Thanks for the birthday-greetings, folks! I may not get around to sending a personal "thank you" to everyone, so consider yourself thanked!

I owe a lot of people e-mails now (especially Ivano and RaMa, and all those who've requested a diploma - it's in the pipeline, guys!), and I intend to get around to all of y'all, either by replying through the journal (preferable), or privately (if it's something that we don't want shared with everyone out there). I mostly do the journal-updating-e-mail-answering while at the office - to cut down my online time at home - and there are a million other things that need doing at any given time, so I'm sorta booked solid. For the next century. And a half. But you've not been forgotten, though some of you (cough-Ivano-cough) may feel that I'm ignoring you (I'm not). There wouldn't be much point to this site if there weren't any readers. And there's a surprisingly large number of readers.

On that note, from now on, if you have questions related to The Longest Journey - technical, game-play, "will there be a sequel?"; stuff like that - you might want to post them on the new TLJ boards at forums.longestjourney.com. I'll check out the threads and maybe post once in a while if/when I have the time, and there will definitely be people (RaMa? Corvwyn? Wamingo?) there who can help you out. Feel free to send me e-mails about TLJ, but I won't be able to answer specific questions - it just takes up too much of my time.

*Sigh*. Need. More. Time!

Last but not least: Anarchy Online! Things have quieted down, so it's about time to stir up some solid controversy again! No, actually, there's an interesting issue I'd love to talk about in depth (though not right now): Cloning. From AO-Basher's 'Razishlyat':

I, for one, thought that FC's version of cloning fit in very well with AO. Omni-Tek's development with insurance scanning was hand-in-hand with attempts at cloning. While cloning may be cliche in sci-fi, so are lasers, space ships, and hyperspace [...] I haven't seen any MMORPG develop as reasonable and explainable system for not dying as Anarchy Online's.

This thread touched on the issues of cloning in AO, and whether or not this is an "acceptable" topic for the story to touch on, or whether it's too much of a cliché at this point. I'd like to talk about that. Some other time. Suffice it to say, clones and cloning have always been a cornerstone of AO's universe - it's how we explain "resurrection", for example - and it's something that will pop up again. And again. And ag- Yes. You've been warned.  ¶ 16:47