Thanks!  Those of us concerned about him appreciate these posts.  They are reassuring.

Thanks, Tina!  Every little bit of information helps.

Jeremy

I definitely would like to have that roadrunner.  Also, I can't remember but did you ever have any pigeons?  That would be a nice bird to have, if you do.

Thanks, Lyne.  For your FYI, the link below for the bears is the link for the chickens.  You need to change the 8 to 9 to get us to the bears.  

Jeremy

I also want to say that I think the moderators have a complex and difficult task and that it is not always easy or sometimes even possible to make a decision that will please everybody--especially, as I have pointed out above--that the guidelines even reduced to a few simple sentences will result in many different interpretations by the individual artists (and moderators!) based upon our personalities and experiences.   In the end, though, if there are complaints, a decision has to be made for the greater good.   More often than not, for the artist in question it isn't going to go their way.   The site can be closed down, if it violates any local, state, or federal law; it can be subject to fines and lawsuits.  It's the reality that Renderosity has to live with--and each of us.  There is freedom of expression here at Renderosity, but there is also license of expression.  What is the difference?  Freedom of expression ends at the other person's face; license of expression doesn't.   I think the moderators mostly do a good and reasonable job of policing the occasional license of expression and allowing us the freedom of expression in our works.  Thanks, Moderators!
 

Jeremy

I think what bothers me is that there is some real inconsistency in following those guidelines--inconsistency on the part of we artists in making our thumbnails and on the part of the moderators in enforcing the guidelines.  I see extremely revealing thumbnails all the time that nobody pays any attention to, then I see stuff like the last post of Dave's which had the nudity thumbnail instead of a smaller render. 

And when do we consider it nudity?  To me, nudity means naked or partly naked.    A partly naked person would be one that showed the genitals of either sex or their bare butts, or just the upper naked torso of a woman.  A woman wearing a bikini would not need a nudity designation.   If those guidelines require nudity labels on people who are bulging out of their clothing, then 90% of all renders at Rendo with human figures in them would have to be (or should be) posted with a nudity warning. 

If Dave's last render was pulled because of his protest, that is wrong.  The moderators have every right to pull any render they feel is unsuitable, but We artists have a right to protest with our artistic skills if we feel the decision is wrong or unjust or just arbitrary.  I don't think Dave's artistic protest warrants removal.
 

Jeremy Miller 

Yes, I have just such a shop.  They are the ones who replaced the drives.  I'll take it to them.  I'm seeing a lot of other things happening, too, that strongly leads me to believe it is the motherboard.   Thanks everybody for your help on this.  Much appreciated.  I'll keep this thread open so I can let you know if that was the problem.
 

Jeremy

Actually, my machine is a custom-made 64-bit machine that is about three years old.  I had it when most folks didn't have a 64-bitter.  Irony is that nobody until the past year made a 64-bit graphics program that I could afford.  Now we have Poser 7 Pro something or other, but I won't buy it because I'd have to use Vista and although some folks have had little problem with Vista, I know so many more  who have.   I hope what you say about Windows 7 is true.   I just hate these suites of programs that we have today.  For example, you used to be able to get WordPerfect or Word by itself.  Now, you can't get except if you take on about ten other memory guzzling programs that you'll never need.  Same with all the security programs we have to have.  They not only cost us money, they cost us time, and they often use up most of our RAM.  Sometimes, I wonder if the virus wouldn't be the lesser of the two evils. 
 

Jeremy

Okay.  Thanks everybody.  I'll have to check this out with my computer man. 
 

Jeremy

I use XP home edition.  I don't use Vista (and don't intend to).
 

All I know is there was a very loud Pop! and they were gone.  I do have surge protection, etc.  The drives that blew have been replaced.
 

J.

I'm afraid that my technical computer knowledge is just enough to be very dangerous!. (sigh/grin)   It would not be a very good idea for me to go messing with the insides of my computer.   I've got a program that will tell what is on my computer.  Would it help if I posted that?
 

J.

Can you elaborate as to what a SATA connector is? 
 

J.

Thank you for such fast response!  The thing is, I replaced both drives.  The original drives were operating as one drive, rather than two.  I don't know if that is RAID or not.  Sorry.   I'm willing to reformat,  but the thing is that it was reformated before I reinstalled on the new drives.  I'm dubious that another reformat would help at this point.  I appreciate your suggestion and will take it under serious advisement.  I hope you can understand my hesitation to do so, having just got my drives finally reinstalled over a couple of months.  (I have a lot of stuff and locating the  backups was a real pain and major investment in time.)  Think I'll wait and see if anybody else has some other alteratives before I act on your advise (which makes a lot of sense to me.)
 

Jeremy

A method that I use to transfer Poser files to Bryce is to save the figure or scene as a wavefront .obj file in a separate folder, appropriately labeled.  In that folder, I also place a copy of all the the texture files needed for the figure, its clothing, etc.  Then I go to Bryce and import the .obj.  It will normally transmit everything with the textures included in the Bryce image.  The only problem is that .obj files don't tranfer alpha or transparencies, so I usually have to ungroup the figure and import the tran files into Bryce via "Leo"  and save as a Bryce material file.  These means that eyelashes, brows, and hair have to be turned into Bryce mat. files; also any clothing transparencies.  This method is a bit cumbersome, but it works in all versions of Bryce and Poser in any combination you wish.   I don't especially like DS and still do it this way despite bridges and all that other stuff.
 

Jeremy

Miss Nancy, you don't have to leave a rating in order to make a comment on someone's work.  You can do one or the other, or both.