Tower of the North

Sorry there hasn’t been much posting going on. School starts in a week for me and I have been busy preparing. I have been putting a lot of work into redoing my home network and getting my computer up and running again. Also I have been preoccupied with playing Starcraft what with the announcement of the dates for Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 it has been pretty exciting over at BHR. We have also been very active in the last few weeks gaining new members and stuff so you should really check the site out if you need something to do.

I’ve updated the leaderboards now to contain more information. High scores, low scores, medals, and individual planet records plus who was alive on that planet. Also scores have been bouncing around a lot recently. Van took second place from where for awhile until today where I came back and beat Xeno and Van both. I still need to upload the proof which I plan on doing in a little while. The competition is heating up!

So I found a new theme that I am happy with that better supports the functions I want it to. Strike one issue off of the list of things that definately need to be worked on. Also I have updated the leaderboards with myself offically taking 1st place with 1423 hits and an image to prove it. I’m going to set a new policy of anything over 1000 needs photo proof and I will upload the most recent proof alongside the score. If anyone wants to join be sure to drop an email.

If you have been paying attention to the site recently you’ll notice there is a new link among the top, the newly created Starfox 64 Leaderboards. A few of my friends and I are in a perpetual tournament to see who can get and maintain the highest score in one of our all time favorite games; Star Fox 64 for the Nintendo 64. Unfortunately I’m not accepting just anyone on the leaderboards I am looking to recruit only people I know personally, but anyone can view and make comments on the boards. Due to some conflicting arrangements in my current theme’s code the old Dungeons and Dragons archive and Downloads page are hidden but should be accessable from the links in this paragraph, I’m working on a fix for that which may include finding a new theme for the site.

For people I know that want to join:

Take a look at the Contact page and send me an email in case you don’t know my personal email address. I will give you further instructions via email.

Good luck players!

Downtime issues have all been resolved now. I’ve been quite slow in the mind in the past few days, it took me some time to figure out what happened. My old domain zoness.us expired and all of the site’s database servers were using that domain so I had to manaually change all of the configuration files heh. That won’t happen again I promise

Over 200 years ago, we enshrined the rule of law as the only monarch in America. Tomorrow, the Senate will likely vote to shred that precedent. Democrats, “compromising” with Republicans, will act together, in a bipartisan fashion, to destroy your right to be free from search without a warrant.

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In a sad act of defiance to the constitution, the senate pass the full FISA Amendments act today granting telecom immunity and expanding Bush’s spying powers over ordinary citizens. Not only now do we have a war criminal but a felon who has no regard for the rights of the American people. It’s just one step closer to a dictatorship now. Great.

Yeah so I’m home from Arizona now. I shouldn’t be doing much now for the rest of the summer, lots of Dungeons & Dragons I suppose. After a recent encounter at various book stores I decided that I am going to continue hosting version 3.5 campaigns at least for another year regardless of the fact that version 4 is moving into the mainstream. My players know 3.5 and I know 3.5 plus I invested too much money in books and whatnot to let it all go to the archives and collect dust.

On top of organizing my D&D materials I am having massive modem problems. The modem is resetting itself about every minute or so. I’ve concluded it isn’t my ISP throttling me and it isn’t any connections or cables so I am going to bug them for a replacement. This getting really annoying and it is making it difficult to do anything so I hope I can get ahold of them tomorrow.

Happy Independence Day to all of you Americans out there, launch some fireworks and enjoy yourself. If fireworks are illegal in your state, do it anyways.

Greets from Phoenix.

To my players: Please check your email for the most detailed description of events. To summarize what you must know I plan on playing next week after I return home, except for July 10th because I have made plans already. This next session will be an all-nighter and I ask that you either bring food you want or bring some money to donate for food, if you bring money for something you get first pick at whatever it is. I will also introduce version 1.6 of the campaign to fix some bugs I had in the numerical and statistical systems of 1.5. Also, we probably won’t be playing 1.0 again.

For the full rundown please check your e-mail, if you didn’t receive the email for whatever reason get me at webmaster@zoness.net with a different email address or I will try and help you fix your problem, I will reply from my personal address. Thank you

MSNBC’s Alex Witt talked to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff about a new proposal by the Bush administration to use satellites for domestic surveillance.

Isikoff told MSNBC, “The Homeland Security Department is talking about expanding the program to use military satellites really, for domestic purposes. They say the primary driver is natural disasters — like the recent flooding in the midwest — to pinpoint areas that are most hard hit and to help with responses, first responses. But they also leave open the possibility that this could be used for other purposes, law enforce many purposes. Tracking potential terrorists but also tracking potential drug operations.”

“And that is where the concerns about civil liberty abuses come in. First of all, there are strict laws about the act that limits the use of the U.S. military for law enforcement purposes. But the precision of these satellites, they can literally capture crystal clear images of your car as you leave the studio this afternoon. And capture them in computer databases — in the government computer databases. And it raises all sorts of concerns. To some degree, the administration is paying the price of what is for — what many in congress see as way over stepping — in the electronic surveillance era.”

Well I wouldn’t be particularly suprised if it was a massive spying scandal. I’m sure the American government is spying on it’s citizens right now anyways. The bit about natural disasters is total bullcrap the government really wants it to “fight crime”. Fighting crime and finding dangerous people is perfectly acceptable but I’m sure there will be more dark uses behind it such as finding and supressing political opponents and marking someone as dangerous and harassing them. It’s something to watch out for but the Bush regime is almost over.