Samantha_Kent

The flash from outside had been like a bolt of lightning and for a moment it had seemed rather incongruous. They were, after all, about as far away from being planetside as one could get, and while the impenetrable waves of gas and dust surrounding them could easily have appeared as storm clouds, Sam knew perfectly well that they did not hold the necessary levels of charge. It had been the ship -- the other ship. The poachers perhaps; Sam had left the bridge with Archie before they had really gotten a handle on the nature of their new "friends." They certainly weren't friendly, and a quick glance out the window told her that their nature had betrayed them; one of their charged harpoons had ricocheted off the power pack and sparked a reaction that had blow a huge hole in their ship. She didn't know whether to be relieved or more worried. If these were the poachers, they had either disabled them or made them even madder than they'd been before, which could be a real bad thing. The Arc crew was lost and had only a passing acquaintance with this ship even in the best of circumstances -- they were outmatched at all but desperation, and they didn't have that in enough spades yet for it to really be an advantage. Sam was worried about Alces, too. He gave at least the impression of knowing what he was doing most of the time, and then he burst out with the weirdest nonsequiturs -- he had sent Sam digging in the ship's stores for beer almost as soon as they'd entered the nebula -- and misinterpretations that were either some of the quickest wordplay Sam had ever heard or evidence that their XO was at best eccentric and at worst, sporadically nutty as a fruitcake. Daena had quietly expressed concern too, which made Sam feel better, though not extraordinarily more secure. At least Lieutenant Phoenix, who she'd been working most with over the past few hours, seemed comparatively sane, if oddly nervous -- though she supposed she'd be nervous too if a strange door had suddenly ripped her half to shreds. She would have to try to get to know him better after they all got out of this; in between setting up a makeshift bomb he had expressed interest in Bajoran solar sail technology and had dropped hints about his racial background which had very much intrigued her; it was rare, even in Starfleet, that she encountered a member of a race about which she knew so little. The ship itself was really starting to weird her out...in the last few minutes one of the mechanical "spiders" had taken a liking to her. The notes he was whistling repeatedly apparently had some sort of significance to him, one which she was at a loss to understand. He skittered about like a puppy being offered a treat when she repeated the notes back at him, but she was becoming convinced that these things had more than animal intelligence. He expected something from them, if they could only figure out the communication. She wondered if it had something to do with that hatch that had nearly sliced Archie to pieces with its laser. The young lieutenant seemed convinced that there was something very important back there, and given the current circumstances she was inclined to agree with him. But what? Why would they have managed to get hold of a ship like this at the price Archie had managed if it was holding something at all valuable or worth protecting so vigorously? Well... she thought with a burst of wry humor. At least now I'm not the one stuck with the safe mission. She wondered what had happened to the other teams; in the recent hubbub she had almost forgotten to worry about them, although the little knot that represented her concern for Brian had never eased, merely added to the weight of the new distractions. Wherever you are, I hope you're better off than we are. She looked down at the small spider in the brief stillness that had followed the damage to the enemy boat. Narrowing her eyes she squatted next to it and whistled the three notes again, watching it skitter excitedly. "Couldn't just speak Standard, could you?" she muttered with an expression of mild frustration mixed with growing curiosity. "Nah...God forbid you should make it too simple."

You are correct -- there are two academies on Sunday. One is at 3PM EST (8PM in the UK, 9PM in CET), and the other is at 9PM EST. Both of these are open to all players; the first one is just deliberately placed at a more feasible hour for European players.

Happy birthday, Moose!

