Chaos Theory

Since the update that took place last Wednesday, nothing has worked right. Theria has been thrown into a state of complete and utter chaos! We're headed for a disaster of biblical proportion! That means Old Testament, real wrath of God type stuff! Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky!! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave!! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!!!

Among the problems suffered by avies all over There are missing inventories, missing clothes, invisible chat bubbles, and constant, incessant, annoyingly frequent technical difficulty messages. And oh yeah, loaners4u was a void for much of today. But I'll get to that.

Nada seems to be experiencing some rather peculiar weather patterns. A dense fog has rolled in and settled in the very center of the island where the mountains form a natural basin. Residents have begun to complain as the fog permeates even the best sealed of homes. No word yet on when the National Guard will arrive to ease the plight of those poor, unfortunate suffering souls.

Additionally, the area surrounding the Tiki Dog stand, which normally is a bright and sunny beach, has suddenly decided it much prefers the desert's evening sunset. While I'm not complaining about this change of tastes, it is fairly disturbing to see the sun rapidly set as you walk towards the Tiki Dog stand. It's almost as if the sky were falling!! Add falling skies to the list of bugs since the update.

Before:After:

Five months ago, planet Theria came dangerously close to a quantum singularity. The results of which were disastrous. See This entry for details about that near miss. Today, scientists tracked the very same quantum singularity as it smashed headlong into the zone where loaners4u resides! The actual impact, however, took place during the scientists' lunch break and so it went unreported until avies began accidentally stumbling into its event horizon. Once inside, there was no way out! Ponder claimed she found some way out involving a web browser, a strip of duct tape, and a roll of film, but we all know that's a bunch of bologna. By late this evening, the black hole had completely passed through the planet, emerging from an area where nothing but blue concrete resides for miles and miles. This time, the anomaly claimed dozens of lives and hundreds of innocent buggies. The two scientists who failed to provide adequate warning were promptly relieved of their positions and thrown into Templar's moat.

The oddest part of all this was that when icedoll attempted to enter loaners4u, she was greeted with a scene that jogged an old memory. This is what she saw today as she found herself tumbling helplessly into the quantum singularity:This is the sight she and DougS were greeted with (minus the text) about three years prior during a solar flare:
Noticing anything peculiar here? Not yet? Perhaps this well help. This image was taken by Elaur on the 20th of this month:And this one here was taken by Sammy1000, also on the 20th:
This is a coincidence which Spock would refer to as "fascinating". Could this be a land which has been kept secret from all of us where time and lag have no meaning? Perhaps this is where our avies are laid to rest each night when we log off? I will be setting out in search of this mystical land as soon as I gather a few necessary supplies (some water, a nice hat, a paint gun for fending off beggars... they get pretty thick out in the wild, you know) and load up my TUV. More information to come as this mystery unravels.

Well, given that There is doomed to implode in upon itself any day now, it was decided that we should live life to its fullest while we still had time left. It was with this attitude that we set out on the weekly Cross Country Race this Friday. Justin and I rode up and down Comet three times over before we finally finished. It was the longest CCR I have done to date. It is entirely possible, however, that the reason it took us so long is because I had to push the TUV with my feet the whole way. Wilmaaaaa!

Before heading to bed tonight, Justin, JoAnn, and I stopped by to check up on Mr. Blinky. With all the problems There has been experiencing lately, we wanted to make sure Blinky was okay. Justin gave him some soup, which really seemed to cheer him up, and I left him another bottle of SPF 10,000 just in case. You never know when he'll need it. Justin wondered if Theria's ozone layer would have been sufficient to protect Blinky from being burnt to a crisp from the sun's rays. Back when he spent his time below Saja, the haze protected Blinky. Now, he's out in the middle of New Kansas with the harsh sun beating down upon his pale white skin! And given that all these buggies, bikes, and boards we ride give off massive pollution, I can't see Theria as having much of an ozone layer. Justin raised a valid point, however. We don't really know what kind of fuel those buggies run on. Is it a fossil fuel? Could it possibly be a Thereite byproduct? Perhaps a new energy-efficient means of utilizing the Theregen molecule could result in a low-emissions vehicle. Then again, perhaps this was already done. Perhaps all the Theregen was extracted from There's oceans, a process which left us with nothing but blue concrete spanning for miles.

In any case, Blinky was glad to see us.

Here's hoping There still exists in the AM.

Jon Quixote was There.

The Scores Are In!

It's finally official! No further scores have been reported so they've been locked and the medals have been handed out. Green takes the gold, yellow silver, and gray bronze! Congratulations to everyone who participated in these games and earned a medal for their team.

Jon Quixote was There.

