Not Quake related but, much cooler. My 12 year old daughter Kim, who has made her mark as a great athlete, decided to expand her horizons recently. Among her many talents, she has become somewhat adept at poetry.

Kim received a letter yesterday stating that a poem she wrote will be placed in the Poetry Institute of Canada and that it will also be considered for a yearly award in her age group. The poem will also be published in a book of poetry by Canadian poets to be released next spring. How cool is that! Here's a copy of the poem

The Ocean - by Kim

Silky web of blue, sitting upon the ocean floor.
Quiet, not being bothered, just sitting there silently.

All of a sudden, splash.
A black and white creature.
Sits upon the ocean surface.

Slow, steady, posture just right.
The bird leaps, Leaving it's womb of water.

The bird sores to the sky.
No worries, no sound.
He just flies.

Needless to say, I'm very proud of my little girl. I Love You, Kim. I know your mom is proud of you too.

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Seems that a bunch of women in our accounting department were falling all over themselves to be the highest bidder for my ugly mug. I'll get my revenge though. I put in a bid for the accounting manager and she'll get the "wrath of Methos". :-)

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Lyric O' the Day: (name that tune)

Previous LOD was "Turn The Page" by the USA artist "Bob Seger"

A funny thing happened on the way to the server. It's been a strange week for server stuff. First, when I had finished the Quake Poll on Tuesday, I went to upload it to the server but, I kept getting a busy signal from my ISP. This was strange because I never had a busy signal before then. Okay, no problem, I'll wait til Wednesday morning to update the site. When I tried my ISP on Wednesday morning, the line had been disconnected.

Hmm, this was weird. I tried calling their voice line but that had been disconnected also. Oh well, I don't care if they shut down, I owed them money. :p  I then went to find another ISP, after about 3 hours, I finally got one and my new account was activated on Wednesday evening so I was able to post the poll results.

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Speaking of servers, my host server Barrysworld is being hacked by a guy in the USA. This normally wouldn't mean much to me besides the fact that they've blocked out the line to BW that comes in from the USA. This does affect me because I use the same line. At this point, I can't connect to the Barrysworld home pages. The rumors I hear is that the guy is really close to being caught and thrown in jail for this federal offence.

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Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap!
I went shopping with my daughter Kim last weekend. One of the places we went to was a HUGE book store in one of the big malls. The people who work and shop in this store are generally "upper class" folks (which I'm not) and they tend to have that nose in the air attitude.

After being in the store for a few minutes, I heard some guy yelling. I went to see what all the commotion was about and I found a 20'ish year old guy screaming at one of the lady sales clerks (around 50 years old) and the woman was nearly in tears.

As far as I could make out, he was mad because he had ordered a book for school and it hadn't arrived yet. This set him off and he started threatening anybody close to him. The lady was trying to calm him down and call the police to have him taken away. Every time she opened her mouth, he started yelling and swearing. Then he grabbed the phone that was there and threw it about 20 yards across the store hitting some poor guy that was watching him. The manager (a very small man) of the store went to talk with him and was promptly pushed down on the floor.

When I saw the manager get pushed around, I decided I would step in and stop this idiot. I walked up to him, grabbed his arm and bent it up behind his back. (being 6'5" really helps in cases like this) I took him to the mall entrance and handed him over to the mall security that was coming in the door.

When I went back into the store to get my daughter and the books I bought. The 30 or so people that were there, all started clapping. The manager thanked me for helping them out and offered me all kinds of free stuff from the store. I politely declined and left the store. When Kim and I were outside, she turned to me and said, "Dad, don't embarrass me like that again!".  (sigh)  :-)

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I'm too tired to type any more. I'll talk to you after I get some sleep.

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Lyric O' the Day: (name that tune)

Previous LOD was "Lightning Crashes" by the USA band "Live"

First of all, the next time I mention doing an Ultimate Quake Poll, somebody give me a good shake. Doing a poll of that size is kinda like having a baby. It's fun to make, the results are great but, the pain you go through is incredible.

