Hi Jean, just saw this one (sorry I was late).

Both Joel & I are role-players, which probably doens't mean alot to you..
Role Playing is like a game of "pretend", and playing things like "cops and
robbers" or "doctors and nurses" or "mummies and daddies", which kids games,
are also very simple role-playing games where they pretend to be different
peole in a different 'setting' or 'world'. One kid plays a doctor, another
kid plays a nurse,a third might be a patient etc etc, and the imaginary
world is a hospital.

The grown-up version is a bit more complicated, but the principle is the
same. A bunch of us get together to play "pretend", although our pretend
worlds are not usually hospitals but often something similar to the world of
Tolkien, and our characters that we play aren't doctors or nures, but
dwarves or elves. And we have to go on an "adventure" together. Part of the
fun is that magic is an accepted part of these imaginary worlds, and some of
the characters in these games are very good at casting spells. One name for
the type of character that is very good at casting spells is "Mage".

A very popular type of Mage is a *Chaos Mage*, a very powerful spellcaster
that answers only to him (or her) self. Its a well known type of character
in role-playing circles. WE took Cary to a roleplaying convention when he
was about 6 months old, knowling full well that we wouldn't be able to play
any of the games there, but we went to see old friends and check out the
stores they have at these conventions. Someone asked us what game we were
going to play, and when we explained we couldn't really play because Cary
was with us, the person said "Oh don't worry, he'd make a great Chaos Mage"
and it stuck.

Especially since, wherever he goes, he brings chaos with him, just like
magic......

Yowie

Hmmm... interesting. The first time I tried it timed out before I
accessed the site (not a good sign lol!) The second time it connected
and apparantly I'm running at 2 megabits per second, which is a hair
below average for cable in Florida. Darn I clicked on the 'explain
results' and it won't go back to the previous screen. Anyway, not too
shabby :)

~Karen aka Kajikit
Crafts, cats, and chocolate - the three essentials of life
http://www.kajikitscorner.com
*remove 'nospam' to reply

For some reason mine came back
3303.6 kbps. Does that mean 3.3 mbps??
(Stupid question, maybe, but necessary. Adding
2+2 is difficult for math idiots. Metric stuff
freezes me up completely!)

Home was about 3.4 mbps, which was rated as "not bad" for Australia, and
work was a measly 197.1 kbps, rated as "mediocre". Work is a T1 connection,
I'd assume, but during business hours theres often a huge load on it, so it
can get horrendously slow sometimes. Weekends and after hours, though, its
like greased lightening!

Actually, I was happy enough with dial-up, I don't do much on the internet
except except mail and newsgroups, which are almost exclusively text based
and so dial-up wasn't an issue most of the time. My surfing is very limited,
and usually its the same old sites anyway, so I have the cache of images
already on my HD, and didn't take *that* long to load. It frustrated the
life out of Joel, though, because it meant he couldn't on-line game or
download movies, songs etc etc. I just hope I don't become an Xbox *and* PC
widow because of this!

Yowie

4.9 mbps. Woohoo!

Cool! I get 824 kbps.

Gee, now I'm getting Jealous 'shadduppa your faces'
just taking the mickey.   Jean.P.

As I recall, the acronym stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber
Line.  Asymmetric means that the speed with which you can send out
information is less than the speed at which you can receive
information.  Businesses usually use the more expensive symmetric
connections, meaning that you can send information fast as well as
receive it fast.