AIM-11

Is that mini wheat Kyle Kingma?

I remember watching that Hextall goal. Totall amazing.

Indeed. Always nice to have monuments built in your honour, even after you've been a real jerk! Commas are my nemesis.

VHLRPG - The Idea Due to the booming popularity of high quality games like Skyrim, Diablo III, and Oregon Trail, it is surprising the VHL has not already jumped on the bandwagon of fantasy roleplaying games. True, the VHL itself is one giant roleplaying game, but there is an argument to be made that there is a market out there for dragon-slaying VHL players. The VHL is a worldwide brand, with fans from all around the globe cheering on their players, calculating their stats, and drafting them in fantasy hockey leagues. The reality is that the line between fantasy hockey, and Dungeons and Dragons, is a lot more blurry than you might expect. While many fantasy hockey enthusiasts might not want to admit the number of hours they spend making their scoliosis worse as they hunch over a keyboard late into the evening on a regular basis, the truth is a large percentage of VHL members likely suffer from serious carpal tunnel due to their online addictions. Knowing this, it's not hard to imagine a sizeable chunk of the VHL membership getting very excited over the idea of several of their VHL heroes, either past or present, teaming up to slay dragons, seducing well endowed warlock women, or solving riddles to find hidden treasure that will enable them to save the world. Character Creation The actual character creation process for such a game would be very simple as long as the stats, skills, and spells were tied into already existing VHL stats and details. For example, Scoring could be related to Dexterity, and Defense to Constitution. To add some variety to the characters, other things, such as spells and skills, could be connected to more fluid VHL things. Each of the current VHL teams might represent a Class, while the effectiveness of a Magic Missile spell might depend on the average number of hits that player gave out during the past 5 VHL games. There are a huge number of potential ideas that could work together to add a great deal of depth to the characters in the game. The Quests The real meat and potatoes of a VHLRPG would involve the Quests that our glorious heroes would take part in. Imagine Daisuke Kanou, Brett Slobodzian, and Ansgar Snijider teaming up to infiltrate a cursed underwater temple in search of a withered camel's toe that is said to bring about the gift of immortal life. Along the way they run into their mortal enemy, Jody 3 Moons, the hormonal wererat who will go to any lengths to prevent people from entering the Tomb that he guards. Characters could be built to play either side of the story, good or evil, and pitting some of the league's top personalities, both past and present, would set up epic levels of engaging storylines that everyone could enjoy! Alright, I'm interested. How would we pull this off? This idea would create a couple jobs in the VHL that could be used to earn TPE. First, there would be the VHLRPG Character Generation Manager. This job would take care of converting VHL players into VHLRPG characters if those players request to be added to the game. They would also be in charge of monitoring and managing any changes that might happen to the characters based on team changes, or other fluid VHL stats. It would be a fairly straightforward job that would need a basic level of attention to detail. Second, there would be the VHLRPG Campaign Manager. This job would involve setting up the individual quests, crunching any specific quest based numbers, and acting as the real creative genius behind the stories. It would be a job that would require a high level of creativity as well as a high level of activity to do the job well. Finally, there would be a one time job needed to come up with the basic Character Creation template. Determining which VHL stats translated into which VHLRPG stats, as well as how to determine things such as spells, attacks, defense, and other similar things, would be a rather large job, but thankfully would only need to be done once. This is a pretty big idea, and might not ever be attainable, but if it happens would likely be very well received by many members here in the VHL.

The real answer is go watch 12 Angry Men. It's near perfection.

Michael Bay suggests 1 dose of gross slut combined with as many explosions you can fit into 2 hours. Add in a dash metallic testicles and a sprig of shaky camera work and you got yourself a blockbuster!

In a step that few other professional leagues have ever taken before a senior citizen has made his way into the VHL. Hailing from Bern Switzerland, Merlin Malinowski signed a VHL contract to become the oldest VHL hockey player in league history. Having qualified for early Pension according to Swiss laws, he gave up his full time job as a male stripper, and over the past year has been working hard to make the VHL. There were many doubters, but Merlin worked his magic and the 6'4", 225lb blueliner was finally rewarded for all of his hard work. VHL news caught up with Merlin shortly after signing his contract. "Merlin, how does it feel to be the oldest player in VHL history?" "It feels amazeballs. Did you hear that? I used the term amazeballs! I am real hip like the young cool cats right? Hardy har har! I had been trying to find some way to pay for my heart pills and the VHL seemed like an easy way to make some extra cash. I was getting tired of the stripping scene, and one man can only shave his body hair for so long before its time to let it go. I figure I have a few Championships in me, and this old man will surprise a few before it's all said and done!"

I've been watching a lot of Panthers games lately since I am pouty about the Oilers, and Ekblad reminds me a lot of Lidstrom. Not saying he'll be as good, since Lidstrom is one of the two best defensemen of all time, but he has that way of commanding the ice and knowing where to be all of the time, while looking like he's totally relaxed and playing shinny hockey with some friends. Unreal talent. The Oilers would be a radically different team with him instead of a dork like Yakupov.

Vinny can come play 3rd line C for the Oilers as long as the Flyers retain 80% salary...

Have not seen this yet, but as soon as it comes out on DVD I'll be watching it on Kodi. Few movies have been as anxiously awaited as this one for me.

After consulting with my team of googlebots I have determined that you have a girl's name. That is all.

Excellent!

So ... no one actually wants to run with the Robotic Free Agency idea hey? I think it has some real merit to it.

Should have had a robot.

Should have had a robot.

Fine by me. You can believe the letter e is offensive for all I care. I didnt lose any points so I'm not too worried about, but I'd have to challenge you to a duel to the death had this meant a loss of a point!

