Round 03

Sarah went home with 6 votes as expected. Cournojo and Travis also received a vote, and one was surely from Pete. Since Sarah self-voted, I don't know if that means that someone else self-voted or someone besides Pete didn't vote for Sarah. I'm not overly concerned about it as I'm sure I'll figure out soon enough what exactly occurred. I don't think I'm in any imminent danger of going home this round, but I don't know exactly what would occur if we lose another challenge. My alliance will probably target Pete, which I hope doesn't happen since I made a deal to try to protect him that I want to honor. Hopefully Pete wants to target Travis and we can all gang up against him. Because besides Travis, I honestly feel like I've made strong connections with everyone and have them on my side. My conversation with Travis was just so-so.

I want to win the challenge tomorrow. At least it would be nice, and I'd LOVE to go to that glass elevator. I see Ben posted 60 times today and Kyle has a fair amount of posts made, so could it be possible that the people there need to unlock a prize by posting every minute of the hour or something? I don't know, but I want to find out. I know from experience how valuable certain prizes are in these games, and I need to figure out what we're up against. I think Kyle will go home if we win the challenge, so hopefully we win. That way only one person on Hornswoggler has gone to the Glass Elevator.

Goodnight, confessional.

I actually didn't realize there would be a challenge request posted, but I think it's best for me to stay out of the discussion about who should get what bag for now. I've already done enough and want to give other people a chance to contribute.

My own thought process is that we need to find the strongest online random generator possible and use it. I programmed my own last semester with the Boost library, but I'd just confuse and scare people telling them that. Heh. I'm looking forward to a challenge that requires us to come together as a tribe and use our brains.

Goodnight, confessional. Again.

PM from Travis
Well somehow, dumbass Travis forgot to submit his vote for Sarah. So I guess that is where the vote for me came from. I feel stupid, but I guess stupid things happen in these games. I just want to let you know that it is very out of my character to self vote and I am going to blame it on the fact that I am just easing back into ORGs hahahaha. But honestly, there is no excuse Smile Lets just say this is the one and only time in this game I will be self-voting. So what do you think of this next challenge?

Thoughts
Okay, Travis has won me over by self-voting and PMing me an apology. I now really like the entire tribe. This could turn into a problem actually, but I'll just try to balance strategy with personal deals as best as possible. This also means that Pete voted for Jonathan.

Cam's idea for the challenge is intelligent, so I'll support it even though something inside of me is screaming that it's not what he thinks it'll be like and we need to do it randomly. I fully support the tribe leader, though, and that's him. So it's all good.

So um why do we have an 8-person priority list for a bag that doesn't exist? I don't understand why it's so unnecessarily repetitive even though it kind of works. I'm referring to Cam's list in the thread; I think the instructions are quite clear based on my interpretation, but someone's confusing something. I figured we'd just do something like this and that would be it.

1. Name #1
2. Name #2
...
8. Name #8

Yeah... that's kinda what I was expecting, but oh well. Cam just laid it out in a VERY detailed way

Yeah, I could argue more with them in the thread, but everyone seems to think it's perfect and I'm the one confused so I'll just stop talking.

If you secretly added an extra bag and added a more complex bag-sharing system, we'd be all set!

Cam's idea for the bag distribution was intelligent, and it looks like the other tribe did the same. I'm a little mad that Cam was able to solve my puzzle before I could even figure out how to draw a line in Photoshop...but at least it saves me work. Should have stuck with Paint I guess.

If someone doesn't show for this challenge, we're ousting them next. Totally.

All we need is for Kenya to post her puzzle. I solved Jonathan's, but I'll let him have a chance at solving it tomorrow so I won't post it. At this point, I think I'm going to aim at voting out Jonathan if we lose. It's understandable that he has a busy schedule and all, but it's just not helpful if he has to wait until the next morning to solve something posted this early in the evening.

Goodnight, confessional? I don't know if I'll be posting in you later tonight or not.

Everyone contributed in the challenge! Yay

So for the challenge, do you want everything randomly spread across the thread like it is now or should we have a better organization?

