Hoskins

You won't step on my toes, believe me. I'm not beholden to any one maker of these things My experience is with all business class machines. I think that anything bought through the "home/home office" section of any manufacturer site is junk. You get what you pay for. Home computers are the cheapest units they sell, because consumers will, 90% of the time, sacrifice quality for the sake of a few bucks. I've seen, consistently, that HP/Dell/Lenovo/Gateway will throw the cheapest components in the home line, because the machines aren't made to last, they make them to move them off the store shelves. This also means that finding drivers is difficult because you never know "which component was put into which batch" of machines at the factory. In the business lines, quality is stepped up and components are consistent across the product lines, because IT departments insist on it. But on the whole, I'm actually quite hardware-neutral. When you dig into it, there are only 3 manufacturers of memory chips and only 2 or three screen makers for notebooks. We may be down to 2 hard drive makers now, I'm not sure who-bought-who last. By the time you dig through all the components that are in the machines, they're all coming from the same places, the differences are in build quality and in the software builds. My real advice here is to get the machine that fits the job, and for most people, that translates to an OS that works well and is familiar (either MacOS or Windows 7, Linux tends to be a bit wonky for the average Joe/Josephine), don't forget to buy Office software (except on a Mac, just go with iWork for the best experience), many people prefer a mouse to a trackpad, and I can't count the number of times I've left my power adapter home when I needed it with me. Also, batteries are expensive and it sucks to ship your computer into the factory to be fixed, because you're without it for two weeks or sometimes longer. So get a warranty on those items that will let the unit be fixed on site, i.e. next business day. Oh and regarding Macs: Don't get a Macbook, spend the extra dough on a Macbook Pro. The build quality is exponentially better. Oh and one more thing: Include an external drive for backup or use an offsite service. There's no excuse for lost data. I like this hard drive because of its 5 year warranty: http://www.buy.com/prod/seagate-freeagent-go-1tb-usb-2-0-portable-hard-drive-tuxedo-black/q/loc/101/212415651.html

I run an IT shop and I spec systems out often, so here's what I'd do: Windows machine: If you're going with HP or Dell, go with their business machines - HP: http://www.hp.com/sbso/busproducts_notebooks.html or Dell: http://www.dell.com/business/laptops The reason to go to the business side is that support is much better and build quality is more consistent. Toshiba and HP laptops consistently rate highly in quality surveys. I'm not all that familiar with Toshiba. Windows 7 home premium, professional or ultimate If you are getting a 32 bit OS, then at least 2 GB and if possible, 3 GB of RAM. If you are getting a 64 bit OS, then at least 4 GB of RAM. 320 GB hard drive For displays, the "glossy" displays tend to be brighter but are more susceptible to glare and fingerprints (HP calls this "Brightview"). The more RAM on the video card, the better (I like to spec for 512MB or better if its affordable). Get Bluetooth if it's available and then get a Bluetooth mouse as an accessory. Office software (if needed: Office 2007 home and student (unless you need Outlook - most people do not). Get an extra power adapter. One goes in the bag, one stays on the desk. Get an extended battery warranty. Batteries last about a year, sometimes more, but they cost over $150 to replace, typically. My warranty has paid for itself twice. Get an extended system warranty if possible. If not, get an onsite warranty for the first year at least. Well worth it for the onsite support for warranty problems rather than shipping your laptop in for service. Do NOT get an extended warranty through Best Buy. In fact, do NOT buy a computer from Best Buy. Let me repeat that: Do not buy a computer at Best Buy. You will rue the day. Here is a "typical" HP laptop I might spec for a customer on a budget. This is not a customized machine, this is just an example, so don't take this as gospel, but it might make a good starting point. http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/321957-321957-64295-3929941-3955552-4021356.html

A Lion in Winter with Peter O'Toole, Kate Hepburn, Timothy Dalton, Anthony Hopkins. The best scripting, casting, an awesome plot - war, swords, family fights, and keeping mom imprisoned in a tower. Who could ask for more? "How is your queen?" "Decaying, I suppose." Ha!

James feel free to correct me here, but I'm guessing that your frustration isn't really with the girl or the prom per se, but at the media attention its getting instead of the wider issues you're discussing? I personally think the whole deal is a complete ratf**k for the girls and the kids in that town. I think the issue should not be taking media or lobbyist attention away from larger issues. I, however, blame the gay community for not staying focused on those issues in the first place. We should not be in this position with a Democrat in the White House. And so I blame El Presidente as well.

