Don Edwards

And then we have parody versions... (I wrote an opening for one. Artie was a pre-teen or barely-teen orphan and food-thief who, while running from the shire-reeve, hoped to get lost in a crowd - and suddenly had to try to jump over that rock and sword. Just barely failed. Landed on her back with the sword in her hand... and I stopped there.)

I've had what is probably a similar test, except on my wrists (for carpal tunnel syndrome). Painful? I volunteered to confess! (Turns out I have all the symptoms, including the effect on one of the three nerves to the hand... the wrong one.)

The magic-dumbbell thing does not appear to be the limit of what Kevin is for. It seems to me that he will also be explaining how to use magic energy to craft spells. Sarah isn't a wizard, so can't craft spells - she can only used the spells she's given. No point in explaining to her how to craft them. But she can benefit from the dumbbell effect because she doesn't have a lot of power. Ashley, meanwhile, needs both aspects. Tedd needs neither, because he's plenty powerful enough (and to spare!) and can see for himself how spells are crafted. Elliot also needs neither, because he isn't a wizard but is sufficiently powerful for the spells he has or is likely to get. Grace is, um, her own thing that Kevin doesn't know how to deal with.

Prof, you may find this interesting. Seems they have made some (preliminary?) progress on treating damaged spinal cords. https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/07/health/spinal-cord-stimulation-study/index.html

If your home isn't currently wheelchair-accessible, you might want to do something about that now. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if you get one for a few days to a few weeks - and that's if the surgery goes well.

A sufficiently smart AI will recognize the anomaly as an anomaly, and develop an independent set of subroutines to deal with it - thus preserving the usual set. In [url=https://www.crosstimecafe.com/viewforum.php?f=47]this story[/url] the robot figured out that sapient bipedal wolves don't offer exactly the same cues to their mental state that humans do...

If I fits, I sits

You are getting into some SERIOUS philosophical discussion there, Fluff. Is a sapient inorganic being that has no discernible energy source or waste output alive for some purpose, just alive, just not alive, or...? For that matter, what is sapience? (We have a very loose definition, and a test that is universally acknowledged to not be very good.)

M'lady received one yesterday that we think was in Thai. Or something in that general area.

Currently 61, supposed to get down to 44 tonight and possibly as low as 31 Friday night. I've not been able to find any specific claim that it has snowed here in recorded history. (One site claims that average total January snowfall is 0.1" but I suspect their software just refused to do 0.) It does occasionally get cold enough to snow... but considering that I've spent several winters here (summers elsewhere) and have only seen water present in the river through town twice, and have never seen it flowing in the river... (I know it does happen - there are several streets in town with "flash flood area" signs.)

Currently 61, supposed to get down to 44 tonight and possibly as low as 31 Friday night. I've not been able to find any specific claim that it has snowed here in recorded history. (One site claims that average total January snowfall is 0.1" but I suspect their software just refused to do 0.) It does occasionally get cold enough to snow... but considering that I've spent several winters here (summers elsewhere) and have only seen water present in the river through town twice, and have never seen it flowing in the river... (I know it does happen - there are several streets in town with "flash flood area" signs.)

Currently 61, supposed to get down to 44 tonight and possibly as low as 31 Friday night. I've not been able to find any specific claim that it has snowed here in recorded history. (One site claims that average total January snowfall is 0.1" but I suspect their software just refused to do 0.) It does occasionally get cold enough to snow... but considering that I've spent several winters here (summers elsewhere) and have only seen water present in the river through town twice, and have never seen it flowing in the river... (I know it does happen - there are several streets in town with "flash flood area" signs.)

Currently 61, supposed to get down to 44 tonight and possibly as low as 31 Friday night. I've not been able to find any specific claim that it has snowed here in recorded history. (One site claims that average total January snowfall is 0.1" but I suspect their software just refused to do 0.) It does occasionally get cold enough to snow... but considering that I've spent several winters here (summers elsewhere) and have only seen water present in the river through town twice, and have never seen it flowing in the river... (I know it does happen - there are several streets in town with "flash flood area" signs.)

