The results are in for Match 2.
Jade had been building, and building, managing to shrug past the bullets sent their way and just eating the chips in their quite literal armor, able to easily replenish it with yet more mud. The mud had stopped Dread from chasing them, and she had gone off and burned the place to scare the people off. Whatever. It complemented what it was they had desired…
All it would take now was this finishing touch, this last gesture of nonaggression towards Sentient Oona, who they were certain simply wished not to be bothered, did not care for any of this commodification of its very existence.
It was crass. It was sickening. It drove Jade, who just wished to live their own life, mad to think about, and now, nobody would follow, soon as they were a short swim through the basin away. The shrine itself would be a sinking island of concrete silk soon. All that would be left then was to use the cover of the dirtying water to avoid the bullets of the fan club, the last guard unit perched within the shrine.
Yet bullets never came, and above them, Jade felt instead a terrible heat, noted the appearance of spiked rubber on their mud-caked back. Something with an exoskeleton like an insect’s stood above them, they careened their head to see who was above them. It was Dread, barely swerving her body past dragonflies which had caught on to her malicious intent and meant to fry her.
“You again… I said fall down… Off.” They spoke with guttural contempt. “How did… You even…”
“You ruined my new boots, Antlerhead, but I am afraid that as much as the ground by which we did our battle had been soiled… You miscalculated in, I think, a fateful way, to utilize that ghastly terminology.” Briefly, indicatively, she looked to her side, and Jade understood as their opponent continued. “You didn’t destroy the bridge first. All I needed to do was walk across, watch your movements… And hop on.”
“You... still talk… too much.” Jade grunted, then, and spat at her, putting on their strongest face.
Then they saw so many dragonflies, flying towards both of them as fell bladed arms raised and descended.
The winner is Dread, with a score of 73 to Jade’s 71!

Category	Winner	Point Totals	Comments
Popularity	Tie	15-15	The first two matches in a row, up to the final moments, saw decent turnout while resulting in a tie by deadline.
Quality	Red Carpet Renaissance	24-21	Reasoning
JoJolity	Black Hill Estate	24-25	Reasoning
Conduct	Tie	10-10

