Someone just said something so completely off-base that you really need to give them an SNL-style comeuppance? Post it here.107 responses total.
Sapna said: >The fact that Russ could get on and gripe about the modems, and then >continue with whatever Grex activities he normally does proves that >the modems aren't all the critical in contributing to his grex >experience. Sapna you ignorant slut, Had you bothered to check, you would have noticed that I was not continuing with my normal Grex activities. I had not appeared in party. I had not emptied my mailbox (which I normally do every time I log in). I had not even posted elsewhere than in the system problems item. When the modems came back up, I posted responses to things going back to Friday. To someone possessing a modicum of perceptivity this might indicate that I had to go way out of my way just to post to item 4; in other words, SOMETHING WAS WRONG! However, since this elite group obviously does not count you as a member, I'll let it go.
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Russ you perfect example of why IT jobs are being outsourced to India. All of the things you say you didn't do, you could have done over telnet which renders your whole flame and the justification for this item "".
Shut the E-fuck up, russ.
Cry me a river. Let's give him a sugar titty. pvn is a dumbass,although in this case he's right. Just telnet in.
That was a bit strong, russ :-(
twenex...you are a wimp
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The really amusing thing about this argument is that when you dial in, you *are* telnetting to Grex. It's just that you're doing it through another layer of indirection.
OKLAHOMA?
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Dan said: >You got on, didn't you? That was the main thrust of Sapna's post. Dan you ignorant slut, You of all people should know the difference between being able to put in a trouble report and being able to participate actively. If you don't I suggest that you have your BBS read to you over a noisy cell phone, and dictate your responses back. Enlightenment is certain to follow. Beady Aitch the oily boid wrote: >All of the things you say you didn't do, you could have done over telnet >which renders your whole flame and the justification for this item "". Brian you ignorant slut, It probably never occurred to you that I would have done all those things, had I not encountered "telnet.exe: not found" when I tried to open "telnet://cyberspace.org". (Shitty deal for $12/hour, I'll never use those bastards again... of course they don't offer Linux.) Without telnet, no mail; I'm sure you can figure out why, if you spend a little time thinking between 12-ounce progressive curls.
I have a supervisor that does a few superuser office duties and shovels the rest on me. During a meeting in which he tells me that he's out of the business by December, he says "Oh, and I might need to use you as a reference..." My retort was "Well, if you think what I might say will be positive...", very tongue in cheek but what I wanted to say was ... <insert SNL phrase here> He's been my strongest supporter in the corporate politics that WILL dismantle our office within the next year, so I hate it when I'm expected to lie. Those who know me know that I'm more than willing to tell it like I see it, right or wrong.
russ, you ignorant slut. Maybe you should install a telnet client. And if you'd bothered to really read my post, you'd see that what realy riled me was your posts about staff. I don't know anyone personally on staff, except maybe Dan now, but I do know enough to understand that they're not here to serve you. And another ignorant slutty remark you made was about the DSL users. Now that was a really informed remark :/ (And if you don't have telnet, how did you get on to post in the systems problem item?>
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Re #14: Backtalk? I'm curious where he rents computer time for $12/hour. The idea of a place that has dial-out modems but no telnet client is pretty weird.
I'm beginning to find this item really entertaining. Grex at it's most venomous. And it still doesn't beat Mnet. Sad.
How venomous do you think a bunch of geeks can be anyway? They're doing their best!
Are you kidding? We're talking about *finicky technical details* here! It's a religious thing. I have no more idea than anyone else what Russ is doing or why he can't telnet like everyone else, but my blood is already starting to boil. Russ has said he's paying $12/hour to gain access in some way that requires him to use a modem. Obviously he must have a pretty good reason for doing so -- though the mind boggles at just what that reason could possibly be. Maybe it's security related. That would be obscure, and is unchallengeable. (You cannot question any computer man about security. You cannot, for example, find out why passwords expire on Grex. Let alone finding out why Grex doesn't use a standard password encryption algorithm.) Whatever it is, Russ is willing to die to defend it. Others will just as fervently attack it. This might never end, and there's no limit to how far it could escalate. Guns... nuclear weapons... a planet buster... geeks, such as russ, myself, and many others on Grex, have *no limits* when it comes to escalation for defending a pet idea. Really. I've seen it happen.
