Congratulations to arkis for more than 32K reCAPTCHA solutions. Truly amazing.

Actually, I'm impressed with everyone who's been able to do tens of thousands of these. But I also have to admit that I find it a bit soothing some evenings just typing in words, sitting here while the snow is falling, with a fire in the fireplace, and nothing but re-runs on the TV. Am I strange, or anyone else agree?


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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

Both. (I am strange myself, hehe...)
And I agree except for the snow part, haven't seen more than a few flakes yet. ;-(
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Arrrrr! I'm a proud member o' the pirates' ship crew BOINC@Heidelberg

Guess I'm a bit strange, too. Typing in the words was definitely a relief when taking a break from grading student papers (and sadly, too often easier to decipher).


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Guess I'm a bit strange, too. Typing in the words was definitely a relief when taking a break from grading student papers (and sadly, too often easier to decipher).

Guess I'm a bit strange, too. Typing in the words was definitely a relief when taking a break from grading student papers (and sadly, too often easier to decipher).

So rewrite the Turk for grading the papers then. ;-)
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Jord.

The BOINC FAQ Service.

So rewrite the Turk for grading the papers then. ;-)

In ancient times we had dice!
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Dragons can fly because they don't fit into pirate ships

I like using the "Stair Method" of grading...

Label five ascending steps from 'F' to 'A'; stand at the top (or on the sixth step); toss stack of papers/assignments into the air; collect papers/assignments by step an apply grade!


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ARRRGGHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 10.000 Turk and I was now Number 5 of the TOP TURKS.

Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

Something major seems to have happened...I am missing 150 turks done over the weekend, and this appears to be the case for several people on the turk list. Indeed, SEARCHER had posted about breaking the 11,000 mark over the weekend, but now has only 10,800 and the post is nowhere to be seen?

Was a restore made that wiped out the last day or two?
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Wormholio put in a new hard drive in the server over the weekend. Last night, after he finished moving lots of files over, the database crashed. So we lost some 20 hours as he put a backup back from before that time. I lost 134 turks, myself.

But he told me earlier today that he still has the logs of what transpired over the weekend and that he will try to write a script that will take out any mention of who did what to the Mech Turk and update the DB with that. So the work may not be lost. Just have patience. :-)

I'm sure he'll be writing something about it when classes are finished, later today.
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Jord.

The BOINC FAQ Service.

WHAT TO THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE ???

I think as I come Home now and I see my Credit Stats on my Profile. But then I see here by the Message Board the last 2 Postings.
So I Thank you very much Scott Brown for your Post and you see this so quickly here.
And Thank you too for Stainless Cutlass for the quickly Answer of Scott Browns Post.
Now I feel better and I wait for a while, that the Credit Stats become a new Update. Thank you Crew.

Bye SEARCHER


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Member of CHARITY TEAM

Thanks to Stainless Cutlass for reporting the status of the problem. I was out all day away from the computer. We made the transition to the new disk drive last week, with no problems, but this weekend I was moving some things to larger partitions, and the DB partition got trashed, so we had to fall back to the last snapshot. A few forum posts were losts, and about 1000 turk credits. But since I have a separate log of the turk credits I belive I can bring them back. Just give me time to write a script to do that. Which likely means next weekend, not anytime this week. Whew.

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

In the mean time you can just add to the Turk without any problems. What Turk credits you lost will eventually be added again. There's no need to wait until that is fixed, unless you did your last turks over the weekend of course. ;-)
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Jord.

The BOINC FAQ Service.

Thanks Jord and Cap'n. Glad to hear that it was the transition to the new hard drive rather than the continuing (and possibly) worsening demise of the old one.

Anyway, I got to gather my 10th 'piece-of-eight' again, which by the logic of some of the graduate student statistics exercises that I graded this evening means that I got paid twice???...which of course brings us back on topic regarding enjoyment of the Turk! ;-)

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Anyway, I got to gather my 10th 'piece-of-eight' again, which by the logic of some of the graduate student statistics exercises that I graded this evening means that I got paid twice???...which of course brings us back on topic regarding enjoyment of the Turk! ;-)

Something is slowing the turk down enormously. At times I am either waiting for the solutions to go away, or waiting for the new solution to show up. I also have times where it first draws the recaptcha window, then goes waiting for the words to come in.

So I don't know if it's Pirates being slow or the recaptcha site being slow, or a combination of the two.
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Jord.

The BOINC FAQ Service.

Something is slowing the turk down enormously. At times I am either waiting for the solutions to go away, or waiting for the new solution to show up. I also have times where it first draws the recaptcha window, then goes waiting for the words to come in.

So I don't know if it's Pirates being slow or the recaptcha site being slow, or a combination of the two.

So that also counts for the "Database is unavailable" messages we get from time to time?

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Jord.

The BOINC FAQ Service.

So that also counts for the "Database is unavailable" messages we get from time to time?

