Received a couple of e-mails in regards to the Quake's Best Players page. The mails were saying that Clan Z (ex FAQ) should be listed as the second best clan after they beat SK on the weekend. Now, the good news about this is that I don't care. Let me explain, since the best clan was chosen by the people who voted on the Ultimate Quake Poll, I have no say in the decision to put SK as the 2nd best clan.

Now, people who know all these clans, they're aware of just how good clan Z is and that they probably deserve to be listed near the top of the pile but, that is the drawback to a poll.

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I have a new "Quake babe"™ picture to post tomorrow. These have become fairly popular since I posted the pictures of Morticia, Bitchy, Lava Goddess and of course Zoid. :)

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I had one person respond to my update from Friday giving me the addy for "A Frag in the Darkness" web site. it's www.fragzone.se/darkness. The only strange thing about this is that the site has been put on hold until Hobbex returns from an extended trip to Indonesia.

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Still waiting for Spookie to update his page, send him some e-mail telling him to get his butt back where it belongs. :)

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Lyric of the Day...

"That's one more kid that'll never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool"

I've had a lot of people e-mail me and complained about the players who were top 3 in some of the categories in the Ultimate Quake Poll. Most were saying that this person shouldn't have been higher than that person etc.

Let's look at this a different way. How about considering that it was voted on by the players and for the players. Just to be nominated would be an honor in itself. Let's take a look at the best aim category. There were 4 players separated by a total of 8 votes. Does it really matter that Thresh got 6 more votes than Xenon? As far as I'm concerned, all 6 players (including ties) have very good aim and it would be an honor to be voted into such company.

Also, if you didn't happen to make the winners list in any of the categories, don't worry about it. It doesn't mean that you're not good enough, it just means that you didn't receive enough votes. There are TONS of great players missing from the poll.

How about favorite sites? This is all personal opinion. Just because BlueNews won, it doesn't mean that Sujoy.com isn't a great site. Suj, who runs a very nice site, just didn't get enough votes. How about Challenge.AU finishing tied for forth with PQ? Sites like Blues, sCary's & PQ crush sites like mine and Hoony's when it comes to hits (Blues gets 60,000 hits a day) but, it doesn't mean that people don't like what we have to say on our pages. Hoony and I tend to concentrate more on the "grass roots" of Quake and not the corporate entity. It's the same as personal sites such as the ones that Cenobite and Coerj run, the people who visit them like what they have to say. Just because they didn't make the best sites list doesn't mean that they're not as important as any other site.

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Speaking of sites in the Quake poll. The site "A Frag in the Darkness" which is run by Hobbex, received quite a few votes. I decided to take a visit to the site after I spoke with Hobbex on irc the other night. Even though (for some reason) he takes a shot at me on his site, I like it very much. He speaks about what is on his mind and seems very passionate about most of the articles he posts. Sorry, I don't remember the url but, if you find it, make sure you go and take a look at his site.

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As I do most Thursday nights, Yesterday, I went to the bar with some people from work. I talked with a girl named Tessa for about 3 hours. She was easily the most beautiful woman in the bar (yes, the bar was packed). After having a great time for most of the evening. One of my male co-workers came over and sat with us. Tessa turned to me and said, "Ray, have you met my boyfriend Mike?". My reply was "boyfriend? (%#%#^%) No, nice to meet you Mike. (sigh)

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Misleading question? When I arrived home from work today, my gorgeous blond neighbor ran up to me while I was getting out of my car, looked me in the eyes and said, "Ray, could you hammer something for me?". Damn, I hate when pretty women do that. Do they do it on purpose to see us drool or is it as innocent as it sounds?

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I had a great time chatting on irc a couple of nights ago. I was chatting with Dru, Lic (ex Legends), RJ from R3V and a few others. We were reminiscing about some of the old days of Quake on the kitty servers. Funniest part was when we were talking about when Shade (ex Legends and now XP I think) got caught using an aimbot. There was such an uproar about it even though it was so easy to spot. Dru, who won the huge Q2 1on1 tourney in Vancouver a while back says that he still loves (and plays) Quake a lot.

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I found out why I've been so sick lately. It's some kind of viral thing that should pass but, it's not going away fast enough. :(

Some cool stuff here today, see if you can get through it all. :)

It's been an interesting last few days. I've been sicker than a dog but, was able to get poll results done and posted as I mentioned I would do.

Chronology:

• Sunday evening - I shut down the Poll page
• The dbase version of the results was over 2 megs in size
• Started sorting through 40,000 names and votes. (ack!)
• Spent 8 hours til early Monday before calling it quits.
• Monday evening - took 10 hours to finish sorting, adding & making a web page to post them to.
• Posted results at 4 a.m. Tuesday morn.

