Mister P-Mosh

I'm suprised that it still exists. I tested those programs out years ago. BackOrifice, for example, has to be nearly seven years old (maybe not quite that old, maybe it's only five.) I wrote a little program once to play a .wav file of a doorbell ringing whenever someone hit port 12345 or 31337 (where BO and Sub7 usually get you) but had to turn it off because it went off too much at random times. It's definitely a random scan most of the time though. I remember programs that would take a range of IP addresses (e.g. 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.255) and scan all of them, just to see if it was installed. That's what this probably is more than anything. Another annoying thing was all the Microsoft IIS web server worms. When I was running my own web site back then, over 2/3 of all the hits I got were from those stupid things. I would watch my server logs and they would just scroll by while thousands upon thousands of hits went by looking for IIS exploits. I was running Apache webserver on Linux though, so that made it even more pointless.

You do realize that it pops up to let you know that Microsoft screwed up and to download the fixes to stuff, right? It doesn't pop up just to annoy you, it pops up because there is a problem to fix.

This is similar to my situation (not the honeymoon baby or anything!) I had actually taken my wife (then girlfriend) to a TWI fellowship before, and she had met a lot of TWI followers while we were dating and then engaged. There are a lot of nice people that she met, and she has trouble understanding how really good people can be a part of something I speak badly about like TWI. I guess it's one of those things where you would have had to have been there. Yeah, there are probably at least a few people we both know. We may not be talking about the same Joel, because the one I am thinking of was in TWI later than that, but it could be my confused perception of time.

I'm going to have to look and see how I did it, but I had a way of changing the icon on the Start menu on 95/98/ME. My old laptop has a smiley face rather than the Windows logo on it.

Part of your problem is how wordy you are. You probably wrote twenty paragraphs to explain why you are not yet talking about what you are going to talk about. Also, you seem to be more arrogant than most of us around here. Your views may not be popular, but people are not going to take you seriously for saying things like, "After weighing more data than most of you, and after having more time to sift through it all than most of you, I feel confident in rejecting your unanimity on all these negative subjects regarding VPW." Also, with regards to your statements about how much you have suffered as a result of your opinion, I think it was your obsession on it that caused the problems. Anyway, I wish my memory was better, because there was another person just like you on this site who I believe was ridiculed off of it recently. You'd do good to not follow in his footsteps. Just because you know some people around here doesn't mean everyone will like you. You seem to need help; your act like you have delusions of being the new MOG and act overdramatic about people disagreeing with you on the internet. I would suggest going out and getting a social life rather than obsessing with TWI nonsense.

The advice to leave it running 24/7 is a myth perpetrated by power companies. Turning off your computer doesn't do harm to it. I leave my work PC running, with all the programs open, when I go home. It's Windows 2000 so I can lock it by pressing Crtl Alt Del and it asks for a password when I unlock it. It's nice because that way when I get to work in the morning I don't have to spend a long time waiting for this POS to boot and all my programs to open. At home, I leave my PCs turned off most of the time. I do use them occasionally in the evenings but when I'm not using them they are powered down. If you want to be concerned about your computer, temperature is one thing that can do a lot of harm. When I was a system administrator at a college, our air conditioner in the server room would go out occasionally. The servers would get really really hot before we could get it fixed. When this happened, we had anywhere from a few hours to a week before a hard drive stopped working in a server or two. Going from the low 70's to 100's within a matter of minutes can really mess things up.

Not a bad movie, some parts are actually good. It was a bit long, and there was too much movie review hype about it. Basically, it's the story of a guy whose father runs a gang of immigrants on mid 1800's New York. His dad dies, he goes off, and comes back to try and get revenge. He ends up taking over where his father left off, and lots of $#!+ happens on the way, including the U.S. civil war. It wasn't the best movie I've seen this year, but it wasn't the worst either. It's a lot better than most of the crap out there right now, and something to see if you've already seen the latest LOTR. Unfortunately, I have to take the wife to see the J-Lo movie this weekend. J-Lo is cute, but I doubt that would help me enjoy the movie.

It's good to see another person close to my age on here. I had to deal with some of the same people in TWI, and I understand a lot of what you had to put up with. It's good you're out, and glad you are happy now. By the way, I knew a Joel up in Indiana that I think is the same one you mentioned. I forget his last name but he was a crazy hyper guy that liked to quote Monty Python and stuff like that. I haven't heard from him in years though so I wouldn't know if he was in or out.

You know Linda... Weird Al is an accordian player too. I'm not trying to insinuate anything though, I just wanted to mention it.

The wife and I went to see it last night, and it wasn't very good. I don't think it was the actors, as they did a good job with what they had, but the script was pretty lame. Still, until the next LOTR comes out (tomorrow I think) there's not any movies out there I can think of that I want to see. Empire was sort of ok to waste an hour and a half with, but I wouldn't pay full price for it.

