Anyone as excited over the possible gaymance for Lafayette? I hope it works out. Dave (my lp) is worried it may be part of some plot, but other than his blood dealing i cant think of anyone that should need to set him up.

P.S. and to American Wolf, the books are good as well, several gay characters.

I'll plan something for the weekend and something for a weeknight and then see how many people we get and what day and time works for most or if we can do it a couple times a week. As we get a little closer, I will post a set date and time here.

Ship interiors is what I've been waiting for before starting to RP in STO. Without them it was just looking a bit odd! But now I'm ready to go! :D

Unfortunately I'm not generally available on Saturddays - I only get to see my boyfriend at weekends and so he gets annoyed if I spend them playing games! - but if anything comes up that's on a weekday I will be in!

I haven't yet planned an RP event because we initially didn't have a huge response and with being so close to Season 2, I thought it would be fun to wait for ship interiors to go live!

That being said, I am looking at AUGUST 1 to do a roleplaying event.

Neilston wrote:

Us long term Iowans tend to be Fiscally conservative and socially liberal. And not taken to extremes. I have always thought this had more to do with the Small town, farmer mentality than anything else. It has only been in the last few decades that more extremist views have cropped up, and they tend to get shamed into silence fairly quickly.

That is not to say that we don't have the Haters, the Closed minded Boobs, and the like. We just assume it is the "Coasters" that have been moving to Iowa the last couple decades causing the trouble and leave it at that.

I used to live in Arizona, and when I first moved there, the people who lived there had a pretty similar attitude. Most were eastern transplants who moved to get out of the cold. It was a small C conservative state that pretty much believed in live and let live. But, over the course of about 10 years that I lived there, it just started to get overrun by the bats**t wing of the conservative movement. Just look at how John McCain used to be "the maverick," taking pride in bucking the traditional Republican establishment. Now in order to keep his job, he felt he had to run to the right, first with crazy Sarah and then to keep pace with J D Hayworth, a local Rush Limbaugh wannabe. When I lived in AZ, I used to actually kinda respect McCain because all of the republicans hated him. Now not so much, and AZ as a whole is kinda going that way as well. As I said before, that xenophobia is a part of everyone's DNA, almost. If they put gay marriage up to a vote in Iowa, is it really going to hold?

and fyi our site is sorta up, still a work in progress but check out our lore section
http://www.lux-nocturna.org/

staticvelocity wrote:

The biggest loss the state of California suffered for civil rights, in my opinion, was when we lost silicon valley... politicians and power companies schemed Davis out of office, Schwarzenegger came in, and nobody did anything to try to retain our high-end business sector. When they left, we lost most of our wealthy-yet-social-minded voters.

Also, the lack of cross-minority support is astounding! Being bi-racial, I am most irritated when I am discriminated against by a well dressed minority! WTF?!? I live in an urban-conservative climate of Cali, and there are way too many people here that vote against civil rights and claim they love their families only to whore themselves at truck stops. Hypocrits!

Though I agree that the whole Gray Davis thing was a crock, the blame for the lack of those technology companies is just simple economics. California priced itself out of competitiveness. All you have to do is look at the property values before the collapse of the housing market. Notwithstanding the outflux of technology companies to cheaper countries like China and India, CA is by far the most expensive place in just this country. I work for a joint venture in Utah between two of the largest technology companies in the world, and the only reason why this facility is even here is because of cheap land and tax incentives. That and one of the two companies originally started the construction, but ended up not being able to do it alone, so it was mothballed for several years before the other partner stepped in with money. It was far cheaper to move people here than it would have been to build something in CA and then move people there. The cost of living is just so much lower.

As for your other comment about minorities working against civil rights, I too am surprised when that happens. From my limited observations, though, I think it's just human nature. When you get into an exclusive club, humans, no matter their race, gender, or whatever have a tendency to want to keep it exclusive. I don't know if it's a payback thing where they're saying that this was done to them so they want to do it to others or if they truly believe that letting others in will dilute what they have, as the argument against gay marriage often goes. It's sad, but I think there is a very xenophobic quality to human nature that abhors "the other." We all have it to some degree. It's just that most of us can control that xenophobia with rationality.

Sincarino wrote:

Gettorix wrote:

Does anyone else find it disturbing that California is less progressive on this issue than Iowa?

-James

For me, being a long time resident of this bankrupt state, I'm more frustrated than disturbed. I partly blame religion. Harvest Crusade Ministries, the Seventh Day Adventists Conference, and Rick Warren's Saddleback Church (just to name a few) are headquartered in California and have significant influence over not just state Republicans but elected Democrats from swing districts.