Chat with Jonathan
Jonathan (1:06:29 PM): Hey Brant,
Jonathan (1:06:39 PM): I have a few minutes before a meeting. CAn we talk a bit
Brant (1:06:54 PM): Hey. Sure that's fine
Jonathan (1:07:27 PM): Graet. I'll be direct. IF we loose the challenge, do you think I will be the target?
Brant (1:08:23 PM): It's possible. :-\ I honestly haven't talked to anyone about what we'd do if we lost yet.
Jonathan (1:08:25 PM): I know I havent been the CHALLENGE WORKHORSE
Jonathan (1:08:35 PM): Thank you for your honesty
Brant (1:08:44 PM): I don't think you're the weakest on the tribe though. You have shown up for every challenge
Jonathan (1:08:56 PM): I did, but hastny been dominant
Brant (1:09:54 PM): True. This past challenge, everyone stepped up...
Brant (1:10:02 PM): So there isn't one easy target
Jonathan (1:10:59 PM): Can I ask you a HUGE favor
Brant (1:11:03 PM): Sure
Brant (1:11:48 PM): I try to be a honest guy and hold true to certain deals that I've made.
Brant (1:12:01 PM): (in non-alias games ;-))
Jonathan (1:12:03 PM): If it's going to be me, please tell me. I just hate to be blindsided. I have no power at all right now and I havenot been around like usual so I guess alliances are already pretty much everwhere lol
Brant (1:12:32 PM): I'll tell you if it's going to be you going home.
Jonathan (1:12:40 PM): If you read my 'resume' of survivor carreer, you'll notice that I'm all about tribal loyalty and my alliacne
Jonathan (1:12:44 PM): Great thank you
Brant (1:13:17 PM): Right now I can honestly say I'm not sure what will happen. I was thinking about it earlier and hoping we'd win so we wouldn't have to send anyone home.
Brant (1:13:43 PM): Do you know who voted for you last TC?
Jonathan (1:13:50 PM): I have a good idea lol
Brant (1:14:15 PM): Travis said he self-voted so I'm guessing it was Pete.
Jonathan (1:14:53 PM): it is Pete
Jonathan (1:14:57 PM): it's so obvious
Jonathan (1:15:13 PM): he'S was the host of the second game at ORG where I was involved
Jonathan (1:15:30 PM): I bashed him hard with his game. He was awful as an host
Jonathan (1:15:43 PM): never on-time, boring challenge and even do not follow HIS on rule lol
Jonathan (1:16:04 PM): He also know that I can be A HUGE HUGE threat in term of strategic move
Brant (1:16:44 PM): Oh, I didn't know about any of that. He just told me that he didn't want to vote for Sarah because he knew her outside of the game.
Brant (1:17:08 PM): But he didn't say who he was voting for or why but it makes sense
Jonathan (1:18:22 PM): Well, I got to go. Thank you for your honesty. Let's hope we can create a bond that will use honesty and friendship
Jonathan (1:18:23 PM): cya
Brant (1:18:41 PM): I'd like to do that. Hopefully we can talk more and I'll let you know if I hear anything about the vote.
Brant (1:18:43 PM): Bye

PM to Kenya
Even with your schedule, thanks for taking the time to consistently show up, do challenges, etc. You're still one of the most dependable on the tribe since you're taking the time to show up and participate after work.

Here's something really interesting. We know that Travis self-voted last TC and Pete voted for Jonathan. Jonathan just IMed me saying that he and Pete had some major disagreements in a past game (OPS2 when Pete was hosting maybe?) and that it has carried into this game. Pretty much, both of them have come to me asking for my help and wanting to target the other person. Both have pledged their loyalty and asked me to let them know if anyone was going to target them. Pete sounds pretty loyal while Jonathan says he'll be loyal but I'm not quite as trusting of him. I'm not sure if you know about this already or not. It's all new to me.

I fear that this issue is going to split up our tribe if it carries on, so I think we'll have to do something about it if we lose. Let me know what you think.

Have a nice day!
Brant

Thoughts
The mysteries of OPS4 are being revealed --- at least on Snozzwanger Tribe. I'm now connected to both Jonathan and Pete, but I don't know whose side I should take. I'm leaning towards Pete because I know him a little better and think he is generally an honest guy while all I know about Jonathan is what he's telling me himself. So if I do something here, I think I'd still want to take Jonathan out because one of them needs to go or our tribe won't be able to truly function as a tribe. I'm not 100% decided yet and asked Kenya for her insight. Then I'll approach Cam and Bryan and let them know what's up later. My alliance will figure out a plan!

