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| snow |
| 11.25.05 (7:30 am) [edit] |
|
It’s snowing here. I am so hyped. Yeah I know snow … ALL Canadians reading this are rolling their eyes but let me tell you this when you get away from winter for a while to a place where it is grey damp and that's it for a few months snow and wind and a variety of temperatures is EXCITING! WE went out to supper last night with work mates of M’s. OMG it was fun. I got to talk to people face to face and have animated fun silly conversations! Today I have to sort the house out we drive up to Germany tonight YAY!!!!! Civilization!!!!!! Not that Switzerland isn’t civilized or anything but man it’s isolated. Okay that’s it for now Gotta clean up the next DOTE post… then that will be it for a week all you readers will have to wait and see… ( me too ) SWG is dead for me …..bad things happening there. Very bad things. Hugs all around wish us luck driving tonight… mountains, tunnels, snow… YIPPIE!!!!! |
| alone vs lonliness |
| 11.23.05 (12:07 pm) [edit] |
|
It has been a week and day since SOE utterly borked the game I spent a great deal of time in. It has been a week and d ay since I was in game, chattering with people from allover the world and doing stuff that was fun and amusing and kept me occupied. In the last week I have, like so many others, run through the gambit of feelings that seem to accompany loss. I miss the companionship of the friends I have / had in game. So for the last week I have been bounced back to a state I had forgotten about. Lonliness. It's just me and this house. Most of the time this is not a terrible state of affairs, I mean I love my solitude and my time alone for me is precious. I did not realise just how precious until I started working full time last year. I do treasure it. But it does get a might lonely. A. called me on the weekend and it so made my day. We chattered about all manner of crazy things and it felt as though I was human once again. Today we have that winter sky, the one that says snow is coming. This morning there was some teeny weeny flakes that wanted to come and say hi to the earth but for the most part snow is only staying on the above the 1000m line. I got a little bit of a scare this morning, thought my appendix was fixingto bust. ow! but the symptoms are all wrong and the only thing I see fits is gas. How wonderful. Who'da thought air could be so darn painful... not that this isn't the first time or anything... but when you sit in a house all by yourself all day long your brain starts to work over time on every little ache and twitch. So, it's cold today, there is snow in the air and te sky has those pretty winter hues my father used to paint. so yeah, I'm lonely. I miss people. I miss Halifax. I miss my game, I miss a lot of things but I also know that they won't come again. I will try to keep my SWG rants on the ghosts of flesh and Bone blog. It gets boring I guess for everyone else. anyway, Friday we drive up to Germany and get to hang with our good friend Carsten I can't wait. If things go the way we plan we even get to see Serenity in English! W00T!! so until then, I wish you all well, to the Americans reading this HAPPY TURKEY DAY!!! .....be excellent to each other... |
| censorship |
| 11.22.05 (8:18 am) [edit] |
|
So, this morning has begun with a multitude of feelings but the current mood is furious. I wrote about it on my live journal blog ( that is the ghosts of flesh and bone blog for those of you who just are like me and are addicted to blogs) I am too lazy to write it out again so I c/p it. [i]I had a dream about getting a package today and sure enough the Vader-ultimate Guide that I ordered at the Beginning of September FINALY arrived. It was supposed to take 6-8 weeks and when it didn't come after the appointed time I wrote the company to ask where it was. I had to write to them THREE times to get an answer. Finally to hear the printing had been pushed back and it would arrive later. Now I ask what would have been so hard about informing the customers about this in the first place? I am starting to wonder about Lucas Arts and the companies they do business with. SOE reached a new low for me this morning. Someone on one of the boards asked about Tiggs and I told the person who posted via the thread about her blog, went to give the URL to discover that it gets automatically *edited* out. Okay.... I can understand editing out swear words. I can understand editing out racial slurs but a f'ing URL to someone's blog????????????????? Censorship at its absolute worst from a country that prides itself on freedom of speech. That was the rock bottom point for me. I have hoped beyond hope that things were not that bad, but they are and SOE as a company is probably the worst I have ever seen ever. At least from a customer service stand point. Even if they did do a roll back I would have question my supporting them. We had already decided on a SONY / SOE product boycott but I can tell you the final nail in the coffin