Great. Thanks Sol.
I'll leave this thread open if anyone wants to rant about crappy games they can.
If not it will fade into obscurity.
Again ... thank you everyone who entered. You all make having contests on TPU a pleasure.
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Classic Thread Necro!
TPU Kreij MEMORIAL COMPETITION
As many of you will know, back in June last year we lost our good friend and Senior Moderator Dean Kortenhoven, better known to us as Kreij to Cancer. For those of you that knew Kreij you will know that not only was he a leading light within this community but he was one damn fine human being. TPU, his family and anyone who knew him well are the poorer without him.
Kreij is remembered throughout our community in many ways, none more prominent than our Memorial build giveaways that not only support current members with the opportunity to win good quality hardware/systems (giveaway builds are geared to be able to game/crunch/fold well)but just as importantly to add more machines to the constant war against this ugly and hateful disease, for that we have our crunching/folding friends to thank for these memorial builds as well as our outstanding TPU forum community, assisted by our good friend Norton. Kreij himself was one of the first members here to generously run giveaways as a thank you to this great community.
One or two of us thought it would be a good idea to complement the existing memorials with something a little different (
Sneeky should take the credit for this idea) in the form of a competition but with a little twist. You see during his illness and treatment Kreij started writing a short story, he wanted distraction from what he was going through and by his very nature he was creative. Sadly he didn't get to quite finish the story and that’s where the competition comes in. Below you will see the said uncompleted short story, have a read, a smile and then help Kreij to complete it with as natural a follow on storyline ending as possible, you have just 300 - 500 words to do it in, that’s
no less than 300 and
no more than 500 so in effect between half and a full page of text.
The competition is open to members who joined TPU on or before 1st October 2015 and have contributed a minimum of 50 posts as of 30th November 2015. We would ask you once completed to post back in this thread with a simple
"I am in" and attach your entry to the post as a Rich Text Format (RTF) document to aid compatibility. You will need to zip the RTF file to attach it to your post, there are a number of free programmes that will do this, WinZip is but one.
OK, so what’s the prize? Well thanks to the support of
Mark, our XFX Rep and the generosity of his company, XFX have kindly donated a
XFX R7 370 4GB DD xxx OC graphics card, specs can be seen here…..
http://xfxforce.com/en-us/products/amd-radeon-r7-300-series/amd-radeon-r7-370-4gb-double-dissipation-r7-370p-f24m
The closing date for the competition is Wednesday 16th December @ 2359 hours UK GMT. We would hope to have decided on a winner by Christmas Eve at the latest, obviously that will depend on the amount of entries. There will be 3 judges, 2 from the community and our XFX Rep (Mark). The winner will have their prize shipped directly to them by XFX.
OK, now on to the story so far........................................
In the technology world, we know that there are a plethora of devices, drivers, applications and utilities. We have all seen and read the reviews from an almost endless selection of websites, print media and social media to get the latest and greatest information on the tech scene. The availability of having all of these resources is great for us consumers, but does anyone really stop to consider the depth of depravity that the reviewers must immerse themselves into to get you the real story?
The following is an inside look into what the real world of hardware reviewing is like. The names have been changed to protect those who are willing to step forward and reveal the sordid, uncompromising and unforgiving nature of what really goes on behind reviews. I will refer to my contact as “Chad”. I could refer to him as "TheGuyWhoAgreedToGiveMeAnInsideLookAtHardwareReviewing", but that would be stupid from almost every standpoint imaginable, so let's just go with "Chad".
The following information is not for the faint of heart or PETA members, you have been warned.
It was 3AM on a Friday morning when I received a text message on my phone that stated, "Now or never". I threw on some clothes, downed a cold cup of coffee that had been sitting in the pot from the night before and headed out to meet with my contact. It was a dark and stormy night, but I was not going to let that stop me from getting the real story to my readers.
I arrived at the agreed location. It was a typical home in a suburban area and the only indication that I was in the right place was a guy standing in the opened garage waving me in. The fact that he was brandish a Benelli M4 semi-automatic, tactical shotgun was of no concern as most of the hardware reviewers I know do that for NDA reasons.
Chad ushered me into the house and to a door that looked to be the entrance to his basement. The door was secured by four deadbolt locks, a magnetic card reader, a voice activated retina scanner and one of those little hook and ring latch thingies. It was obvious that security was of utmost importance. It could be that it was all unnecessary, and being a geek he just liked using high tech hardware, but I didn’t mention it as he was still wielding the shotgun.
When we entered the basement proper I was pleasantly surprised. What I expected to be a dank, dark room smelling of old gym socks and molding Doritoes, was actually an area that one could almost describe as hospital clean. There were tables with hardware set up on them and cameras on tripods nearby. Neatly lined on shelves were extra parts, tools and additional video equipment. I was impressed.
I turned to Chad and mentioned that this all looked pretty normal for what one would expect when reviewing hardware devices. Why all the precautions and secrecy?
Pointing over to one corner of the basement, Chad said, “Let me show you something.” The corner was dark, but as we got closer I could see some sort of makeshift doorway. It looked like a few 2x4s nailed together with some plastic wrap stretched over it. Chad asked me to step to the side and reached down and turned on a little switch at the bottom of the doorway. What happened next is somewhat difficult to describe as I think I was screaming the whole time.
The plastic wrap began to glow in fluorescent colors and after several seconds deflated into a space that could not be seen and began emitting a noise that can only be described as the wailing of tormented souls from Hell all trying to sing a speeded up version of achy breaky heart. Chad grabbed my sleeve and yelled, “Let’s go.”
“Let’s go where?”, I screamed over the cacophony of noise.
“To where we get cheap parts.”, yelled Chad, “It’s just a minute away.”
Looking at the nightmarish doorway that had opened I screamed, “What if something goes wrong?”
“Don’t worry”, He said, “We’re backed up in the cloud on my Steam account.”
That, dear readers, is where I must stop and rest for a few moments. What came next will not only stun your sense, but give you a completely different outlook on the perils of hardware reviewing.
Now over to you creative lot and good luck!