Busy working on the next interview. I'm just having a bit of trouble translating the language. :)  That should give you a hint as to who it might be.

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I tried the latest Quake 2 patch. It seems to run a bit better and it's much better on-line. [TC]-Reaper said that it made his ping go up by 60ms but mine was great and it was smooth sailing. The main reason I tried it was to see the new dm 1on1 level that was included in the package. It seems like a nice level and reminds me of one of the UK levels. (can't remember which one, I think it's made by Nightwing) Oh, just for the record, Quake 2 still sucks. :)

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I have a couple of demos to add to the demos page but I haven't uploaded them yet. It's hard to go through a ton of demos to find one that is decent. For those of you that don't get your demos on the demos page, please don't be disappointed. I can't put every demo on there and the level of play gets higher every day. Oh, one other thing, please DON'T send me demos in the mail. Just send me mail with the url and I'll take a look at the demo later.

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Bad news. Talked to DC_DaNoLd today and he mentioned that Team France "may" be pulling out of the 5 Nations Tournament. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that the tourney is being played under UKCL rules. This includes the HPB/LPB rule. In this rule, it states that an HPB has to be a modem player. DaNoLd is ISDN. This means that even though he will get a ping of 180 or so in the UK, he will still be considered an LPB. I personally have never agreed with this rule because I feel that anybody with a ping over a certain level (130 in UKCL) should be considered an HPB no matter what kind of connection he/she is on. I'm sure that they put this rule into place due to the use of proxies before a server could control the ping changes.

Damn, my fingers are sore from typing. The News page, Spookie's page, Nightwing's page, the demos page and this page were all updated.

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Got home today with the news of a murder / suicide in Los Angeles. Seems that actor Phil Hartman was shot and killed by his wife (in front of their children) before she shot and killed herself. I liked watching him on Saturday Night Live for the last 8 years, plus his movies and his voice on The Simpsons. What a waste.

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My buddy Spookie updated "The Spookie Side" for the 2nd time in a week. I'll have to check his temperature and see if he's okay. He did however, forget to mention about joining Clan XP.

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Added 2 "older" demos to the Quake demos page. Both of these demos have been sitting on my hard drive since they were recorded. One is a very good demo of Timber and Mastah Killah on dm4 that was recorded a couple of months ago. The other was posted by popular demand. It's the T3 final match with DeathRow and Unforgiven. This time, it's from Thresh's POV. The one that was on the page already was the same match from B2's POV.

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Had lunch at work today with a gorgeous woman. She was the kind of stunning beauty that every time another guy walked by you wanted to say "Hey buddy, look who I'm with". Of course, that would be uncool so I sat there with a gloating type of smile.

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I can't be bothered to post the music lyrics tonight, I'll try to get to it tomorrow.

Jesus, what a boring day. Spent all day at work including staying late for a few hours. Spent most of the evening talking on the phone to 2 ex-girlfriends. Hmmm, maybe I'll call a few more tomorrow, umm, I don't think so.

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Has id Software lost it's grip on the gaming community? Everywhere I go, people are playing Unreal. It seems that people just aren't happy with Quake 2 and are looking for something different. I think that technology wise, Carmack and the boys did some great work but the games lacks the same kind of atmosphere that the original Quake did. More and more people are thinking that id really misses John Romero from the game design point of view. John Romero has always known what it takes to make a great game fun to play. I guess we'll see if this is true when Daikatana comes out in September. It's got the same engine as Quake 2, let's see what JR can do with the game itself.

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Oh well, I'm tired and heading to bed, larger update tomorrow.

Another boring day at work. I didn't get the job promotion I mentioned a week or two ago but, I was offered two other positions. We'll see what happens.

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I was corrected by Randemarr that he and Kety will be married on July 15th and not July 7th as I mentioned yesterday (fixed). Supposedly, July 15th is when a bunch of things coincide so they're getting married then. I think Randemarr is doing it just so that he'll never forget his anniversary date. :)

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Music trivia answers from last Thursday. If I remember, I'll post more this Thursday.

1. "Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream. Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream"
   
   Pink Floyd, "Sheep" from the album, Animals.

2. "Gold coast rails through the cotton fields, sold in a market down in New Orleans"
   
   Rolling Stones, "Brown Sugar", from the album ??? (don't remember, possible Sticky Fingers)

3. "All the twisted thoughts that spin, around my head. I'm spinning how fast the sun can, drop away"
   
   Pearl Jam, "Black" from the album Ten.

