FrankL

Bolt also has electricity-based powers. He would agree but not as a sidekick. Bolt would take the boy to join him on Garret's Crew. Garret is a first-gen super (world is second gen) who trains new supers. He's had many successes over the years and only a few have gone rogue on him.

Sorry to heat what's happening to both of you, CC and TKD. In my prayers.

The supers travel through time in search of the greatest hero of them all (it's rather funny how Hulk is concerned that "the new guy" will take over his niche). They arrive in a small settlement and direct a woman who looks about to go into labor any moment to a nearby inn. My sons are playing Spiderman and Iron Man. One of Spiderman's lines is: "'I will save you from death innocent civilian, but Jesus will save you with God's love.' Yeah, that's a good new battle cry."

The children's program at church involves superheroes this year. I was uncomfortable with this because it mixes Marvel and DC characters. But that's beside the point. It's also beside the point that the Hulk player will wear a savage Hulk costume but have a style of speech closer to the Professor and Joe Fixit. Yesterday, my wife, who is directing, was talking to the kid playing Cap. "You've had the script for a month. When I made you Captain America, you assured me you would learn your lines." "I know." "Look, you're the main character here. Without you, this falls apart. With great power comes great responsibility."

Bolt likes to play with computers but doesn't go that deep into the specs. Everyone on the team would turn to one character, Null Space. Not only can he hack into just about anything, but he can make fantastic computer defenses. If the device has gotten past the defenses he set up, he will be at once most impressed and most pissed. As far as is Null Space a black hat or white hat hacker, no one asks. Hints are he plays both sides when it suits him.

[if you type the quote blocks or make them for each piece and paste it in, you can break it up.] Yes, there has been heavy sexual tension between the two. They came very close to falling when he opened up to her emotionally once before on this mission. The rebuffing was mutual, and the mutual desire, obvious. Very good point. This test can be the one earlier in the story where he goes from squire to full knight. I needed something for that place, also. And Chekov's Gun must be fired. Yes. It wouldn't do to move it forward. There's an opening. Her prior champion was the Black Knight who served honorably. In honor, he and Michael were identical. This test really has to stay as it holds the crux of Mike's arc. Thank you, Lucius

This is for a story I am writing, not a game. The story has an adventuring party consisting of two paladins, a dashing swordsman, and two ranged fighters (the paladins have powers from their divine patron). This arc belongs to one of the knights, Sir Michael. He just earned his spurs. In the final fight, he needs to decisively prove that he has the character of a White Knight by overcoming several tests of character. Four tests came to mind, and I like them. However, it seems like that's one too many. The story needs to be about 18,000 words long. It's on pace for that length so far. Here are the tests I have planned for Michael as the party faces Queen Vivian. Desire-Mike is tempted to unchastity by an illusion of Dame Helen the Gracious (the other knight in the party). He does not know this is an illusion, and I don't want him to invalidate the test by piercing it. He will refuse the illusion's charms. [There has been heavy sexual tension between the two already.] Fear-Queen Vivian summons a great monster. Michael and the others will fight it, with Mike taking point, even though Mike is "quivering in [his] steel boots." It's the act of cowardice not the feeling of fear that is wrong. And they still have to win. Dark Self-Michael and the others face their evil doppelgangers. (If not here, Michael has to defeat his earlier as the doppleganger has taunted them already with his visor down (that is, they don't know the black knight is Michael's doppleganger)). Pride-Queen Vivian offers Michael a place as her new right hand [the Black Knight was her champion]. He will become a legend if he accepts. Naturally, he won't. Please tell which of the four you would drop OR if you would leave all of them in place. I'm not just looking for a majority vote but the best reasoning.

Very nice, Mark. *Hat tip.*

We rewrote the program to allow for three crops (actually, it can take as many crops as the admin sets up). Three weeks, almost full time on the project. However, since we could prove that the whole thing had been defined as 2 from the get go, the client paid for the modifications. The next phase is making the summary pages display more than 2 crops. He will also be paying for that. I felt like I won one with this guy!

A humorous supers book I'm enjoying is Tales of the Dim Knight. Normal guy in a small town gets a symbiote suit. Hilarity ensues.

Same thing happens to me. Listen to your creative side, and it will work out.

Thank you sharing. Enjoying these immensely.

Mr. Scruffy is also a Ranger. Belkar is his animal companion. The dino is Belkar's animal companion. This morning my son was showing me the caterpillar he caught the other day. "He's eating a lot!" B also likes to catch grasshoppers and other bugs. He then lets them go before bed. I was thinking this morning, "ah, he's gonna be a ranger, but how is his love of cooking* going to work in here?" Then I just shuddered as I remembered Belkar has ranks in gourmet cooking. *he's not yet 6, but he likes to cook and watch Alton Brown.

I have blown every SAN roll I made at work today. The fact that I am making SAN rolls at work should tell you that things were already downhill.

