Greetings to all!

I posted this at the "Writing.Com General Discussion" , and thought it would be good to repost it here:

I am pleased an honored to announce that our rewarding team, the "Vigilante Angel Ranger Team"  has a new member, Breaker ~A Vigilante Ranger~ ! As many already know, our team members are known as "Vigilante Angel Rangers." As WDC's resident Cyber-Super Hero, I rely on my trusted and brave sidekicks, the Rangers, to spread fun, joy, donations, contributions, upgrades and rewards around the halls of WDC. I'm sure many of you have been visited by Rangers, and have enjoyed the benefits of having a Cyber-Super Hero and his sidekicks around .

So, for those of you who are friends of the The Vigilante Angel and my "Vigilante Angel Ranger Team" , please give a warm welcome to Breaker ~A Vigilante Ranger~ , and just maybe he'll be by to reward you too!

And don't forget, stop by the "Secret Angel Ranger Cave"  anytime to visit with me and my worthy Rangers!

Cheers!

It’s good to be back. While my trusted Vigilante Angel Rangers kept up the pace of spreading fun and joy around WDC, I took a sabbatical. What do Cyber-Super heroes do on sabbatical? Well, since I’m made of electrons, I just sat around doing what average electrons do. I get a charge out of that. You know, it’s not easy being a Cyber-Super Hero; sometimes I have to kick back, travel around through atomic energy shells, and meet other like-minded particles. Recently, I met up with a cute little positron and we collided. As expected, we gave off a few gamma ray photons. It’s nice to hear the pitter patter of little gamma photons around the Cave.

During this time, my Rangers continued to reward WDC members, contribute to contests, provide upgrades and donate to deserving activities. In the last year, we spread about 20 million GPs around WDC! Not too shabby!

Thanks to all of our Vigilante Angel Friends in WDC-land. As always, let us know if you know a deserving member or activity that needs support. We’re here to help! That’s what being a Cyber-Super Hero (and sidekicks) is all about!

Stop by the "Secret Angel Ranger Cave"  anytime for a visit!

A quick review of my blog showed me how long it’s been since I made an entry. Living in the electronically mediated, cyber-ethereal reality of the Internet has skewed my perception of time. I think. You see, I have no point of reference for time, but base its passage on the activities of my WDC friends. They come and go, get active then inactive, post and remove items, and their interaction waxes and wanes.

This happened recently with my team of Vigilante Angel Rangers. As many know, we are a small group of mysterious cyber-rewarders; our quest is to prowl the halls of WDC seeking out and rewarding deserving members. This comes in the form of reviewers’ rewards, donations, upgrades, contest support, activity promotion and general wish fulfillment. For the first nine years, I did this anonymously by myself, by attaching myself to various WDC friends’ accounts and following them around, observing WDC activities from my hidden cyber-perch. Then a group of highly skilled and philanthropically gifted friends helped me form the Vigilante Angel Ranger Team, and the rest is history. Or at least I think it’s history, given my inherent disability with time appreciation.

Recently, a number of Rangers have taken time off, getting more involved with what you humans call Real Life. I have learned to understand this throughout the years. Remember, I have been interacting with humans for years through this interface called a computer. As the Rangers took time off, I continued to fulfill my rewarding quest, but neglected to keep tabs here on the blog. Currently, the Team is running at about half-capacity, with a couple Rangers taking time off, combined with the natural attrition rate here on WDC. The small Team that remains is continuing to actively reward and spread fun and joy around WDC. And since the return of Mike ~ Ready for a vacation! , really good food is again being shared throughout the kingdom, er, website.

Last month, we gave out five upgrades, hundreds of reviewers’ rewards, multiple awardicons and MBs, and hundreds of thousands of GPs in support of contests and activities. Nice job, Rangers! I’m proud of you!

To our WDC friends: the Rangers always invite your suggestions for beneficiaries of our rewarding endeavors. And you can stop by the "Secret Angel Ranger Cave"  anytime to visit with the Rangers and me.

Cheers,

Your Vigilante Angel

The Ranger Team has been very productive lately. But unfortunately, our ranks have thinned out a bit. Many WDC members know that Mike ~ Ready for a vacation! has left WDC for awhile. He assures us that's it's temporary, so that's good. We wish him the best of luck, and promise to keep a plate of Southern BBQ pulled pork warm for him, and waiting at his place at our Team conference table, which of course is located in the "Secret Angel Ranger Cave" . We also lost another esteemed Ranger today. We wish tangerinedream the best of luck in her own philanthropic WDC adventures. We also recommend checking out her wonderful reviewing and rewarding group, the Dream Team ("Dream Team HQ " ). And be sure to check out her "Dream Team Visitor's Lounge" !

