rants
the deathmatch challenge

11/14/96 i used to get a lot of requests to update this section (not so many anymore, i think people gave up), and while i usually try and be responsive to floods of requests, it was something i had no control over... a rant is a rant, you can't force it (that's how you get hemorrhoids). luckily rant fans, someone came to your rescue. warning this is a real rant, not humor... I AM NOT AMUSED. here's what happened... i'm minding my own business yesterday, when i started receiving weird emails with odd return addresses that didn't follow the normal genxr@dadscash.edu format. these messages were mostly negative, calling me names, insulting me, telling me to "accept the challenge." more of them came in and i noticed they all cced:scary, and seemed to reference one particular website. when i visited it, i learned that the webmaster had decided to issue a deathmatch challenge to me and scary on the site (where neither of us would see it) with a cgi form set to send email both of us at the touch of a button, with instructions asking visitors to use it to give us shit (stripping the sender's true email address to boot). it actually took a couple messages to the webmaster (who, i must stress, i had previously considered some vague sort of "friend" from our 'net dealings) to convince him, that this did, in fact, constitute mailbombing, and that he should stop. his challenge, which accuses scary and i of being html weenies, rather than quake players, is still sitting up on his website, but he's stopped mailing the unattributed bile that people post to his cgi form, it is now being posted on a separate page (just what the web needs, a little more nutrient-free content). i was going to ignore this, but i'm being asked about it, so let me say this: i have never claimed to be the best deathmatcher in the world, but if he'd asked for a match, i'm sure we could have worked it out. this mailbombing incident, however, represents one of the more extreme cases of poor judgment from a fellow quake webmaster I have ever encountered, and frankly i'm still very pissed. so no, i decline this "challenge" (which is quite obviously a publicity stunt) in fact, you probably noticed i won't even mention the site in this editorial. if he wants cheap hits for his website, he'll have to post nude pictures of his wife... in the meantime i'll wait for that crap to come down, and one last email about this... an apology.