RE#13 sno..what does that post have to do with the price of tea in china?
Re 19 Ok - *that* was funny.
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Maybe Russ does not have any ISP service at home and can't telnet at work?
Re #23 - people shouldn't be telnetting in from work anyway. ;)
Yeah, they should be ssh-ing so that the network sniffers won't get their password ;)
Sapna said: >Maybe you should install a telnet client. Sapna you ignorant reading-impaired slut, 1,) It wasn't my computer, it was a rented workstation (a fact which was noted in #12). Installing software on it was verboten, even if it was possible. (And why should I fix someone else's misconfiguration?) 2.) Even if I had, telnet might have been blocked at the gateway. >(And if you don't have telnet, how did you get on to post in the systems > problem item?> 3.) There is this little web interface to BBS. It's called Backtalk...
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Russ, you can turn this into Sapna bashing I don't care. I admit I misread, and thought you meant an ISP (though the per hour rate should have raised a flag for me). But I didn't think anyone would be desperate enough to pay $12.00 an hour just to get on grex. But maybe that's the high-point of your life. Who knows. (And it's absurd that someone would allow dialling in, but not have telnet, but that's been pointed out before.)
Russ, you really found a computer to rent with a modem and browser but no telnet? Do you think that's a common problem that Grexers have, so that it's reasonable to expect the staff to take precautions to not strand people in that situation?
Russ, why do you insist on calling Sapna an ignorant slut when she primarily gives you helpful suggestions? I could just as well call you a dick-licking-stupid-ass-muther-fucka for not having the sense to instal telnet or ssh on your home machine and getting to grex that way. By the way, if you wanna suck my dick, email me and we can make an arrangement.
Re #27: Who said these machines had modems? I didn't. (I have a modem, but modems were useless due to the terminal server outage...) Re #29: Nope; browser but no modem (also a lot of stuff that I didn't need right then). It was what I could get at the time with enough connectivity to do the job. You got a problem with that? I expect the staff to at least look at what's wrong and post something about it (even if it's "we can't figure it out"). It took many days for that to happen.
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has anyone told her that?
novomit said: >Russ, why do you insist on calling Sapna an ignorant slut when she primarily >gives you helpful suggestions? novomit you ignorant slut, Grossly incorrect presumption is anything but helpful. >By the way, if you >wanna suck my dick, email me and we can make an arrangement. I've already decided that I don't care to meet you, but if you snail-mail your dick to me I'll consider the offer.
Re #32 para 2: That is correct. Likely to change very soon, but true for the moment. (I'm a stick-in-the-mud; I got on-line before there was a public-access Internet and I haven't found it necessary or even desirable [given certain 'sploits in the field] to change until now.)
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Where do you get the number 6? I know 6 people who dial in and am sure there are many more - cmg, davel, I think rcurl.
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Can you provide an exact figure?
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Regardless, it's not worth a VOLUNTEER'S time to race down there to check on a modem for ONE person who refuses to move into the late 90's. People... oh sorry... people like Russ keep forgetting that "volunteer" means "when we have a spare moment to devote to you".
Not only are the total number of modem users a very very small minority of the total user population, but one can confirm by simply looking at financial statements that modemites consume a hugely disproportionate amount of grex's financial resources not to even mention the hidden cost of infrastructure and support taken from the "free" time of staff volunteers. Fortunately for the modemites, management values their presence diproportionally to their financial contribution to the enterprise. If I were management I might consider looking into cutting a deal with a local hosting/ISP to 'colocate' the majority of dialup lines and have one official grex modem line that fails over to the ISP/hosting phone bank on busy. Even if the cost is the same the reliability and lack of hidden support cost is worth it. Similar to prison inmate phone systems set up to avoid the huge cost of the official systems or the "one number tracks you down" the telcos already have arrangements in place and ISP/colos typically already have underutilized phone banks in place looking for $biz. If the one official dialup goes on the fritz, take it offhook and it rolls over and you debug it later.
