King of the Swingers had a new Palace built underground which was then occupied by a Lich.
 
Who Built it.  This isn't the patron or the project manager; those folks don't do the actual excavation or construction.  Needed here is the identity of the person who supervised the construction on the site, and the nature of the labor that went into the construction.  That latter could be legions of nameless human (or not human) slaves, hordes of fanatically devoted followers, or a specific architectural firm, for example. These overseer-and-grunt specifications need not be exclusive, but a describing them should take into account the environment in which the construction happened.  As examples, if building was in a vast empty desert, or at the bottom of the ocean, puts special demands on those doing the construction.  You could identify the constructor as the same entity as the patron, but this puts demands on that patron, such as being an Archmage and a commitment of time and effort to putting the edifice in place.  The first person to post a particular builder can specify who they are.   This may by implication limit others wanting you use the same grunts and site boss; for example, an ordinary human cannot usually have built dungeons three hundred years apart.
 
Mythic Monster or Guardian or History. You can specify a unique monster or guardian for the dungeon. Alternately you can lay out an occupation history of the place. For example: Derek King of the Swingers moved in first; after he died High Priest Philip ran it; then Maurice the Lich turned him into a shrivelled toad, threw him out, and took over for a century or two, until he got too cocky, and Infernal Octopus Reginald found his immured heart and banished him forever.  Then the Japanese factory ships caught Reginald, turned him into tako sushi without realising what they'd done, and the place has lain empty since.
 
Round one will be your Location, but the rest can be selected in any order.
 
We will begin Thursday October 3, Five in the afternoon British Time which is Noon Eastern in the States. We take the weekends off.

The constant ringing in my ears, no thanks to Tinnitus.

In the real world, in the past century or so, people have used knives like the K-Bar, kukris, machetes, bayonets, improvised spears and clubs, and the occasional samurai sword.  They're quiet, don't need reloading, and useful in close quarters combat or when you're out of ammo.  Also, soldiers since the dawn of guns have used rifles as clubs when in close quarters combat.  Now, a powered melee weapon (chainsword, lightsaber, vibroblade or what have you) might be a useful adjunct in a world of enhanced body armor, powered armor, xenomorphs and force fields.  But largely the functionality would be similar to nonpowered melee weapons, except of course you could run out of power.  

Damn.
50 is way too young (Says a guy getting there)
 
I adored the character development of Nog. They took what was at best a 'dead end kid' character from a previously joke species, and developed his storyline into an amazing immigrant experience where he took what was best from the culture of his heritage and used it to make his way into the culture of his choice.
 
Aron Eisenberg has said of Nog, "The thing that I thought they did so well with Nog was that they didn't make him perfect. He joined Starfleet with the determination and the tenacity to succeed, but he didn't always make the right decision, but he always kept trying again. And I always felt that Nog was one of the most Human characters on that show."
 
 
 

Cheers. That is why I couldn't find it on Wikipedia. Thank you. 

The title is wrong; it should be The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers. It aired in the 80s; I liked it.
 
 

Reasons I Can Think Of Where Swords Might Be Viable In An SF Campaign:
 
1. Cultural.  Consider the Klingons, an FLT starfaring race that nonetheless reveres skill in melee combat.  Or the Vulcans, who must win an arena duel with clumsy bladed weapons before earning a chance to mate.  Or the Jedi.
 
2. Defenses.  Perhaps the defenses of the day are so effective against beam and projectile weapons that blades become useful again.  Example: Holtzmann shields in Dune.
 
3. Effectiveness.  Maybe the gel-demons of Aldebaran are practically immune to ranged weapons but can easily be slain by an edge.  Likewise, the vegepygmies of Betelgeuse might have Kevlar-like husks that are bulletproof but can be easily cut by a blade.  Or maybe, in some sick and twisted future version of Highlander, enemies might only be killable by decapitation.
 
4. Environment.  Swords might be safer to use on a thin-hulled space vessel than a slugthrower.
 
5. High Technology.  Future swords may be monomolecular or chain- or vibro- or energy-bladed, or otherwise more effective than ranged weapons could be.  Jedi are nigh invulnerable when equipped with lightsabers.
 
6. Low Technology.  Swords might be state of the art in a steampunk or postapocalyptic star campaign.
 
That's all I can think of off the top of my head.  I leave you with a parting piece of wisdom from Cpl. Zim:
 

Q: Check out those implants on Seven of Nine!
 
A: They're real...and they're spectacular.

Venus was once potentially habitable
 
Magnetic pulses on Mars
 
Planets orbiting black holes?

Make your own pretzels: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/homemade-soft-pretzels-recipe-1948242

Bad news: No game tomorrow.
Good news: We don't have to share the banana bread!

Make your own pretzels: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/homemade-soft-pretzels-recipe-1948242

Thanks! Glad to hear a few people still enjoy them. 
By the way, the Star HERO Fandom website belongs to Arooo. Back in the day he had offered to host my Trek pdfs, since he was already hosting his Babylon 5 HERO and something else.