Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Yeah, I'm a little early, but after posting this I'll probably need to lay low in order to avoid the wrath of the Loyal Order of Hibernians...

Friday Night Tournament: Jihan Redux

The attentive reader will note that in my last FNT post, I had said that, after eking out a victory against Jihan McCallen, I told her that I would give her a rematch any time she wanted. I meant it, too. Jihan is a tough, tenacious opponent, against whom it's a challenge to test myself.

This exchange took place in the ring, of course, and well within hearing of Averlast's owner, Karine Koba.

Karine also handles the booking for the Friday night events.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Yep, the very next week, to kick off the middleweight division's portion of the evening's program, Jihan and I were in opposite corners, getting ready to do it all again.

Circumstances were slightly different this time, though. The time used to take down the sim that I referred to in my last post was used to upgrade the server. While things were not perfect, there was considerably less lag at ringside, despite the fact that we had a full house that evening.

The crowd, like it was in the prior week, seemed to be in Jihan's favor. No surprise there. If I were watching this fight in the stands instead of fighting it, I probably would have been cheering for Jihan, too. I've seen boxers on the wrong side of the crowd's preferences let it get to them. Those boxers usually didn't come back the following week.

So we faced each other again. We got Vox's instructions again. We wished each other luck before the bell rang again.

And then the bell rang, and we tore into each other again.

Aside from the fact that we could both, y'know, actually see what was going on with only a minimal drop in framerate, it started out much like our original confrontation: Give and take. She got her shots in, I got mine in. When I say that Jihan is tenacious, I'm not being hyperbolic. The woman will stick to you like glue if you let her.

If I had to pick the round that made it for me, I'd have to pick the second. I found the openings I was looking for and popped her up a couple of times. She never left the ring, instead landing and coming back in for more, but in that round she couldn't quite answer what I was handing out. And I think that, in the end, it was the second round that put me over. The rest of the time it was catch-as-catch-can, with neither of us gaining a solid advantage over the other.

At the end of the fight, it went to me on points. Jihan and I congratulated each other on another fight well fought, and even shared a hug in the ring. For now, perhaps, this ends matters between us as far as any friendly rivalry goes, but it would be foolish of me to think that I won't be facing her again some day.

Even barring any other considerations, the field of middleweights isn't that terribly wide at the present, to think that another rematch could never happen.

I have noticed one thing, however. For one reason or another, even outside of the FNT posts, Jihan has been something of a presence on the blog of late. I wonder if it would be possible to convince her to do a post on her thoughts on the last couple of weeks?

Murphy's Law

I've been plugging away at other projects this week, mainly things that, once perfected, will sell well in the Averlast store. This has left me little time to spar as the week went on. I had some good sessions early on, but there's enough of a gap between "early on" and "now" to make me a little nervous.

So, last night, I figured I had about a fifteen minute window to get some sparring in as a final warmup before tonight's event. Fortunately, Jihan was around, and without further ado we rezzed our gloves and jumped into the ring.

POP QUIZ!

What happened during this sparring
session?

a.) Jihan knocked me around the gym with
disturbing ease.
b.) I knocked Jihan around the gym with
disturbing ease.
c.) We were as equally matched as we were last
Friday, nobody doing anything with disturbing ease.
d.) Linden Labs picked that exact fifteen
minute timeframe to take down the sim for a restart, and ended our sparring session just as we were getting warmed up.

If you picked d.), then you've won... nothing. But you have the satisfaction of knowing that you're right.

Paris in the springtime.

I'm someone who's generally more inclined to laugh at Paris Hilton rather than with her.

Unless, of course, it comes to the thing that made her the inescapable monster that she is today: The stupid, stupid media:

Turns out, as some outlets later discovered, the "mystic" was an actor named Maxie Santillan Jr., who has appeared on CSI and My Name Is Earl. And though some accused Hilton of getting Punk'd, the joke's on them: The entire scene was staged for a new show from Punk'd producer Ashton Kutcher premiering Sunday on E! (10:30 ET/PT).
Pop Fiction, an eight-episode series, is a prank show targeting paparazzi and gullible media outlets.

Okay, Paris. Just this once: Here's to you (lifts up fizzy caffeinated nonalcoholic beverage).

Gary Gygax is dead.

Gygax, for those of you who generally don't run in geek circles, was the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, the vehicle wherein a boy from the suburbs of Minneapolis could, through the easy-to-pick-up rules and a heavy dose of imagination, make the transition from awkward adolescent to shining hero with none of those messy intermediate steps in between (slayable orcs being something of a rarity in the Minneapolis suburbs).

