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Wizard's Rainbow BBS - Online since 2014

 

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Dish Network DVR in the early 2000's Was a Game Changer

 

There is a story here, I promise.

     When looking at old Snakepeople.net posts I made in highschool and in college, I came across the picture above; it's me wearing a Powerglove, pretending to stab my friend Chrys in the face. I owned two Powergloves, neither worked, and Chrys was never a fan. We needed content for the website that was actually getting around 10k hits a month, and I thought this would be a good idea. One thing really stood out to me, made me really go back to that time, and that was the random set top box in the background of a 25 year old picture... a Dish Network DVR.

It's better than you think.

     My dad owned a Radio Shack growing up, so we always had all the coolest doo-dads and bootleg shit laying around the house. When Satellite TV via Dish Network came out and demo units from them became available, he signed up early. I talked him into getting the DVR for my room at the astronomical price of $50 per month. This is the days of Dial-up guys, like 2000-2001. I was still living at home, going to school part time and working part time while my parents were planning their retirement. $50 a month then was easily like $100 a month or more today, so I'm not sure why he said yes, even if they had the money. I was always surprised about the things he would accept and reject, but technology he would always splurge and ask questions later.. which I appreciated. 

This shit was insane.

     I went from having like 40 grainy channels in my room to hundreds overnight. I could select up to two channels at once, and it would record one, and I could watch the other. While watching a show, I could save snips of movies (nude scenes, gore, explosions, quotes) just a few seconds at a time, and save them in folders. For the first time I experienced on-demand movies and TV shows, rewinding live TV, and even playing some really limited games on the remote provided. What's crazy: It worked. It was fast. Like instant- no wait. Click the record button, red light clicks on, saves it quickly with zero effort. Within a month my Dad had found someone at the flea market to sell him a card to get full access to everything on the menu of programs, 999 channels. Pay per view. Porn of all types. Sports and international TV. I thought the internet was cool, but this was next fucking level cool. For other reasons, I went through a strange period of my life in that time, alienating friends and loved ones, depressed. The TV and internet were my only escape during those dark times. I estimate each day I watched 2-5 movies per day, every day, for around a year. I attached myself to certain actors, directors, writers.. Endlessly consuming media and creating websites, writing stories, and attempting to learn new skills alone while working nights at a gas station. I went through a break-up, saved lots of money, and emerged on the other side a different person- driven and slightly insane. Maybe that's a story for another time?

     For that next year I continued to live at home and this magical contraption was always the center of attention. There was always something on. Having friends over? Throw them the remote and they would be sitting there for hours just playing around and mesmerized; totally changing the way they thought about consuming media and TV. It was not until several years later that live channels and such on the internet with Sopcast would take me away from Satellite and Cable bootleg television. 

    It's worth noting that Chrys is now a successful TV and Movie lighting and electrical engineer, proud father and husband, and overall just a smart dude that did well for himself.

Quick Overwatch 2 Rant - Comp Ranking.. REALLY sucks.

 

Huh is right. Maybe I thought I was better than I Am.

    For context, I have 1200 hours of OW played in total, have been playing since Beta, and only took one time off after OW2 came out because it just felt strange to me. I've since been back, and although I'm having a good time in Quick Play, comp makes no sense to me at all. My previous achievements are FFA Top 500 (389) and played as high as Grandmasters for one season in regular comp play in OW1 with a dedicated team. I have only played against a handful of better Ashe mains as me, and my accuracy is always in the 40% range.. I rarely miss. My death to kill ratio, kills, accuracy, are all in the range of someone who plays comp at a masters level. I'm very consistent and rarely get caught. If anyone watched me play on twitch and youtube, those videos are out there and I'm proud of them.

