Former Member

Very well written, but not my type of story. ;–) I prefer your usual style. But if this exercise helps you limber up and stretch in preparation for next year’s continuations, I suppose it’s a good thing. I am not the only one who reads your stories. But you have created a few characters that I’d love to see forced to spend various lengths of time among the reivers (some need more punishment than others). ;–)

So, did @FlyOnTheWall ask ‘a friend’ to assist him with those details? ;–)

One of the boys isn’t cis-gender? ;–)

Why does Eddie sound exactly like @Wesley8890 when Matty tells him he’s in love with Eddie? ;–)

Thank you for another hot redhead! ;–) (I was busy most of yesterday afternoon and evening plus this afternoon kept me from getting to this story earlier.) I remember the fire extinguisher, but am with the apparent majority who cannot remember his name! ;–) You know Tim, you keep starting new series. If you merge one or more, you’ll be able to cut back on the total. But your big mistake is that they all have very different settings! So your options are to have your firefighters somehow discover a connection with your high school students or to have your two stories with Danes in them cross the English Channel in one direction or the other… ;–)

Is that related to the reason why new Notifications in the Popup List currently are inconsistently bolded? And some viewed items remain Bolded on the Notifications Page even though they are no longer Bolded in the Popup List? Alternately, it would be nice if the Popup List expanded to contain all the new Notifications and/or the Notifications Page listed 50 (or more) items (possibly as an option similar to eBay and other online retailers allowing me to choose to list more items on the same page).

Well for the record, I meant me staying isolated and not asking abt this, and then feeling slighted. Sorry for the confusion

Locks would be important if they attempt to build canals closer to the more mountainous Creid territory… ;–)

You’re selectively quoting me out of context. The mountain ranges refer to California’s many mountain ranges. ;–)

But dreams don’t follow normal rules! ;–)

Got it. It will be added It’s always better to inquire than to isolate oneself and feel slighted.

Maybe Diego can let them fantasize together in a dream set in Az’s timeless garden… ;–)

But Jazz needs a little push! Why not let Rob take him along? I’m sure the teammates would feel safer exploring together than with a stranger! ;–)

No, the brothers and their dates plus Angie & the Imp! ;–)

So we can add your poem to the collection, where it belongs? Please say yes, as I feel awful this happened to you. Inclusive was the goal, and as we’re all human, mistakes occur. Sorry again

Have they figured out locks for their canals yet? Canals were extremely important in the era before railroads. But geography dictates the ease of engineering and building them. California has a shipping canal that connects the Sacramento Delta to Sacramento (and since the Delta drains into the San Francisco Bay at sea level, this allows large ships to sail inland to the Capital). Because the state has so many mountain ranges, there are only a few other potential locations for canals and those are not cost-effective compared with rail. Of course, the first railroads used horses and mules to power the trains. The rails were much smoother than the rocky roads of the time. This reduced the effort to move heavy objects. It’s not clear, but I’m guessing that if A’Dore and Blethos have paved roads, they’re confined within wealthy cities. They haven’t developed materials to pave large swaths of the kingdoms with rut-resistance over longer distances. No concrete-paved super highways! No asphalt-lined grand freeways! But I haven’t read about any toll-roads either! ;–)

I’m not sure, so maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but if this even has the remotest possibility of being related to the Pulse tribute posted yesterday, we need to take care of it immediately. I asked @Mikiesboyto check his records, and when he reached out to you personally about 6 weeks ago to see if you’d be interested in contributing — as he did personally to dozens of GA members — the reply he got back mentioned not having the bandwidth to contribute. Both of us have checked, and have received no subsequent message saying conditions had changed. But none of that is important. What is is if you have a piece for the tribute, please email or PM to either Tim or me to post immediately. If this is regards to the Pulse tribute, we can fix it today 😃

Star Trek: Enterprise had Trip who was his father’s and grandfather’s namesake. And I realized Quinn/quint/cinq/cinco are actually related to quintuple or five! Quad (quatre/cuatro/quadruple) would be four. There was an old spreadsheet application called Lotus 1-2-3. One of its rivals was named Borland Quattro (now owned by Corel). The story is that there’s an old song that begins with a chant: One, two, three, quattro! (Quattro being four en Español in Italian. This is definition is why Audi calls their four-wheel-drive models Quattro.)

This was much more poignant than all those news reports on TV where the reporter is nonsensically describing events in Orlando while they are sitting in Chicago or Los Angeles, This was much more personal than all those reporters who disguise their true feelings of disinterest by putting on their mask of ‘professional.’ This was much more real than all those live, on-the-scene satellite feeds from the parking lot in the dark (west coast time, don'tcha know). Sadly those who wish to silence us by killing us are allied with those who wish to silence us by censoring what we say and do as well as those who want to legislate us out of existence.

There’d be some Jesuits (especially) who would fit right in in Valhalla! ;–) Olympic Gold Metal-winner, Greg Louganis, attended El Cajon’s Valhalla High School in suburban San Diego, CA! ;–)

CEOs are not the most important asset. Frontline employees create the wealth that drives the business. Too many CEOs, CFO, and COOs have an inflated opinion of their value to their company. Take away the frontline employees and there is no company. Too many CEOs apparently have no idea what their company produces and who is doing the production. Too many CEOs slash the bottom and leave the vastly over-paid, already top-heavy management structure in place. It’s unsustainable. Trimming upper management would probably save the company around the same amount of money, but no one wants to suggest cutting their own job when they can get others laid off instead. Upper management makes those sorts of decisions without consulting the employees affected. Take a look at how many companies start their death spirals by cutting jobs at the bottom without touching the upper management who made the lousy decisions that forced job cuts in the first place! And CEOs that caused huge losses still get enormous golden parachutes when they fail. Unlike the poor employees who lost their jobs even though they worked loyally for their employer. Those failed CEOs often get hired by other corporations that end up desperately slashing jobs trying to stay out of bankruptcy due to poor decisions at the top.

My old Android phone was particularly lousy at predicting what I was attempting to type. My iPhone is better, but still doesn’t guess the right word a lot of the time. iOS does tend to guess using words in my personal spelling dictionary (often personal or family names) which is sometimes useful. But they only have space to make three guesses, so I shouldn’t be surprised that they’re wrong so often and I suppose I should be pleased that they’re right as often as they are. ;–)

It’s rather difficult for ‘John in Omaha’ to provide that sort of assistance from a call center in Mumbai, Manila, or even Memphis! ;–)

Three or four of those ‘readers’ are me! I reloaded the page to see if anyone had Commented before I did. That gets counted as a view (or reader) each time. Unique views would be a more useful number to compare, but is probably more complex to calculate. ;–)

So will Dennis figure out how the magic mirrors work, at least in part? (Or maybe Dr Warren’s grandson?) If they could get even some of the functionality to work, they could speed up communication between A’Dore, Blethos, and Creid. Voices would seem to be the easiest to transfer across long distances. Maybe Dennis will figure out how to get vibrations amplified and passed along elsewhere… ;–)