LoAmi

::nods:: Okay, I see. I'd probably feel demeaned myself but if those are the rules, those are the rules and I'd deal. Not for long, I hope. A reasonably experienced simmer can graduate the academy pretty quickly. Requiring everyone to go through the academy process, I think, is more than just a matter of "those are the rules" - it satisfies the interests of fairness and equality. To some extent, it prevents favortism to people who know the GMs, and it keeps STSF from trusting other simming forums' rank systems, where their standards may be lower (I think the Chakotay idiot is a perfect example of why we need academies). The only exceptions to the rank/academy system that I could see being reasonable (correct me if there are more) are: - When a ship joins STSF from another forum, people who move along with a ship should be able to keep their rank, without going through the academy process again - GMs who have lower rank (Lt Cmdr or Cmdr) in academies become "honorary" Cmdrs, Captains during their academies. - A GMs who has a lower rank (Lt Cmdr/Cmdr) in one sim who starts a new sim should be able to be a Captain.

So far, TNG - post second season - is my favorite series, but all of them have had some very good and very bad episodes. TOS was good, even if a bit hokey and dated, but got pretty bad in its third season. Voyager got better in the later seasons. DS9 began well, got tired and boring, and revamped towards the end. Enterprise still hasn't had enough of a chance to grow on me.

Happy Birthday, Laura!

Welcome to STSF! If you do start simming, you may well find it fun and exciting! The only way to find out is to try! Also, if you're interested in simming, and you're a bit unsure about jumping in even after reading the materials, you can always come to an academy sim or an advanced sim and watch other players. You can PM (private message) the GMs (or even most of the other players) for more information. See the schedule for when they take place.

This is probably a dumb question (and totally topic-irrelevant) but: If you can get together so many people in one place to sim, why use the computers?

Great story, as always, Captain!

Nah, I think he lived too long. :wink:

*all* the links don't work after you've clicked on the ready room? Just the links to the ready room don't work? For now, try to download the latest version of Internet explorer first (go to Microsoft's website and you'll be able to find it), uninstall Internet explorer and Java (you should be able to do this through control panel->add or remove programs), and reinstall both. Alternatively, try to download Mozilla 1.3.1 (http://www.mozilla.org) and Java (http://java.sun.com) and install those. (The Java installation may be a bit more complicated than just running the install program, I don't know if they've updated it to work properly with Mozilla). The idea is to just try this in another browser other than Internet explorer.

Looks like I've got a short life to look forward to.... now, if only I had more of a past (please)....

Can you be a lot more specific about what works and what doesn't? Maybe give a step-by-step account of what you do and what programs you do them in, and where it stops working. You seem to be able to post here, so your browser (Internet Explorer?) works... and your internet provider is working, at least sometimes.

Sorry... had to vote for myself. I never get any votes! (Actually, it's not a half bad idea, hint, hint - but, please, only ONE hillbilly)

For Java, you want to download the latest version of the Java Virtual Machine *for your system* -- this should leave you only one choice. Go to: http://java.sun.com/getjava/manual.html and click on the correct link (most likely "Windows, English"). Save it to your disk. Run the file. What system are you using? Browser? Can you be more specific about your problem?

'Honorary' is the key word here. This host was in the 23rd century, before Klingon and Federation relations were so good. Anyway, I hear Trill symbiont tastes good with gagh.

Ah, yes, I think this is the perfect time for one more public notice about the zhian'tara: all avenues of mayhem that come from this exercise will likely be explored. (Thanks Blu!)

You may have just stumbled onto the secret of why they stopped sending everyone free floppy disks.

Umm... I don't know how compatible a Trill symbiont is with ... a Klingon. Or whether the Klingons would've bothered implanting it into one of them (a very unklingon thing to do!), rather than killing it and eating it. And, of course, there would be the question of how it got back from the Klingons to the Trill symbiosis council. Since it is my job to reconcile everything, I still think that the best resolution is that the ship was damaged, but not destroyed, even though our friend the first officer was killed; maybe it was towed back and recommissioned a year later as a transport.

Well, one perennial problem is the punt monster in our chat rooms. And, anyway, it wasn't the warp intake manifold cleaning job that was the problem...

