The real question is that, being as my last two ESEA seasons included stints of basic, will my team also die merely by association?

I loved using syringes, but sadly the crossbow, in its "I provide massive healing to allies near and especially far" state, there's nothing they could do that would ever make the needle guns viable - unless they were to add a healing ability to them - that would be fun.

If you're hell bent on the military as a career, running the full 20+ years, you're much better off looking at schools with an ROTC program and calling a recruiter to figure out how it will all work out, and then going the officer route. Being from the mid-west virtually 1/2 of all the people I went to high school either joined the guard or some branch of the military. Some folks even did boot camp at 17 so they could go into the guard their senior year lol. This was ~2006 when demand was still super high for people though. Most of the military is down-sizing now and entry requirements are more stringent.

Of the 30 or so people I knew who enlisted, only 3 of them are still semi-active in the military as a reserves mostly (one of my roommates in college is a 1st Lt. now in the Army, but he was wounded in Iraq and has a disability now (hearing is not so good), so they just keep him around to train the noobies lol). A few people also used the army for medical school - whereby the army would put you through med school, then you become an army doctor for x years after - they're still in.

I also have a nephew who was an MP in the air force who now works as a defense contractor, and a few other folks who were trained mechanics in the air force who now work as a contractors fixing planes for all sorts of folks. A cousin of mine was a weatherman for the Marines - now he's a weatherman on TV lol.

From my understanding, if you're not financially able to get to do whatever it is you really want to do, the military isn't an awful stepping stone, or if you've got leadership skills and go into being an officer, life can be pretty nice, but if you want to just enlist because you can't think of anything else to do, it's a really poor choice. Everybody I know who simply enlisted because they couldn't think of anything else to do are now out - and generally hated their experience, one (who served in the artillery in Korea) said that prison (he went on drug charges after he got out) was preferable to the army lol. Oh, also one girl I dated in high school is in the color guard now for fancy events lol, she seems to like her job.

I also had a group of friends join the navy who were convinced they could get through BUDs and be navy seals - the bravest one flunked out 3 times. He ended up doing chip and seal for years afterwords lol.

The precedent for how reparations are dealt with typically falls back on The Versailles treaty sadly, which generally follows that if you didn't have a seat at the table during the original agreement, nobody is paying you anything lol. They're lucky they got their payment in the 60's.

If anything I think Greece is trying to bargain some sort of a debt swap with Germany, wherein Greece would promise to acknowledge its debt claim as paid or void in exchange for Germany easing up on them now - I doubt it will happen, because there's really no avenue for them to turn to. When they brought the issue up post-reunification, Germany simply responded that it was their view that the 2 + 4 agreement absolved them from such things, and Greece gave up.

The Greeks WW2 related proposals are a non-starter - it's just a thing they can bring up to try to get sympathy or to buy more time, as the issue of WW2 reparations relating to Germany was dealt with after the war, and the question is closed as far as international law is concerned. There's no avenue for them to pursue German assets - that will hear them anyways, because these issues were all dealt with at the Potsdam Conference and the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947. If Greece wanted its reparations they'd have had to have done it then. Furthermore when the DDR and FDR unified, additional treaties were signed (The Two Plus Four Agreements) which absolved Germany from all prior war treaties, with the exception of a few military provisions..

The Greeks *did* also receive reparations from Germany (115 million), but they've periodically brought the issue back up - but that ship has sailed as far as international law is concerned, because Greece was left out of the pertinent treaty proceedings.

Well, to be fair, virtually anybody they put in this position would come out the same way, Greece wants to restructure their entire debt deal with the EU, and the major players in the EU have 0 interest in allowing for that to happen lol. So the Greeks have to scam for time as much as possible, or Syriza will blow up their mandate, because, if no outside creditors can be found, they'll eventually have to renege on most of their campaign promises lol. They even went to Russia to talk to them about financial support - which is highly unlikely given Russia's precarious financial situation lol. Although some sources report that Gazprom and Greece are trying to cut a deal to get their very own oil pipeline (by way of the Black sea --- ) Turkey ---) Greece) which would provide *some* immediate investment.

Viaduct or GPIT.

It's a symptom of having played medic for so long - those are the only maps where I have to actually pay attention to what I'm doing or I'll single-highhandedly lose rounds lol.

The most famous bank robber from Indiana managed to knock over several banks, as well as a few police stations (they took automatic weapons and Kevlar vests).

https://libcom.org/files/images/history/dillinger.jpg (arrest photo)

Their leader was also busted out of prison twice, because members of his gang would show up dressed as police officers (using lewt from their police station robberies) and then start shooting once people started asking questions lol.

The biggest problem with bank robberies are getting rid of the pieces after you take them. Marked bills, huge denomination bills, unique jewelry, stuff with serial numbers, etc.