I had a historical super in a story whose body treated oxygen like toxic gas.

Where I used to work, that would be true. Our salesmen (project managers) keep good definitions because some of them have been burned by this kinda thing in the past. None as large as this one though.

This is from the land where gaming and reality meet. A client asked for a meeting today to discuss some changes to his program. As he was showing me the pages and saying "This won't be too big, I don't think," I realized I had blown a SAN roll. That was not the thing to say. I tried to explain, no it is rather big. This program is up and working and these are BIG changes. It's not just a layout change. He kinda understood that, but kept insisting that it was simpler than I was making it out to be. Excuse me? Have you spent hundreds of hours in this mess of code that you inherited from your predecessor? Have you cleaned it up to the best of your ability so that you at least know what is going on? I didn't think so. So don't tell me how big this change is going to be. Of course, I didn't say that. I did think through some of the changes as he kept talking. That's when I had to make the second roll. You know, the one where you see how much you understand of the horror you saw? Yep, made that one big. So I'm down on SAN already. I was down when the meeting started from some other emergency tasks that came in today, but I'm much further down. The client says, "And I think that doing this now will make it easier to add more crops in the future." SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA! Oh! Bad! SAN rolls! Lost the first, made the second without even thinking about it. Remember, I've spent hundreds of hours in this code. "No, it won't. This code was written with two crops in mind. To add a third is going to be a huge undertaking." Remember, I inherited this mess. There were up front design decisions that I never would have made. Such as making two of every calculation field on the farm rows and they differ by the prepended "s" for soybean or "c" for corn. Yep, I didn't do that, but I have to live with it. The first time I looked at this code, I realized the horrible design and how next to impossible it would be to add a third crop. Let me rephrase. Adding it is a small but surmountable problem. Adding it in a way that the code will work right easily is not small. When we're done, I return to my desk and the client runs into the boss on the way out the door. They start talking. I continue on. The boss comes to me. "What do you mean it's going to be a big deal to add another crop?" "X, this thing was built with two crops in mind. That is hardcoded in. Let me show you the tables." He doesn't get it. "So you just add some more. Add wheatfutures and wheatoptions and whatever else." "Yes, but that's going to be a mess inside the code. These should have been made in the first place as futures, options, cash, futuresprices, etc, with the crop added as a field." Then I gently tried to remind him that I didn't write this thing first. "I knew the first time I looked at this code that it adding another crop was going to be difficult. Look at this table." I showed him the farms table where each row has TotCornAcres, TotSoyAcres, cPAH, sAPH, cShare, sShare, etc." More than 20 fields for each crop. "Well, if this should have been designed differently from the beginning, that's our mistake and we can't charge him for fixing that. You'll just have to make it work. What if you do this? Each farmer has two crops and he can specify what they are. For A it might be corn and soybeans, for B it's wheat and corn. Then those price tables could be tied to their choice." SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA. "No good. Client takes care of the market pricing tables which are part of those. To really fix it, it needs almost a complete rewrite." "Well, it was our design flaw, so you'll have to fix it." SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA. I ran into the sales man who handles that account today before leaving. He asked me about the meeting. I explained everything and how the design flaw was "our" fault. "No! He specified from the beginning of the definition that there were two crops: corn and soybeans. He has never mentioned adding another. If he had, it would have been built differently from the start." [it still shouldn't have been built this way, but I didn't say that.] "Who's paying for this?" "X said our fault, we fix it." "No it is not our fault. I'm going to talk to X." And he went to see the boss. And now I find out tomorrow what happened.

To my wife this morning. "If Tony Stark liked to tell bad jokes, would he be Irony Man?" w: Frank, that's bad. Really bad. Me: You're right. It should be "If Tony Stark liked to tell bad jokes about improbable situations, would he be Irony Man?" W: Just stop. Please.

That's one way to fulfill a prophecy.

Question in my mind is this: when V is released will V have learned a lesson and tell the others about the Faustian bargain?

Very sad tonight. My two best friends at work both had farewell parties today.

Last week I found out two items which have greatly saddened me. 1) The company I work for is relocating (I have known this part. The location is a new thing). The place the boss wants (and is close to getting) will almost double my commute from 30 minutes to an hour. The first place the boss spoke of only added negligible time to my trip. This move will substantially increase the commute time of almost everyone in the office. 2) My closest friend at work has decided to look for a new job. In RL, I never have made friends easily.

My youngest son gave me one by accident. He was wearing jammies with Wolverine on them. "I am Wolverine, but when I go to bed, I'll be Winnie the Pooh." I just looked at my wife and said, "Oh, bother. [snickt]"

Finished Big Red at my boys' bedtime reading recently and started Irish Red, the sequel, the next night. They love them (and so do I). Recommended for all dog lovers!

I noticed that today. I wonder if its the same vBulletin attack that took Hero down intermittenly.