Compiling over 200,000 entries (actual amount was 206,910) into a page full of results makes the eyes go nuts. It would've been MUCH easier if the people who didn't have an answer for a category would've left it blank instead of putting in some answer like "don't know" or "dunno" or "haven't the foggiest".

My feelings on the poll are varied. I was hoping for more diversified results and even more than the 3420 people who voted (after deleting 210 voters). It was nice to see the Fins voting in force. I don't think there was a player category that every member of clan Z didn't get a vote.

The love / hate affair that players have with Thresh and DeathRow still amazes me. Winners of 11 categories with 8 being good and 3 being bad puzzles me. I guess the more popular you become, the more enemies you get.

Here's my version of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (or at least Surprising)

The Good

• LPB/HPB vote was almost exactly opposite of last vote
• More players use GL than last poll
• Much less players using Rjump binds than last poll
• 16% less players using crosshairs (pffft, chicks)
• 82% of voters are in a clan. That's cool
• 250 more Quakers eating Pizza while playing :)
• One guys voted his favorite snack as "Quaker Oats". LOL
• Some American players (besides Thresh) made some of the top 3's.
• Lakerman does very well in the entire poll and wins DM2 by a landslide
• Clan Z from Finland received tons of votes in every category
• sCary (nuff said)
• FOV 120 had 31% vote
• DM4, best 1on1 map with over 1400 votes
• E1M2 on had 73 votes for 1on1 map. Cool
• DM3 rocks for clan matches
• Out of 838 votes, top three players in Best Aim category separated by 20 votes
• Methos Quake best demo site by over 1250 votes (Thank You)
• Fragzone winner best quake / gaming site
• Quake 3 Arena wins hands down
• Quake Done Quicker still rules for best demos
• Clan [9] kicks ass in nearly every clan category

The Bad

• Only 9% of voters play regular Quake
• 4% more players use GL than last vote
• BluesNews not making the top three in the Quake / Gamng site. He may not be as "in-touch" these days but, credit where credit is due.
• Favorite id single player maps were all from E1Mx, come on, lots of great Quake maps and most better than the first episode
• E1M2 as fav single player map, bah, show some imagination. Tons of great maps, E1M2 is boring in single player
• The Ziggurath Vertigo in worst single player map. The map design was very cool when the game came out.

The Ugly (surprising)

• Thresh and / or DeathRow winners in 11 categories, 8 good, 3 bad
• Clan matches were most popular at 72%
• Only 34% chose FOV 90
• Thresh wins most overrated player by a landslide (wtf, hasn't he proved himself yet?)
• Challenge.AU received 4 votes for best Quake site
• Blue wins most annoying personality
• Paul2 gets lots of votes from Swedes as most annoying LOL (hard to believe)
• Almost as many people play Doom as they play Unreal
• SiN only gets 76 votes for upcoming game

Things You Didn't See In The Vote

• Methos Quake voted second best Quake site (not counted)
• Methos voted 2nd in Quake personality (not counted)
• Methos gets 20 votes for most annoying personality
• Spookie gets 40 votes for Coolest Quake Player
• The highest vote getter NOT to win a category was Sectopod
• 84% of voters used IE v4.x

I should have a few more tidbits from the poll results tomorrow.

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Lyric O' the Day: (name that tune)

"Oh, now, feel it, coming back again. Like a roll of thunder chasing the wind. Forces pulling from the center of the earth again. I can feel it."

Previous LOD was "Epic" by the USA band "Faith No More"

I didn't realize that the PC Gamer that I read each month, wasn't released in the rest of the world. Now, I knew that there were different versions, I just didn't know what the difference was. As it turns out, the North American version has a Thresh article each month and the UK version replaces the Thresh article with about 100 pages of something called Wireplay.

Not sure what Wireplay is but, I know that they have it in the UK and Australia and apparently, it's something very evil.

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I'd like to give a HUGE thanks to all the sites that mentioned the poll. The amount of voters was incredible. I'd also like to thank the site (non-English speaking) that announced "Methos Has A Big Pole". I wasn't ready for the response I got from that. LOL

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Upon viewing the partial results on the Ultimate Quake Poll 2, there were a few things that I noticed. One was the lack of voters from the UK. The UK players are normally huge supporters of Quake but, it might be a case that they have the same amount of people voting this time but, it just doesn't compare as highly with the overall votes.