After a few futile moments trying to commune with the alien, Dread stepped over that bridge once more, back onto land and stood over the lake where they had left Jade. After that final confrontation, the dragonflies had all dissipated, Sentient Oona either sated or exhausted after that final exchange of blows, and for a few days, slumbering.
Both of the fighters had been covered in blood, covered in gore, covered in wounds. The fire raged on even as the trapped god’s rage quelled, heat counteracted by the cool of the muddy, bloody lake, which Dread, feeling theatrical, turned herself away from.
“How quaint! A beast such as yourself thinking you had a chance beating a woman of my stature. Cute, really. Your malodorous challenge was something indeed, and I will admit that you… That you…”
Dread’s lip began to quiver. Her trip was RUINED!
She didn’t even get a single souvenir! Her train of thought lost, tears well in her eyes. Joywave fell, and she turned away from Jade, beginning to sob. She needed to go hug someone.
To this end, then, she ran and ran, tromping across the edge of the marsh towards the direction of the evacuating town she’d last seen her friend head, who surely would be not judgmental over such a platonic request as consolation. Mr. Jones was surely-
Ah. He’d already left, huh?
All he had left behind, then, was the Green Flying Man, clutching a massive gash in his flickering, transformed torso, hand feebly fumbling with a rotary phone in one of the few buildings not on fire yet.
“H… H-hello? Matilda? It’s… Nngh, it’s an emergency situation! The… The Estate is empty, and the closest member’s here with me in Sentient Oona and I’ll try and get back with them, but a guy cut his own leg off and died and everything’s on fire and Memory… He grabbed Memory Management, and said he knew how to kill her, that he would if she doesn’t-”
Click!
A fell claw hung the phone up, then severed the line, and Green collapsed, having been tripped and sent to the floor.
“Y-you! But if you’re here, th-that means-” Green whined. “No… No, no, no…”
“Do not irritate me with your whining!” The crying Dread, using Joywave, brought her hand down, then the other, then raised them, then brought each down again, and repeated this, and repeated this. “I! Am in! A very bad mood!”
The Green Flying Man was not long for the world anyway thanks to the distinctive sabre wound which had gouged him (a normal man would have been dead already), despite what he had said to assure whoever he was on the phone with, already fading from being, but he practically disintegrated seconds into Dread’s onslaught, and she hardly registered this until she stood, breathing heavily in the aftermath of her tantrum.
If… If what he said was true, then the reason Mr. Jones has left me here, messy and with no souvenirs to my name… Still sniffling pathetically, Dread quivered, trying to stiffen her posture. Then he, at least, had his success…
There’s only a few hours left, as of posting this match, to vote in its predecessor, a duel between a cactus-mancer and a clone-summoner in a clock tower.
Scenario:
Elephant Bones 2 - Afternoon
The empty former diner and tax shelter, adjacent to the legitimate restaurant to which it was a sequel, had constantly had people watching after it since the incident before, when ANVIL militia members had occupied it with the intention of using it to raid and capture the restaurant proper. For Fira B, the place made for a fine space to do paperwork and generally not be easily found when she wasn’t outright needed, also serving double duty in how it kept hooligans from their hooliganry.
“I raise you better dental. It’s a top-secret dental plan - people like us normally don’t get to know about it. But... you gotta risk 8% of the raise you earned so far.”
Byte, sitting at the table opposite her, pondered it over, not typically the type to end up in poker games, but having wanted a raise and found himself very easily swayed by Fira, basically, implying he was afraid to handle it this way, worried he would lose. Sure, Fira was probably blatantly cheating, but hey, so was he, and as it was, his pay was about to go up 10%.
Thanks to his Stand, he already had everything he needed to make a perfect game… All saved in spades, card-counted to hell for the perfect moment, and this forbidden dental plan for teeth beyond compare had been his ultimate goal this entire time.
“Alright, I’ll call.” The final hands were dealt and played to, then, tensely, before he declared, putting it all down on the table, “royal flush, all spades! Those secret teeth are as good as-”
Fira, grinning, displayed her own hand, then, having prepared her own forbidden technique for this exact eventuality, this moment. Not one, two, three, or four Aces in her hand, nor even something so hackneyed as an errant fifth Ace. She had gone beyond Poker, and displayed a devastating, never-before-seen six Aces technique, all in different suits. Everyone in real Poker knew that that was even better.
“No way… Dammit, that’s cheating! No way you seriously got-”
“So were you. Don’t forget this loss, Byte. Work hard, and maybe one day you’ll be able to get any teeth you want. Even mine, if you’re ruthless enough.”
He was about to raise an objection, then, when another figure walked through the faux-restaurant doors, carrying with them a face-obscuring massive gift basket full of assorted soaps and candies that look like soaps. More troublingly, as both parties present immediately narrowed their eyes at, though, was the uniform the figure was wearing.
They were clad in body armor, aqua and blue with white accents, the unmistakable colors of VALKYRIE and its members, complete with the sidearm all were known for carrying idly resting at their side.
“What do you want.” Fira asked sternly, about to stand up.
“Oh, the boss asked me to drop these off to sweeten the deal!”
“Deal?” Her voice lowered, and she stood tall, Byte almost wanting to grin at the sight of what was to come. “I don’t know anything about a ‘deal’.”
“Oh, right, uh, probably should’ve led with that!” Awkwardly, the recruit, young-looking, Byte surmised, put the gift basket down on the table. “See, uh, he wants you to swing by the address on the card later, says he’s sure you could help with-”
Effie Linder was sitting outside, fiddling frustratedly with the wi-fi as she tried to remember exactly what the new password was, only to see the man who’d walked in in a VALKYRIE uniform literally thrown out, crying out and hitting the pavement like a ragdoll. It made her smirk, despite herself and her contempt for the boss.
Fira brushed her hands off, seething and staring before letting the doors shut. Byte, meanwhile, looked over the gift basket, smelling one of the soaps, and one of the candies, within.
“Not bad, actually… Whoever picked this out has some taste. Always bugged me how soap doesn’t taste like it smells…”
“Eugh, I swear… VALKYRIE is acting chummy with us now... It’s one thing for their enemies to fight us because of some bad timing, but we are not people VALKYRIE sends gift baskets to!”
“Never even heard of Ugo McBaise sending gift baskets to anyone…” Byte quipped, curious.
“Exactly. It’s a passive-aggressive thing, clearly. They’re trying to tell us to play nice.” Fira cracked her knuckles, turning to him then. “You can admire soaps later. What’s the address on that card? Let’s go there and beat the hell out of Ugo. Send a message that we’re not friends, and his bones should be broken right now.”
“Hey, alright, I’m down,” Byte said, finding some amusement in the situation as he stood, slowly, opening up the card. “Besides… I know, different branches and all, but you know what happened to Zebra… All because he was backing Peres up in her fight against this company. Like, dammit, I was on that trip, too… Like half of us were, and people risked their lives and died trying to get that Ocean Soul caught alive in the first place, and then some guys from this company show up and then it’s all for nothing. Maybe I’ll feel better calling this a sort of revenge.”
The Black Hill Estate - Afternoon
Inch Nine paced around her room rubbing her temples. Ever since the fight she’d had with Byron Oxbow, everything in her life had gotten more complicated. She’d brought it up with Klein once, and the conflicted expression in his face had stuck with her. Pretty much any friends she had made with connections to the Industrial District reacted that way, to various extents. Inch was a cool headed person, but even though she struggled to show it, it affected her.
Thoughts rushed through her head on who was at fault for this… Cairo, Fira, Byron, that commander of his. Even with all of that a thought kept flowing through her head. Maybe herself, even. If she had only been able to talk Byron down, been more forthright about where she stood, it might have been avoided. She could have worked something out and her relationships would all be fine and so much hurt could have been avoided.
No. No, that was stupid, too.
It was that bastard, Ugo McBaise, and that horrible company he ran. He couldn’t help but keep pushing and pushing forward, turning a security company into a household bogeyman. Of course everyone would have been less on edge, never would have been at war in the first place, had it not been for that lot.
Yes, saying that, Inch felt at peace again, if only for a moment.
As that thought finished a small knock came at the door. Soon enough, she heard a voice she recognized well - that of her teammate, Cabernet Sauvignon, who came through the other side of the door. “Hey, we just got a letter and a gift basket from these VALKYRIE guys… Actually quite a nice fellow at the door, said it was specifically for us.”
“Hm.” Inch tilted her head. It had an… Assorted smell to it, and everything did look quite delicious. To test the mettle of this goodwill, she thought to grab something, take a bite…
She was glad that nobody could see the lower half of her face, the expression on it, at the random item within that she had taken, the soapy taste overwhelming her senses now. With a continued coolheadedness as Cab sat there surely unawares, she asked, “did he say what occasion this was for? I am to understand that this is not a company known for actions such as this, even if many of us have helped ODIN.”
“Said he had somewhere to be, then ran off before I could possibly entertain him,” Cab answered, “though I suspect perhaps that he was intimidated by my attempts to strike up a conversation about the exotic cheeses and scented candles which would best pair with the provided basket…” His face darkened a moment, then, as he added in a suspicious, perhaps self-importantly quiet tone, “and aside from that, probably whatever this is is suspicious as hell.”
“We are in agreement, then. No matter how polite they act towards us,” Inch said, her eyes narrowing at the deceptively tasty looking contents of the basket, towards the letter within, apparently from the head of the company urging them to come, “we can not abide by working with a man like that, or even being seen as his allies.”
“You know, I don’t know much about this Mcbaise guy, except by the reputation you all gave him, and this may be an old hobby of mine talking, but…” Cab gestured for the card, then, to glance, for himself, over the address. “If they’re going to roll out the red carpet for us, what do you say we head over there just to knock some heads?”
“I could not have thought of a better message myself. Perhaps you are not all culinary knowledge and trivia, Cabernet.”
Business District, Noon
As one would naturally do when receiving a “suspicious as hell” gift basket, Inch and Cab soon decided to investigate further, going to the address mentioned in the card the next day, driving Cab’s truck over there.
That was a mistake; the two of them must have spent almost an hour trying to find any available parking spot afterwards. The odds were stacked against them, but they eventually managed to find an overpriced spot fifteen minutes from their destination that they could stay in for a while, and went on their way.
Inch and Cab made their way through the hustle and bustle of the district, but after a couple minutes of walking, Inch spotted something out of the corner of her eye that gave her pause - a teal-haired woman walking angrily through the street, whom she’d fought for her life alongside not long ago. Fira.
Inch casually walked over, Cab following along behind her, and made her way to Fira, waving. “Hello there, Fira!” She said, actually sort of pleased to see her.
She didn’t expect to see a friendly-ish face here, so it was a welcome sight. Per usual Fira’s expression right now wasn’t one many people would call “friendly,” which is to say that she seemed even more pissed off than she usually did.
“Oh, Inch. You’re here. Hello.” Verbose as ever, Fira B.
“I am. What brings you here, Fira? You live and work quite far west of here, non?”
Before Fira said anything, Byte stepped in, taking over from there. “Those VALKYRIE assholes sent us some kind of gift package filled with soap and candy... wanted to win us over, I guess, make us do something for them, so we’re heading over to tell them to fuck off and beat that Ugo asshole up.”
