Rockwood: The Rockwood Mailbag.

The Rockwood Mailbag

Express yourself!

Have you always wanted to let Team Rockwood know just what you were thinking? Do you wonder why the panels of the strip are laid out horizontally instead of vertically? Or do you have sensitive documents that will bring down the government? In any case, we want to know! Just fill out your name and e-mail address, then let 'er rip! No question or comment is too bizarre for Team Rockwood to take a stab at, and if we can get enough mail coming in, this page will be updated weekly! (Unlike the old mailbag page, which got updated about four times in two years.)

So consider this an experiment in web interactivity. Or, consider it a way to artificially inflate our hit count. Either way, just write in!

Updated on January 8, 2002
		December 18, 2001 "Do you wonder why the panels of the strip are laid out horizontally instead of vertically?" Now that you mention it... yes, I am curious! --James
		Well, besides the obvious answer ("everyone else does it"), the real reason is that of readability. A vertically-oriented strip would be harder to read in print, and more of a hassle to scroll on the web. The other reason is some things are just wrong
		December 18, 2001 Does Khan still have his nuclear weapons, I mean couldn't Skip hold the world ransom with an orbiting weapons platform? --nuc time
		As a trillionaire, Skip hardly needs to hold anyone for ransom. He can already buy anything he wants. Furthermore, making such a threat would likely bring retaliation. It's not like his space station would be a hard target to hit. And besides, what kind of moron would threaten the world with weapons of mass destruction for his own personal gain?
		December 19, 2001 Really I was looking at December 19th strip, and noticed that Rockwood said "8 tiny reindeer" and then mentioned that Rudolph was the infared guidance system. Well that would normally make 9 Reindeer (if you watch the old stop motion animation tv special). --John
		Careful there, John. Santa never says he has nine tiny reindeer, and you shouldn't tell Santa he can't count. Free thinking like that can only get you sent one place, and it's always winter.
		December 27, 2001 Is the Khan computer guy named for Gengis Khan (or son or dad or one of those Mongols) or the Trek Khan? (by the way, I saw this funny Christmas ecard with "The Wreath of Khan!") --Jiminy
		Both. And neither. KHAN named himself, so you'd really have to ask him, and he's not talking. But for conjecture's sake, we'd have to guess that since Trek Khan was probably named for Genghis Khan, both he and KHAN are named after the original guy.
		December 27, 2001 Hey... do the people of Team Rockwood look like our favorite comic strip stars? Does Brian look like Will, or Skip, or, God help us, Al? Oh! How about them orbity-thingies? Are they modeled after anyone on the Team? --Bijou
		The orbity-thingies, while not modeled after someone on Team Rockwood, are modeled after one member's former championship endeavors. As for Brian himself, although he usually doesn't post his picture on the web, in this one case he'll make an exception. Take a look.
		December 28, 2001 Just thought I'd tell ya: I'm not buying your calendar because I have a BETTER way of knowing what day it is: My daily visit to the Rockwood page! If there's a Rockwood comic, I know it's a weekday. 'Nuff said! --Dave "Wik" Percival
		Oh, Dave, what a sad life you must be leading now! Relying on the new strips on the main page will only tell you what day it is three times a week. What about the weekends? And holidays? And phases of the moon? Dave, while we're glad to know you're showing up daily, you need more to fill your life. And what better to fill up those lonely moments than the 2002 Rockwood Calendar? It's not too late, Dave!
		January 3, 2002 So it seems for the past few years you've had a different theme... e.g. Rockwood In Space for 2001, and Rockwood For President for 2000, but will we see a new theme here in 2002? Or will the team be stuck in space for another year? I, for one, am ready for a change, but then again, I don't write the comic. Therefore I will probably just resort to begging and whining until you succumb to my will. Have a great year! :-) --Damon
		Well, Damon, we don't succumb to anyone's will, but we'll let you know in advance that whining and begging wouldn't work anyway. In fact, there's only one thing that's ever broken us, but we're not going to tell you what it is. Oh, the horror.
		January 3, 2002 Hey, when you say "team" Rockwood, who is on the team? I only see one name on the site. --John
		John, due to national security issues, we can't divulge the members of Team Rockwood without jeopardizing innocent lives. Needless to say, they have varying experiences in government and in private industry. We'd tell you more, but...well, you know.
		January 3, 2002 Ode to KHAN (the first Rockwood sonnet) Electronic circuits, wires, silicon chips and killer instinct comprise the butch former CIA main computer KHAN, confused 'cuase he can't shoot people and such. Though KHAN knows the humans he wants to bomb he does not know that what he wants is wrong; homicidal thoughts turn humans to mulch and the crew think he is quite out of touch. Therapy was done and he got a name, Kill Humans All Now; KHAN don't seem too smart, but dedicated he is to his job ridding the earth of its terrible plague called humanity and KHAN will hurt all if he's given the chance to play God. --Mikki