I will try...I hope this is what you're looking for and that I don't just sound like I'm repeating Moose's stuff; I don't want to be redundant. If I'm veering off way in the direction of unhelpful, let me know. Once you're logged into the chat room, you can go the room you want (for the Academies, that's the "Holodeck") by double-clicking on its name in the right-hand panel. This will take you into the room and you'll be able to chat with whoever else is there. The GMs will assign you a position when the academy starts and you'll be able to get started. When the game begins, you start talking "in-character," saying what your character is doing to move the thread of the story along. This is done in a couple of ways... To indicate your character's speech, you just type it out; i.e.: [samantha_Kent] Welcome to the Star Trek Simulation Forum! To indicate your character's actions, you use two colons on either end of your sentence; i.e.: [samantha_Kent] ::walks onto the bridge of the USS Arcadia:: To indicate who your character is talking to or interacting with, you can address them with a tag; i.e.: [samantha_Kent] T'Kreen> Welcome to the Star Trek Simulation Forum! indicates that not only am I speaking the words out loud, but I am speaking them directly to you. To indicate communication via commbadge or communicator, you use ++ for the tag instead of brackets; i.e.: [samantha_Kent] +T'Kreen+ Welcome to the Star Trek Simulation Forum! indicates that I have called you by commbadge wherever you happen to be at the moment in order to deliver my welcome. And really that's all the basic stuff you need to know. While you're doing all this, other people will be interacting with you and with each other as well, and the GMs will occasionally toss out ACTION statements (sentences with the tag "ACTION>" attached) which direct the plot, and you can respond to them as well. It all seems a little complicated and fast-paced at first (certainly did for me, at least) but the more you play in the academies the more you get used to the process and can focus on the story. During the academies, to help everyone keep track of what's going on, you're also required to stick a tag in front of your posts to indicate which position you're playing, so everyone can keep an eye on their department, so if I were the assistant engineer, for example: [samantha_Kent] <AENG> T'Kreen> ::walks onto the bridge of the USS Arcadia:: Welcome to the Star Trek Simulation Forum! When you get onto an advanced sim, this isn't necessary but it's helpful in the academies where people are still getting their feet under them. As I said, I don't know if this is helpful or if you had something else in mind that you needed assistance with -- feel free to keep asking around. Everyone here is really friendly and helpful and most of them aren't as longwinded as me either. :P Again, welcome, and we look forward to seeing you around. :(

Happy birthday, Eagle!

Welcome aboard, T'Kreen! The academy is basically the training ground where you learn how the game of simming works; they occur every evening in the STSF chatroom, which you can reach via the button in the top right of this message board. They're just short one-hour plots, generally without a continuing storyline. You're not expected to have created a character yet -- everyone's human and you just play the game to the best of your ability and learn how to interact with other people within the context of a story framework and move the plot along. After the GMs are sure that you understand how the game works you graduate out and can join an advanced sim, at which point you start creating your character and putting them into a continuing storyline from week to week. It's not clear from your post if you're looking for actual technical help on the process of the chat...is that the case? We're all glad to help out around here but I just don't want to ramble at you about stuff you already know. Again, welcome! Hope you enjoy yourself around here. :P

While I recommend that you mix and match your categories to determine the information most useful and relevant to you, I do recommend that you *definitely* make use of the family background idea. Family information can be really useful to understanding what shaped a character and where their personality grew from and it's always been really helpful to me in the initial shaping of a character. It can also really simplify the process; placing characteristics into the family background can drop a lot of characteristics into place in the actual char that might have taken a longer time to come to light on their own. Sam's father is a diplomat, for example, which ended up shaping her personality to be more xenophilic and interested in learning about things she doesn't understand, which led me to place her as a science officer. Also keep in mind that what you are creating in your bio is not going to remain static; after only a few months of play you may find that your character has evolved away from the original bio (it's certainly been my experience with every character I've ever played). In my opinion the bio is a jumping-off point, which is not to say it shouldn't require focus, but you shouldn't let it completely hamper you. That being said...if it helps any, the bio categories I usually stick with are: Basic Statistics Family Personality Profile Medical Profile Career History and then add other things from there if the character turns out to need them. EDIT: Whoops...Kansas and Ba'alyo pretty much already touched on the character evolution idea. Oh well...::points:: What they said. :P

The whole Arc crew's pulling for you, I know, Eagle. Hope things smooth out for you soon.

http://zbthemezone.com/index/ This site used to be the Invisionfree Skin Zone -- with the transition of a lot of IPB boards to the new ZetaBoards format, they've changed their name but their forums still have the code and CSS formatting for a lot of cool Invisionfree board skins. I've worked with IF boards on a number of occasions and always pull from here because forum CSS is mad complicated. Just passing the link along in case there was any desire for it in any quarters in the board administration here.

