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Spring Storm

Nighttime thunderstorm! Yay!

Thread by: Amaury, May 31, 2014, 0 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Permanent Stat Boosting Items in Turn-Based RPGs

Am I the only one who, for some reason, likes to play through turn-based RPGs, such as Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits and Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, with natural stats (HP, MP, etc.) and therefore not use items that permanently increase stats, such as health points? For example, Jessica from Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King at level 30 naturally has 187 health points.

Thread by: Amaury, May 30, 2014, 12 replies, in forum: Gaming
Thread
Happy Birthday to Kingdom Hearts 530

@Kingdom Hearts530

Happy birthday!

Thread by: Amaury, May 30, 2014, 3 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
The Stuff Thread

Post stuff here.

Thread by: Amaury, May 30, 2014, 1 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
User Title Ideas

What would fit Sparx better than Spyro's Ally?

Please take this serious and suggest something that actually has to do with the Spyro series and Sparx.

Thread by: Amaury, May 30, 2014, 5 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Happy Birthday, Clawtooth and kingdomheartsgeek!

@Clawtooth: I don't know how old he is now, happy birthday, regardless!

@kingdomheartsgeek: He's on his last year as a teenager! Enjoy it!

Thread by: Amaury, May 30, 2014, 2 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Support Solved Predefined YouTube Video Titles and Descriptions

Does anyone know where to go for this?

I have a predefined description from a long time ago, and I can't remember how to get back there.

Any help?

Thread by: Amaury, May 29, 2014, 3 replies, in forum: Technology
Thread
Don't Do Drugs

Last year, there was a pretty big scare when 72 people were admitted to the hospital for drug overdose; of those 72 people, there was one death.

There was an article about this posted on Monday.

There's a photo of the young adult in the link below.

http://mynorthwest.com/980/2530442/...ed-in-2013-Gorge-overdose-want-to-warn-others

When Tracy Witkowski was told that her only child had been hospitalized for a drug overdose, her first question was, "Who's Molly?"

Nurses at Central Washington Hospital in Wenatchee told Tracy and her husband Paul that their son, 21-year-old Patrick Witkowski, had likely ingested a drug known as Molly while partying with friends at the Gorge Amphitheater during the Paradiso Festival last year.

Patrick was among 72 concert-goers who were taken to area hospitals during the two-day electronic dance music festival that began June 28, 2013, and attracted more than 25,000 attendees. Of those, roughly 50 were treated for alcohol and/or drug intoxication, according to the local fire district.

Patrick was the only one who died.

"It was like a slow-motion dream," Tracy Witkowski said. "You never expect it to happen."

In the first interview they've granted since their son's death, Paul and Tracy sat down with KIRO Radio "On Assignment" to talk about his passing, the drug that killed him, and their constant struggle to understand how it could have happened.

Patrick Witkowski was raised in Des Moines, about 20 minutes south of Seattle, where his parents still live. "He was known as the gentle giant. That's what his nickname was," said his mother, as she sat at their kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon in April. "He was always very kind; he never raised his voice around anybody. He was honest, he was compassionate."

"He was such a big guy, and I think people felt safe around him," said his dad, Paul.

Patrick enjoyed athletics, basketball in particular, and graduated from Kennedy Catholic High School in Burien. He went to college at Western Washington University his freshman year, but later transferred to Washington State University in Pullman and joined the Gamma Xi chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.

He graduated with a degree in management information systems shortly before he died.

"He was smart and he studied hard, but he was also a fun guy to hang around. Everyone wanted to be around him," said one of Patrick's closest friends from college. He and two other friends who were with Patrick when he died spoke about that day for the first time in an interview with KIRO Radio. They asked to have their names withheld because at least one confessed to also taking drugs at the Gorge.

"It could have been me," one said. "It could have been me. It could have been any of my friends."

Like many of his friends, Patrick enjoyed the electronic dance music scene and had been to shows in Seattle and Los Angeles. It was why he bought tickets for the Paradiso Festival almost a year in advance.

"It's just electronic music with DJ's and a light show. How harmful could that be?" his dad thought.

While they suspected their son and his friends would drink at the festival, Paul and Tracy said they had no idea there would be drug use.

"He was the responsible one," Tracy said. "He was the one you never had to worry about."

Patrick met friends in Vantage on the first day of the show and the group caravanned to the Gorge to set up their campground. Tracy said she exchanged several texts with her son that day, asking if he had everything he needed.

"He said, 'Mom, we're going to be alright. We have everything we need. I'll talk to you tomorrow,'" she said. It was the last time she heard from him. The next morning, on Saturday, June 29, a Des Moines police officer knocked on her door.

"He said, 'I'm looking for Patrick Witkowski's parents,'" she recalled. "All he had was a piece of paper with a nurse's name and number and asked me to call her as soon as possible."