I live in Utah, so don't get me started on the role that religion plays in politics. That being said, I'm curious as to the politics in Colorado, considering that you have such powerful religious organizations as Focus on the Family headquartered there.

The biggest loss the state of California suffered for civil rights, in my opinion, was when we lost silicon valley... politicians and power companies schemed Davis out of office, Schwarzenegger came in, and nobody did anything to try to retain our high-end business sector. When they left, we lost most of our wealthy-yet-social-minded voters.

Also, the lack of cross-minority support is astounding! Being bi-racial, I am most irritated when I am discriminated against by a well dressed minority! WTF?!? I live in an urban-conservative climate of Cali, and there are way too many people here that vote against civil rights and claim they love their families only to whore themselves at truck stops. Hypocrits!

Gettorix wrote:

Does anyone else find it disturbing that California is less progressive on this issue than Iowa?

-James

For me, being a long time resident of this bankrupt state, I'm more frustrated than disturbed. I partly blame religion. Harvest Crusade Ministries, the Seventh Day Adventists Conference, and Rick Warren's Saddleback Church (just to name a few) are headquartered in California and have significant influence over not just state Republicans but elected Democrats from swing districts.

Also keep in mind that California is one of the larger states in the country. Although it has sizable and familiar urban centers (Los Angeles,San Francisco, San Diego for example, which consistently help Feinstein and Boxer get re-elected to the U.S. Senate, thank goodness)suburban and rural communities make up most of the state; people in such communities tend to be center-right, politically.

And let's not forget that Reagan, Nixon and Buchanan were/are Californians :P

Yay to the Top 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How embarrassing is it that the U.S. is lagging behind

I agree we are way behind some other countries, though Uganda makes us look positively Utopian...

One of the major impacts though of the recent court rulings on DOMA is that the federal government has no authority to define marriage. At all. Which means it's a state-by-state battle. So 3 down, 47 to go! (I think it's 3 states that have full marriage equality.)

Does anyone else find it disturbing that California is less progressive on this issue than Iowa?

We have "Domestic Partnerships" here in Nevada, which I accept as a "Separate but Equal" status filling in until we can get it right for good.

-James

Neilston wrote:

Just remember, two steps forward, one step back.

Which is a nice way of saying, WONDERFUL NEWS, but don't let your guard down.

Agreed. But it does seem the tide is turning our way. I mean, come on, even Argentina has gay marriage now. How embarrassing is it that the U.S. is lagging behind machismo-based cultures on gay issues. That's tantamount to lagging behind arab nations on women's rights, or Jack in the Box for food quality.

(Although I do occasionally crave their unlike-anyone-else's tacos....)

Still only testing in North America as far as I know... :(

LOL I wanna hear it all! I woke up today to texts from my buds about the Beta! who has rumors?

just a note for anyone interested myself and my friend are formers xi players and are starting a ffxiv linkshell/guild/company
Lux Nocturna - http://bit.ly/a9s2B3 check out the facebook link if your interested or message me here we are working on a website and hope to hear from everyone :)
thanks guys

Another:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gftV6RnfBC8iPPWGM0SGQeNLiC6QD9GVIC3G0

Washington D.C. wont violate local law to enact Doma type ruling in district.

I've returned the profiles back to their previous settings. They're no longer visible for those not log in.

If you'd like a URL to give out, you can create one by clicking here. Anyone who sees the URL will be able to see your profile. You could consider using this link in your STO Forum signature.

Over the years, I've heard on and off complaints that the sites 'remember me' function doesn't work. I've been doing some research into the matter and this seems to be a rather complicated issue dealing with Joomla.

Personal accounts and more information should help me track down the issue. Have you had a problem with it? What browser and OS do you use? Do you have the most recent version of your browser? (If you're using IE6, you friggin need to update.) Does it never work or does it expire after a certain amount of time?

Some background information. The 'remember me' function on websites use cookies to store the log in and session information for your site. When you access a site, that information is read from the sites cookie stored on your computer and automatically logs you in.

If you don't allow cookies to be saved onto your computer or you clear your cookies, the 'remember me' function simply will not work. Cookies naturally expire after a certain amount of time as well. This is for security purposes. This way if someone else is using your old computer or device they won't be able to log into your accounts forever.

One of the suggestions for fixing problems with the 'remember me' function is to give it a higher priority than the legacy function (The legacy function allows us to use outdated components on the site.) which I've already done. So if you have had problems with this in the past, it may clear up over the next couple weeks. If you wanna speed up how quickly the changes will take effect, go ahead and delete the cookies on your computer. If you use multiple browsers, delete the cookies from all your browsers.

It makes me wonder what other commercials we're going to get in future episodes. :P