Heya folks, I have no idea what I'm doing so I figured maybe somebody out here would know.

I received a 500$ grant (it would be good if I did not use all 500$) to buy a scanner. I need a scanner that is easily portable and also doesn't really have any limit to what goes in it - because books and other bulky printed objects will be scanned regularly. It also needs to be pretty swole as far as resolution goes because some of the scans will likely be the only digital images of the documents/photographs in existence anywhere - and may need to be blown up for display.

Currently using (but don't have exclusive use of) https://www.amazon.com/HP-ScanJet-4600-Flatbed-Hi-Speed/dp/B0000DIODD

So I would like something roughly equivalent or better. If nobody knows no biggie I'll figure some way to blow 500$ on a scanner surely lol.

Sometimes they'll beep if there's some kind of fault, but yeah if it's not being detected it's either the mobo/port/cable/hdd itself. Gotta fiddle with things and figure out which party is at fault - hopefully it's just the cable :(

My favorite all time win actually came when I first started playing in UGC - we were playing in playoffs on Freight - the game ended in regulation as a 4-4.

So we go into OT. Win mid, push the opposition back to their own last, fail a last push (common on freight) and end up pushed back to our own last. Battle back, and eventually pushed the other team back to last. It was then that our young soldier "Iarerobot" a mentee of avoided, uttered the words "I am going spy"

He failed to get any stab. He says "I'm going spy again" We try to send in a suicide to help him get some stabs, to no avail, in fact the other team is able to start pressuring second and we start falling back, I pop uber to buy time.

When I hear young robot's voice say "I'm spy again, and am going to win the game"

In the kill feed we see a player die, and miliseconds before second was capped, he back-capped last and won us the game sending us to finals.

------

My worst loss came in s14 against SS/Phrakture/Jav's team (I forget their name now) where I was backing up from metalworks second and got stuck in the little wall outcropping on metalworks last and died with 98% losing us the game.

It depends on how high the thing was that was being built - lots of cultures used ramps (typically earth work) for building really tall stuff. But for more practical purposes I imagine they just climbed whatever they were building (for example thatching a roof - just climb up the wall and have somebody below you hand you the supplies). That's how I did it anyways when I helped do grass roof repairs lol.

Yeah I wouldn't recommend Tolstoy at all to younger people - maybe Anna Karenina, but even that is pushing it. I could see a good justification for an "abridged" version in HS, but the full work is too much.

Bulgakov is challenging for HS students because he expects a lot of cultural foreknowledge that most HS people aren't going to have - especially in the US. Master and Margarita is very widely read, but I imagine most of the best bits (having to do with Soviet life in the 30's and Russian Orthodoxy) are completely missed by most US audiences. That and he purposefully tried to write as much like Gogol as possible, and you'd never get that if you hadn't read any Gogol (who sadly, I'm told, isn't very widely read in the US). But if you like books, read Dead Souls http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1081/1081-h/1081-h.htm (English translation) you wont regret it.

Since you mention "we" though - I'll recommend my favorite Soviet-era satire: Twelve Chairs http://www.lib.ru/ILFPETROV/ilf_petrov_12_chairs_engl.txt

I read War and Peace by choice - but any HS that makes kids read Dostoevsky and Bulgakov would be one hell of a school (we did not).

The books that I remember most clearly were: basically every major play of Shakespeare, Chaim Potok's books about being a Jew in America during ww2, the most homo-erotic book ever "A Separate Peace", Ray Bradburry stuff, and Richard Wright's Native Son.

I got BNW in university. Had to read Dosty and Bulgakov on my own lol. But I was always a book nerd, read Das Kapital when I was 17 lol.

The end of pre-arranged scrims below invite.

MW up primary
MW down melee
F secondary

@#21

Basically, the CIA and various other American agencies have been very interested in the potential applications of psychics since, well the beginning really. Several presidents have even employed personal mediums/psychics, etc on occasion. There were extensive attempts to utilize psychics to spy on the USSR, and then a sort of counter-investigation to see if the psychic spying actually worked (project stargate was its name).

For the most part it was discovered that the psychics never produced anything useful, and that in the very few occasions that they did it was likely because the project managers edited the reports later on so as to provide some reason to keep the project going and thus remain employed in an easy job lol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project

I haven't eaten breakfast since 8th grade and have a pseudo meal at like midnight.

I didn't attend because I was given the impression that I would probably have been disruptive because I'm pretty unhappy with the state of affairs in general. I am one of the small number of people (as you are too saam :D) who tries to sell this game and how great it is to other people, and generally screwing things up makes that harder to do lol.

The thing that boggles my mind with this whole thing - and with previous weapons debates - is that if the game isn't broken, don't try to fix it. You have no idea the number of times I was told I was "trying to stop the game from evolving" when I brought the ESEA whitelist to UGC - but the growth of that league that occurred while I was the admin there, and has continued since, seems to absolve me.

