Zixar

365 Towing Anytime Towing Towmasters Cheapass Towing Mistle-Tow (popular at Christmas) Allweather Towing Ditch-Defying Towing The Pillsbury Towboy (*groan*, er, *giggle*) or, The Happy Hooker (might get the wrong sort of calls...but there's no such thing as bad publicity)

Ah, yes. The tired old "oxywater" nonsense. Here's an interesting link from the "How Stuff Works" site, detailing in easy-to-understand terms why there most certainly is such a thing as too much oxygen. Is it harmful to breathe 100% oxygen? What I should do at this point is write a note predicting exactly how Snake-Oil Dave will try to refute these plain, simple (and quite verifiable) facts, encrypt it, post it, wait for his inevitable self-righteous tirade, then post the decryption key just to show how transparent his lunacy really is. But then again, why bother? I'm not trying to claim that Snickers candy bars give you "Awesum Powerz to Preedict the FUCHURE!!!!" or anything. So instead, I'll just post a couple of exercise questions for the debunkers to practice on: 1) Discuss the fallacies in the family of statements similar to "but that's LUNG oxygen, not LYMPH oxygen!" 2) Personal attacks are in no way a refutation of scientific evidence. Neither is changing the subject. Be prepared to examine the retort and give two examples of each. Class dismissed, Professor Zix

Well, Karl Urban played Eomer in the last two Lord of the Rings movies, and Rohan was hardly an industrial metroplex... :)--> Anyway: Keith Urban is quite good, I agree. (XM Radio Channel 14 --Bluegrass Junction. No commercials. Try it.)

Thanks, everybody! I have missed the place, truth be told. It's just easy to run out of time for all the things you're juggling. And WWJLA: No, you're not being the bad guy, merely realistic. Ordinarily, I would not have accelerated a relationship this fast. But then again, I've never met anyone quite like Amanda. We get along so well, and it's been like that since the first time we met face to face. (okay, well, the second. Long story.) It was like we'd been best friends all our lives at first sight. We were just instantly comfortable around each other, and we've been able to be open and honest about everything so far. The usual early nervousness and insecurities about a relationship just haven't manifested themselves as normal. I hate to use such a cliche', but it really is like we were made for each other. (And yes, I'd be rolling my eyes and gagging if I heard anyone else say it, too...but you just can't believe it until it happens to you. Ask Steve!&Cindy!. They know.) Anyway, thanks for indulging in the video contest. The nominations will be closed Friday night, and then the real voting will begin in about a week. ;)--> God bless! Sev, er, Zix :)-->

Thanks, Raf! The first half of this year was really rough, but it's getting worked out, slowly but surely. God bless! Zix (man, it feels weird typing that again...)

Eh, I just incremented myself and moved on to another enormously time-wasting endeavor that just celebrated its one-year anniversary. Of course, I also got divorced, had my drug-addicted stepson arrested for stealing one of my guns, found a new love, got engaged again...quite a lot, actually. The time-wasting endeavor? Well, several people here may remember I aspired to be a screenwriter many moons ago, but never actually produced anything of note. I met up with a bunch of young people on another site, and one little offer to help them out by writing a script turned into something quite unexpected. It's called "machinima"--making movies with characters in 3D games, like "Doom", "The Sims 2", or, in our case, Microsoft's "Halo". It used to be just a way for players to record certain cool stunts they managed to pull off in the game, like seeing how high they could blow a Jeep with enough grenades and a rocket launcher, but then a group of guys in Austin, TX, decided to use the multiplayer version of Halo and film an actual video series. It's called Red vs. Blue and it has ballooned into a colossal web hit. It's kind of like M*A*S*H, a comedy about two hapless squads stranded in a box canyon with no real reason to fight the other except that the other side is supposed to fight them. When I stumbled into the forums on the RvB site, a young fellow from England was trying to get fan interest up in making a parody/homage about certain groups of people on the forums. (Like, say, "Satori & Co. vs. P-Mosh's Ilk", if it were to be done here.) Sooo, I opened my big mouth, and "Sponsors vs. Freeloaders" was born. The first few episodes we produced were pretty bad (2&3 especially), but we switched from comedy to drama starting with Episode 5, and the series took off. We have an international cast spanning four countries and three continents, and we're now in the running for several awards for Halo machinima. (You can vote for me, if you like, at 3rd Annual Rockets on Prisoner Machinima Awards I'm near the bottom of the page as "Sevenar of Sponsors vs Freeloaders" for Best Male Performance--go figure!) And it was through all this that I met an amazing young woman--Amanda--and we fell in love almost instantly. (Yes, this was after Lynn and I separated.) She's now living with me (long story), we're both ecstatically happy, and we're engaged to be married (well, as soon as her divorce is final, anyway...). More as the situation develops... :)-->

(can't help snickering) Score another one for Catcup...

Even with ten cats, I have to say that's a CUUUUUTE dog, Sudo. ;)-->

I'm guessing Crest. Anything with tin compounds in it (stannous fluoride--Crest's "fluoristat") would probably have some level of radioactivity from trace elements.