The Notorious Hitchhiker

There was a special Massive Hoverboat Flotilla tonight in honor of the 2006 Winter There Games. Apparently, it was a repeat of the June 2005 flotilla. My passengers at the start were Justin500, Dihtri, and TheChaz. qgon was promised the fourth seat, but he had internet connection problems and didn't get to join us until after the flotilla had ended. Like qgon, the flotilla got off to a shaky start with only myself and one other boat following Stungthumbz. Superbear had tried to use a club to create the group IM this time around and it totally backfired. The IM wound up crashing and most people were left in the dust as we departed for our trip around Comet Island. Boats slowly joined in formation as they caught up with the pack and soon we were flying in fashion!

As a special treat tonight, MissyJean logged in while we were waiting at the halfway point! I summoned her, she suited up, and joined us for most of the remaining stretch. It was good to have her riding in the flotilla again. It's a shame Buff wasn't there, though. It would have been nice to get the old crew back together.

We saw some really strange things on this flotilla, including (but not limited to) tiny pink one-man boats, invisible boats, deadly missiles hurled at us from boats' aft launcher tubes, and boats that spit avies out the rear as if they were exhaust!! Boy, I tell ya, it was a night of oddities.No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. That is a grown avie riding the boat equivalent of a tricycle! And to port... there's... some... thing... on the wing... some.. THING... out there!

In addition to contending with such strange phenomena, this flotilla also included a deadly arsenal of feelium balls!! Sir! Klingons on the starboard bow! Scrape them off, Jim!!

Now, as if all that weren't enough, Justin chose tonight to begin his career as a stunt double. Somewhere along the way, he stated his desire to jump from my shuttle onto Geoschroy's helicopter. I, lacking the salted peanuts and in-flight movies my passengers required, was forced to find other means of entertainment. So, I obliged to Justin's request and brought my shuttle up alongside Geo's chopper. Suddenly, and without warning, Justin took a leap of faith!After that first successful jump, there was no quenching his thirst for thrills. He took a few more test jumps onto Geo's chopper, then grew more daring and began leaping greater distances under more dangerous and unpredictable circumstances. On one occasion, he popped the glass without warning and leapt from my shuttle causing a sudden drop in cabin pressure! While we struggled to maintain control and avoid the myriad of boats surrounding us, Justin had already hopped skipped and jumped his way onto another boat! We had completely lost track of him! It took me quite some time to get my bearings and begin the search for my missing crewman. When I finally found him, you wouldn't believe what he was riding!

Knotty was in utter horror that he had picked up this.. this... HITCHHIKER!! He couldn't believe that someone would have the audacity to sit on HIS boat!! According to Dihtri, the worst part of it all was that Justin wasn't dressed accordingly! Where was his pink outfit?! But in all seriousness, the boat was so small that even the slightest imbalance could put it at risk of spiraling out of control and smashing into the blue concrete totally obliterating every last square pixel of material including the avies riding on it, given that our avies do not have parachutes! You know, we really should have parachutes.Therian avies falling down, falling down, falling down...

Justin continued leaping from boat to boat, earning him the title "The Notorious Hitchhiker" among those who's seats he had temporarily commandeered. By the end of the event, I had chased him over what seemed like hundreds of miles trying to get him back! He finally ended up riding with Stellaflora who, like the others, was less than enthusiastic about having picked up a hitchhiker. He complained and complained and finally managed to ditch Justin in the middle of nowhere, where I dutifully retrieved him and continued on to land with the rest of the pack at the flotilla's conclusion.

Eye candy! Click to enlarge:

Dang it, qgon!! Now I have to repaint the shuttle!!!

Jon Quixote was There.

Congrats Green Team!

Today marked the closing of the Winter 2006 There Games! Although several hosts have yet to post scores for at least five events, Green team was unofficially declared the winner of the games at the closing ceremonies, with yellow in second and gray in third. When There will stop waiting for the few remaining hosts (slackers!) to post their scores is a mystery. The scores are very close thanks, in part, to Basya who gave out a total of 24 points in one event on Saturday. Such an event is unheard of! Sixteen of those points went to yellow team alone. All for one event! She gave out four sets of points, that's four 1st places, four 2nd places, and four 3rd places! Before this event, gray and yellow were very close for points and second place in the games was still up for grabs. Basya, however, effectively removed any hope gray team had of earning second with one swift click of the mouse. Great job Basya. No really, I'm being totally serious here. Several people have already begun to e-mail Mackie and complain about the utter inappropriateness of Basya's scoring. Among them, myself. Not only am I afraid yellow may have a chance at taking the lead if the rest of the events are scored in their favor, but I do believe in fairness of the games. Anyone who has attended one of Basya's events in these games knows she goes way beyond fair scoring on a regular basis. This one event, however, was just ridiculous. Allowing one event to carry the weight of what would normally be four separate events is absurd. But enough ranting, bring on the eye candy! Click to englarge:Dihtri won the There Games Spirit Award, "for her outstanding sportsmanship and efforts in rallying for all the teams as well as her own". Go Dihtri!!

