
Welcome to the FidoNet Winter Olympics
by Dave Bealer

The television networks couldn't wait four years for another great
Olympics marketing opportunity, so they're spacing them two years
apart now.  For those who have the BBS bug so bad that no CRT in
their home is without a connection to a computer and a modem, here
are some alternative events which will be taking place online.

5K Cross Posting
- Competitors race to post an annoying pyramid scheme message in all
  the echoes, newsgroups and conferences available on FidoNet boards.
  The total number of outraged, bandwidth wasting replies is taken
  into account.
  
Nodelist Flag Jumping
- trying to clear a blizzard of new nodelist flags.  Flags for the
  new terbo-charged water-cooled modems; flags to tell you about the 
  sysop: hair color; eye color; belly button - inney or outey?  Soon
  you will need a 120 MB hard disk just for the nodelist.

28.8K Bi-directional File Slinging
- competitors preserve their upload/download ratios by using a new
  bi-directional file transfer protocol to upload a few megabytes of
  old laundry lists while downloading the latest virtual reality game.

Rules Slalom
- the gold medalist in this event will be the first user to weave his
  way through the maze of access rules at his local FidoNet BBS.

Giant Rules Slalom
- the gold medalist in this event will be the first user to weave his
  way through the maze of state and local privacy and obscenity laws.
  Professionals (lawyers) are prohibited from competing.

Super G-Man
- competitors attempt to use secure public-key encryption on their
  messages without being busted by the Feds for making eavesdropping
  difficult.

Downhill
- where the maturity level of Fido is headed (and we're not talking
  physical age). 
  
Conference Moguls
- those wacky, wonderful moderators get their turn in the spotlight.
  Attacking and defending existing echoes is the name of the game.

Freestyle Aerials
- creative methods of gaining satellite access to cut echoes.

Know-It-All Combined
- a monumental gathering of the most opinionated 80% of FidoNet
  users -  the ones with about 5% of the net's total knowledge.

Horse Hockey
- this stuff will be flying fast and furious in many of the echoes.

Speed Skating Around the Topic
- the gold medalists will cram the most off-topic material into
  their posts while not being tossed off the echo.

Figurative Skating
- The echoes will be thick with analogies in this contest.  None
  of the analogies will have the slightest thing to do with 
  the topic at hand - or the message's subject line.

Anyone who spends two weeks reading about these events on FidoNet
will see about as much actual sports footage as those who spent two
weeks watching the CBS coverage of the real Winter Olympics.    {RAH}
--------------
Dave Bealer is a thirty-something mainframe systems programmer who
works with CICS, MVS and all manner of nasty acronyms at one of the
largest heavy metal shops on the East Coast.  He shares a waterfront
townhome in Pasadena, MD. with two cats who annoy him endlessly as he
writes and electronically publishes RAH.    FidoNet> 1:261/1129
Internet: dave.bealer@rah.clark.net

