Westwind

*waves* Hey there! There is no particular application/registration to be a diplomat here to TWP unless you are opening a new Embassy. Fortunately, we're happy that LKE has an embassy with us already. So, welcome Ambassador! The LKE Embassy is here on Embassy Row.

Yeah, I never cared about those naming distinctions, I didn't see the difference. I just always say 'Equilism members'. I recall a player in Equilism, and a recent TNP Delegate, had nicknamed Ivan Moldavi as "Moldy". (Side note: Equilism's name was an accidental misspelling by Founder Equility.) It may have been Gracius, I don't recall myself. It was Pixiedance that delivered it to the TNP Embassy at ADN though if I recall correctly. And it gave the appropriate two weeks notice, so it was certainly proper. I was soon after invited along with a couple others, I don't remember who, to talk with Pixiedance about it on IRC. I doubt I'd have logs of that anymore though. It was a strange meeting, never had one quite like it in NS. It was more like Roleplay.

*nods* Yeah, I played my part of it. I was solidly in favor of their application to join ADN. I don't remember what my position in ADN was at the time besides Representative of Equilism. I served in most capacities at one time or another. I exchanged pm's with Mammothstan over it. However, politics being what they are, I had to watch what I said in what venue. My dilemma was that I was serving in an official capacity as Equilism representative to the ADN Council. And the Equilism Senate had voted to oppose the application. So I had to argue against their application in Council, while trying to do what I could, quietly, to support it outside of Council, outside of embassies. I'd also served as a Provincial Defense Minister in The Pacific. What was it...oh....Croyance Province. A certain other former TWP Delegate signed up in the military sign up thread I'd started then. I was also in The Pacific Underground before that. (Much later, and unrelated, I was in a Francoist raider region. I had to see what that was about.) There were indeed some very ruffled feathers on both sides, ADN and NPO. One of the most divisive things in NS was NPO/ADN. That and Invading/Defender (we called in invading, they preferred 'raiding'). And then the types of defending had their divisions...is it okay to retaliate against an invaders home region, or isn't that just being like them ? Is it okay to prioritize defending missions by political ideology, or should ideology never be a factor in defending ? Should there be open communications with invaders, or should each and every one be ban-on-sight? It was a much more black and white NS world, and passions were often easily stirred. Especially when ADN was trying to create 'defender unity' and get all those different positions to work together. (The ideology thing failed as RLA withdrew from ADN. The retaliation thing failed, as TITO wouldn't join ADN - they want the right to retaliate. Still a sixty region alliance is nothing to sneeze at.) I think it was the NPO that gracefully withdrew it's application eventually. I was rather dissapointed. *Remembers working with Ananke way back when in '04/'05 When UPS Rail and then Great Bight took the TNP Delegacy and threw out the government Ananke had been TNP Defense Minister, and were allied to Equilism by three separate treaties. Equilism gave her full E-Army HQ access as planning for liberation began.* *Remembers a telegram exchange with Great Bight, who said he'd once held a feeder with only 17 endorsements* TWP, TNP, TRR, Nasicournia, Equililsm.....this was generally the core of ADN, not to disparage or ignore the contributions of many others. TNP was a strong leg of ADN that was weakend by Delegacy instability and finally by Delegate's choice to withdraw from the organization. Some in the government protested, and some players quit the game. The Delegate's nation was passed around a bit, and eventually a new constitutional convention was held, and the sides within the region tried to merge back into a single community. TWP also eventually withdrew from ADN. It was, though, an ADN that was growing inactive in lost relevance. And TWP was struggling, frankly with boredom. There was alot of that feeling in the r/d game after Influence entered the game. For a time, it was TWP Minister of State Security Biyah and myself that were running ADN Intel. For awhile it was Blackbird and I. And before that, it was Equility and I. With Equilism also having withdrawn after having it's Charter proposal for a new ADN rejected (and after The Schism), and with Nasicournia a dead region, ADN was running on fumes, and the main defender activity was moving to FRA. *For reference: ADN=Alliance Defense Network, originally created in 2003 in direct opposition to the Atlantic Alliance. ADN debated a Constitution, which was ratified on Februrary 29, 2004. The Atlantic Alliance announced they were dissolved on February 29, 2004. Westwind joined ADN, February 29, 2004. Coincidence? Some things may never be known. *FRA = Founderless Regions Alliance, founded by three members including a former Equilism and TWP Defense Minister. One could say Westwind brought an end to Constitutional ADN by: - Negotiating peace treaties, along with EuroSoviets, to end the ADN/Ireland (and The German Empire and DEN) war. The Peace Treaty was Constitutional, yet Director Pope Hope tried to oppose it and stop it after presented. Too late. - Brought impeachment articles to the ADN Senate against ADN President Vasquez for leading an invasion of Ireland after the signing of the Peace Treaty, and planning it on ADN's forums. Leading to the President's resignation. - Through the Vice Presidential election to Democratic Donkeys, who soon revealed he was an invader spy. - Blocking legislative proposals in the ADN Congress. - Recommending Pope Hope declare martial law, which she did. - Appointed moderator of new ADN Reloaded, then Admin, and was first elected Assistant Director. Finally becoming Acting Director. One could say all that, but it'd be re-writing history, wouldn't it ? Wouldn't it ?! Constitutional ADN was an extra-regional government. Meaning that member regions were subject to the laws of ADN. And when ADN declared war, all member regions had to declare war. It had three branches of government, and a bicameral legislative branch. A Co-executive President/Director. A Chief Justice and a Prosecutor General. Two former ADN Prosecutor Generals are currently active on this forum There was one peice of legislation in ADN in particular, and I can't recall what it was, but it was pushing on regional sovereignty enough to have some people starting to push back a bit. And some organizations wouldn't join in order to preserve their sovereignty. TITO/EAA/RLA/A.L.L./GLA...