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Posted the interview with Scott Miller. I was very disappointed with this interview, both with the questions and especially the answers. After posting it, I read it again and it just seemed crappy.  The fact that he didn't even attempt to answer half the questions I sent him, bothers me too. Hopefully the next interview posted will be a bit better. I certainly won't wait a month before posting it.

Real life stuff is always more important than these silly games we play.

Noted on the news page that DC_Carnage (still DC?) had a baby daughter on May 5th. I am VERY happy for Mark, Andrea and baby Jessica.

Glad to hear that DC_dd is out of hospital and feeling better.

I want to wish the best to Randemarr's fiancée, Kety. She's having a bit of a hard time these days and I hope she feels better very soon. Randemarr is one of the "truly nice guys" in the Quake world and I hope everything goes well for them. Oh, did I happen to mention that they will be Mr. & Mrs. Randemarr after July 15th, 1998? :)

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I don't know why it still surprises me but the amount of blatant software piracy on warez sites has reached another fever pitch since Unreal was released. Of course, all the people I talked with say that they will buy it as soon as they can. (uh-huh)

I don't know why publishing companies don't just hold back on the release for a few days and have a concurrent worldwide release. I'm sure some of these companies must have learned something from the way Activision released Quake 2. It's not fair to release something in North America and not expect people in other countries to resort to illegal methods to get the program.

The longer they wait to release it internationally, the more people won't buy it because they already have a pirated copy. Not saying that piracy is good, it's not but I can see why some people do it.

QuakeWorld v2.21 was just released. I even had it on my news page before BluesNews, Planetquake and quakeworld.net :) Thanks Ceno.

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QPD-Cenobite, who is a very good player, for some reason hates demos, hates watching demos and despises people who have quake demo on their site. :) Okay, he's not that bad but, he has succumbed to peer pressure and in a moment of weakness yesterday, he asked me if he could send me 3 demos. The demos (2 against Sujoy and 1 against EEK, Timber) were pretty good and they're on the demos page. I've told you many times, Ceno, you can sit on irc all day long singing KungFu Fighting but sooner or later, you will come to the Dark Side. :)

A button has been found! Chris "[TC]-Reaper" Tataryn contacted me today and said he would be happy to help me out with the button for the site. Out of all the talented people I know, it was a bit strange that somebody in the same city as I'm in would be the one to do the graphic. Chris also mentioned that he would help out with the rest of the graphics on Methos Quake. If you want to use the button to link from your site, please link it to http://llamanet.net/methos

Chris runs a 3D design company called Liquid Fusion. Oh, did I mention that the Thunder Clan [TC] was the greatest Quake 2 clan in the world? :)

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Regarding the mail I received yesterday about my phone call to id. I have forwarded a copy of the e-mail to John Carmack and Todd Hollenshead to see if the persons involved actually represents id Software. I haven't received any response to the reply mail I sent.

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An early review on Unreal from Spookie after playing it for about an hour.

OMG! Someone just kicked iD Software in the balls!!!

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Oh, a special message for kids living in the USA that happen to have access to guns. GROW THE FUCK UP AND DON'T GO TO SCHOOL AND KILL PEOPLE! (sorry about that, it had to be said)

I remember about 10 years ago when we started getting a TV station here that was broadcast from Detroit in the USA. The first day it was on, I watched the evening news. The news woman said there was a new city law going into affect that day. "Any student caught bringing guns or weapons into school would be expelled from school". Now, I'm no rocket scientist but, what the hell ever happened to people being "arrested" for carrying weapons? Only in the USA. (sigh)

Still looking for an animated button for the site. With so many talented artists out there, I'm sure somebody can make me a simple one.

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Got a surprise today when I checked my mail. It was an e-mail from some people that supposedly "represented id Software". The only thing from my site that was specifically mentioned in the e-mail was my phone call to id Software (.plan file entry from 5/19/98) in which I was trying to get a replacement for my Quake CD. The e-mail said to "immediately cease and desist your attack on id Software and related companies or legal action will be taken" and to "remove any and all derogatory remarks from publication".

I was going to copy the entire e-mail to this page but I figured I would check into it and see who these people are. I did however give a fairly terse response to the e-mail. I informed them of the following information.

1. That the comments I made on this page were a transcript of what happened during a phone call to id. They weren't made to slander anybody involved in the conversation.