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I don't think all 6 of those users Sindi mentioned were paid members. So even if Grex loses all 6 of those members, the loss is going to be less than $360.00 You're right, it doesn't make sense keeping the phone-lines around for less than 1% of the user-base who refuse to move to the late 90s. It's not like Grex is a M$ wanna-be, constantly upgrading to be incompatible with last year's version. After being around for 12+ years, I think it's reasonable to expect Grex to move ahead and leave the phone-lines behind. Hankering for the phone-lines just because you don't want to move with the times is proving ot be disservie t oGrex, more than anything else. Not a very nice way to treat her, is it? (Is Grex female?) But then what do I know :P I'm not a member of this "elite group" as Russ put it, in Resp 1
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Prolly the group that still uses dialling in versus something more modern. Or the group of Grex members Or on the BOD. Any of these. Those were Russ's words. Not exactly the ones I would use
I did not think grex existed for the purpose of making money, but rather for serving its users. Dan, would you stop using the number 6 when you have no idea how many people actually dial in? I can actually think of at least 10. Probably two lines would be adequate. Grex is supposed to allow anyone with any sort of a computer and a 2400 bps modem to get on the net, without also having to pay for an ISP. Most of the people we signed up just use email and would be perfectly happy if grex had a slower net connection to save money. Majority rule is not appropriate here.
More 'modern' is not necessarily more efficient or more convenient, and it is usually significantly more expensive.
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Resp 48> "Grex is supposed to allow anyone with any sort of a computer and a 2400 bps modem to get on the net, without also having to pay for an ISP" Is that in the charter? As for the 10 users, do all of them only have dial-in access? Except for Russ, who had to use a $12-an-hour-telnet-less computer to access BBS when the modems were down, I don't know of anyone else who could not access grex through other means. I'm sure there are some, but I'm sure the number was less than 10. How many people have you signed up? What's the percentage to the user- base, and to the paid members? Compare that to the number of users who would be unhappier with a slow connection, and they're outnumbered by a very large margin. Majority rule is not appropriate here, I agree. Staff and the BoD are considerate enough of the miniscule number of users who depend on dialling in, (either as the only means, or a more convenient means) to get on Grex, and they maintain the phone lines. Fine. We really have no problem with that. What most people here have had a problem with is the expectation these people have that staff drop everything, and go take care of the modem problem the minute it occurs. And I think what most people took offense to were the rude posts about the issue, more than anything else. (If it weren't for those posts, I wouldn't have even been discussing the whole modem issue. It hasn't really made a difference to me, I don't use dial-in, and don't foresee ever using it.)
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We're not even asking you to use broadband. Use a good old dial up ISP, and telnet in. (BTW, I'm at the library and they don't have telnet, or dial-in. I demand that staff spend their valuable time developing ajava interface to party so I can chat!!!)
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I should point out that Grex gets its 501(c) tax-free status because of its educational and charity mission.
And your point is? Re 52> Damn, I forgot about www.yale.edu/ssh!!!
The modems ARE a priority for Grex. They are a diminishing priority, but they are nonetheless a priority. As long as there are people who still use them, we will probably maintain at least one modem connection. Unfortunately, current staff is not at the beck and call of the system to fix the machine when it is down, or the modems or terminal server when they choke, and when thy DO actually read the conferences or their email on a regular basis, there is little mechanism to assure that problems are dealt with promptly, whatever the problems may be. Fortunately, there has just been a significant increase in root staff (4) which will hopefully be accompanied by a refreshed energy and initiative when it comes to fixing Grex.