...hopefully. The only benefit I can think of as to getting rid of Pete would be that Pete seemingly has a connection to Deetster that I'd like to break. If Deetster is able to maintain enough strong connections, I can see him taking me out at the first opportunity and myself placing pre-jury on this. That scares me. I'm not as close to Travis as I'd like to be since he sent multiple people apologies about self-voting, so I'm still thinking about him as a target, but for now, we need to focus on resolving the Jonathan and Pete conflict if we lose.

As long as I can find all of your answers, it should be okay

Chat with Cam
Brant (8:13:54 PM): So I hope we win
Brant (8:13:58 PM): lol
Cam (8:14:00 PM): me too!
Brant (8:14:44 PM): Our answers are all over the place, but Doug said it's fine
Cam (8:14:54 PM): lol kay
Brant (8:15:09 PM): If we lose, I think Jonathan and Pete want to target the other person
Brant (8:15:23 PM): I was talking to them both, and they don't seem to like each other :-\
Cam (8:15:37 PM): yeah that seems to be the case
Cam (8:15:40 PM): jonathan's all paranoid
Brant (8:16:09 PM): Yeah, Jonathan asked me if I heard his name as a target. I told him I didn't because I hadn't heard any names
Brant (8:16:36 PM): Hopefully we win. If we lose, I could see it getting ugly with those two.
Cam (8:16:48 PM): well, as long as it isn't one of us 4 haha
Brant (8:17:22 PM): Yeah, we pretty much can control what happens fortunately :-)
Cam (8:17:31 PM): i guess we'd keep pete since he's smarter?
Cam (8:17:47 PM): i was impressed with him on the challenge lol
Brant (8:18:18 PM): Yeah, I think I'd prefer that. I could see it either way, but Jonathan had to wait until this morning to do the challenge plus he seems a little overly paranoid when talking to him.
Cam (8:18:28 PM): yeah

Thoughts on Chat
Cam fascinates me because he'll be completely off-topic, talking nonsense one conversation and be 100% serious and down-to-earth in a next. From a Survivor standpoint, he seems to understand how the game is played without any huge weaknesses. If anything, he might be a little too sharp and to-the-point in certain conversations, but if he balances that well enough with his fun, off-topic self, he's close to the perfect player from what I've seen. Thinking down the road when we have tribe swaps and so forth, I think I need to stress to the other tribe how Cam is our leader and everyone looks up to him and respects him plus he runs the challenges. I'm sure they'll try to idol one of us (or if they have the numbers, vote one of us) out of the game and I'd rather it be him than me since I may be their main choice right now. Of course I'd like to see us both stay if possible, but if things go wrong, it would be best for me not to be the biggest threat from Snozzwanger.

I was also thinking that maybe it would be best for our tribe to lose this challenge to oust either Jonathan or Pete (which would relieve a lot of pressure from me since I'm currently committed to both of them and they want to target one another) but if anything, I think that I'd prefer they both stay since they seem to at least tentatively want to work with me and their numbers plus my 4 give me some options when tribes mix. I guess that I give really honest vibes because people have a habit of coming to me and wanting to work with me, and it's helpful in the game, but it becomes a problem since I can't work with anyone. And I can't just turn them down when they ask without revealing my plans and ruining my game.

