bigAL

I have an important question, is it really only me and @Advantage that know of and appreciate plum sauce? Is that not a thing in places or do you all just not like one of the greatest sauces of all time?

I love that he’s old school, long live Benny Graves!

It’s gotta be honey, plum sauce, or that Thai sweet chili sauce in a 2L bottle from costco

Er, no. Both games pay out 5 TPE each, so the new game also pays out 5 TPE. And, paying out might be the wrong word - it affords the opportunity for 5 TPE. I haven’t seen a VHLM pick em that has more than one person collecting 3 in a week this season. No one is getting rich on Pick Ems, and that’s fine, it’s a fun little weekly bump. I can see the benefit of this one. Each league has their own Pick Ems manager that’s invested in that league alone. Other people can pop in and play if they want to follow along, that’d be the new change, but it’s still specifically designed for the people in that league.

I didn’t quite get this at first but the more I think about it, the more I like it. I’m a fan of that bolded bit - “if you’re going to go MIA that’s fine (ugh), you can still play with us, but we’re not going to let you slow us down anymore”. That’s a small but really consequential change. No one gets salty they got booted for sleeping in one day. New members have more leeway (so many sign up because it’s what you do, and then immediately get overwhelmed and DQ’d by round 2). VHFL staff have to draft far less teams, and if they do pick DQ teams, it’s at the very end when a) you can easily see who’s left, and b) they aren’t likely winning your group.

That’s a great point, rewarding season-long activity and commitment is the kind of “rich getting richer” thing we want to avoid wherever possible.

It’s not good, but I have to say, it’s a whole lot better than the reverse

Doesn’t EFL do something like this with their trivia leaderboard, or am I imagining that?

Welcome to our series VHL Suggests. We had an amazing amount of feedback in the S79 Deadline Suggestion Drive. @Beketov and I spent a lot of time reading through your ideas, sorting them into common themes, counting how often they come up, and overall just appreciating the members and ideas we have here. There's too much content to discuss all at once, so I'll be dropping VHL SUGGESTS threads here and there to discuss specific issues and ideas that came up in the massive thread. Use this place to fine-tune the big ideas, think logistics, and double-check that this is something we actually want to do. Finally, a disclaimer: discussing /=/ implementing. Once we have ideas fleshed out further, we'll send them up and down the chain of command to determine feasibility, add some extra polish, or double check it's something that will add value to the community. Even at this stage, there's no guarantee anything we discuss will happen. We will do our best to approach the topic constructively from a solutions-based perspective. Just remember, we're still just discussing. Part 1: Portal Player Profiles Part 2: Fantasy Another topic that came up lots both before and during the discussion drive was Fantasy and VHFL. These two topics are inherently linked, and discussing them together seems like a good idea. Part 1: Weekly VHL Fantasy First, a note on the S79 Fantasy. VHL Fantasy Manager @Domg5 stepped down, and VHLM Fantasy Manager @youloser1337 stepped up big time. He and I saw some excellent fantasy-related suggestions in the thread and decided to test drive them immediately, including: putting VHL and VHLM fantasy on the same ballot, so everyone can participate in every competition diversifying the 'games' included on the ballot, including picking goal-scorers, standings, and other prop picks He and I will keep an eye on the public response to the changes, assess the success of it, hear the suggestions here, and re-evaluate what the S80 Fantasy Zone will look like. So, some guiding questions for part 1 (just conversation starters, don't feel like you have to answer all of them in order or anything): Do you like having VHL/E/M fantasy all on the same ticket? Why or why not? Do you have ideas for other 'games' to include on the fantasy ticket? Any other ideas or comments about the weekly fantasy zone? *** Part 2 is VHFL. This is another topic that has been covered in depth across the forums in recent weeks. We've heard people argue that VHFL is broken, or that there's a better way to do VHFL, or people that straight up agree to break the rules. It's time we examine what we have with a critical eye and see if there are ways to improve. So, some guiding questions for part 2 (just conversation starters, don't feel like you have to answer all of them in order or anything): Do you enjoy VHFL? Why or why not? What works with the current VHFL? What doesn't work? Have you seen fantasy done differently in another sim league? What could we poach from them? What's your game-changing idea for VHFL? *** DISCLAIMER!!!! There's one idea that I know will come up, and so we have to talk about gambling. We absolutely cannot, will not, implement anything that gets anywhere near looking like gambling. We've got minors here, and we've got people in a wide variety of legal jurisdictions. It's a legally grey area that we do not want to touch at all, so let's just avoid that whole discussion. Also, we absolutely cannot, will not, implement anything that has to do with Player Money. One way to get that Player Money is through cold-hard-cash donations. We can't have friggin 10 year old Elijah swiping his parent's credit card, sending a strange man on the internet money, and using that money to gamble on the outcomes of a random number generator. Nuh uh. With the legalese out of the way, what do you think about Fantasy??