     Today I entered comp for initial testing thinking I would land in Diamond somewhere, as I've been putting in the hours lately, I'm a Moira support main, and I'm not the best with identifying the new characters and such, so expected a little less. I won my first round and... Gold 4. Gold 4? Why would it put me in Gold? From what I read, legacy comp rankings have something to do with future placements. I crush in QP, and those players are all ranked pretty high. The very next game in the test I lost, and the players were noticeably worse than my first game. No one on Mic now at all, bad playing style, sometimes just not playing.. it was all over the place. The next 8 games were all losses as well, so I'm at the end of Gold, stuck. My heals are off the charts, my kills top the tank and DPS every game, and even with that I proceeded to lose the next 4 games, taking yet another demotion. 

     What gives? I now have to play with players that are on a different skill level entirely, and in a rank where people treat it like QP. Two games people left on my team, and we just had to stick out the loss. This never happened in the higher ranks, everyone gave it their best and communicated. I'll be honest, I'm just not use to this.

     For shits and giggles I went on my sons OW2 account, only around level 15, and maybe played two games 5+ years ago with zero comp. I did the tests and was put in Diamond right away. DPS testing I was put into Platinum. Immediately the level of play changed, I could easily find my way and was around experienced players. Went back to normal account account, starting testing DPS and it and put me in Silver 1. I thought I was a super hero! I'm making crazy plays, carrying, just running around and slaying at will. I won the next few, but here iam, now stuck in Gold again overplaying. The chat is downright toxic at Silver & Gold, does not matter if I have 23 kills in one round of 3 with zero deaths, 3 different players in the chat call me out for "Bad DPS". The other DPS in that game scored two kills over 5 rounds, but targeted me. I think I'm done with OW2 comp for quite a while until they can figure out a better way to judge skill, or I'll wait for a patch and give it another go.

**Edit** Played four DPS comp games tonight, Gold 4, 4/21/25. Three losses by a huge margin, all three games lost there appeared to be a smurf on the their team healing which was strange and really stood out. I played my best, got top kills, but the team selection was all over the place, chat toxic, and had to turn my mic off because someone was making clicking sounds and singing spanish music. One game, the first one I played, was a push map and everyone was great, both teams. Felt like a masters game to be honest. Great coms, huge pushes, awesome ults, I felt good losing since we played such a great game. So all over the place. The only way to play comp (and the only way I got as far as I did before) is to have a team of people you know who have a specialty and are on coms at all times. 

**Edit Part 2** 5/4/25 It's been two weeks since this post, and I gave it another go, and its WORSE. Way worse, as bad as it's ever been. The front page of reddit is a buzz with the issue, and it's making climbing out of bad placements impossible. I'm now after just a few games in high silver. The last 4 games were 100% steam rolls. Previous to that we lost 75% of the games and they were not even close; the other 25% we just steamrolled the opposing team. 12 games, and zero really good matches at all. People not leaving spawn, other team is obviously on another level with one or two strong characters. I starting snooping the players, and some of them are in their first comp game ever, just plowing people. Smurfing? Poor matching making? I have no idea any more. Comp is no longer fun, and the performance issues of Stadium caused me to quit after one match. Either I stop playing for a few years like I have done before, or just have fun in QP and not worry. The stress of having to perform well and make up for terrible players in bad games in comp is no longer worth it. I use to like being in High Plat on DPS, hang around there and go up and down a little. The climb in Diamond was super stressful and required all my attention and full mic up at all times with no one in the room with me, which is at a premium these days, so it was fun to hover in high plat. No leavers in plat, everyone communicates hero choices. Anyway, this rant is now over, and I think it's uninstall for a few more years and play indie games.

Black Roses [1988] Full Movie!

 

This movie fucking ROCKS.

     I have very little experience with 80's rock and roll monster movies, so this really blew me away with the quality of the audio and amazing vocals. Did I mentioned the band is comprised of rock and roll monsters? The songs are way better than they deserve to be and punch way above the norm. Lizzy Borden and King Kobra obviously have something to do with it, so you know it's going to be good. Seriously, just hit play.