chrisl

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MrSpkr: [QB] There. Said it. Didn't hurt (almost). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Now you've done it. You ought to be demoted back to SSN for that. It's one thing to apologize for something truly offensive (for which it would probably be better to cut off an arm or something) or remarkably insensitive, or a rude attack on some rube on the outerboard (you know what I'm referring to). But it's altogether different to apologize for simply being a dork in the cesspool. That's really unacceptable. Send me a setup, and preferably not too stupid of one.

What's with the burma shave approach MrSpkr? You're starting to resemble Fuerte's debut in the pool, which is generally not something one wants to emulate. Chris

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Juardis: a bunch of jabber <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Are you by any chance related to Pawbroon?

Here's what I got by displaying all topics and going to the page that was responded to longest ago, and then playing around with which topic number I was looking at by hand: oldest on this board As you can see, it's topic number 15. It looks like topics 1-14 were overwritten in Jan 2000 during a crash. I know there's a link somewhere in this bbs to the old bbs, and at least some bits of it were still online within the past year.

head pokes above the muck Ackk. Pffft. Spluutter. Phloooey. wipes face That's an experience I never want to have again. I go away for two weeks and you fill about 2.5 threads utterly full of mostly worthless cess. I had to wallow in it for way too long to catch up on the fate of Seanachai (I still can't bring myself to fully bold his name, maybe after his uncivil rights are fully restored). I may have to poke out my eyes for safety and develop an audio-only interface for putting orders into CM and observing the turn outcomes. That was miserable. Despite all of your greatest hopes, I managed (by mere inches) to avoid being eaten by a bear, and lost only a pint or so of blood to the damn mosquitoes. I also now happen to be short on games, since I finished my last one just before I left, and so I have now been CM-free for about 2.2 weeks. The horror. A few points: Elvis: I number files. It started innocently enough, in my PBEM youth (in the gold demo--I played the beta for a long time only against the AI) I played against someone who corrupted me, and had a complex naming scheme involving putting the name of whose turn it was and whether it was a movie or orders file. The plan (which was followed) was to swap passswords after the game to see what the other guy could see. I continued in this way, renaming files to match the convention and occasionally even doing the password swap. Life was good. Then I played a few more, people I played with used other schemes (abc; 1,2,3...) and I got lazy. It was a pain to type in all those silly letters to say whose turn it was. I started numbering files sequentially. It was easy, and I had played enough that I didn't care if the file described whose turn it was. Back in those days I used a different password for each game, and still occasionally swapped at the end (though usually not, and even then I didn't always look at many turns from the other side). I even started a spreadsheet to keep track of opponents, which canned scenarios I had played, the passwords (for both sides) and the scores. Then I dipped a toe in the cesspool. I stopped using different passwords, since my brain became feeble and unable to remember anything. I stopped maintaining the spreadsheet, as I was playing mostly QBs and build with a third party. I stopped swapping passwords at the end (since I could tell what was likely to be visible or not, and guess what my opponent was doing, and besides, I would have had to use more passwords than my doorknob-like memory could retain). Life was much better. I continued to number files, and at the end of the game throw them all out. I never really looked at them again, but I kept them and then threw them out later. I don't know why. Then I discovered something. Sometimes it's actually useful (especially when working with a thoroughly addled brain) to go back several turns and watch something. To see how many troops were showing on each of the little infantry units before they turned into little crosses or circles in the woods. To listen for the "bang" of a transmission blowing on muddy ground to see if that tank that hasn't moved for three turns is really immobilized or just faking. I sometimes notice something that I missed earlier. Gamey? Probably, but not much worse than blowing the bridge in mensch's scenario. I will continue to number, and when I play you I will try to send you files that have non-sequential turn numbers that are both interesting and not monotonic. Sometimes I'll name the files after another member of the pool, or maybe one of the cats (if you get a file called Stumpy you'll know it's the cat) Occasionally I will forget. On those occasions I hope you will keep your head far enough out of your nether regions (and those of others) to just rename it, play it, and send it back. If you don't like it then you can stick to playing TCP with Peng and Phil. dalem (what are you, anyway?): You seem to be following me. Bastard. Go away. You are also a fool. I, too, went from Ann Arbor to Minneapolis (via Boston, however). If you follow me to LA then I will have to pull your eyeballs out your ears or something equally unpleasant. Ann Arbor was good back then, much less flashy and yuppie than it is now. Though it will always be far preferable to East Lansing. Minneapolis is much colder and darker than A^2. You will have parts of your body freeze and fall off. Your eyeballs and teeth will shatter from the cold. Your ears will turn white, and then green, and finally black with a texture of leather before they are finally bitten off by the geek at the Minnesota State Fair while you are waiting in line to buy some food-on-a-stick. And the girls won't come near you, because they are all engaged by their junior year of high school, and married as soon as they get out. Besides, you're icky. And everyone there talks like they're in the movie "Fargo". Shaw: You insult me. You went on a tirade about how evil a scenario creator that Peng is, and neglect my evil works of art. I made "Event Horizon" with it's bizarre reinforcements. I scared dorosh and his canucks away from the pool with "Juno" based on the normandy landings (to the extent that there were germans, canadians, and a beach in both). If you want evil scenarios, ask me to make one next time.

