Avgas in France has reached $7.50/gal !

"Montblack" writes:

I've seen kids playing hockey, rollerblade-hockey, Frisbee golf, tennis,
volleyball, swimming, biking and still no sight of any pickup games of
soccer.

I can't remember the last time I saw kids ( 14 yo) playing pick up anything.
Seriously. I assume they're exhausted from all the organized activities.

Dan.

--
"Ad Astra Per Alia Porci" PGP Key Id:0x507D93DF

I can't remember the last time I saw kids ( 14 yo) playing pick up
anything.
Seriously. I assume they're exhausted from all the organized activities.

Sadly, that's very true. I was just talking about this with my 14 year old
son tonight, while we were playing (American) football (just catch, really)
out in the back yard.

When I was a kid, at the height of the baby boom, my neighborhood was FULL
of kids my age. I mean, it was a riot every night, with kids running wild
every which way. We played every possible sport, and always had full-sized
teams.

Now, the nearest kid my son's age lives several blocks away. I really feel
for the kid, cuz there just isn't any opportunity for him to play a pick-up
game of ANYTHING -- soccer, baseball, football, it doesn't matter.

Yet another reason kids are addicted to video games -- they can be played
alone. It's sad.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article KwZ9e.6991$c24.4078@attbi_s72, Jay Honeck wrote:
Now, the nearest kid my son's age lives several blocks away. I really feel
for the kid, cuz there just isn't any opportunity for him to play a pick-up
game of ANYTHING -- soccer, baseball, football, it doesn't matter.

Move to the city - then there'll be plenty of nearby kids. That will
always be a problem in a rural area. If you live in high-density housing
in a large city, there will always be random outdoor activities for
groups of kids.

Yet another reason kids are addicted to video games -- they can be played
alone. It's sad.

I play video games probably far too often - but seldom alone. We have
this 'intarweb' thingy that allows us to play with friends, and even
form communities, and have meetups with people not just in the same
city, but in different countries. My regular gaming friends live in
England, Finland, Germany and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, ping
times are too bad to the US, I'd like to be able to play games with
friends over there.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Move to the city - then there'll be plenty of nearby kids. That will
always be a problem in a rural area. If you live in high-density housing
in a large city, there will always be random outdoor activities for
groups of kids.

We live in a city of 65,000, in a metropolitan area of over 120,000.

True, it's not "high density housing" -- something most of us fight all of
our lives to escape, at least in the Midwest. Having worked for the
Chicago Tribune, there is no way I would live in a big city -- not for all
the money in the world.

My regular gaming friends live in
England, Finland, Germany and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, ping
times are too bad to the US, I'd like to be able to play games with
friends over there.

For those of us past 45, can you please explain what that phrase means?
What's a "ping time"?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article SK5ae.8698$NU4.1859@attbi_s22, Jay Honeck wrote:
My regular gaming friends live in
England, Finland, Germany and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, ping
times are too bad to the US, I'd like to be able to play games with
friends over there.

For those of us past 45, can you please explain what that phrase means?
What's a "ping time"?

Think of a submarine's SONAR. It goes 'ping'. The ping bounces off
another submarine, and back to a transducer on the submarine that did
the pinging. You can measure your distance to the other sub by measuring
this time. The ping time is the round-trip time it took for the
ping to go from your sub, be reflected off the other sub, and get back
to your sub. Or think of how DME measures distances - by sending a
signal to the DME station, which then returns it, and then the box in
your panel works out the distance to the station from the round trip
time.

On the internet, your ping time is how long the round trip is from your
computer to a remote computer. On a LAN, ping times are measured in
fractions of milliseconds. On the internet, on hosts within a few
hundred miles, ping times will be in tens of milliseconds. On the
internet, to a host that's thousands of miles away, the ping time will
be in hundreds of milliseconds. Over a satellite link, ping times may be
in excess of a second. (Ever seen those live satellite linkups on TV
where there's quite an obvious pause from when the interviewer finishes
asking the question, to when the interviewee starts responding?)

On the internet, ping time (or latency) is affected by many factors,
such as how full your internet pipe is, what the transfer speed of the
internet pipe is, how big the packet is you send etc. It is also
affected by the speed of light through fibreoptics and the number of
routers and repeaters the data must pass through. Therefore, ping times
between Europe and the US - although more than adequate for web
browsing, chatting on IRC etc. are often not good enough for fast-paced
action games.

To play a highly interactive 3D game, which simulates some real world
situation, having a low ping time is important, because the actions of
the different players must be reasonably synchronized for the game to
make sense. For some online games, ping time is less important - think
of a turn-based strategy game.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Jay Honeck wrote:




We live in a city of 65,000, in a metropolitan area of over 120,000.

Ahem...120,000 is not now and never will be a "metro area".

"Newps" wrote

Ahem...120,000 is not now and never will be a "metro area".

Think again. In Iowa, and other Midwest and plains states, that is a
downright huge metro area. Such as are the wide open spaces in the US.
--
Jim in NC

"Morgans" wrote in message
...

"Newps" wrote

Ahem...120,000 is not now and never will be a "metro area".

Think again. In Iowa, and other Midwest and plains states, that is a
downright huge metro area. Such as are the wide open spaces in the US.
--
The feds consider a "Metro Area" to be 1 million population or more and have
since the 60's I think.

Morgans wrote:

"Newps" wrote


Ahem...120,000 is not now and never will be a "metro area".


Think again. In Iowa, and other Midwest and plains states, that is a
downright huge metro area. Such as are the wide open spaces in the US.

Ah, no. My town is 100,000 and no way, no how is this a metro area.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:SK5ae.8698$NU4.1859@attbi_s22...
Move to the city - then there'll be plenty of nearby kids. That will
always be a problem in a rural area. If you live in high-density housing
in a large city, there will always be random outdoor activities for
groups of kids.

We live in a city of 65,000, in a metropolitan area of over 120,000.


Cute expression - 65,000 equals a city. That's a town, not much more than a
village.

120,000 a metropolitan area - that's just a big town.

What does it take to become a city in the US?