Maybe a week and a half or so ago, I started getting 150 ping to chicago servers at peak times (~8-11ish PM) for no discernible reason. That would be bad enough on its own considering that I live in PA and normally get 25 ping to chicago, but today, the problem has gotten significantly worse, and now I have Luxembourg ping to basically every server that I would normally have less than 90 ping to. EXCEPT New York servers. Some of them.

Is my ISP just fucking me in the ass, or is there some way that I can solve this problem? Because I really don't want to fucking cut myself in the game and follow it up with cuts in real life because I'm not allowed to play TF2 anymore.

lmao I just checked, I'm listed as the medic for watermelon dog

I don't even know who the actual medic was, I forget

Wouldn’t it have been better to just start making videos under a different name if you wanted to come back? I am not one of the people that deeply cares about this, but even symbolically, it would probably feel better to let the online persona of Sketchek go. Lying is bad, but even then, it feels like starting fresh would feel better even if people eventually found out that your new online persona was the same person as the old one. It would feel more legitimate if your intent was really to not come back to the same thing you had before.

Either way, it’s been three years, and if this apology video isn’t shitgarbage and the new videos are still good, I’ll watch them. I’ve never been the type to hold a grudge if people admit they were being stupid and make what seems like a legitimate effort to change.

Alright the open thread needs saving so I'm going to be roleplaying as an ego player for a little while now, ok?

I actually don't understand how these sub open newbie mix ass cretins can even think they can step to the sheer glory that is my MID OPEN GAMEPLAY

Like what the fuck is even the point of those idiots playing this game if they can't match the skill of someone with thousands of hours and multiple years more experience than them that STILL PLAYS IN THE LOWEST DIVISION

What fucking morons, am I right? God, if only I knew more IM players, I'd be playing on one of the toxic IM teams by now so I wouldn't have to hang out with all of you SHITTERS down here in the open thread. My place in this div doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I don't play DM servers, don't play pugchamp, and don't demo review, we all know it's just about who you know. Except all of those other players, they just SUCK and will NEVER BE LIKE ME.

Alright thanks for coming to my nerd essay

I mean, fuck, do we have a choice? Not like I can just walk up and go "hey fuck this my dudes" and just have the problem go away. I just hope it takes until r2 playoffs for my team to fight mainclassing sandbaggers.

No one deserves to be baited this late into registration. Voosh is a friend of mine, which would already be enough to recommend him for your team, but he's also a solid player. More importantly, though, he's been dedicating time to improving recently, which is readily apparent to me because we're constantly in communication about how to improve our lolhl team. What this says to me is that Voosh would do *extremely* well on any team with a solid mentor that's looking to come together and improve over the season, because he's one of the increasingly rare players that's receptive to feedback when it's not all positive.

Review demos with him, shitpost at him, and have a good time during the season. All this and more can be yours if you give the boy a chance. High open/bubble playoffs recommended, but will likely improve immensely over the course of the season given the right team environment.

Yeah u right

https://play.esea.net/teams/47483

Deadteam5 to win open after somehow picking up john milter, popo, and alfa again?

Buildy game REEEEE

Retro's a good dude who clearly cares about playing this game well. Dedicated, but you'll need to get to know him before you understand the mind behind the man.

Alright friends, I did an informal poll and between my dry rub for pulled pork and my hot sauce recipe I only tested once, people came out in support of hot sauce.

This is a cooked habanero sauce with a bright, unique flavor profile, and one that could DEFINITELY STILL STAND SOME TWEAKS. Like I mentioned, I've only made this once, using approximate ratios. That said, here's the ingredients:

THE PEPPERS:

Habaneros, seeded: I'll be removing the seeds from all of the peppers I use in the recipe for texture purposes, but if you wanted a hotter sauce that took a little less knife work but was overall a little less complex, you could leave the seeds in. I'm not your mom.

Habanadas, if you have them: These are heatless habanero peppers that I added to get a little more pepper flavor and adjust the heat for a wider audience. If you don't have them, you'll still be fine, don't worry.