A couple of comments based on having just toured the oilfields at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska (where it gets way cold): They can make a low-temp grade of diesel that doesn't gel until much lower temps than the usual stuff. I don't remember exactly what temp, but it was ~-40. I also don't know if the technology was available in 1940s Russia. In PB they use a lot of diesel pickups, and once the outside temp drops to a certain level, they leave them on the rest of the winter and use the plug-in engine heaters, since diesels don't apparently produce enough heat when idling to keep them warm without additional help.

Lorak, you inattentive fool, please mark lightly in the tome, with just a wisp of chalk: chrisl: loss mkiv: tactical victory this battle included one of the bloodiest battles I've ever seen over a small flag (just one of six total flags on the map).

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lorak: We finally get a physicist to show up and prance around in the cess... and what do we get? Discussions relating to quantum math? String theory? The problem of storing anti-matter once it is created? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Hey! Can't you read? don't you bother to check people's info? I was here in the original incarnation. I posted the 1000th post (not the 1000th response like some little sycophant of Ethan). I slew the original incarnation of the MBT, and I am a physicist (also in Pasadena, CA, but no relation to the mine-dude). We also covered string theory back in the original, too, at the request of Peng. If you want to talk about storing anti-matter we can deal with it when I get back from vacation. Maybe I'll send you some in the mail and you can figure out how to open the package without annihilating the universe. And MkIV send me that file back-- I want to finish before I get bled out by mosquitoes.

"Abandoned" is when there is damage that renders the tank combat inoperable for the next hour or so. It may be repairable in hours or days. "knocked out" is when the tank is rendered unrecoverable (brewed up or other very substantial damage that would require more than a few days to fix). In an operation these distinctions are important, because an abandoned tank can come back (assuming the crew isn't wiped out) in a later battle and the tank doesn't wind up behind enemy lines. For this reason, if you cause a bunch of tanks (or one KT) to be abandoned, it can be worth advancing your lines to prevent recovery. A knocked out tank is gone.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dunnee: I wouldn't want to face my Co. commander after bailing out because a shot took off my rear-view mirror.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The ones that took off the mirror are non-penetrating. Those fall into the "ricochet" category. If you read a few accounts, tank crews tended to bail after a penetrating hit--like Andreas said, someone who can kill you has a bead on you. Crews in immobilized tanks that were under AT fire didn't tend to stick around nearly as long as CM lets them. From reading some accounts at TankBooks.com, it sounds like they would bail, hike back and get some coffee, find a fresh tank, and come back up. Tanks (new and repaired) were in greater supply than trained crews, and there was no point for a crew to be heroic and fire one more shot before brewing up if they could bail and be useful for a longer period. [ 07-15-2001: Message edited by: chrisl ]

Since it's not a work day, apparently none of you other slugs are posting and the thread has dropped to the last line of page one. Normally, I would just watch it drop, since you all irritate me immensely in your own particular ways, but this time I decided to save the stupid thread with a little bit of grog stuff. All the alleged pioneer grogs were arguing about the date of chainsaw invention, so I went out and looked it up. Amazing what a search will tell you, especially if you don't have to use the UBB one on a board with a quarter million posts. The first appearance of the chainsaw was as an osteotome: first chainsaw That's right, it was invented by a doctor around 1830 for chopping bits off people, so next time the saw bucks and cuts your head off, remember that's its original application. This also puts the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the final battle scene from Motel Hell into a completely new light. Who knew that they were really medical documentaries? Now here's a bit more on the development of the chainsaw: chainsaw history It turns out, and this is where it gets very groggy. Close your eyes if you can't bear it. It turns out that Stihl (you know, they still make all sorts of saws) was a German guy who gets credit for the first portable, gasoline powered chainsaw in the mid to late 1920s. (The original medical version appears to have been handcranked-- imagine getting a craniotomy with that thing). (edited for punctuation groggyness?) [ 07-15-2001: Message edited by: chrisl ]

