This is for a few people on System Wars. The rest of you may skip this.

The name "Frags-o-Plenty" was a whimsical choice. It was picked for comedic purposes, specifically relating to satire.

My god, someone on the internet has a sense of humor.

Using my name to illustrate the pulled-out-of-arse "fact" that I'm a twelve-year-old kid who thinks he's "all that" and can "WTFPWN" everybody is void. Deal with it, and attack my arguments rather than me.

A: "Jeff Gerstmann always has a plan!" -- Pre-E3'07 OTS show.

And gamers from all over the community have a bone to pick with CNET. Most of you who are reading this already know what I'm referring to, and while this blog has little to no argumental power... I'm just hoping that the crotchety old farts over at CNET start seeing how much Jeff's name pops up on their website. And then I hope they start to panic. Actually, I wish a whole lot worse on them, but I won't get into that for now. All I want to say is this, along with a chorus of others: bring Jeff back. Now. I don't give a damn about how juvenille that sounds, Jeff is what's holding this place together... or was, at any rate. Have fun sitting on your crumbling empire, CNET. I'll be there to help it fall a little faster.

As many might have guessed by my recent change of avatar, I have recently jumped on the Crysis fan bandwagon. By recently, I mean somethere for about six months now. And for the longest time, I've had a collector's edition of the game pre-ordered at my local EB Games (the only place to buy a game within about 50 miles of this backwater commune.) Now, brick-and-mortar stores have never really had the greatest reputation, though since someone else has got up on the Soapbox about that, I'll let his rant cover that section (I'm not linking it, by the way. Go look it up for yourself.) Instead, I'm just going to go into a rant about how much I hate my local game retailer. Actually, my sentiment can probably be summarized into a single line.

If you have 56 people pre-ordeing the game in a community of 10 000 (note: large percentage,) then make sure THAT YOU ORDER THE BLOODY THING WHEN IT'S RELEASED SO THAT WE DON'T HAVE TO WAIT FOR ANOTHER TWO WEEKS FOR YOUR NEXT SHIPMENT TO ARRIVE, YOU [Insert generic offensive term here]S!!!

On the lighter side of things, my Core 2 Quad CPU just arrived early. The Canadian Postal service has my admiration and respect for about the next half hour.

Quake Wars Demo Strategy Reference:

Raptor is mostly right, but it's field ops that deploys the fire support turrets (i.e. Rail Howitzers, Hammers, Plasma Mortars etc.) not recon. Recon (i.e. covert ops or infiltrators) only deploy radar. As for what to do, well... he're the rundown.



Engineers from the GDF team must run up to the bridge and use their pliers to build it. You can't use the pliers anywhere else but in a specific spot; it's marked out on your minimap. If you get slaughtered each time you try this, build the guard tower near the GDF base so your snipers have a better vantage point. Also, try to get someone to use their smoke grenades to give you some concealment (another covert ops item.) After the bridge is built, the MCP is deployed.



Once the MCP arrives, you have to drive it through the tunnel to a designated area in that little base on the other end. The specific spot is right in front of a warehouse/hanger. Sounds easy, but it's not. The Strogg can dig in here pretty easily if they know what they're doing, and if you see someone like me hiding behind a crate with the cyclops in seige mode... forget about it. If you've ever gotten angry at a guy named Waltz doing that, that'd be me. The best way to go about uprooting the Strogg here is to get a bunch of people into the Trojan APC and circle around behind that base using the river (it's amphibious, after all.) Get some people to use rocket launchers to take out AV turrets or AP turrets, and use your HE charges to take out Anti-Artillery turrets in case you have a field ops hanging around doing nothing. Leave that poor, ruthless guy in the cyclops alone though; I like using it to get some easy kills (seriously...I went up 21 ranks in a single game because of it.) Anyway, once the Strogg are weakened a little, get a few engineers to rush up, repair the MPC, and drive it to the designated zone.



Once you have gotten the MPC in the proper area, the outpost is yours. Now, cross the river and get to that shield generator. See those pretty little aircraft? Useless for now, unless you have a good Anansi pilot or need air superiority from a pesky Tormentor. Anyway, have a soldier use an HE charge on the sewer grate near the river. This will allow you to come up from below to hack the generator and later enter the facility. However, I find the best way is to rush in with a handy Trojan APC again, and get your driver to drive right up to the generator itself to shock and awe the Strogg there. If they have a large number of AV turrets in place though, or a cyclops, try to get someone to keep them busy with the tank and then sneak up from below using the sewer in a coordinated attack (though that seems rarely possible if you don't have a good team.) Also, even though you can't deploy radar in this region (it's always considered Strogg territory) you can still deploy third-eye cameras which come into effect much quicker, are harder to spot, and can explode if you ever find an enemy Strogg nearby. All that you miss out on is a bit of radar range.



After you get the shield hacked (through strategy or through dumb luck) it's time to take out the contaminator. If there isn't a lot of external resistance, spawn at the little shack thing at the end of the bridge and invade. If someone (i.e. me) is camping with a Cyclops, then I'd recommend spawning back at the MCP outpost this time around, getting into a Trojan APC or a Platypus (boat) and taking the sewer route in. While going after the contaminator, I'd say to have a good sniper outside picking off spawning Strogg, a medic getting rid of as many spawn hosts inside as he can, and everyone else trying to plant HE charges on the contaminator as soldiers.