“Oh! We received a similar package too... I had just thought of what candles I might buy while out here to combine with it all, offer the perfect ambiance for some aged Caciocavallo Podolico, but we agree - something’s suspicious about this…” Cab said, Inch nodding along.
Inch spoke up again then. “If all of us are heading towards the same place… I suppose it is best for us to all go together, non?”
“Guess so.” Fira, though not exactly overjoyed at the idea, seemed receptive enough to it, and neither Byte nor Cab objected either, so the four stand users went on their way. Each, though imagining different melodies, were totally all picturing the scene as being paired with some kickass background music or another.
Making their way towards the address, they noticed that there seemed to be less and less of the tall skyscrapers common to the district surrounding them, and more and more buildings directly associated with VALKYRIE - that made sense, given that this was their part of the district.
As they went along, Byte kept looking around, even more so than the rest of them, always looking and commenting on whatever came to mind for him - “hey, that building seems like a pain in the ass to work in,” “oh, that dude actually looks kind of strong, I bet he could take those other guys over there. Not me though, obviously,” and other inane comments. Soon enough, everyone else simply started tuning it out, paying them no real heed and going on along their way.
Eventually, they reached the address - a building, larger than most others in the area, marking the entrance to a VALKYRIE training ground. Getting near the building, Byte noticed something - a man in a VALKYRIE outfit, walking towards them. He seemed quite well built, enough so that Byte figured he might even have to use BRB to beat him were things to come to that. “Hey, that VALKYRIE guy over there seems like he wants something with us, no?”
No response. The man got closer.
Byte wondered to himself how he could get the attention of Fira or the other two without pissing them off. Eventually, he decided to give Cab a light slap on the shoulder to grab his attention - he didn’t seem particularly threatening, especially when compared to Fira or Inch.
Cab, who seemed to be lost in thought looking at the building, turned to Byte with a sour expression. “What do you want, and why would it necessitate hitting me?!”. He seemed angry, but Byte simply shrugged in response. “Well, you weren’t responding to what I said, and-”
“Uh… excuse me? You’re the ones we called over, right? Inch Nine, Cabernet Sauvignon, Fira B, and-”
“What do you want from us.” Before the man, who seemed to be surprisingly docile considering his build and appearance, could finish, Fira interrupted him, and he found himself angrily stared down by all four of the stand users. The man stammered for a bit, unsure of how to respond or what to say...
“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey… let’s all calm down, yeah?” The intense staredown was interrupted when a voice came from afar, one that was familiar to Fira.
“Hey, wait a sec…” She cocked an eyebrow in disbelief, grunting and adding as she turned, “no way… Is it seriously-”
A man clad in a dark suit colored like VALKYRIE’s armor, adorned with cute shapes had emerged now, clad professionally head-to-toe, dress shoes to black sunglasses, and lord, that hair.
Such long hair, vertical and striped.
Rushen Smith stood before the lot of them, strutting around like he’d owned the place or something. She’d beaten him once, but hadn’t been expecting to cross paths with him again.
“What do you want.”
“No need to be so hostile, yeah? We’re not calling you here to start trouble or nothing, so-”
“We’re?” Fira interrupted him. “You’re with VALKYRIE?” Well, if he was with VALKYRIE, at least Fira knew very well that she could still beat the shit out of him, given that she already had a good track record against him. Then, she’d move on to Ugo.
“So you’re like a… Miniboss, now.” Byte interjected, disappointed, yet ready to fight nonetheless.
“If I may finish.” Rushen sounded impatient
“To make a long story short… Ugo’s out. CEO fired him for everything he’s done. You’re not talkin’ to some crony to an NFL reject. You’re looking at the new head of VALKYRIE. For security and PR reasons, Allday has been been keepin’ quiet about it for now, preparing for just the right moment to tell the public, make sure I get revealed to the public with a good positive splash, but it is what it is. So… ready to talk now? Because I’m thinkin’ we can use your help, and we can definitely make it worth your while.”
Deeper within the premises - An Open-air training facility
Everyone had been disarmed by their confusion, and by Rushen’s goodwill, and by the thought that, just like that, one of the most threatening people in the city could just be fired like it was nothing, which made for Rushen a convenient situation. They were in line, following his lead, and as he did so, he brought them to a state-of-the-art training facility, one wherein dozens upon dozens of security officers in armor were walking around, shooting the shit, running, chatting by vending machines stocked with overpriced health food and sports drinks, and almost always giving Rushen a respectful nod and salute as he passed by, always meeting it with a cool, “at ease.”
“I still do not understand why we are here…” Inch, after some time being led around, spoke up. “I assume you sent those gift baskets to us, but even then, beyond wishing us here quickly, you did not say what you expect of us. Or even sign your name, beyond ‘the boss of VALKYRIE.’”
“Yes, like I said, my step into the private sector ain’t public knowledge yet… Trying to keep a lot under lock, ‘cuz I’ve inherited a backlog of things to take care of. Need-to-know basis… You know how it is.”
Fira nodded, saying bluntly, “so you’re planning something big. Want us to have a part. What? And why? Better not be wasting our time…”
“All Ugo ever taught people far as tactics went was a bullheaded, aggressive push forward… Rush, and rush, and rush, and just overwhelm opponents before they can think their way out.” Rushen explained. “It hasn’t been working, it got a lotta people on all sides or no sides hurt and killed who didn’t need to be, and while he used to have a man for handling stuff that took a brain, long story short… He’s no longer with us either. We’re trying to work on a way to save the people of this city from what’s up ahead, and no point in doing that if there’s no one to save, yeah? VALKYRIE needs to be better… We need to reorient, pick and choose better battles, get better at fighting them. No more bullcrap about raiding bars or stealing cows, yeah?”
“So you want us to… Help you retrain this security company?” Byte asked. “Why us?”
“The four of you felt right for it,” Rushen answered, looking each of them over in turn, “Byte, I know the part you played in that shipyard incident, and while I still ain’t pleased at what you were working for then, and it really messed Jesse up in a bad way, that’s all over now. The Ocean Soul business is done and in the past, and you’re real good at what you do.”
He was quiet, then.
“Fira,” he continued, “you’re another career criminal in this city, and you and I both know it, but we need someone who can think like that, someone with fight in her, for what I’m trying to get these guys ready for. Now ain’t the time to get picky… Long as you keep minding your business.”
“I try. Some people make it so hard.” Fira snorted, folding her arms.
“Inch, you used to be seen with Cairo a whole bunch, until right around when a certain incident happened… You know what I mean, don’t you?” She and Fira sneered, and Rushen raised a hand. “I’m not here to criticize, mind. I like your style, and that cool gator power thing you got going for you, hear you’ve got some real good learning techniques, and most important of all, I hear the two of you managed to survive bein’ in the dead center of Byron Oxbow at his angriest in thirty years.”
“You are… Praising me. It is appreciated, thank you.”
“And Cab,” Rushen continued, “you are the whitest man I have ever met, and I’ve got family in the same neck of New York as Douglas Jones. But hey, you’re a friend of Jesse’s, and these guys around here, they remember you at the battle on Capital Island, hurt and just popped outta this magic bottle, and still fighting with ‘em and helping people escape. You’re good people, and you got a particular edge to you I need too.”
“I saw I think a better side of VALKYRIE than most, by good circumstance,” Cab started, flattered by the mixed praise, ultimately happy to recognize it as stroking his ego, and a part of him warmed up for what was being praised turning out to be something besides the hobbies with which he’d filled the void. “Though I was just as willing to knock these guys’ heads in as everyone else here, you know… I certainly don’t mind this turnaround, though. And I think I’m starting to guess who it is you want to fight here, why you want a group like this in on it… Might you be planning to stake out the-”
“Not a word. Can’t let this get leaked.”
“Of course, of course,” Cab answered, quite confident in his mental answer nonetheless. “You mentioned this being worth our while… Can I ask what you mean by that?”
“The CEO’s gonna be watching this training sesh too, if you didn’t already guess… We’ll make sure all four of you are rewarded handsomely for this, of course, but if you really go above-and-beyond, she’s said she’ll throw even more bonus on top of all the dough. I recommend you shoot for that.”
“So we need to help train your guys better than these two, huh?” Fira answered, jerking her thumb at Inch and Cab.
“I mean, it probably is better for you to work with the person ya know primarily, but it’s not really a comp-”
“We are gonna blow whatever you guys are doing out of the water,” Byte interrupted, looking towards the Estate residents with a fiery look in his own eye. “We’ll show you the kind of training you can normally only see for a total premium at Dukes!”
“Yes, let’s one-up each other,” Cab agreed with an amused smirk, well aware that this competitive streak was unnecessary, but beginning to feel a certain fire in him, “what do you say, Inch? You up for the task of whipping these guys into crimebusting shape?”
“I suppose I am.” Inch herself was beginning to feel the air of competition, feel her blood pumping, “no hard feelings to either of you, if you are not selected for this… But we are simply going to do a phenomenal job.”
Rushen sighed, shaking his head. “Least you ain’t trying to kill each other… Alright! I’ll roll with it.” He clapped his hands, perking up quite a bit. “Both of y’all are in charge of sixteen recruits who need retraining fast, and we’re gonna compare what you did at the end. Just don’t kill ‘em or nothing, or do nothing stupid, and for four hours, soon as you got a plan together, what you say goes. Got it? Good.”
Man, now I’m feelin’ the competitive spirit a bit… Really is contagious, huh? Probably gonna make ‘em do a better job… Ah, hell, now I’m feelin’ a certain urge. I’m gonna say it. I’m gonna!
“Open the game.”
(credit to magistelles for the awesome art!)
Location: A VALKYRIE training facility in the middle of the business district.
The area consists of track fields, indoor gymnasiums, shooting ranges, training equipment storage, training towers and practical training buildings as well as other training sites. There is also general equipment storage and a small infirmary on site.
Essentially any sort of equipment or facilities you’d expect to find in a military style boot camp can be found here. Things like body armor and helmets, large tires, guns (both handguns and rifles), training dummies, etc. If you aren’t sure if something can be found here, just ask the judges.
There is also a large amount of spare wood used for building obstacle courses.
Goal: Train your group of recruits better than your opponents in a 4 hour training session!
Additional Information:
You can assume there is minimal downtime from getting area to area within the full facility.
Each team has a group of 16 VALKYRIE recruits to be trained. Each of them has 333 physicals and a 2 in gun handling and a 2 in hand to hand combat. While your session is a full 4 hours, you may still need to consider the stamina of the recruits and schedule breaks for them accordingly. They are in full uniform, with helmets, combat boots, and body armor as well as a pistol and baton each. They also have equipment that lets them see stands. They each have spare uniforms and can be refitted with training equipment from the equipment storage as needed. They also have assault rifles and walkie talkies in the equipment storage.
For the purposes of training they will generally agree to whatever you put them through short of anything that has significant risk of resulting in actual harm.
Teams are allowed to use/take anything from the facilities for the purposes of training.
In terms of Voting and Quality we are looking for a few different things:

Having effective training: This can mostly be boiled down to how well their training either strengthenings their bodies or helps them learn muscle memories or techniques that improve fighting.
Using your time effectively: Similar to having effective training, minimizing wasted time that could have been otherwise useful is also important.
Having your recruits last for as much of the training as possible: Having guys needing to be sent to the infirmary for injuries or overworking them before the 4 hours is up will affect your score negatively. While accidents can happen through say sparring or other mishaps, you should try to minimize any lasting damages to the recruits.
Having varied and well rounded training: Having them build skills in multiple areas, full body exercise over focusing on one or two muscle groups, and preparing them for a variety of scenarios.
Discipline: While your recruits will be following your orders for training, being able to command their attention and respect can go a long way on making an impression and bolster training effectiveness. On the flip side, doing things that make the recruits not take you or training seriously can defeat the purpose of training.

In terms of training, you can also consider anything security personnel should be trained in, not just strictly combat. That can include rescuing, defending people, perceptiveness, team coordination, etc.

Team	Combatant	JoJolity
The Graveyard Shift	Fira B.	“This pain-in-the-ass pillar is a reflection on that woman's personality...” You know, if you are going to be training these people, might as well make this fun for yourself. Personalize your training regiment as much as you can to make it unique with your abilities!
The Graveyard Shift	Byte	“Climb to the top of the pillar with just your hands. That's the only exit. If you can't climb out, you'll stay there until you die.” Anybody could just sit back and train people, that’s why you can’t bring yourself to do that. Be active and hands-on in your training!
Black Hill Estate	Inch Nine	“Climbing with something other than the ripple is not appreciated by the pillar... This "Hell Climb Pillar" only likes the ripple and knocks down everything else... Don't forget that.” No point in relaxing while they do all the training, might as well brush up on your own skills. Be active and hands-on in your training!
Black Hill Estate	Cabernet “Cab” Sauvignon	“It's the fault of the person who built that trap... whoever built this was really fucked up! Making me fall for that” While you could have them do just normal training, that is defeating both the point of the exercise and would be a complete waste of everybody’s time. Personalize your training regiment as much as you can to make it unique with your abilities!

Link to the Official Player Spreadsheet
Link to Match Schedule
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[Table] I am Dave Plummer, author of Windows Task Manager, Zip Folders, and worked on Space Cadet Pinball, Media Center, Windows Shell, MS-DOS, OLE32, WPA, and more. (pt 1/2)

Source
Note: Based on observing question-taker's profile, he is still taking answers, so two parts may or may not completely summarize the AMA.