Another was the lack of votes from the Americans. The volume of American voters was higher but, compared to the amount of voters this time, the percentage is down. The amount of votes by Finland and some other countries has amazed me.

Some of the results are very cool indeed. The fact that the mega gaming site Bluesnews wasn't voted as the "favorite Quake / gaming site" says quite a bit about what the players want to see on the internet in regards to actual gaming news.

I'll be closing down the poll at midnight my time which is 6:00 a.m. GMT. I'll try to get the results sorted tomorrow but, it will be a long hard task.

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My daughter wants me to take her shopping. Wish me luck in the land of the stores.

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Lyric O' the Day: (name that tune)

"Can you feel it ,see it, hear it today? If you can't, then it doesn't matter anyway. You will never understand it cuz it happens too fast and it feels so good, it's like walking on glass. It's so cool, it's so hip, it's alright. It's so groovy, it's outta sight. You can touch it, smell it, taste it so sweet but, it makes no difference cuz it knocks you off your feet."

Previous LOD was "Animal" by the UK band "Def Leppard"

Hide your children, this one's a nasty one. (that Paul2 guy is starting to have an affect on me :)

<pissed off mode>

Timing is everything. Shogo was finally released and was available in some computer stores yesterday. Approx. 2 hours prior, there was a bug patch released for the same game. Am I the only one that is getting sick of this?

For all gaming companies, please live by this simple rule. Don't release a game until the fucking thing works properly. If companies like LucasArts and Access Software can do it, so can you. Stop using the paying public as beta testers after the game is released. Release a beta, then fix all the problems before the final release.

Hmm, wonder if I'll still get free copies of games after that kind of comment? LOL

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I saw an article on the net today. I think it was called Games Domain Reviews or something close to that. The guy who writes this page always seems to be picking on id Software. Now, I pick on id when they do something stupid but, I always give credit where credit is due. After reading the PC Gamer articles, this guy decided to rag on id for "making games that please them" instead of pushing the limits and making games for the public.

Here's the bottom line. id has the hardest job in the gaming industry. Not only do they design the best 3D games, they also design all their own 3D engines. It's much easier to use a licensed engine and expand on it. There are only 3 companies that have designed more than 1 3D engine and id is the only one to make more than one 1st person shooter engine. id has designed 3 of them.

Let's think back to when Hexen was released. People were amazed at what was added to the Doom 2 engine. Things like jumping, lightning, movable floors, free floating objects (leaves, lava, waterfalls etc), earthquakes and in-game resistance (ice floors, slow motion etc). So many people thought that Hexen kicked Doom 2's ass but, these effects were only done because of the engine that was available to Raven Software.

If id is only doing what pleases themselves, so be it. I'll take their games over "one hit wonder" games like ROTT and Duke3D any day.

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Hmm, I received quite a few responses to my comments about Fragga in my last update. I don't know what the problem is here but, instead of people simply asking me the scenario of how, when and where I saw Fragga, a lot of people just decided that I was bullshiiting and discarded the info I had to offer.

Now, the only reasons I can think of for these narrow-minded people who commented were that they either a) didn't appreciate that the info came from me, b) they thought they knew everything that is happening in the UK Quake or c) they're just dumb fucks that can't disseminate a bit of simple information.

I saw messages saying "Why would Fragga tell Methos and nobody else?" and "Methos must be dreaming again". Neither are true so I'll explain what actually happened.

Here's the deal. I logged onto one of the old Crystal Duel servers around 3 months ago. There were 2 people on the server just fooling around and practicing. One of them was Adze who ran the servers and was a member of clan QPD (Fragga's old clan). Adze and I have known each other for a while and he introduced me to Fragga. I asked Fragga if he was making a comeback and he said that he needed to practice a lot first but that he wanted to comeback. About 2 weeks later, I asked Adze if Fragga was playing again and he said that he was but, he wasn't using the name Fragga.