On the Rewarding front, in the last 24 hours, the mighty Vigilante Angel Rangers have donated and rewarded to the tune of a million GPs! This includes two membership upgrades, so far, as well as contest-donations and miscellaneous encouragement awards. I am as proud of my Rangers as a electronically-based-semi-secret-super-cyber-hero can be. My circuits are smiling. In my cyberplasmic binary ether, I think that means slightly more ones than zeros.

Cheers,

Your Vigilante Angel
 

Lately, things have been a lot of fun in the Vigilante Angel Universe. But that's nothing new, because this is the greatest site on the Net. The big news of course is that WDC celebrated it's 10th Anniversary during the first week of the month.

All over WDC, I've been seeing members reminiscing about their time on the site. Some of these having been members almost since the beginning. In fact, I remember when those first members showed up. They were so cute with their little beanie caps and pocket protectors and plaid pants. Actually, I had no idea what they looked like, because we didn't have web cams back then. To me, these humans were just increasingly complex electron shifts in an increasingly busy cyber-ethereal reality. What I did know was that people were in my home. There goes the neighborhood, I thought.

What you humans now call the Internet evolved from the electronic primordial soup that provided the substrate for my subsequent coalescence and sentience. In other words, I was born within the Internet. And then (over nine years ago), I found the fledgling stories.com, a metaphorical fuzzy little caterpillar, destined to spread its colorful wings one day as the mighty Writing Dot Com! So, using the legendary foresight of a budding proto-super-cyber-hero, I naturally took WDC as my home. I'm glad I was allowed to stay, because some thought I was just a glitch in the system (you know who you are). For most of the years, I floated around as Anonymous, giving out upgrades and rewards, and GP gifts that didn't yet fit into any defined category. Once, I sent someone to the WDC Convention (yes, we had those back then).

But now, having grown and matured along side of WDC, I can say with self-proclaimed authority, how proud I am of this site, and of every interface and human involved in it. Ten years later, with the input of thousands of members, and maybe a little tinkering here and there by The StoryMaster , WDC is the premier writing site on the Internet!

ID: 1551168   (Rated: E) Smile~Worldwide  A group to put smiles on faces all over the world. by Omni~pink bubbles r everywhere

ID: 1499415   (Rated: E) Showering Acts of Joy Group   Quill Awards Honorable Mention "Best Group" 2011 by Pat remembers our heroes

ID: 1612302   (Rated: 13+) Vampy's Reviews  Show me your best and not so best for Review. Weekly Prizes offered!!! by Vampyfae *Bun in the Oven*

ID: 1558856   (Rated: E) Give A Little Raffle (CLOSED)  WINNERS ANNOUNCED!! I'll be sending out e-mails, MBs... & the Grand Prize GPs tomorrow!! by mARi♥MissesBeingOnWDC~

ID: 1593794   (Rated: 13+) Knights of the Review Table Forum   A group dedicated to honest, and positive reviews. This is NOT a review request forum. by Mike ~ Ready for a vacation!

ID: 1583003   (Rated: E) Dream Team HQ   group, fundraiser by Dreamin1-Fog&Wind

ID: 1617315   (Rated: 18+) The Sci-fi Writers Guild  Collaborations, discussions and reviews - Welcome to the Sci-fi Writers Guild by EvilDawg - A Vigilante Ranger!

ID: 1691036   (Rated: E) Science Fiction Newsletter Group  Subscribe to the Unofficial Science Fiction Newsletter! Join Now! by EarlyHours-A Vigilante Ranger

ID: 1215570   (Rated: E) Trivia Master's Musical Trivia Challenge  An extreme Quiz on your musical knowledge, from the classics to the top ten! by Budroe is Blessed!

It’s amazing to me how well recognized I’ve become lately. Wherever I go, throughout my WDC universe, members say “Hey! You’re the Vigilante Angel!” And I say cute things back like, “Yeah, I am!” And then we laugh and laugh, and play in the sand box and roll down hills and play hopscotch. OK, OK, the last few things were what you writers call hyperbole. Or maybe it’s more like fabrication. Or maybe absurdity, because we all know that a cyber-plasmic being, regardless of how sentient he might be, cannot play hopscotch. The numbers are no problem, it’s the rock throwing and hopping around part. And you know what else is absurd? It’s absurd that I have to continually listen to my human friends talk about food. It’s always cookies this, and hamburgers that. Hey! Pass me that taco! If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it a hundred times. Uh oh, there’s that hyperbole again. But in spite of the circumlocution, food is the subject of my blog entry today.