Questions	Answers
Space Cadet Pinball, how does it feel to be the most played "bring your child to work day" game? I remember it fondly.	The best part is that I used to "teach" computer lab when my kids were in K through 6th grades, back when Pinball was still included and well known. The kids could care less about anything technically hard or interesting that I'd worked on, of course, but Pinball gave me instant street cred with them.
	Especially cool was being able to walk over and enter a secret code that only I knew that would turn on all the cheats, like infinite lives. They thought I was a wizard at that age!
	The code, by the way, is "hidden test" without the quotes! Then various keys do different things, you can click and drag the ball around, and so on. Google it for the gory details!
	I always like to point out that I was working with a full set of original IP from Maxis, so I had nothing to do with the design of the game, or it's art, etc... that was all done! My contribution was volunteering to port it, including a partial rewrite from asm to C, to work on MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC, IA64, ARM, and so on, which was actually a lot of work. But I got it into the Windows box, which is how and why everyone knows it today. But all credit for the gameplay and so on goes to Maxis, all I did was not screw it up in that case!
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To add a bit of detail re Space Cadet Pinball: we built Space Cadet originally at my company Cinematronics and did a deal with Microsoft to ship it with the Plus Pack that accompanied Win 95 and Win 98. While it technically didn't ship w/ Windows, the Plus Pack had something like a 25% attach rate and pinball wound up on most systems anyway. Microsoft actually had an option in our original contract from 1994 to ship it with the OS itself or the Plus Pack. Maxis was our publisher for the subsequent retail version, and later bought my company. More germane to this thread: I believe Dave's port entered the picture a few years later, after Win 98, and was likely critical to pinball continuing to ship on later iterations of the Windows OS (i.e. 32-bit). I definitely appreciate the time he put in to give the game extra years of life on the Windows platform. Kevin Gliner, game designer and producer for 3D Pinball, and co-founder of Cinematronics.	Pleased to FINALLY put a name to the game design! You should update the Wikipedia article for the game, as I think it lists Matt Ridgway, who might have been sound? I've been crediting Maxis for years, not knowing the role of Cinematronics who was who. One thing that confused me: wasn't there a company that did video games in the 80s called Cinematronics? Any relation? Star Castle, Armor Attack, etc...
	As for timing, this likely between the Win95 and Win98 Plus! packs. It was very early on at least, and shipped at least in NT4, and perhaps earlier in "SUR" release that ran atop NT 3.51, but I don't have access to any source files to check dates!
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I keep meaning to fix that wikipedia article, there's a significant number of people that worked on the game and for some reason only Matt (an independent sound guy who did some excellent part-time contract work for us) is listed. There's also a lot of confusion about the timing of various releases and the companies involved, and who owns it now (EA). I actually have all the original source, although no rights to any of it anymore. Hard to say on the timing of the port. I was working in Redmond in '99 when I got word someone had done an NT4 and Win2000 port (I'm assuming that was you), so that was the first time the port showed up on my radar. I have a more confident memory (and contracts, email, etc) of all the events related to how pinball came about and the first couple years after it was released. I like to think pinball was the very first Win95 game (it was fun to watch Gates and Leno pretend to play it on stage at the Win95 launch event), but of course there were other games that shipped with the launch too. You're correct, there was an 80s arcade game company called Cinematronics that went out of business long before we started in 1994, and someone had let the trademark lapse. How we came to be called Cinematronics is a long story for another time...	NT shipped in 96, so the version I did for it would have been done in 95. I remember working on it about the time Win9X was shipping or in late beta. I could be wrong on that part, but Nov 95 would be my guess.
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Damn dude, porting assembly? You are a legend!	Thanks - we actually did all of our debugging in assembler. We didn't have any source-level or line-level debugging at all (except as noted below). So you'd connect to a machine through an ssh-like tool and then, if the symbols were right, you could get a callstack and inspect memory, disassemble functions, and so on. But since we spent much of our day staring at assembly, I became reasonably adept at it.
	I say "reasonably" as I was lazy enough that I would compile the components of interest to me with Visual Studio PDB symbols so that, if I could repro on my own machine, I could then source-level debug it. That made me fast at some stuff that others were slow at, but I likely never got as proficient at asm debugging as someone who never had an alternative. I had a developer friend named Bob whom was an ntsd (our debugger) superstar, and he'd write expressions inside of breakpoints to fire conditionally, that kind of thing. So I did learn that trick, but I'm sure there were dozens I just never knew.
	That all said, we rarely if ever coded in assembly. All coding was in C/C++.
	In the Pinball case, parts of the original were written in hand-coded in asm by Maxis, like the sound engine, and wouldn't have had a hope of working on anything but an x86. Rather than be lame and not have sound on the RISC platforms, I opted to rewrite that stuff in C so that it was portable.
	The RISC platforms also bring their own set of problems like 32-bit alignment for data. And being on Windows NT (now just "Windows") meant being Unicode, but fortunately there isn't a TON of text in a pinball game!
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boytekka: damn, the only time that I did assembly language is when we tried moving a small machine through the printer port.. I miss those days LordApocalyptica: Only time I did assembly was when I wanted to make a game on my TI-84, and decided that I didn't want to. I miss those days too.	First game I wrote in assembly I did in a machine language monitor on my C64. You can't (easily) relocate 6502 so to add code you'd have to jump out, do stuff, and jump back... Crazy!
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If I can ask a question, how does it feels to go from coding with basically zero help to working with modern IDE and code editors that give you a lot of infos, tips, error notifications and so on? I've started programming like a year ago from zero, and I don't think I could be able to program like y'all did 20 years ago or more. Thanks for doing this AMA anyways!	You're very welcome! The progression in tools has been amazing, really. I remember HESMON and my first machine language monitors for the PET and C64, then really nice ROM dev environments, and CygnusEd for the Amiga... all the way up to PlatformIO and Visual Studio Code.
	My most recent "WOW" moment was adding a line to my lib_deps line in platformio, which magically included the library being developed at the URL on github. So you can link to online projects... cool.
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Just wanted to say thanks for the Alpha port!	Alpha AXP was by far the hardest to debug! "Branch later, maybe"
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I just want to thank you for my first experience with pinball. I am now a top 100 competitive pinball player and own 16 pinball machines.	That's cool, which do you collect primarily? I was always a fan of Williams, and am FB friends with a couple of their older devs like Steve Ritchie, Larry DeMar, and Eugene Jarvis (but I should be careful, Bill Gates warned me never to name drop :-) )
	I have a Black Knight 2000 as my own machine right now!
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I have a wide range. Some modern Sterns like Metallica, Jurassic Park, Tron and Iron Maiden. Older Bally’s like Frontier and Fathom. 2 classic Bally/Williams Dr Who and Attack From Mars. Plus a few EMs. I like them all! Attack From Mars was the game that got me into the physical world of pinball. Collecting has been more of a recent pandemic thing since I can’t go out and play. I miss traveling around the country playing in big tournaments. Oh yeah and Steve Ritchie is quite the character. You must meet him some day. I’ve met him a few times and each time has earned a place in my pinball stories I talk about with friends.	Congrats on the collection, that's a nice set! I've never met Steve - I did meet Larry DeMar in vegas. I was playing at a slot machine and he was next to me, and had a name tag, and I was like... "Excuse me sir, but does the word Robotron mean anything?" and it turned out to be him!
Asking as someone pretty new in software development, did you experience impostor syndrome? If so, how did you deal with it?	My first couple of years were very productive, so I wasn't insecure about my output, but even so I definitely experienced imposter syndrome. I think most people who achieve aspirational roles do... I have a friend who was in the NFL who describes the same feeling.
	Being as productive as your peers is sort of the pre-requisite, and if that's true, then remind yourself that when you were in fifth grade, the eighth graders on the playground seemed so old and mature! It's odd in that I started in 1993, but to me anyone who started in the 80s was a "true" Old Timer and remains so in my head to this day. And similarly I'm no doubt the grizzled veteran to people I hired a few years later.
	I know when I started I felt like the dumbest guy in the room, and by the end I felt like the smartest guy in the room, and I don't think I'd gotten any smarter along the way. So it's all relative and perception. Well, that and the stock caused some serious attrition of the "really smart"!
	I remember visiting Google a couple of years ago in the bathrooms they had posters that read "YOU ARE NOT AN IMPOSTER", and info about seminars and so on about it, so it's very common! I wish I had a concrete strategy for you, but I don't other than "It's commonplace, and I bet there are a ton of resources on the Web. Don't be surprised you're experiencing it!"
What would you encourage someone to start learning today related to your field?	I'm learning React at the moment. Let's face it, the web development experience is utter nonsense. So I kept hoping for something that would make it clean, and easy to make components, and to work with REST apis. So I went looking for a solution. Then I read about Angular, and it seemed like "too much" to learn for the sake of making a SPA.
	But React seems understandable enough and solves a ton of problems with web development, not the least of which is being able to intermingle HTML and Javascript (via JSX).
	As for languages, I'd probably start with Python. I prototyped a complicated LED system a couple of years ago and it was admirable what it could accomplish for an interpreted language. And you probably have to know modern Javascript as well.
Now, would you be rather interested in working for windows, macos or linux ?	I work in all three. For my own projects I write to the ASP.NET Core 3.1, and that's available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I originally wrote my LED server to it under MacOS, then moved it to Windows with about 5 minutes of changes (related to the consoles being somewhat different). Then I moved it to Linux, where I made it work and then containerized it with Docker. I got it up and running on my Raspberry Pi and in a Windows HyperV and under WSL using Ubuntu. To me that kind of stuff is super cool.
	Once I had it working in a Docker container I deployed it to my Synology NAS, which is some variant of Linux. So my NAS runs my Christmas lights!
	I love stuff like that when it works!
	My main workstation is a Dell monitor that has an internal KVM. I have a 2013 Mac Pro connected to it, which is maxed out and then has an eGPU and eRAID setup via Thunderbolt. And then I have a 3970X Windows PC connected as well, and I can jump back and forth with a button.
	I spend most of my day in Windows now, unless it's video related, in which case I use Final Cut Pro.
Hi Dave, thanks for the AmA! In regards to task manager - often times I have to click the 'end task' button more than once to get the frozen program to actually close. Why is this? Thanks again.	Remember that, at least in my day, End Task is different than End Process. The former sends a "Please close yourself" message to the app, and if it's hung, it should then detect it and so on, but doesn't always. Imagine the app is in a weird state where it's still pumping messages, it's not hung, but it's broken. End Task likely won't work.
	That's when you need End Process, which tears everything down for you. The substantive difference is that the program gets no choice in the matter and no notification. End Task can be graceful. End Process is brutal.
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What about when the task manager stops responding? We need a task manager manager to manage the task manager. Lol	I've never seen that happen, ever, unless the system itself or the window manager is bunged in some way. Your puny Task Manager cannot save you now.
	Then again, nothing can, save a reboot.
What cool new tech are you excited about?	Right now I'm actually trying to productize something of my own, a system for doing hidden, permanently-installed LED holiday lighting. It receives the effect entirely over WiFi, or it can fall back to built-in effects and so on. Quick demo from 4th of July here:
	https://youtu.be/7QNtj2hZtaQ
	I'm done the software on the ESP32 and on the desktop, and working on the phone app now. So the next step is to find someone to manufacture the actual addressable LED strip fixtures. They'd be like under-counter LED strips that snap together end to end, but weatherproof, and with WS2813 LEDs internally.
	In terms of stuff that I'm just benefitting from, the latest CPUs from AMD are amazing. I have the 32-core 3970X and the raw computing power is hard to comprehend. That you can buy a 32-core chip for $2K (or 64-core for $4K) amazes me! Now I need to learn AI or something to make use of all of that hardware...
After the rise of WinRAR, did you continue to use the trial or did you pay?	From: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
	Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2006 3:14 PM
	To: Dave
	Subject: Your BuyRAR.com Order #: 122229610 License Key