was this morning. bam! NEVER EVER AGAIN! merlyn's account dies on dec 6th. I am sad because I loved playing the swg , and I must admit I am a bit lost atm without it. For the last year it has been my social life and a place to hang out and meet with friends. But I cannot condone the actions of this company that treats its paying customers like chaff. I don't know any more what has me more angry, the fact that they change ths game so utterly without any warning or thought to the long term players or that they treat their paying customers with about as much regard as most people pay road kill. How on earth can I in all good conscience support a company like this? The answer is simple. I can't and I won't. Do I sound angry? I should, I am. More angry than I have been with a company / corp. in a long time. so... to calm down I went to the window and I looked outside, there is a bigger world out there and other places to find people to hang with. Other games run by other companies that actually give a damn about the people who pay for them. Until then.... "...do not fear the unknown. You are brave and supple. You will be as wind across snow, as light upon water." PS: just as an add on they deleted the entire thread stating in the reason for deletion this: Moved: http://forums.station.sony.co... Thread removed due to inappropriate comments and degenerating into a hate thread. so omg I am so hopping mad. What was so Hate about someone asking where Tiggs went?[/i] So…. As you can see I don’t quite know how to deal with this turn of events. I am absolutely astonished by it but I shouldn’t be should I?. /sigh |
| 5 years |
| 11.21.05 (8:28 am) [edit] |
|
It's our wedding anniversary today. we have been married for 5 years. together for 8 or 9. Kiss for my sweetie. |
| appalling customer service and other unimportant issues of te 21st Century. |
| 11.17.05 (10:10 am) [edit] |
|
So here it is. SOE ( sony online entertainment) has published the greatest Nerf of them all, completely and utterly changed a game I loved and all done with the most appalling customer service I have ever seen and that’s saying something because I come from the land of Future shop and I battles with them for a year over a computer that was crap. ( I won by the way) In the last few weeks I have watched a gaming company lie to its paying customers, do a switch and bait with an expansion not many people were overly thrilled about until SOE added a ton of freebee incentives for those who just could not resist. Then half the reasons for half the players that bought this expansion ( $30, 00 per account) were suddenly and to my mind quite rudely deleted. The profession of Creature handler was eliminated there by eliminating the reason many people bought said expansion. ( 1 or 2 days after the expansion went live) Appalling. Many, many people complained threatened law suits etc… and I suppose it must have done some good because sometime last week SOE announced they would refund people’s money for the purchase of the expansion The Trial of Obi wan. We played and paid for 5 accounts. When news of the grand nerf came down after reading up on it and hearing about the drastic and dramatic changes to the game we loved we cancelled payment on 3, hoping that maybe it would not be as bad as we feared. It was and is every bit as bad as I feared. My last night in game was the 14th and we partied in Pax, with close friends and allies and new people. I didn’t know it then, when I logged Merlyn and Meec out in the big house that I would not be logging back in. For the last two days or so I have been reading the forums and hearing the outpouring of unhappiness and disappointment from many many paying customers and none of the big concerns are being answered or addressed. Many of the posts from unhappy people are being deleted under the statement of not conforming to forum rules, or flame baiting, or some such nonsense. Some are really stupid posts I agree , but handicapped people asking why they can no longer play a game thy loved because it did not occur to any one designing this new bit of bantha poo doo that maybe a person with one hand CAN’T play like this….why are threads like that being deleted? If this change is what the customers wanted and asked for why are SO many people complaining and why are so many people canceling their game accounts? How can a game company get it so wrong? Customer service, they know nothing about it. As a customer I refuse to pay for and support a company that treats its paying customers as though they were nothing more than a passing convenience. My opinion counts. My money counts and it will walk away to be counted in someone else's pocket. While I love Star wars and I loved being able to play in this game I don’t live and breath it so much that I don’t know when I am being shafted. Just walk away. Soo this game will go to consol maybe, and maybe the new comers will love the twitch based fast action toons on speed look. Or the fact that Imperial are NOT represented at all in the over all garish eye candy character sheets. I am utterly unimpressed by what sony online entertainment and Lucas Arts have done to a game that was extraordinary and unique. These are companies without vision, without care or thought for long term loyal customers who put up with a lot. This is all about money and more money and greed. Maybe in another galaxy far far away someone else will create a game as diverse and as complex as this one was, one where the company will listen to the creative input of its customers and players until then we can only hope, because that galaxy is not this one. Until then I remain one very very unhappy SOE/LA customer. |