2. That I'm still waiting for my replacement Quake CD from id.

3. That they should worry about more important things like the people who freely distribute id's programs in the warez channels.

4. That they should mind their own damn business and stop bothering me.

5. That this isn't the USA where people going around suing people on a daily basis.

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Go Go Go!zilla!

I was using a pretty handy program called Go!zilla which enables you to (among other things) continue downloads that have failed and also instantly use ftpsearch to find the file on other locations and show you which has the best connection. Anyway, the last couple of days while using this program, when the download was finished, it would proceed to shut down my Windows 95. Although it shut it down properly and didn't cause any lost data or hang ups, I can do without these feature. Needless to say, it's now "going, going GoneZilla". Don't fear the reaper!

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Okay, let's play a little game. I'll say some song lyrics, you tell me the songs and the artists. Remember that I'm an old geezer so most of the songs will be from the 70's, 80's and maybe from the 90's. All songs will be from albums that were popular around the world. (no dance, no rap, no crap) If this goes over well, I might make this a regular thing.

1. "Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream. Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream"

2. "Gold coast rails through the cotton fields, sold in a market down in New Orleans"

3. "All the twisted thoughts that spin, around my head. I'm spinning how fast the sun can, drop away"

Just e-mail me any answers that you know. The last two should be easy. :)

I'm still looking for a couple of things for the site.

I still need a nice animated button for the site. If there's any artists out there (are you listening Grim?), please do me a favor and make a nice little 88x31 button for people to link to. It would be very much appreciated.

I'm also looking for a better way to have the Quake demos displayed. I received some suggestions and all but a few would be a LOT of work. One person even suggested I make the demos page similar to www.demolition.org. As most of you know, I use to rate & review demos on Demolition and it took Ponnu (my bud that runs it) about 3 months to make the perl code for the site. It's a great looking site but I don't want to go that far.

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I put a demo on the demos page today of Unholy and MikeJ. It's a good demo but what got to me was the size of the compressed file. QW demos tend to be very large, usually 800k to 1.x megs for a 10 minute match. This demo is a 20 minute match with about 5 minutes extra of chatting at the end. The size of this 25 minute regular Quake demo is under 600k! I was sure that it was a corrupt file but I watched the entire demo and it was fine.

Also of note in the demo are the spectators. While some of them I didn't know, I certainly knew of players like "Hellrot" (John Cash), "Gollum" (from Impulse9), "WhiteDragon", "5 Days To Go" (Thresh from DeathRow) and a host of others. You could make a pretty good clan from the players spectating and playing in this match.

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I told people that I would post the only Quake joke I know of. If you're under age or don't like swearing, skip this part. It's not meant to offend anybody. I saw this joke in the UK Quake mailing list a while back and I thought it was funny.

Q. What is the difference between having oral sex with a woman and playing against a very good Quake camper?

A. At least when you're with the woman, you get to see the cunt before it's all over. :)

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My daughter Kim, (12 years old) found herself a summer job working at a local golf course. She gets to drive around in a golf cart and get golf balls plus she greets people coming into the clubhouse. Great, I'm very happy for her. I think it will be nice for her to earn a few dollars for stuff she wants to buy. Then I heard that she is working 25 hours a week (it will increase to 40 hours when school is out in a month or so) and she gets paid around $6.00 an hour.

Her first 2 week's pay was $300! When the hours go to 40 a week, her pay will be around $480 every 2 weeks. Now, I don't know about you but, I don't remember making anywhere near $480 before I finished school and got a real job. She could make over $4,200 before she quits in the fall. Is it legal to charge rent to a 12 year old? :)

I need a nice button for the site. If anybody out there has any talent, please do me a favor and make me a nice animated button for the site. It has to be the regular 88x31 and not too large in size. Thanks.

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Got some responses from my Quake CD & phone call to id Software (see yesterday's .plan) problems. Most responses either thought it was really funny and quite a few people suggested "go to a WaReZ site dude!"

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Spookie actually sent me an update for his page. Although he's a great guy, he sure isn't the most timely person for updating his page. It use to be a couple of times a week, then once every week or two. Now I'm lucky if I see an update every 2 months. I was going to change his page to a .plan file but, he runs Netscape 3.0 and it only allows one e-mail addy. He can't be arsed to setup a newer browser that allows multiple addys. Hmmm, did I mention he was a nice guy?  :)

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Trying to find a better way to run the demos page. It was fine when there were 20 or so demos, now it's getting quite crowded. I don't want to have some elaborate setup and I don't want to go through too much work to set it up but I would like something a little cleaner that still shows the reviews. The main problem is that there are so many demos, people don't know what they've downloaded. Also, I need a better way to display the demos released each day. If anybody has some ideas on this, let me know.