I was curious about the numbers, and so I did the following commands: last -10000 | grep 216.93.104.37 > dialin cut -f1 -d' ' dialin | sort | uniq > uniq.dialin It at least appears to me that 216.93.104.37 is the IP address for the terminal server; russ and keesan's recent logins all seem to have come from that address. Since Sunday at about 8:00 a.m., there have been 40 unique loginids who have used this IP address. I think 40 unique loginids is sufficient to make it advisable we maintain the modems. I then wondered how many people have logged on at all, and so I ran this: last -10000|cut -f1 -d' ' | sort | uniq | wc There were 1940 unique loginids used during that time. About 2% of the logins came from dial-in users. And btw, "last -10000 | grep 216.93.104.37 | wc" returns 182 lines, so about 2% of all logins come from the dial-in modems. Those who have dialed in (according to my determination) since Sunday morning were: bguest bookie bye charcat cmcgee colleen csm98 cyklone davel dpc dpfitzen drew durrett exit gitap golfer gracel hangup i jmm keesan keesan2 kingjon logout lowclass maryeliz melanief paull phenix q qborthwi quit raheim rtrees russ tpryan whoed willann wings wlevak There are certainly many names in that group whom I would dislike losing.
(yep, especially "bye", "exit", "hangup", "logout" and "quit." I don't know what we would do without them.) (data point: when I'm in Ann Arbor, I usually dial Grex directly at least once a week, and would more often if I could use it to ssh. my e-mail is hosted on a machine that doesn't allow telnet sessions.)
We signed up charcat, dpfitzen, rtrees, willann and wings. How many total logins were there from the Ann Arbor area? Jep, thanks for the list. Should we charge people extra (or insist they be members) before allowing them to use the web interface, since this takes up extra bandwidth?
I missed sorting out the system logins. The login "q" is another one. So? I think 30 users is still enough to make it worthwhile to maintain modems.
Additionally, keesan2 probably isn't anyone other than... keesan!
I think that Grex is on the right track with regards to the dialins - continue to support them, but also continue to monitor usage and reduce the number as demand diminishes (as it will).
REsp 59> How about charging people for the ability to dial-in? Charging for the web-interface is just going to lose Grex web exposure. Sure, if your take is Grex is for Ann Arborites mostly and we don't want new users surfing on in, charge for the web interface.
59 and 63. Behave!
When I'm traveling, I use dial-in exclusively. I don't have an ISP, so my "free" access is limited to libraries. Dial-in allows me to have 24/7 access for 3.4 cents a minute. (when, exactly, did the cents symbol get replaced on keyboards?).
The cents symbol never made it onto computer keyboards. Can't say I regret. Bad enough that keyboards the world over have $ keys. I'd be for keeping a dialin even if Cindi was the only one using it.
RE 64> /throws tantrum and stomps her feet
key board the world over doesn't have $ keys (AFAIK) . I guess some has 'pound' keys too.. realised it while chatting with a brit on irc.
Then how do they do something like "echo $SHELL" when at grex?
The pound symbol could have been due to ascii characters or a chart he used to pick the symbol from.
Didn't the old mainframes have a cent sign? Somehow regular ASCII doesn't have the cent sign, but EBCDIC does.
Yeah, I used an MVS machine that used it in some weird-looking code before. Nontheless, I still prefer ASCII to EBCDIC.
Another dialin (infrequent) is gitap. We set her up on an XT at 2400 bps. What percentage of members dial in? (Can someone compare jep's incomplete list with the membership list?).
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re 73 I'm sure dial ins aren't a majority of even the small pool of loins who are members.
Thanks for the sleuthing work, John, but you might as well give it up. The i\g\n\o\r\a\n\t\ s\lu\t\s\ people who insist that everyone do things THEIR way, regardless of charitable missions or history or OS vulnerabilities or echo lag or any other reason for dialing direct, do not care how many people use the dial-ins. They knew the number was much more than one just from the discussion in item 4 long before this item was entered, but they will not change their tune because of trifling facts. It's a religious thing to them, and I'm a heretic. And I'm proud of it. (If it wasn't religious, why would anyone argue that the modems were unimportant when Grex is still paying for the phone lines? Why should we leave any costly asset unusable? Maybe they've bastardized Roman Catholicism and adopted a doctrine of idle phone wires in lieu of celibate priests. "Our DIALINS must be sworn to PURITY!" Hmmm. That *would* let them be slutty in the rest of their lives... what do you bet that their cult has temple prostitutes?)