I first saw this sort of thing on paper as a riddle. I remember going through each number and Steve is correct that pretty much everything ends up as 9 or a derivative of it. There are some other tricks like this, such as the one where you end up with a Kangaroo in Columbia eating an Orange or something like that. I'm more of a card trick person myself though.

Wow, you put a lot of work into that. I never thought the show was all that bad, but you did expose some big plot holes that I didn't pay attention to when I saw that episode.

Of all the Michael Chrichton books, I think that "Sphere" was one of the best. It did start off pretty slowly, but it was one that kept me reading until I finished it and constantly trying to figure it out.

Hey, I found them in my archive files! If anyone missed them the first time around and wants to read them, let me know, ok? Are they online somewhere that you can post? I might want to check them out just to see.

I did a lot on amazon.com. I got video games, movies, and books for various relatives from there, paid a little extra to have them gift wrapped, and mailed to them free. This is truly the future of gift shopping. Jeez, this would suck if the WayGB were to figure out who I am and reveal this post to my innie family, but I doubt they would.

Suprisingly, you'll not be treated like a freak as you may expect. I've "come out" to some people I know about my activities in a cult and nobody has thought I was weird as a result, at least to my face. You'll also find there are others out there, many TWI-like cults are hurting people, and there are many others who share your experiences. Since leaving TWI, I'm sure you can comfort those who are considering leaving, or just feeling miserable in one if you wish, as you have the knowledge and experience in how to leave that way of life behind.

My wife learned that she has to coerce me by giving me enough alcohol to have a strong buzz going before I loosen up enough to dance with her. I really don't like dancing.

Star Trek (the original series) - cheesy, cheaply done show that had enough good interaction between some of the characters to make it interesting. They were also controversial during their time by introducing a black woman on TV in a normal role, which gets a plus for being ballsy. Captain Kirk was ok before his ego exploded. The movies were mostly circle-jerks of the veterans of the TV show, in my opinion. Star Trek TNG - Cheesy, but had better special effects than TOS. Some characters were good, but everyone was a little too tame. Troi was attractive, but only in that vague 1940's era way. Star Trek DS9 - Mostly boring until close to the end, but by then I didn't care enough to watch enough to understand what was going on. The biggest mistake they made at first with this series is that a space station just stays in one place, so the action has to come to them. ST needs new worlds and all that stuff. Star Trek Voyager - It had potential to be interesting, but something about it just sucked. Enterprise - A "Quantam Leap" reunion at best, otherwise it's mostly rednecks in space. I watch it mostly because of the shower scenes with Hoshi in it. Now for some non-ST shows and my opinions on them. X-files - Some episodes were great, and some of the best things ever on TV. However, it went on too long and the series got to be very lame. They could probably fit all the good stuff into one season and it would be my favorite TV series, but there was too much stupid stuff. Stargate SG-1 - Great show, started out on Showtime years ago. I think it would have been better to stay on Showtime, because to play it on TV they had to edit out nudity, cursing, and violence. Farscape - I didn't see much of this, but it had a pretty interesting plot. I just didn't like the space muppets aspect of it. Lexx - This is probably the most realistic space show I've ever seen. To sum it up, it's about horny people in a spaceship. Unfortunately, it's not as entertaining as it sounds. Taken - I had to throw this in just because I'm really liking it. Sure, it's a mix between Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Independance Day, and the X-files, but Stephen Spielburg did a good job with this one. As someone else noted in the thread about it, it's like watching a new Stephen Spielburg movie every night. Babylon 5 - I've heard how great this show is, and I've caught enough to like it some, but it never really caught on with me. I do realize that it has a huge cult following though.

I finished my shopping already a few weeks ago, and my wife finished hers on Saturday.

Greensleeves is always a good one, as is carol of the bells. However, I'd like to personally run over those "Manheim Steamroller" guys with a real steamroller. I don't really like their music much, but the advertisements are played once every set of commercials this time of the year, and their almost TWI-like "rock" music is pretty lame.

The one I am referring to has a last name more like Gal****re

So would you guys be happy to see a movie based on 'Enterprise' next?

Hopefully they'll come out with a paperback at some point.

Didn't Michael Chrichton also do that Beowulf update...I forget what it was called but that movie "The Thirteenth Warrior" was inspired by it.

Actually, I didn't like the new James Bond movie as much as I thought I would because of the non-Bond-like beginning of the film (how could James Bond become a prisoner of war?) and a few other minor things. I do agree that it is still one of the better ones, at least since Sean Connery defined the role. I'd say Pierce Brosnan is the 2nd best James Bond. He just needs to become a little bit meaner and I'll be happy.