Whining does pay :)

My whining has paid off twofold today. First, I got my Front Page account back with Llamanet. This makes it much easier to maintain the site and offers many features, such as channel subscribing. Second, my whining and bitching to Zoid during our conversation about the bugs and supposedly new features in QW v2.2 has paid off. He announced today that QW v2.21 will soon be on it's way.

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My wonderful dealings with id Software. Looking back on this now, it seems funny, I was quite ticked at the time it happened.

I vised my Quake maps some time ago and now I can't connect to servers running QW v2.2. No problem, I'll just re-install from my Quake CD. Huh? What do you mean Kim (my daughter) broke my Quake CD around a year ago? Damn!

I called id Software lamenting my problem, here's a close transcript of the conversation.

Lady who answered the phone: "sure, just send us the broken CD and we'll replace it".

Me: It was a year ago, I don't have the broken pieces. I only have the box it came in and this so called manual that was included.

Lady: "Oh, okay, just a moment" (click...wait... love this elevator hold music... wait.. after 20 minutes on long distance, I hang-up and call back)

Lady: "Oh, I'm sorry, we must have been disconnected" (grrr, where's my rocket launcher). "Sir, do you still have the receipt?"

Me: No, it was a year ago mam.

Lady: "Oh, then I don't think we can do anything for you." she says in her Texas accent.

Me: Mam, I don't want a copy of a new game, I just want to replace a two year old game I ordered from your site, it was sent to me by GT Interactive which you don't deal with anymore.

Lady: "Oh (notice every sentence starts with "OH"), then you'll have to call them"

Me: But they don't have anything to do with Quake anymore.

Lady: "Oh my (notice slight change here), maybe you should call Activision"

Me: No, they have no rights to Quake, only Quake 2.

Lady: Quake? Oh, I thought you were talking about Quake 2.

Me: Does this mean you can help me now?

Lady: No, sorry sir, we can't help you, have a nice day. (click)

Me: But...but...wait....SHIT!

Needless to say, I didn't get a new copy of Quake and I still can't connect to QW 2.2 servers. If anybody has a CD of Quake they wanna give away, send it my way.

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If you run IE v4.x browser, you can now click on subscribe at the bottom of any of my pages. You will then be notified of any changes to the site. It's a very cool feature.

Grrr, just enough stuff to piss me off today....

The new QuakeWorld (v2.20) is out (link on my news page) and I'm a bit ticked for a couple of reasons.

First off, the new QW isn't backward compatible in any way what-so-ever. Not only can't you connect to server versions prior to v2.2, you can't even play demos that were recorded prior to this version. I sure hope somebody can make a patch for it, otherwise, I will probably end up removing all the QW demos from the demos page. This sucks big time as I would hate to think that people won't be able to view some of the amazing demos such as Timber's win at the Fusion tourney.

Second, you can only use UDP based proxies (such as NAD) with the new version. It won't accept any proxy that changes the data (such as FAQ-Proxy)

Third, I've always been annoyed that they include GameSpy with the QW downloads, well, now it's required that you have GameSpy v1.53 to connect to a QW v2.2 server.

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A couple of weeks ago, I applied for a job at my work. The job would be a minor promotion and I will end up getting the position as I've already been doing the job for the last couple of months.

A few things piss me off about the "process of hiring" at major corporations.

1. I had to apply for the position with resume and references. (I already work in the same department!)

2. They narrowed the 45 applicants down to 25 interviews. 25? They couldn't have lowered it to 5 or 10? Surely they must've gotten some good applications.

3. The interview itself. 5 questions. First one was the normal "Why do you think you're qualified for this position?". The other 4 were taken directly from the "new management handbook". They're what are known as BDI questions which are behavioral type of questions. What this means is that they don't ask you anything that is job specific, only about how you reacted in certain situations in your life. So, if you were applying for a job as a neurosurgeon, they would ask you a question like "Tell us about a time in your life that you wanted something from your boss and you were told no." Although question like these determine how you dealt with certain situations, it doesn't help determine what you know or how well your job will be done.