Red bell pepper: Again, this is just a method to jam more pepper flavor in there and adjust the heat at the same time. Optional ingredient, and even if you do use it, don't use much because seeded habaneros aren't actually that hot in the first place, and I do want this to be a hot sauce.

Chipotle peppers: I had some unidentified, mild dried hot peppers when I was making this sauce, and I tossed a few of them in, after doing my best to toast them in a pan and grind them up afterwards. Not necessary, but fun and will improve the end product.

THE POWDERS:

Ancho chili powder: Love this shit, it's delicious. Frankly, this sauce was mostly about just how many flavors I could shove into one mixture, so I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to add this

Smoked Paprika: Also very good. You don't need too much, but it can help add some depth.

Ginger powder: As you may have learned from the last recipes, I like ginger. A lot. Just fucking put it in, dude. Don't think about it.

Chinese five-spice powder: Here it is, one of the weirdest ingredients in this sauce. It's also a really easy way to do something that people won't be expecting with your flavor profile, and I'm a sucker for originality. And, as it happened, it worked out. Five-spice is good.

THE FRESH:

Garlic cloves: Use a bunch, garlic will never betray you.

Onion: Dude, it's onion. It can't NOT add flavor. Onion will make it into basically every savory recipe I cook, ever.

Ginger root: Okay, I wasn't joking, I love ginger. It's got better (and different) flavor fresh, and I used both for the sauce.

Carrot: I was inspired by Torchbearer sauces, and their base of what I believe is carrot and mandarin orange. It's a nice flavor, and will add notable sweetness to the final product, especially because we'll be leaving the carrot raw and blending it in.

THE LIQUID:

Apple Cider Vinegar: Be sparing, but remember that vinegars, when used properly, can give a lot of good stuff to a sauce.

Water, for cooking and blending: Again, you mostly want to use just enough liquid. This is going to be a thick sauce because of all the pepper mass in it, so if you add enough liquid that the sauce runs like a (delicious) cholula or a (disgusting) frank's red hot, the sauce will be FAR too watery/vinegary. Just use what you need, and no more.

Worcestershire: Don't use much, but do use some. I like this shit. It's got too much flavor going on to tell what's what, but it's got a great depth to it.

Ponzu: Okay, what can I say, I fucking love ponzu. This is the other weird ingredient in the sauce, and while you should be pretty sparing with it, I do think it's worth adding.

Okay, that's all that I can remember adding. We're basically done with the ingredients now. But unfortunately, I can't give any ratios, because they'd be totally fucking pulled from my ass. Instead, I can probably give a descending list of how much of a given thing I used. Maybe.

Habaneros-> Habanadas-> Onion-> Bell Pepper-> Garlic-> Carrot-> Ancho Powder-> Dried Chipotle-> Smoked Paprika-> Ginger Powder-> Five-Spice-> Fresh Ginger.

And for the liquids: Water-> Apple Cider Vinegar-> Ponzu-> Worcestershire.

Holy shit that's too many ingredients probably. Whatever. I made it and it tasted good. Anyway, chop your veg small, because you'll be blending this eventually, then cook all of it except the carrot in a pan for a little while in a neutral oil (not butter, that will lower the shelf life.) Once it's cooked down past the stage where you'd call it "sweating" the veg but before you caramelize anything, add some of your liquids to the pan, add all your spices, and simmer for a while. You don't want the veg to be swimming, but you want a decent amount of liquid medium to get shit going. You can taste and adjust spices and liquids during this process. You'll probably need to with that shit excuse for ratios I gave you.

Once you've simmered for a long enough time that you're pretty sure you're done, (what the fuck does that mean, I don't know. I was winging it, okay?) pull the pan from the heat, then in your blender, mix a little apple cider vinegar with a little water, and blend your carrot in that to get everything started. Once your carrot is blended, put everything else in there and blend all that different shit until it's all the same thing, and that thing is your finished sauce. Tentatively taste it, being absolutely sure that you've irrevocably fucked something up somewhere along the line and your sauce will be inedible, and be pleasantly surprised when it turns out to actually be good. My sauce was relatively sweet, a little less hot than I would have liked, very pepper-forward in its flavor, with notable notes of ginger and garlic, with just a hint of five-spice in the back that made you wonder what the fuck you just ate, but in a good way. You just made hot sauce just to see if you could, and it actually turned out well. Fuck yeah, you're cool for 30 minutes.