Problems that occurred:

• Dealing with 40,000 votes makes your eyes go buggy after about 2 hours. (no joke)
• Both Excel and Access (to my knowledge) can't sort properly by numbers. ie: if used in descending order, 9 will be listed above 20 because 9 is higher than 2.
• Spelling, people can't spell, nuff said
• Different names, this was quite a problem. Take something easy like favorite weapon. The lightning gun. This weapon was entered in the following formats. Lightning gun, THE lightning gun, Shaft, Thunderbolt, LG. etc.. I had to change them all to something similar before I could count them. Don't get me started with names of players with clan names. Geez!
• Access freezes if you open 3 copies of the same dbase! (doh!)

The response was amazing. E-mail galore and most of it positive. Everybody who saw me on irc or elsewhere kept mentioning the poll. There were mentions on a few sites such as Challenge.AU, sCary's and FragZone. I don't speak Swedish but I'm sure it's good when they say "Methos Poll nej CRAP!" or something like that. :) 

I had a few people ask me how they didn't finish first and that they were better than the person picked. My response to this, "Don't shoot the messenger!". I don't know if I mentioned this before but, I didn't vote in the poll for that exact reason. I wanted it to be fair and let the 1009 voters decide.

Now, let's go over what I thought about the results. There was good and bad in the results as far as I was concerned. I'll try to list what I think were "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly".

The Good

• 68% no-GL, the multiplayer game is better without it
• 73% no RL jump bind - cool
• CheezyPoofs - mmmm
• Haunted Halls and Elder God Shrine in fav single levels
• DM4 best 1on1 level :)
• E1M2 was #2 in worst clan level - I hate that map :)
• Most of the results in the best players category were very good.
• Best aim category, how much closer can voting be? All good choices
• Thresh winning tons of categories and deserving most
• [9] winning best clan - cool stuff
• Quake personalities - all great choices and Sujoy beat out Thresh
• Best sites - Challenge.AU 4th, that rocks
• Clan sites - Fallen Angels 2nd, love it
• Demo Site - ahem :)
• Coolest player - Spookie Rulz Dood!
• Quake demos - QDQ, nuff said

The Bad

• 89% Crosshairs (pffff, chicks - DC-DaNoLd)
• E1M2 Fav single map? Boring! Loads of great maps in Quake
• Thresh and Sujoy in most overrated players - these guys are still great, show some respect. :)
• New players list, umm, these guys are new? :)
• No DR in best clan, shouldn't have won but 30 votes? sheesh!
• Best other game StarCraft? Hmm
• No Sujoy / Danold in Best demo (63 votes missed by 1)

The Ugly (or at least surprising)

• 61% HPB - didn't think there were that many HPB's left
• 208 people think dm2 is a good clan level?
• Worst clan level - People actually use DM1 for clan matches?
• Only 8 votes for QW as best mod
• No Americans in best HPB player, strange indeed
• Most hated clans, are these clans that hated?
• No John Carmack in personalities list (only 1 vote)

Things that didn't make the poll

• 90% of voters used Windows 95/98, 5% use Win31, 2% Mac and 2% Unix/Linux
• 75% of voters use Internet Explorer, 24% use Netscape (various versions)
• Best other game - 508 votes for "There is no other game than Quake"
• Methos Quake would've finished 3rd for best site (not counted)
• Methos would've finished 2nd for Quake Personality (not counted)
• Although not winners, retired players Danold and Ettu received a total of 840 votes in various categories. (I love that)
• Methos Quake had it's biggest day ever on the day the results were released :)

Voting Countries (percentage of all votes)

• 25.1% - Sweden, Norway, Finland (combined)
• 18.7% - Australia, New Zealand (combined)
• 18.7% - USA, Canada (combined)
• 15.1% - UK (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales combined)
• 6.9% - Germany
• 15.5% - 21 Other Countries

All in all, it was very tough to do but, it was also a LOT of fun. The results are things that you can discuss with your Quake friends for a day or two and have some fun with them. Much like Hoony was refering too, this was done for the players. The players are what makes the gaming companies rich, perhaps they should start giving something back.

Thanks to all that have sent e-mail regarding my first post from the last Methos .plan update. Your thoughts were appreciated.

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I had a great time at Summer Slam. Thanks again to [TC]-Reaper for inviting me. I hope I can recuperate in time for work tomorrow as these old bones are pretty sore. Nothing that sitting in a hot tub for about 6 hours won't cure. Anybody know a good masseuse?