Hello Cap`n,
Hello Crew,

I want only know, when the Problem from last Week is finished ? I not see now my loosed 200 Turks from last Week and I think by Scott Brown was same, he missing 150 Turks from last Weekend. We can become this Turks back or loosed this Turks now ??. Thank you for Answers.

SEARCHER


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Member of CHARITY TEAM

The missing turk credits from last week should now be restored.

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

Thank'ye Cap'n!

Thank you Cap`n,
thank you Crew,

for restored the loosed Turks and your many Work for do that.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AARRRGGGHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 12.000 Turk and I was now Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

But I also have to admit that I find it a bit soothing some evenings just typing in words, sitting here while the snow is falling, with a fire in the fireplace, and nothing but re-runs on the TV. Am I strange, or anyone else agree?

AARRRGGGHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 13.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AARRGGHH, SEARCHER busted now the 14.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

Hello Ian Burns,
now the Page is okay same before, and you can look this TOP TURKS too.
Number 149 was Mark Gallaher from USA and Number 150 was Jason from USA too.

Have a nice Day and Greatings

Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

Any reason why my Turks don't count?
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Any reason why my Turks don't count?

AARRGGHH, SEARCHER busted now the 15.000 Turk and I was now Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AARRGGHH, SEARCHER busted now the 16.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AARRGGHH, SEARCHER busted now the 17.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS and I become my 12 Silver " Pieces of Eight " Coin. My Dozen Silver Coins " Pieces of Eight " was full now. Very very big Smiling.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AARRGGHH, SEARCHER busted now the 18.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AARRGGHH, SEARCHER busted now the 19.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.



Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AARRGGHH, SEARCHER busted now the 20.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.



Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AARRGGHH, SEARCHER busted now the 21.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.



Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAARRRGGGHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 22.000 Turk and I was now, the new Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.



Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAARRRGGGHHH, SEARCHER WAS BACK,

and busted now the 23,000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.



Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAARRRGGGHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 24.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.



Aye and Bye SEARCHER
____________
Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAARRRGGGHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 25.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.



Aye and Bye SEARCHER
____________
Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAARRRGGGHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 26.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.



Aye and BYE SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 27.000 Turk and I was now, the new Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.




Aye and Bye SEARCHER
____________
Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAARRRGGGHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 28.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.




Aye and Bye SEARCHER
____________
Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 29.000 Turk and I was now, the new Number 2 of the TOP TURKS.




Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

Arrrgghhh Cap'n. Would ye be toying with the Turk? Twer but 14 of me mates on the top list just now? Maybe just blokes like me who'd turk'd abit recently?


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Maybe just blokes like me who'd turk'd abit recently?

It's impressive that Rusty has been interested enough to sniff around and collect 2 'Pieces of Eight' .-)

Wonder when will he fall out of the table.
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Peter .-)

Maybe just blokes like me who'd turk'd abit recently?

It's impressive that Rusty has been interested enough to sniff around and collect 2 'Pieces of Eight' .-)
Wonder when will he fall out of the table?

The top turks list has been modified to only show those who've been active recently, but no credits or pieces of eight have been lost. Anyone who does even one turk task will have their full total scores shown on the list again, at least for a while.

I've solved some 10 more unknown words, let's see the table in 1-2 days...

I dont' know if anybody has been watching the Mechanical Turk scores lately, but you may want to take a look. Woody Woodpecker is getting close to his 14th piece of eight, which is an amazing feat.

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

13 piece of eight brings me bad luck so I need one more...

2^16 turks!

Nice work Woody Woodpecker, congratulations!

/me thinks you should go for #15 ;)

I might go for #15 if somebody else goes for #14 ;-)

The New York times on-line edition has a facility where you can send a link to an article to someone you know via e-mail, along with a short message. This has been available for a while, but I just noticed that they are now using reCAPTCHA to insure that the form is being used by a real person.

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 30.000 Turk and I was Number 4 of the TOP TURKS.



Aye and Bye SEARCHER



P.S. Good Job Woody Woodpecker, but I like 13 Piece of Eight and more too.
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 31.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER


P.S. Number 13 Piece of Eight I was coming for crab you.
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 32.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER


P.S. Number 13 Piece of Eight I see you.
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER grab now the 13 Piece of Eight.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
____________
Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER grab now the 13 Piece of Eight.

AYE CAP`N,

so let`s start to the next Work and to the next Piece of Eight.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 33.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER


P.S. My lucky 13 Piece of Eight stay now by me. For this good Luck I will drink a big Bottle of Jamaica Rum. Cheers and Prost to all here.
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

15 Pieces Of Eight, not so bad :-)!

I am truly humbled by your accomplishment...and your fingers must really hurt at this point! :)
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Just curious. Is the turk case sensitive? I'd hate to be bothering with the shift button if I don't have to.

