Subject: Welcome to the new board
User: Denny
Message:
Changed the software since we got spammed so badly last week.
Hope this is kinda working.
User: joeygray
Message:
I dunno. Just one more annoyance, I guess, having now to type your password for each post. I curse all Spammers with an ancient Egyptian curse.
User: WRAC
Message:
Just testing the new board. I like the fact that posting names are tied to player names!
WRAC
User: Snowguy
Message:
So sorry to see it come to this, Denny, but I guess it was inevitable. Any chance you can share with us basically how this happened?
Also, is there any place we can go to see "read-only" versions of recent posts? I know that even as you got the T---s H-----m posts and follow-ups removed there were still lots of pieces of undewrlying garbage embedded. Sure would like to know the layman's version of how it happened!
User: Snowguy
Message:
One more thing. We got a mini-version of this stuff several weeks ago. Do you suppose it was related to this broadside in any way? I mean, might it have been a "shot across the bow?" Also, do you think your board was targeted, or did many more, similar boards have the same problem? Do you think it was a regular or intermittent poster or chatter who instiogated this, or was it instead a drive-by?
Were we targeted by a rifle attack or instead caught with others in "streetsweeper" shotgun blasts? Have I used enough cliches? (*Stop, Snow!) But I would still like to know.
User: olblue
Message:
Forced change can be bad thing but here's wishing all the best protection in this new format. As far as I know Denny, you still don't ride a Harley but however in all our eyes....you DA MAN! My hat's off to you.
User: malr
Message:
Hello -
This is 'ideas' - how about having a notional 'LETS' thread? LETS stands for Local Exchange Transfer System, and it's generally for babysitting and plums and such - you know, I have plums, you have baby, she wants plums, he wants music lessons - everything moves round in exchange for tokens which are like money, but not money, so the tax man never needs to know.
Mwah, hah, hah, hah!
By email would would work for... um, lemme see. I have novels, I want someone to read novels and say 'this bit good, this bit incomprehensible - take this bit out, what were you thinking?'
Because that works better if it's someone who can't put ground glass in your food, however bad your prose is... ;-?
Or - anyone want to learn their modality?
Or - anyone want to learn one (or all) of the three arts of memory?
Or - ever been shown round the secret garden?
User: nonA
Message:
Ok it's a bit of a change and I suppose I'll come to appreciate it, but... Well back to that Egyptian curse. The fleas of a thousand camels are too good for spammers, etc.
User: Sheikh_Yerbouti
Message:
Loving the new board layout already but, with having to now log in, I guess we unfortunately won't see quite so many of the amusing aliases that used to crop up....
User: secism
Message:
I dig it, it looks good and it's easier than the old one. I have no complaints.
User: Laffman
Message:
To Sheikh_Yerbouti (clever name),
It's true we'll probably see fewer aliases, but one workaround would be for people to simply "sign" their posts with the alias they want at the bottom. It's less anonymous than the old way, but no less clever. For really determined folks, it's still possible to register multiple aliases and post with them accordingly.
On a positive note, registered posts means people can't purposely or accidentally post under some other poster's nick anymore. It didn't happen a lot anyway (thankfully), but more than once some fly-by-night poster would get the entry fields mixed up and post as "Denny" or "denny", even though it clearly wasn't him.
User: ix
Message:
Not that you didn't know, but Sheik Yerbouti was a Zappa album, one of the songs whose lyrics I CAN post was "City of tiny lights".
City of tiny lights,
Don't you wanna go,
Hear the tiny auto horns,
When they tiny blow,
Tiny lightin',
In the storm,
Tiny blankets,
Keep you warm,
Tiny pillows,
Tiny sheets,
Talkin' bout those tiny cookies,
That the peoples eats.
Had a great cover picture of Zappa looking very sheikish. I long for the days when albums had names like "Uncle Meat" and "Weasels ripped my flesh". Sigh.
User: LonghornPlatinum
Message:
):) The nicest feature is that the most recently replied-to thread goes back to the top. That's just the way it should be.
):o Moo.
User: sillama
Message:
Clean layout and excellent design! Kudos to you, Denny!!!
User: ix
Message:
I liked the way you could reply to a specific post before.
User: Snowguy
Message:
Just to point out to newer poster (and forgetful older ones such as myself) this is a VERY old thread. This is one reason it would be nice to include the year as part of the time and date of each post.
I can't say for sure, but it might even stem from when threads resembled a tree with limbs and branches, unlike what we have now. You could answer any post back then and start a new branch. (Now you have to indicate (after hotnurse posted in post number four and you are way down in post number ten) "Hotnurse wrote:")
I can't say for sure when this thread was discussed, or if it even was the change I am referring to. In fact, I don't even recall what the words I omitted would have been in this post, above:
"Also, is there any place we can go to see "read-only" versions of recent posts? I know that even as you got the T---s H-----m posts and follow-ups removed there were still lots of pieces of undewrlying garbage embedded. Sure would like to know the layman's version of how it happened!"