Hi James. Please rethink your decision. It is entirely your choice to feel this way about yourself, and you know damned well you can change this anytime you want. If this is your particular pool of mud, so be it. But I disagree. I think you're plenty good. Shake it off, James, it's history. Let it go. What you were then is not what you are now. There is no excuse for letting the past dictate your future. My parents were some seriously f**ked up people, one of whom had the audacity to up and die on me when I was nine. There are long stretches of my life that literally read like a nifty archive cliche story. Badly outed when young. Picked on nerd. Unrequited crushes. Getting beat up. Etc. Etc. Etc. It took a lot of time, but I got past it, and I've now created my own version of f**ked up that doesn't have anything to do with those people or that time, it's all my doing. You too can have this kind of independence and freedom. If these people are no longer around, then they no longer have any power over you unless you give it to them. They are ghosts. You are letting yourself be dictated to by ghosts. At least two decades have now gone by and you're still blaming people that have probably LONG forgotten you. Most important life lesson I ever had: figuring out that people have their own crap to deal with, and usually when someone shits on me, it has NOTHING to do with me at all, I'm just usually standing where they want to pile it. You put a lot of emphasis on not letting others control you or put you in a position to get hurt. Yet you cling to people and situations that, for all intents and purposes, don't exist anymore. This does not make sense. You have friends here. They're right in front of you. I don't see anyone here judging you or screwing you over. Lean on them. They may not be in your uh, meatspace, but go to Las Vegas and meet a few. So maybe you have to relearn lots of things, maybe you need to learn how to be friends with people. That's okay, there's time to learn. Yeah, it's a bitch, but you're not old and dusty. You're scary smart, funny, direct and brutally honest. You are the type that would have your friends backs, no matter what (and whether you'd admit it or not). Those really are appealing qualities in a friend. I'd be honored to count you as a friend whether we ever meet in real life or not. So, yeah, disposable? Nope. Not even close.

Speaking purely as a person who has been an addicted person and who's been around a lot of people dealing with it for most of my adult life, I see JP's role in 1968 as being completely fed up with trying to fix this guy. There comes a point in an addiction where the people around the addict realize that no matter what they do, it won't be enough to save them. Not if the addict doesn't want their help. I've been on both sides of this - as the addict and as the family member. JP is, through most of the story, on a knife edge about what to do with Jeff, and when he finally commits to the idea that Jeff can't be helped, it's devastating. If you haven't been around this, it's hard to understand, but believe me, there does come a point when it's no longer about "saving" the addict, it's about saving yourself FROM them. I think Mark caught these moments perfectly.

I put it on my iphone, it detected I was near a hydrant. I think. Then I got rid of it. Holy cow, there are some real morans out there in homo land.

David: Please, be very careful with the eye candy. You can do serious damage to your neck, what with all the whiplash. Take care, get better.

I'm 47 and have spent the better part of twelve years back in the closet after spending about twelve OUT of the closet before that. Before, I was so out, I radiated rainbow flags. Nowadays, I'm so closeted I think you could hang a shoe tree off my neck. I'm quite sick of it. It's making me grumpy and antisocial. I want to come out again. I would like to rejoin "gay society". Plus I'm having a bit of a midlife crisis, which isn't helping things. There are complications. I could use some input from you random strangers on the Internet about how to fix my life. Please chime in. No reasonable advice rejected. First, I think I'm socio-phobic because I've basically been working my ass off for ten years with very little social life. I'm pretty nervous about meeting people. I'm also sober, so alcohol as a social lube is out. Any suggestions for meeting gay people, in Michigan, where the gays congregate in about ten bars and a community center? I think there might be a bowling league, but I don't bowl. I know there are some gay people NOT in a bar and NOT in an m4m chat room in Michigan but they're all in stealth mode or something. How to meet people when people don't want to be met? Where are all the gay guys my age? Dinner parties? WTF? Second, I run my own company and that takes a lot of my time and has completely taken over my social life. Plus I'm not sure how my clients will react if they find out, although if any of them really have a problem with it they can find another computer guy. Amirite? I want to put myself out there a bit, like I've got my facebook profile showing that I like men. New customers are going to look at that because I've got some business pages out there too. Plus I'm using twitter and a blog and some other stuff. I don't want to hide on those networks, it's stupid. Any suggestions for fielding dumb questions from people about this? SO there you have it. Any advice, support, donations, clothing tips for spring (I don't own a white belt, don't EVEN go there), I'd appreciate hearing from you.

