Don Edwards

The issue I'd have with drugged bait in a cat-trap is that you have only a vague idea how much time will elapse between the cat taking the bait and the human retrieving the trap. Perhaps that could be worked around, given more relevant knowledge than I happen to have acquired from random sources...

Once when I was working what was in part an internal customer-service desk, someone actually tried to launch an official complaint about me speaking formally. (She made the mistake of telling her boss why I suddenly became rigidly polite. He... ahem... didn't respond formally, nor with rigid politeness. Afterward, he called my boss to praise me for handling the situation so well. And my boss told me about it.)

On two occasions this summer we saw mule deer - a buck can hit 330 pounds - on the streets of Missoula, a city of over 100,000 people. The first time, the critter was crossing what is probably the second- or third-busiest street in the city. During rush hour. We think he was on his way to the golf course. The second occasion, it was an 8-point buck grazing between a residential street and the fence around a school; he didn't even raise his head as we drove past. Definitely urban deer. What's odd is that out in the small towns where we spend most of the summer and usually see deer in town almost every week, often two or three at a time, we only saw one deer in town all summer.

It's a weird spell - the primary effect hits the artist. (If you doubt that, read the commentary under the main comic.)

Raccoons are big enough that they can be hazardous to hit with an ordinary car but small enough that, under normal circumstances, they aren't. (If for any reason the vehicle is not far from being out of control anyway, hitting one can finish it off.) Most people, though, try to avoid squishing animals on the roadway if they can do so safely. It's far from rare that someone tries a little too hard to miss the animal, and hits something else that is even less desirable to hit.

Pikers. English has twenty. What's really helpful is that a grand total of only seven letters are used to write them, five of those seven letters cover at least three phonemes each, but each of the twenty is written at least two different ways. (One of of them, I think at least seven different ways.) And some people think English is hard to learn! Can't imagine why!

Ellen re-told the story that she apparently got from Nioi.

Definitely looks like Maine Coon. Some Maine Coons have no guard-hairs. As a result their fur is incredibly soft - and they have a huge amount of it. Once I brushed one and made 18 inches of yarn from the brushings. (Also, using cat-brushes as carding brushes is awkward. They are designed for pulling, but instead you have to push. And if you push too far, you rake those bristles across your knuckles.)

I would guess that if Magus has access to Elliot's memories, and takes the time to look through them to find out if Elliot will remember post-possession what Magus does with him, he'll discover that Elliot also has no experience with this scenario...

So now, make sure you have multiple copies on different devices. You want good file-syncing software - preferably that is stated to handle three-way or n-way file-syncing - in two sets of circumstances: (1) you are backing up to a small device and/or only intend to keep the most current version of stuff on a device, or (2) updates to the stuff included in the operation might occur on any of two or more devices - there is no one copy of the stuff that is definitively always the most up-to-date version. You want good backup software that keeps multiple versions if you have a source you can treat as definitively the current version (at least relative to the backups), and are copying it to a large-capacity storage device, and want to protect stuff from your own fat fingers and brain malfunctions. Which in my own experience are a greater danger than hardware failures. You can do both - I file-sync between my phone, tablet, and computer, and also keep multi-version backups of the computer (including the stuff that is synced with the phone and tablet) on an external HD.

The same thing he gained from keeping the janitor alive - whatever that is. But here's another way of looking at it: so far we've seen him in four hosts - and he's vacated three of them. Of those three, one is definitely alive post-possession, and one died of old age; I don't think we know the status of the other one. We have no proof that he CAN just kill a host. (Aside, obviously, from possessing another host and having the new host kill the old one by ordinary means.)

I think it's pretty well proven that Elliot has the ability to transform himself from other forms to his normal male form. (If not directly, then use one of his female-transformation spells and then revert to male.) However, he has blond hair at the moment, so I'd probably go with Magus having managed the hypothetical transformation from female. Possibly borrowing Elliot's abilities to assist.

The gutter, below the gutter, or the perv box?

Magus was aware that Elliot is a shifter. He expected to be rammed into Elliot's body. Maybe Elliot was transformed to female, but Magus immediately transformed him back. Also, Elliot is transformed - he's now blond.

And then, don't keep anything important in only one place. My important stuff is file-synced between my computer, my phone, and my tablet - three places. And then it's backed up from the computer to an external hard drive. With good backup software that keeps multiple versions. (I use BackInTime on Linux; Time Machine on OSX is pretty much the same, and Genie Timeline on Windows is similar. Among others.) If I had reliable high-speed non-metered internet access I'd consider syncing (not backing up) to a cloud drive as well.

Have you tried plugging that flash drive into a different USB port? Plugging a different device into that USB port? In other words, verify that the problem is with the flash drive rather than the port. A common problem with USB is that contact is maintained by a pair of springs that are really just bent aluminum - they tend to get bent back, so they don't do their job. Unfortunately, the standard USB A connection puts these springs *inside* the *socket* (not the plug) so they are a bit of a pain to fix (the mini and micro plugs put them on the outside of the plug - much easier). And make sure the computer is turned off while you do it. Here's a video on the procedure.

The hard part of rolling a round die is getting it to stop and determining which number is up.

I don't recall seeing anything that would indicate Magus tried to use any forbidden magic. What we have is that in the process of Magus and Terra each casting one spell (with Terra having at least two pre-cast spells - flight and a shield - clearly in effect, versus Magus having none, although we have no clue what either might have had in place with no visible effect), in the course of a duel presumably already in progress for unknown reasons that apparently (based on Terra's reaction to the result) include actual intent to do harm, Magus did something Terra didn't. And, guess what, Terra did something Magus didn't.

And where were you told that Terra was not allowed to possess and use similar devices in that competition? All you can say for sure is that we were not shown that she attempted to use one. Considering how little of the contest we were shown, that's meaningless. I would agree that he may have been cheating. There's certainly no proof he wasn't. But I don't think we've been shown any actual evidence that he was.

How do you know he broke a rule? Where were these rules documented? In our world, that's the norm - but lots of things that were once titles or jobs are now (also or primarily) used as names. So the same thing could have happened to the term "Magus" in his world. Or perhaps it always was a name.

But I classify this as a redundant enchantment.

You wanted to sound extra fragrant?

The fact of Ashley being the only one in the game not used to routine magic, shows.

I disagree with that statement. Speaking as one of those schoolchildren. We were not taught the metric system. We were taught another set of conversion factors, so we could not only convert between quarts and gallons, we could also convert between quarts and liters. But we were never given any sort of sense of how big a liter is - there were no liter containers anywhere around us. And where the conversion factor between quarts and gallons is a small integer, the conversion factor between quarts and liters is a decimal fraction; you need a minimum of two digits, and preferably three, to get any sort of accuracy. This in an education system that was doing a pretty poor job of teaching most people basic arithmetic, and considered itself to be doing an acceptable job if 80% of the students mastered at least 60% of this subject, one of the three foundations on which all other education rests (the others being language/literacy and behavior). The soft-drink industry has done far more to actually teach people the metric system. Simply by distributing their product in 1- and 2-liter bottles.

In a cheerleader outfit, obviously.