Top 5 things heard at Summer Slam

5) Shut-UP!!! (All TC guys)

4) We Own Joooo!!!! (Reaper)

3) Can I chop down this house so we can have more firewood? (Sparhawk, who seemed intent on putting anything he could on the bonfire)

2) MING!, I said no cuddling tonight! (Methos)

1) Damn, that Methos really does have a "Fat Arse". (Everybody)

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Strange conversation with Hoony the other day. Me: "Can you mention that the Ultimate Quake Poll ends on Sunday?" Hoony: "Okay, I'll mention it in my next update on Monday."  :)

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Speaking of the Ultimate Quake Poll. I had approx. 200 votes over the weekend. I'm hoping this brings the total to 1000 voters which would be a nice round number. I'll sort through it and let you know how many voters there were.

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Xeno mentioned that he's seen quite a few Q2 players using the name "Methos". Now, when I said "You too can be a llama", I didn't mean this particular llama.  :)

I haven't updated the site or been on-line for a couple of days. This was done because I spent most of the day yesterday with my daughter. It was a year ago yesterday that I lost the person I loved more than life itself. Even after a year, it still hurts like a bitch.

In the words of John Lennon, "Remember Love".

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As I mentioned on the news page, I'm heading out to Summer Slam 98 in the morning. God knows I need to get out and have a good time for a while.

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Speaking of getting out, I went to the bar last night with some friends from work. I hadn't been there for a while and once again, I was hit on by 4 different women. One even asked me to marry her. Was there a full moon last night? :)

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I received an e-mail the other day from a Quake player expressing concern over some of the categories in the Ultimate Quake Poll. The comment he made was that certain categories were "geared" towards certain players/clans. The people he mentioned were Thresh, Xenon and Clan 9. I can't stress strongly enough that this is not the case. Yes, some of the results might have been different if the poll was done a few weeks ago or if DR would've won against 9 but, that is just a matter of timing. The categories were picked at random and not aimed towards any player or clan.

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On the same note, I'm surprised at some of the nationalistic voting that has taken place in the poll. Not that I didn't expect it to happen but, the countries that are doing it raised my eyebrows a bit. I'm not referring to the dickheads that put "me" in for every category but, the people who only vote for players from their own country. Both the USA and Sweden have been honest and picked who they consider the best. Countries like Germany & Australia have surprised me with "most" voters only picking people from their own country.

Now, I'm not saying that these 2 countries don't have great players, it's just that if you were making a world all-star team, I'm sure their might be a few people from other countries than Australia and Germany.

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Oh, and to that special Quake player out there, here's a quote from Steve Tyler.

"That attitude may taste like shit but, don't it go good with wine"

Wow, it's been a week since I updated this page. I'll see what I can cover today.

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On August 15th, I checked the page hits for August and found that in 15 days, I had surpassed the highest total for any month so far. The popularity was mainly from the coverage from the 9vsDR tourney. Good news indeed.

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A huge thanks to Hoony over at Challenge.AU for posting the interview with me. I thought it went well. When I read the opening speech he put on there, I wasn't sure who he was talking about. It made me sound much too good. I was to the point of thinking, "geez, this guy sounds cool, who is he?". Turns out that Hoony thought he was doing an interview with somebody else and put the wrong message in there. :) 

What did you think of the interview? Was there questions that weren't asked or weren't answered properly? I've received some mail on it but most were just telling me that Quake 2 isn't dead. I agree with this, Q2 is a very popular game. Is it as good as Quake? I think not. Did you like the interview? Hate it? Send me some e-mail and let me know.

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I had a small chat with sCary last night about various things. One of the subjects that came up was the fact that when we post some factual (ie: non-personal stuff) information on our sites, we tend to get a lot of mail regarding it. I brought up the comment "Don't shoot the messenger" to which sCary replied "Amen!"

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If you happen to see me on irc, please don't ask me why DeathRow lost or why [9] won. Ask the players who were involved. We can go on forever saying that DR was unprepared or think up many other reasons. I think Thresh said it best when he said that "[9] had much better teamplay". Nuff said, let's move on.

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I had a run-in with a player from England named Hakeem on irc last week. Hakeem and I had previous conversations and he was always quick with dissing me. This time, the conversation started out with another insult from him so I replied with "heh, this is coming from a qw cheater?". Hakeem was understandably upset by this comment and asked me why I said this. My reply was "I'm only commenting on what others have told me". (which is true) The conversation devolved from there to the point where Hakeem was making personal attacks on me. (fat arse? LOL) Except for the cheating comment, I stayed away from any personal types of attack on Hakeem's race, physical appearance, manhood or heritage.