| in the still of the morning |
| 11.15.05 (6:52 am) [edit] |
|
So.... witha 17 hour server down time... today will game free, how about that. However the forums will not be down ... I am such a forum junkie. :( Some things to do soon, scrolls... sort out signet files ... they area fng mess atm. House work.... well this stuff never ends so I shoudl stop listing it as a to do LOL and write. I am sa bit stuck, but this it seems, is normal I get to a point where I need to stop and think and last week was not a stop and think week. M was on holiday so we coudl fix and sort the beasement which we mostly did ( yay) and due to the swift and sudden announcement of the grand nerf for SWG we decided to get our toons to where we wanted them to be and that takes time. We had fun though and that is what counts but it wasn't good for writing. Plus when he's home all day i don't get my stuff done, it breaks my routine. So now we are back to normal and I am starting to pick up where I left off, but it's tricky to get going... Still..... I will get to it I promise. Next weeek we go up to Germany or maybe it is the week after I can't remember and time sort of means nothing ... Christ mas is about 5 or 6 weeks away and I need to make a shopping list and actually send cards and presents this year. I am pretty bad at stuff like that. easy to be isolated in this place and forget there is a whole world out there. anyway...maybe more later am gonna start my day now... until then , be excellent to each other! |
| worlds of words |
| 11.14.05 (10:35 am) [edit] |
|
When I first started my very strange love affair with computers and all that cyborgy star warsy, shadowrun / D&D stuff, little did I think it would lead me here. I make art out of dead computer componants, I play massive multiplayer on line games, I met my husband through cyberspace, we fell in love without ever having heard each other's voice or touched. I ended up, for a short time, working with a computer company ( hardware) and I LOVED this job, it was a mindless sort of job but I didn't care I got to work with hardware and the cool new toys. And I made a lot of friends there. My first computer ( because it was my brother, the boy of the family who got this stuff first) was a 286 not a comadore 64. My 286 died a slow painful death of losing a sector off its hard drive every two months or so, until I quite literally had to kick it to get it to boot up. The loss of this computer was painful. 5 and quarter floppies were still in use. Then I bought a second hand 486, this lasted a while but I out grew it. I got an emachine ( SHUDDER) this was returned many times until the hard drive died an evil and horrible death after 9 months taking much of my not copied data with it...grrrr I finally got my money back and bought a dell. I still have that Dell it is now our media computer where we store the tv shows and watch movies via the dvd player in the computer room, thsi Dell is now around 7 maybe 8 years old and stiill works. ( several upgrades were done) Now I have an ACER because an ACER girl must have an ACER computer and I am happy with this beast. It runs my games, it stores my data ( which I back up faithfully to the point of being neurotic) I have a lovely little tablet notebook which is tiny but travels well. We are totally wireless in the house and we are computer nerds I am a geek. It's good to be a geek. So why am I writing about this stuff? No idea, it's in my head. I suppose I was thinking , this morning, about the ID I use and how long I have had it for. I think since 1994 ish. When I began to use Telnets and MUDDS and so on. Windows 3.1 dos anyone?Pegmail 3.1 holy cow and I still use pegasus mail, it ROCKS! Of course the university UNIX system was also interesting... Now I keep several online journals I can talk, real time, to people from all over the world in a virtual reality based on a science fiction film series. I have virtual stuff which I am for real attached to ( I really like my holo of an Imperial Lambda Class shuttle thankyou) and in the end it is just 1s and 0s. Someone should do a paper on that, I mean.... virtual stuff you pay virtual money for but are really attached to...go figure... William Gibson, Walter Jon Williams and all the others who write / wrote about this stuff ... your words are now my worlds. And it is SOOOOOO cool. so,,, on that geeky note I do have a book to continue and a kitchen floor to mop, wet laundry to hang up and life to contemplate...oh and a virtual cyberspace goodbye party to go to in Pax tonight because my creature handler from SWg will be saying goodbye and retiring to teh virtual desert of the Virtual tatooine inhis virtual house filled with virtual cool stuff. bet I cry when I log him out for the last time. This world.... it astounds me on a daily basis. until then be excellent to each other. |