In any case, be assured this is a quite old post.
User: firenze
Message:
You are right, Snowguy. This thread is very old. But, I am with "Because". Why did you dig it up kangaroo?
User: dede
Message:
LOL and i bet the weather is beautiful, go for a run ....
User: MrFixit
Message:
This might be the oldest thread. Prior we had some discussion board I'd cribbed from somewhere on the 'net, but since it was sorta a standard the hackers had figured out how to abuse it. So then I cut over to this that used our Freecell logins. It was apparently later I started reading the cookie cuz initially you still had to type your username and password to post.
Looks like joeygray had the first comment ever wherein he expresses his discontent with the universe and with spammers in particular.
And then looks like there was flurry of comments from 2008 from some familiar folks. Man some of y'all been around for a while.
MrFixit aka Denny
User: SixIron
Message:
I can confirm that olblue, since I was around then too. Old farts R Us!
User: olblue
Message:
ROFL SixIron! We're not old....just well seasoned!
User: windriven
Message:
Denny said, "Man some of y'all been around for a while."
Wasting time takes dedication and perseverance.
User: roo
Message:
In the meantime I've lost my dot. When the original roo's account expired Denny gave it to me.
User: firenzes_mother
Message:
Been here at least 25 years, Denny. Are you ever going to give me back my leopard leotards?
User: sayerahatwork
Message:
Ive been around ages, not as long as you blue.
User: roo
Message:
I've been around long enough to be blessed with a granddaughter, now nearly three.
User: olblue
Message:
Beverley, you and julia were the first two people I met my first night in the chat room!
User: beverley
Message:
Iām amazed you remember that! Those are great memories. :)
User: retiredk9ed
Message:
Although I don't chat a lot I have been playing since the 90's.
User: retiredk9ed
Message:
I remember when we got to pay a few bucks to opt out of ads forever also.
User: joeygray
Message:
Of course most of remember when you were limited to one link per post, at the bottom, and no embedded images at all, and the very funky wikitable subset for columns. All that left a really short time ago.
User: Punster
Message:
Hey Denny, do you have any records from back in the old freecell.com days ?
I was thinking that I joined freecell.com in the late 90's. I bought my first personal computer in 1997 and played the Windows freecell game alot, but then found out about freecell.com and started playing that. Then you switched to freecell.net.
User: outskirts
Message:
Here's something from 2000 at the wayback machine. It's the old style discussion and it seems to work.
https://web.archive.org/web/20000815211600/http://www.freecell.com/netcellboard/index.html
Or pick another year since 1998
https://web.archive.org/
User: MrFixit
Message:
Wow that's cool. I'd completely forgotten the white phase.
Did I ever actually use this one? No idea.
Somewhere I've got a screenshot of the very first flavor... searching...
User: MrFixit
Message:
This is pretty close to the earliest. I'm gonna guess around 1997 or so. It's got my old Microsoft email address so it's at least 1997 but it's still designed to display with the 16 color monitors of the time as you can see from the highly pixelated logo and cards.
User: outskirts
Message:
Here's an old card logo. And click on chat and it takes you to mad chatters..
https://web.archive.org/web/20000619175313/http://www.freecell.com/moved.html
User: MrFixit
Message:
Oh jeesh you made me think Mad Chatter was still up and running! Not impossible to lose track of that stuff on this server...
User: outskirts
Message:
That would be something wouldn't it. Also, click the cool pick logo and it takes you to cool pick., where you picked a website a day for the clueless plebes. Oh and your message about email! š Can I get cluelessplebe@freecell.com?
User: TNmountainman
Message:
We've had this discussion multiple times, I think. I didn't bring up the Wayback Machine earlier because I assumed Denny meant *not counting* the old format. So I didn't bother. But......that said.........here's a previous discussion (peripherally):
Freecell.net - play online competitive Freecell solitaire
ix brought it up earlier, too:
Freecell.net - play online competitive Freecell solitaire
....which takes one to this:
I haven't tried it lately, so don't know how good it is these days for freecell. The last couple of times I tried it, it was spotty *at best*. Just looking quickly for the earliest one there, it *says* Dec. 12, 1998 there are two posts, but can't get them to 'populate'.
User: TNmountainman
Message:
And then Denny posted this link in 2006:
Freecell.com - Freecell for the Web
.....from which one can get to:
The coolies link there *seems* to work - or at least brings up those neat-sit-of-the-day things. (Not checking to see if the links work, but WebUndies.com seems pretty fun. :) But it also says the coolios.com domain name expired in 2005.
And it still wants me to: You'd be having more fun with a Java-enabled browser!
User: MrFixit
Message:
The rapper Coolio sued me in about 1999 for that name.
User: TNmountainman
Message:
Good thing you were/are cooler than he was/is. 'If you've got it, flaunt it."