Tracy found out that her son had been taken by ambulance to Quincy Valley Medical Center, but was later airlifted to the trauma center at Central Washington Hospital in Wenatchee, along with seven others from the Gorge who required more urgent care.

The nurse informed Tracy over the phone that Patrick had likely ingested Molly, a slang term for a drug marketed as pure ecstasy.

The nurse told her to get to Wenatchee as soon as possible.

"I literally asked her if he was going to die," Tracy recalled. "She said, 'Not right now.'"

By the time Paul and Tracy arrived in Wenatchee, their son had been induced into a coma. He had tubes coming out of nearly every hole in his body.

"He was bleeding everywhere you could imagine," Paul said. "He just looked very still," Tracy said. "Really, to me, he didn't even look like he was there."

A nurse told them it was unlikely that Patrick would live much longer.

He died early Sunday morning.

Before long, reporters began showing up at the Witkowski's home in Des Moines and the story was all over the news.

Headlines linked many of the hospitalizations, as well as Patrick's death, to Molly after Grant County law enforcement officials said the drug was being sold in the Gorge campground and at the amphitheater.

However, according to a medical examiner report released months later, Patrick did not die from a Molly overdose. He died of multiple system organ failure from exposure to high heat and methamphetamine intoxication.

What Patrick and his friends thought was Molly, or pure ecstasy, was not.

One of Patrick's friends, who admitted to buying and taking Molly at the Gorge, said he had no reason to believe the drug would be anything other than ecstasy. He said he purchased one pill for $10, while Patrick bought his pills from a "kid wearing a basketball jersey and a hat."

"I just got it from someone who looked like I could trust them, I guess. There's no way in hell I would have taken that," he said, had he known it contained methamphetamine or other drugs.

"As long as a drug dealer says it's Molly, people are going to believe them because we're dumb kids," said another of Patrick's friends.

"It's almost never going to have ecstasy in it, and it's extremely unlikely to be pure ecstasy," said Caleb Banta-Green, a senior research scientist at the University of Washington's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute.

Banta-Green said data from 2012 in King County showed that only one-quarter of drugs sold as Molly actually contained MDMA, or ecstasy. The other 75 percent were cut with drugs such as bath salts, methylone, or synthetic substances known as trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine, methylenedioxypyrovalerone, and benzylpiperazine, which are meant to mimic the effects of ecstasy, but are cheaper to manufacture.

"You don't know what effect it's going to have on you and you don't know how strong it is," he said. "And these aren't getting manufactured in a nice pharmaceutical factory. These are getting manufactured in an illicit drug factory."

Banta-Green said the drugs can have long-term psychiatric and physical effects on the user. They often lead to overheating and, in some cases, death.

When Patrick was first admitted to the hospital, his core body temperate was 109.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

"It's deadly and people don't know what they're putting in their mouth," said Tracy Witkowski, who has since researched the drug and encouraged other parents to do so as well.

"The one thing that we did not know, that we know now, is that this electronic dance music goes hand-in-hand with Molly," she said.

One of Patrick's friends said he knew Molly would be readily available at the festival.

"People walk around these campgrounds asking if people are looking for Molly," he said. "If you don't know what it is, it sounds like they're looking for a person." Patrick's death was not the first high-profile overdose at an electronic dance music event.

Two people died of Molly overdoses at the Electric Zoo festival on Randall's Island in New York last year. As a result, the third day of the event was canceled.

In contrast, the Gorge, which is operated by Live Nation, did not cancel the second day of the Paradiso Festival, despite requests to do so from the local fire district and hospital, both of which were overwhelmed with patients and calls for service.

"I think money is too important," Paul Witkowski said. "They don't care about human life."

The Gorge and Live Nation have ignored repeated requests for comment via email, by phone, and in person. To this day, no one from the Gorge or Live Nation has called Paul and Tracy about their son's death, although the company issued a short statement on their website offering "sympathy" to those affected.

More than two months after Patrick died, and before it was ruled an accident, the Grant County Sheriff's Office sent deputies to Paul and Tracy's home to ask questions.

"They sat in our family room and they wanted some details about the day of the show," Tracy said. "The thing that infuriated me the most was that they were uneducated about what happened at the Gorge. They told me they found out about the death on TV."

Tracy said the deputies asked her what Molly was. "They had no idea," Paul said.

Paul and Tracy were also shocked to hear from Patrick's friends about what they considered to be lax security at the Gorge, despite a post on the venue's website that boasts tight security and a zero-tolerance policy for drugs.

"Everyone will be searched upon entry," reads the post. "You will need to empty your pockets and have all items examined."