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I agree, but for some reason people insisted on keeping about six. I was not claiming dialins were a majority, rather a larger minority of members, who tend to be local.
Re 76 - Hahahahaha - It's funny how you imply your the injured party. It seems everything I've heard about you is true, and that post proves it. (Of course we knew the number was more than one, we pegged it at 6, or did you miss that?)
Currently there are seven active modems, the minimum number dictated by our Centrex contract, which will be expiring soon, at which point we will drop at least two phone lines. No one is insisting on the current number, it is merely that the economics of fees versus penalties make it prudent to wait until the expiration of the contract to drop more lines.
What percentage of the total monthly regular cost of grex is the phone
lines? What percentage of a month's logins are over those phone lines?
What percentage of those modemite logins are users who donate money?
For increased reliability with little or no $US cost savings I betcha
using another ISP's phone bank could easily be done and have the benefit
of reducing the hidden cost of volunteer staff "free" time devoted to
dialup support.
I also suspect that it would be very easy to figure out a per hour
"cost" of modemite use and "bill" them for it. ("cost" being based on
used login time not actual cost - the busier a modem line is the cheaper
per hour). I betcha there would be enough folk (like mary) willing to
kick in a little extra tax deductible donation to cover the cost of
those modemites who are either unwilling or unable to offer a small
donation themselves to pay their "bill". Those that value the modemites
could kick in a little extra, some of the otherwise freeloader modemites
might start to contribute, and you could continue to offer current level
of dialup access at a net zero instead of a constant drain.
Of course you would never shut off accounts that never paid their "bill"
but you might have an item posting the top "noncontributing" modemites
and let peer pressure do the job.
You are attempting to establish a false equivalency between donating to Grex and purchasing the services Grex provides. It IS false because officially there is no distinction between dial-in and telnet and web users. Their means of access are merely that; their choice of means of access to participation in the Grex community. There are costs assiciated with all means of acces, whether it is a phone line, a DSL connection, or staff time. Dividing up and parceling out those services based on who pays what, or even establishing a system to track them, is not consistent with the mission or the history of Grex -- except to the extent necessary for security and limitation of liability. I don't expect any of this to change, but feel free to propose it in Co- op if you would like to vote on it.
The next board meeting will be in September. For that meeting I'd like to see, if possible, some recents statistics on our modem usage. The timing should be right to then drop lines without any penalties. Not all, but some - enough to maintain reasonable access for those who need it. Regarding chipping in to subsidize modem access - that's what I do now, willingly. I don't pay for my access but rather for whatever it takes to bring in a diverse group and maintain an interesting community. Take away that mix and you couldn't pay me to spend time here. You'd have to convince me that the people who come to us via modem aren't enhancing our community. Good luck.
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And the resources be appreciated.
Be appreciated???? Are you suggesting that people who don't use BBS, and are not members should be banned because they don't "appreciate" what we offer? Or that we only ban people who have the "wrong attitude" and express it?
Uhm no... Just that people respect that staff is on a volunteer basis, and they be respectful about their time, and their efforts, and be a little polite when requesting something be done. Also keep in mind that something may not be fixed as soon as you post something, and not rant and rave about it. (I have no idea why that touched a nerve with me, but it has, and hopefully this will be my last post about it) I certainly did not mean the first type of people you mentioned. And though I would personally like to "ban" some of the few people with the "wrong attitude", I understand that that's not grex's policy. And anyhow, that wasn't the intent of my post. (I can see how there is a slight possibility you might come up with that response. By resources, I meant staff resources, not the phone lines, or modems. I apologise for the ambiguity)
You'll never get a guy like russ to appreciate anything. And if it were just russ that would disappear if the dialups were to go away, I would be all for getting rid of them. But, he isnt the only person who uses them. Still, it is reasonable to look at the actual usage the dialups get and then to reduce them if the usage warrents that. Isnt there some contract that is keeping grex from reducing dialups right now?