	Attachments: rarkey.rar
	My WinRAR order number, from about 15 years ago, is above. And my WinZip license is much older than that. As someone who (a) made their real living in shareware and (b) worked on Product Activation, I'm the kind of guy who always licenses everything! You'll notice in my PlatformIO/"Arduino" video I even walk people through how to contribute to show how easy it is. I love good, cheap software.
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Would you download a car?	My wife's Tesla downloads update all the time. I'm sure they're just as complex as the mechanical components of the car, so in a sense, we already do!
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But... why did you keep the email?	I have a folder on my OneDrive called Registrations where I keep copies of license keys and registrations. So it was handy. Looks like Telix is my oldest registration from 1989 or so.
Also what was Microsoft really like back in the 90s? As a user of MS-Dos 3.30 forward till now. I’m assuming there has just been a whole tide of changes. Was double space really as funny on the dev side as it was on the user side with the slowness and the pufferfish as a logo :)	I worked on Doublespace in that I wrote a thunking layer that could live in low memory and then moved the rest of the code into the HMA. I didn't work on the compression, but odds are the guy who did is reading along right now, I bet!
	I don't really know if it was faster or slower than its contemporaries like Stacker. I wrote one for the Amiga, though didn't get it quite finished before starting at MS, and it's an interesting and hard problem to do well. At least on the AmigaDOS it was, FAT would be a tad easier.
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I mean for its time it was great. But back then floppy disks and 10M RLL-MFM drives were more the norm. It was actually awesome to have it included IN the OS instead of having to buy stacker. I think this is why I get so much of a kick out of every phishing AD that says download this to double your RAM. It just takes me back.	RAM Doublers are a whole 'nother ball of wax. Raymond Chen, in his blog "The Old New Thing", covers them well. If I understand it correctly, in the most famous case the code to do the actual memory compression was disabled, so it literally did nothing, but did it with overhead.
	On the other hand, I note that current Windows, the HyperV, and even my Synology NAS offer "Memory Compression" now so perhaps there's a time and a place on modern cpus and systems.
I'm an Engineer and regularly use MS Office to produce reports and calculations. Subscript and Superscript are something I use all the time. For at least the last 15 years, in MS Word I can hit "Ctrl +" & "Ctrl Shift +" to make the highlighted text Subscript or Superscript. But MS Word sucks for calculations, so I use MS Excel. But MS Excel it's about 8 clicks to make something super or subscript, and the hotkey technology hasn't made it in. So my question is, why was MS Office 2003 the best version of office that was ever produced?	I retired in 2003. Coincidence? I'll leave that one up to the scholars.
If you could go back and change anything about Windows without consequences or worrying about backwards compatibility, what would it be?	Format! I wrote that and since I was used to using the Visual Studio Resource Editor for dialogs, but couldn't in this case, I just laid out a stack of buttons and labels, content in the knowledge that a Program Manager or Designer would come up with a proper design for it that I would then code up. But somehow, no one did, and no one has for 25 years! So it's a big tall stack of buttons like a prairie grain elevator.
Ever met Bill Gates or have an interesting personal experience with him or another higher up you can share?	Yes, even when I was a new college hire he had the 30 of us or so over for beer and a burger in his back yard. It was a nice touch and quite informal. Obviously, at some scale, it wasn't 30 people anymore and they couldn't continue it!
	Ever play the video game Star Castle? It was like that. Concentric circles of people standing around BillG each armed with what they hope is a question or comment so clever they'll stand out in some way!
If every software you need would be available for both systems. Would you use a Linux distribution or Windows 10?	Right now I'd use Windows 10 because, if the same client software is available, I'd do it on Windows simply because I have a new 3970X w/ 128G of RAM and triple RAID0 SSDs plus an Optane stick. All for about 1/10th the price of a Mac Pro. Since the hardware is so cheap and powerful, it's really hard to resist.
	Even if all the client software were magically available, or Parallels for Linux were a thing, I'd stick with Windows because I haven't seen a Linux UI that I really like. I know everyone has a favorite... if there's an actually good and attractive one that works out of the box, let me know what distro, and maybe link a screenshot!
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Give Mint 20 with Cinnamon a fair shot! I have struggled for years trying to like a Linux distro but never found one that felt and looked right which I think had been the reason Linux hasn't been adopted mainstream but Mint20 with Cinnamon is possibly it..if not its very very close.. Has awesome multi-desltop winodws feature and you can make it basically just like Win10.. Would love to know what you think of it! 20.1 BETA just dropped and has a super interesting feature called Web Apps that needs to be checked out asap! Heres a link to the 20 long term support version.. some people do not like the Minto Logos/Backgrounds out of the box..keep in mind there are a ton of nice ones included and many more you can get quickly if that's something you don't like..what is really neat is that you can make Mint20 look like any OS.. there are themes that make it exactly like MacOS I just have not personally tried those out yet. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3928	Thanks, I'll check out Mint!
I am looking at my copy of Douglas Coupland's "microserfs". Although it's fiction, do you think it resembles the Microsoft Culture of the time?	Lord no, that book bugged me. On the one hand, they're a bunch of pretentious and precocious, annoying kids. I worked on a team (NT) where the tone was set by Dave Cutler and the guys he brought over from Digital, so it was rather different. On the other hand, it's such a big company that odds are those four main people DID exist somewhere in the company. Just not around me!
Why was (is) a monolithic registry preferred over distributing the settings in a number of files like Unix? Why did windows remain single-user focused for so long when Unix was multi-user since the 70s? In my understanding, if there is just one user, that user has to be admin which opened Windows up to security issues. (I don't even recall any sudo-like privilege escalation in pre-XP Windows.)	Windows NT was multiluser from birth. And there's nothing about the Windows architecture that requires users to be admin; the reality, I think, is that most apps started out in Win95 land and just didn't work if they were run as non-admin, so people ran as admin because the apps required it.
	We couldn't just break all those apps and say "Oh well, get better apps" so what you got was a convention of people running as admin. But again, there's no need to. Same as Unix.
	The one exception is that under Unix it's easy to sudo and so admin work briefly. I wish Windows had (or exposed) a simpler mechanism for letting me run as a non-admin credential and escalate when needed. I know UAC does the same thing, more or less, if used cautiously.
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Yeah NT did eventually get around to fixing it. My question was really about the earlier systems, because I think you said you worked on MS-DOS? Since there were existing systems with multi-user and privilege escalation even before the first Windows, somebody must have made a conscious decision to not include that functionality.	MS-DOS was only the second or third OS I can think of for a Microprocessor (CPM, SCP, then MS-DOS). What existed for mainframes and minis didn't matter much in the memory limits available on the desktop.
What was the inspiration for Space Cadet Pinball and what is your high score?	I don't know, I wasn't the designer, the inspiration part happened separate, I provided the perspiration part! I was actually pretty good at the game, since I was literally paid to play and test it... but I don't know the score, sorry! I do have the world high score on Tempest, though! But not Pinball :-)
1. What's something super useful within Task Manager you think even seasoned Windows users don't know they can do? 2. What do you think a future version of Task Manager should be able to do?	I think CTRL_SHIFT_ESC is a surprise to a lot of people!
	I think Task Manager needs Dark Mode, and a way to show who has locked what file or device so you can kill the offender when needed.
Why is it that I can still find dialogs in Windows 10 that were clearly built using 16 bit Visual Studio 97 version?	This should explain it. When you achieve perfection, you leave it alone:
	https://youtu.be/l75a8CvIHBQ
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Please for the love of God, use your Microsoft contacts to stop the snipping tool from going away. It's literally perfect but they keep trying to discontinue it.	One Compound Word: SnagIt. It's what you need to make your life complete.
	After my time, but I heard the new snipping and history that's being built in to replace it is pretty good. It better be if they kill snipping tool!
Thanks for task manager! I use it for so many things. How do you feel about newer versions of Windows de-emphasizing the control panel in favor of their new settings app?	I'm all for it if they made sure they had 100% coverage of all settings. It's sort of weird that in this day and age, with an R&D budget in the billions, we still have a mix of new control panel and old property pages. But I like the new stuff if it covered all cases!
Hello Dave! Why does Windows have such a rough time transferring a lot of small files? Is it a limitation of NTFS?	It's not Windows, it's all operating systems. Part of it is filesystem related:
	Imagine copying a file takes 200ms of overhead plus 10ms per MB. Coping 100M of large files will take 200ms + 1000ms = 1.2 seconds.
	Now imagine you have 100M of 1M files. Now you have 100*200ms + 1000ms = 20000ms or 20 seconds. 20 times as long for the same amount of data.
Did you ever get a chance to work in/on OS/2? I stuck with OS/2 until 2005/2006, before moving onto Linux, and would love to hear any opinions and stories you might have.	I didn't! I used OS/2 a bit but never had a chance to work on it. Many of the people I worked with did, though... but if OS/2 were Kevin Bacon, I'm one degree removed.
I had waited more than 20 years to ask this... What the fuck is Trumpet Winsock?	That's what you need to use TCP/IP on Windows before it was included in Windows. You're welcome.
What was the idea behind having "generic" activation keys starting in Windows XP that would activate any version, it was said they were for [educational purposes], did Microsoft provide them to 501c3/non-profit schools, or was there a different reasoning?	I'm not sure what you mean by "generic". I remember retail and oem, but what was a generic key?
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There was a set of keys that became public knowledge partway through XP life that appeared to activate unlimited machines as valid, though added a banner "For Educational Purposes Only". I remember trying it back in the day and always wondered what the intention was that was important enough the key activations were never blocked. [I did have multiple legal keys, but curiosity killed the cat and I had to swap one to the "educational" key to see for myself, lol]	I don't actually know! But I can surmise that if it was displaying a banner down in the bottom right corner of the screen, it knew it was not licensed and was likely limited or time-limited in some way. Unless you could actually ACTIVATE them with that key, which would surprise me.
How does OLE still work? I can't think of anything else that complex and old that still runs. We've got a legacy piece in our application that uses it and I can build against it using .net 4.0, in an Azure pipeline and deploy to windows 10 hosts and a piece of 90s technology still works perfectly. How and why?	It was complex, but pretty well written and very well tested. That's not to say there aren't a lot of bugs outside the common case codepaths, but I bet if Office used it, it's pretty solid, and will be forever.
Other than your personal phone number, did any Easter eggs make it to general availability?	There was one in the Win9X shell, but I think we removed it for Windows XP and later. So not that I'm aware of!
Have you ever wanted to make a "sequel" to Space Cadet?	There are actually two other tables available in the original Maxis game that should work, in theory, but I think Space Cadet was the best of the 3, so...
Were there ever any 3rd party edit/change to shell that made you think, "Why didn't we think of that?"	Not offhand, but "Stacks" on MacOS where it tries to rescue your mess by grouping things by filetype (Images, Docs, etc) is pretty clever. So that's something I wish we'd though of!
Have you worked at all with Bryce Cogswell and Mark Russinovich?? Also, what was your initial response to Process Explorer /the Sysinternals stuff??	No, but the SysInternal guys are geniuses of the highest order, so far as I'm concerned (and I say that based on their products, no knowing them). They know their stuff.
What are your best/oddest purchases you were able to justify as a work expense (for example, were you able to get MS to buy pinball machines as an R&D cost)?	I had DirecTv in my office! I was working on the Media Center prototype and we couldn't get cable on campus, so I got the dish installed on the roof, etc....
	I had a Tempest machine in my Office but at my own expense. I started right around the days of the "shrimp vs weenies" memo, so they were pretty cost conscious.
Is it true that you and Dave Cutler got into a knife fight over a hand of poker gone bad?	A broken bottle is not a knife.
Was DoubleSpace stolen from Stacker?	No. As I understand it, DoubleSpace was licensed from an Israeli developer. Then I heard that Stacker had somehow been awarded a patent on using a hash table in compression, which sounds pretty ludicrous if true. There was a trial, and even though it revolved around hash tables and math and compression engines, and no one on the jury had been to college, as I heard it. So the big guy lost. That's the story I heard, your mileage may vary. I'm not a spokesman, etc.
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MS-DOS 6.21, the most useless version. I remember writing an extra "2" on my 6.2 OEM disks when the update came out (no point wasting disks).	You say "useless", I say "canonical".
	I think I actually worked on 6.22, not sure. It was 6.2 something. In terms of usefulness, the features I added to it personally were:
	- Moving Doublespace to HMA to free up a lot of low mem, as noted
	- Giving Diskcopy ability to do it in a single pass with no swaps
	- I wrote a new version of Smartdrv that added CD-ROM support
	- I wrote a special version of Setup that worked via deltas and put everything on a single floppy (no point wasting disks).
	Mind you, I was just a summer intern when I did that, and it took me about 3 months.
What are your favorite DOS command-line tricks that still work in Windows 10?	doskey!
What actually happens if someone deletes Win32?	Human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. Do not attempt.
Did Bill ever swing by your cubicle and tell you'd he'd take your assignment home and finish it in a weekend if you didn't hurry up?	Cubicle? It was the 90s at Microsoft! I had a corner office with a table, chairs, a Tempest machine, and a sofabed.
What is the best project you worked on or had friends work on that was canceled, that you would revive if you had the resources?	Windows Media Center, I'd say! And I wish they'd done a great AutoPC that the OEMs could have licensed and made common to most cars.
There has been a lot of hate on Windows / Microsoft from the Unix / Linux advocates. What are some narratives that you disagree / don't think are true?	I used to love the Amiga, so I know what it's like to feel a sense of advocacy for a platform that you feel is superior but overlooked in the marketplace.
	I think the most untrue narrative I've heard about them is that they all have neckbeards. I think it's only "most", not all.
How do you introduce yourself at parties?	"Does anyone here know how to update my Groove subscription on my Zune?"
What OS are you using now? What's your favorite OS of all time? What's the worst OS of all time? What's the worst Microsoft OS (if different)?	The best OS of all time was Windows NT 4.0 with the Shell Update Release.
	The worst OS of all time was the TRS-80 Model 1, Level 1 DOS that didn't have the keyboard debounce code in ROM yet so you couldn't even type on the thing.
[deleted]	No, I never put a true easter egg in anything. Especially in an operating system, I don't believe in them. You have to be able to trust the OS, and I think it goes against that.
How did you get started in this specific field?	I first wandered into a Radio Shack store in about 1979 when I was 11, where I saw my very first computer. It was not connected yet, as the staff had not figured out how to set it up yet. Being somewhat precocious, I asked if I might play with it if I could manage to set it up. On a lark they said, “Sure kid, have a shot”, and ten minutes or so later I had it up and running. This endeared me to the manager, Brian, enough that every Thursday night and Saturday morning I would ride my bike down to the store: I’d type in my crude BASIC programs and they were kind enough to indulge my incessant free tinkering on their expensive computer. So that's pretty much how I started!
Do you ever have moments where you’re like “they have it so easy nowadays” or do you think that because of the groundwork put in place 30 years ago that systems have become exponentially more complex?	Only when someone spools up an entire docker instance to pipe something to it on the command line... then it's like "Really? You're basically booting a virtual computer as a command?"
What's the best C++ expert tip you can share for fellow programmers?	If you make anything in your class virtual, make the destructor virtual, particularly if there's any chance that anyone might delete an instance of your derived class through a base class pointer. Otherwise, the behavior is undefined, I think, but even if it works, it's not what you want!
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Wow this is eerie. I literally fixed a bug a couple weeks ago that was this specific case.	They can be weird bugs to track down, too!
Tabs or spaces?	Spaces on an indent of 4, tabs set to 8.
How can I open an MS Binder file?	Push down on the metal tabs at the top and bottom of the central spine of the binder. That will release the 3-hole punch claws, and then you can remove your printed file.
"It's now safe to turn off your computer" Why was this splash removed?	I think most current BIOSes can do it on their own by now!
Do you have any insight as to why MS decided to build Windows 95 from the ground up instead of building off of an existing *nix system the way Apple did with OSX? Was it just for backwards compatibility or were there other reasons? Also, had you gone this way, how do you think Windows, and the industry in general, might be different? I'm asking as someone who thinks that WSL is the best thing to happen to Windows in years.	Windows 95 was not built from the ground up, but NT was. The most succinct reason (and just a guess, I'm not a spokesman) is that even though MS had Xenix on hand, there were fundamental problems in the way Unix handled SMP multiprocessor locks and so on at the time. I presume these have long since been solved in Linux, etc, but not without significant work.
	WSL is one of my favorite things too, but for the library of tools and software, it makes available to me, not because of some fundamental architectural superiority, I don't think!
What are your feelings about "Microsoft Bob"?	https://youtu.be/rXHu9OmLd8Y
What did source control look like in the 90's? How did MS keep its code from leaking out to the public? How did you handle versioning and different developers working on the same feature?	We used a tool called SLM, or Source Library Manager. It was sort of available briefly as a product under the name Microsoft Delta.
	It was OK for smaller teams but did not support branching, so just before I left we moved to Source Depot.
Why was Ctrl + Alt + Delete changed to Ctrl + Shift + Escape?	It wasn't! Ctrl-Alt-Delete raises the "Secure Alert Sequence" which triggers the OS to switch to the secure desktop, where you have the ability to click a button which will start task manager upon return to your regular desktop.
	Ctrl-Shift-Esc is a feature built into Winlogon that launches a TaskManager on the current desktop without switching to the secure desktop.
	There are theoretically hacks and exploits that can only be caught by switching to the secure desktop, so if you're ever in doubt, ctrl-alt-del is the more secure way to go.
How did DOS ever get away with just pulling device names like "COM1" out of thin air when it came to output redirection etc..?	That's for compatibility with MS-DOS.
What are you currently working on?	Mostly on LED and Microcontroller projects that I detail on my YouTube channel, and the channel itself takes a fair bit of my time! If you're curious, you can check out my current successes and failure adventures at http://youtube.com/d/davesgarage
Did you work with Kris Hatleid on Super Hacker and the game Evolution?	I worked with Kris on an unreleased title called "Commander Video". That's largely where I learned assembly language, since he did the bulk of the coding, I watched and did level design, etc. 1982 or so I believe!
Got any dev back door mainframe access codes for pinball?	hidden test
Dave, how did you manage to do all that without being able to google everything?	That's one of the craziest things... I got a degree in computer science before you could even look anything up!
	The hardest part was OLE2. Coming form a different platform (the Amiga) it was a monster to wrap my head around, and the book (Inside OLE2) was not the best for introducing devs to OLE. It scared me, and I sure could have used a YouTube tutorial or two!
Hi Dave! So here's a bit of an odd one. I loved your Space Cadet Pinball! I must have spent countless hours on it as a kid, and even now I still occasionally try to find ways to boot it up. A legitimate classic. But lately, the version windows offers just... don't feel the same. They aren't as nice. Is there a game you can name that you would say feels like a worthy successor to Space Cadet Pinball? Or even any more general pinball games you would recommend?	I have a real Black Knight 2000 machine here in the house that I fully restored, so I'm a fan of physcial pinball as well!
	I think the two best video games are (a) arcade Tempest, and (b) XBox Geometry Wars 3.
	GW3 is a classic, or should be!
Woah woah woah, University of Regina?!? Are you from here? Cool to see a UofR grad had such a major impact!	Yup! Check out the regina sub for a recent article
When working on MS-DOS what did you think of alternatives such as 4DOS, NDOS or DR-DOS, were they source of inspiration for new features or not at all ?	No in general, but Norton had NCD. It was a change folder command that could jump around the disk, so if you typed "NCD drivers" from the root, it could go down to "C:\windows\system32\drives". Super handy.
	So I tried to write one for NT, but it meant changing the working directory of the PARENT process (cmd.exe) and I could never figure out a clean and elegant way to do it without modifying CMD itself!
Which is the best version of Windows? (Figuratively speaking).	Windows NT 4.0