I love the web. Here's some history of chain saws, including the apparently first invention, which was for medical applications: chain saw history medical applications

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by PeterNZer: Meanwhile, Chrisl, of JPL fame, you will be pleased to know your JPL hand electric fan is very amusing to my friends in NZ because it blows -backwards-. Kind of a metaphor there isn't there? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> That's 'cause you took it across the equator.

We'll have to talk to BTS about that bolding of your name in the identification sidebar. That's not right at all.

If it's going so badly that it's stopped being fun, then you should surrender. I've been on the winning side of such things a couple of times and it can be frustrating to have a lopsided match continue for 10-15 more turns. I've also been on the losing side of them, surrendered, and my opponents didn't complain. That said, if you're taking heavy losses but delivering similar pain it can be fun to try to minimize the margin of victory that your opponent is going to get. As defender in attack and assault scenarios that's sometimes all you can hope for. I've also played a few where both players were out of ammo and reduced to harsh words and powdery snowballs, stumbling haphazardly toward the flags. Those can be a lot of fun, and hard to tell who's going to win.

Fear of Penging

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Iskander: Give Peng a Challenge, or give Him Death! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Nah, because everyone's choice would be too obvious.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MrPeng: [QB] I hereby ammend the rules of double secret probation blood hamster excorcisms to include the following: 33.iv - this rule has been expurgated and emended and fed a bottle of cheap vodka. ii. The one wo be excorcised will be played by the acting father confessor of the 'pool in no less than 3 (three) {tres} concurrent games by not less then three game designers, two of whom shall be the evil one rune and three of whom shall be the other evil one Berli. 11. The third game shall be a game already in progress and will have a pseudo-sci-fi sort of a thing going and must have been created by a terrible liar whom we shall call 'chrisl' 11. the excorschism will be considered a suckcess should the acting father confessor win two out of three of the games. see rule XIV.331 for the conditions should this happen 133.XIV should this not actually come to pass and should the accused win two out of three games please see rule 44.342.C.1.cxii/b37 <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Peng you fool. You left out the bits about punishment. Other than suffer 3 games against you and throw two of them (which, although utterly humiliating, isn't as entertaining as a blood hamster.), he who shall not be named doesn't have to carry an embarrasing sig file or a scarlet "A" or suffer any torture at all, aside from a couple of asterisks by his name (and after the first, which I believe he already has, how much more shame can he feel). btw, you owe me a setup, though you should wait until august 1, since I'm headed off to vacation soon.

Here's some data that heidman posted a while back. I got it by searching with the words "cover value" in the search line. cover thread

If you really dislike the Peng thread you should take a dip in the cesspool and relax. The other threads that have some relation are the WineCape invitational tourney (which includes a number of players from the cesspool) and the two FAQ threads, which are bumped to the top every now and then as a public service. Reading past the first few posts in those will put your eyes at risk.