| How to win customers and keep them: or do not do what these guys are doing! |
| 11.13.05 (8:06 am) [edit] |
|
so in the last week, in the SWG world all holy hell has broken loose. Tiggs was fired, the board have gone mad and people are really really pissed. Tiggs has a blog now [url=] http://www.livejournal.com/us... [/url] Lies are flying left fight and centre and SOE is caving on things like a second char slot and refunds for the supery-hyped expansion The Trials of Obiwan. some articles of interest are: [url=] http://biz.gamedaily.com/feat... [/url] Smedley talks [url=] http://www.next-gen.biz/index... [/url] the customers strike back [url=] http://www.next-gen.biz/index... [/url] What NOT to do if you want to Keep your customers... [url=] http://www.next-gen.biz/index... [/url] an explanation for this most part, on the forums, the test center boards and so on the reviews of this new update have been terrible, if the forums are anything to go by it is about 75:25% against the new upgrade. Its buggy and difficult and looks like halloween eye candy for ADD 12 year olds. So far the bugs out number the positive features and the deal breaker for me is I have to play rebel first even though I am a die hard Imperial. Galactic Civil war anyone? Choice???? For these guys it is just about money and numbers, that is it, we are credit cards and stats but what they don't seem to get is that Star Wars fans are a breed apart. Especially the 1st generation ones like myself. I remember the world before star wars and I remember when it came out, I remember being excited and just the WOW factor was enough to give my over active imagination food for a life time. Star wars fans are nuts... well yes we are, I mean There are people out there ( the 501st) who spend a TON of money on SW costumes just so they can stand around looking like a storm trooper for special occasions ( openings etc...) and the love it... why? Because there is a magic about this whole thing. I mean Lord of the Rings fans are just as nuts maybe not as visible but just as nuts ( learn elvish and tell me they are not nuts) Star Trek fans are nuts..... learn Klingon and wear prosthetics to conventions... nuts and why because we love to get away from our real world humdrum blah blah blah and we ride on the coat tails of someone's great idea and story and we make it bigger and we make it our own. SWG is a really cool game, it is a virtual Star Wars world where one can immerse and be and do and escape and meet like minded nutjobs who do teh same thing. And it's very very cool. But somehow the company that is creating this game just DOES NOT GET IT. For the fans, it is not about money or numbers it is about Star Wars and in the time of the Galactice Empire the jedi ( sorry all you jedi wannabes) were almost extinct not out numbering the population 50:1. The empire ruled. Rebels were few and out numbered fighting against all odds for a better or at least a differnt leadership... now this game which was interesting and unusual will be a clone of all the rest why? money pure and simple and the base player core are leaving in droves. someone did a count take a look here...money... poof gone... [url=] http://www.gbrain.co.uk/swg.p... [/url] going going gone the smart asses at SOE who have come up with this new game experience have NO clues. I wonder and so do many others if they even know about the Star Wars universe and have seen the movies. It is all about money and our money is walking out their door. Come on SOE/LA get your collective asses together and do the right thing! Stop screwing with our game! until then..... may the force be with you. |
| spider relocation project |
| 11.05.05 (6:41 am) [edit] |
|
okay so enough was enough, I go into my beautiful bathroom sit on the john only to look up and see the dathomir spider ( swg ref) staring at me from two feet away, on the side of the bath rub... enough is enough. I don't mind sharing my house with various critters spiders and lizards included but my bathroom is MINE! So after a few tries and one very scared spider my husband managed to capture him with a glass and relocated him UNHARMED out side. Since it is not that cold out and these are actually spiders who tend to live in fields I feel he / she will be happier out side. on this whole a much better arranagement. until then be excellent to each other. |
| Boycotting Sony |
| 11.04.05 (6:06 am) [edit] |
|