Total (final?) scores as of this posting:

And so ends the Winter 2006 There Games! Boom, kaboom! Yaaaaaay!

Jon Quixote was There.

Qapla!

Very big thanks to Elaur for the screenshots in this post!

Well, that previous post seems to have rallied everybody together for tonight's games. As promised, I stayed miles away from that blasted paintball event. I did, however, go to several other key events tonight. Basya held another Bacio race, this time with a little twist. It was hostless!! Turns out Basya was somehow banned from her own event and couldn't get in until after the event ended! She tried for the entire hour and a half without any success at all. I kept track of the scores for Basya until superbear2 showed up, upon which time he insisted we do races and not just timed laps because the event's description specifically called for races. He was very adamant about this and wouldn't take no for an answer. And so we raced just to appease him. When basya finally showed up, an argument between the two immediately ensued. Superbear2 insisted that Basya only award points based on the top finishers in the races, however, Basya wanted to also award points based on the fastest laps as she had done in all her other events. Superbear, again, would hear nothing of this and he argued with her until she finally agreed with her fingers crossed behind her back. In the end, green won first place in the races, and first and third for the fastest laps. Great job, team.

I left to help CapeCodBob at Elaur's paintball race while Squirrelett and others attended Tbone4's Tbone Toss. I have to hand it to you, Bob, you were totally awesome at this event. Bob got suited up in his superhero outfit and greased himself to enhance his flight capabilities and... stood still. Stood still while I pummeled him with paintballs back and forth across the track! Bob crossed the finish line before anybody else 90% of the time. Only three times, that I can recall, did he fall behind. The first time was because somebody shot me from behind and sent me flying past Bob! Losers. The second time was because Bob came down with a severe case of lag. No matter how many times I shot him, he just wouldn't budge! He apologized, took his anti-lag medication and we were off again! We lost the final race because the whole superhero thing went to Bob's head and he decided it would be appropriate if he took flight. For a brief moment, I thought he would fly clear over the finish gate! Turns out he landed just short. He won it for us in the end, though. Great job, Bob. You rock!There I am squaring up as bob bravely places himself in the line of fire.And there's bob as he gets pummeled across the finish line. Go Bob!

We finished the paintball race with a few minutes to spare and shuffled on over to Tbone's event to give the team a hand in the last ten minutes. By this point, Ubber_Geek had joined us. We met up with teammates BananaSplit199, Mycost, and Squirrelett. In all that made six of us!! I haven't seen that many greens attending the same event since the first day of the There Games at the team roundup!! See what we can accomplish with a little teamwork? We stole the lead and moved on to the next event. Go green!That's everybody lining up to smash Tbone4 across the zone. Look at all those green nametags!!!

We all stayed put for Tbone's next event, relay races. Needless to say, with all of us present, we dominated the races. After a few short rounds, all but one of the other teams vacated the event and left our two teams to fight it out. Despite being the only racer on her team, jamt forged onward and, by remaining in the event, won second place for her team.

Most of us then caught the train over to Sammy1000's skydiving event. We each took our two jumps and in the end, Elaur got a 10 and a 25 point jump, Squirrelett got 18 and 25, Ubber_Geek got 25 and 25, Bob got 5 and 25, Banana got 10 and 25, and I got 25 and 25. That's a lot of points! We very happily took second place in the event, considering we haven't done so well at most of these skydiving events.Look! There's Bob!!

The final event of the night was called "Riddle Me This", hosted by Tbone4. Tbone went AWOL during the middle of the event and Elaur was forced to take over hosting duties. She continued reading off riddles and we continued answering them! By the end of the event, green team had accumulated something like eleven points while the other teams received at most two! Go green! Go Bob!! ::crowd roars:: Bob! Bob! Bob!

Total scores at the time of this posting:
Green: 181!!! Yeehah!
Yellow: 138
Gray: 129
Pink: 82
Mauve: 54
Blue: 48
Olive: 29
Teal: 22
Peach: 22
Light Blue: 21
Brown: 18
Light Green: 16
Tan: 13
Purple: 7
Red: 6
Orange: 1

Jon Quixote was There.

Green Team M.I.A.!!

So, where are all you guys?! Lately the only ones pulling our weight around here have been CapeCodBob, Squirrelett, Parker, and myself! Even Elaur was able to make it to a paintball match last night! Where are the other 58 members of the green nametag team? [Scornful insult]. They've all gone MIA on us! No gold medals for you losers after we win these games. [Sarcastic remark]. [Witty retort].