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On a brighter note, our buddy Spookie (Jarlaxle) was invited to Bastard's Beatdown taking place in LosAngeles this weekend. I hope he has a great time and wins tons of stuff.

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Hmmm, 4:30 a.m. and I'm sicker than a dog. I think it was some undercooked beef I had for supper. Myself and the toilet bowl are becoming quite good friends. I'll probably take the day off work if I don't feel better in a few hours. On the same note, TV at this time in the morning sucks. Nothing but 30 minute paid commercials.

Another installment of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good - Microsoft - Okay, on to this MicroSoft Windows 98 fiasco in the USA. Does anybody (besides their competitors) really care if MS includes their own browser with Win98? I certainly don't. I would rather have it included with Win98 than have to download another 25 meg program later. Netscape's big complaint is that it will create an unfair advantage to MS if Internet Explorer is on people's desktop. I may be getting old but wasn't it also included with Win95? That didn't seem to cause Netscape too many problems.

Netscape says they want either a) Netscape Communicator included on the Windows 98 CD or b) no browser on the CD at all. Neither of these are going to happen unless MicroSoft decided to release Windows 98 with 2 CD's. One with the operating system, the other with Internet software. If this happens, Netscape want their product on the second cd with IE 4.x. (it ain't gonna happen)

Here's the deal, if I own a bakery and decide to give away a loaf of bread with every dozen donuts that I sell, I'm going to make sure it's my bread and not from another bakery.

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The Bad - MicroSoft - MicroSoft's Java development has done something that I consider "underhanded" when they released their new line of Java products. What they did was to change the Java coding so that it works with nearly everything but it isn't compliant with Sun's Java development. As is the case in the USA, Sun Microsystems, which owns the copyright on Java coding, will be suing MS to have this changed.

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The Ugly - US Justice Department - Get a life! With so many problems in the USA, do you have nothing better to do than get involved with the greedy imperialistic dealings of major companies? It has cost the American tax payers 2 million dollars a day for over 3 months, (that's 180 Million so far) for you to be involved as to whether or not a web browser is included on a CD. Go out and find some real criminals for a while. (like that Clinton guy :)

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I was told earlier by Dave from LLamaNET that I will be getting my FP connection to the server restored soon. (wOOp!) This will be great as I hate using FTP to maintain a site.

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I think the "hooligans" in Clan [9] and myself have finally made peace with each other (not that I had any problems with them before).

Just a hint for everybody, if you send me mail, at least attempt to be cordial in the message. You can be mad at something and still remain a mature person. Calling me names or using a lot of swear words isn't going to get a reply from me.

Ack! Received more mail from a few of the Clan [9] guys. These will be the final comments on the whole Clan [9] (with Doomer) and UT/EG saga. Now, I'm as thick skinned as the next person but, this is getting a bit too silly for my liking. Here are two of the comments I received from one of the Clan [9] members.

"you are treating us like we are hooligans going through prison or something" and "You are attacking us for no reason and giving us a very bad reputation"

Now, you can read the two previous entries and see if these comments are warranted. I don't think they were. I only said that one clan lost a match to another clan and I did NOT attack Clan [9] in any way or give them a "very bad reputation". Nuff said, lets not make more of this than is necessary. If I didn't like Clan [9], I wouldn't have listed them as the #2 clan on my Quake's Best Players page.

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Argh, I wasn't able to retrieve my mail for about 24 hours as the Llamanet server had some problems and my mail account had been shut down. When it was put back up, they changed my mail login to my ftp login and couldn't send me mail to tell me. I finally got a message via ICQ letting me know what was happening. The biggest problem is the 6 hour time difference between here and the server. When I got home from work and found out about it, I sent them mail but they didn't get it til the next morning.

I'm still whining at them to put up the FP extensions. Maintaining a site via ftp sucks. :(

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Oh gee, the "Quake's Best Players" list is back to normal. I was asked by a UK player named Kranium to put DC_Razza as the winner for DM4. Hope you got a good laugh Kranium, I'll forward all the hate mail to you. :)

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Tomorrow I'll whine about this Win98 crap in the USA. :)

Fresh off my "Quake ego is a fragile thing" comment in my last update, I find that I've bruised another set of egos. After mentioning that Clan [9] from Sweden lost a match to Clan UT from the USA, I was e-mailed by (what seemed like) everybody in Clan [9] screaming foul. They all had different excuses... err I mean stories, but the consensus seems to be that they didn't play Clan UT, and it was actually Clan EG that they lost to. Also, the 4 players playing weren't all from Clan [9] so it wasn't an "official" Clan [9] match. Since TB-Doomer was playing with them, (he's a pretty good player) Clan [9] doesn't actually get dinged for the loss, just a few friends from Sweden (mostly Clan [9]) that lost the match. Here's the new synopsis of the match...

