About Me

I am the James C that is posting on the Authoritative Minesweeper site.

I am going to try and keep this short, but I can’t promise anything. I am originally from Texas, but I have been in the US Air Force for almost 12 years. I may come off as a punk kid sometimes, but I have been around the world and back a few times and I have met a lot of different people. I was born in 1973, so being 30; I may be one of the oldest guys in the community. It’s hard to believe sometimes. I know that I am cynical, argumentative, and defensive. I have been for a long time and I don’t foresee that changing, but I have gotten better as I have gotten older. I forget from time to time that other people don’t feel the same way. I like posting in the guest book and when a “hot” topic comes up, I just can’t resist. It was actually Dave Matson that motivated me to tone it down a bit. I want to stay a part of the community. I don’t mean to offend anyone, so please bear with me at times. It’s just the thrill of the argument. The anonymous nature of the internet makes me lose track of myself and to whom I am talking, so I rant and rave, and make wild statements without always considering the consequences. But then again, you should hear me in person.

My Minesweeper career

It may not seem like it by my scores, but I first played Minesweeper about 10 years ago. I was deployed to Saudi Arabia and they (guys at work, not Saudi’s) were explaining to me that 2 2’s against a wall both had to be mines and other stuff like that. The best guy at our site could get low 160’s at expert. I spent the next year trying to beat his times. I remember breaking 50 the first time in intermediate and my expert times were probably in the 150s when I stopped playing. I didn’t own a computer, so all my playing had been at work. As a joke someone had set the times to an 88 in expert because they knew I had been playing a lot. Well I just knew that was impossible. Even though I eventually got a computer, I never started playing again until Dec 2003. I played for a few days and got 6-35-131. I remembered a friend bragging about his scores so I called him up. When he told me 5-25-89 I was shocked. I never got good enough on my own to believe that I was the best in the world as a lot of people say. I also had a hard time believing that he was the best in the world, so the first thing I did when I hung up was type Minesweeper into Google. The first hit was, of course, the Authoritative Minesweeper. That’s how I approach things, though. I never posted on the site, but I think I read everything on it and everything on every link. I was determined to get some decent numbers before I got involved in the community. I took me almost 4 months. I spent a week in Vegas without playing, then in the next two days I shattered both of my records. I m sure nobody remembers, but my very first post to the guestbook was 102 à 92 and 26 à21. I don’t really have any time goals other than breaking my current personal records. A big reason for this is because I don’t know how good I can get. I have only beaten one of my scores since I joined the community. One day, on one board, when everything when right, I got a 78. Sometimes I wish that it had never happened. I guess I could look at it as some kind of accomplishment. My second sub-100 was my first sub-80. In actuality, I posted that 78 to the AR and it represented a level that I still am unable to play to. It’s discouraging when I start realizing that it could take me a few months to beat it. Now that may not seem like long to you guys in the top ten that wait for so long to gain one second, but to me it represents almost half of the time that I have been playing seriously. After I broke 100 and then 80 six weeks later, I thought I had made some kind of break-through, and the game would be easy. All it has done though is make me doubt my game and playing style. Well, that’s about it. I am sure there are many of you out there that have gone through the same things. My philosophy is simple; find all the bombs as fast as you can. I flag a LOT and I double-click a LOT!! I hope that one of these days it will all come together one more time. I would like to move up a few spots in the AR, but other than that I just want to break my current records, so I guess there is nothing to do but keep playing. I do want to sub-20 though. My Career won’t be complete until I get an acceptable 19 or better on intermediate.

About the Dreamboard

I don’t want to go too far with this, and I want to be careful what I set in stone with this profile, but this topic is why people know who I am and there are a couple of things that I want to say. I will defend the Dreamboard as long as I play. A lot of you probably think that I just want an easy score, but there really is more to it than that. There are a lot of great players out there, and no discredit to anyone, but to me the first name I knew in the community was and will always be Matt McGinley. Like I said, I read everything on this site and every link. I was much more interested in intermediate than expert, so naturally the first video I ever watched was Matt’s WR 10. I was, needless to say, amazed, so I read all his profiles that I could find. I got the Dreamboard for the first time the day before I entered the community. I didn’t know of any controversy over it. I didn’t even know that it was the board that people called the ”Dreamboard.” I opened the bottom left corner and I flagged it to death. I may have had some sub-conscious memory of his video, because even though I didn’t realize what the board was, I cleared the top right without flagging, which was not an easy feat for me at the time. As I finished the board out, I just “knew” it was a record, so I went very slowly without flagging through the section at the bottom right so as not to mess up. I could not believe it when the white box popped up and I saw the 21 in the corner. After I calmed down, I studied it for a minute. It was only then that I realized that I had gotten “Matt’s WR board.” After I joined the community and found the clone, I did re-play the board. I was so awed that he had done it more than twice as fast as me, so I wanted to see how fast I could do it. I only played the board about 20 times, and not all in one day. I didn’t know that this practice was frowned upon. The fastest I have ever done it, in case you are curious is a 12.91. Since then I have gotten the board once more, and I messed it up within 5 seconds. Eventually, I will get the board again, because, well, that’s the way MS cycles it. I personally feel it is part of the game and the thrill for me will be when I find it again and complete it in 15 seconds or so. Maybe it will be faster than that by the time comes, but who knows. I am far too competitive to hunt for the board. I want to move up in the rankings because I am good, not because I cheated, therefore I WILL NOT submit any time that I make on the Dreamboard. But, when I do get it, and I make a good score, it will be a personal milestone for me. It’s part of the game, as I play it, and no one will take that away.

Other Stuff

I hope I have not gone overboard here. I like to read the profiles of the big guys out there, but I like to hear about the other ones too. Hopefully some of you feel the same way. When I am not playing minesweeper, I am usually working or sleeping. No, seriously I shoot skeet every weekend and I am getting pretty good at it. I also play poker every chance I get. Really it doesn’t matter, I will play any card game for hours on end, but poker is the king of them all. Fortunately I don’t live too close to any casinos. Due to budget limitations I am often forced to play in the smallest games they have. It’s hard to win against people who don’t take the game seriously and have more disposable income, so I usually just stick to home games. They are much easier to beat, and the money adds up quicker than you realize. It’s enough to keep me in shot-gun shells, if nothing else. So, I can’t think of much else to say without getting too controversial. I will save that for the guestbook. Here is a link for you to check out if you have nothing better to do than give away money. www.partypoker.com.