There are books and books written by the Tiblisi bank robbers (a bank robbery just before the Russian Revolution) - their major problem was they had ~20 million (in modern money terms), but they couldn't change any of the bills because they were all marked. But many of the perpetrators lived past the revolution and wrote memoirs about the crazy things they did (also Stalin was one of the planners of the train robbery, so fame by association).

I'm 27 and have a 7 year old son, and occasionally work (I'm on the dole, usually, thanks to being maimed by a factory) and I have absolutely no problem finding time to fuck around.

I still played comp a bit when I worked regularly, but I often worked 3rd shift so that knocked me out, because I couldn't be home after 10:30 PM. But, when I was on days (7-3) I played and it was ezpz.

When I was in college though, I didn't play at all - because as soon as the kiddo went to bed, I was socializing until 1-2 am lol. I'd have a lot more of my brain cells, and probably would've gotten better grades, had I had tf2 then though :(

As far as tournaments: I didn't even know Kevin was running anything until I saw this thread, and looked lol The stickies are kind of innocuous - gotta have a fancy poster or something so people can leaf it around and generate so-called "hype"

Actually history, art, and especially philosophy really pay off - get fucked stem people, we do fun shit and get drunk and still make bank.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/11/20/surprise-humanities-degrees-provide-great-return-on-investment/

Na, spitting was perfectly normal until the anti-disease campaigns started, and in *most* "Western" cultures until around 1700 or so. Some Eastern European cultures (Romania/Moldova) it used to be common to spit directly in the face of (younger) people you liked. It was also so common that part of the regalia of the US Supreme Court, still to this day, issues a spittoon to every supreme court justice, because they didn't want the justices spitting all over the building. If you look at different tour videos of the supreme court (or you go and visit) each justice has his or her own spittoon chillin' behind the bench lol.

Also I should note that spitting doesn't actually spread TB that effectively. I've even kissed a person who had TB and didn't catch it lol (long story). It was a misplaced belief - of course medical science in the late 1800's had lots of wacky ideas lol.

Also I should note that defecating in front of other people is a fairly common practice throughout the world. It's actually a major public health problem in some areas of East Asia because train tracks are a particularly popular public restroom.

You know the social aversion to spitting was started because of TB (at least in the "West")? Before that time spitting was done fairly regularly - if you believe the TB pamphlets it was like everybody was playing baseball 24/7 spitting all over everything and nobody cared.

http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/9/25/1380117778568/A-public-health-poster-fr-008.jpg

For example :D

If you need an extra gamer I'd be down to help fill out your "only 2 days left" roster lol.

I could play medic for a non-open team, although it may take me 1-2 scrim days to get back into proper shape and get used to everything.

I'd also be down to play weak dm pocket in open, or bad rocket jumping roamer in open if need be.

hmu if you're interested.

Casting LAN reminded me how much I miss playing :(

Honestly if you wanted to try to change the way things are done, instead of trying to do something wacky like a pick/ban system - we should try to get bracketed tournaments back. They used to happen all the time and people generally participated them en masse - from the Zowie tournaments, the CommFT tournament, the Pug.na tournament, the (interest in) the CEVO vanilla tournament, the GXL non-cevo tournament.

I know a major barrier to entry for a lot of us oldbies, is that ESEA seasons are a huge time commitment (2 months of your life) - and it's hard to find 5 other people that you can deal with for that length of time. But if we had snap tournaments every few months that were open to whomever, people could make teams that may only last 1-2 weeks, and you'll play all sorts of teams.

That's what I want - tournaments. Give me a tournament to play in for a 2-3 weeks max - that'd be hella fun.

I thought that whole LAN was pretty interesting. Every team at least came in trying to win. Maybe individual players were being defeatists on their own, but Elevate, who, no disrespect, had a really shaky season, came out against Froyo guns blazin'. But, the truly interesting part, was how teams responded to being pressed by teams that were beating them. We saw mad men, who knowing what I know about the players on that team, I expected would become *more* methodical when pressed, actually started doing odd things to throw off the opposition - and it backfired a lot. It reminded me of myself lol. 20b responded by trying to slow down the game, they let some opportunities pass them by in the interest of playing slower and making sure they were more organized - and it paid off for them, but ultimately wasn't enough, and their last pushes got rushed sometimes because the prize was too much to turn down. Elevate actually really impressed me with a few text-book aggressive plays that worked out really well, but ultimately against Froyo they fell short.

The other neat part about this lan is how MM and Elevate teleported their demos back in time to like 08-09' and went to roaming demos. It didn't win them LAN, but it was neat to see how the teams tried to do it. It's something that hasn't really been done in the upper echelons of TF2 in a long time, and it obviously worked against the 4 other invite teams sometimes.