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apocrypha
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Planes? Shit, I'm terrified to get in my car now!


Reply #140 on: October 16, 2008, 11:29:55 PM

Fixed! Somehow my main PC's TCP/IP had a specific IP and DNS set, when I set them back to "Obtain automatically" and set my router to OpenDNS it all started working fine. No idea how or why this PC had those settings, I have no memory of doing that.

Many thanks guys :)

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.
Yegolev
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Reply #141 on: October 17, 2008, 06:07:11 AM

Having a static IP on your PC isn't a bad thing, it was just your DNS settings.  I set a static IP on my PC so I can do port-forwarding to it, and also so I could give it a name in my wife's hosts file so she could more easily map the shared drive.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Lantyssa
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Reply #142 on: October 18, 2008, 12:38:16 PM

Yeah.  It's entirely possible after you had set it, your provider changed their DNS address, or where ever you had it set to did.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
Yegolev
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Reply #143 on: October 21, 2008, 07:28:04 AM

... your provider changed their DNS address...

This is probably why I went with OpenDNS.  Likely avoided some fun times when AT+T bought BellSouth with that decision.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Lantyssa
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Reply #144 on: October 21, 2008, 09:45:54 AM

Any big provider really.  I've had all my ISPs change at least once or twice over the course of my service with them due to their own internal network upgrades.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
Yegolev
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Reply #145 on: October 21, 2008, 11:43:10 AM

I want to tack semicolons to the end of my lines using Perl.

In Perl, s/$/;/g  behaves oddly.  I get expected results from s/a/;/g but the end-of-line match is being a pain and it seems to substitute ;\n; instead of just ;.  Anyone have any experience with this so I can shortcut my learning experience?

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Trippy
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Reply #146 on: October 21, 2008, 12:19:16 PM

Need to see your code. Best guess at this point is you are adding an "\n" in a print somewhere but not chomp'ing before hand or your input file has screwy line endings.

Contrary to popular belief the "$" metacharacter in Perl regular expressions does not signify "end of line" -- it means "end of string". Depending on how you've slurped up the file you are trying to edit this may or may not be what you want. If you really want $ to mean end-of-line you can use the "m" flag.

Something like this should work if you are dealing with standard Unix text files:

Code:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

while (<>)
        {
        chomp($_);
        s/$/;/g;
        print $_, "\n";
        }
Yegolev
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Reply #147 on: October 21, 2008, 12:35:49 PM

Pertinent code:
Code:
   while (<F>) {
      if ($oper eq "exact" or $oper eq "e") {
         $count++ if /$orig/;
         s/$orig/$new/g;
      } elsif
        ...
      }
      print O;
   }

I precompile the matching regex using qr//, so for $ the var $orig is (?-xism:$) instead of just a literal $, so it should do what I want.  However since it behaves perfectly well when using something other than $, I need to look into that bit.  I might try to manually deal with the newlines and see if that helps.  I'd rather not write a special case for this situation since new situations could come along that I have not thought of.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Trippy
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Reply #148 on: October 21, 2008, 12:46:03 PM

What is $new set to? You aren't chomping anything either. Are you getting an extra "\n" at the end of your lines? There's also "\z" that can be used to match end of string instead of $, if you think that's messing things up.
Yegolev
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Reply #149 on: October 21, 2008, 12:46:30 PM

Trippy, you gave me the tipoff since the fix was
Code:
  while (<F>) {
      chomp;
...
print O "$_\n";
   }

 DRILLING AND MANLINESS

EDIT for dorkiness:  $new is, in this case, a ;.  The trouble was, indeed, my misuse of $ in this case, or just something funky with <> that I never noticed before.  The input file is a regular file with no embedded newlines, so... it works now so I'm having a hard time being interested.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2008, 12:55:02 PM by Yegolev »

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Soln
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the opportunity for evil is just delicious


Reply #150 on: October 21, 2008, 04:08:36 PM

I'm worried about malware for the home.  We run XP boxes with AVG and MSFT security panel on (fw and antivirus).  I also occassionally put up ZoneAlarm.  Any recommendations for good malware detectors?
Trippy
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Reply #151 on: October 21, 2008, 06:48:00 PM

I'm worried about malware for the home.  We run XP boxes with AVG and MSFT security panel on (fw and antivirus).  I also occassionally put up ZoneAlarm.  Any recommendations for good malware detectors?
The safest thing to do is to turn your normal user account into a non-admin account. That way the malware can't (usually) install anything even if you somehow inadverently click on something you shouldn't have in your browser.

