NOTE: This was a way-too long guide that I wrote on the now-exploded 99 Percent forums in February 2012, so I’m archiving it here (rather than actually writing any new content). I still fly Merlins a lot, even in the face of the recent OMGWTFBBQ assault frigate buffs that have made low and null very T1 frigate-unfriendly, and anything posted in Fleet Finder as a "FRIGATE ROAM" actually mans "ASSAULT FRIGATE ROAM, though if you have a Daredevil maybe we’ll let you in as a +1 scout." Fuck the haters.

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1) Come up with a reasonable idea to fix a long-broken system in the game

2) Post said idea in forums

3) Get a CSM member to make a prop bet regarding a loophole in the formula

4) Post said loophole (that works but no one would ever use because it’s incredibly self-destructive)

5)

I think I may return it, because the guy did work on Wizardy. However, it’s Eve, and a legitimate bet. Plus, I love that comment.

Seriously, I just forget things. I’m old. Maybe when I paid the hosting bill I should have remembered to get out of maintenance mode.

What’s worse is that I actually got emails asking me about the site. So… there. I’ll fix the remaining DB issues later.

In the meantime, Wen is way better at poker than I am and owned me on her first ever live cash game. I shall find my testicles again someday. (Reference: Ante Up pokercast, 8/25/11 episode, starting about an hour in. Shame.)

I’m a big fan of High Stakes Poker… well, of the earlier seasons of High Stakes Poker. It was a great entry into the then-expanding balloon of poker TV shows generally dominated by tournament final tables, where the differences in stack sizes are measured in terms of exponents, as are the increases in blinds, so all you see is 10 PRINT "All In"; 20 GOTO 10. HSP was (except for Live at the Bike, web-only) the first televised cash game between actual skilled players applying their formidable experience and analytic skills to the laudable goal of taking money away from each other.

Most people who follow poker on TV point to the early days of the World Poker Tour and its use of the lipstick hole card camera as the pivotal innovation that made poker watchable. If you want to know what it was like before, just go to a cardroom and railbird for a while and see how long you can take it. True, knowledge of the hole cards is necessary to make poker intelligible to a viewing audience, but I don’t think that’s what makes it interesting in a TV show.

What makes it interesting is Gabe Kaplan.

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I’ve been getting some fun comments from someone who is so smart he doesn’t even need to read an article before criticizing. That person is the redoubtable Richard Kulisz, who has been such a good contributor that I’m glad to make a full post just about him. He’s famous too, and you can read more about his exciting career here, here, here, and here (edit: also here), just for a start. Hell, he even has his own appreciation society.

Now to be fair, his comments started off fairly rational-sounding, if not always on target. It was kind of interesting watching the mania grow and grow as the comments got less and less pertinent to the source material. The old me would have helped him along, slowly whipping him up into a frenzy through careful insertions of responses designed to trigger his hindbrain through subliminal manipulation, like "no, u." The new me? It’s not really that I’m any nicer a person. I just don’t care.

Here are some exciting excerpts from his collection of (as of this writing) 29 comments, maybe with more to come assuming he doesn’t notice that I’ve dropped him into the moderation queue and removed all his old diatribes.

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"Honey, I have an important announcement to make," I said, as I am wont to do when I am home with nobody else in earshot but Wen.

"Yes?" she tiredly asked.

"I am giving up on this whole F.A.T.A.L. exercise," I told her.

"THANK GOD."

I really wanted to try and finish, but honestly this could be the first RPG "book" that has ever made me actively angry just by reading it.  And yes I know all about HYBRID.

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Continuing my exercise in self-loathing, I now continue generating my "character."  This starts with reading about a page’s worth of description regarding the inferiority of women in just about every imaginable way. Now, I won’t really debate the history of feminine perceptions and roles historically, but our hero Byron Hall throughout his so-called "book" ignores every perk and protection gained as the single most valuable factor in the population (namely, having a population at all) and goes right to the slavery, submission, rape^100, and fantasy elements of lonely disturbed little boys everywhere that would get them laughed right out of the Eulenspiegel Society, should they ever leave their basements.  But I digress.  On with our completely logical character generation system, which is mathematically superior and historically accurate.  THE DICE NEVER LIE.

Age: -2.6 years ((4d100=112)/5 – 25)

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Warning:  The game discussed in this post is NSFW, and probably NSFAnywhere.  It tops the charts of "Worst RPG Ever," even beating out the reprehensible "Racial Holy War," which is an unfinished and unplayable game about inbred white supremacists gunning down ethnic stereotypes (if there were any actual combat rules).  If you don’t care about tabletop RPGs, this will probably not interest you.  If you are actively anti-RPG, I recommend you simply go watch Mazes and Monsters again.  I cannot possibly review it… well, maybe I will later, but it’s already been done in epic style, with a similarly epic response from the game "designers."

Instead, I’m going to try and create a character for it.

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http://cago.ranter.net

Geeks ahoy.

The homemade system (out of free parts) finally blew its top, and I can’t say that I blame it.  Puny single core P4 proc is puny.  As cheap and poor as I am, even I have to throw in the towel when I can no longer get into the BIOS.  Determined to not repeat the mistake that I made in getting second-and-thirdhand parts into a 24/7 active server and hoping that it would not blow up, instead I made an even bigger mistake and bought an off the shelf system.

Even worse, it’s by Compaq.

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