Hail Thee,

Man, I am here for a full 3 days and my name appears in a subject line. I have been accused of being too verbose before, so that probably still holds true. There is another place in another world (uo.stratics.com for Ultima Online) where I even babbled my way into Moderatorhood :-)

> I presume that this was a friendly little poke at the expense of our beloved *cough* Stephen Keller.

It is ? *lol* At that point I didnt even know that such a poster existed on this forum :-) He certainly wasnt on the first page of postings, and that was the only page i looked at.

> Possibly a curious thing for a presumed newbie to say, n'est-ce pas ?

Oh, I am not a newbie to forums as such. Not in the long run. Years ago I haunted Usenet, that was even before my Ultima Online time. We are talking '97 to '99 here. My most favourite newsgroup was "comp.lang.c". I have been told that it is a place for freaks ... suits me :-) At one point I typed my name into the "DejaNews" (doesn't exist anymore) search engine and selected to search all archives .... WOW.

> As well, there are other indications of StephAn's curiously non-teutonic parlance.

That fact that at this point I have to look up parlance in my dictionary should tell you something, though ..... *gets his Langenscheidt* Ok, I probably could have guessed that :)

> Or perhaps he's simply picked up lotsa American-type humour by osmosis...

IMHO thats what RinkWorks does to you, or to your brain. Well my brain at least. I love the humor on Rinks !

> I hope Stephan does not mind a more detailed analysis of his Rinkpresence,

Not at all :-)

> Our new Rinkfriend Stephan Wilms, if he is indeed posting from somewhere near Wiesbaden (close to Frankfurt) in Germany,
> happens to be in a location much closer to the Belgian border than, say, if he were posting from München.

Much much closer than that. You posted this too early, as I confessed to living in Aachen just this morning. When I drive from Aachen to Monschau (roughly 25 km) I not only pass at least 2 Belgium Fries Stations, one of them called "Belgo Frits", the road also runs through Belgium terretory for about 1 km.

> Maybe people do indeed call them "Belgian Fries" in that part of Deutschland,

*grins*
They call them "Belgische Fritten", though.

> On the other hand, Stephan's service provider appears to be a PSInet connection, registered in Vermont, and routed through Toronto, Canada.

Dang, it does ? Man, that is one crazy route to take. The company I work for is PSI net customer. I do wonder what way the data will take in the future, though. Last I heard is that PSInet in USA went broke.

> Bottom line: Stephan Wilm's cover story ostensibly holds up to scrutiny, more or less.

Thank you ... more or less.

> However his mode of address and several other aspects scream "Stephen Keller,"

Hmmm, is this good or bad ?

> I know I've been wrong before as to other poster's identities.

Ahhh, that might explain a lot :)

> I am now dying with curiosity.

*smiles*
Are identities really that fascinating ? I never saw the point in attempting to hide mine.

Sorry for babbling this much, BTW :-)