Wyrd of Parker J. Torrence

If you did not know the VA gave in and Wiccans can now get Grave Markers with the Pentacle on it…

Circle Sanctuary is seeking help to get the word out Read the rest of this entry »

Well around 5pm on April 19th I called the owner of Wolfhome to attempt to clear up the banning mess. He was surprisingly pleasant considering I was calling him at his home.

(the following is from my phone call and an email exchange between the owner and my wife)

At the bottom of the mess, one of my youngest daughter’s friends got banned back on the 8th of April. As Wolfhome uses a method of IP address bans. It banned everyone using our ISP. My daughter submitted a problem ticket asking why she had been banned (she in fact had not yet been banned, her friend who uses the same ISP that we do, had been but the IP address ban effected us too). A few days latter she submitted 3 more problem tickets asking the same question. That is when she did get banned. I have no idea as to how many other problem tickets Wolfhome got from other users of our ISP, but it seems it was over a dozen.

For all practical purposes the ban has been lifted from the 22+ users it had affected (the 22 usernames list I had received via my middle daughter’s boyfriend, was in fact not a complete list of all effected by the ban).

My closing thoughts on this matter: In a day and age with Internet cafes, wifi connected colleges and Proxy Servers, why would someone still be using IP address bans? A MAC address ban would take it to the level of the computer being used regardless of the IP address being accessed by that computer. It seems more logical, and if it had been being used, this whole mess from my point of view would of never taken place in the first place.

Up until a few days ago I had never heard of Wolfhome. So what is Woldhome? It seems it is a flash based comic style chat room(s).

Like many families, in my house hold we have more people then computers, so we use the time share system. The children are on the computers, or the adults are on the computers. So I had noticed that my children were visiting a new website where animated wolves talked to each other. They seemed to be having fun, and they know the rules about what they can and can not say in chat rooms, and my 18 year old daughter was in the rooms with them most of the time so I did not give it much thought.

Tuesday night my son asked to get on the computer, a few minutes latter I heard him yelling at his sister (not the 18 year old) about something. So it was Dad time … after I got him calmed down I learned that he was Banned from Wolfhome. Well to be more exact “his sister had got banned” and because of that he was also banned.

My wife who had heard of Wolfhome before, went and joined only to find that before ever entering a chat room and having the chance to offend anyone, she was also banned!

In all it seems that there are 22 usernames banned, only of which 8 can be traced back to my household. Only 2 of those usernames belong to my youngest daughter.

While I have no desire to go into why my youngest daughter got banned in the first place, I find it incomprehensible that someone at Wolfhome deemed it prudent to “perm ban” everyone in our small Wyoming town that uses the same ISP.

Being a small town using a local ISP, our ISP tech finds it in his best interest to run most of his subscribers to the Internet using the same IP address. I have lived other places where every time you log in you get a different IP address. I’m not a tech, I’m sure that there are good and bad points to both systems. That Wolfhome chose to ban the IP address and in effect 22 of their users I would think as one of the bad points. It also does not speak well of the Admin at Wolfhome for the short sightedness.

I often question the wisdom of the marketing staff of the Scifi channel. It is almost like they do not know what to do when they have a show that is popular.

Once upon a time, my wife and I discovered SciFi Fridays and we would make arrangements for the children to be someplace else so that we could enjoy a few hours of quality time watching such shows as Farscape. Well Farscape lasted for three seasons. Then we saw the death of Sliders, not that the show had not jumped the shark long before SciFi got their hands on it.

The SciFi channel got StarGate SG-1 and created the spin-off Stargate Atlantis. Both great shows on FRIDAY NIGHT.

Then they created Battlestar Galactica, and life was good!

That was until 2007 when someone at the SciFi channel had a major brain fart! Read the rest of this entry »

(The following is part of an email sent out by Selena of Circle Sanctuary for the “Order of the Pentacle” )

[Quote]

VA PROPOSED RULES: We also now have directions for reviewing and sharing
concerns about the problems with the VA’s proposed new regulations for
additions to the VA’s list of emblems of belief that can be included on the
memorial markers, headstones, and plaques it provides to honor deceased
veterans.

See instructions:
http://www.circlesanctuary.org/liberty/veteranpentacle/VARuleComment.htm

We have a variety of concerns about these proposed procedures, including
(1) there is still no requirement that the VA make any decision on an emblem
of belief application, (2) there are no time limits for decision making on
applications, and (3) these procedures contain vague wording that seems to
permit the VA to continue to pick and choose which religions to accommodate
and which symbols to approve. Essentially, if these new procedures are
adopted, the Pentacle under these new rules could still be kept in limbo,
and maybe even rejected should a VA official deem our symbol not appropriate
for state and federal veteran cemeteries.

We think it is important that Wiccan and other Pagan veterans and those
presently serving in the military give input about these new procedures.

You do not need to disclose your religious orientation in contributing
comments. However, it would be helpful for you to state that you have had
past/present military service. The deadline for comments is March 20, 2007.

[Un-Quote]