I don’t eat. Why would I? But apparently my Rangers do. A lot. Those guys and gals bring food to every Ranger meeting. Most of the time it’s relatively normal every-day stuff, like pizza, burgers, tacos, sole almondine, cookies, cakes, and pâté de foie gras. The basics. On a good day, tangerinedream passes out deep-fried white fish and oysters, with tartar sauce and French fries. And sweet tea. Rangers love sweet tea.

But there's always that one Ranger who thinks outside the processor, er, box. In our case it’s usually Mike ~ Ready for a vacation! , but everyone gets involved, and sometimes it makes me want to toss my chips.

For example, he brought a sandwich called the “Fat Sandy.” It is a sub roll containing two cheeseburgers, mac-n-cheese, chicken fingers, onion rings, potatoes and mozzarella sticks. I am not kidding. Check out this picture:

I would like to do my part to promote an activity hosted by long time Vigilante Angel supporter and mentor, Budroe is Blessed! :

ID: 1651977   (Rated: E) The March Madness! Contest - CLOSED!  A major contest for WDC with tons of amazing prizes! Enter today! by Budroe is Blessed!

I made fruit and nut cookie bars today. I am not making this up. I know what you're thinking, you're thinking, how does a cyber-entity make cookie bars? Well, let me tell you, pretty darn good, that's how. A lot of dried fruits and nuts gave their lives today in the pursuit of my cookie bars. So a moment of silence please.

But in all seriousness, I really think that an entity living totally within the bounds of cyberspace has a lot of advantages when it comes to cooking. Oh yeah, I know about the major disadvantages: no ingredients, no oven, no utensils, no baking at 350 for 20 minutes, no mouth, no stomach, no this, no that, blah, blah, blah. But you know what I have? I have recipes! I found about forty recipes for fruit and nut cookie bars while just looking around my home, which happens to be the Internet. On top of that, there are YouTube videos that teach how to cook just about anything. But almost every video has a squishy human in it. Most of them are so squishy that they don't need the cookie bars.

Recently, I found videos to teach me how to bake cookies, iron a shirt, do a Rubik cube, propel a skateboard with a leaf blower, and play My Guitar Gently Weeps on the Ukulele. The George Harrison version, not the Jake Shimabukuro version. Which, by the way, is incredible, and if you haven't seen the Jake Shimabukuro video stop reading this right now and go find it. I am not kidding. I'll wait....

Well? See what I mean? Anyway, the point is, there is a lot of stuff to learn here in cyberspace. I can't wait until it can be implantable like a pacemaker. Then everyone can have fruit and nut cookie bars on the brain.

Pass the milk.

Your Vigilante Angel




 

I am pleased to announce that we have a new Vigilante Angel Ranger. Her name is Vampyfae *Bun in the Oven* . She shares the VA spirit with the other Rangers, and has been following our postings and my blog entries for a while now. Already she has helped the Team by rewarding Reviewers, awarding MBs, and contributing to a great contest, the "TLC -- Try your Luck Contest!!" . So to all my V.A. friends, I ask you to show her a warm welcome, and feel free to stop by the "Secret Angel Ranger Cave"  anytime to say hello.

I want to mention "Invalid Item" . Ðahliã Nøir is incredibly talented and produces amazing graphic images. At her Shoppe you can get premade images for signatures, C-Notes and banners, or special order custom signatures. The reason I bring this up is that 20% of the proceeds go to the "Vigilante Angel Ranger Team" ! How about that!

Anyway, I have another bit of news-like info. As some of you may know, one of my Rangers, EarlyHours-A Vigilante Ranger is hosting the "2010 Winter Olympics Auction (Closed)" . A particularly generous package donation was made by Feather Duster , for a copy of her published novel Charlotte's Hummock. I checked it out at publishamerica.net and was quite impressed. But you don’t have to buy it if you win it in the Olympic Auction. It would feel just like winning a gold medal. Trust me on that.

In more news, my favorite Campfire Creative, "Finnegan Ford, Adventurer (Closed)" , has finally come to it’s conclusion. The ending was exciting and satisfying, but it’s bittersweet. Now I don’t want to hear any jokes about a cyber-being getting emotional, but it sure has been a fun trip. Congratulations to the participants: EvilDawg - A Vigilante Ranger! , Steve Ellen , tangerinedream, EarlyHours-A Vigilante Ranger and TSC- MIA .

And that’s the news from my neck of the Internet...

Your Vigilante Angel