This week on the Inquirer Forum

[You see, dear readers, we have this forum at The Inquirer and it's not like the usual thing at all. Oh no. And Sid Viscous has volunteered to do an executive summary on a weekly basis and this will give you a pretty sound idea what they are. And because it's in Microsoft Word, the links are hard to figure out, but hey - just go to < a href="http://www.delphi.com/theinquirer" target="_new">the forum and dive in. As the Lord Provost of Aberdeen said to me about the sea water swimming pool - most people found it too cold and so we demolished it. Hermit is the moderator of our forum... MM]

"Yes, sounds about as appealing as a week old warm fish milkshake." AL_V Poll Roundup
If Josh (Cupid_Stunt) was forum moder... If Josh were the Inquirer Moderator, we'd be gunning for him…. Literally.

Is Josh old enough to drink? Josh may not be old enough to drink, but if he belly's up to the bar, we'll put up with him.

Is Mikey too old to drink? And by a landslide, Mikey seems to have a drinking problem. (No not that kind)

Are 8AM Monday Meetings Evil? And in this weeks surprise outcome, early Monday morning meetings are not generally liked. We think Hermie may have been doing a little ballot stuffing, trying to up the happily unemployed vote. Should Peg be the Inq forum mascot. Too close to call.

Welcome FNG's
CNSPIRCYFRK was the most notable of the FNG's this week. Jumping in with both feet early last week, and coming out only mildly scalded. He made the typical new guy mistake of actually asking a computer related question. The OOFG regulars straightened him out right quick, and he picked up and followed right along. Don't worry CNSPIRCYFRK, you'll figure out what IT is someday.

MMBDERKSEN Popped in with a few good posts. Amazingly, he took right to the forum like a duck to water. A little research, turns out he's an Aussie so not much of a surprise there.

SCATA Came in smoothly with a computer related post Is it just me? That offered absolutely no useful information, and managed to offend at least 6 distinct groups. Rather impressive for an FNG. The regulars turned it into cars briefly, after discussing filthy keyboards for far to long. This thread eventually turned into the Infamous Hedgehog's in speedo's thread. Remember you heard it here first folks.

Weekly Folly
Of course we had a slight glitch in the Forum Tuesday. Wuz it just me. There was much rejoicing. There was also a marked increase in certain notable stocks, which promptly fell a few hours later. A couple of threads popped up discussing some of the difficulties we were experiencing. Herr Doktor remarked, "I reckon we ain't getting 250+ posts an hour here" Is it just me #2? Don't be so sure Bubby. What we lack in quality, we make up for in quantity.

Kat Haikus TAMEALIEN decided to grace us with his literary talents of the Japanese poetry persuasion. A variety of members contributed their "best". A few of the regulars tried to move the thread to the traditional cars topic. The poetry pansies persisted, but in the end the macho gear-heads had more staying power.

Next OOFG - The Out of Focus Group™. The English branch of the OOFG continued to plan their next meeting Things went along well for a while, until e-kenmac (SKAFFMAN) brought up oyster beer, things degraded quickly. Then all hell broke loose when G. returned from a long weekend with his bit of Fluff in the land of snails. He seemed to be in a much better mood from the previous week (wouldn't be difficult). We suspect the weekend wasn't a total loss.

Another Record: BEWNIE posted for the third time, by the third person this thing. I think we can pretty much safely assume it's a link worth visiting.

Labour exclude bill to extend drinking G., for it is he, pulled in with a political thread, seems to have created an Inq Forum record. The thread stayed on topic for at least 60 posts, with nary a vehicle of any kind in site. Then frnht451 did a full kat non-sequitor, which then lasted fully until post 89, where I offhandedly mentioned my truck, which did not take at all. But thanks to the Big H (Hermit at hoodview (HOODVIEW) we found a new topic of interest to us all. Mimes, and how much we would like to kill them.

Over in I wish... SDMAHANEY shows us just how nuts he is. Building a car in his basement, something small and inexpensive. Got news for ya wacky. Try the used car dealer down the street. Everybody's gotta re-invent the wheel.

Is Josh old enough to drink? Mr. Magee (mike.magee@btinternet.com (MIKEMAGEE)) our glorious leader started the most patronized thread of the week (and possibly ever). It stayed semi-on topic a fair bit (18 posts), until this reporter (and I use the term veeerrryy loosely) mentioned something about his truck (can I get some votes on Peg being the Inq Forum mascot). In the interest of brevity, I'll give a quick timeline.

Posts 1 - 18 Booze and drinking.
Posts 18 - 69 SIDVISCOUS mentions his truck (briefly) and his mental stability is called into question, a brief encounter with animals that go wild, continue on with trucks, cars, The Dukes of Hazzard, boats and general macho type stuff. The booze never quite left our minds or hearts though.

Posts 69 - 78 Back onto the booze, carding and age in general.

Posts 79 - 83 SIDVISCOUS sanity is called into question again.

Posts 83 - 93 Taxes and general Waffle. SGF2 starts the bidding at one porcupine for yours truly. Based upon numerous posts by SGF2, we are all considering the possibility that she has a strange fascination with small, heavyset rodent like mammals.

Posts 94 - 98 Storage, and body disposal.

Posts 99- 112 Big corporate conglomerates.

Posts 111 - 128 e-kenmac (SKAFFMAN) brings up the weather. It's hot out! Funny, I hadn't noticed.

Posts 128 - 137 Thank god, we are back on to cars for a while.

Posts 138 - 249 TAMEALIEN brings up squirrel hunting. This turns into a marathon on guns shooting, and CUPID_STUNT poor taste in online video games. Well his poor taste in general.

Posts 234 - 241 We dabbled into a brief bout of sexual harassment, thanks to SDMAHANEY. (Not to forget that frnht451 first offended our lovely lass in Bad scientific jokes)

Posts 250 - 259 We brought aircraft into the mix

Posts 260 - 267 Tall structures.

Posts 268 - 276 Back to guns, and if there is a God in heaven it's over.

On Wednesday NewOriginal created a few additional group. Personally I thought one was a brilliant idea. Booze , Sid's truck , Out Of Focus Group .

Who better to ask than youse all Started back on the 14th with a search for the perfect Margarita. It turned into the hot topic on Thursday. Of course in true Inq Forum fashion, by this point it had nothing to do with the original post. Along the way the Euro, and the European union became the topic. Now I have read over the thread 15 times, if I've done it once, and I have no idea how we got there. However we got there, everybody was talking on Thursday. G, Flashman (THEFLASHMAN), NewOriginal, and surprisingly CUPID_STUNT (aka. Beavis) put out some interesting, concise, well thought out, political drivel. Shockingly, for a political discussion, nobody's mind was changed, and nothing truly useful came out of the discourse.

All in all, an active week. Plenty of insults thrown, a giggle here and there, and most importantly we did what we did best. Turned any serious topic on the IT industry into total blather.µ

[Our thanks to Sid Viscous for wasting his time, Ed.]