I don't know anything about the "real time" protection some of these products provide.

I just had to deal with my dad's computer getting a massive malware infection. The online scanner from MS at http://onecare.live.com is remarkably good. It's far far better than that Windows Defender piece of crap, though it does run quite slowly. It even runs properly when booted into Safe Mode with networking turned on.

Unfortunately no single program can detect everything out there so you end up having to run a bunch of different programs and pray that they've found everything important. I also used Sophos, the online scanner from Panda, AVG, and some other ones.
Selby
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Reply #152 on: October 21, 2008, 08:28:39 PM

So.  I lost a hard drive this morning.  Came in and the computer wouldn't boot because the hard drive is making a funny clicking noise.  Turns out it won't boot as long as it is plugged in.  Not *overly* a problem, it was just the music drive with 10 years of MP3s (5% I don't have CDs for anymore due to attrition).  I had all of the music on several iPods, so it's not like the data is gone, just going to be a major pain the ass to rename 10,000 files from AFDD.mp3 and whatnot (ID3 info all intact).

I did notice that this is a Western Digital drive, of which I have had multiple people ask me about recovery on over the past few years.  Is there anything to be done about said drive once it is borked without shelling out to those expensive data recovery centers?  I don't think so, but it's been about 5 years since I was in the IT field and pickings were slim then on options.  Is there something about WD that means they have higher failures?  All of the drives have been of varying size and the failure is the same - spins, kind of, then clicking every other second or so.  WD's site is pretty much no help here.
Trippy
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Reply #153 on: October 21, 2008, 08:36:10 PM

Is there anything to be done about said drive once it is borked without shelling out to those expensive data recovery centers?  I don't think so, but it's been about 5 years since I was in the IT field and pickings were slim then on options.
If it's a mechanical problem you are basically boned without taking the platters out and putting them into another working casing. If it's a bad sector problem there are utilities that may be able to read some of stuff off of the drive.
 
Quote
Is there something about WD that means they have higher failures?
No.
Soln
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the opportunity for evil is just delicious


Reply #154 on: October 21, 2008, 10:00:39 PM

Thanks Trippy, it was Windows Defender I was looking at.  Sorry Selby.
Selby
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Reply #155 on: October 22, 2008, 05:34:09 AM

Quote
Is there something about WD that means they have higher failures?
No.
I figured not, but listening to people bitch about one brand or another (especially some of the lesser known names) made me wonder the question.

Now the next question is does anyone know of a file renaming program\ID3 library for MP3s or do I get to rename all the files by hand?  All of the ID3 tag info is there, so if I can read that I can rename the file to whatever I want and restore a directory structure that is useful to me.
Trippy
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Reply #156 on: October 22, 2008, 05:51:45 AM

I use TagScanner for that sort of thing.
Lantyssa
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Reply #157 on: October 22, 2008, 09:56:04 AM

Thanks Trippy, it was Windows Defender I was looking at.  Sorry Selby.
There is always the standbys of Ad Aware and Spybot.  If I think a machine has something, I like to run several as each one seems to catch something the others don't.

Spybot also has TeaTimer for constant protection, but it's annoying as hell as every change in the registry pops up a dialog box.  Due to Microsoft's genius, there are a lot of legitimate changes happening there.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
Ratman_tf
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Reply #158 on: October 24, 2008, 05:58:21 AM



The symptoms:

After upgrading my hard drive to a SATA, my IDE DVD Rom tends to give up the ghost.
I used to think it was a hardware problem, either with the drive or the cable, but this is now happening to my external RW CD Rom when I try to plug it in.