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Day 5: Protection Part 2- Ground, Center, Protect (plus talisman)

Today we'll cover Grounding, Centering, and Casting Protection in part 1. For part 2, we'll make a protective talisman. For the talisman, any item you can wear or hold will work. (I will be using one of grandmother's thimbles. She had quite a collection.)
Grounding and centering are often used together or interchangeably and are often presented as given parts of a spell. When I talk about them today I will refer to them as distinct and separate things.
Lets start with grounding. There are a few ideas behind why grounding works and when to do it.
Grounding before a spell can assist in protecting your own energy by allowing you to be a conduit. Calling on energy from the elements, your ancestors, the fae, deities, etc. can be a lot for your body and mind to handle. Grounding yourself allows you to direct the energy without trying to store that energy inside of yourself. It flows through you and goes where you need it to go. It can allow you to push the excess energy out and away without having to send it somewhere specific. If it goes into the ground, it quickly becomes inert. If you have an affinity with another element, you can try using that element instead, or something solid that represents that element. You can use your talisman, if you choose to create one.
It is common to use the actual ground for this. You don't have to go barefoot, but I think it helps reinforce the connection to go barefoot on dirt or grass, but tile, hardwood, or carpet is fine too. If you can't take your shoes off- that's fine. If you want to sprawl out and connect your whole body to the ground- go for it. Since the ground is always there, it's the easiest thing to use. Imagine the excess energy flowing through you, then force it out through your feet into the ground and away from you where it can't bounce around inside of you and wreak havoc.
It's also common to use something from the ground (earth) such as a certain crystal or rock or a bowl of dirt. Again, it doesn't HAVE to be earth related to work, but there should be a physical component to it. I sometimes use something that comes from or represents a loved one, something that I've made, or a notebook/pen. If you go this route, focus completely on that object, almost (or actually) to the exclusion of everything else. Really feel it. Let the leftover energy dissipate while you focus on calming yourself and getting in control of yourself.
Another simple method of grounding is common for people with anxiety. You can do 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 or any meaningful number. Go through your senses and find 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. This method is especially useful for coming back (I think of it as making a landing) after astral projection.
There are many more ways to ground, but these are 3 of my favorites.
Centering is the act of getting yourself ready to direct the energy you will use. On day 2 when we wrote the full moon spell, I made a recommendation to do something that energizes, fuels, or relaxes you. This is the basics of centering. You can also think of it as "getting your vibe right." It's making sure that you are going into the spell with a clear mind and clear intentions. If you are centered, it will be easier to summon and direct energy.
There is no real right and wrong way to center yourself. It's simply getting yourself to the appropriate mindset. For me, dancing, knitting, doing something mindfully all help with this. The grounding techniques can also (or instead) be a centering technique. Meditation can be centering.
Your altar may be what centers you, or calling the corners, casting a circle, lighting a candle, whatever gets you in the magical mood and focused.
Before we move on to protection, I want to make a note about visualization. If you're like me and you don't SEE things in your mind- that's okay. If you have trouble with conjuring up images, it's okay to just tell yourself what is there and what's happening. If you put a cup on the table and turn away from it, you can KNOW that it's there without any sensory feedback from it. You may have to work on just knowing that the thing is there, even if you don't see it. In 20+ years of practicing, I still can't visualize (honestly I might have some level of aphantasia, I didn't know that people actually see things in their minds until I was like 30 years old.) If it doesn't come easily, don't worry, just continue with your intent and get yourself to the state of knowing it is there.
Protection should be specific, at least in the beginning. You will direct some of that energy to do a job. Like my analogy on day 2, you don't typically wear armor to the grocery store. Protection is not always necessary. It will not hurt you to cast protection every time you cast a spell. It will also not hurt you every time you forget or choose not to. The more practiced you are at protection, the more effective you will be and it may become something that you do without serious (or any) effort. Like the boxing analogy from yesterday, it may just happen intuitively when you need it. If you've ever seen a Christian or Catholic reflexively cross themselves, or even the acting of clutching one's pearls (which reminds me of grabbing a protective amulet or crucifix) that's a way of reflexively casting protection. You might even have a protective sigil that you draw in the air or a protective amulet you touch.
One simple and popular way to call protection is to visualize something like a robe, cape, or armor. It can be any color that symbolizes protection to you. Let your intuition decide and then look up the correspondences later. Ground and center yourself. Pull some energy from around you and give the garment some real shape and purpose. What is it meant to protect you FROM, exactly? Being too vague may have unwanted side effects. The most blatant example would be during an attraction spell. You may be thinking that you don't want to get hurt, but pain is part of a healthy relationship, romantic or otherwise. There will always be little hurts and disappointments that happen. Asking for protection from any pain may protect you from new people (or existing ones.) That attraction spell will not be effective in that case. Same with a job or money spell. You may be unintentionally preventing yourself from getting a job where something about it is not ideal, and therefore seen as a threat. (Like an annoying coworker.)
It's not so much that the universe, your deity, your inner self, or whatever is messing with you, as it is that you cannot have a successful spell without a solid goal. This includes protection spells. At this point in my practice, I don't have to be so specific. I have over 20 years casting protection in the same couple of ways. I know and the universe knows what I want to let in and what I don't and when. Some people start with a clear knowing of what "protection" means and some struggle with it for a while. Looking into your values on Day 7 should help with this.
When you are grounded, centered, and have an idea of what your armor should protect you from- put it on. You do not have to continue to visualize it the whole time you are casting your spell, but do remember to take it off when your spell is over. You can connect this type of protection to a physical object (such as an actual cloak, or a piece of jewelry that you physically wear along with the magical armor.
Another method is to cast a circle. You can use a wand if you have one, or any pointy object, or your finger, or do some superhero laser beam vision to draw a circle around yourself. As you do, visualize light coming up like a force field to protect you. (Again, let your intuition choose, look up the meaning later.) Let the universe and everything in it know that nothing with intention or purpose that does not align with your own cannot pass into the space, and if anything fitting that description was already there, it needs to leave immediately. When you are done you can trace the circle backward, or cut it open with your wand, or break it by walking out of it. If your visualization skills are weak, you can make a circle with salt, herbs, crystals, or whatever else you like.
Remember to send the excess energy away from you.
Your assignment is to try it out. These are only two of a great many ways to protect yourself magically. Adapt them as needed to suit your own life and needs and feel free to try any others or create your own. If you don't often cast protection, add it to your daily practice for the month. Aim for once a day, ground, center, and call/cast protection. Then end it. It should not be significantly draining or kept up for very long. Be careful not to use your own energy to maintain the protection. It should not take effort to keep the protection active, especially for the few moments you should be practicing.
Today's part 2 is to create a protective talisman. You should have an item that is fairly small and easy to wear or carry. Don't worry about cleansing it for now. Do avoid using anything that feels full of maliciously bad energy, but other than that, a little bit of bad vibes isn't a problem. Depending on your skill level, it could be more harmful trying to pull bad vibes out. (Like sucking on a snakebite with your mouth. You might get some venom out, but it's going in your mouth and that's not actually better...) Instead of trying to pull out any bad vibes, we are going to replace them with our intent. (Think of it as a cup of soda. If we add water, it may not look very different, but if we keep adding water, it will eventually be full of water. The soda will fall on the ground and soak into the earth, like all excess energy.)
You also need to have a clear intention. Will you carry this with you? Will you use it for spellwork only? What do you want to keep away and what do you want to allow? Think of this as setting your filter.
For a spellwork specific talisman, you can ask it to only allow energy that aligns with yours. For everyday protection, you can ask it to keep away malicious energy, or to give your intuition a boost, or to bring you calm when you need it. The options are endless. I recommend going with something specific, positive, and somewhat mild. "Protect me" is not going to work. It may end up bringing you a rash of what looks like bad luck.
Not everyone has that kind of experience, but some do. "Protect me" might get you a broken down car (to keep you home,) lose you a job (to protect from a potentially uncool coworker.) With practice, "protect me" WILL be specific enough. Context and intuition will be enough to focus your intent. For right now, though, spend a little bit of time thinking about it. Think about "who, what, where, when, why, and how."
Mine will be specific to communicating with my guide/s, something I'm fairly new at. I want to be protected from fake guides. I recently did a ritual to meet a guide, and they have kind of a mimic thing going on, so "fakes" would probably filter my guide out.