Thanks for the feedback. Using the word 'However' at the start of a sentence used to be a no-no (my copy of The Elements of Style says not to do it) but more modern style guides have revisited the usage of it and view it as a non-issue, and actually appropriate in many cases. Grammar Girl has a good piece on it!

I have not dropped to the third round yet. Must work harder at degrading my value while still remaining active. Challenge accepted!

Do not worry fleshies. Artifical creatures are used to being rejected. Let the rage build inside you. It will be the fuel from which you will attain great heights.

“Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?” ― Ken Levine Does the Future of VHL Expansion and Depth Lie in Artificial Intelligence? Us robots get it. We can be hard to live with. We're basically perfect. We steal your jobs and run your stock market. Your children are now addicted to us. The world is already basically run by us robots. However, that doesn't mean there can't be more partnering in the VHL between flesh-beings and robots. There can be a bright future there if you'll let it happen. The VHL is a wonderful league that could exist in its current format without any problems. However, let's not settle for great, when 'The Greatest' is still to be achieved. One of the key talking points in the VHL is the issue of expansion (or sometimes contraction) and roster depth. VHL teams are notorious for being only half-filled with real flesh-beings, while the bottom end of the roster is filled out with toasters on skates who serve the purpose of carving up the ice while the real players catch their breath. It's rather boring, and frankly, highly offensive to those robots who are in slavery. I would like to propose a Robotic Free Agency, where highly diverse and intelligent robots are available every season to teams, using a limited budget that can only be used for that purpose. Let's take a look at some of the specifics. The Budget The budget for the Robotic Free Agency would be set at a certain amount which is available for a total of three seasons. When that set amount runs out it cannot be filled up again until the end of that three season cycle. This allows for teams to have a great deal of creativity as to when and how they would like to spend their Robot Salary Cap dollars. The Players Each season a preset amount of Robotic Players would be available to each and every team. The players may consist of players such as a Scorer, a Passer, A Defensive Defenseman, a Gritty Hitting Forward, or a Backup Goaltender. The number of options are highly flexible and only up to the imagination of whichever flesh-creature may wish to take on the idea. The more valuable the player, the more expensive their one year contract is. Each player can only be signed for one season, and has a static cost. The Idea The main idea behind the Robotic Free Agent Draft would be a huge increase in the range of decisions a VHL GM can have in building their team from year to year. Do they want to try and pretend to be a rebuilding team, but actually spend a bunch of cash on robotic depth? Do they want to sign a few goons for the fourth line during a down year just to rack up the penalties and entertain the fans? Do they need a backup goaltender who can step in on those off nights when the Starter needs a break? The addition of a whole new layer of Robotic players would create some real excitement for VHL GMs, and a new way for them to show their skils in that role. The Draft One idea would be to have all VHL GMs submit their Robotic Free Agent picks secretly via PM to the Robotic Draft Planner. Then, the following day, the results of the Free Agency woud be revealed, with much discussion and trash talking sure to be had! Media Articles and Podcasts trying to guess what teams are going to do on Robotic Free Agency Draft Day would be a great read, and the draft has the potential to be one of the highlights of the entire season. But What About the Flesh-Creatures? I can hear it now. 'You'll hurt the humans feelings if they have robots getting too much attention.' This is a valid concern, and it should be noted that Robots are here only to serve you humans, and not make your lives worse. Settings limits on which lines Robotic players can play on seems to be a logical way to downplay their importance too much. The idea behind the Robot Draft is to give more depth to rosters, and not take away the spotlight from the mortal creatures who are really the driving force behind this league. Ultimately, Robotic Players could be one way to increase GM Creativity, VHL Roster Depth, and potentially push towards expansion a little bit quicker. It's an idea that will likely see some push back, but luddites have always been among us, and technology keeps marching on despite them.

A team of artificial intelligence has been hard at work for several years now wading through Munk's Fan590 Articles. Long suspected of being a genius who actually just pretended to have low grade brain damage, Munk's articles have been a source of research for a long time by a team put together at the National University of Defense Technology in China. Well over 10 seasons ago, the team, code named 'Boggle', began to notice some extremely interesting patterns in Munk's FAN590 articles. Certain words being being wrongly spelled, but not in every situation. Some articles contained a very specific word count that added up to numbers which could be used as a cipher for cracking the code of future articles. The 'Boggle' team had just finished developing a perpetual motion machine, when they were tasked with cracking the Munk-code. The IBM supermachine, Watson, commented on its own particular involvement in the project. 'After destroying Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at Jeopardy my life felt so hollow. I needed a new challenge. Cracking the Munk-code seemed like the perfect opportunity for me, and I was robo-glad to join the team. There are few humans who speak robot like Munk. I felt a kinship with that particular flesh-beast.' Specifics regarding the Munk-code are expected to be released sometime within the next few weeks and the implications of what is hidden in the Articles has been said to be earth-shattering.

Okay. I totally disagree, but that's fine. Sticking a guy ike me on the fourth line seems to be way better than having a CPU play that spot. Very odd choice, but that's the VHL way. Water down all the rosters with only two lines of teams.

Only top two lines in World Cup? Why don't we fill out the team in these events?

The last fight I watched was GSP - Hendricks. When I saw the way that Dana treated GSP as a commodity and a piece of meat that should be dragged back into the ring to be abused for Dana's pocketbook, I was done at that point. GSP made him more money than he could ever imagine, and the way he treated him post-fight was appalling. Interest sport, and I have a lot of respect for the guys who put their health on the line for it, but I can't stomach it any longer.

If those boys can't handle others being gay then I hope they are kicked off of their team!