Just curious. Is the turk case sensitive? I'd hate to be bothering with the shift button if I don't have to.

I noticed it's tolerant of a few mistakes, too. Which is good because some of those things look like incoherent chicken scratch.

After looking at the purpose of the turk, wouldn't it be better to type it in with the proper case? Wouldn't that help for converting books? Or, would the software be smart enough to use proper case?
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6r39 7r199

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 34.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

Wouldn't that help for converting books? Or, would the software be smart enough to use proper case?

I thought part of the point was helping the software become smart enough to determine the proper case.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 35.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

Congratulations SEARCHER!

-Woody

Hello Woody Woodpecker, thank you very much, but you make a very great Job too.

Big Smiling, but I not only look you Woody, I will follow you too.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 36.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 37.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
____________
Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 38.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

A lot of names have dissapeared from the Top turks list. As of right now there are only 27 listed, even Wormholio is missing. Does this clean up inactive users? Or is something fishy happening on this ship?

Inflation Theory has caused much of this project to disappear.
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Inflation Theory, or Econophysics. Or both. Or neither.
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Click and enter your name for your BOINC Statistics

----------------------------

reCAPTCHA captured by Google

http://tinyurl.com/mz6ss9

----------------------------


____________

California Earthquake 10/23/89
QCN

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 39.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 40.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 41.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 42.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

I have noticed that the puzzles for the reCAPTCHA are now slightly more complicated. They superimpose blobs of contrasting color to make it more difficult. But while it makes it more difficult for a human to solve the puzzle, I wonder if it really makes it harder for a computer?

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

where is the counting of whether the answer was right or false?

And I miss my 99 silver in the Top-score list....

Why the 'machine' is not counting?

greetz littleBouncer

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Not sure about that...but unfortunately, it seems that there may be two patterns to correctly solve the reCAPTCHA's without completing the entire word set:

1) Numbers appear to always be the unknown element. When a word and numeric (or monetary) figure appear together as the two items, typing the word will always be correct.

2) Typing only the longer (i.e., most letters) word appears to yield the correct entry most if not all of the time.

Anyone else notice this (or other) pattern(s)?




____________

where is the counting of whether the answer was right or false?

And I miss my 99 silver in the Top-score list....

Not sure about that...but unfortunately, it seems that there may be two patterns to correctly solve the reCAPTCHA's without completing the entire word set:

1) Numbers appear to always be the unknown element. When a word and numeric (or monetary) figure appear together as the two items, typing the word will always be correct.

2) Typing only the longer (i.e., most letters) word appears to yield the correct entry most if not all of the time.

Anyone else notice this (or other) pattern(s)?

Can any body confirm these observations? Has anybody noticed any other patterns that represent a weakness in the CAPTCHA?

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 43.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.



Aye and Bye SEARCHER
____________
Member of CHARITY TEAM

Scott Brown wrote:

Not sure about that...but unfortunately, it seems that there may be two patterns to correctly solve the reCAPTCHA's without completing the entire word set:

1) Numbers appear to always be the unknown element. When a word and numeric (or monetary) figure appear together as the two items, typing the word will always be correct.

2) Typing only the longer (i.e., most letters) word appears to yield the correct entry most if not all of the time.

Anyone else notice this (or other) pattern(s)?

In the spirit of testing things, this is great. The reCAPTCHA is one of the strongest CAPTCHA's but if it has a 'tell' then it would be good to know. Can any body confirm these observations? Has anybody noticed any other patterns that represent a weakness in the CAPTCHA?

Wormholio wrote:

Scott Brown wrote:

1) Numbers appear to always be the unknown element. When a word and numeric (or monetary) figure appear together as the two items, typing the word will always be correct.

2) Typing only the longer (i.e., most letters) word appears to yield the correct entry most if not all of the time.

Can any body confirm these observations? Has anybody noticed any other patterns that represent a weakness in the CAPTCHA?

1) I have had continued success for #1 above--numbers are always the unknown element. I have never had this fail.

2) The longer word scenario noted in #2 above isn't exactly true (or at least universal). The more specific pattern is that words with 2 or 3 letters are never the correct answer. I have tested this by both ignoring the 2-/3-letter words, and typing only the longer word always yields a correct solution.

3) Although quite rare to encounter, it appears that entries with punctuation may also be the unknown elements (not completely sure about these).

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 44.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, SEARCHER busted now the 45.000 Turk and I was Number 3 of the TOP TURKS.


Aye and Bye SEARCHER
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Member of CHARITY TEAM

Woody is back!

I guess I'll turk until the captain finds more suitable tasks, seem to have lost me credits from years ago ... time to steady me fingers!
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That's what I'm doing...just a decent way to kill time, although I don't have much to kill. >.<

I'd like to crunch some actual numbers sometime, too. For now, captchas are fine. At least it's helping something.
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Pirates of Penn's Forest...arrrr, aight?