Is it tomorrow yet ?

*nods* I've had problems with Edge too. Simply not working with some sites, crashing with others. Went back to Chrome, which has it's own problems.

Bottom line for me, I still prefer Windows 7, but Windows 10 is okay. (Loathed Windows 8) Just remember to adjust your privacy settings on 10 because Microsoft defaults them wide open so they can track you and feed you targeted ads.

A Peruvian GF, eh ? Hmmm....a lawyer friend of mine's third wife is Peruvian. His second, and mother to his sons, was Nicaraguan. At one time they wanted to set me up with her sister, heh. Meteorology was with the Physics department in Nebraska too. Also Astronomy. One of my professors, who was later the best man at my wedding, thought I should be teaching at Junior Colleges (2 year, like Winnie is talking about). There was a hybrid program at Northern Colorado that was somewhere between a Masters and a PhD that he suggested for me. Obviously, that never happened, I was diverted by RL. I did have 1200 undergrad students though, which basically meant I got no sleep. Grading 1200 essays is a tedious nightmare. And those students were awful. The University had to let anyone into the school, so the freshman geography classes were one of the 'weeding out' classes. My supervising prof was just starting his first year, and was newly arrived in the US from Lithuania. He couldn't understand all the F's I was handing out. 192 nation map assignment, and they only get five nations right ? F ! Essays written cross-wise across the page instead of on the lines? F ! "You can do a lot in a lifetime, if you don't burn out too fast" - Neal Peart Just good old, traditional TWP threadjacking My ex (2nd wife) just upgraded to Windows 10 this weekend. Or rather, one of the boys started it for her and she just let it finish. Last night she told me she was afraid to turn it on. lol

I did phone support at Microsoft for about six months in '95. I was the "Grammar Guru" (each function specialist was a 'guru') for Word 95, wrote some of the macros it used, some knowledge base articles, etc. They laid us off when they outsourced it all. Which really sucked, as they had promised a raise and stock options at six months, so naturally the layoff was a couple weeks before that (there was a later class action lawsuit about it, didn't do me any good). I then applied for a position in the Microsoft lab, and they told me I was overqualified and should be in management. That was as annoying as another company that called me in for an interview around the same time, and as soon as I sat down with the interviewer he started out with, 'let me just say first that you're overqualified'....like, why then did you waste my time!? He did give me a tour of the company at least. Heh, we were at an 'off campus' site for Microsoft, so we didn't get to be part of the big Windows 95 launch with Bill Gates. Instead, we had Steve Ballmer and had to download and install a 'Ballmer' theme for our desktop. Complete with icons that were pictures of Ballmer's kids. *shakes head sadly* I might still have the tshirt and pin they gave us. Even back then I was the 'old guy' in the support group. They put the lone female in the corner next to me to keep the younger guys from bothering her. She had a plush doll of The Tick on her desk with a pull string, so periodically through the day you'd hear "Spoon!" That was better that the guy across from me, he talked so loud. Meanwhile there was a guy one more cubicle down that you'd see his head bobbing up and down as he'd hop on one leg while he was talking on the phone (he was missing the other one). He and I wrote some of the macros together. The beta manuals for Windows 95 were huge. Five volumes, I don't remember how many pages each. Maybe three inches thick each. And yeah, Microsoft Bob came out then too. We were scratching our heads about that one as much as everyone else. Bug bashes were always fun. *nods* I took a couple meteorology classes, that's all that was available at the time where I was. That's kind of the progression of the disciplines: Geography to Climatology to Meteorology to Physics (or vice-versa). My graduate climatology prof put it this way: 'In meteorology, you have to know the physics and the equations. In climatology, you only need to know that the equations exist and how they apply." The Physics department was across the hall from the Geography department at grad school.