It's just like the debate with replay in baseball. Just because the thing is available doesn't necessarily mean it should be used unless it will demonstrably improve the playing/viewing experience as a whole. That's the line we, as a community, really ought to take with most of our rules and unlocks. Just because the quick-fix is available and even if it is nerfed, it doesn't add anything of value to our game, in fact, even if it were some non-reality where the quick-fix wasn't a big deal, I would still argue against its inclusion because our game fundamentally revolves around uber and kritz (with kritz being decidedly less useful than it was due to arrow building already and the demo nerf).

I would encourage you *not* to back out of the league if you've already signed up - you're surely not the only ones who feel upset. Talk to the other team leaders, just like I did in s14, and explain to them you have no interest in running xyz weapons, and that you won't run them unless they do. If you find a team that refuses to abide by that agreement, refuse to scrim them, ever. It works very well, particularly in IM and the upper reaches of open, or invite. Since those teams often have to be pretty picky about who they scrim, and if all of your ideal scrim partners wont play you, you wont be playing a lot of useful tf2 lol.

While we're at it, I'll air another grievance of mine. Pre-arranged scrims outside of invite are hurting the community. Stop, please. Use discord or IRC or anything. Imagine how many teams don't form because mixes don't happen as often anymore, or teams that simply can't find scrims and become discouraged and quit. It's demonstrably bad. I understand if you're an invite team or the tippy-top of IM not scrimming any random team, but everybody else should take anybody who wants to throw down. Not to mention if you're really grinding out scrims it will be easier to scrim longer if you can do it as we did in ye olden days lol. It also makes leading a team considerably easier because you don't have to arrange everything in advance, and you don't have to worry about finding ringers in a rush. Plus, you wont spending 20 minutes+ of your scrim time waiting on the other team to show up to a pre-arranged scrim because their scout is out with pneumonia unexpectedly. It's all positives. Hell, back in the day there used to exist these things called "scrim teams" who were just collections of older players who just showed up in IRC a few days a week and gave *really* good games fairly regularly - but that's gone completely now as well. I even personally tried to resurrect Dheroes but we gave up in part because we couldn't find anybody to scrim lol.

I'm all for getting rid of the crossbow - being able to fire 40 arrows in a minute and provide huge amounts of healing completely obviates important game mechanics - like kritz heals. If its firing rate was reduced I'd be all for it however, since it would actually be a sacrifice.

Uber-saw is balanced because the number of times you're actually going to be able to save your own life with it are pretty slim, and you have to incur a tremendous amount of risk to wack somebody most times. Trekkie the bonesaw legend often made an example of other medics who tried to swing with him.

Escape plan *used* to be pretty busted but now with the mini-crits it doesn't actually allow you to escape all that often lol. The bigger issue is the crossbow because you can use it to step behind cover quickly and pull it back to receive an arrow - whereas otherwise you'd still be pretty hooped with no health hiding behind map geometry.

Just a suggestion - especially in regards to the quickfix.

The season quickfix was unbanned was also the season of the IM anti-quickfix mafia. Essentially, my team, and several other teams (the majority of the division) had a gentlemen's agreement not to ever run the quickfix. If you did you would never be scrimmed again by any team participating - blacklisted essentially.

It was 100% effective - our championship + playoffs in that season of IM also featured the only playoff tf2 that didn't have any quickfix, that is to say, it was the only TF2 being played.

What a season.

So, even if the incredibly regrettable decision is made to legalize the quickfix, just remember, you've got options lol.

I've said this in other threads, but it's gotten me through numerous years of collegiate study - including a few classes I hardly even went to, with flying colors lol.

Step 1. Get a legal pad or large (long) piece of paper.
Step 2. Write down *everything* you think you'll need to know for your exam on that single sheet of paper. That way if you absolutely know something you can just erase it or not put it on to begin with and just make a mark so you repeat the thing you already know in that spot. If *everything* you need to know is too big to fit on the paper, you need to spend more time with whatever concepts so you can be more concise (thus understanding the material better).
Step 3. Memorize things on the sheet of paper relative to things that you know "I know x thing, and the 2 things I don't know so well on the paper are above and below it"
Step 4. Vick's vapor rub. Put some of it on your arm while you look at the paper and recite it in your head over and over.
Step 5. Take exam, put some Vick's vapor rub on your arm again, take test with arm close enough to smell the menthol.
Step 6: profit.

You can also glance over that sheet a few times before the exam begins to give yourself a little confidence boost lol. If you're really on your game you'll make that sheet a few days in advance of the night before the exam, so you can approach it more leisurely.

I mostly have to deal with oral exams recently - but nobody has noticed that if they ask me something unexpected I rub my nose to get a hit of menthol to kick start my brain lol. I'm a machine when it comes to name/dates/quotations which always at least gives you some brownie points in my fields lol :D