The Old Timers' Notice Board

[Caid Ivik]

privet!   happy new year

btw is EdricO still around? we're preparing a lecture on Frankfurt School with a colleague this year, so I'd have a question or two

[Gobalopper]

He comes around every so often. You can @ people now so we'll see if he still has notifications on.

Paging @Edric O.

[Lapin Blanc]

Hi @Gobalopper New account, don't know if my older ones are still around but but am I able to say hi? I'm that dude from Québec who used to have that Dune Fan Club back in th 90s! ;-) That has to count for being an old timer!

[Lord J]

So... I'm going to be giving a Toastmasters presentation tomorrow about Dune, and I'm planning on mentioning this forum. Anything I should be sure to mention? 

[Gobalopper]

I'm curious what you mentioned about the forum?

[sneezer3]

I live! Was worried I wouldn't be able to login to my old account for a while, took a day for the reset password email to send.

I'm surprised this forum is still going strong, congrats to Gobalopper for keeping it up. I suppose it's been online about 15 years since westwood turned the forums over to gobalopper from emperor battle for dune? that's a long time.

Nothing much new to report. Got a computer science degree. turned 30 recently (yeah, I was pretty young when I made a lot of posts a long time ago). Now I think about it probably everyone here that's been here a while is probably a lot older.

These days I spend more time making games than playing them, and prepping for interviews a lot, trying to get out of the rat race like everyone else is I suppose.

Enjoyed playing emperor with you guys back in the day and the discussions. I still remember reading some of the riddles from emprworm's old thread. It's good this site is still around.

[Andrew]

I can confirm. Getting older.

[Lord J]

On 2/25/2019 at 7:41 PM, Gobalopper said:

I'm curious what you mentioned about the forum?

I basically just mentioned it in passing when I was talking about how I got into Dune and started playing Dune 2000. I didn't mention all of the fan fic and screaming matches in politics, haha!

[Dante]

I dropped by to see if there was any discussion about the upcoming movie and associated game or three.

Early days yet. Maybe in the next year or two...

[Gobalopper]

There is a bit of discussion over here about the actors but yeah still pretty early.

[exatreide]

Hey this is exatreides checking in. Been coming here since like 1999! But for whatever reason it's not letting me login or reset my password.

Well, I'm doing well. Have my own house, car, work as a nurse and am finally out of the military. Thought I'd pop in and see how all the old pals were doing.

[Gobalopper]

Hey, good to hear from you again, I figure the movie will bring back a few people. Send me a message if you want me to merge your two accounts.

[gryphon]

Hi Ex, long time no see.

(think this is also my post after a very long time)

[MrFlibble]

Hi!

[Ray of Sunshine]

I don''t know if I qualify as an "old timer" as per the 100 posts, but I am definitely an old timer at 86 years.

Up until today, Aug 19, 2019, I didn't know that this tread existed, and considering that dates go back to 2005, I am a little short on keep up with the "news" category.   My apology.

During what ever time duration you want to put me, I have basically playing a considerable number of the RTII  scenarios for a number of months, after playing a considerable number of RT3 prior.

However, I have been absorbed with actual "model railroading" in both the N and G scales.  Spending some time up upgrading my N-scale model train display.   Then in some preparation of getting some progress in the determination of building platforms, as well as "home made" roadbeds, with aluminum strips for the track, to withstand weather elemints of the out of door eventual display. 

All these endeavors and agendas keep my busy, and just don't seem to have an adequate amount of time to get involved for any amount of time for all.  

But they are all hobbies, but am considering now, to give a little more time in the Terminal, to see what "has and will" happen.   LOL

[bryorama]

Just doing a small check in. Started posting here as a child in the year 2002 - was roughly 8 years old. Played E:BFD mostly. 27 years old now and a high school teacher. Still love playing video games as well. Glad to still see lots of familiar names around. Think the last time I postd in this thread was the year 2012 or something. 

[Edric O]

*dusts off and removes cobwebs from self*

How... how long was I out? Four years?? Wow. I can't believe it has really been that long. But the forum time stamps do not lie. My last post before this one was in January 2016. And to think, my first post that month said this:

On 1/15/2016 at 3:47 PM, Edric O said:

So... hello again, everyone. I've been gone for over half a year (looking back, it appears my most recent post before today was in May 2015). I honestly don't know how that happened, but I don't intend to let it happen again.

...well, so much for not letting it happen again. 🙁 Half a year seemed like a long time to be away back then, and now here I am, four years and two months later, after by far the longest hiatus since I joined FED2k in April 2000. But at least I have returned in time for my 20 year anniversary! Expect one or two Alexandre Dumas references when the day comes. "Vingt ans après", indeed.

One thing that has not changed, however, is the emotional connection I feel towards my dear FED2k. Yes, I've been away four years, but I kept thinking of this site and this forum, regularly wanting to come back... and regularly putting it off. As I said in 2016:

On 1/15/2016 at 3:47 PM, Edric O said:

On this day I always get nostalgic and think of home. And, you see, after all these years, no matter how long I may be away, I still think of Fed2k as my home on the internet.

So I am back home again. This time because... because it's the end of the world as we knew it, so what better time to seek out old friends.

[Edric O]

So... who is still here? Does this fancy new UI come with a way to ping people? Hmmm... I guess I need to poke around.

[gryphon]

21 minutes ago, Edric O said:

So... who is still here? Does this fancy new UI come with a way to ping people? Hmmm... I guess I need to poke around.

Nice to see you Edric O.

 

Still here, where else can we go with this lock-down....

[Edric O]

Good to see you too, @gryphon! (I figured out how to ping people)

We're all in lockdown now, I imagine, or soon to be. Talk about living in interesting times. I think that new Dune movie might get postponed for a while, too.

[Andrew]

I'm here but nothing going on here, so don't post.

Getting ready for covid-19....

[Gobalopper]

Did PEI get its first COVID case yet @Andrew?

I'm still alive, working from home with three kids under 6 is... interesting.

[Andrew]

Ya, we are at 5 cases so far. but there is little testing. Like most provinces they only test those that traveled or are in hospital. Which is kinda useless because if in hospital might as well assume that is the cause, and if traveled might as well assume they have it. No community spread testing means it will spread easy.

I'm basically assuming that I have it and everyone else has it. That's the only way to survive.

Governments were too slow to do anything. Hearing that trump is just gonna let it spread and kill everyone so that they can get economy back on track faster could cause problems for Canada.

Trudeau just announced quarantine act is enacted. A bit late but ok.

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection.html

[Gobalopper]

Alberta has some pretty good stats on cases here:
https://covid19stats.alberta.ca/

Our community cases are still fairly stable which is promising but I think we'll need at least another week before knowing how well it is working. Alberta has tested about 36,000 people while Canada as a whole has tested about 160,000. That is 22% of the tests for a province with 11% of the population of Canada. So in that sense we're doing pretty good here.

[Edric O]

This is a good website with up-to-date data for every country (and provincial-level data for some countries, including the US and Canada):

https://covidly.com

The basic summary is: Covid-19 is spreading exponentially worldwide, with confirmed cases increasing by a factor of 10 every two weeks or so. Countries that have enacted very strict lockdown measures have managed to get it under control (e.g. China and now Italy), and also countries with very extensive testing and isolation of carriers have managed to get it under control (e.g. South Korea). But in countries that are neither locked down nor testing everyone, it's spreading like wildfire.