• 3 Clan [9] guys and TB-Doomer lost 117-66 to Clan EG members (although it's not an official EG match if MikeJ isn't playing)
• Pings for 3 of the EG guys were 250+ and 1 guy with a very low ping (EG normally plays with 4 lpb's)
• Pings for the [9] guys and TB-Doomer were 140-150

Does all this seem a bit petty to you too? It was only a friendly game and it doesn't really matter who won or lost. If [9] wants to be picky about it not being an "official" clan match, that's fine. I would look at the other side of the coin and decipher what went wrong and how can it be fixed so that the same thing doesn't happen against DeathRow this summer.

Just to clarify, EG clan broke up a while back and split into two clans (UT and P1). A month or two ago, they all decided to get back together in EG. When I asked some of the EG guys about the match with [9], none of them knew anything about it nor had they heard of Clan [9]. I guess this does mean that it wasn't an official clan match.

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Updated the "Quake's Best Players" list today and crowned a new DM4 champ. I never thought that anybody would be better than Timber is but, the new champ is a sight to behold.

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God dammit, I should stick to Quake. I've been playing Blade Runner the past few days and I'm stuck. At least with Quake, you can take out your frustrations while playing. :)

The Quake ego is a fragile thing. It seems that these days, whenever I put a demo on the demos page, somebody complains about it. I won't mention names as that isn't the issue but maybe we can all lighten up a bit and enjoy the demos.

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Am I too hard on people? I don't think so. I have my opinions the same as the next person but I rarely ever single anybody out and rag on them. Lately, some people have accused me being too much of a critic when it comes to some players and clans. I'm to the point now where I don't really care if I'm tough on some people. I never make personal attacks on them but I will say if they played like crap in a demo.

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Speaking of playing badly, I saw the number 1 clan from Sweden, Clan [9] take a visit to a USA server last night to play the number 1 ranked QW clan called UT. [9] lost the match 117-66. Before we start hearing the whining, here are the particulars. All the [9] players had pings of 140-150. All the UT players except one had pings of 250. This surprises me because the last time I saw UT, they were all lpb.

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After gathering dust on my shelf for quite a while, I finally started playing the game Blade Runner. After playing Quake for so long, it's nice to see some high-res graphics for a change. I get a bit tired of the grainy graphics in regular Quake and the blurred graphics of GL Quake. On the other hand, you never need a hint book to play Quake :)

Hmmm, what questions do I get asked the most? Here some of them.

1) Where does the name Methos come from?

Methos (pronounced ME-thoss) is from the TV show version of The Highlander. The character Methos is the oldest and wisest of all the immortals. I have little in common with the character. I'm not immortal, it's debatable as to how wise I am but, I am old. :)  The name has nothing to do with some American candy.

2) Who's your favorite Quake player?

My personal favorite Quake player for the past year or so has been DC_Danold. It doesn't mean I think he's the best or worst in the world. Kind of like your favorite football team. For whatever reasons, you like them. Dan is a superb player and a very nice guy.

3) Where do you get all those great demos?

All over the place. Most are submitted by way of url, some I find while visiting sites (which I rarely do) and the older ones I happened to have sitting around on my hard drive.

4) Do you ever play Quake yourself?

Yes, I play Quake everyday. I used to be in a QW clan called [Co.] (The Company) until they folded. I have been asked to be in a few other clans but I don't have the time.

5) Are you any good at Quake?

I'm an average Quake player. I wish I could be as good as half of the players on the demos page but I don't think it's going to happen.

6) Do you think you're some kind of expert on Quake players?

No, I don't think I'm an expert on Quake players. I know what makes a good player and most people can certainly tell what mistakes a bad player makes or what players do wrong in matches. 

7) What (in your opinion) makes a great Quake player?

Tough question. Let's see what I can come up with. I tend to like smart players. Players can do as many rocket jumps and other fancy moves as they want but most don't impress me.