So here it is, after investing a ton of money in an online game run by Lucas Arts and Sony Online Entertainment, namely Star Wars Galaxies, we find our selves suddenly at a loss for words. As pathetic as it sounds, this was my social life, hard to have a real social life when one doesn't speak the language and lives in a tiny town in the middle of no where... Two days ago without any hints or warnings the bombshell was dropped that the entire game will be sytematically changed. The whole combat system for a second time re vamped. On the whole I guess this might not be a bad thing but it is when over half of the professions that made this MMORPG special are being eliminated. This means that pretty much all five of the characters we had created loved and played , spending many hours crafting the templates and getting these 'toons' to their desired place will in the end have been for nought. These characters will be gone, die a virtual death. For people who have no idea what I am talking about, it's like that beautful car you helped restore being stolen from you and returned utterly smashed to bits, or that house you spent so long building and planning being burned to the ground. These are also just things but we love them anyway. My husband and I loved this game, we loved the toons we played and the people ( real people) we interacted with on a daily basis. This game helped to make the move to yet another place where we don't speak the local language easier to deal with, that sense of isolation was so much less. Now, it is being ripped apart and taken from us. What stunned me the most was the betrayal of the peope who acted as player liasons between the devs and the player base. The ones whose professions will no longer exist were not invited to Austin Texas to see what teh new system would be like, they were not given any forewarning to allow them to prepare for the enslaught of anger, they found out about the death of their professions the same way the rest of us did, via the forums. I can't think of more shocking treatment than that. I also feel really sad for all the people who spent 30, dollars + applicable taxes on the new expansion... only to find out once the thing had gone live that everything was for nothing. Professions that were promised great things and great loot will be eliminated for ever. Wow, talk about a company blind siding it's PAYING customers. We will rip you of your money and then we will rip you all apart. awesome service. So my husband and I will be voting with our money and it will be going else where. I will NEVER in this life time buy ANYTHING that is even remotely SONY related again. Any company that treats its customers like this deserves NOTHING except my absolute and utter contempt. cannot express my anger and sadness at the moment for what is being done. so cheers Sony, that's two less customers you have now. Maybe it isn't much in the grand scheme of things but we don't have kids and we spend a lot on entertainment. Maybe how people feel doesn't really matter in this world any more and customer service has lost all meaning that's for sure, but money still talks and ours isn't speaking to Sony any more. [url=] http://www.directionalpad.com... [/url] [url=] http://www.gamespot.com/news/... [/url] ... Until then be excellent to each other. |
| sharing |
| 11.02.05 (5:42 am) [edit] |
|
I share my world with many many beings. Most of the tie we do so unknown to each other but there is one critter that I am very very aware of and that is the giant spider who lives in the bidet in my bathroom. It got me thinking really, we share this house with a whole host of mother natures little wonders ranging from the flies taht drive me crazy to the ton of spiders in various sizes who hide in all the corners all over the house. I don't mind spiders at all, actually they help with the house work, they eat unwanted bugs and on the whole are harmless. I don't mind the milipedes that seem to have discovered how to get inside.... or the aphids that live on the wall despite my best efforts to get rid of them... The ants have gone, which is a good thing and the wasps as well. But Mother nature, it seems never lets you forget that while humans may occupy spaceon this planet in the end she has the last say and makes the last stand. I don't mind at all really. I vacuum the cobwebs away but try to make sure I don't kill the spiders, I swat the flies though. Wasps get shoo'd out of the house and everything else just gets dealt with or ignored depending on how I feel about creepy crawlies.... But the BIG spider in my bathroom is on my mind a lot. It's big. It's apparantly harmless but it's big. I won't kill it though it has every right to live and so far it's been unobtrusive and mostly terrified when it sees us. If it eats moths and big bugs like that well fine! Munch away say I... but I am reminded that I share my world with a whole host of unseen unnoticed for the most part critters. It's kinda cool when you think about it. not much else to say really.. grey still days now, November days.... the time chaneg wrecks havoc on my body... until then be excellent to each other. |
|
moon phases |