I was denied time off for the 20-22.

PLEASE NOTE:

- Rangercon is STILL memorial Day weekend
- Rangercon will begin that FRIDAY (the 22nd) instead, and run to Memorial Day itself (the 25th) and beyond if need be.

Since most people arrive on Friday I expect little disappointment from this.

If people are interested in staying LONGER, please let me know and I can extend the dates past that Monday.

PRICE HAS BEEN REDUCED TO $35/HEAD TO REFLECT CHANGE

Arnold Schwarzenegger has a big one.
Michael J. Fox has a small one.
Madonna doesn't have one.
The Pope has one but doesn't use it.
Clinton uses his all the time.
Bush is one.
Mickey Mouse has an unusual one.
Liberace never used his on women.
Jerry Seinfeld is very, very proud of his.
Cher claims that she took on 3.
We never saw Lucy use Desi's.

What is it?

(answer in forums)

One more change that would be nice is if a certain server admin would fix addcomment.php so we can actually put comments on these postings....

CHANNNGEEEEEE

I just realized that wishing a happy new year is like wishing for hope and change ... tee hee

There is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. While, everything you run from, at some point will end up staring you in the face.

/me salutes

October 7, 1871
Massive fire burns in Wisconsin

The most devastating fire in United States history is ignited in Wisconsin on this day in 1871. Over the course of the next day, 1,200 people lost their lives and 2 billion trees were consumed by flames. Despite the massive scale of the blaze, it was overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire, which began the next day about 250 miles away.

Peshtigo, Wisconsin, was a company lumber and sawmill town owned by William Ogden that was home to what was then one of the largest wood-products factories in the United States. The summer of 1871 was particularly dry across the northern Midwest. Still, settlers continued to set fires, using the "slash and burn" method to create new farmland and, in the process, making the risk of forest fire substantial. In fact, the month before had seen significant fires burn from Canada to Iowa.

Peshtigo, like many Midwestern towns, was highly vulnerable to fire. Nearly every structure in town was a timber-framed building--prime fuel for a fire. In addition, the roads in and out of town were covered with saw dust and a key bridge was made of wood. This would allow a fire from outside the town to easily spread to Peshtigo and make escaping from a fire in the town difficult. On September 23, the town had stockpiled a large supply of water in case a nearby fire headed in Peshtigo’s direction. Still, they were not prepared for the size and speed of the October 7 blaze.

The blaze began at an unknown spot in the dense Wisconsin forest. It first spread to the small village of Sugar Bush, where every resident was killed. High winds then sent the 200-foot flames racing northeast toward the neighboring community of Peshtigo. Temperatures reached 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, causing trees to literally explode in the flames.

On October 8, the fire reached Peshtigo without warning. Two hundred people died in a single tavern. Others fled to a nearby river, where several people died from drowning. Three people who sought refuge in a water tank boiled to death when the fire heated the tank. A mass grave of nearly 350 people was established because extensive burns made it impossible to identify the bodies.

Despite the fact that this was the worst fire in American history, newspaper headlines on subsequent days were dominated by the story of another devastating, though smaller, blaze: the Great Chicago Fire. Another fire in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that consumed 2 million acres was an even smaller footnote in the next day’s papers.

CHECK HERE FOR YOUR UPDATING NEEDZ

Wally's review of Warhammer Online has made it to the masses!

Check it out for yourself:

http://www.giantrealm.com

Hey everyone!

The clan's early work is the featured article today!

Diary of a Camper is a short 1996 American film created by United Ranger Films, then a subdivision of a popular group of players, or clan, known as the Rangers. Made using id Software's 1996 first-person shooter computer game Quake and released over the Internet as a non-interactive game demo file, the video is considered the first example of machinima—the art of using real-time, virtual 3-D environments, often game engines, to create animated films. The story centers on a lone camper, a pejorative for a player who waits in a strategic location instead of seeking active battle, who faces five members of the Rangers clan in a deathmatch, a type of multiplayer game whose goal is to kill as many opponents as possible. Although players had previously recorded segments of gameplay, these were usually deathmatches or speedruns, attempts to complete a map as quickly as possible. Diary of a Camper was the first demo to contain a narrative with (text-based) dialogue, instead of merely showing gameplay. Commentators agree that the work itself is primitive, but acknowledge its importance in establishing video games as a medium for filmmaking. (more...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_a_Camper

- Mansa