Trollback is well aware of your penchant for man-sex, but usually we are heartened to see that you can drag yourselves away long enough to post a month worth of trolling gold. Not this time; it seems that you and Bubba were having too much fun to keep up to last month's high standards.

There's no "Ask Slashdot" topic available for user journals, but I am intrigued by this reader's question, and I thought it was worth a try to tap into the collective wisdom of Slashdot.

Hi Wil,

you mentioned some time ago in your blog that you did a presentation on writing your book(s) using open source tools. Have you posted these slides (or whatever the medium was) anywhere?

Welcome to the first monthly edition of Trollback for 2004. This edition has been a pleasure to put together, thanks to the sheer quantity of quality posts presented in The List.

omfg ror lolf

You made the top ten list!

No PointsName Hp [max]
1 20342 Morc-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in Sokoban on level 6 [max 9].
Killed by an owlbear. - [79]
2 15917 Morc-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in The Dungeons of Doom on level 12.
Killed by a xan. - [68]
3 4171 Morc-Wiz-Orc-Mal-Cha died in The Dungeons of Doom on level 6.
Killed by a water elemental. - [59]

As a general rule, here is what to do if you are confronted by the police in the US:

Trollback is here with the last montly edition of Trollback to cover 2003. Trollback will post a year in review edition in the coming days, which will review some of the highlights of the year, as Trollback saw them.

The trollback team has struggled to put together the review. Trollback has a fair idea of what will make it and what will not, but would certainly like to hear from the community as to what the highlights were for you.

RetroCRUSH is a pop culture website run my my friend Robert Berry.

From bOINGbOING:

Rusty is a trollback fan

Trollback has many spies, and some of the more pallid, greasy ones keeps a close eye on IRC. One of our spies managed to unstick his keys long enough to alert us to this:

Someone left this in my blog. It must be seen to be believed.

The hilarious (and scary) thing is, the dialogue it generates is right on par with the stuff they used to give us to say.

I made it into the Hollywood Reporter!!

It's a very positive article, and it's nice to read something about me in the entertainment press that isn't framed in a negative light:

O'Reilly put out a press release to announce my deal with them!

This is pretty damn cool:

I posted this announcement at my lame website, but I'm so excited about it, I'm gonna repost it here:

I have totally signed a three book deal with a major publisher. O'Reilly and Associates, to be precise.

Okay, I'm totally trying to play it all cool, but . . .

HOLY MOTHER OF CRAP!! WOOOO!!!!!! ROCK!

YEAH!!! KICK ASS BABY!!! UNGH!!! UNGH!!!

Over at bOINGbOING, Cory Doctorow writes:

I guess this has made the e-mail rounds before, but it's new to me. I think it's hilarious.

(thanks to Shaun for the e-mail!)
Windows and The Borg

Picard: "Mr. LaForge, have you had any success with your attempts at finding a weakness in the Borg? And Mr. Data, have you been able to access their command pathways?"

Geordi: "Yes, Captain. In fact, we found the answer by searching through our archives on late Twentieth-century computing technology."