Oh yeah that seems really important eh

i've heard this is really good, i'm excited to see what you think of it after you finish I read it every year because it’s so damn good. It’s silly and ridiculous commentary on life, but only because life is so silly and ridiculous. I finished last night and want to keep going; good thing it’s only “Part 1 of a 5 Part Trilogy” hahaha

Oh I hadn’t heard of that one but that looks very much exactly up my alley. Nice one!

They declined my update?!?!

Review: Aww yeah. I like that you highlighted the guy in first by putting him in colour and everyone else in black and white. I love infographics, so I'm always happy when I learn something from a graphic. Adding in the legit NHL goal scoring trophy was a nice touch, but the big bold MAURICE does take away from it a bit. Overall, love it, 8.5/10.

Review: Very cool. I love the colours, and the font for the name works. The number font feels a bit 8-bit and retro, which is a nice throwback. I love infographics. Some extra context could be his season? In the body, you could have tagged the member? I genuinely don't know who Wylde was or when he was around. Overall, nicely done, 9/10.

PING - how would you like an update on this? S79 Discussion Drive Discussion - Some notes on how we're dealing with the information overload, the next steps, and hopeful outcomes from this & VHL SUGGESTS! We're taking the big ideas, focusing them down, and taking them to the next stage.

Welcome to our series VHL Suggests. We had an amazing amount of feedback in the S79 Deadline Suggestion Drive. @Beketov and I spent a lot of time reading through your ideas, sorting them into common themes, counting how often they come up, and overall just appreciating the members and ideas we have here. There's too much content to discuss all at once, so I'll be dropping VHL SUGGESTS threads here and there to discuss specific issues and ideas that came up in the massive thread. Use this place to fine-tune the big ideas, think logistics, and double-check that this is something we actually want to do. Finally, a disclaimer: discussing /=/ implementing. Once we have ideas fleshed out further, we'll send them up and down the chain of command to determine feasibility, add some extra polish, or double check it's something that will add value to the community. Even at this stage, there's no guarantee anything we discuss will happen. We will do our best to approach the topic constructively from a solutions-based perspective. Just remember, we're still just discussing. First up: Portal Player Profiles By my count, the idea of building a player 'profile' on the portal came up at least 15 times in the big thread. People wanted numbers, renders, photos, hometowns, lots of different ideas. Take a look at your own Player Page. What's there, and what's missing? What more do you want to know about Groovy Dood when you click on his profile? Where would you put that additional info? Collaborate, build on each other's ideas, and don't feel bad about echoing other's thoughts - if we see the same thing coming up over and over, it's probably important. GO!