And when you remember that cool feeling, also remember to pick me up for your team, because I'm sick.

FINAL NOTE: Try to wear gloves when working with any peppers hotter than a jalapeno, because if you don't, and you touch your eyes, your junk, or any soft tissue on your body for up to a day afterward depending on how good your soap is and how hard you scrub, you will be treated to an inescapable burn that I have been told can compare to being in hell. Luckily, I haven't had to feel that feeling, because I went out and got some food-safe gloves just for this operation. Be safe, TFTV.

How was my cast boys

Alright folks, today I’m here to talk to you about a basic fried rice, and more importantly, how to make a flavorful sauce to really improve the whole rice experience. The thing that I really like about fried rice is that you can put almost anything in it, you can use old rice for it if you want, and it’s incredibly simple, so it’s the perfect thing to make if you want to use up some leftovers or just slam some chopped veggies into a world of flavor. With that being said, for the version I’m wriing down, I’m going to use

Chicken
Scallion
Onion
Garlic
Carrot
And Bell Pepper

Because I am a man who loves onions. So first, chop up all your veg and all your meat to your desired chunkiness. That’ll be different for everyone, but I suggest smaller pieces in general, because this is supposed to be eaten with rice. Oh, and by the way, let me warn you right now that I have never measured anything while making fried rice. That’s not really a problem if you have a personal idea of what you’re going for, but I understand that for my amateur and aspiring home chefs out there, it might be a little confusing, so I’ll try my best to provide approximate ratios for this sauce I’m going to describe. As for the rest of the ingredients, though, the amount of those only depends on two things: how much rice you have, and how big of a pan you have. For me, I like to feel like about 40-60% of any given bite I take is rice, and the rest is other delicious things. The exact ratio depends on the day, my mood, and how much stuff we have in the first place, but it’s forgiving anyway, and you’ll develop your own ideas of what makes you happy. Got it? I believe in you.

So, like I was saying, once you have all of your stuff chopped, you should start to make the sauce. I like to use a large variety of ingredients in this sauce because I really like having more than just a few notes of flavor in my food. You could easily use, for instance, mostly soy sauce for this, and it would be basically fine, but it would be powerfully salty and not really as good or interesting as what I’m doing here.

These are the basic components of the sauce, the bedrocks of flavor, and the ingredients you should use the greatest amount of:

Ponzu - - - Soy Sauce - - - Mirin

I literally cannot sing the praises of ponzu enough. It’s a wonderful mixture of ingredients (including soy sauce and mirin, actually,) that brings a lot of good stuff to the party. I could probably still make fried rice if I didn’t have ponzu, but I’d be very sad about it.

This is the secondary tier of the sauce, things I like putting in, but in smaller quantities for balance:

Rice Wine Vinegar - - - Chinese Chili Oil - - - Fresh Ginger - - - Crushed Garlic

I don’t think it’s worth adding ginger unless it’s fresh here, but if it is fresh, it’s an awesome addition, and one that plays really well with the other flavors we’ve got going.

This is the tertiary tier of the sauce, ingredients that need to be dosed out very cautiously for fear they overpower the rest of the sauce:

Fish Sauce - - - Sugar - - - Lime Juice - - - Toasted Sesame Oil

Fish sauce is a really, really strong-smelling liquid that brings excellent flavor to dishes when used in relatively small quantities, kind of like worcestershire sauce. Additionally, a !small! amount of sugar is a recent addition that I’ve made to this kind of sauce, but it can do good things if you don’t go overboard. The sesame oil is entirely optional, and I often omit it. Sometimes, though, it’s nice.

Hopefully, that general rundown was enough to give you the confidence to get in there and mix your own sauce, because that’s all I’m going to write about it for now. If you had any questions about it in the future, though, you can just ask me here or add me at http://steamcommunity.com/id/kvwi to pick me up for your high open team.

