An Outlaws Sunday 14 Straight Hours in Kali and IRC

On the first Sunday of 1998, January 4^th to be exact, I set out ta chronicle a th' exploits of Outlaws players on th' Net. This isn't as hard as it sounds; Kali and IRC, two of the three main Outlaws hangouts, both have logging functions that will automatically record the contents of the chat window in a text file.

I wanted to log th' Zone as well 'cause there are far more players there than in Kali an' IRC put together (a peak that day of around 80 players in the Zone, while Kali topped out at about nine or ten, IRC at about 20). But after goin' through th' horrors of Zone installation, which forced me ta reboot several times causin' some gaps in th' Kali an' IRC logs, I rediscovered th' Zone's habit of only storin' th' last couple hundred lines of text. To create a complete log I would have had to stay there all day, cutting and pasting from th' Zone chat window into a text file. Well, I had to clean my bathroom dammit! So th' Zone wuz out.

I watched it a bit anyway jus' fer comparison's sake. There ain't a whole lotta stimulatin' conversation there except when th' head Outlaws Zone monitor, +Mr. Snappy, makes an appearance. That name always reminds me of a squirrel fer some reason, an' there're always a buncha 'lil baby squirrels who gather 'round ta pester him with stupid questions. It's pretty funny.

I decided 'ta go undercover so people wouldn't recognize me an' keep tryin' ta strike up conversation. I chose th' name "Il Cattivo" as my disguise: it's Italian, go look it up it'll do ya good. But there are functions in Kali an' IRC that will tell you a good deal about someone an' I left some tellin' info up so a few smart fellers figgered out who I wuz... actually it's a shame that I accidentally overwrote th' beginnin' of th' Kali log 'cause there's a hilarious bit where some'a th' guys were tryin' ta figger out who I was, an' they decided I wuz Portuguese... until DirtyDon checked an' blew my cover, THANKS DON! Heh.

Kali doesn't have a timestamp function so I called out th' time every now an' then through th' day. This caused some consternation among people there at th' time... it wasn't 'til later that I discovered th' Kali log function records private conversations too, so I could get th' time in th' log my whisperin' it to myself. IRC doesn't log private chats with th' main log file, so a few conversations I had there aren't included (like when Da Beast blew my cover). But I tell ya what jus' ta make th' experience as complete as possible fer ya I'll throw in th' log of a sex channel that tried ta start an unsolicited chat with me. Ooo!

The Logs

I accidentally overwrote th' first part of th' Kali log which is why it starts at 1:19 pm rather than 12:45 pm like th' IRC log. Logging went 'til 3:00 am Monday with a few interruptions fer reboots required by th' installation of th' darned Zone software. Keep in mind that Sunday isn't th' peak day fer Outlaws play; it's actually busier weeknights an' especially Saturday.

So what have we learned?

It seems to me that more extended conversations take place in Kali than in IRC. I have a feeling that a large amount of the talking in IRC goes on in private 1 on 1 chats. Fer some reason people are just more talkative in Kali; I think it's got something to do with th' interface that lets everyone have their own chat font so that what they type looks unique. Perhaps also Kali's $20 registration weeds out th' completely sorry, poor an' illiterate types as well as th' antisocial hacker types so that people in Kali are better equipped and more inclined to start up conversations.

You can see though that the vast majority of th' dialogue has to do with people talking about lag, their computer or th' other games they play. Thankfully there were no extended masochistic conversations on Sunday, which is something of a rare occurrence as the vast majority of net players are, predictably enough, horny, bitter guys. Mebbe it's because it was Sunday...

Well, I hope you had fun readin' this. If yer recorded in one'a th' logs an' feel that I've slandered yer good name by printin' yer unedited conversations, well that's just too bad. I probably won't be able to get away with this sort'a thing in th' future 'cause people will be wise ta this tactic, so yer safe from me fer a while.

Oh yes, fer those of you who read th' Kali log to it's apparently tragic conclusion, Wes was alive an' well in th' Kali racing server which is listed right under Outlaws on Kali's server list. Turns out he wasn't dead, just clumsy. Poor Wes.

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