*nods* Healthy or not, it's a choice. And people don't like their freedom of choice infringed, which the anti-tobacco forces have chosen as their approach. A condition such as Autism though, is not a choice. It's something out of your control.

The first time I had to use a MAC was in 1990 when I was working in the Remote Sensing Applications Lab at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Mostly I used Pixar workstations there running on Unix. I loved those workstations, they were awesome for their time. I still miss them. But you accessed the mainframe via the little MAC, and it also served as our access to the Internet. I was doing Climate studies (Southern Oscillation, Glacial Advance and Retreat) with Landsat and SPOT satellite imagery at the time, working on my Masters degree. (In the process, I discovered a lot of unknown faults along the Rocky Mountain upthrust thanks to a filter another grad student created and we tested on the imagery data - the Latimer filter). All the data was on magnetic tape, like the big old reel-to-reel machines you see in the movies. We had a wall filled with several of those in a separate climate controlled clean room. At home I had an 8088 PC with CGA graphics (three color graphics, wow!) and connected to the University via a 300 baud modem. Watching the document download word-by-word slowly was painful. Heh....in Graduate Statistics class, we were still programming with punched cards.

I was doing this (calling business support) about ten years ago. I kept getting a guy named Jesus. And he pronounced it the English way. It was a little odd. I was general manager for a local computer company. When the owners hired me, they bragged about having all these HP certifications and being a dealer, etc. Then they complained and wanted me to find out why they weren't getting paid for the warranty they were doing. When I checked, they had no certifications at all. They lied to me (as with a lot of other things...thus I left after six months). My service manager claimed to have server certifications, but refused to attach them to the company. That place was a mess. They were also selling consumer machines to their business clients, mostly refurbs, to make the sale over the rest of the local market. All for a measly 2 - 3 % profit margin. In my own business after that, I was an ACER dealer, but was certified with HP and Dell as well. Although I was doing more printers/copiers than computers. Also had to pass Homeland Security and FBI clearances twice, so I could work on equipment in some government offices. Replaced firewalls for HUD, repairs for FBI. Most secure place I've been in: The Federal Reserve. Guys with the loaded machine guys follow you around and watch you work. But I repaired some HP laptops for them. Even though their security is tight, they're nice about it. The security at the Federal Courthouse are rude jerks. And I know someone that was able to get a gun past them (former cop, the US Marshals service asked me to let him test them....they gave me a little US Marshals badge lapel pin as their thanks, heh). Army base security are hire-a-cops without guns. You'd think they'd have soldiers manning the gates. I hated working on Dell laptops, the design was so convoluted to get to anything. Just to replace the battery on the board would be a two hour complete disassembly. Running Windows 10 on my main PC here, but Windows 7 still on the others. Tried to upgrade another to 10, but on it's first reboot it freezes up and goes no further. I've probably tried about ten times. I'm pretty sure it's something in the BIOS that 10 isn't playing well with, but it's got the latest available for it. But it is an old PC. I've never liked MACs. Simply due to that proprietary approach that lets them get away with ridiculous mark up prices. I don't know why people want to give away their hard earned money that way. Yes, generally it's been better for graphics in the past, but that's not really the case anymore. I used to work on MACs in the early 90's. A $50 new floppy drive for a PC would cost $300 for a refurb for a MAC. Insane. Nothing but price gouging by Apple.

And before you know it, it'll be yesterday's news all over again.

*nods* We've always thought so. Welcome to TWP *sits back in his rocking chair* Once upon a time I was a member of TAG, a predecessor to DEN, as Foreign Minister of raider region The Whole under RogueScholar. TAG was dissolved and merged into DEN.

November is Epilepsy Awareness month. I was going to put something together last year, but didn't have the time.

I went ahead and cleaned up the Clubhouse.

Westwind Frontline Telegraph News always tries to stay on the bleeding edge of NS news, even two years ahead of time. *chuckles*

*nods* Admin just needs the appropriate regional authority to give us the word what you want. Otherwise I would have done my own clean up and rearrangement.

Thank you most kindly

You (or whoever) can pick out what you want and use that in TWP's news. All I'd ask is that it be accredited to WTF News with a link to this full issue.

