I just finished reading H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. (Spoilers...)   One mystery that remains at the end is who exactly was "number 118" (the powerful being summoned by Dr. Willet which ends up eliminating Orne and Hutchinson and instructing Willet to get rid of Curwen). I read the story in The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories which is fairly thoroughly commented by S. T. Joshi, however he doesn't address the identity of number 118 at all. I've also tried searching for it online for a bit, but all I'm finding is some inconclusive speculation.  It seems clear that Lovecraft didn't mean for the text to give it away, but what do we actually know about the identity of 118? Is there any evidence at all that Lovecraft had a specific person (or being) in mind who he just didn't reveal or that he kept it vague without reference to any specific person on purpose? And if it was or may have been a specific person, who is the most likely candidate? Evidence both from inside and outside the text is welcome.
In H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Dr. Willett      Enters Joseph Curwen's dungeon and resurrects a dead person identified as No. 118 by reciting the incantation of the Ascending Node over his salts.   Dr. Willett is told by      The resurrected Joseph Curwen, impersonating Charles Dexter Ward, who he secretly murdered,   that   " 'twas Number 118, and I conceive you would have shook had you looked it up in my list in t'other room."  No. 118 himself gives Dr. Willett a note asking the doctor to      kill Joseph Curwen.   It soon becomes clear that No. 118 is opposed to the nefarious dealings that have been transpiring and desirous of being an ally of Dr. Willett.  Who is No. 118?  Earlier in the story,      The grave of Ezra Weeden, a primary instigator in Joseph Curwen's initial downfall and the romantic rival of Curwen, is robbed. There doesn't seem to be any other mention of Weeden in the 20th century occurrences, so without a further connection the passage seems superfluous.   The shared goals of these two people seem to indicate that No. 118 may, in fact, have been that person, but the      Note given by No. 118 to Dr. Willett in eighth century Latin seems to indicate someone much older than Ezra Weeden.   It also occurred to me that No. 118 could be      The recently murdered Charles Dexter Ward himself. Ward's reference to killing Dr. Allen (who is actually an alias of Curwen) and dissolving his body with acid and No. 118's mention of doing the same to Curwen seem to support the idea, but that still doesn't explain the archaic note. Ward is described as writing in a somewhat modern style, at least as opposed to Curwen. It also doesn't explain why Curwen would want to murder Ward if he was going to resurrect him later anyway.
Windows 7 Audio Too Loud In Windows 7 (64-bit, Ultimate) the default audio output is extremely high. This has been an issue for a while but I was able to get around it as my previous headphones took more power to drive so it actually worked in my benefit.  However, now I have a set of really sensitive headphones and they're being over-powered. So much so that if I put it down at around 5% of total output it's bearable.  Is there a way I can sort of limit the system's volume so that it's incapable of going extremely loud and then have the rest of it just behave as normal?  Things I've tried:   Uninstalling and re-installing the audio device and drivers. Limiting each application individually. Searching for third-party software (so far nothing looks promising).   The first has no effect. The second works find but I have to do it for every application individually (which can be a pain) and many of them reset their volume every time they're launched, which makes it almost useless. Some even reset the volume while I'm playing a game!  So does anyone have any suggestions on how to make my volume reasonable?  The device is, apparently, a Cirrus Logic CS4206A (AB 24). The computer is an 2010 iMac. Determining the name of the VMware host of a VM guest - from the guest Is it possible to determine the name of the VMware host (ESX or ESXi) that my guest resides in, from within the guest itself?  I would expect this to be possible via VMware Tools, but am not sure where to look. Is there a way to make Runnable's run() throw an exception? What is a race condition? When writing multithreaded applications, one of the most common problems experienced is race conditions.    My questions to the community are:  What is the race condition? How do you detect them? How do you handle them? Finally, how do you prevent them from occurring? Attributive nouns vs. of-genitive On vs At with date and time This must be a simple question for a native speaker.  