Chat with Travis
Travis (9:03:37 PM): Hey Brant!
Travis (9:03:43 PM): This is Travis from willy wonka
Brant (9:04:20 PM): Travis! Hey how's it going?
Travis (9:04:35 PM): Oh great now that I am off work!
Brant (9:04:57 PM): Haha nice
Travis (9:05:02 PM): LONG DAY hahaha
Brant (9:05:15 PM): That sucks, glad it's over now lol
Travis (9:05:37 PM): amen!
Travis (9:05:41 PM): how was your day?
Brant (9:06:10 PM): Boring, I'm taking summer classes and had a quiz. Nothing fun at all
Travis (9:06:23 PM): yucko, what was the quiz in?
Brant (9:06:31 PM): Statistics stuff
Travis (9:07:05 PM): Oh I loved Stats :-)
Travis (9:07:12 PM): I was a sociology m,ajor
Brant (9:07:33 PM): Oh! So you probably worked with all sorts of data
Travis (9:07:51 PM): yup sure sis
Travis (9:07:53 PM): did
Brant (9:08:39 PM): hahaha, nice. I just saw Willy Wonka post --- but not results unfortunately :-\
Travis (9:08:59 PM): oh bummers
Travis (9:09:02 PM): what did he pst?o
Brant (9:09:18 PM): He said he's working on the results and they'll come tonight
Travis (9:09:26 PM): okay cool
Travis (9:09:28 PM): think we won?
Brant (9:09:37 PM): I'm a computer sciene major. Which I have a lot of fun with programming different things
Brant (9:09:49 PM): I hope so...they weren't too hard so the other tribe probably figured them out too
Brant (9:09:54 PM): Idk
Travis (9:10:11 PM): i hope we did
Brant (9:10:18 PM): And that cs major comment was meant to come above the challenge message lol
Travis (9:10:19 PM): plus cam is lucky, i am glad he made the list
Travis (9:10:20 PM): :-)
Travis (9:10:30 PM): do u like you major?
Brant (9:10:52 PM): Yep, I was going to go into engineering at first, but it just wasn't for me. CS is nice.
Brant (9:11:02 PM): Cam's an awesome leader so hopefully it works out :-)
Travis (9:11:28 PM): Yea I like the guy a lot
Travis (9:11:33 PM): he seems so sincere
Travis (9:11:36 PM): and kind hearted
Brant (9:12:40 PM): Yeah it's great how he was the one picked for the leader. Plus he usually posts first for the challenge and gets everything organized.
Travis (9:12:56 PM): yea thats a huge help
Brant (9:14:04 PM): I think we did really awesome as a tribe this past challenge...
Brant (9:14:11 PM): everyone showed up, posted their thing, and solved something
Travis (9:14:14 PM): yea man for sure
Travis (9:14:19 PM): we rocked
Brant (9:15:18 PM): So I hope the other tribe loses and they vote out Kyle
Travis (9:15:31 PM): why Kyle?
Brant (9:15:41 PM): I'm guessing he's the target since he went to the glass elevator
Brant (9:15:50 PM): Er I mean he didn't show up last challenge before this one
Brant (9:16:04 PM): So if he goes, it means only one person in the game has went there
Travis (9:16:20 PM): oh yeah thats true!
Brant (9:16:20 PM): Less chance of being idoled later or something
Brant (9:17:02 PM): It sounds like there are multiple things in there
Brant (9:17:07 PM): At least that's the vibe I'm getting
Travis (9:17:32 PM): yea I am kinda confused about what it is exactly
Brant (9:18:03 PM): I thought I'd find out last round :-\
Brant (9:18:05 PM): Ben's just too insane
Travis (9:18:19 PM): omg I know
Travis (9:18:20 PM): wow
Travis (9:18:23 PM): too much
Brant (9:18:43 PM): He must have found a site with EVERYTHING
Brant (9:18:55 PM): And just copied everything from it
Travis (9:18:58 PM): i know, and worked for hours
Brant (9:19:29 PM): yeah, he'll be hard to beat later
Travis (9:19:37 PM): i know
Travis (9:19:42 PM): he is someone to watch for
Brant (9:23:16 PM): There's a book called the glass elevator that's a sequel to to the main one
Brant (9:23:41 PM): I'm reading the description now, lol. It looks pretty ridiculous with shape-shifting aliens and stuff
Brant (9:24:01 PM): Making me want to go to the glass elevator even more :-P
Travis (9:24:29 PM): oh weird...

Thoughts on Chat
I feel like a social failure after our chat. It's good to get to know Travis, but I think I killed the conversation with my awkwardness. I like him; he's a nice, funny guy. But why have Travis and I never been able to maintain a conversation?! Argh. We need to find some common ground so we can keep talking a while. Maybe the issue is we don't have any. But I think we do and hope we can find it. If this alliance works with my Four, he's probably going to be our #5 and we need him, so it's important for him to like to talk to me.