Your Majesty. I humbly offer my sword in your service. wait, that came out wrong Congratulations, well done, carry on, etc. Well deserved win, sir.

Hello GA. Look at your beach. Now back to me. Now back to your beach. Now back to me. Sadly, I am not your beach. But I could smell like your beach, if I put kelp in my pants. Look down. Now look back up. You're on a website, reading a post from a man who smells like a beach. What's that on your face, back to me, I have it. Its a pair of glasses, covering those things you love. Now look again, the glasses are now diamonds. Everything is possible when you read something from a man who smells lilke a beach. I'm on a horse.

Oh yeah. Chopped liver on thick-sliced bread with very thick slices of onion. As it destroys you, you feel good about it.

I've got the Kindle app and Stanza on my iphone and they're great. Stanza is the big winner because I can invert the ink color and go black text on white or white text on black for reading at night. The Baen Free Library is my best friend. Also, you can get Baen CD's here

The cool thing about that lady is that every time she speaks, she sets her own cause back by years what a moran

If a story sucks but I'm hooked, I'll skip to the end to get it over with. Otherwise, I'll read it as the author wrote it. I presume that when a writer kills off a character, its for a reason - either to progress the story forward or to set up something coming later in the story. And stories should, to some degree, mirror real life. Tragedy happens. How characters deal with it can be a great read. I am not a fan of the "cliche death" - so often found in amateur fiction - which is really just the writer pulling puppet strings on characters. I hate that. Anyway, surprise is part of the fun, although a little foreshadowing has its place...

I haven't participated in chat here, as I haven't at any of the sites I participate in, since about y2k or so. I used to moderate chat rooms on AOL and on online forums. At any given time, I was moderating between 25 and 150 people in a room, and sometimes two or three rooms in a session. The one core principle I stuck to as a mod was that I expected people to respect the people and the room. If you badmouthed somebody, you got kicked. If you smarted off, you got kicked. If you isolated people or "picked" on them, you got kicked. Clique-ish behavior counted as isolating. When young people graduate from high school and again from college, they begin to realize that cliques and clique-ish behavior is childish. While I understand there are people under 18 here, the older people here should know better, and should BE better than to be childish. Cliques are so...highschool. Maybe, just maybe, the GA chat room could be a place where you practice NOT being in a clique, and instead, offer a welcoming presence to the people around you, with the end result that everyone has a better time. And now I will bow out, because I have no dog in this fight, but I sure do hate cliques.

I'm pretty sure that the optimal weapon against a zombie is fire. Fire and poisoned brains that make them tear their own heads off. But, since that's not on the list, I'm going with the riot shotgun and the M-16 - I hope it has a laser sight. You really need a head shot so the M-16 is effective there, and for up close and personal the shotgun will be pretty effective. Always keep moving, you've got to duck and weave sometimes but for the most part as long as they don't box you in it's pretty easy to get distance - they can only shuffle so fast. I'm always happiest when I can burn a grassland to hide in the smoke and for maximum flame on zombies as they cross the fire line, so I stayed with the Midwest. I've selected the hummer because the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank isn't on the list.

you tryin to call me a HOUSEWIFE??

Oh James. I'm sorry, that was me. I thought you were a deer. It was the anti-porch crowd, obviously. You can never freaking tell. People are all kinds of f**ked up. So you'll probably never know the answer to your questions, but you've dodged lots of bullets in your life, what's one more? Just don't get all existential, it's too close to bead wearing. Glad you're okay, holy crap.

Well for me, it's fun to read a story, know it's unrealistic, and enjoy it anyway. We must agree to disagree, I think.

I agree with Jeremy. Steven isn't all the way straight. I would bet that the times will prevent him from self identifying as "gay", so it's all in the closet and behind closed doors. Tonto, however, definitely has a clue.

Part of being a good reader of a story is using your imagination to suspend your disbelief while you read the story. Not everything is or will be accurate. Because nothing is real. It doesn't HAVE to be accurate, or even believable. It just has to be part of a good story.

How do you REALLY feel? Don't hold back...

Okay, Comsie, why are you writing this stuff on an online form? Write it in Notepad or Wordpad, then copy and paste it online. Then you have a local copy. H