At the time this was happening, I wasn't in the best of moods. It was immediately following the matches from day 2 of the 9vsDR tourney and I had about 50 people messaging me. I was upset that DR didn't win more of the games. (yes, I thought 9 deserved to win) I was sick, my uncle had died a couple of days before, I had a frustrating time with the proxy for the matches (as did everybody) and I was trying to do an interview with Xenon. Then Hakeem showed up.

I was going to do a huge posting on cheaters a few months ago and when I mentioned this on this page, I received some e-mail and demos regarding cheaters. Of the 50 or so e-mails I received, 4 of them mentioned Hakeem. Now, I wasn't about to post without some kind of back-up to these allegations. I never did get any further evidence of him cheating. Do I know that he cheats? No, I don't. Sujoy says that Hakeem doesn't cheat (which I also mentioned in the irc channel) so that's enough info for me. Should I have made the comment on irc about him being a qw cheater? No probably not but, I was in a bad mood at the time and was getting quite tired of his insults.

I've had problems with other players before (such as Coerj) but with other players, we just agree to disagree and move on from there. Hakeem and I haven't gotten to this point yet but hopefully we can just co-exist in the Quake world without too many problems.

Does my bum look fat in this?  (__x__)  LOL

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Received a curious e-mail today. The only thing it said in the message was.

"pist was anal, i was oral"

Hmm, interesting indeed.

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I was invited to "SUmmeR sLaM '98" this weekend. Since I have this weekend off work, I'll probably attend. Hmm, lots of drunk Quake 2ers? They'll probably beat me into submission until I say that Quake 2 RuLz! Bah, it'll never happen. :-)

Now, before I get into this, I just want to say that Clan 9 played VERY well and were deserving of their one-sided victory on the matches.

What went right? The matches (from a fan pov) were very exciting. Not because this person or that person played well but because so many people were anxiously waiting for the results. It was one of those tourneys where nearly everything in the Quake world stopped while we waited for word from Sweden about the latest match.

The fact that DeathRow lost has it's good and bad. The good is that the American players (not just DR) are now aware that there are other good clan around the world. This victory wasn't only for Clan Nine, it was for clans all over the world that are very talented. When I think of other clans like SC & BD from Sweden, SK from Germany, QPD and DC from the UK plus many others, it makes me think that there's a chance we might one day have a true international tourney.

What went wrong? Many problems with the proxies that were used. The matches were decided after 7 games and although the 8th & 9th games were good, there wasn't a whole lot of interest other than the final score.

DeathRow wasn't properly prepared for the matches. They hadn't played as a clan in about 3 months and 2 weeks isn't going to beat a clan such as 9. Yes, they've said that they were prepared for the matches but that's not the case. I talked to a couple of the DR guys about a month ago. The cockiness was surprising. Unholy and Thorn had beaten 2 clan 9 members in 2on2 matches at E3 and from those matches, DR decided they would win. A few days ago, B2 was lamenting the fact they had never seen clan 9 play or even seen them in demos. I had offered to send some demos to the DR guys about a month ago and they declined them saying they didn't need them.

I originally had 2 predictions for the matches.The first was 6-4 for DR and then just before the matches started, I decided that it would be 6-4 for 9. (9 would win all 5 QW games and 1 e1m2 game in NQ) After finding out just how prepared DR was, Clan Nine winning wasn't even a question.

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I'll update more when I'm awake.

I think PlanetQuake is getting a bit too caught up in the DR Vs 9 matches. While reviewing their coverage (which is splendid), they talk about Sweden being able to avoid 2 world wars but not the third one. Then at the end of each match, they give the scores as "Europe 1 - USA 0".

First of all, it's not the USA. It's just a clan that lives in the USA and they are NOT representing their country. Second, it's not Europe, it's not even Sweden. It's just a clan from Sweden. Although these matches are very important from a Quake point of view, let's try and keep things in perspective. :)

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I tried accessing the DeathRow channel on IRC again. It turns out I'm not banned anymore. I noticed that Orion was there and tried to talk with him but there wasn't any response. Oh well.

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I still haven't found the demos I'm looking for. I need 3 demos. The Paralyzer demos from games 2 and 4 plus, the Thresh demo from game 5. If you've seen these demos, let me know. The demos of Paralyzer are NOT in the 13 meg demo pack with his name. Those demos are of 9-Spice. :(

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Let's see if Hoony from Challenge.AU has esp. His title for the scores of yesterdays matches errantly said "Nine Wins First Round in Normal Quake, 5 Games to 4". Now, if DR wins 3 games, 9 wins 1 with one a draw, I want Hoony to buy my next lottery ticket. :)

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Finally got some sleep over the last day or so. It's been hot as hell here so I've locked myself inside my air-conditioned house. I poke my head out long enough to start up the barbecue and put on some steaks for supper.