The Centrex contract, right, slynne. As stated in the first paragraph of #84, the BoD can look at real numbers in September to make a decision about how many lines we need. I'm fairly certain it's more than two, but I don't have a guess how many more than two we need.
Curmudgeons are a Grex specialty.
Beady you ignorant slut, The expenses for Grex are posted monthly in the Coop conference. (Not that allowing the terminal server to stay down would have any effect on phone expenses, as some have implied!) ================================ Sapna you ignorant slut, >Hahahahaha - It's funny how you imply your the injured party. I wasn't the one who turned a technical issue in the system problems item into a personal attack, nor am I ignoring every issue of fact that's being brought forth here. (That's why you're so defensive.) I also know the definitions of "tongue in cheek" and "hyperbole". >(Of course we knew the number was more than one, we pegged it at 6, or did >you miss that?) Which is already low by a factor of 4 according to jep's analysis, but I quote this item, response 41: # ... it's not worth a VOLUNTEER'S time to race down there to check on # a modem for ONE person who refuses to move into the late 90's. However, since you disclaim the number of one, one wonders why you took that response as referring to you. Apparently, the talk about you being self-centered and having to be the focus of attention is true. Are you the high priestess of the Temple of the Idle Phone Line, or just an underling? How any "clients" do you have on a typical day?
What the... so I'm stuck being a brainy virgin or something? I feel so left out.
Forget it russ. I don't think it's worth anyone's time arguing with you. You're totally skewed in your perceptions. Go ahead, make demands of people all you want, call them names. Doesn't really affect me one way or another. Have a good life. Or whatever you have left of it.
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Um. uh-huh. I'm not advocating eliminating or even cutting back on the number of modems. I'm just suggesting gathering real data upon which to act and pointing out there are alternatives to the current structure of things. Personally, I can't envision ever even using the modems so how many there are don't make me no nevermind.
Um, I'm having a hard time figuring out what the controversy is about. We periodically collect data on modem usage and make decisions about cutting the number of modems. We haven't done it lately because under the terms of our centrex contract, we can't drop any more phone lines. (I guess we could drop a modem, but that wouldn't save us any money.) The contract expires soon, and we will be getting off it. Then we can cut lines again. We will run the usual statistics and probably end up dropping a line or two. We won't drop all the lines. I don't think this is controversial. I'm also entirely unoffended by Russ's complaints. I think we should do better maintaining the modems. Russ's complaints weren't delivered in the most charming manner imaginable, but I've known him for twenty years now, and I'm pretty much used to him. I even like him a lot of the time. Hmmm...is there a name for those people who aren't exactly friends, but who you know as well as you know many of your friends, so they become part of your community? I've got a lot of those on Grex.
They're call "net-friends" or "cyber-friends". "Grex-friends" is what I use when referring to people I've interacted with on Grex
Well, some people I know on Grex really are friends. For others, I'm pleased to have them around for their shear familiarity, but we lack the personal connection to really be friends. I don't think that is a relationship unique to the net.
I tend to use "acquaintance" for that relationship.
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Re #93: I checked http://www.templeoftheidlephoneline.com today, and they have a list of positions open. One of them carried the job title of "chopped liver"; would that address your complaint?
Re #97: It's not about modems, Jan. Modems are just the pretext.
re#103: Ok, russ. I've known you even longer than janc has (certianly been out on more dates with you than janc) and you've managed to lose even me. WTF are you talking about?
He's been complaining that staff hasn't been sufficiently responsive to problems, even after the problems have been reported. The recent modem outage was just the example of the lack of attention. There is also the problem that one of the modems doesn't seem to work right, but no one on staff has tried (or reported trying) to isolate which modem and either take it out of service or replace it.
Re #105: It's not that anymore, either. Re #104: Dry out some and maybe dry humor will start making sense again.
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You have several choices: