Holy smokes!  You'll never guess what happened to me this morning!  After writing up the two LAN Minutes below, I rushed home this morning to take care of a suspected server issue -- since it wasn't my lunch time yet, Isis didn't have anything prepared for me, so she asked if I would like a grilled-cheese...  She made a great sandwich, I sat down and took a bite then noticed there was a face starring up at me, it was the face of baby Myles!  I was in shock!!  Although hard to make out in this amateur photo taken at 10:30am, you can see the features of baby Myles face!  Praise the Lord above!!  I have put this holy-miracle-phenomenon on eBay...  You too will have the glorious chance to bid on this fine item, bidding starts at $20,000.00 US since my sandwich is fresher than Buddy's "Virgin Mary Grilled-Cheese Holy Sandwich Phenomenon" thing.

God reads Abattoir.Net -- in the time it took to post the LAN Minutes update below, the value of the "Virgin Mary Grilled-Cheese Holy Sandwich Phenomenon" has just dropping from $16,600.00 to $7,600.00  This happened in the last 20 seconds !!  It's like a miracle!  I'll be selling this LAN Minutes on eBay later this month.  Perhaps someone in Florida will buy it.

Unless you've been living under a rock (...or in Beeton...), there's a good chance you've heard about the latest test in human gullibility sponsored by eBay...  Remember when my chat log with the president of Exahost went up for sale on eBay and actually had buyers bid on it?  I thought that was a testament to dumb, but check out what some moron in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida has cooked up -- yes, it's half a grilled-cheese sandwich with a bite out of it that was made ten years ago.  No joke (...well, that depends on where you sit on the matter I suppose...).  Apparently he made himself a grilled-cheese, "when I took a bite out of it, I saw a face looking up at me, It was Virgin Mary starring back at me, I was in total shock!"  Shock's not the word I would use, but whatever...  Time and time again he references the sandwich as a phenomenon since "the item has not been preserved or anything, It has been keep in a plastic case, not a special one that seals out air or potential mold or bacteria, it is like a miracle!"  No...  It's not like a miracle, it's more like proof you shouldn't eat process cheese you ass-hat.  Either way, eBay item #5535890757 as of this point of writing has locked in over $16,500.00 US with another 4 days left on the bidding.  I say good for him, if some religious featherbrain out there is stupid enough to buy this, I say take his money then laugh at him.  For sixteen grand you could make over 64,000 grilled-cheese sandwiches and feed a small country...  Or you could put this in your fridge and pray to it, either one's good. *bangs head*

Time to bring James Bond and Austin Powers together, looks like Lockheed Martin Space Systems is getting close to introducing its new Missile Laser Defence system for commercial aircraft -- yes, soon you can enjoy the comforts of knowing your Boeing 747 is nose-armed with a megawatt-class COIL chemical laser system fueled by a syrup mix of hydrogen, oxygen and salts (...Basic Hydrogen Peroxide...); it's capable of destroy ballistic missiles racing at your flight by instantly locking onto the baseball-sized object coming at you in excess of 6,000km/h and heating it to burst point in seconds...  Okay, so what if it's a tennis-ball sized rocket heading at your flight in excess of 6,000km/h and it misses for a second -- who's hot-dog gets toasted then?  "I don't know dear, I was just walking downtown and suddenly felt very feverish; then my Fedora popped into flames."  Quite a neat write-up on Space.com, take a peek if you have that significant other who's a real hard person to shop for at Christmas.  (more)

Mail Call!  We received a letter which posed an interesting idea, an idea that we've hashed around the Abattoir from time to time -- Member Minutes, sorta' sounds like Air Miles (...lasers not included...) but different; although we have the Abattoir.BBs for the public to make their voice heard, an Abattoir.Net Supporting Member was wondering if he would be able to write a "LAN Minutes UpDate" for Abattoir.Net...  Sure!  Why not?  If you have something happening that you want to let everyone know about and you think it would fit in the Minutes, or perhaps you just want to banter then send us your LAN Minutes along with any graphic you might have (full rez, none edited) and our crack team of Editors will critique it so bad that you'll develop a complex...  or we might publish it on Abattoir.Net, either one.  Keep your LAN Minutes entry one paragraph long and no more than 250 words if you can.  If we run your LAN Minutes on Abattoir.Net, you can take home a wonderful "I kicked-ass @ the Abattoir" Official tee-shirt!  Send your creative entry to minutes@abattoir.net.

Well lookie, lookie here...  It seems Abattoir.Net's BTM45 "Frag4Food" Drive made the news across southern Ontario!  On Monday morning following the BTM, Kevin Frankish of CityTV's Breakfast Television mentioned Abattoir.Net while reporting on weekend happenings -- I wrote to Kevin on Sunday evening and included a picture of all the food that was donated at BTM45's "Frag4Food" Drive, he read the whole email live, a snippet of which; "We host a rather small LAN Party (30 people) but take a look at the donations that arrived – I just wanted to take a moment to thank all our players; your generosity is appreciated in spades! If a small house party of 30 guests can pull together over 240 cans of food for The Daily Bread Food Bank, then I would throw the challenge out to all other LAN Party event coordinators to top us! Let’s make sure no one goes hungry this holiday season…".  Kevin and Liza gave the Abattoir quite a praise for our community good will...  So once again, everyone from BTM45, the team at BT also tells you to take a bow!  I've approached CityTV's Program Director in a bid to acquire a copy of the November 8th Breakfast Television broadcast since I missed it, we'll let you know how that comes.  Now we can officially say "Abattoir.Net - As seen on TV".

Mail Call!  It's not just the Abattoir using our postal service to send surprises...  We had a little package arrive here today containing a slew of awesome baby clothes for Myles, thanks guys, he loves them all!  A wonderful letter was enclosed which ended "...we can't wait to come and visit.  We also have some good news to share.  We're going to become parents too come May 17th!"  The letter was from Jeff (Viking/Madball) Walker and Kristie (PMS) Walker (Kobrynowicz); long time Abattoir readers would recall, Viking and I became friends many moons ago after blowing each others heads all over the dungeon walls repeatedly in Quake on a server we both frequented...  Viking invited us to New Jersey for their wedding when he latched on to the stunning Kristie back in Aug 2001 -- Congratulations guys!  We knew it was coming *ahem* that's great news...  Too bad Myles will have over a years advance training in Doom3 and Unreal2 before Kristie introduces MiniYours, my kid's going to kick your kids' ass!  Ah...  Good times.

Tomorrow marks a very important day -- as we gather at a BTM LAN Party to shoot each other with rocket launchers, shotguns, sniper-rifles, mines and grenades we laugh and yell at the thrill of the kill while explosions rage around us; it almost seems sick to get a charge out of it after you approach a Vet to buy your Remembrance Day Poppy; their account of our game play fun was all too personal and very much real...  I bought a second Poppy after loseing the first I bought two days before from one of nicest gentleman you could meet; he's stationed at Costco in Mississauga near the corner of Mavis and Britannia right in the main doors.  He offered to pin my Poppy on, I refused saying "it's okay, I'll just stab at myself a few times, it'll find it's way...  anyway, pales in comparison to what you boys went though."  He smiled back, then reached for the Poppy and began to weave it through my coat lapel, he bent the pin on the end just a tad "...this will keep it from falling off when you drive, you have to watch out for the seat belt."  He smiled and I shook his hand; he was like an instant grandpa...  I just wanted to stand there in Costco's entrance and ask him what it was all like; I just can't imagine the stories.  Please take a moment tomorrow to remember and never forget, the unreal sacrifices made by our Vets; thanks boys, we owe you more than can be said in a small paragraph on a small website.

Show us your cans, indeed!  This weekend kicked off BTM Season, and we brought it in with a full house  blast-fest!  We can't thank our patrons enough for their generosity, you brought a tear to our eyes!  We asked everyone coming to bring a can or more of food to kick-off our "Frag4Food" drive, with all goods going to The Daily Bread Food Bank, each can scored you a ticket and we drew for a DVD player donated to the Abattoir by the great folks at AVDeals.com -- We asked, you listened and did you ever come through for us!  Just look at the pile of chow that showed...  We collected over 250 cans of food ranging from Chunky Soup to baby food to "Bamboo Shoots" (WTF?) -- for a LAN Party of about 30 people, I think that's pretty damned impressive!  Extra thanks go out to David (Bitch'n'Heat) Grima who showed with over 45 cans and Jason (Silent Bob) Rees who piled over 20 cans into the cause...  You can all take a well deserved bow, you've helped feed many a family -- Kudos, gang!

As usual, all the excitement was caught on camera and has been placed in the BTM Folder on the SuperFTP Server...  We'll be adding the HiDEF video footage too, but I think we'll have to sample it down a tad first.  As previously mentioned, the Abattoir.Net Compendium DVD Box Sets have been received by our Supporting Members, but there was another little surprise encoded within -- an easter-egg was placed on the 3rd DVD!  The Special Features DVD (...once you found the easter-egg...) instructed you to email easter-eggs@abattoir.net with the subject title "Soda is a loser!" as soon as you found it -- congratulations to Luke (Horus) Baltus who found it first and claimed his prize at the BTM, a nice little Case Logic CD/DVD Vault.  Keep posted to Abattoir.Net for the announcement of BTM46's date.

Our little surprise is out of the bag now...  On October 30th - 2004, over 4 months of work was packaged in bubble-wrap envelopes and shipped out across the land to every unsuspecting supporting member of Abattoir.Net; It was our way of saying "Thank-You" for your support... Enclosed in the Abattoir.Net Compendium 2 was 20 gigs of goodies spanning three DVDs for Unreal Tournament 2004 -- this collection contains 15 Assault maps, 371 Deathmatch maps, 141 Onslaught maps, 14 Bombing Run maps, 191 Capture the Flag maps, 13 Double Domination maps, 50 Vehicle CTF maps, 150 new skins and even includes 10 Unreal Tournament MODs and the latest patches... With the Compendium installed, there's little chance an UT2K4 player would ever be downloading a map at a LAN party! On DVD3 we included some great bonus features from happenings around the Abattoir this year, like DieJestor blowing his hand off at the cottage with a rocket, all caught in HiDEF -- also, watch a wicked video of CorpsE whale on 666 BOTs in 9:11sec all sped-up and put to music... Each and every Compendium 2 DVD box set is serial number stamped, embossed and registered to that supporting member... If you received a Compendium DVD box set, hold on to your serial number.  Once again, thank-you for your support!

Want more info on the Abattoir.Net Compendium02 DVD Box Set?  Want your very own copy (...free of course!..)  Check-out compendium02.abattoir.net where 98.3% of what you've just read is repeated (but there's more pictures and stuff).

Oh my!  It's time to polish your rocket launcher (...get your mind out of the gutter...) because BTM45 "Compendium" Edition is almost here!  The long Summer wait is over, BTM Season is now open and this weekend we'll be seeing the frags flying like never before -- there's always a buzz in the air when BTM week hits.  Since the Christmas Season will quickly be upon us too, we're going to ask our great patrons to do a little extra for us on this BTM; we're having a "Frag4Food" drive...  Every attendee to BTM45 (...spectator or not...) are being asked to bring a can of food -- all food collected will be delivered to the Daily Bread Food Bank where it is desperately needed...  Let's make sure we feed each other rockets, but not forget those among us who are less fortunate.  Each can of food you bring gives you one draw ticket -- we'll draw one ticket from the hat, that winner gets to pick a prize envelope that will contain the number of the prize in the Abattoir.Net SwagMag that you've won; you can bring as many cans as you like (...of course...) so pad your chances and fill a hungry tummy at the same time.  Notices are going out tonight to all registrants...

Did everyone have a spooky Halloween?  We sure did!  (...kinda...)  We're just wondering, how old was the oldest person who showed at your door?  When is someone too old to go out trick-or-treating?  We had one pair show at our door that were so old I asked them if they wanted the Mr.Big Chocolate Bar or a Beer; here's a little advise for those of you who are over the age of 16 and still wish to cash in on Halloween bootie -- if you come to my door, you had better be in a costume, you had better be extra polite, and for the love of God, put your friggin' cigarette out before you ring my bell.  Either way, it was a great night and the "kids" had fun!  Little Myles didn't go out of course, since he's only 6 months old, but he did pose for a photo opt.