First, a thanx going out to Aslan for mentioning me and my Blabs on his page. He has signed up on Case's TA Kali Ladder after reading about it in here. Or so he says, hehe. I am hoping he will meet an active ladder, and lots of nice players in there. Maybe you should ALL join, and see to it that he gets some games there too. We can't have him play CyberDrgn all the time, and me, whenever I get the time to show up. And as for the "Most Losses" prize, well, I dunno about that one, and Case's sure seem to be taking their time in getting their "Hall Of Fame" up and running. The TEN TA Ladder is, safe to say, Officially DEAD. Ahem, After reading Aslans site, I am forced to withdraw any recommendation I might have made to that particular site. The reason ? Well, he mentioned the BAD word. But you can just ignore it, go check the "Top 5 lists" he has in there, and then quickly leave again :). Some of the lists he has posted are pretty internal in their TEN based satire (especially the aleged renowned "Padder" and trainer-user named "Butcher7" gets quite a few chops. Whether the rumours are true or not, it's still fun to read) (ever the Neutral Gnug huh? - ed.).

Some ladder news here:
In which I will start out by noting on myself not to make another blab sounding so Biased towards one player. I'm referring to the mentioning I did a few Blabs back about the case with Telamus and Samiam. After reading that again, I do see that it did kinda put Telamus in a bad light. That was not my intention at all, he's a very respectable player, both in skill and honor, And I concider him a friend and a very honorable player whom I like getting beat by, and rejoice when I actually manage to win over him :). When we talked about it, he did say that it didn't matter, and that I didn't have to write anything further about it, But I wasn't really listening to him, sooo... Lol, kidding. I had to say something about the case, and we basically only heard one side of the story in the matter, and that was Samiam's rather frustrated side of the story. He had been very unlucky with the timing and such. Oh well, we'll see what happens later on, but can't we just all get along ? :)

Other news: Well, not much happening really. Pweekiller got up to 6th place, by beating CyberDrgn, that pushed Preen a spot down to 7th. Preen is currently idle on 7.2 days. Meaning, he should have been bumped 5 spots by now if I understand the rules correctly (rules state that if a top 10 player is idle for more than a week, they get penalized by being kicked down 5 spots. Not 100% sure about it all right here, but it should be something like that). Ah, nice, I just went and checked the ladder again, and sure enough, Preen has been kicked down 5 places by the ladder for being idle for more than 7 days while being in the top 10. This places him at the 12th spot, while Bzrk is back at #7. As for me, I'm still hanging in at the 4th spot, and enjoying a rare Win streak. Better not play h0tr0d or Telamus or anyone to put it on the line :). Bah, I never liked streaks, I always manage to get attached to them, and avoid playing all the good players so I might actually learn something, other than just keeping a good looking score. I haven't had time to play much these last days either, been rather pre-occupied with work, and I am having some friends I know from the Internet visiting me and our cyber café. Dang, they actually don't look at all as I had imagined. They look much more normal than they seem when online :)

Anyways, life in the TA community goes on, as always. The ladders are going, the CBL is still on, the cheating is as bad as even on TEN, and ppl whine and complain, but ppl are still playing TA. Some as much as ever. The community is definately not as big as it was, but it is FAR from dead. There's still life in good ol' TA to last until TA:K comes out, which will hopefully be soon (I still have March 99 as an official release date).

315 and I are still boiling around on the #gnug channel whenever we can, and we're starting to get some regulars in there, which is nice :)

Hmm, another thing that's on my mind these days is the "Ptarth matter", as I call it. Some say we didn't give him any peace or respect in letting him try and speak his case. Well, it's true to some extent. We were afterall 4-5 ppl who always had a quick remark to his arguments. I do, however, feel he didn't do a great job in quickly enough deriving to the point he was trying to make. The Core point of his argument. I quickly stated my point, but it seemed to get lost in the mess. I do think we all came out of it nicely (except Gnug725 who left in irritation, hehe), and the internal humour and pun, and general way of acting/speaking/behaving amongst us Gnugs and friends is somewhat special, and Ptarth didn't seem to know it very well (ofcourse he woulnd't). All the same, this entire case has an unfinished feel to it as far as I'm concerned, and I'd like to continue the discussions with whomever might be interested. Don't know if Ptarth is, but I would understand why he wouldn't be.

Ah, I will hold this Blab back for a short while, as it seems Telamus and Samiam are finally playing for the #2 spot.

*waiting waiting waiting*

Ah, there, they're back, and Samiam won on Painted Desert. Congrats to Samiam for getting to the #2 spot, and Godspeed to him in getting 1st. And I will be there to report if anything happens further in the case.

Well, that's all for now, until the next blab, Liberty and Foozberries for all.