The hard drive indicator light and the drive light will come on and stay on. This is a very helpful  swamp poop indicator as to when it's on the fritz.

Whenever I tinker with it, messing with drivers or system settings or the master/slave switch on the drive itself, it will go back to normal and play nice for a few hours or a few days. And then the problem comes back.

I'm very sadf, especially since most games have to be in the drive to play. *Insert snarky DRM complaint here*

I'm running good ole Windows XP SP3 on a M2A-VM motherboard system.



 "What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful."
-Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation.
Trippy
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Reply #159 on: October 24, 2008, 06:36:24 AM

If this is your time you've used your SATA controller check for MB BIOS updates, check for IRQ conflicts, and try some of the other SATA ports on the MB.
Engels
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Reply #160 on: October 24, 2008, 09:40:13 AM

Also, uninstall your IDE controllers and let them be reinstalled at reboot. I've seen this problem before with Dell Optiplexes that have both IDE and Sata. Under Device Manager, the entries you're looking for are the Primary IDE Channel, the Secondary IDE Channel, and the Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller.

I should get back to nature, too.  You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer.  Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached.  Buy a car with only two cup holders or something. -Signe

I LIKE being bounced around by Tonkors. - Lantyssa

Babies shooting themselves in the head is the state bird of West Virginia. - schild
Ookii
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Reply #161 on: October 24, 2008, 09:52:33 AM

Well one would assume your external CD-ROM drive is USB, so both your IDE and USB drives go on the fritz which you can identify by the HDD indicator light (the little led on your case I assume) being constantly on.

Have you tried to plug in your external while your internal was unplugged?  If you have then we know that it isn't anything to do with the internal drive.

Is your old IDE hard drive still hooked up?  If so you might be taxing your power supply which could cause all sorts of odd problems, though chances are small an extra drive pushed it over the edge.

Ratman_tf
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Reply #162 on: October 24, 2008, 12:08:53 PM

Updated BIOS today. No effect.

I couldn't... identify where the IRQ settings are. The CMOS set up screen shows PCI plug & play IRQ's, but the drives are startup stuff. Maybe I'm reading it wrong?

Have tried plug 4 and plug 1 for the SATA HD. No change.

Just now tried uninstalling the IDE controllers and letting them reinstall on bootup. Looked good until I put a CD in the drive... at which point the drive failed.

Old HD is no longer in the computer. (Did a mirror of the old drive's contents when I installed it, and then removed the old drive.)

Will try unplugging the internal and using the external only later. My last fix took two whole days to fail though. So it can take some time to troubleshoot.  Sad Panda

P.S. The drive lights symptom usually only happens after Windows loads up. I mean, when it's happening it never takes effect until Windows has loaded.  When the problem is happening, I can't even open the drive to insert/remove a disk. But I can open the disk tray before Windows loads.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2008, 12:20:52 PM by Ratman_tf »



 "What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful."
-Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation.
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Reply #163 on: October 24, 2008, 12:39:49 PM

Do you have the StarForce?

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Engels
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inflicts shingles.


Reply #164 on: October 24, 2008, 01:13:27 PM

Or a dvd copying program such as CloneDVD or some such? Sometimes those programs will do a CD/DVD device mount (virtual mount) that can lock up your drive.

Also, when the drive fails, do you get any exclamation marks or Xs in the Device Manager? Or does it just suddenly poof?

I should get back to nature, too.  You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer.  Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached.  Buy a car with only two cup holders or something. -Signe

I LIKE being bounced around by Tonkors. - Lantyssa

Babies shooting themselves in the head is the state bird of West Virginia. - schild
Ratman_tf
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Reply #165 on: October 24, 2008, 01:47:39 PM

Or a dvd copying program such as CloneDVD or some such? Sometimes those programs will do a CD/DVD device mount (virtual mount) that can lock up your drive.