Maybe somebody in STSF would volunteer to help design a site for you. I wish I had the skills but all I know how to do is type the URL into the little box and hit "go." ::raises hand extremely tentatively:: I'm not a pro by any stretch, but I have designed a website for a game outside of STSF and have a passing understanding of HTML and CSS, though I still haven't quite gotten my head around JavaScript...in other words, I can't do anything really fancy but I can structure a basic page and at least make it look mostly clean. And I would, of course, be happy to help you out, Jami, or anyone else in the STSF crowd. Just throwing the offer out there. If you're looking for a really pro design job, though, do *not* take me up on this offer, because you won't get it. :P

::sigh:: I think I need a hug. Or something.

The same general conversation has been happening on both Trek communities I belong to with every release of every single pixel's worth of information about the movie and I'm going to say now what I've been saying since word of the movie first came out: Let's keep an open mind till we actually see the blasted thing. I am and always have been a twitchy type regarding continuity and consistency and if I were ever to be so exceedingly lucky as to be able to demand that J.J. Abrams make a Star Trek movie entirely for my sake, I would demand as close a visual connection to established canon as I could. However, I understand that this movie is being made in a different era of filmmaking and as such requires a different aesthetic approach to draw more people in. Therefore I'm not going to complain about it. What I am going to do is be very guarded in my approach to the actual movie. Changing the aesthetics is a very different thing from changing the basic content of the franchise -- the characters, the themes, the world. If Abrams manages to do justice to forty years of history in story, content, and theme, then I will definitely forgive a shift to make the Enterprise look a bit more like 21st-century-filmmaking. If, on the other hand, I feel that the movie itself handles like a shuttlecraft with three thrusters out, I will happily nitpick the aesthetics to death along with everything else, but not before. My personal feeling is that whoever is running marketing for this movie is quite possibly very in-tune with the Trek fanbase. They know a lot of us were disillusioned by Enterprise and Nemesis and that some of us might even have been considering not bothering with this movie, at least until it came to DVD. And so they've leaked little bits of it and are now creating an uproar among us, controversy and argument and discussion which otherwise might have remained flat. I know that for me personally it's got me much more interested in seeing the movie just so I can hold my own in the debate I know will follow. Just my two cents. (Also, I think the nacelles look really bulky and off-balance on the front end. :P )

"This is a bicycle."

ROFL.

Yep...this is what happens when you carry your laptop in a laptop bag with a quarter floating around in it for an entire flight from BWI to Atlanta. BEWARE...

Which pop-up window is it that's confusing you? When I go to save a file, I get a popup window which says at the top, "Enter name of file to save to," and which has a menu bar down the left side of the large overarching folders, and then from there you can use the main central window to click further into the subfolders -- clicking on a folder expands the window to the right with the subfolders and files contained in that folder and so on. And then when you reach the folder that you want to save to, you hit OK. Occasionally when you try to download a file it will give you a window which gives you options of opening the file with an application or saving it to disk, in which case you can select "Save to Disk" and it will give you the same window as described above. Feel free to hit me up via PM or AIM with any questions about this; I don't want to completely hijack the thread, although it is upping my post count nicely. :)

::throws a party::