Gygax's brainchild, derived from the addition of fantasy rules to a straight medieval wargame called Chainmail, spawned legions of imitators, some pastiches of the original concept, but more set in just about every genre available to fiction.

But the impact of D&D extended far beyond publishing houses with a taste for funny-shaped dice. Without the inspiration of D&D, there would be no World of Warcraft. The emphasis on encouraging the imaginations of the players also makes it a conceptual ancestor of Second Life, as well.

This would be a subtly different, but far less interesting world for the lack of Gary Gygax in it.

Obituary here.

I got your DOOM right here...

For all of the satanic imagery, gloriously excessive carnage, and overall fright factor that was the original DOOM, this may be the scariest thing to come out of it yet:

Friday Night Tournament: Oh, no, there goes Tokyo...

First things first, let me apologize to everyone for not sticking around for the final free-for-all. The nice people who provide me with the paycheck that allows me to pay for such things as electricity and internet access tend to appreciate it when I'm not asleep at my desk, hence the needful early exit.

So, on to the events of last night: I arrived a little late, and upon doing so was immediately pressed into judging for the evening by Karine. This caught me off guard, as I was looking forward to hanging around in the back, joking with the other boxers, and cheering on whoever was fighting at the moment. But a lady's request is not to be denied, especially if that lady happens to be someone whom I frequently address as "boss". So I sat my avatar down and, in the real world, grabbed a handy notebook and pen to track the points scored.

Judging is not a task suited to multitasking. Any IMs I got had to be answered quickly, curtly, and, preferably, between rounds. Despite my best efforts, I'm afraid that I may have ruffled some feathers because I just couldn't pull away from watching the fights long enough to give satisfactory answers.

There was good action last night. All of our fighters appeared to be in top form, and nobody succumbed to a knockout in either the lightweight or middleweight divisions.

As I mentioned yesterday, I had signed up for the card as well, and was hoping to put that coveted tenth victory on my record. So it was with great eagerness that I put down my pen and paper and let Karine take over judging for my fight.

My opponent was Jihan McCallen. I've been at ringside in various capacities in the past few weeks, so I've had a firsthand look at the roll she had been on of late. Starting with her first win, a come-from-behind KO of snake Boa, followed in the next week by outboxing former lightweight champ (and newly minted middleweight) jony Abramovic, it was clear that Jihan was not an opponent to take lightly. Not that that's ever a good idea for any opponent, but Jihan's record of late speaks for itself.

As we faced each other in the center of the ring while announcer Vox Mullen did the pro forma reading of the rules, another opponent made itself known: Lag. Now there's lag and then there's lag. This was Lagzilla. And it raised its massive foot at the beginning of our match and stomped on the ring. Hard.

Now even in a crowded sim, such as what we had last night, you can reasonably expect lag to sort of come and go in waves: Some moments of freedom of movement followed by a near-grinding halt of the frame rate. Not so this time. This lag was annoyingly persistent, its only saving grace that it seemed to be affecting Jihan and myself equally as we lurched around the ring, trying to do each other some damage.

Complaining about lag in SL is a bit like complaining about bad weather in real life: You can gripe about it all you like, but there's little you can do about it once it hits. And the lag doesn't much care what you think.

There was nothing to do but soldier on, and we did our best to give the people what they came for. We rattled each others cages and each popped the other up pretty good in the fourth round, but in the end it came down to a back-and-forth ground war. We maneuvered as best we could, each trying to catch the other in the side or on the back, unloading with rights and lefts that either sent one of us across the ring or a small jump off of the ground. One-point hits, and we did our best to deliver them. We neither of us went out of the ring for the whole fight.

The overwhelming lag and the uncertainty of who had the advantage made for a nerve-wracking fight. When the last bell rang, Jihan and I congratulated each other before the decision was read. I was as certain that she had won as she was that I had.

When the decision was finally read, awarding the match to me on points, I could have been knocked over with the proverbial feather. I don't know what the judge's scores were, but I'm sure that it was close. It was one hell of a fight. I told Jihan that I'd give her a rematch any time, and I meant it.

But while it was a good night for me, I'd have to say that the person that it really belonged to was Conan Horan, whom I'd fought to a draw in my last middleweight outing. In addition to a solid win over snake Boa after stepping in for an absent boxer, he went on after my match with Jihan to fight Derrick Cult in a real white-knuckler of a match. The two of them ended round after round either tied up in the score or nearly so. In the end, Conan pulled it off, taking down the guy who is widely recognized as one of the best fighters at Averlast.