That wasn't the case, according to one of Patrick's friends, who said security, both at the campground and inside the event, was almost non-existent.

"Considering the drug use that takes place there, I think that the security is extremely minimal," he said. "And I'm sure the people that put on the shows are aware that that kind of culture is involved."

At one point, the Witkowskis hired an attorney to look into whether there was any negligence related to their son's death, but decided not to pursue a lawsuit.

"We're not naive. We know that Patrick made the choice to take it," Tracy said. "However, we feel there's lot of responsibility with Grant County, the Gorge itself, and the promoters of these electronic dance music festivals. They should not be allowed to have that type of environment exist. As far as I'm concerned, they all have the blood on their hands."

Paul and Tracy said they are concerned that others will be in danger when the Paradiso Festival returns to the Gorge on June 27.

"Now it's next summer, people have forgotten and it's time to start this up again," Tracy said. "They probably hope it doesn't repeat itself, but they're going to go on with it like it never happened."

They are not alone in their concern.

In letters obtained through public disclosure requests, KIRO Radio discovered warnings dating back nearly 15 years about a "dangerous" environment at the Gorge and the potential for loss of life.

They are warnings that Paul and Tracy now believe, if heeded, could have saved their son's life.
Click to expand...

Thread by: Amaury, May 28, 2014, 24 replies, in forum: Discussion
Thread
Support Solved Unplugging Modem and Router

Would it be considered generally a good idea to start leaving our modem and router unplugged during the night?

Occasionally, whether in the morning or after the computer's been on for a while on said day, I'll get spotty / laggy Internet, and if I do an extreme hard reset and leave both the modem and router unplugged for about 30 minutes (though 10 minutes would probably be fine), the issue disappears until the next time.

Thanks in advance.

Thread by: Amaury, May 28, 2014, 3 replies, in forum: Technology
Thread
Happy Birthday, Keyblade Spirit!

@Square Enix-chan

Happy birthday!

Thread by: Amaury, May 28, 2014, 1 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
The Prodigy

Anyone else watch this movie? I just finished watching it, and it was pretty good.

Thread by: Amaury, May 27, 2014, 7 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Dark Styles vs. Light Styles

What do you prefer? I don't mind either.

There is one thing that intrigues me, though: Quite a while before I left BC Forums a few months ago (it was full of jerks, including the management), I asked if it would be possible to implement dark styles, and a lot of people objected saying they preferred light styles.

Obviously, it's all down to personal opinion, but looking at XenForo, there are four style categories: light, dark, seasonal, and other. Only doing light and dark, combining the number of styles in those categories, there are 212 styles total. Of those 212 styles, there are 145 light styles and 67 dark styles, which makes the ratio 145/67. To be more precise, 68% of the styles are light and 32% of the styles are dark.

Anyway, essentially, dark styles seem pretty rare, and not only that, but most of the dark styles cost money, whereas most of the light styles are free.

What do you guys think? Are dark styles going out of style or what? I'm also going to tag @Misty since this is her area of expertise.

Discuss.

Thread by: Amaury, May 25, 2014, 18 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Drive-by Shooting Near University of California Kills Seven
My condolences and prayers go out to all those affected.

There are photos and videos in the linked source below.

Suspect in Calif. Shootings Felt Spurned in Love
- Source: USA Today
- Published: May 24, 2014
Elliot Rodger seemed to have it all. A nice car. A Hollywood director father married to an actress. A life growing up in a family of famous achievers in the entertainment capital of the world.

Now, Hollywood director Peter Rodger and his family say they warned police about disturbing videos weeks before a shooting rampage that they believe their son, Elliot Rodger, committed near a Santa Barbara university Friday night, according to family lawyer Alan Shifman. Seven people died, including the attacker.

The shootings ended with Elliot Rodger, 22, dead in his BMW in Isla Vista, Calif. — hours after a disturbing video titled "Elliot Rodger's retribution" was posted, a manifesto authorities said was a clear sign of "premeditated mass murder."

Rodger, who was born in London before moving to the U.S. at age 5, was photographed two years ago on the red carpet for The Hunger Games premiere, accompanied by his father Peter, who was an assistant director on the film.

Rodger grew up surrounded by Hollywood glitz and a family of overachievers. His step-mother, actress Soumaya Akaaboune, appeared in Green Zone with Matt Damon and stars in a French language version of The Real Housewives reality-television show.

His late grandfather, William Rodger, was a renowned British war photographer who was the first to capture on film the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. He later helped found the Magnum picture agency.

The young Rodger is a Santa Barbara City College Student and Isla Vista resident, according to his Facebook page and a Web diary titled "Elliot Rodger's Official Blog."

A Facebook page under his name illustrated a taste for the expensive things in life. Several pictures showed him driving his BMW, and he listed luxury clothes and vehicle manufacturers such as Prada, Gucci, Bentley and Aston Martin as his "likes."