Brian shouldn't have been so surprised. Valera was a resourceful woman who always, always got what she wanted. Upon being transported, he had found himself facing a Klingon and a Nausicaan, both pointing nasty-looking disruptors at him. Fully expecting to be disarmed and hauled away, he raised his arms, only to feel the familiar prickly sensation of yet another transporter sequence. A small optimistic part of him cheered, thinking that the Arcadia had done some fast work in tracking the transporter signal and his next stop would be the familiar surroundings of a Starfleet ship. That hope was quickly dashed when he reached his second destination and he realized that Valera was still with him. Their final destination seemed to be a natural cave. Brian glanced around for a transporter system and saw nothing, not even a receiving pad. That last trip had been one-way. Valera held herself still until the transport had finished taking effect and then turned to angle herself on Brian, pointing the disruptor she had picked up at the stopover point in the journey. Her expression was murderous and cold; where before their had been her usual cocktail of seduction, calculation, and confidence, combined perhaps with a slight bit of pleasure at seeing him, now the mix held a liberal shot of fury. He had returned to her, she had expected him to act in good faith as he always had before, and he had betrayed her. "Welcome home, Brian," she said acidly, gesturing him onwards with the muzzle of the pistol, deeper into the caverns that were her operation's main contraband storage. Brian raised his eyebrows at the icy look. He had seen it before on her but never targeted on him. "I didn't betray you, Val. I wasn't the loon who shot you." Valera smiled, a slow, angry smile that did not reach her eyes. "Brian, I only let them within a kilometer of me because of you. You know who I am, how I operate; if you had meant for a fair trade you would have prepared them. If you had meant to do real business, we would have never reached this point." She shoved him gently with the point of the gun. "Move." He sighed and made his way down the mined tunnel that descended at an angle almost too steep to walk down. "If you had meant to do real business you would have never demanded me as collateral." Valera followed him a few paces behind, her dark eyes focused on the back of his head. "I had my reasons," she said. To tell the truth, it had been a moment of very uncharacteristic impulsivity which had prompted her to make the offer at all; the reasons for which she had originally wanted Brian to remain had not been sound business practice at all and she knew that he knew it. No matter; things was back under her control. Her mind was rewriting the situation even as they moved down the steep slope. "Care to share?" His devil-may-care attitude was something he had locked away along with his jacket, but considering the situation and who he was dealing with, Brian felt it best to act in a manner familiar to his captor. Valera smirked as she heard the old tone creep back into his voice; she had been beginning to wonder whether the Starfleet people had gotten to him altogether. Apparently not, though it was too late for it to matter. "Maybe I have a use for you?" she said, a teasing, almost playful tone creeping into her own voice, though it still held the tight edge to it, reminding him who was in control. Brian frowned at her verbal dodges as he continued to walk in front of her. The tunnel was long, nearly a kilometer he guessed. He had heard of warrens like these when he was working for Valera but he'd had no idea that she had built one. "You always had a use for me, Val. Usually it didn't involve gunplay though." "And it wouldn't have if you had proceeded in good faith as I expected you to," Valera responded. "And perhaps then I might have found a purpose for you that would have been...more enjoyable for all concerned." They finally exited into a huge, well-lit cavern. Shipping crates, boxes, and barrels were spread across the room in orderly rows. The markings on the containers indicated their origins as a potpourri of Alpha and Beta Quadrant species. Off to their right was a small prefab building and a fusion generator that powered the lights and environmental systems. "So this would be your retirement stash?" Brian whistled lightly as he looked around. Valera cast her eyes once around the room, checking for anything out of the ordinary. This room was the center of her organization, but only a select few ever came here or even knew the location, a closely guarded secret protected by sensor-jams and the use of multiple transporter systems all quickly disassembled again after use; getting in was nearly impossible. Getting out was harder. "A segment of it -- I never keep all my eggs in one basket," she said, checking the charge on her disruptor quickly. "But this is where I keep the most valuable of my goods, yes." She cast him a significant look and a slight smirk, raising her eyebrows and gesturing for him to sit down. "You might as well make yourself comfortable." Brian looked at where she gestured. "No comfortable chair? Not even a pillow? I am disappointed, Val. I expected something a little more posh." "No need to decorate for company. You won't be here long," Valera returned, shrugging slightly and moving closer to him, reaching out a hand to push him firmly with the tips of her fingers back onto a crate behind him. He wasn't sure how far he would get, but he saw the opening and had to try. Brian let himself fall back too easily with her push, and as he fell he reached out and grabbed Valera's wrist, using his backward momentum to pull her off-balance and onto him as he landed on the crate. The disruptor was pinned between them as he held her around the waist. If she pulled the trigger it