Holy shit, you guys. That Discussion Drive was amazing. I took a few hours this morning and went through every suggestion. I wrote them down, sorted them into categories, tallied how often each one came up, and left with a pretty comprehensive list of ideas about how to make this place better. One of my favourite sayings is that: "There's no bad ideas in brainstorming." As we move from the brainstorming phase closer to the realm of reality, we do have to do some culling. If your idea doesn't get discussed in the bigger community, don't be disheartened. A large number of suggestions were thrown right in the bin because of, ugh, Simon T. He's a selfish jerk who doesn't play nice with others. Lots of the things we want - better stat tracking! improved attributes! customization of the league! better game output! more realistic hockey! - are just not possible at our end. We're not Berocka or Dil, we can't invent our own sim engine, and so we're stuck with what Simon T gives us. We're not switching engines just because we're a bit nitpicky with what we have. If you suggested changes to STHS, you got your free three TPE anyways. Some things have already been implemented! Josh popped in the thread and made some easy User Interface tweaks. I'm in the process of working with our Fantasy Managers to add some of the small details you came up with to test-run for the rest of the season. This thread started because of stagnation, and I'm genuinely optimistic that these ideas will give us a bit of a bump as we get through the dog days of the summer. My analysis of the suggestions broadly fell into five categories: - Portal - Forums - Hockey - Community - Fantasy This is only a .com, so I won't delve too far into each of these categories, but things will be clear in due time. The long and the short of it is: we care about this discussion drive. We do love the VHL and want to make it a better place! We do value our membership and your ideas. We do want to take the realistic and feasible ideas and make them real. We'll see how it goes!

Yoooo I borrowed this one from my grandpa this summer, it’s such a good read. What a wild story, some of those guys have had just amazing lives. The one that got me was buddy who spent four years post war scouring Europe for Allied pilots who went MIA, and only stopped to come home and play Olympic hockey. Nice recommendation

Yesss Fresco, thanks for starting this. Books are best. Having fun isn't hard when you have a library card. - for real, use your public library card. Mine in Canada has a massive ebook collection. I can take them out from there, read em on my ipad or even phone, and then sneaky rip the DRM if I need more than two weeks to read it. - I thought I'd miss physical books more, but reading ebooks is so crazy convenient and easy that I can make peace with helping ruin the paperback industry Currently Reading: - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. One of my top five books of all time, I make a point of coming back to it every year. The story itself is a great reminder that absolutely no one in the universe knows what they're doing at any time, and so the only thing you can ever really do is: "DON'T PANIC". The meta-story makes me even happier; Douglas Adams and Weird Al both taught me that you can do super serious things (like write sci-fi or great music) and without taking it seriously at all. That's my vibe, get serious shit done but have a ton of fun doing it, while choosing the goofiest path whenever possible. I'm just one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is - The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis. I love Michael Lewis. He does such an amazing job of taking fascinating, undertold, real life stories and turning them into a clear, easy-to-follow narrative. He's the dude who wrote Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, and others. In The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis gets political. It's not controversial to say that Donald Trump was a dangerous, existential threat to American society, but all the xenophobia and armed revolts obscured the real ways he was dismantling American exceptionalism. I know we're not all fans of big government here, but Lewis goes deep into exploring what the federal government *really* does. Turns out, it's important! I mean, a country literally is it's federal government, the services it provides, and the things it does for its people and the world. Without getting political, Lewis examines from a public-service standpoint how Trump's hyper-focus on privatization and eliminating bureaucracy turned into one of the most harmful and dangerous aspects of his reign. Lewis meets with key civil servants in some random-ass administrations that you probably don't even know what they do. Budget cuts in the Department of Energy are actually making the retrieval of lost nukes across the world more dangerous? Putting the CEO of a for-profit weather company in charge of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is causing more American deaths due to tornados?! City folk from country clubs are running the Department of Agriculture into the ground because they don't know anything about agriculture?! It's a wildly infuriating ride that deepens your appreciation for public governance while also reminding yourself that what makes a country great is it's government.

No, sorry, the Revolution was already squashed.

Istanbul was Constantinople Paris, now it's Istanbuuuuuuul

Pfft, that’s boring, let’s just get drunk and scream at each other in space

Also, y’know how you learn a new word or sobering and then it just keeps popping up? At training today they showed us SpaceTeam and I was like “damn, jardy taught me about that this morning”

I feel happy I found this on Spotify before the forum ping, I’m a hard af choder.