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While checking for various software updates I stumbled upon this...

(January 31, 2002 update) PowerToys will not be available today as previously stated here. We're sorry, because we know you like them a lot.

PowerToys are currently being improved, and will be available for download in April 2002.

Oh well, it look like we'll have to wait until April. :(

News source: Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP

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As I was scrolling through some funny pictures from a random picture archive, I came across a picture where some people had made an incredible looking (not anymore :) ) 17-guys-high tower in cs_assault. My first thought was: "Wow that's amazing", my second though was "hang on, we can do better than that". So i showed some of my friends the picture and said half-jokingly "hey let's make a bigger one". Before I knew it, we had a channel filled with guys wanting to participate in building the highest Counter-Strike tower ever.

After we got about twenty people gathered up, we figured out a problem: no server. So we had to host our own game. The host was the one with the fastest internet, which in our poor group, was 1Mbit. But even the absolute certainty of a horrible
lag didn't stop our band of crazy finns dedicated to towerbuilding, so we hit the server. Second problem: map choosing. After some pondering we thought that cs_siege's gulch would be the best one. Then, the lag hit us. The ping was between 700-1500. At first we didn't think that it would cause big problems, because we were only building a tower. When the tower was 7 players high we realized the lag WAS a problem: bouncing up the literally manmade stairs with ~1000 ping was as difficult as taming a dinosaur with a stick. Finally, afer many many restarts, we got our first tower to beat the 17 in the picture I saw. Our laggy tower of 19 people was a sight for sore eyes.

We returned to irc to celebrate, but I wasn't satisfied. With screenshots of our huge tower, I went to talk to a "Surffi.net" (a famous server provide in Finland) admin. I represented the evidence, stated our problems and asked if we could loan one of the servers with 32 player limit to make an even bigger tower. And they gave us one. I quickly started gathering up new players for the making of an incredible 32 player tower.

The map problem hit us again. cs_siege only holds 20 players, and all 32 player maps seemed a bit short. But after a bit of "betatesting" we found out that de_aztecs skybox just goes on and on, so we set our tower in the river of de_aztec. When we finally got to the server attempting the new unofficial world record, I realized that we should've done the recruiting more individually instead of just saying "every1 come here to build a tower" It seemed like every time we were near of succeeding someone started shooting and ruined the attempt. We must've tried almost 50 times for the tower and every time some snot-nosed teenager ruined it. We had to handpick the crew.

After a tiresome search for 32 trustworthy people of the irc, we set out again to the surffi.net server. The first build was perfect, only thing missing was one player, so we only got a 31-player-tower. After that, some mishaps, failures, and finally, we got every single player on the server in the tower. The feeling was great. I bet no-one has ever made a higher CS tower ever. I believe that is the true world record in CS towering! :)

I want to thank the whole Finnish Cr3w (all more or less famous cs-players) of CS towerbuilding, or in Finnish, Torninteko:

(This all was done in 800 gravity at all times)

Poko,  CribLizer,  PLak,  Cadarn,  Maxster,  PadFoot,  RegaL,  Dessuttelija,  daquez,  Norsu,  Novac,  Amiga 500+,  Inci,  juma,  GJ,  RankkaAnkka,  JoJo (me!),  Avather,  J0kinen,  Sraw,  acces,  Leke,  Jnx,  Zuipp0,  Ouga,  Lrk,  DeLuca,  Jeesman (more of a spiritual support :) ),  Helmot (webmaster and a builder in a few attempts),  Cadarn,  dragi,  Stalfos,  Potkustartti,  Cracle,  Asterix.