Most of the Facebook posts from the past year show photos of the same young man in the video, including a photo of him behind the wheel of a late-model black BMW coupe, and a few sunsets. The license plate on the BMW in one of Rodger's Facebook photos matches the tag on a car photographed at the crime scene with a body lying near it.

The rambling YouTube video posted Friday includes chilling speech.

"For the last eight years of my life, since I hit puberty, I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted to me," the young man says in the video, shot inside a car.

"Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men, never to me.

"I'm 22 years old and still a virgin, never even kissed a girl. And through college, 2½ years, more than that actually, I'm still a virgin. It has been very torturous.

"I will have my revenge against humanity. I will punish all of you for it.

"Yes ... After I have annihilated every single girl in the sorority house I will take to the streets of Isla Vista and slay every single person I see there. All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure."

Online writings in his name also reveal deep-seated anger, including some on an online message board called PUAhate (for self-styled haters of "pick-up artists").

Many blog posts in a Web diary titled "Elliot Rodger's Official Blog," discuss his frustrations with life.

"Being lonely in a beautiful place like Santa Barbara is truly a horrible experience," he wrote. "As I've said many times, a beautiful environment can be the darkest hell if you have to experience it all alone, especially while having to watch other men walking around with their girlfriends. I wish girls were attracted to me. I don't know why they aren't."

"I consider myself a sophisticated, polite gentleman, unlike most boys my age," he said, listing his likes as hiking, exercise, watching sunsets, travel, cars and fashion.
Click to expand...
Thread by: Amaury, May 24, 2014, 11 replies, in forum: Current Events
Thread
Let's Have a Discussion about Hatok

@hatok

It's one of my best bro's turn!

Hatok's from Canada, and Canada's cool! Also, he needs to become an official premium.

Thread by: Amaury, May 24, 2014, 25 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Religion

If my mom or I want to learn more about Jesus, we have hands and can research it ourselves.

Those people that come by to try and spread the message are annoying.

Thread by: Amaury, May 24, 2014, 30 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
One Down; Four to Go
Submitted my online application to Subway.

Now I just need to submit the following:
- Circle K (Online)
- Carl's Jr. (Written)
- 7-Eleven (Written)
- Happy's Market (Written)
I'll do Circle K later today and then the other three tomorrow.
Thread by: Amaury, May 23, 2014, 18 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Support Solved Inconsistent Rendering Time with Windows Movie Maker
Lately, I've been having inconsistent rendering / saving time with Windows Movie Maker.

For example, I have a 20-minute video rendering now, and it's at 36% with 15 minutes remaining. However, earlier I was doing 20-minute~ videos, and at 1%, there were 10 minutes remaining, and one was even 22~ minutes.

I've come up with two theories, but I don't think they'd be it:
- After the automatic AVG scan, the duration doubles
- Earlier I had 42~ GB of space available, and now I have 38~ GB available, and somehow hard drive space affects rendering time
It should also be noted that all the videos are from the same thing before I broke the two-hour and 26-minute video (The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning) into 20-minute~ parts.
Thread by: Amaury, May 23, 2014, 6 replies, in forum: Technology
Thread
Support Solved No Thumbnail Options on a YouTube Video

As title and screenshot below.

View attachment 38508

For some reason, this video never got a thumbnail. I tried giving it a day, and then before I went to bed this morning around 12:30 AM, I cleared my entire browser's data to no avail. Is my only option to give it a custom thumbnail?

Thread by: Amaury, May 23, 2014, 1 replies, in forum: Technology
Thread
Just Sad

I'm not sure if anyone here's heard of it, but there's a show on Spike called World's Wildest Police Videos. I finally caught up on my DVR recordings of them, and one of the last scenes I watched, it was about a father and his 16-year-old child who were a part of a some group -- I can't remember what it was called (I'll have to re-watch it later), but it started with an S -- that had known history with being violent toward the law.

Anyway, they killed two policemen during a routine stop and later got killed themselves at a store parking lot when several units tracked them down. It's just sad, especially for the 16-year-old male since he never got a chance to get his life going, though at the same time, I don't have much sympathy because he made some pretty bad choices following in his dad's footsteps.

Thread by: Amaury, May 23, 2014, 31 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Do People Sound More Mature Depending on Their Native Language?

This kind of goes hand-in-hand with my Puberty Discussion Thread thread, and I'm going to tag @Ienzo since she's an expert in this field.

Here's an example what I believe is a German let's player speaking:

If I had to make a guess based off appearance, I'd say the guy looks anywhere between 16 and 18 years of age.

Thread by: Amaury, May 21, 2014, 8 replies, in forum: Discussion

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