Of course, good luck trying to find a team that works this well. I've only run across one... but we had overrun the Strogg in about 10 minutes doing this sort of thing. Either way, you can still see if you can fill one of these roles to help out if you want to. Otherwise, go for the Strogg team and just deploy as many turrets and support cannons as possible.

Frags-o-Plenty (henceforth referred to as "I", "owner" or "myself") imposes a cookie and pie tax. All cookies and/or pies that have been, are currently, or have the potential to be eaten will be quantumly brought to any part of this reality's timeline for owner's express consumption if I see fit. Those wishing to partake in said consumption (henceforth referred to as "you", "people", "person" or any combination of those words) must pay a percentage of their income to be determined by the owner at the time of their desired consumption, based on market demand and supply. Should deception or avoidance of this tax manifest itself in any way, shape or form, the person responsible for said act (henceforth referred to as "pie bootlegger") will have a punishment delivered upon them, which may or may not be in line with the rules of physics (henceforth referred to as "reality".) Should I find any violators of this tax, reality will be required to convert them into no fewer than twenty four (24) individual pies, and will be substantially rewarded for its cooperation at the discretion of myself. Upon reaching a term of 3.14159 years, should the pie bootlegger still have all 24 individual pies intact, he/she will be returned to his/her previous form(s) for conversational purposes (henceforth referred to as "chatting".) If chatting does not take place immediately, the paroled pie bootlegger will be turned over to suitable authorities, including myself, for incarceration lasting the remainder of their natural life/lives, as per the Boring Person's Act of 2719.

...and who should happen to drop by? A moron. Not a lengthly story, but one that'll make you hit your head in wonder.

Picture this: I'm sitting upstairs in front of my computer (don't scream, I had clothes on this time) going arount on the good old internet, listening to some music, when I heard a loud bang from downstairs, followed by something of a scream. I'm supposedly home alone at this point, so naturally I have to wonder: what the hell?

I go downstairs, and notice that the front door is open. This is odd. I go to close it, but then I notice that my living room TV is sitting outside in front of my front step. Again: what the hell?

Even more odd is the spent bullet casing sitting next to a nice-sized puddle of blood, which trails off to the end of my driveway, where the guy apparently got in his car and drove off. I know he drove off, because his driver's license is sitting there, safely nestled into his wallet.

A short while later, the police arrived. An even shorter while after that, we've pretty much pieced together most of the thing. Guy (can't say his name, apparently) came up to the house, saw the car was gone, picked the lock (we're going to need a new one, this one's pretty much had it at this point,) went inside, walked past a curio cabinet with about $5000 worth of junk in it (I didn't buy it, but apparently it's valuable,) picked up a $700 TV, went outside, and somehow managed to shoot himself in the foot. He dropped the TV (we need another one of those things, too now,) and ran.

So I pretty much know what happened to the letter at this point, but I still have to ask:

What the hell?

Note: If you aren't me, this doesn't concern you.

If you're not in the BWU, then it really doesn't concern you.

Some people may know that I'm currently writing a book. A large book, that has 400 pages done, and none of them involve the beginning or end of the story. Now, it might sound like a weak concept to write the middle of the story before beginning or ending it; please note that I had the rough of it planned out beforehand.

I have well over three dozen alternate beginnings to this story written to some extent, but I couldn't find a way to make any of them seem both believable and enjoyable at the same time. Now, however, that's changed.

Basically, I'm just saying that I'm really happy.

Well, I have a new shift for work these days, so now I'm stuck at a crappy pool (bothe metaphorically and in some cases, literally) until 9 on Thursday evenings.That alone is a pain in the ass, but it also means I'm not going to be able to watch On The Spot  live anymore. Needless to say, that makes my chlorine-induced itching even worse.

Actually, it's more like 40 000 cubic feet under the smoke. In fact, it's exactly it.

About a half hour ago, someone let a purple, military-grade smoke bomb off in my house. I have no idea why, but it's happened, and now all my consoles and PCs are spitting up purple fog whenever their fans start going. It looks cool, but the house smells like rice crispie squares from hell.

Is there any point to this? No, not really. But I'm putting it up as a contingency if anyone thinks I took the coward's way out when I'm playing online and suddenly get disconnected.

Just another day in Canada.

I'm not one who believes in coincidences all too much, but today really had me going "Maybe I was wrong about that." When you have half a class on the last day of school before winter break during the last period of the day, you'd expect the people in it to be a little bored. It's not like the teacher can really teach, as she'd have to teach it again later on, but student-run games probably aren't the answer.

Take charades, for instance. It's a simple, clean game, right? Well, our teacher managed to come up with the idea that everybody could write down one thing to do with Christmas, submit it, and then take turns having somebody act it out in front of the class.

Now, we consider ourselves mature, but it wasn't really expressed here. Out of the seventeen people in our class, fifteen wrote and submitted "yellow snow."

This was absurd to me. It didn't seem mature at all. At the very least they could be a little more diverse, like me. I submitted "lemon-flavoured snow-cone." And that's a whole lot more mature. Then there's the other, creepy guy who submitted "Charles Manson." We really don't know why, and if you don't know who he is, research. Wikipedia is there for you.

It's probably not funny to you, but it is to me, so I'm blogging it for future reference. You can't stop me, either.

Unless you're the Admin. I forgot about that.