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The change in attitudes between Clan 9 and DeathRow over the past month have been very noticeable. Under the circumstances, it's very understanding. Quake is a game of egos and icons. You can be at the top of the heap one day and at the bottom the next day. Now, nobody is going to say that the clan that loses this get-together will be sent to the bottom of the Quake totem pole.

A month ago, it seemed like all out war, hate the opposition, kill, kill, kill. Now days, everything is very friendly and almost too nice. After being humbled by Clan 9 yesterday, not too many of the DeathRow guys were talking. The guys from 9 weren't saying anything that might get the DR guys angry.

Just personal stuff today. You can skip this if you're not interested.

I was woken up early this morning by a long distance phone call from Lancaster, England. It was my cousin Paul informing me that my Uncle Mick from Kendal, England had died.

I didn't know my Uncle Mick that well so it didn't affect me too badly. The problem I had was having to contact my mother and tell her that her brother had died. This wasn't an easy thing to do. After that, I had to go into work and play manager as if nothing had happened.

Needless to say, it was a bad day all around. Rest in peace, Mick.

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I shouldn't have to do this but, just to clarify something I've been talking about on the site recently.

• I haven't asked any of the so-called "Quake babes" to marry me in real life.

• I haven't told any of them that I love them in real life.

• I don't have a collection of pics from these women. Just what you see on the site.

These women are great sports about all this, they are all very pretty women and most importantly, they all have their own lives the same as I do.

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Also, happy Birthday to everybodies favorite Quake.uk spammer, Paul2 (Cunt-O-Matic)

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Sorry for this update, some things just have to be said.

A message to Clan 9 and Clan DeathRow. After this week, only one of you will carry the torch for the future of Quake. Play fair, play hard, show the respect due for the other clan and the game itself. Good luck to both and may the best clan win.

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I guess I should take the time to thank all the people who have sent their condolences to me in regards to not being able to attend the DR Vs 9 matches in Sweden.

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Finished an interview today, strange thing is that I wasn't the one asking the questions. Some time in the next week, an interview of Methos will be showing up on the web. I'll let you know when it has been posted for all to see.

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I had an e-mail yesterday from a guy in Sweden asking why there were no Scandinavian players on the Quake's Best Players list. He did happen to notice that Lakerman was on there but he said "Lakerman doesn't count because he was in the states for 2 years". Heh

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Spookie returned from XP-Con2 in one piece. He said he had a great time and will be posting an update soon.

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Morticia and Bitchy still haven't answered my marriage proposals. If this keeps up, I'll have to start looking for another Quake babe. LOL

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Speaking of another Quake babe, I had a picture sent to me of the ever popular LavaGoddess sent to me. For those that don't remember, she's the girl who was in the 1998 Miss USA Pageant. I'll be posting her pictures tomorrow and sending out my traditional marriage proposal. :)

As I've mentioned before, the Quake's Best Players list gets tougher and tougher to update. There's still some great "old" talent and all the young "studs" are moving up in the ranks. The most common question I get for the categories listed are as follows.

• DM4 - Why is Timber ahead of Kane?
  These two are very close in overall talent but completely different in the way they play. Kane reminds me a lot of Randemarr and Timber seems to have a style all his own. I gave the nod to Timber because of his over-all play and the way he waltz through some very tough competition at Fusion earlier this year. I would love to see these two play some games on Lan to avoid the problems that come with the internet.
• 2nd Best Overall - Why Rix instead of Gollum?
  Another very tough choice. Rix has won 4 tourneys in the past 6 or so months. Gollum was the top scorer in both of the PGL all-star games and won a 1on1 tourney after that. I gave it to Rix because he won the latest CPL tourney which Gollum also played in.
• 2nd Best Clan - Why Clan 9 over Unforgiven?
  This one is easy, depending on what happens at the DR Vs 9 tournament (if you can call it that), Clan 9 could be 1st, 2nd or 3rd after it. If 9 wins, they'll be put first, if they lose, they'll stay 2nd. If they get stomped, U|4 will be put in second.

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Methos Quake had approx. 1000 more hits in July than it did in June. This would've been much higher if the Llamanet server wasn't down for 3 1/2 days during July.

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Vavoom! Spent another day staring at Mistress Morticia. I still want to marry her and have her baby. Morticia, I love you, please marry me!  :)