Also, when the drive fails, do you get any exclamation marks or Xs in the Device Manager? Or does it just suddenly poof?

Poof. It disappears from the drive manager altogether.

I don't think I have any DRM like Starforce. And I don't have any DvD copying stuff.

I did do another pass with uninstalling the IDE controller. Took both the ATI IDE controller and the dual channel controller out, and then rebooted. It's being good again (played some Guitar Hero 3) will give it a while and see if the problem returns.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2008, 01:51:36 PM by Ratman_tf »



 "What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful."
-Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation.
Yegolev
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Reply #166 on: October 24, 2008, 01:49:59 PM

I figured if you installed something on purpose, you'd have checked it out, like Daemon Tools.  I'm left thinking it must be malware.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Trippy
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Posts: 23611


Reply #167 on: October 24, 2008, 04:57:14 PM

Updated BIOS today. No effect.

I couldn't... identify where the IRQ settings are. The CMOS set up screen shows PCI plug & play IRQ's, but the drives are startup stuff. Maybe I'm reading it wrong?
First check the device manager for the drive controllers and look at their resources. Easy way is to select View -> Resources by Type -> IRQ. Your ATA controllers should all be on separate IRQs and they also shouldn't overlap with your USB controllers. If there is a conflict there you'll have to fiddle with your BIOS to turn off auto-assignment of IRQs and manually reassign them.
Ratman_tf
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Reply #168 on: October 25, 2008, 04:01:49 AM

Updated BIOS today. No effect.

I couldn't... identify where the IRQ settings are. The CMOS set up screen shows PCI plug & play IRQ's, but the drives are startup stuff. Maybe I'm reading it wrong?
First check the device manager for the drive controllers and look at their resources. Easy way is to select View -> Resources by Type -> IRQ. Your ATA controllers should all be on separate IRQs and they also shouldn't overlap with your USB controllers. If there is a conflict there you'll have to fiddle with your BIOS to turn off auto-assignment of IRQs and manually reassign them.


Got another failure tonight.

Pictures!



I see the primary and secondary IDE channels on IRQs 14 and 15, yes?
I see a lot of the USB host controller sharing IRQs all over the place. ?

One other thing I did is get a new case. It has two USB ports on the front, in addition to the USB ports on the motherboard. I connected the front ports up for game controllers.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2008, 04:06:25 AM by Ratman_tf »



 "What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful."
-Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation.
Trippy
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Posts: 23611


Reply #169 on: October 25, 2008, 04:19:34 AM

I'm not familiar with the AMD 690G chipset but it looks like your computer thinks your SATA ports are acting as standard IDE. I.e. the "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" entry does not look right and your SATA drive is probably being accessed in legacy parallel IDE mode and that may be causing your problem.

See here for any example (not saying this solution will work for you but this is an indication of the problem):

http://gammu.org/wiki/index.php?title=HydePark:Nx6325#SATA
Ratman_tf
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Reply #170 on: October 25, 2008, 09:31:38 AM

The plot sickens.

I did some googling on Trippy's last post. Most likely I installed the drive in IDE mode. I found a post on a tech board about converting it over to AHCI mode.

Quote
It turned out to be straight forward.
 The mainboard (ASUS M2A-VM) comes with a nice driver cd.
You can even boot it. It starts FreeDOS and creates the driver floppy for you.
 In the BIOS I chose AHCI over the default IDE compatibility mode and then booted the Windows XP Home cd.
 It had no issue with the SATA burner.
 I hit F6 and it went for the AHCI/RAID drivers on the floppy.
 No problem whatsoever.

I'm hoping I can create the driver floppies (need to throw a floppy drive in the computer, I haven't needed one until now) change the hard drive to AHCI mode and do a repair install of Windows XP and not have to do a clean install.

Thoughts?