I believe that would mean "they did NOT click a link they found on ANOTHER WEBSITE - they got here some other way." That would be devoted fans who check your page regularly (or have their computer do it for them and notify them when something's changed). Word of mouth - "hey Joe, I think you'll like this" in email, text message, or a paper note. Semi-directed word of mouth - email or text message to a mailing list. Pretty much any means that does NOT involve that specific person clicking a link on a web page.

Thing is... by mentioning that the griffins expect Elliot, Mr. V just shot down his argument for not taking Nanase. And Nanase (or Susan, but I can't see a good reason to take her) in fairy-form would be extremely safe - the griffins would have to find her human body, which could be back home, to do her any lasting harm. If they attack in spite of their deference to her royal status. Granted, we know from prior experience that getting the fairy-form killed while she's in it is not good, but if she isn't needed there she could land it in a tree and revert to her human body back home. (Hey, this is how they could handle it. Nanase is babysitting, Susan or Sarah or Ellen comes to visit with her, Nanase goes to rest for a few minutes, pops a fairydoll to Elliot/Cheerleadra - or behind Mr. V - and it gets tucked away somewhere non-obvious...) (Also, I'm imagining a griffin snapping at fairydoll-Nanase - and she flies inside the griffin's beak, wraps herself around the base of its tongue, and starts fey-punching...) Grace would probably be safer, in the event of the griffins going on the attack, than Mr. V or Cheerleadra. But there isn't a really good argument for taking her. Tedd would be vulnerable, but there IS a good argument for taking him. And he'd be more likely to get automatic deference (or be seen as an inherent threat) than Mr. V And then there's the question of how likely is it for any sort of them-versus-griffins combat scenario to emerge? IMHO, not very.

https://freebasic.net/ MS Office comes with VBA. LibreOffice/OpenOffice comes with StarBasic, although IMHO it isn't ready for prime time (I tried to migrate a moderately complex macro I'd previously written in Excel, and when testing it one particular subroutine executed perfectly THREE time but on the FOURTH time it got a data-type exception - on a DIM statement. Since I do a fair amount of macro programming, I stick with Office2007... on Linux.) Windows comes with CMD.COM (or is it currently COMMAND.COM?) and PowerShell. Most distributions of Linux comes with about a dozen assorted scripting language in a basic install, and dozens more available in whatever software manager they use. Under Linux, if the first two bytes of a file that you're trying to execute are #! then the rest of the first line - that is, from there up to a newline - is taken as the path and filename of an interpreter and the remainder of the file is handed to that interpreter. So you can freely mix routines written in different scripting languages.

iCat: we have a nap for that.

Not surprising that you read Two Lumps. (I stopped reading it when the real titular cats died and the cartoon critters, IMHO, turned from cats into tiny humans in cat suits.)

Dang, I need to get my crossover story done. I know why the character I'm bringing over would be at that meeting (albeit probably as a fourth person, not the 3rd)...

40 years after childhood he's still a young adult? He didn't SEEM a bit slow... (Personally, I preferred Emma Peel as the sidekick - several years before I figured out why. And I think she had a nastier side-kick, too.)

More of an equal-opportunity racist than he is usually given... um... credit?... for. He hated pretty much every ethnicity other than Anglo-Saxon. (Somewhere I once found a reference to what he said about the Danes. It wasn't pretty. Naturally I can't find it again.) That is a VERY common - and unfortunate - pattern. I stopped reading Mercedes Lackey's new stuff because of it. Some writers really seriously need an editor.

I wonder if that network is run from a very large library with a very large librarian...

The word Dan was looking for is "pleated". She's wearing one pleated skirt. The cuffs of her sleeves, and her collar, are also pleated (or made to look pleated - e.g. pleated fabric tack-sewn to a non-pleated liner - because, frankly, having them actually pleated doesn't make sense and would be kind of awkward).

Although I did hear a tale, apparently true, of an A-10 taking a rabbit strike to the lower engine cowling. The pilot's CO and the head mechanic had a LOT of fun razz him about it ("just how low were you flying?"), in front of the whole squad, before revealing that he had also taken a bird strike, apparently a hawk, to the upper cowling of the same engine.