There you have it, the whole exciting story (yawn). No spectacular secrets or big announcements, just a guy playing Quake. If you didn't see it on the news page, I posted a link to the old Fragga / Reaper bot demo.

</pissed off mode>

Lyric O' the Day: (name that tune) Another easy one today

"I cry wolf, given mouth to mouth. Like a moving heartbeat in the witching hour. I'm running with the wind, a shadow in the dust. And like the driving rain, like the restless rust."

Previous LOD was "Runaway Train" by the USA band "Soul Asylum"

Well, Methos is another year older. I guess there's only one thing left to do. I'll move to Florida, buy some white shoes, wear bright plaid pants that buckle near my chest and complain about the government, full-time.

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The Ultimate Quake Poll 2 is doing very well and the hits are still roaring in. I haven't checked the results lately but they seemed pretty good last time I checked. The poll was announced on every major Quake site (sCary mentioned it after I threatened to stop showing Quake Babes™ on my site) and I thank them all for the kind words.

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Ode to sCary:
Did I mention that sCary was a nice guy? Well, he is. In my last update I mentioned the GNDM tourney and specifically mentioned Crezyman from ZT and sCary from R3V. Well, I received about 50 pieces of mail on this telling me 2 things. One was that CZM was no longer with ZT and has been with R3V since just after the GNDM tourney. Good job man. I use to play with Crezy quite often and he's a good guy. He's also improved his aim dramatically. (See, I told you those aim bots would help :)

The other news was that sCary (depending on who you listen to) left / took a break from / had a big fight with / got kicked out, of R3V. I decided to hear it from the horse's mouth so, I asked sCary what the scoop was. He confirmed that for now, he is inactive from the R3V gang. I won't bother going into the why's and when's because it's none of our business and I gave him my word that I wouldn't discuss any details.

Now, sCary and I have only talked a few times but I (like many) am a big fan of his. I like sCary for a few reasons. One is because I love his demos. His Quake playing is always a treat to watch. The second reason is because of his site. I like reading his personal comments in his weekly entries. Last, and most important is that fact that sCary is true to the game of Quake.

sCary could be a poster child for the game of Quake. I'm sure he's the kind of person that id was hoping would represent their game. He's American, he's very good at the game, he speaks his mind, he's considered "cool" by lots of other people, he has the means to speak about the game and he loves the game. He's been around since the start of the game and even now days, he still uses the name sCary and rarely changes when joining a server or on irc. There are very few great players that can say that.

Why am I harping about this? Not sure really. I guess I just don't want sCary to fade away from Quake. The game needs him as much as he needs the game. Come back soon Steve, you won the "favorite Quake personality" in the first poll because people like what you're all about. 

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Speaking of Quake legends, UK Quake player Fragga has been mentioned a lot in the UK Quake mailing list lately in almost folklore type fashion. People telling stories of his triumphs while playing and of course his infamous matches against Sujoy.

For those that don't know who Fragga. He was young Quake player and member of clan QPD that was very good. He was also the first person I saw that used the "spawn frag" method of playing on DM4. That was until his mother received a HUGE 3 month phone bill with all the time charges of Fragga playing Quake on-line. He retired from Quake for a while after that.

There seems to be some confusion as to where Fragga is and what he's been doing lately. The last time I saw Fragga on a server was about 3 months ago. He was practicing for a comeback. I won't say any more than this except for the fact that he plays regularly in the UK Quake scene under a different alias.

There's also been talk that people want to see the old Fragga vs the Reaper Bot demo. I have the dm4 one and if somebody requests it, I'll see if I can dig it up and throw it on-line.

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Hmm, they may talk about Fragga in a Quake folklore kind of fashion but, I still love the Ettu, Hellrot story better. I guess it's only fitting that Fragga started the spawn fragging and Ettu ended them. :-)

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Lyric O' the Day: (name that tune) An easy one today

"Can you help me remember how to smile? Make it somehow all seem worthwhile? How on earth did I get so jaded? Life's mystery seems so faded."