Not quite. Start with person 1. The odds that person 2 will have the same birthday is 1/365, but person 3 does NOT have a 1/364 chance of matching either. He has a 2/365 chance, because he can match either one of the first two. Continuing onward, the sum of the probabilities becomes greater than 1/2 (182.5/365) at the 20th person(190/365), not the 23rd. Remember to count the first person, but not to add a probability to him. (0/365+1/365+2/365+3/365+4/365+ ... +19/365=190/365. 190/365 > 1/2.)EDIT: I thought something looked funny about that. Turns out you don't ADD the probabilities that two people share the same birthday, you MULTIPLY the probability that they DON'T until it drops below 1/2. So, it's 365x364x363...x343/365^23 which finally drops the probability that no two people share the same birthday to less than .500. In other words, 23 is the correct answer, but for a different reason. If you added the probabilities together, you'd go over 365/365 when you hit the 28th person--which is nonsense. 28 people can easily have 28 different birthdays in February alone. Doing it the other way assures the probability converges to 1.000 at person 365.

Happy Birthday, Hope!!!! Congratulations! If I'd known, I'd have stayed in Orlando a few extra days and driven over... :(-->

Raf: Probably Vader thinks the twins are dead--especially if he's the one who winds up killing Amidala. WordWolf: It's "midichlorian" not "midiflorine".

It's true. There's enough bismuth in P-B to make the airport x-ray machines show it as black. I had a box of P-B tablets in my carryon bag and the screeners had to open it and check the box.

I'm sure Anakin built C-3PO out of salvaged parts from other 3PO droids. If you remember, in the very beginning of episode 4, there's a silver 3PO walking behind him, and in Episode 5, there's a white one. Also the one who meets Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon at the start of Episode 1. The thousands of languages is probably just a chipset. :P

The longest word in the English language that only has one vowel in it is STRENGTHS. The Sun and the Moon are different sizes and different distances away from the Earth, but curiously, their size-distance ratios make them appear the same size from our vantage point. Since bismuth is more dense than lead, a bottle of Pepto-Bismol will block x-rays. Cats are not the only creature that land on all fours. Rabbits can do this too. Human beings and bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) are the only primates that mate face-to-face. Most animals that appear to have backward-bent knees on their hind legs (like cats, dogs, etc.) really don't. That's really their ankle joint, they just run on their tiptoes. Their knee joint is closer to their hip, and is pointed the same way yours is. It is physically impossible to keep your eyes open when you sneeze.

Wish I could be there with you all...

Re: The current whereabouts of the Queen Mother. D'oh! Anyway, I'll bet Trefor knows the difference between an heir apparent and an heir presumptive... :)-->

Trefor: Interesting! Thanks. Vickles: No, because when George VI died in 1952, his wife did not become the monarch. She's known now as the Queen Mother. (Her name is also Elizabeth, but in order to avoid confusion with her daughter, she's rarely addressed as anything but "the Queen Mother" or "the Queen Mum".)

Technically, don't you have to throw in Schleswig-Holstein in between the Windsor and the Sonderburg, too? In reality, I think she's just a "Windsor" since Charles is the heir apparent. Wasn't it the order that the children who weren't the direct heirs to be Mountbatten-Windsors and the heirs to be plain Windsors? Odd stuff, heraldry...

Of course, the sad part is that they were probably only about 20 feet from each other when they had this public display of affection... hee hee! Come on, you two! Put down the keyboards and go chase each other, or something... :P

(Note: This is addressed at no one in particular.) Let me guess, if you take the Magic Noni Juice and bubble oxygen through it, you'll have so much detoxifying homeopathic healing karma coursing through your veins that you'll spontaneously combust from the sheer anti-establishment nirvana it sends you to. --> No wonder Wierwille had no problem swelling the ranks of TWI. People will believe anything as long as it's sensational and iconoclastic. If this stuff really worked, don't you think some Big Evil Corporation would be bulldozing islands to set up noni farms to control the world's supply? After all, they're only interested in money, money, money, and if you can sell the junk for $30 a quart, you'd own the oil barons in ten years. ...or are they already doing it? It's not like anyone here actually flew to Tahiti and bottled their own noni. Oh, but these Corporations are producing stuff you want to believe in, so they're not Big or Evil? How do you know it isn't some cruel joke wager between two of the shadowy conspiracy that really controls everything? One of the Rothschilds could have bet another that he couldn't sell rotten olive juice to people for $100 a gallon...and lost. Remember: If you pay way too much for something you didn't really need, and it breaks the first week you bought it, you've just contributed to a secret Illuminati fund-raising project. (see iPod, GameBoy, AOL, etc., etc.) :)-->

Well, at least you didn't refer to them as the Bang Gang...* HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, ! FAMILY!!! You guys are the best! A zillion happy returns of the day, Much love, Zix *Old Computer Joke. When reading an address, an exclamation point is read as a "bang", much like a period is a "dot", and this thing (@) is read as "at". So, Steve!@greasespot.com would be read out loud as "Steve bang at greasespot dot com."

Actually, I find it rather interesting. One wonders what would happen if Camilla's ex-husband mysteriously died before the ceremony on Saturday...

Congratulations, you two! Treat each other kindly and deal with each other honestly, and you'll live happily ever after. :)--> God bless you both, Zix

I had thought we wouldn't have to go through all the ugly stuff. Wrong. She just moved back in and informed me there was nothing I could do about it until the divorce was final. I'm therefore filing on Monday, since the mandatory waiting period is 30 days. We were supposed to go over the whole thing and file in 3 weeks when she got back, but she forced my hand with this stunt. Sigh. What a mess.