		Excellent work, Mikki! That's a good start, now all you need to do is hire a million monkeys and maybe Rockwood will end up the bard of the 21st century!
		January 5, 2002 Hey! I think it would be awesome if you made t-shirts for Rockwood. You could plug them into the strip too! Well, maybe not. Also, can you tell us any specific plans you have for this new year? --Joe Daily
		Plans? Only one.
		January 4, 2002 Hee hee hee! I KNEW you snuck that 1-bit pixel trick in your strip, 'cause I did it too!! See? --Andrew Sorcini
		Andrew is the first person in a long time (and the fourth person overall) to solve the Rockwood A.I. puzzles. And since he posted the solutions on the Cloudmakers web site, we've been deluged with emails from people who are still so hooked on the game that they still check the message board now, five months after the game officially ended. Admittedly, we were hooked here at Team Rockwood, too, so we can hardly blame these people. And it's pretty cool that even now they were willing to put up the effort.
		January 4, 2002 Haha! Great puzzle! Too bad everyone had it solved in the THREE FARGIN HOURS I actually had to work... ah well. :) Awesome comic...give us more! Aloha, Greg ****** The Salla comics were really cute! Thanks. --Marie Lamb **** Thanks for making my morning brighter with this little puzzle. --Felicia Herman **** Cool strip, fun puzzle. I didn't get here on my own, though. As with everything else, Cloudmakers comes through! --Lisa Martincik **** Although at a loss thanks to timezones, I can't believe it took everyone else that long to work out the tooltip was quite literal... Btw, great strip :) --James 'Ender' Brown **** I hope you have some idea of what you're getting yourself into by engaging CM like this. Anyhow, good luck to you. --Lizzy Campbell **** You're the man! Excellent comics, working in puzzles, and reinspiring the Collective Detective into action...you deserve an award! --Lou Maccarone ****** Cool comic and Cool puzzle! Is there any more to it? --Danny
		Nope. There were only two puzzles, the phone number and the secret web page. We thought it was kind of funny that after first looking at the comics a few weeks ago without suspecting any puzzles at all, the Cloudmakers then tried to create more puzzles than there actually were once they found out of their existence. Truly these people were obsessed!
		January 4, 2002 You have guts to post your phone number in your comic strip. Cool puzzle! --Joe Kavanagh ****** Hmm. Everytime I think things have settled down someone comes along and stirs the pot. ;) lol Sadly, like through most of the beast I just tagged along, failing to solve anything myself. Sigh.... You realize of course that your phone number should have been morse code that had been enigma encoded, not just dots. It just wasn't challenging enough for the real thinkers. ;) --Patrick Elliott ****** Hey, Brian, sorry I called you and told you I had the wrong number. :P I got nervous. Flashing back to Mike Royal. --Kim DuBray
		Brian's number is available online, so the real challenge of the first puzzle was not to find out how to call Brian, but just knowing that there was a phone number in the comic in the first place. And since no one called between July and January, extra encoding of the number was apparently not needed.
		January 4, 2002 Interesting.... is this a plot to get e-mail addresses? Shouldn't matter too much, my account gets so much spam anyway. As long as this isn't an acceptance letter to Harvard, the spam should make it to my AOL account just fine. --George P. Burdell ******** January 4, 2002 Cool... wish I could say I solved this myself, but I saw the solution on CM... You could probably do this again, and no-one would mind, I'm a-thinkin'... ^_^ --Dave III
		We're not interested in harvesting anyone's email. As a rule, Team Rockwood hates spam and won't be a party in perpetuating it. As for starting up another puzzle, while we won't rule it out, the flood of emails we got from everyone in the past few days will certainly make us think carefully before we put one together haphazardly.
		January 6, 2002 I just got the link in an email message, but I love taking credit for other's work. --Vex ******** January 7, 2002 Great puzzle! Loved the comic too! --Kermit
		Glad to hear it! And also, we'd like to say that this officially brings to a close the Rockwood A.I. puzzle game. Now that the cat's out of the bag, there's no real point in hiding it anymore. We're not going to take the other pages down in case someone still wants to take a look at them, but since the solution is now just a click away, it hardly seems sporting to reward anyone for finding out the secrets anymore. We hope the everyone who actually spent time looking had a good time, and who knows? Maybe in the future we'll do it again. You can never tell.
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