Previous LOD was "Holiday In Cambodia" by the USA band "Dead Kennedy's"

Geez, this update took me ages to do. I'm not sure why that is but, it was a big update and spell checking Paul2's QMH page takes forever. (honest)

I decided I would start the Ultimate Quake Poll 2 on Tuesday, October 13th. I was going to start it on Saturday but I don't have everything completed. I have this weekend off work so I'll probably do it then. Monday is a holiday here in Canada (Thanksgiving Day) and Tuesday is the first day of my new job. Plus, it's also my birthday. :-)

Is it just me or does everybody run out of shampoo, anti-perspirant and after shave on the same day? It seem to happen to me all the time.

I have to decide whether or not I want to keep the site on the Barrysworld servers. There have been a few host sites that have asked me to move but, I don't want to move just for the sake of moving. Tony and the guys at BW have been great and I've enjoyed being with them.

I'll have to head over to BW and read their rules and regulations that they have in place. I can think of a couple of people who are thinking "yes, please leave". LOL

Today, I checked into getting cable modem access again. I had checked 3 months ago and they told me it would be available in my area of the city "in about 3 months". When I called them today, they told me it should be available in my area of the city "in about 3 months". WTF? S'cuse me ma'am, you told me that 3 months ago. "Oh well, that's the latest news I have, sorry". Damn, damn, damn!

Tomorrow, I'll call to get the latest update on the ADSL situation. It pisses me off that 80% of the city I live in has both ADSL and cable modem access but because I live in the "burbs", I can't get it yet.

My favorite sport is Hockey and the NHL (National Hockey League) starts it's regular season tomorrow. That of course is great news for couch potatoes like me. Pretty soon, it'll be a great time of year. Professional Hockey, Football (American and Canadian), Basketball and of course, the Baseball play-offs. How cool is that!

Wow, long time, no update. It was so bad that I had both Spookie and Paul2 updating ahead of me. Trust me, that is really bad. :-)

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Work has been busy as hell. I'm in the middle of doing a huge project for the head honchos at my work and the results will affect approx. 20 million Internet users. Hmm, maybe I should add some stuff that will help all Quake users. :0

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Speaking of work, I received a verbal promotion on Friday. I won't see the offer in writing til later this week but, it should raise my yearly salary by about $12,000 or possibly a bit more. That made for a good day at work. Now, if I could only get a decent parking spot, I'd be happy. You may think the parking comment is a joke but, it's not. In the downtown office towers I work in, they're the 3 largest buildings in the city I live in. The only parking around is an underground parkade that charges something like $400 a month. Yikes!

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Needless to say, the QMH page was umm busy. The responses came in very quickly. Most surprising was that nearly all were positive and saying how funny people thought it was. Now, this isn't to say that Paul2 didn't offend anybody, he did. I was a bit surprised that he kept directing his ranting towards the Americans and the Swedes but, that's his choice.

Just for the record, I don't edit anything Paul2 says on the page and I won't unless he says something that I would consider "over the top". So far, Paul has kept it fairly light and funny to the point where everybody knows that he's joking about most points he makes. If he were to get into race or gender remarks, I would probably edit that out.

I've always commented that the Quake ego is a fragile thing. It's actually refreshing to see somebody that doesn't take it too seriously and does his best to make sure others don't take it seriously either.

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My comments on the last update saying that the UK team is comprised of a few countries (England, Scotland etc..) brought a few interesting responses. While most people wanted to know why they were allowed to do it, Ewan and Nightwing tried to convince me that England wasn't a country. They mentioned that England was more like a State or a Province of the United Kingdom.

Well, it's been a few years since I've been back to my home "country" of England but, as far as I know, it's still a country. :-)

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I had a decent weekend so far. I was able to see my "gorgeous blonde neighbor" on Friday morning for a couple of hours. After getting the news about my promotion at work, I had an easy day. I then got to spend the evening with her (dinner, pub, late night stuff etc..) and most of the day on Saturday. Spent Saturday evening fixing and upgrading my daughter's computer. Oh well, pretty boring for most people but, I thought it was nice.