Lorak - please chisel in the stone of the tome: chrisl: draw jd: draw I managed to pull of a draw against his full fledged attack by the gamey use of crews, sharpshooters and snow. jd threw everything along one axis in the snow, and was slowed down enough that he couldn't make it across to one of the big flags. We both totally ignored a little flag way off to one side, but as the wall of germans approached, a crew and a sharpshooter volunteered to hike over and see how the snow was. Fresh, untracked powder. They flopped down and made snow angels while their compatriots suffered the harsh words and sticks and stones that jd was left with after 35 bloody turns.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jd: chrisl ... We are reduced to throwing sticks, branches and rocks at his retreating troops. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Quite pathetic it is to watch. I generously gave him a proper attack, knowing how gleefully he blundered into a few vicious ambushes in every battle, and thinking he might actually be able to win with attack odds. Looks like he may snatch a draw from the waiting maw of victory. If he really put his mind ot it he could lose, but with only three turns left, it would require some effort. MkIV is defending valiantly against my attack (a mere probe) on a very large map. It's a long hike between anywhere and anywhere on this map, and he seems to have troops everywhere. Fortunately there are a great many trees, and I have a great many artillery shells, and they have created a great many airbursts with which to perforate his little electronic men. There's plasma leaking all over the woods. Unfortunately, his claimed occupation of t-shirt salesman or something like that is simply a cover for his real job as cryptanalyst. Yes, the gamey bastard managed to hack the CM encryption so that he scores first shot kills with every spitball and peashooter attached to treads that he managed to scavenge from the local dump. As for Peng and the rulebook, I certainly did not pay a thing for that copy of the rules. I pulled it from deep in the bowels of....lets forget that..., and it is at the very least a good forgery, if not the genuine article. It appears to be printed in various rather disgusting fluids (I try not to get too close to it to avoid infection). And for S*******i, not only can I not bold his name, but will not even spell it out until the double secret blood hamster exorcism is complete and either he's regained the little control he once had over his own fingers, or Peng has been turned into a bowl of spoiled mush in the course of the exorcism. Scratch that-- Peng is already something of a bowl of spoiled mush as it is. Well, anyway, either he performs the exorcism or he dies trying (or if we're truly lucky, both).

________________________| There's a little row of icons above each post, and the one on the far left looks like a little rolodex card. Click on it. If you're relatively young you may never have seen a rolodex, but it looks like a file folder with a couple notches out of the bottom. The real thin is a few inches by a few inches, and mounts on some hoops that you can spin around to select the card you want. (edited to make a little vertical bar point to the icon) [ 07-05-2001: Message edited by: chrisl ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Seanachai: That's applied to Wisconsinites, you cloth-headed berk. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I know that you idjit. It does appear to be more one of the more offensive things you can call a minnesotan, though. And you seem to be quite sensitive to it. You clearly have the memory of something similar to a doorknob or a piece of toast, as most of my early abuse of you related to your heritage as a cheesehead pretending to be minnesotan pretending to be canuck etc. It looks like old doc Freeman has gotten to you, and your fingers run amok on the keyboard without input from more complicated assemblages of neurons somewhere in the forward parts of your head. (edit because I occasionally leave out some of the letters) [ 07-04-2001: Message edited by: chrisl ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Seanachai: Well do you bloody know why?! Because you lot were going stale, that's why! You needed a dose of the short, sharp shock you did! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Already getting out the old folk records, eh... <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> As for claims that I'd thrown open the Eternal Peng Challenge Thread to hordes of posturing idjits showing up to dance around with their underwear pulled over their heads and trying to sing with the elastic band in their mouth <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Worse, you've invited the sort who jabber on about the angle of the teeth in the Russian chainsaws that were used to make mg bunkers in October 1941 vs. January 1942, and the effect they have on the penetration of bird droppings and the consequent reduction of the resident Russians' spotting ability. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> The only gang of useless wankers I invited in are the current pariticpants to Winecape's Invitational 'Tourney of Stars' (a significant number of whom are Cesspoolers anyway, for Christ's sake). It seemed to me that: <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> A significant number of whom have dipped a small toe into the cesspool and decided that they too feared infection to take a real swim. Now you've offered to promote them up to the status that some of us received when Lorak was bored one day. They ought to wait for Lorak's brain farts like the rest of us. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Ÿ) It is quite within my right, as one of the Old Ones, to wander out, dead drunk and with a Canadian flag inserted and displayed in an extraordinarily non-traditional way, and invite in Idi Amin, Imelda Marcos, and Pugsley, the fluke-paralyzed Killer Whale from the soon to be built Branson, Missourri Sea World, if I so choose.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Quite so. In fact I hear Idi sets a mean table, and Imelda could put all that footwear to great use here in the pool-- stomping on heads, and implanting shoes in nether regions. And, of course, who wouldn't want a killer whale hanging around, even if it was fluke paralyzed and couldn't bite anyone in half. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> HERE BE IT SET FORTH! THE ETERNAL PENG CHALLENGE THREAD RISES UP, SHAKES OFF THE LETHARGY OF SELF-SATISFACTION, AND RETURNS TO ITS ROOTS, LIKE A DOG RETURNING TO THE LAST PLACE IT SPEWED! Peng, I once again take our Challenge public.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Cheesehead. (edited because I never manage to balance the damn quotes" [ 07-04-2001: Message edited by: chrisl ]