Kony, 2012. Not an election campaign

[Jacktheawesome]

Bryan, I must say it's hard to take anything you say seriously with that avatar.

[Korban3]

He's right.

[Assaultman67]

Bryan, I must say it's hard to take anything you say seriously with that avatar.

Sigh,

It's been a long ongoing internal struggle that all started with one spur of the moment decision.

As you all have probably noticed (hopefully noticed ), I was off the forums for about a month due to just starting a full time job and not having internet at my temporary living place. So I managed to visit the forums eventually and I realized "Hey someone stole korban's avatar!". In a spur of the moment decision I hopped on that bandwagon and stole it as well without even understanding why it was stolen in the first place without even saving my old one. Then I realized I'm associating with the wrong crowd. ... It's hard to explain the feeling, but I'll try to explain it with another true story. (This is getting a bit "double tangenty" or even "triple tangenty" but fuck it, if you read this far, let's face it, there is about a 95% chance you're gonna read the rest even if I start to talk about how delightfully colorful parrots are ... speaking of which ... No, I'm not going there, don't get your hope up. I don't want to talk about parrots right at this particular moment, ask me later after you have bought me a proper dinner and I'm in the mood.)

When I was in high school I had a clique I sat with during lunch and one day I found that the table was full. So no problem I'll go sit elsewhere. I see my backup choice table is also full, so I think, "that's no big deal I'll just go sit with the girls" on a whim. The moment I sat down, I realized I had made a horrible mistake. Every girl there just stared at me like "What the fuck are you doing here pervert?"

This is how I felt a few hours after blindly leaping onto the "Steal korban's avatar" bandwagon. Except, understandably, much less intense.

but what can you do? Just get up and leave? That would only draw more attention to the situation? Right? Wrong.

So just as I kept sitting at the lunchroom table with the girls enduring their condescending looks and putting on my best poker face as if this is normal, I kept korban's avatar envisioning the same thing happening with you guys.

Eventually in my lunchroom story I started a conversation along the lines of:

Me: "I'm sorry, this is insanely awkward isn't it?"
Girl: "Yes, yes it is. What the fuck are you doing here?"
Me: "I ... I don't know ... When I decided to sit here It never dawned on me that general gender of a table was an important factor when choosing where to sit in a lunchroom, but it's pretty damn obvious now that I'm sitting here ... I think it's best that I leave now."

That's how the conversation went in my head. In reality it was probably more like this:

Girl: "Go the fuck away pervert!"
Me: "Ok."

And with that I left to a bunch of laughing girls and sat with the sparsely populated drug abuser/hackey sack table.

(Interestingly enough, I realize I now have a "lunchroom phobia" when I go to lunch at work ... I'm too new and don't know where to sit. I end up eating in my sad little cubicle, go back to my apartment, or go out to eat.)

Unlike the lunchroom scenario, when I chose to abandon korban's avatar, I decided strategically not to draw light to the situation.

...

Also I just now realized that this feeling could have all been summed up with:



When I went to look for my old fallback avatar, It was no longer there.

So I wandered, through the depths of folders of images on my hard drive trying to search for something that would even come close to replacing my old bearded opossum.

After going through a total of five images, I came across this one and was like "Fuck it, close enough".

Tl;Dr: I didn't save my old one.

[Jacktheawesome]

[Freshbite]

And with that I left to a bunch of laughing girls and sat with the sparsely populated drug abuser/hackey sack table.

(Interestingly enough, I realize I now have a "lunchroom phobia" when I go to lunch at work ... I'm too new and don't know where to sit. I end up eating in my sad little cubicle, go back to my apartment, or go out to eat.)

All I can say is...



... and to show that I care, I launched an investigation in hunt for your old avatar. I searched my local folders on my computer where a lot of random images gather (some of which comes from this board, mostly for instructional purposes). I searched my Imgur account and I even searched among my Fraps Screenshots.

I couldn't find a reserved copy of your avatar anywhere that I could have stored one, so I moved along to Google Caching. I found some old threads via the search tool and proceeded to use caching to get an old copy of the same page (hopefully before you switched avatar), but to no avail. The avatar is bound to your account and I could only see your new one.

It was then that I actually opened your avatar and noticed the Url.
[download/file.php?avatar=16034_1331729149.jpg]

All that it is, is a call to a database with a generated avatar-id bound to the user. I was on to something. I immediately went to Google and searched for the first part of the url, without the avatar-id, in hope of finding some form of archive with all frequently seen images.

Google Images: "download/file.php?avatar="

I was right. After a while of skimming through the page, I did find your old avatar.
However, it was not without problems. What I saw was merely a cached, slightly smaller version of the image, and not the actual file (which has been overwritten by your new avatar). I took the liberty of reuploading the cached version to Imgur.

Here it is:

http://i.imgur.com/XYVva.png

It's slightly deformed, it seems to be compressed from the original 90x90 image to the 78x78 it has now. I hope you will take it into consideration though, I would be glad to see that I didn't spend about an hour on this investigation in vain.

From a fellow forum member to another.

[Jacktheawesome]

Freshbite, you just won the internet. That is the coolest thing I've ever seen a forum member do for another.

[Korban3]

Yeah, that really is a massive amount of awesome. On a connected note, that search link turns up a thread for a custom skeleton character from Lugaru. I'm gonna try to port it over to Overgrowth. AWAY!!!! ...
Tomorrow!!!!

[Assaultman67]

Thanks, although that image was of fairly low quality to begin with.

Maybe I should change it anyway.

What do you guys think? I know that avatars become somewhat of an identity, but to be honest I kinda half assed finding one in the first place

Maybe something fairly derivative of the original concept so it doesnt completely alienate like this:

[Korban3]

Cool story bro, needs more beard.

[Jacktheawesome]

Agreed. It just doesn't have the same magic.

[Glabbit]

"Hey wow, suddenly I remember who you were" ...is what I want to say, but your behaviour had identified you long before Freshy found your avatar for you. Well done, that man.

Furthermore;
BEARD THAT SHIT UP.

[Freshbite]

What do you guys think? I know that avatars become somewhat of an identity, but to be honest I kinda half assed finding one in the first place

Maybe something fairly derivative of the original concept so it doesnt completely alienate like this:

That's sort of the style I've been going with whenever I've changed avatar. I approve.

"Hey wow, suddenly I remember who you were" ...is what I want to say, but your behaviour had identified you long before Freshy found your avatar for you.

I find this hard to believe. Would you be able to distinguish between all of us if we had no form of name connected to our posts? That is an interesting thought. I believe that atleast I would have severe problems if that were the case.

[Glabbit]

No. I would not. But Assaultman somehow seems to have some mannerisms I think I recognised.
Your scepticism is well-placed.

[Freshbite]

I believe I would have problems to distinguish between Korban and Jack... they have this same silliness about their posts, and they type in a similar way. Adwuga would be easy to spot though. I don't know about you and Bryan, that would be rather hard I think.

[Korban3]

Well, I could probably pick out Glabbit. I'd have a hard time with Bryan. I think Endoperez might be hard for me to pick out from Freshbite, except that one would only post in Randomness and one would only post outside of it.
And you could bait Endoperez out with bad sources and stories about how ineffective longsword parrying is. Or a lot of other things, to be honest Luvs.
Are me and Jack really that similar, though?