• Having great player prediction is a must. You need to know where your opponent is at all times during the match. A player (even when losing) must have control over his own game and not get surprised from behind or do other stupid things.
• Being calm under pressure is important.
• Great aim!
• Knowing the level and all the tricks to the level. Even great players still learn new tricks on levels they've played a thousand times.

Although it doesn't affect gameplay, a player must be cool. Either playing or chatting, if the player doesn't have respect for other people, other people will have no use for him. The last thing we need in Quake is more egos and assholes.

8) How come so-an-so (insert favorite player here) isn't in your Best Players list?

Because he sucks! Just kidding :)  Probably because there's somebody better. Possibly because I haven't heard of him. Possibly because whenever I saw him, he lost. No, the best players list isn't perfect at all and there's no scientific solution to getting on the list (bribes are nice though) but, if somebody regularly beats a person who is on the list, they'll probably make it to the list sooner or later.

9) What are the best and worst things about being involved in Quake?

The Best: The people. I've met so many cool people while playing Quake and chatting on IRC and ICQ. Talking to really nice people like John Cash, John Romero, Ettu, Danold and a whole bunch of others is worth more than I could ever say. Having fun playing with cool people is a rush. Winning a tough match is very fulfilling.

The Worst: The people. Some are real assholes. Many have opinions and just won't listen to anything anybody else says. The people who don't accept Quake as friendly competition bother me. Hating players because they live in other countries or because they get a lot of publicity is very childish. Having said this, these people are in the minority. Lag sucks too.

Whew, that's about it. Anymore questions? Just e-mail them to me.

"Spookie Side" is soon to be history. He seems to be having a hard time finding Quake happenings in L.A. to talk about on his site. So, we've decided to make a "Spookie's .plan page" and he can talk about anything he wants. Maybe he'll get in a "jabbering" mood soon. I hope so.

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The Llamanet admins never did respond to my mail asking about why I wasn't one of the top 5 sites on llamanet last week. (see last entry) I finally got a hold of one of them on ICQ and asked if he got my mail. The response I got was "yes". I questioned him about my ranking and his response was "you're still not in the top 5". Oh well, screw 'em. I don't think Methos Quake is anywhere near to being a "great site" but I do know exactly how many hits each of the llamanet sites get and I know where I stand in the rankings. The llamanet guys are still nice guys, I just don't agree with the counter they use.

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Congrats to my buddy Dave "iAgo" Wakeman who ran the GibFest '98 tourney on joining Clan TC (Thunder Clan) who won everything there was to win at the tourney. Good job Dave, it just goes to show what you can force people into at a tourney when you have your finger on the power switch. :)

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For those of you who have yet to hear of Tyro, feel lucky. Tyro is a kid in the UK who is known for being a shit disturber on IRC and Quake servers to the point of being physically accosted at the recent Fusion touney in the UK. I had a chance to see him in action on IRC last night and he lived up to his reputation. He proceeded to get under the skin of nearly everybody on the channel. Nearly every second word was swearing at somebody (when he spelled the words correctly). Oh well, I'm sure he'll grow up sooner or later.

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I'm off work for the next few days so I'll be able to update the site a bit more. I also have a demo of [9] playing against the #1 UK clan, QPD that I'll put on the demos page when I get a few minutes.

What gives with the llamanet hit counter? I noticed this morning on the llamanet home page that I wasn't in their top 5 visited sites. This was quite surprising to me. Two weeks ago, I had a "average" week as far as hits go and managed to make it into the top 5. Last week, I had a shit week for hits and wasn't in the top 5. No problem there. This week, I had a great week for hits. At one point getting 2500+ hits in a 24 hour period but, I didn't make it into the list. How is this so? I went to the 5 sites listed and the counters didn't show much activity. Nothing against the other sites, they're all pretty nice sites. I sent e-mail to the llamanet admins but haven't received any response. Yeah, I know, Stop your whining Methos! :)

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It's a small (Quake) world. Last time I did the "Quake's Best Players" list, most people liked it. After I let it get approx. 5 months old, some people in the UK started harping on me about it. Fair enough, it was time for a serious update to the list. Since I made the new list a couple of weeks ago, nobody in the UK has complained about it. HOWEVER, I have now received mail from Sweden, Norway, Germany, Brazil, USA and even Australia complaining about some of the selections. Seems that a lot of people don't like the fact that Sniket (from Sweden) is on the list. Oh well, I guess you can't please everybody.

