'Sup guys. Been awhile. I have my own honest-to-goodness internet connection now that might be a little less terrible and unreliable. Is ShMo still up and around? I can't seem to find it, and the ip address I did have (from mid-2010) doesn't seem to be any good.

Man, all the exciting stuff happens when I'm not around.

Could someone be a dear and make it so that clicking on the forum banner takes the user back to the index?  I can do without a lot of things on a forum (like avatars and sigs, amirite?), but that particular thing is so ingrained into me that it drives me insane when it's not there.

You know, when the game stops screwing around and finally lets me have an Eyelander, I'm almost going to miss the bottle.  Hurrtarging it is surprisingly fun.

I was havin' fun.  Lots of it.

After months of being in the dark and pestering, I finally have a hard transfer date: June 6th.

Only two or three months later then what they were originally "looking at", but hey!

Thanks, Valve.  I love your new look.

Well, tonight was the second busiest night in store history.

...everyone was happy.

And at the end of the night, that's what matters.  You got this locked.

The more I think about it, the more I agree with Kayin (I think it was Kayin): Just give everyone all the new "usable" items outright, and make people earn (or "earn") the hats.  I mean, if people want to cheat or lame their way into the cosmetic changes... well, whatever gets 'em through the night, I guess.  Strictly speaking there's not a lot of harm in that.

I get the premise behind earning new items, and I even like it in theory, but in practice it's kind of a mess.  For example: I would never have known that I actually really like Sniper if I hadn't randomly gotten Jarate once.  Some weeks later, quite bored and somehow on a team with no Snipers, decided that I may as well try it out.  Turned out to be pretty cool, so I stuck with it for awhile, unlocking the Huntsman through achievements, where upon it all made sense.  The Sniper was for me.

Note that the entire sequence of events starts with the word "random".  I'm glad for the existence of random drops at all, but my point is that this kind of discovery shouldn't be at the behest of an rng or earning achievements.  If I had never got that jar of piss or had to earn it through achievements, I never would have at all since at that point I had long since written off Sniper as my least favorite class.

Am I making any sense?  I feel a twinge incoherent.  My base point is that if they're going to put all this hard work into making and balancing these new toys they should just let us play with them.  I'm still waiting on scoring an Eyelander drop so maybe I can find out that I don't actually hate/suck at Demoman, because I sure as heck ain't gonna earn it through achievements unless I go a-whorin'.

Just keep Zero in, throw in an Ace Attorney character, and bring back Kobun and I'm all good.

Oh I did, believe me, and he replied with some incoherent wall of text about me being a self-centered douche and how I don't get it and I will never be as good as them and I'm not a team player.  Basically trying to cloak himself in a deluded sense of chivalry and taking my statements way too personally.  This all coming from someone who routinely alienates three-quarters of the people he meets because this is what he always does, and loafs about during class bitching about wanting to go home.

I've known this dude for three years and I've tried to think best of him and give him the benefit of the doubt, but I'm done.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to go to my boss with this when I see her on Monday or Tuesday.  Not to be vengeful really, I just don't want to have to deal with his bullshit when I'm there working on the clock and he's just there to hang out with his woman and mostly do nothing.  (He has to keep of a vague pretense of helping or else chef would kick his ass out.  She don't put up with loafers and distractions.)