I know that we use "on" with dates: I'll see you on January 1st.  And we use "at" with times: I'll see you at 17:30.  But what preposition has to be used when we speak for date and time:  I'll see you on January 1st at 17:30. looks ok.  But what in this case: It happened on 2014-01-01 17:30.  Is "on" correct when we are specifying the date and the time?   The date-time comes as a ready text as 2014-01-01 17:30 and I cannot modify it. I can only put text before the date-time string or after it. How do I debug permissions? how to get user permissions for nfs share? Are there any rulesets or laws for Q or Q continuum? Anything, that would prevent them from doing... anything? Or at least limit them from doing something really bad?  In "" episode Q explains to  that they can do, have, get, become anything they want or appear anywhere they want, with just a snap of fingers. If that is true and if there are absolutely no borders or limits, they can't pass, then how can universe work in general? Or, how did it manage to exist so far?  I mean -- any Q could wipe out Borg, entire human population or even entire universe... with just a snap of fingers. What could prevent Q from doing that? Fresh Windows-10 Install A Windows-7 laptop was upgraded to Windows-10 during the Microsoft free upgrade period when they were nudging users to migrate away from 7 to 10.  The system is sluggish and crash prone: I would like create a fresh install with a new SSD from a Windows 10 install .iso burned to a USB drive.  Is it possible (and how can) the the license-key from the old drive be recovered and migrated to a fresh install?   If this is not the right question to ask, I would appreciate edits to the questions: thank you. Select 1px aliased border When I choose Select > Modify > Border and select a 1px border - the border I get is anti-aliased, hence if I fill my selection a 3px border is affected.  Is there a way to select a 1px aliased border? Strange black shading. Cannot fully light mesh. (Cycles) I am working on a few examples where my author said this is true if $h$ is continuous. Can someone explain why? Just because the integral is $0$ doesn't mean the integrand is zero as well.   $\int_{a}^b h^2=0\implies h=0$? Table of Contents with Chapter I'm attempting to modify the Table of Contents in my document. Currently, chapter one in my document is listed as   1   Introduction   What I would like to see is  Chapter 1   Introduction   Seems like an easy enough thing to ask for, but can't seem to find a good way to do this. Any feedback would be most appreciative. I often find myself adding a lot of \textsl{} around inside \emph{} or \textit{} blocks because I find italicized digits to look too "showoffy" and "baroque" and to hinder legibility (I'm using $$ when the number has a mathematical sense, but this situation occurs in less technical texts like CVs, and such.).  Could someone help me write a renewcommand to automate this, or better, a single low level command that makes \emph, \itshape, \textit and friends choose slanted over italic for numbers? I'm not too familiar with the low level latex font selection system nor with a way to detect digits from regular letters.  Edit: MWE of what I need and what I want to avoid  \documentclass{article} \begin{document} He thought: '\emph{Why 1234567890 apples?}' then he realized '\emph{ah yes, he has \textsl{1234567890} childs}' \end{document}   gives:   I find the italicized version (first one) of 2,3,4 and 7 to look especially bad. Here there is my proof (quite short and easy) of a rather straightforward result. The text of this question comes from a previous question of mine, where I ended up working on a wrong inequality. Here things are fixed. Still, I would like to know:  if it is sound, because absolute value always creates me some problem, and if there is a shorter (neater) way to get the result (maybe without using contradiction).    Proposition: $|d(x,y)-d(y,z)| \leq d(x,z)$. Proof: We proceed by cases.  Case 1: $d(x,y)-d(y,z) \geq 0$. Assume by contradiction that $d(x,y)-d(y,z) &gt; d(x,z)$. Hence, $d(x,y)&gt; d(y,z) + d(x,z)$, contradicting the triangle inequality.  Case 2: $d(x,y)-d(y,z) &lt; 0$. Assume by contradiction that $ - d(x,y) + d(y,z) &gt; d(x,z)$. Hence, $d(x,y) &lt; d(y,z) - d(x,z)$. By applying the triangle inequality, we have that $d(y,x) \geq d(y,z) + d(x,z)$, which is by symmetry equivalent to  $d(x,y) \geq d(y,z) + d(x,z)$, obtaining the desired contradiction. $\square$     As always, any feedback is welcome. Thank you for your time. If $M$ is an $R$-module and $I\subseteq\mathrm{Ann}(M)$ an ideal, then $M$ has a structure of $R/I$-module Let $M$ be an $R$-module and let $I$ be an ideal of $R$ such that $I$ is a subset of $\mathrm{Ann}(M)$. Define a product of an element of $R/I$ by an element of $M$ as follows: $$(r+I)\cdot m=rm.