The last 24 hours have been the busiest on this site since it opened less than a month ago. In the last 24 hours, Methos Quake had over 2500 hits. Not quite up to the level of BluesNews but that's not bad for a personal web page that doesn't have warez or porn on it. :) Thanks to all the people that dropped by. Hopefully you'll come back often.

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Went to GibFest '98 yesterday. GibFest is a Quake 2 Lan tournament, including a 1on1, CTF and (if time) an RA2 tourney. Since I was at work most of the day, I wasn't able to bring my PC to play. Was only able to stay for a few hours to visit some of the guys and help out where I could with some of the network stuff. Thanks to Dave and all the guys at GibFest. I'll post the results etc.. when I get more info on it.

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Saw a rumor from QL_Pundit that Ettu might be playing Quake again. I don't know if this is true but it would be great news if it is. Both Danold and Ettu coming back in the same week sounds too good to be true. :)

Did a rather large update to the site today. Demos added to the demos page. Reptile interview was posted. I created a new menu page for the interviews. Updated the news page blah, blah...

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The Reptile interview (although late) turned out very well. YES, I did give him ample opportunity to supply me with a different picture :)  He also confirmed (for the first time) that DeathRow is trying to go to Sweden to play against Clan [9]. I would love to see these two great clans go at it.

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Went to the pub last night to celebrate some happenings at work. No less than 3 different offers by women for nocturnal activities. Damn, must've been slim pickens in the rest of the bar to get that many offers in a span of two hours. :)

Had a lot of problems with Llamanet the past couple of days regarding access. First with Front Page and then with FTP. Thanks to Bloated (admin dude) for bowing to my continuous whining and getting it all fixed up. :)

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Oops, I noted the other night that UK irc channel addy had gone down and that DC_Carnage had given me an alternate address. I forgot to post the new address. It's "irc.thedbs.com". There ya go, Randemarr. :)

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My whining also paid off in other ways too. After whining about not getting the interview questions back from people who had agreed to do them, I got two back today. Both of them were quite good. Next months interview will (hopefully) be posted on Friday (May 1)

Earth calling Spookie! I haven't seen or heard from Spookie in a week or so. His page is starting to get dusty. I hope he hasn't done something silly like found a girlfriend. :)

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My favorite Quake player? Not that anybody has asked but if you look at my demos page, you can probably figure out that my favorite Quake player for the past year or so has been DC-DaNoLd. I was always impressed with the talent and intelligence Dan showed in nearly every match he played. Dan was winner or runner-up in many of the categories on my Quake's Best Players page. Since his retirement from Quake a few months ago, I have missed watching him play. While talking with Dan last night, he informed me that he's now back playing Quake and QW. Welcome back Dan. It's great to see you're playing again.

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I'm a sports fan. The sports I like are NHL Hockey, NFL Football, Formula One Racing and a few others. There's a baseball player in the USA named Cal Ripken jr. Cal has done something that I've never heard of before. The other day he played in his 2500th consecutive game! When you think about it, it's an awesome feat. That's like Wayne Gretzky playing every NHL game for 30 1/2 seasons or somebody playing every NFL Football game for 156 consecutive seasons or a football (soccer) player from England playing in every regular season match for 54 seasons. Wow!

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Just for a laugh, next time you're playing Quake or watching a demo, change the "roll angle" settings to something other than zero. The command is "cl_rollangle xx". Try about 25, it will make you a bit dizzy. If you really want to get crazy, try it at 180. It's even funnier if you're watching a demo as a spectator.

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Some decent responses to the new choices on the Quake's Best Players list. I'm sure that I will get the complaints rolling in soon enough. :)

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Watched the movie "Kiss The Girls" on video last night. Decent acting, decent plot but a bit far fetched near the end. Also notable as one of the few movies Morgan Freeman doesn't narrate the story line. :)

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My thanks to DC_Carnage (Thanks Mark) for giving me an alternate address for the UK IRC server. Seems that the old address went bye-bye.

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Still waiting for responses back from 5 different interviews that were sent out for the Interview page ages ago. I don't understand why people who have happily agreed to do the interviews can't just answer the questions and send them back.

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Tried to connect to the UK irc server (irc.ukcl.ml.org) tonight but for the second night in a row, I couldn't connect. If anybody knows if the server is down, broken, or just plain fooked up, send me mail and let me know.