Tickenest

Eric Lindros to Announce Retirement Thursday And so ends one of the most frustrating careers in NHL history. As a Philly fan, I was excited when they beat out the Rangers in the arbitration hearing and landed his rights. I mean, my God, we'd finally landed the guy who's going to lead us to NHL dominance, and FINALLY I'd see a Philly champion in my sentient lifetime (since I obviously don't remember the 1983 NBA title for the Sixers.) Once the team got the Legion of Doom going, it should have been all over from there. But no. He just couldn't stay healthy, and he just couldn't lead the team to playoff glory. One appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals (swept by Detroit in 1997), six All-Star games, a Hart Trophy. Not a bad career. But it never lived up to the hype, and we in Philly eventually ran him out of town the way we've done in the past, and the wait for a championship continues+. +Not counting two Calder Cups by the Phantoms, several lacrosse championships by the Wings, a couple of soccer titles for the Kixx, and the near-Triple Crown by Smarty Jones.

The only trick is to make sure that both guys are using the same version (it's updated quite frequently). Now, that's not exactly difficult, but important to keep in mind.

You know, I vaguely recall that. It must have been like two years ago or so, though. I'm surprised you weren't liking TSB. A lot of people have played a lot of TSB online with NESticle (including me, though I stopped a while ago). Was it the NESticle experience or just the game itself that you didn't like so much?

And now we're pretty much dead by your hands, sir.

It's a lazy Saturday afternoon, and I just got done playing with one of the Fins. I think that with the advent of the new Kaillera client (as discussed most recently here), it's now quite feasible for a substantial number of North American players to play games against the Fins thanks to its p2p functionality. In the interest of cross-ocean relations, here's a brief guide to finding and playing the Fins. -The best way to find them is IRC. If you're familiar with IRC, they hang out on IRCNet, #nhl94 and #eliteleague are good places to start. Look for guys like swos, tombie, nahkahomo, Mahavishnu, Wayler, vihu, etc. I've played with all of them before and the worst thing they'll say is that they don't feel like playing. -If you don't know IRC, then either get familiar with it or use IRCNet's web-based chat. XS4All Webchat gives you access. IRCNet is the network, give yourself a nickname, and choose "Other" for chat channel and type #nhl94 or #eliteleague in the box that appears below, and then connect. Once you're connected and in the channel, type "/join #eliteleague" or "/join #nhl94" (without the quotation marks) to join the channel you didn't join at first. -They're five hours ahead of the east coast (though I think that'll be four hours for a bit starting tomorrow thanks to their Daylight Savings ending), so any time but late night is preferable. On the other hand, some of them are real night owls, so you can always give it a shot. -They ALL know English. -They prefer penalties, offsides, and line changes (see the default for the nhl2008.bin ROM), which may not be the preferred playing style for a lot of guys around here, but you can always either give it a shot or try to negotiate with them. I mean, everyone can try to be a little flexible for exhibition matches. So, you know, give it a shot if you feel like it. By and large, they're Gens players, but if you prefer SNES they might be up for it, or else they might know who would be. Otherwise, meh, not the end of the world.

This is why I stick to sports such as tennis (mixed doubles), Frisbee (not the Ultimate variety), bodysurfing (other people's bodies), and Crazy Golf (but not so crazy as to be comical.)

I've seen swos and one or two other of the Fins pull a similar move. Instead of trying to score it directly, though, they flip the puck over, let it bounce off the top of the net, and in the meantime turn around and try to catch the puck when it falls back to the ice after the bounce and score it directly. They're pretty good at it but if you're quick enough and recognize what they're doing you can control the goaltender and stop it.

I haven't done it yet myself, but from talking to angryjay and the Fins, it seems that the recording option creates a movie file of some sort (I forget the file extension) that can be played back in this version of Kaillera in "playback" mode, and the playback can be captured to video with "MovieGens", a term which brings exactly one hit on Google that actually refers to emulator playback. I don't know, there's probably another way to capture the playback. Obviously, movies made with Genesis emulators exist, though perhaps made with non-Gens emulators.

I mean that I had so much frustration playing as Philly this season that I think I've finally kicked the habit. It was a struggle, to be sure, that should just about do it for the strange marriage between Tickenest and the Flyers. I know I'm finished way before anyone else but I think 34 points will not be making the playoffs.

You should give it a shot.

The Flyers aren't a very good hockey team.