would most likely kill them both. Looking into her green eyes that were now only inches from his, he smirked. "You should have brought backup." Valera let out a low grunt as he took advantage of her momentary lapse in attention to exploit her momentum, pulling her over onto him and trapping her gun arm between their bodies. She stared into his eyes, seeing their smirking expression -- again he was trying to put one over on her, and again she was coming dangerously close to letting him. Whatever soft spot she had ever held for him was rapidly disappearing as he continued to take advantage of her remaining goodwill. She met his gaze with supremely confident one of her own; with her free hand she reached up to run her fingers along the edge of his chin, and with such close proximity to him her natural pheromones began leaking out to seal her words -- "You know I can handle myself, Brian. Now...let me go." Brian felt his grip loosen at the chemically amplified suggestion only to realize what was going on and try to fight it. He gritted his teeth and whispered Samantha's name as he forced himself to focus on her instead of the subversively arousing feelings that Valera was creating. "Tell me why you took me. I can't be worth that much to the Syndicate, its been over five years." It wasn't as much of an effect as she would have expected to have but it was enough; twisting abruptly she pulled free of his hand and brought the gun around to jab into his stomach. "Ah, but the Syndicate's price does not take into account your new employers. I know what things are worth, and you are worth quite a bit. You always were." Actually, she could not be *quite* as certain as she sounded; she had not yet had a chance to make the deal and there were always uncertainties involved. He let out a short burst of air as she jammed the disruptor in his abdomen but forced himself not to react more than that. Glaring at her a moment while he regained his breath, he wondered if it was even possible to charm or wrangle his way out of this one. "To them or to you Val? As far as they're concerned I might have been just one of a hundred halfway decent pilots. Maybe you put more value on me because we had something special once." Valera smiled tightly. This man knew her far too well. Even had he not presented a profit opportunity, that would have been reason enough to get him out as quickly as possible. "Perhaps." She had hoped, when she saw that he had deposited himself back on her doorstep after all these years, that perhaps he had meant to pick up where they had left off. Clearly that was not going to happen; his friend with the gun had shown her quite clearly that things were different than she had expected and so plans had to be adjusted. And they had been. This was a business transaction, bought and paid for, and she had to remember that. She stepped back from him, keeping the gun trained on him. "But then, that was a long time ago, wasn't it?" "Some feelings don't fade over time." Brian felt like his heart was tearing in half as he spoke. He felt like he was betraying himself, but more importantly and painfully he was betraying Samantha. How he wished they could've spent more time together...that fleeting moment just off the bridge seemed nearly like heaven, a sharp contrast to his current position in the dank underworld of a planet. The forced grin on his face came easier than he would've liked as his gaze strayed from Valera's face to take in the rest of her body. This was necessary, if he was ever going to see Samantha again...this was necessary. Valera paused to chew over that for a few minutes. There was a certain, odd sort of integrity to the life she lead in that one could always be certain of one thing : that no one else was really doing anything out of altruism -- but with Brian it had never been certain, and it certainly wasn't now. If that really *was* why he had come back to her, he had a very odd way of showing it. At any rate, he required much more careful handling than the last time they had been together, but it didn't prevent her from adding a new level of calculation to the equations constantly running in her head. "I'm flattered," she said after the short silence, her smile widening and quirking slightly at the corner with amusement. She took a few steps back towards him again, but kept the gun trained on him. "Unfortunately...I have already paid my dues for you to your friends...the information you required...I must balance that investment eventually. But..." her voice trailed off and she raised her eyebrows at him suggestively. "It will be several days before the deals can go through and I take you back to the surface. Plenty of time to...catch up..."

::raises eyebrows and backs away slowly::

Great program -- good choice. I'll send you a PM with how to do it so as not to bore everyone to tears.

Can you hear me now? ...Good.

Yep, Kansas, that about covers it. :)

The same could be said of a lot of PC users when you try to tell them about Macs, though. My roommate has a PC and this has turned into a running joke between us. It is a shame that these are really the only two mainstream options though.

Hehe...yeah...I pretty much was...luckily it happened three days before my warranty went out, so I got the new one free, and I only lost three weeks worth of work because I had backed up the harddrive on the occasion of the quarter getting stuck in the DVD drive. So the moral of the story: BACK UP YOUR WORK! BACK UP YOUR WORK! BACK UP YOUR WORK!

Just for the record, I have always gotten AMAZING customer service from the Apple Store people. They've been very helpful, comforting (on the occasion when my harddrive completely died), and tolerant (on the occasion when I got a quarter stuck in the DVD drive). So...I personally highly recommend Apple on that level as well.