Today we won first and second place in Basya's bacio races for the fastest lap times AND for placing first and second in the races. That's a total of ten points right there! [Generic team pep talk]. While I don't think that Basya's method of scoring her races is totally fair, (heck it's not even consistent from one event to the other) I can't deny a certain satisfaction from winning those points today. It makes up for the fact that the rest of green team is slacking hardcore. Plus, we did terribly in the two triva games which followed and tonight's paintball event.

Speaking of paintball... I don't think I'll be going to any more of those blasted paintball events hosted by Superbear2. Nothing against Superbear2, he scored the games very fairly. And it's not that I don't enjoy a good paintball match or two. No, the problem lays with the gray and yellow teams...

[memory sequence] Tonight's hell began while I was trying to get as many players from green team as possible in the match, but nobody cared to help out their team! One even hung up the IM immediately upon seeing the phrase "There Games". [Generic angry insult]. Gee, thanks for the support. No really, I appreciate it. Thank goodness for CapeCodBob. [Gratitude dance]. Although he didn't think he was very good at paintball, he definitely held his own and made it possible for us to place third overall. I wouldn't have stood a chance without him. We would have done better had gray and yellow teams not ganged up on us. Yes, this was what made the event so darn fun tonight. Everyone from gray and yellow teams decided they were not going to shoot each other, but instead would focus exclusively on Bob and myself. [Generic insult]. I had noticed this trend before Bob came to help but I didn't realize that they had planned all this even before the event started. That is, until Bob and I noticed they were all standing under a flag of truce beneath one goal just before storming their way over to where we were standing. I asked myself, "Is this a French revolution type of thing?!" Bob and I proceeded to kick all of their lousy two-timing butts all over the funzone for the rest of the event. [Traditional military battle cry]. I know that if I go to another event, however, they will only recruit more help and simply repeat the same procedure. So guys, I'm out. Have at it. [Mumbled expletive].

Jon Quixote was There.

Blinky Falls On Hard Times

A few days ago, I popped in to check on Mr. Blinky and saw he had migrated a short distance away from where he used to be on New Kansas. He was just over the nearby hilltop. Later that night, I checked back in and he was gone!! This evening I returned to New Kansas with Justin500 in search of ol' Blinky. We searched far and wide for him, but he was nowhere to be seen! Justin said the previous night Blinky was standing next to this couch in the middle of nowhere. We took a look at who the paz belonged to and it turns out it's owned by someone named 5impo. The paz is called "Lenwa's Ghost"!! Could it be that these people think they own Mr. Blinky? It would seem they have tried to claim poor Mr. Blinky as a possession!! Perhaps this drove Blinky into hiding? Maybe he ran away without telling anybody where he was going!

We extended our search and nearby we came across an abandoned hoverboat. What in the world is this doing here, we thought?When we clicked its about tab to see who it belonged to, we got this error (click to enlarge):What does it mean? We considered the possibility that the boat belonged to Mr. Blinky and he was planning on taking another trip or moving to another island again. We were left with even more questions than before. We decided to continue our search beginning again at Blinky's last known location. When we got there, to our surprise, there was Mr. Blinky standing next to that sofa blinking away!!He totally caught us by surprise. We ran up to him and asked him what was going on but, as usual, he kept quiet. It was then that Justin noticed I was blinking too and had disappeared from his list of nearby avies! But I didn't appear to blink from my perspective. What was going on here?! I stepped back and ceased to blink on Justin's screen, then Justin stepped towards Blinky and he began to blink on my screen!
We put it all together and were able to draw some conclusions that seem to explain all these strange things that have been going on. It would seem that Lenwa, who claimed Mr. Blinky as a possession, has angered Blinky. Mr. Blinky belongs to nobody! He has as much right to exist freely as you and I do! This Lenwa is still fairly new in There, just over a month old, so we can't expect him to know all these things. But he should tried talking to Mr. Blinky before making such wild assumptions! He could have looked in the forums and found a wealth of information about Mr. Blinky! Heck, he could have asked just about anybody else he found roaming around There and we could have told him everything he needed to know! But instead he goes and claims that he owns Mr. Blinky. Bad idea. It would seem that Blinky took great offense to this and has gone into hiding! That's why Justin and I couldn't find him initially. When he realized that it was just us looking for him, he showed himself. As far as the boat goes, I believe Blinky's reach extends beyond that of a normal avie. He is capable of reaching out into the servers and touching other objects in-world. That's how he is able to make anyone standing near him blink, and how he took control over the boat! Perhaps by making people near him blink, he is trying to give us a taste of what it must be like for him living such an existence. No doubt, while I type this Blinky is busy plotting his revenge on Lenwa! Good luck, Blinky. We'll back you anytime, anywhere. Just give the word.

Jon Quixote was There.