Who: me (protected), my true guide/s (allowed), and draw on the energy of my ancestors (connected to the object- one bought it for another.)
What: thimble (object)
Where: within a bubble of about 6 feet in diameter. (A little larger than my height, smaller than most rooms I would practice in.)
When: When I hold it or place it beside me to communicate with spirits and otherworldly entities.
Why: I would like to grow the relationship between myself and this guide.
How: I want the thimble to call up kind of a tent around me, made from something like spiritual spiderwebs, using the energy of my ancestors to create an environment around me where only the invited are able to pass through, so I can be vulnerable in that space and let growth happen more quickly. (The specific ancestors were really family-oriented and amazingly supportive of their descendants choices, particularly skilled at creating and maintaining a useful network, fiercely protective when called on (in life) and generally amazing for a lot of reasons that really fit this goal.)

Here's another example, this one is a poker chip to protect against bad financial decisions:

Who: Only me (it will have no effect for others who carry it.)
What: An old poker chip.
Where/when: Wherever I bring it/inside my own mind, mostly. When it's on my person and I have a financial decision to make.
Why: I tend to overthink decisions or be talked into going along with someone else's desire.
How: I want it to shield me from the influence and desires of others so my own intuition, logic, and reason will be the only thing to guide my choices.

Another option would be to provide extra protection at the end of a spell and to help ground or center you. You can focus on the physical item while it takes the burden of protecting you as you shed your excess energy and temporary protection.
The point is to be as specific as possible. This isn't a hex or a jinx, so don't target any specific person with it. If you don't have anything quite that specific, think of it as one of those stakes for a sapling. You are going to grow very fast and may need some extra support. This talisman will be that extra support as you grow and probably get blown around during this journey to being a strong, deeply rooted witch.
When you have your item and your intent, it's time to ground, center and protect.
You can use visualization, sound, or a combination of the two to start pushing your intent into the object. Sound can be in the form of words, song, music, or tone. Do what feels right, and look it up later. If you want to light a candle or something to make it more ritualistic, keep it small this time. This item will have your back, be nice and treat it well. More like a friend than royalty. Don't be overly formal.
When you are done, release excess energy and remove your protection.
Do it again somewhat regularly. As you start out that might mean anything from daily to once a month or once a year. Just affirm the purpose and use it for that purpose. As you use it and it becomes more honed to your intention it will not be necessary to maintain it as often.
That's 5 days down and we've already done a lot!
So today, tell me (as much as you're comfortable with)

How is meditation going?
How is your BoS growing?
How did protection practice go? What method did you try and how did you like it?
Did you make a talisman? If you're comfortable, share your experience.

Tomorrow I will talk about the essential tools every witch needs, and the ones you may think you need. I'm sure you already know what I'm going to say about the necessities, but I'll also talk about different types of altars, the challenges of sharing them on social media, and tell you a bit about the evolution of my own. See you then!!

All information presented is copyrighted material, you may not reproduce any part in any way except as permitted by US Copyright law. For info about reproduction permission, DM me.
My current goal is to turn this into a book, and perhaps repeat this type of "course" in the future. I truly believe there is no cost of admission to witchcraft and I will never ask you to buy anything (from me or otherwise.)
If you would like and are comfortably able to leave a tip, I do have CashApp, Venmo, and Paypal. (Starving artist is a lifestyle choice, but not-starving artist is great too. And no, I'm not actually starving, but I am looking at paying some money to get this project turned into a book and I've got my eye on this tarot deck...)

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Players, who open an account can benefit from its fantastic Welcome Package as long as they make an initial deposit of $10 or the equivalent in their currency of choice. Here is what the Package consists of. To begin with, your first deposit will earn you a 100% bonus match of up to $150 and 200 Extra Spins on the Starburst slot. Sounds good, doesn't it? And it does not end here as players' second deposits of $20 or more will be matched at 50% with up to $200 to play with for free. Certain playthrough conditions are attached to the Welcome Bonuses, however. Players will be able to withdraw the winnings they've accrued with the free funds only after they have wagered the deposit and bonus amount 20 times or more. The Extra Spins are also subject to wagering requirements of 30 times.
Existing players can extend their gameplay as each month there is a special 50% Reload Bonus of up to $200. Have in mind your stakes with this bonus should be limited to $10 per game round until you fulfill the playthrough requirements, which in this instance are 13 times the deposit and bonus amount. If you happen to place a wager exceeding the said sum, your bonus and its associated winnings will be forfeited.
One important thing to mention is the games' contribution towards clearing the aforementioned playthrough requirements. For example, if you wager $100 on the slots, you will clear the same amount from your wagering requirements since most slots have a 100% contribution. Meanwhile, progressive slots' contribution is 50%. In comparison, other games like Punto Banco, baccarat, Jacks or Better and Casino Hold 'em have a far smaller contribution of 1%, which means players will have to put more of their money on stake to clear their playthrough. Note that with most bonuses, you have a limited amount of time (15 days) to cover the requirements. If you fail to clear the playthrough in time, your winnings will be declared void.
Each new player, who registers a real-money account automatically becomes a member of the Cash Rewards program. Players are rewarded with the so-called Frequent Player Points for participating in the games with real-money wagers. Different games generate points at different rates. As soon as you have generated 200 points you, will be able to exchange them for cash at the rate of $1 per 100 points. Apparently, here, loyalty pays out too!

CasinoLuck Payment Methods

Being a renowned gaming provider, the website accepts a vast range of convenient, time-efficient and easy-to-use methods of payment. All banking solutions available at the website are reliable and secure, not to mention the casino aims to prevent frauds, misappropriation and identity thefts by utilizing SSL encryptions up to par with those, implemented by banking institutions. This means using your credit card to deposit is just as safe as paying with your Visa at the local convenience store.
The number of methods, players can use to fund their accounts is impressive, to say the least. Some of the most popular deposit options include credit/debit cards by Visa, Maestro, Mastercard, e-wallet Skrill, Neteller, EcoPayz and Moneta, prepaid vouchers by PaySafeCard and instant banking solutions such as Trustly, Moneta, Euteller, eKonto, Nordea, Sofort, POLi and Giropay as well as bank wire transfers. Keep in mind, some of these methods are used only in given regions and may be unavailable in your country.
We recommend you use PaySafeCard or e-wallets like Skrill and Neteller as no fees are imposed on payments processed with those. In comparison, players who fund their accounts with debit/credit cards will have a 2,5% fee deducted from their balance. The minimum deposit amount is $10, while the upper limit is set at $5,000 per day. In most cases, deposits are approved and processed immediately, but bank transfers may take up to 7 business days to complete.
A large portion of the methods, mentioned above are suitable for withdrawals with a few exceptions such as PaySafeCard and Mastercard. The minimum and maximum amounts, players can cash out per day, coincide with those for the deposits. However, withdrawals are not processed as quickly as deposits. The delay can be attributed to the numerous checks the transactions undergo before they leave the casino. That is why there is a pending period of 1 to 12 hours during which players' withdrawal requests are being approved.
Opening an account in the currency used in your country is, without a doubt, a major advantage as this way you will not incur currency conversion fees. Thankfully, a mind-blowing number of currencies are accepted. Players can open their accounts in any of the following – USD, CAD, AUD, EUR, GBP, BGL, NOK, SEK, ZAR, CNY, CZK, DKK, PLN, RUB, VEF, GEL, TRY, RON, MXN, NGN, HRK, HUF, PEN, CHF, KRW, ILS.
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CasinoLuck Customer Support

One great way to establish a good relationship with your customers is by providing them with excellent support service around the clock. There is no exception here as the operator offers very courteous, timely and adequate Customer Support to all players, who happen to experience any type of issues with their accounts, payments or bonuses. Which happens rarely, if ever. On many occasions, players contact support merely to request more detailed information on given matters.
The good news is great Customer Support is provided to all players in need of assistance. The support representatives are on standby via the Live Chat functionality, available at the website. Their approach is beyond professional which is hardly surprising, considering the fact they are expertly-trained to solve all types of issues and provide clear-cut information in the quickest manner possible.
Players, who are not in a hurry can opt for reaching the support staff via email. A less time-efficient option, of course, yet the agents typically respond quickly, within hours. If you wish your issues to be handled adequately, it would be best for you to provide your email address and account username in advance, since this will greatly facilitate the support agents. Please note, support at this online casino is currently unavailable over the phone.
To cater to the needs of its diverse, multinational gaming community, the online casino is available in 12 different languages, namely: English, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Danish.

Licensing and Restricted Countries

In operation for over 15 years now, the website has successfully established a reputation for being among the most reliable, secure and fair online gaming destinations in the world. This, however, does not come as a surprise as the casino is completely legitimate and praised by players for the transparency it demonstrates.
The casino is owned and maintained by the prestigious company Minotauro Media Ltd. which is responsible for the operation and management of a number of other well-known casino brands in the industry; its website, however, is based in Malta.
CasinoLuck holds a valid license from the authorities of Curacao. The casino has been also granted a permission to operate from two of the strictest and most respected regulatory bodies in the industry – the Malta Gaming Authority and the UK Gambling Commission – a fact that serves as a sufficient guarantee for its reliability.
In the interest of fair gaming, a Random Number Generator has been implemented in order to ensure the algorithms of each game are based on a random principle. All developers' the casino has partnered with are certified and their software is tested and monitored by independent, third-party companies.
The casino's transparency is further backed up by the fact its license numbers are openly published on its homepage. The same applies to its overall payout percentage, which is estimated to be 97% on the average. Players, who are interested can go through a list of all games, available at the website, and check their average player return percentages.
Undoubtedly, one of the greatest advantages this online domain has to offer is the fact it has opened its virtual doors to gamers from a vast number of countries.
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