The Dink Network

Poll Comments

Here are the top 5 comments for the poll 109, Worst Dink Network Design?:

5. erm...i say 2..no 3...on the other hand..5 was nice? ummm random guess: 7

4. I like you a lot, Bob.

3. Wait! I know finnish! KESKIOLUT! hah! Ehh.. wait! That's not funny at all.. why am I writing here?!?

2. dukie: Those red spheres really sucked

1. Oh fudge, I thought the poll was best design, stupid me. ARRGGGH.

I have no clue where Comment 4 comes from... but its funny in an odd way. What does Keskiolut mean, anyone? And with Gen 7 topping the results, obviously, The Dink Community at large: (Pick One)

A) Can't Read

B) Has an odd sense of humor

C) Doesn't like Gen 7

When I brought Tal on the staff to start Ask Tal, I guess I had a few misconceptions. Mainly, I thought Ask Tal would be Dink related. I forsaw people asking about how to get past a certain point in a D-Mod, why is WC on staff, how often does redink1 completely screw up the databases, a scripting problem, etc.

Instead, its basically filled with inanity, as in very, very, very stupid questions. This, of course, isn't Tal's fault; he answers questions that you give him.

I swear... I'm just going to stop reading it. It has just turned into lists of idiotic questions, which Tal answers as best as can be humanly expected... but it can only be funny for so long, at least for me.

But I'm a crabby old webmaster, and everyone else seems to enjoy it... Bah.

Once upon a time, there was a Dutch lad named Jveenhof. He discovered Dink, and made a lot of D-Mods, most of which were of questionable quality. He even started his own web site, DinkX Productions. And all was good... until that fateful day in September 2000 when when he got hit by a car, and he died.

... or so the story goes.

One day in early September 2000, there was a message posted on DinkX Productions main page, attributed to Jveenhof's sister Karin. It said that she was logging on to his web site to tell everyone that Jveenhof had died in a car accident of sorts, and of course couldn't continue Dinking.

Needless to say, most people were rather shocked and saddened.

I know I was. I even searched some Dutch Newspapers in vain searching for an obituary. A news story. Anything. I cried a bit as well.

But something about Karin's post just didn't click with some people. How did Karin get access to Jveenhof's web space, for one? And what about his Yahoo! E-mail account? I believed that Jveenhof either kept his passwords saved on his computer, or he wrote them down. I mean, someone wouldn't fake Jveenhof's death... right?

Then Silencer came back from the grave to post a news item on it. I won't bother to summarize it; you can see that some people believed in Jveenhof's death quite seriously, whereas didn't.

There was a lot of posts on the board at the time. Most were the equivalent of RIP, and saddened messages expressing grief and condolances for Jveenhof's family.

I didn't notice it at the time, but Jveenhof's closest Dink friends (Andy M and some others, if I remember right) didn't do any of that. They didn't post much at all...

And so a few days pass, basically the board felt like a weird soap-opera daydream. Some people were adament that Jveenhof wasn't dead, it was a joke or something else, whereas others were adament that no-one would dare joke around with a subject matter this serious. And so things went...

Until the day Jveenhof posted a message on DinkX Productions. He essentially said that he wasn't really dead, and he just wanted to leave the Dink Community in such a way so he would never be tempted to come back. He had a girlfriend and was going to move on in life. However, he said he was really touched by all of the expressions of grief and such, so he decided to stop this silly nonsense and come back anyway. He also said he e-mailed his closest Dink friends (Andy M and some others) that he wasn't really dead.

Needless to say, the shock and sadness of the community turned to outright hatred and anger.

If Jveenhof posted to the board, quite a few people flamed him outright. Paco (so Tal says) was especially venement against Jveenhof... Paco flamed him so much that Medar banned him and he left the Dink Community shortly thereafter.

I just ignored his posts on the message board... though I did send a rather long and nasty e-mail I wrote to his Yahoo! E-Mail account. I basically blasted him, used lots of exclamation points, etc. etc. I threatened to remove every single D-Mod he ever made from The Dink Network, and so on. I was pissed.

Jveenhof later said in a message board posting that 'someone flamed me that I never thought would ever do so'. Suprise, surprise. Someone faked his death and played with everyone's emotions. He was still set on leaving Dink, and by the time September ended, Jveenhof just wasn't around.

...

Addendum: Jveenhof eventually returned, having lost (I think) his girlfriend. About a year later I eventually got over it, and I now hold no grudges at all. With his return, he started making better D-Mods, such as the Revenge of the Ducks trilogy. Indeed, somebody once said, "Looks like Jveenhof's d-mod skills have, if anything being improved by his death."

Next Monday I will discuss the Dinkanoid High Score Contest and my weak will... fun fun. And I come back to glorious broadband land (i.e. College) around August 23rd or so. And then the weird links will resume, yay.