It's been great with the Fins, but the only time I tried it with someone in North America, James and I desynched several times. Odd, but I still think it's promising because geez, it worked well with the Fins. swos called it the best connection he's ever had for a transatlantic game.

I'm guessing nobody really gets the ramifications of it i.e. equalized ping for both players and no reliance on a server.

That one's an exploit that removes the punishment for a being checked successfully. In other words, a minus, not a plus.

The Flyers heaped more scorn on some of their opponents yesterday; specifically, those who had already lost to the Flyers, as the good guys reverted to their old ways by losing all 3 games yesterday against Montreal and Detroit by a combined score of 20-5, thereby exposing anyone who'd already lost to them as terrible, terrible people. Said right winger Mark Recchi, "I'm just disgusted at the way the universe played yesterday. Man, we just couldn't get a break. If just one puck had bounced our way yesterday, we might have lost by a combined score of 19-5 instead of 20-5."

What is your basis for saying that this has nothing to do with my router when there are pages and pages on the internet about people trying to configure their routers to work with zbattle?

I just plugged my computer directly into the modem and zbattle connected easily, so something's definitely getting lost in the [network address] translation. ZING

I checked the .ini file just now and saw that I had www.newcom.org there, which, of course, is not www.newcon.org. Quickly, I saved the changes and restarted zbattle. Still didn't connect, even after I DMZed my computer and temporarily disabled the software firewall. Those bastards....

Day 2 of the Philadelphia story saw the club share the points from six games against difficult opponents. The club started out by hosting the mighty Blackhawks at the Spectrum, and a tight affair brought the teams to a 4-4 tie after regulation. Shortly into OT, however, Chicago accidentally scored in their own net, sending the home crowd into raptures. The return matchup in Chicago was a similarly tight affair, again requiring free hockey, but this time the Blackhawks managed a one-timer a minute into the extra period, securing their share of the four points. Four games against division rivals Pittsburgh followed, and the Penguins skated circles around the Flyers to start, winning the first in Philly by a 3-2 scoreline before going hog wild back in Pittsburgh, putting 11 past the good guys but only conceding four. The referees took pity on the Flyers in the third game, however, penalizing the Penguins five times and enabling the Flyers to take the game, 4-3. Back at The Spectrum for the fourth and final game, an intense match saw the teams share four goals in regulation. Shortly into overtime, though, Eric Lindros found Pelle Eklund on a cross-ice pass in the offensive zone. Eklund's one-timer was saved by the goalie but Mark Recchi pounced onto the loose puck behind the net, just barely squeezed between the goal post and the recovering keeper, and flipped the puck into the open net for the victory, improving the Flyers' record in OT this season to 3-2.

I'm bumping my above post because I feel like it and more people will see it now. If you don't like it, well...ok, we can still be friends.

Can't get on at all.

That's not gonna end well for anyone involved. Besides, I hear Tikkanen doesn't turn tricks for free.

The Flyers opened their season last night with an eight-game cavalcade of vulcanized, rubbery excitement. The season started off predictably with a 3-2 loss to Bo and Hartford that wasn't as close as the score indicated, as only two late goals from the good guys made it seem close. The club somehow managed to turn it around for the next two against Hartford, however, as the breaks seemed to go their way for a change. The Flyers found themselves down a goal with seconds to go in the third period before Mark Recchi collected a rebound off a one-timer, found the keeper out of position, and flipped the puck into the net with just :04 left, enabling the Flyers to force an overtime in which Pelle Eklund found the back of the net for the win. A stronger defensive effort from the Flyers saw them to victory in the final game of the set, though again, Hartford had a few bad breaks to prevent them from causing further harm. Two games against Quebec followed, and, as expected, the club couldn't find a way to beat skoolyardpuck's squad, falling twice, leaving the Flyers with one match left to take something from Quebec this season. Three more games against DaDonch44 and the Buffalo Mogilnys Sabres finished off the evening's play, and though the Flyers had their hands more than full with the Sabres' best player, his teammates weren't up to the task as evidenced by the Flyers enjoying a +3 goal differential whenever Mogilny was off the ice for injury or penalty. The club finally put together a complete performance in the last game, earning a comprehensive 5-1 victory in their first game of the season decided by more than 2 goals.

Sadly, I've checked all of those things. zbattle was working with the old router + firewall combination, but even when I disable the software firewall the connection fails. I have my computer set up to get assigned the same address by DHCP every time. I'll probably test it out some more in a few days...and continue to fail. Thanks for trying.

Is that a picture of Jose Mourinho?