You may recall the story I posted that was written by a friend, one Dr. Bob: http://www.techcomedy.com/single/new_stories.php?content_number=45460 -- he has come up with a sequel.

Langdon held up the curiously carved cylinder of marble, its curved surface made up of individually-movable rings. Each ring bore an alphabet. He squared his shoulders, took off and polished his glasses, and rested his hand on a classroom lectern that Sophie had till then not realized was in the room.

"It's called a cryptex", he explained. "It was designed by the legendary Leonardo da Vinci - you remember, one of the early initiates of the Sign of the Sea Star. As well as the documents that the user wants to keep safe, it contains a cup of coffee. Attempts to open it without arranging the rings to reveal the correct password cause the coffee to be spilled, obliterating the document."

"So it is intended to protect important documents?" she breathed.

"That's one of its uses. It also stops people from drinking your coffee."

"How hard is it to open?"

"That depends upon who created it. Some cryptexes - cryptices - some of these gadgets, properly designed by initiates, are said to require at least ten thousand hours to open, by which time the coffee will be cold. However, some of those created by so-called "users" are somewhat easier. Let's see."

He spun the five rings. The letters G-U-E-S-T lined up, and the cylinder slid open.

"Think you can deal with stupid users though? I have a lot of patience and even I have trouble sometimes."

"I eat stupid users for breakfast...they're good with bb-queue sauce."

The accident was ultimately decided to be her fault as she hadn't ever bothered to talk to even her own insurance company about it. They worked out a settlement with me, and with the extra from the extended warranty, I was able to pay off my poor little Neon. I ended up getting 2006 Focus, and she's awsome!

This isn’t so much a story as it is more of a rant. As I’m in a Transformers sort of mood Ill describe things in that formula. Disclaimer: No disrespect is intended to Hasbro, or anyone else related with Transformers. All characterizations below are just that, characterizations. Nothing is to be inferred from names or genders used other than that the writer was irritated at the time…end disclaimer Two big Starfishacons seem to keep trying to creep up on me today. One is a big loudbot called Blasturpass, the other a seemingly small one that has eyes bigger than its energon capacitor called Emailcramer.

Blasturpass seems big and imposing, but he’s all mouth, literally. Blasterpass transforms into a speaker truck, with the speakers forming into the torso, and making up his mouth, when transformed into robot mode. Intelligence not being a strong point of his ether, he tends to run off at the mouth any chance he gets. The one thing he loves to say above everything else though is PASSWORDS. Yes, all he likes to do all day is broadcast passwords to anyone that gets within earshot. Woe be it any who let Blasturpass on their team, as their security will then be easily breached by everyone else soon after. White noise generators would be a good choice to use around this dimwitted loudmouth. The most preferred method of stopping this lumbering lummox however would be a fully charged cattle prod right to the speaker grill. Oh how I hate people that love to tell me their passwords when 1) they shouldn’t be giving them out and 2) I don’t need to know them to do what I need to do

Emailcramer loves email, just can’t get enough of it. Does everything she can to keep all her email in her mailbox, despite it not being the right size to hold it all. If she has a 50 Megabyte limit at the time, she tries to get 100, has 100, tries to get 200, etc. Small enough to transform into a mail scooter, yet seems to think she is a mail semi. When transformed, her eyes make up the majority of her head, unfortunately making things seem smaller than they actually are. This Starfishacon is tenacious if not extremely annoying, not knowing when to quit and actually let go of old email that is no longer needed, or storing it off of her person when it gets to be too much to handle, which is usually her downfall. Best way to deal with her is weld her hands and feet together, and keep stuffing her full of email until she explodes. Why wont people get the clue that they cant keep everything in their mailbox, and just need to clean things up every so often. Maybe then we wouldn’t get so many calls from starfish wondering why they cant send/receive email when the problem is they need to acualy manage their email as opposed to just letting it all pile up in their mailbox.

Hope you enjoy my adaptation of Starfishacons, who knows, maybe more will come in the future.

this guy gets a MVP aware for a VB express add on.. then M$ is trying to sue him and will not release WHY or WHAT he violated.