Thank you kindly

Westwind Telegraph Frontline News WTF News date: 12 March 2016 Issue # 9 A randomly periodic publication of reports from around NationStates (hey, last issue was two years ago). WTF News is a public service of Westwind. *Neither The Once and Future King of Westwind, The Infinite Space of All Good People, associated puppet nations, nor the The West Pacific or Equilism take any credit or responsibility for the opinions expressed herein. All implied contracts are figments of your imagination. All your NS issues belong to us. Speaking of issues, do not expect to feel 'normal' while reading this one. This isn't RL you know. This news service is Published by The Universe. Long live NS national sovereignty and remember, today is National Plant a Flower Day. Recommended by ......wait a minute, I forgot. Proceed at your own risk. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Issue #1 - It's the End of The West Pacific Union as we knew it, and I feel fine (The Voice, The West Pacific) - Yes, as has been discussed in a curious conversation on the NS gameplay forum, The West Pacific Union forum government voted itself out of existence. For some outside the region, this has caused a certain level of consternation. While inside the region, there is no concern what so ever. I won't go too deeply into these diverse opinions on the situation. But the truth is that each GCR has chosen it's own method and level governance, and The West Pacific is no different. Former Delegate Punk Daddy has long been an advocate of an ingame government and the region has believed in the primacy of the Delegate for over a decade. This is nothing new for The West Pacific. It was unfortunate that the ingame thread linked above lead to so many moderator warnings and bans. So many unnecessary attacks. But some attacks went on to become overly personal were certainly unbecoming some NS players. There are all kinds of different communities across NationStates. Just because one region doesn't fit the mold that you think it should, doesn't mean that it isn't what the actual community wants for itself. That attitude towards TWP was insulting. Looks across all the thousands of regions....they don't all have offsite forum governments. Some don't have governments at all. So why should TWP if it's community doesn't want it, or simply isn't interested. It's sad to see people that would rather degrade a region's own choice rather than to respect it's community. But perhaps that goes on back into the history of various players with their various interests in trying to control the GCRs. Or maybe not, I don't know. I'm just the old timer in the rocking chair in the corner. Everything is fine in TWP. There is a fully functional government, and it only uses the forum for what it needs, while the rest is ingame. That makes perfect sense to me, because we're playing a game in nationstates.net , and it's giving us more tools to do what we need ingame. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Issue #2 - The Equilism Township, can elections be far behind? (Tranquility, Equilism) - Having languished for months in the Equilism Senate in an effort to replace the existing Commonwealth Constitution, the new Charter of the Equilism Township has been ratified. The Founder (Whamabama) has three days in which to veto the Charter if he so chooses. At that time the Commonwealth of Equilism will officially be dissolved and elections opened for the positions of Delegate, Moderator, and Mayor. One candidate has expressed an interest in all positions already. Once elections have been concluded, the Interim government will also be dissolved. Other matters under discussion in Equilism include the status of the forum and whether or not a move to a new forum would be a good idea, and the issue of a future policy direction for the region. Founder Whamabama and Co-Founder Westwind have emphasized the need for the region to choose a focus upon which to build community and activity for the region. Gameplay ideas have been presented and role play also mentioned. Whether or not the needed participation levels and leadership will be their for those concepts are yet to be seen. It is quite early in those discussions, although elections may provide an opportunity to expand upon them. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Issue #3 - An Europeian Anniversary (Happy 9th!) (Ninth Anniversary Celebration Hall, Europeia) - WTF News would like to wish Europeia a happy 9th Anniversary. Yours is a region of much history both of it's own and as a part of the NS-wide world. I enjoyed the opportunity to visit the celebration and add a couple memories of my own there for you. I won't repeat myself here. Certainly you are well aware of your impact upon NS affairs, and will hopefully look forward to many more years of activity and influence to come. Salute ! -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Issue #4 - North Korea has a missing submarine (I read it in the Enquirer!) Yes, as soon as I heard the news, I immediately recalled special issue #6 which revealed Bhang Bhang Duc was working with North Korea to attempt to create their own Dalek: Could it be that they have now reached a successful conclusion to their Dalek project and seek to deliver it via submarine to a clandestine point to commit sabotage and destruction against their enemies? Stay tuned, because when it comes to North Korea (and sometimes Bhang Bhang Duc), anything can happen. (The officer in the foreground certainly seems proud of his toy collection.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- As always, only the finest data bits were sacrificed in the transporting of this data packet to your device. All data bits have been blessed by the Sanctus Vermiculus Ordinem of The West Pacific and The Church of Westwind. Amen. Westwind Telegraph Frontline News is in Distribution to fine regions across NationStates. Brought to you by.... Copyright 2016, Westwind of All Good People. Better people, Better Food, and Better Beer. The difference between the Heavenly Dream and the God Awful Reality.

You could also RP our own World Assembly with our own resolution proposals. That way they can be TWP specific, and be as ridiculus as you'd like. A Resolution to Eliminate Marsupials in the Wild..... ....Whereas Marsupials are a threat to worldwide peace, and ....Whereas Marsupials are disruptive to the TWP RMB Therefore let it be resolved that marsupials may only be privately farmed for their meat and fur, while eliminating the perpetual threat from wild and free range marsupials....

*sneezes* The glitter tends to make me sneeze. Your mileage may vary.

Careful there, you don't know what it'll do to you....

Should be fixed