$$ (a) Show that this product is well defined. (b) Show that this product, together with the sum of elements of $M$, turns $M$ into an $R/I$-module.  My answer for (a): Let $r+I,s+I \in R/I$ such that $r+I=s+I$. Then $(r+I)m=(s+I)m$, for all $m \in M$. Then $rm=sm \implies r=s$  (since the inverse of $m$ is in $M$), so the product is well defined.  Is my answer to (a) correct?  How can I use Ann(M) to answer (b)? I'm calling a function in Python which I know may stall and force me to restart the script.   How do I call the function or what do I wrap it in so that if it takes longer than 5 seconds the script cancels it and does something else? How can I safely move a module to another folder? I created a module through Drupal Console, unfortunately it wasn't placed in a folder of its own, rather straight into /modules/custom. Before I noticed where it had gone, I enabled the module.   In Drupal 6/7, this was easy to fix - I could literally just put the files into the correct path, clear the cache (maybe rebuild the registry, it wasn't an exact science), and all was well.  The same isn't true for Drupal 8; I moved the files into a subfolder, rebuilt cache, and all requests tell me that Drupal is failing to include a required file. The particular file is a block class, and the path Drupal is trying to find it is where it used to be, not where I've moved it to.  The bit of code objecting is in Symfony's ApcClassLoader, so I guess I need to clear something that's slightly above Drupal's head to get this path reference updated.  How can I do that?  Uninstalling and re-installing the module does work, but once there's important data stored that's not going to be an option.  I was wrong, uninstalling and re-installing is not a viable option. After uninstalling and reinstalling, Drupal can no longer pick up the custom blocks the module defines. I'm guessing that reference is cached somewhere that isn't cleared when the module is uninstalled. Just need to find out where that is and how to clear it... How do I add SSL to a .net application that uses httplistener - it will *not* be running on IIS Most recent edits in bold I am using the .net HttpListener class, but I won't be running this application on IIS and am not using ASP.net.  This  describes what code to actually use to implement SSL with asp.net and  describes how to set up the certificates (although I'm not sure if it works only for IIS or not).    The class documentation describes various types of authentication (basic, digest, Windows, etc.) --- none of them refer to SSL.  It does say that if .  Is this going to be a one line property setting and HttpListener figures out the rest?    In short, I need to know how to set up the certificates and how to modify the code to implement SSL.  Although it doesn't occur when I'm trying to access HTTPS, I did notice an error in my System Event log - the source is "Schannel" and the content of the message is:     A fatal error occurred when attempting   to access the SSL server credential   private key. The error code returned   from the cryptographic module is   0x80090016.   Edit: Steps taken so far   Created a working HTTPListener in C# that works for HTTP connections (e.g. "" Created a certificate using makecert.exe Added the certificate to be trusted using certmgr.exe Used Httpcfg.exe to listen for SSL connections on a test port (e.g. 8090) Added port 8080 to the HTTPListener via listener.Prefixes.Add("); tested an HTTP client connection, e.g. (") in a browser and receive correct return tested an HTTPS client connection, e.g. (") in a browser and receive "Data Transfer Interrupted" (in Firefox) debugging in visual studio shows that the listener callback that receives the requests never gets hit when the HTTPS connection starts - I don't see any place that I could set a breakpoint to catch anything else earlier. netstat shows that listening ports are open for both HTTPS and HTTP.  the HTTPS port does go to TIME_WAIT after a connection is attempted.  and  don't catch any of the traffic, I guess it doesn't get far enough in the process to show up in those HTTP analysis tools   Questions   What could the problem be?  Is there a piece of .Net code I am missing (meaning I have to do more in C# other than simply add a prefix to the listener that points to HTTPS, which is what i have done) Have a missed a configuration step somewhere?  What else might I do to analyze the problem? Is the error message in the System Event log a sign of the problem?  If so how would it be fixed?