 "What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful."
-Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation.
Trippy
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Reply #171 on: October 25, 2008, 09:35:25 AM

Sure.
Engels
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Reply #172 on: October 25, 2008, 09:37:53 AM

Question for Trippy:

Is the ISA designation left over from back in the day when we had ISA slots, or does it stand for something else now? Also, how would one go about changing that? Do you manually assign a PCI IRQ to the device in question, or can you do so via Windows managed IRQ assignment? I mean, I know its possible to switch the assignment from automatic (the defualt) to manual, and monkey around with the devices IRQ numbers, but which is the better way?

Ratman, I think you may be able to change how Windows identifies your hard drives by upgrading the drivers for them from IDE to AHCI via a reinstallation of HD's drivers. To quote Trippy's link:

Quote

According to some people (for example http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1067638):

While the (HDD) drive itself is a SATA drive it is being accessed using legacy PATA mode.
 
You can change the device "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" into "ATI 4379 Serial ATA Controller" in Windows (32Bit) by changing the driver. 3 steps needed:

1. download Silicon Image Driver: http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/3x12-x86-1.3.68.2-logo.zip

2. edit SI3112.inf: replace the subsys "43791002" with "30B0103C" (Line 95,100,401)

3. update the device "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" (PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4379&SUBSYS_30B0103C&REV_80) with the modified driver, "ATI 4379 Serial ATA Controller" should be shown now as compatible

(successfully tested an working on Vista32 Business.)



Note, this is for a specific ACHI controller, namely the one from Silicon Image, but the drivers for your particular controller should be out there too. However, it may be more complicated, since it seems that there needs to be some modification for the .inf file, and who knows what it would be for your particular device.

I just tend to shy away from rebuilding the OS. It leaves a lot of orphaned registry entries that clog systems, and you have to re-register windows update once or twice to get all your patches up to snuff. You will also have to reinstall IE7 if you're using an install disk that doesn't include it.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2008, 09:40:57 AM by Engels »

I should get back to nature, too.  You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer.  Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached.  Buy a car with only two cup holders or something. -Signe

I LIKE being bounced around by Tonkors. - Lantyssa

Babies shooting themselves in the head is the state bird of West Virginia. - schild
Trippy
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Posts: 23611


Reply #173 on: October 25, 2008, 09:49:07 AM

Question for Trippy:

Is the ISA designation left over from back in the day when we had ISA slots, or does it stand for something else now?
The former. It's mostly legacy now and there's an ISA IRQ<->PCI IRQ handler within the PCI controller that handles converting between ISA-style interrupts and PCI ones.

Quote
Also, how would one go about changing that? Do you manually assign a PCI IRQ to the device in question, or can you do so via Windows managed IRQ assignment? I mean, I know its possible to switch the assignment from automatic (the defualt) to manual, and monkey around with the devices IRQ numbers, but which is the better way?:
Don't know which is the "better" way. If I had to do it I would muck with the BIOS first, but that's just me.
Ratman_tf
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Reply #174 on: October 25, 2008, 09:52:32 AM

Note, this is for a specific ACHI controller, namely the one from Silicon Image, but the drivers for your particular controller should be out there too. However, it may be more complicated, since it seems that there needs to be some modification for the .inf file, and who knows what it would be for your particular device.

I just tend to shy away from rebuilding the OS. It leaves a lot of orphaned registry entries that clog systems, and you have to re-register windows update once or twice to get all your patches up to snuff. You will also have to reinstall IE7 if you're using an install disk that doesn't include it.


Yep. That's why I posted for opinions before doing it. I'm in no huge hurry, so I'll poke around some more and see if I can just find the driver tweakage info somewhere.

*Edit to add*

I got the AHCI drivers from the CD (had to use Slyfeind's computer to access the CD, grrr.) ahcix86
Had no luck finding anyone who's tweaked the drivers for a hot swap to AHCI mode though.

Man. I'd settle for IDE emulation mode, if it weren't for the conflict problem.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2008, 11:25:51 AM by Ratman_tf »



 "What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful."
-Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation.
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