Chat with Travis
Brant (10:13:55 PM): See results?
Travis (10:14:24 PM): Oh yea!
Travis (10:14:29 PM): what a sigh of relief
Brant (10:15:12 PM): YES! I can't believe how close it ended up
Travis (10:15:23 PM): oh i know
Brant (10:15:50 PM): no TC tomorrow which makes things a little less stressful
Brant (10:16:20 PM): if we lost, I don't know 100% what I would have done...
Travis (10:16:26 PM): yea?
Travis (10:16:56 PM): I don't hahaha
Brant (10:17:43 PM): I'm not sure since we're all strong. I wouldn't have wanted to vote for you since you're more active in the challenges than the others
Travis (10:18:29 PM): ea, early in the game I totally base my votes on activity and ultimately avoid future TCs
Brant (10:19:11 PM): Right, and there are definitely people less active than us so I think we would have been safe unlesss something crazy happened
Brant (10:19:25 PM): It's nice for our happy tribe to stay together another day, haha
Travis (10:20:00 PM): oh for sure
Travis (10:20:21 PM): I think as long as we stay unified and focused on the challenges we have a very good chance of making merge
Brant (10:22:18 PM): Yeah, that's basically my goal. Merge and jury would be awesome
Travis (10:22:38 PM): agreed thats my focus
Brant (10:22:51 PM): Well "at least jury" I should say lol
Brant (10:23:08 PM): But jury is always fun
Brant (10:23:23 PM): Are you playing any other games right now?
Travis (10:23:31 PM): Nope just this one
Travis (10:23:33 PM): you?
Brant (10:24:10 PM): Just this 1 for now. I signed up for others, but I don't know when they will start. Probably not until the end of summer
Travis (10:24:26 PM): oh coolness
Brant (10:25:21 PM): I used to play more at a time, but now I'm trying to spread them out. You said you're easing back into ORGs?
Travis (10:25:37 PM): yes that is true :-)
Brant (10:27:18 PM): It's interesting...it seems like sometimes life happens and people go away from the ORG community for a while, but they usually come back
Brant (10:27:34 PM): I was a member of Alt and stopped playing for a year or two when the site was down
Brant (10:27:56 PM): And just started playing again around the time ORG Planet opened this past summer
Brant (10:28:58 PM): And now it's like I never left, back into it with a lot of the same people around
Travis (10:31:20 PM): I never played with you at Alt I dont think
Brant (10:32:16 PM): I feel like most of the games I played there used aliases
Brant (10:32:42 PM): And some of them ended right when the site went down so I never learned who everyone was
Brant (10:33:37 PM): Your name doesn't ring a bell from there. Most of the ones I played were around the end of that site's lifetime
Travis (10:35:11 PM): I was banned/left from the site for a while with a small group of other people who disagreed with some of the administration
Travis (10:35:31 PM): I dont really play alias games all that much
Travis (10:37:53 PM): But most of us have all made up since
Travis (10:38:03 PM): I still can't stand DJ and probably never will
Travis (10:38:14 PM): but I give him his distance whn I can
Brant (10:40:08 PM): Well I'm glad you made up with a lot of them and are back here for this game at least :-)
Brant (10:40:14 PM): I haven't really gotten to know DJ
Travis (10:41:01 PM): eh, you aint missing much ahhahha
Brant (10:41:56 PM): lol
Brant (10:42:02 PM): Alright I'm going to head out for a little
Brant (10:42:25 PM): I might be back a little later, if not I'll catch you some other time
Brant (10:42:50 PM): I'm so happy we won and don't have to have TC discussions
Brant (10:43:11 PM): And can just chill and enjoy our nights
Brant (10:43:30 PM): But nice to meet you and ttyl
Brant (10:44:03 PM): Have a good one

Thoughts on Chat
Wow, I really am such an epic failure for finally thinking that I was hitting on some good conversation topics --- and then it exploded in my face. I wonder if he recognizes me from the games we played. I'm going to pretend that I don't recognize him because I know for sure he didn't like me in past games...*sigh* At least I tried to make conversation with him and hopefully he appreciates it.

Oh and we won. Sweet. I hope it's a hard tribal council for Hornswoggler and it splits their tribe.

I figure being down to final 14 people by midnight and after having 3 rounds together, we'll have a tribe swap or something soon. So if there's one thing I should focus on today, it should be archiving information from past rounds into my confessional or into files on my computer.

I don't think I'll be around much tonight, mainly because my computer's fan has seemingly failed on my computer and the temperatures get ridiculously high, causing it to automatically shut down after being on for about 10 minutes. It also makes a very loud sound. I think I'll have the fan and heat sink replaced next week, hopefully Monday. But until then, I won't be quite as active as I usually am although I'm working on getting Internet access on my sister's old laptop to compensate. I just need to find a wireless card or adapter for it.

I backed up some minor things in case we do get new tribes tonight and you decide to hide them. But I doubt any of that will be important yet. It should be interesting to see what happens over on Hornswoggler Tribe.