Mistercohen
Mistercohen is a fleet officer in the crew Rum by Gum. He is a member of the flag Mixed Nuts on the Cobalt Ocean.
Biography
Mistercohen started on Puzzle Pirates in November 2005 as Dobdobbodpa, after introduced by Shalimar from the crew Inner Strength. He and Shalimar are a real-life married couple. After a long break, he returned as Mistercohen in April 2006 and joined the crew Heian Era. While inspired by the fictional "Mister Cohen" from Monty Python's Crimson Permanant Assurance, Mistercohen is not to be confused with Cohog, whose real last name happens to be Cohen.
Having played under a smaller crew, Mistercohen grew rapidly under this larger crew and the very active flag Indestructible Fury, returning to a successful inter-archipelago trade in forrageables and starting a weaving stall on Terra Island for his flag. While not significant by itself, he took premaking cloth to extremes in order to compete, and would use up a Merchant Brig worth of hemp almost daily. He continued playing the role of Ferengi in Cobalt's economy, making side deals for weavery supplies, never wasting a voyage's profit potential, learning to solo a Merchant Brig from Manontoilet and even producing advertising for Shanty Raid-io. He often tutored fellow officers in using the Shop Tool and the Pirate Commodity Trader.
Seeing that profiting at all on Terra relied heavily on inter-archipelago trade, Mistercohen asked for assistance from Indestructible Fury, which at the time held Prolix Purlieu and Cochineal Island. The market buildings at Cochineal and at Napi Peak were the only outlet for forrageables from the Jade archipelago, and these proved too inconsistent for regular inter-archipelago trade. Looking to encourage his own profits as well as other traders' profits, he won Cochineal's governorship in October 2006 in an election held on Indestructible Fury's forum. From there, he placed buy offers for pineapples and rambutan at the palace that would let traders make money during times when the game's automated markets weren't buying, effectively subsidizing inter-archipelago trade. This proved successful, but he was unable to document this success until he developed a palace reporting tool. With this documentation, he was able to justify setting shoppe taxes to 0% to encourage additional growth at Cochineal itself.
Having weathered two blockades and a flag merger with National Pirate Radio, real life took a heavier toll and Mistercohen retired from the Cochineal governorship in June 2007. As of December 2007, he plays on a less frequent basis with the crew Rum by Gum with Aarghbird and Sundreena, fellow students of Shalimar.
Technical Support Controversy
In real life, Mistercohen is an information technology consultant and an advocate of "least privilege" computing. This lead him to argue with forum members, ocean masters and developers that Puzzle Pirates encouraged reckless computing by its design, at least on Microsoft Windows. To prove that it was possible to play Puzzle Pirates in a least privilege environment, he developed a special installer for Windows 2000 and Windows XP for Lizthegrey's review. This proved unnecessary, as Three Rings Design released an installer around June 2006 that worked within a Java-enabled web browser, and worked in a least privilege environment transparently.
Mistercohen continued to assist forum members with technical issues from time to time, occasionally drawing ire from Microsoft Windows critics. At one point, he produced an advertisement for Shanty Raid-io promoting his security blog, which included a scathing critique of Lizthegrey's handling of the Windows Metafile vulnerability scares from January 2006. This belligerance continued after Windows Vista's release in January 2007.
Achievements and Contributions
- Won an honourable mention for an entry in Parroty Parity Parodies, November 2005
- Developed a palace reporting tool, October 2006
- Produced a sailing tutorial, January 2007
- Hosted King of the Ring, Cobalt Edition, January 2007
