So just as I was about to start discussing my evil plans in private with you guys, the lounge disappeared. I still have the regular badge though, so I guess they revoked all of the Regular’s privileges… I feel this is partially my fault… Sorry everyone 
No, they didn’t revoke our Regular privileges.
Regular Trust Level is time and activity based, if you don’t constantly meet the requirements, you will be demoted back to Member
https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-do-user-trust-levels-do/4924/6
What I’m saying, is that I still have the regular badge, but don’t have access to the lounge thing anymore… Besides, that stuff is “in the last 100 days” and this new forum is barely a week old. Also, further down that post, it says that there’s a two week grace period before being demoted, and again it’s barely been a week… Although, looking at the requirements for keeping the regular badge, I don’t think I want to… I don’t normally “like” posts, and I don’t plan on viewing a excessive amount of posts and threads just to keep it. That to me feels like more work than it’s worth
Just caught this… Yes, this seems to be a glitch that @Slowhand is aware of. This happened just the same way last night as well. A little while from now the ‘Regular’ badge will disappear from everyone again. It was fixed this morning though. Now it looks like it will need to be done again. Bugs… bugs galore.
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I see, thanks for clarifying that 
Also, on a very very unrelated note… since this new forum has effectively fixed all of the broken threads…
The original Brain Drain thread can be viewed again! 
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Going back a bit, topic wise, the power at my location went out without warning and is, per power company bulletin, potentially expected to be out for 2 hours. The other side of the street has power so this looks to be yet another gaffe from the power company.
The power company uses a web site for customers to report outages and isn’t forthcoming with a phone number for doing the same on their site. In some ways that makes sense but in others it is like that old bit where the vhs player comes with only a vhs tape to tell one how to set it up.
The power going out makes me acutely aware of just how dark this place is without lighting and, by all the annoying beeping, just how many things here have battery backup 
FiOS provides battery backup for some things but not for their ancient router…
We always have a copy of our electric bill on hand since that has the number to call for outages.
I have FiOS in my house, and the only thing they provide battery backup for is the phones, and the battery only lasts about 8 hours or something
I had the number for the power company by the phone (and in my phone)-I heeded those annoying infomercials they run where they have little kids singing power tips (do other power companies do that?) lol-but I decided to try and find the number on their site via my phone as, once I finished reading up on local politics in my local paper, there wasn’t a whole lot else to do w/o power. I was also looping Amish Paradise on my phone 
I wish Verizon would roll out some truly modern routers universally. Swapping in another router, one that is truly 21st century ready, would be easy if not for the Moca integrated into it. I’m sure there’s a Rosario + Vampire crack to be made here but it isn’t coming to mind.
We’ve not had too many power issues since we moved to Florida. We did have some bad ones in Oklahoma, one winter ice storm took out power for 5 days solid. Anyway I had a UPS for each PC, but over the years their batteries died so now we have just the one UPS that keeps our cable modem / router / hub and my monitors going. My PC and my company PC are both laptops and will keep running for several hours.
In 8 years we have only had a couple of instances where the UPS ran down.
Seeing as it is Florida I probably should spring for a gas generator and a handful of long heavy duty extension cords.
Mark Gosdin
I’ve thought about getting a hookup for my old generator wired in or getting a propane household generator but it just hasn’t been really feasible yet. Normally I don’t have power issues as my street is one of the few around here with subterranean power lines so it was extremely weird that this happened.
There were some characters who lived in my neighborhood who didn’t pay their electric bill and defaulted on their mortgage but they squatted in the house for months before the sheriff finally came in with his posse and ousted 'em forcibly (Sheriff is up for reelection now and I’m somewhat surprised the ads haven’t brought that up). Anyhow, until the time they were evicted they had power for months by doing the old “plug the generator output into an outlet in the house” trick. I suppose if push came to shove I could resort to that, though I’d do it the safer way and turn off my circuit to the grid so as not to backfeed.
Personally, I’m waiting for advancements in capacitor tech as battery tech just isn’t cutting it. The nigh-instant charging of capacitors vs batteries is alluring as well.
So I got offered $150 for my SilverHawk’s Sky-runner . Debating on selling or not as it has become a rather rare piece even loose so doubt I will ever find one again . Had the thing since it came out back in 1988 . So even if I did it would not be the one with memories .
I don’t believe that I’m familiar with that.
Course I also have the blue missle that is always missing .
I’m pretty sure that’s my first time seeing such a thing. I kinda feel as though I missed out on something since I missed this property that has angry-squid spaceships
In other news, I’m down to my last few pre-tax hours for Amazon. Sadly, despite having distribution centers in the area and one (soon to be) just up the street, they still decided to hand my shipment off to USPS instead of using a real private carrier or one of their own smaller shippers. This has been a relatively recent development for me. That doesn’t bode well for the future of Amazon shipments 
This kind of surprises me, as, other than the ThunderCats series, SilverHawks falls in the category of most well-known Rankin/Bass TV series.
I’ve seen some ThunderCats but no space squids for me. The only space ship with many arms that I’ve seen was the Outlaw Star lol.
If SilverHawks is second to ThunderCats then it must be one heck of a chasm between first and second place as I’ve even seen arbitrary techy-hipster types wearing ThunderCats shirts in passing but if I saw any SH merch I don’t recall it. Is it because one made it to vintage Toonami?
My oldest boy had ThunderCats toys and a set of character PJ’s. I have vague memories of watching some episodes with him.
I think the joint USPS / FedEx, UPS, DHL shipping that Amazon has been using is an attempt to funnel some revenue to the USPS. They aren’t going to make it without some form of drastic intervention by the government or being privatized which I doubt that the current administration would allow. So, it may be in all the other carriers & big shippers interest to push business in that direction.
Mark Gosdin
Let me know when someone offers you for Bluegrass’ Mirage.
Yeah, the first time an order from Amazon was shipped with UPS and then to USPS and then to me thoroughly confused me. My tracking through Amazon said that some one signed for the package and it wasn’t me. I contacted Amazon and they gave me the address to where it was shipped and lo and behold my Google earth search turns up the post office.
Today in traffic I learned that the most interesting thing must have been on the front passenger side floor in the car that was in front of me. This led to 20 mins of the guy reaching hopelessly for an object that was nearly impossible to get. It made me laugh because all he had to do was take off his seat belt to be able to reach for it. Can’t imagine how that person passed the test to become a licensed driver haha.
-Mo-
USPS already is a private business. it is not affiliated in any way with the US government, just the US government uses it as the official mail handler for government documents to the public and they share insurance oppotunities with government employees.
Like the Federal Reserve Banks, it is private just gets special treatment and favors from the government for doing some duties for it.
O.o