My House is Bigger!

Here's a pathetic tale of complete nerd-hood, but it's kind of entertaining, so here goes:

I have a couple buddies, Shen and George. Shen has a Sony Playstation and George bought a game called "Mega Bomberman" for it. If you're not familiar with the game, it's a very basic action-arcade game where each player runs around on a little game board trying to blow up the other players with bombs. There are a variety of game boards included in the game.

(At this point your nerd-detection radar should start to beep. But remember the "variety of game boards" part -- that'll become important in a minute...)

So, George thinks he's pretty good at the game (he can beat Shen and I, but that might not be saying much). We have a peculiar little tradition whereby when a person wins a game of Bomberman, he gets to claim that the game board is his "house." And as a player wins more games on different game boards, his "house" grows to include the various game boards he has been victorious on.

OK, so one day, Shen sends out an email challenge to George, claiming that he can beat him at Bomberman. George replies with a cocky little email message and attaches a diagram:

On Wed, 10 Feb 1999, George Lee wrote:

> Just to give you some perspective...

(Just in case you're wondering, the "Witch" is a computer generated player that occasionally kicks all our butts.)

Now, a couple different things about George's message bugged me -- not the least of which was the gross misrepresentation of my house -- so I replied:

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 18:18:56 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
From: "Kuo-Yee Richard (Yee) Lee" kyr@best.com
To: George Lee glee@live-solutions.com
Cc: Shen Owyang shen@ricochet.net
Subject: Re: Bomberman Houses

Actually, George, your drawing was 2-D and therefore does not truly
give us "perspective" at all.  For a more accurate view, take a peek
at the attached BMP file.

Thanks for coming, but remember that 3-D graphics are in MY HOUSE!!!

Cheers,
-Yee

After receiving a good bit of ribbing from Shen and I about the inadequacies of his two-dimensional house, George wrote back:

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 01:14:04 -0800
From: George Lee glee@live-solutions.com
To: Kuo-Yee Lee kyr@best.com, Shen Owyang sowyang@frost.com
Subject: Yee's Wussy House

So what if it took me until now to craft up this childish response to Yee's
3D image?  So what if I won't be able to wake up tomorrow morning?  So what
if it's going to take you 10 minutes to download what I've created?  So what
if I can barely move my arms because Yee Jedi mind tricked me into working
out with him?  I will have revenge!!!

Be patient with the download...plus, are you really that anxious to get
SMACKED!!!

http://www.best.com/~georgel/house.html

george lee, owner of all houses except the 'speed change' house in bomberman

Well, after viewing George's animated creation, I couldn't very well just sit and take it, so I created this webpage and made a GIF animation to counter George's:

And I'm sure this will not be the end of the "My House is Bigger!" saga...

Yee Lee, Feb. 11, 1999