Once you have your sauce mixed, get your meat in a bowl, and pour some of your sauce on it to start getting thise flavors together. Don’t use it all here though, because you really made this sauce to flavor the rice. Speaking of rice, there are only two more ingredients left to mention:

Rice (you don’t want to forget this one)
And eggs. Beaten eggs, to be precise.

Now you’ve got all of your ingredients together. Time to cook some meth.

Sautee your veggies, giving your onion a little more time and your garlic a little less time on the heat. Reserve about a third of your scallions to garnish if you want. Toss your chicken in that pan along with the marinating liquid, and cook it up for a little while, but take it and everything else out of the pan as soon as your chicken is actually cooked, and reserve it in a bowl. Take your beaten eggs, pour them in the pan, and beat them some more. Get them maybe 50% cooked or so, then put your rice in the pan, and mix that until your rice is at least partially heated and the egg has gotten to know the rice a little. Put everything else back in the pan, then mix it together. Pour your sauce over the entire mixture, and then mix it again to combine. You don’t want to waterlog the rice, you want to flavor it. This is going to be a reasonably strongly flavored sauce, so remember to do your tasting and make sure you added the right amount. Continue mixing while you heat up the rice to its final serving temperature, then you’re done. You can either add the other scallions to the pan directly now to garnish, or you can sprinkle them on top after serving.

Remember, if a man can cook, a man can frag.

What's up gamers, it's been about a week, and because of the holiday festivities, I haven't had time to answer all of the myriad low invite team leaders that added me to beg me to grace their team with my presence. However, I'm back now, and I have one thing to say to all of my many friends in invite: No! I will not deviate from my initial plan of *High Open!* I respect you as friends and fellow players, but it would be too much for the fragile invite division if someone as large as me were to roster on a team! For the safety and sanctity of our precious league, I must decline all of your offers.

In the meantime, though, because it's been thanksgiving, I've been cooking, and I'm back with another simple and yet highly baller recipe to share with all of you folks, this time for an easy cranberry sauce that's sure to get your juices flowing, especially because this is the time of year you can easily find cranberries in your supermarket if you have access to one.

Cranberry sauce with ginger and apple

Cranberries and sugar - I like my sauce a little bit less sweet, so I use one cup of sugar to every pound of cranberries, but you could tweak that a little bit to your liking if you wanted.

For this batch, I used:

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 pounds cranberries

1 bottle Martinelli's sparkling apple cider - When I first made this sauce a long time ago, I was a few bottles of cider deep, and I thought "what the hell, if it tastes this good by itself, it'll have to taste good in this sauce." It did. God I love this liquid. If you don't have access to this ingredient, you could probably use a nice apple cider local to your area along with an extra splash of orange juice, but I'm sure it wouldn't be the same.

~1 knob ginger, chopped fine or grated - Nothing to say about this, really. Ginger is excellent, and fresh ginger is even better. If you don't have fresh, you can of course use powdered, but it won't be quite as good and you'll still want your bottle of powdered ginger to be as fresh as possible.

Zest and juice of one orange - Like I said earlier, you could maybe use a splash of extra OJ here, but it's not necessary at all. It's nice to have some citrus backing up the apple cider here, but I want the main things you're thinking about to be everything BUT this orange.

That's it. That's all the ingredients. Easy.

Once you've got your shit together, remember to sort through your bag of cranberries for any rotten or off-colored ones, because there will always be some, then add all of your ingredients to an appropriately sized pot.

I brought my pot to a boil, then immediately dropped the heat as soon as my berries started to split, because I'm impatient, but still want to cook things low and slow like they're supposed to be cooked. After that, I cooked at or slightly above a simmer until the sauce deepened in color, thickened up appreciably, and smelled fucking delicious. After that, I pulled it off the heat. I suggest you do the same, but expect to be cooking the sauce for at least 30 or 45 minutes for maximum goodness.

I like my sauce to be slightly tart on its own, and to serve it with other foods, so if you just want a nice cranberry jelly or something similar, I would up the sugar content a little and then cook it a little longer.

Thanks for reading, and pick me up, motherfuckers.

http://puu.sh/C4enn/1aa4f6fe0b.jpg