Cool, a bitter old thief! One question for everyone: Did any Lo'Ami actually die of old age?

It's called hyperbole. Clearly, Mr. Tarqesh Lo'Ami was a teller of tall tales! I'll bet that had he lived to be an old man, he would've said things like: "What luxury you kids have -- when I was a kid, I walked to school carrying a ten ton knapsack, in the snow, barefoot, uphill, both ways." :angry:

First of all, welcome to STSF! I started simming with STSF about 8 months ago. As everyone else has said above, it has its problems, but I think you'll find your experience here simming and interacting with the community both in chat and on the boards quite fun. While I haven't simmed on other groups, I have looked through some of their websites, and (thanks to our webmaster) this one is one of the best designed and maintained (with no popup ads!), and (thanks to our community), this has some of the most creative, imaginitive people driving the sims' storylines (read our logs for some examples!). While you may start out despising the academy system because you can't jump into a "real" sim immediately, you will find it to your advantage. Firstly, you get a good, solid introduction to simming without any pressure to get everything right the first time. Secondly, you can get practice simming all the positions on the ship without a commitment. Thirdly, you'll find that the GMs here only graduate people after they've mastered the simming basics (which isn't all that hard, with practice!), so the advanced sims aren't clogged with lost, green recruits. Finally, you'll find that most of the people here are nice and will help you out if you need it. Hope to see you soon in an academy, and, once again, welcome aboard!

=/\= Duty Log of Lt. Arphazad Lo'Ami =/\= ::Begin Recording:: Chief Science Officer's log, stardate 10305.25; Arcadia is docked at starbase to offload the refugees from the Blue Note's slave operation. Six refugees went missing shortly after their rescue. Three have so far been found, all dead. Engineering reports that security systems were tampered with... well, as engineer Hawkins said, "fried." Meanwhile, an unidentified ship sits at the edge of our sensor range. It has so far emitted multiple false sensor readings, which show up on the tactical console, but not on the science console. We have linked Arcadia's sensors to the stations', with no luck yet in identifying the ship. A probe that we launched before Arcadia entered the station's shield radius went missing after it detected a nearby subspace distortion. The damage done so far indicates that the ship may pose a threat to Arcadia or even to the starbase. It would be an odd coincidence if the deaths of the refugees, the destroyed systems, the sensor malfunctions, and the unidentified ship were unrelated. I have developed a "hunch" -- no, educated guess -- about some of these events. A quick visit to sickbay for some measurements on the refugees' bodies may provide some evidence to support it. =/\= End Recording =/\=

Happy Birthday, Sovak. (As if you haven't heard this enough:) Live long and prosper. :: does the Vulcan hand thing ::

As I said in the other post, couldn't stop laughing!

Vex got it right. You enter the room and get posessed by a previous host, who talks to me about him/herself. You can use my log for Nemrod Lo'Ami and Vex's for Esrelda as guides. By the way, Vex, I laughed out loud all the way through reading yours. One thing I forgot to specify - you do not have to give specific dates for when your host lived, I'll fit that all together when I update my bio to include all of your submissions; if it is time dependent though, an idea of the century would be good. :-) Oh, and, for credit where credit is due: The Prologue post should be signed: Lt. Arphazad Lo'Ami Acting Chief Science Officer, USS Arcadia and Cmdr. Zar Alces (aka Captain Moose's alter-ego) Chief Engineer, USS Arcadia

To all STSF-ers: You may have noticed the new folder in the lounge section of the boards. That folder will be there for the next two(?) weeks, and it is where Lt. Arphazad Lo'Ami's zhian'tara will take place. The zhian'tara (from DS9 "Facets") is a Trill rite of closure, wherein a Trill's friends (that's you!) are temporarily posessed by one of the symbiont's previous hosts. In this case, it is being done because poor Lo'Ami has amnesia with respect to his previous hosts. This means that you have the opportunity to define a little bit of my character's past, and, have a little fun at my expense. All you have to do is write one log! A more detailed log with background information is posted in the folder, as is an example log. Thank you for all for participating. Have fun!