Sick

I’ve been sick for the past few days but it wasn’t bad until yesterday when I woke up and found that I couldn’t move and couldn’t breathe. I had told myself I would go to work but when I woke up I couldn’t find the energy to actually start getting ready. So yesterday I took a sick day and stayed home to recuperate which seems to have worked some.

I checked my GMail this morning and was surprised when I rolled over a contact’s name and found a new interface. It’s a great improvement over the last release of GMail.

The PotBS beta has been going great! I think that this would definitely be a worthy MMO to take the place of WoW in my gaming.

Woot and the lack of Bandoliers of Carrots

I see there is another Woot-Off in progress!

Has anyone else noticed the lack of Bags of Crap? I haven’t seen one on Woot for months.

BETA!!!

A long time ago I signed up for the Pirates of the Burning Sea (PotBS) beta, I was playing World of Warcraft (WoW) and Vanguard regularly but I was getting burned out on them quickly. WoW was becoming the same old fight and grind and Vanguard was so new that it was buggy, I wanted something different. I wanted something in a different setting and with different players.

Not only do I play Fantasy MMOs but I also play a whole lot of Sid Meier’s Pirates! and I was really searching for an MMO that captured the spirit and gameplay of Pirates! but there were none. That is until Flying Lab Software announced PotBS and set up the closed beta for it. I pounced on that as soon as I heard about it and never got a response; I would check the site every so often about beta and never found any information other than they were sending out invites slowly.

So, today I was checking an old email address an found a message from Flying Labs with the subject:

[Pirates of the Burning Sea] Pirates of the Burning Sea Beta Acceptance Confirmation

I must say that I’m excited! I followed all the instructions to get my Flying Labs account set up with my SOE Station account (I HATE SOE! but for the game I will put up with them. Why couldn’t they go with a company that ISN’T known for taking over games and screwing them up?!) and now I just have to wait to get home so that I can install the game on my desktop.

I’ve been saying I need a chair to put in front of my desktop and now I really will need it. I wonder if I could take that one…

Neighbors

Mrs Fireshaper and I have met most of our neighbors in the apartment building since we moved in, making friends with one and just giving passing nods to others (a phantom resident lives in the apartment across from us but that’s a different story), but the other night we met one neighbor who seemed a bit on the not-so-friendly side. We had taken Amadeus outside since he had to go take care of nature’s call and we decided to let him play for a bit since it was nice out and it wasn’t too late. Normally I don’t think that 9PM is that late (I usually don’t think about going to bed until around 11:3PM) but I know that some people get up earlier than me and others just need to get more sleep, but apparently 9 at night is too late to be playing with your dog behind an apartment building. We were running around, with Amadeus on a leash, and just having fun when he ran up to one of the doors of our building, me in tow, and the door opened. I was told last night that the only person living there was male but what greeted me at the door was most definitely female, she was wearing a night gown and her hair looked like it was teased out.

The conversation was quick and simple –

Neighbor: I heard a lot of noise out here and wondered what was going on.
Me: Sorry, we were just playing with our dog.
She looks at me and slams the door as I walk away.

We weren’t making much noise, I didn’t think, and I didn’t know there was a lights-out rule in effect at an apartment complex. If you are living in an apartment you really can’t expect it to be quiet all the time, people take showers at 2AM but I don’t go over to their apartment, knock on their door, and ask what they are doing because they are making too much noise. After the fact I thought that our conversation should have gone a different way –

Neighbor: I heard a lot of noise and was wondering what was going on.
Me: Oh, I’m sorry I bothered you. I’m training my dog, you see, he works for the narcotics division. Oh, he seems to really like you and it looks like he smells something in your apartment. Do you mind if I search your place?

This neighbor also watched us from her window one day while we were walking Amadeus behind the building, and she has black trash bags on her bedroom windows. It’s always fun to have a nosy neighbor.

thunder… Thunder… THUNDERCATS! HOOOOOOOOOOO!

Kotaku announced today that Jerry O’Flaherty (Art Director – Gears of War, Unreal Tournament III, and a few Command & Conquer games) will be director of the upcoming ThunderCats CG-animated movie.

IMDb has a title for the ThunderCats movie and has it slated for a 2010 release.  I don’t have an IMDbPro account so I can’t see all the other info about what’s going on with it, anyone else?

I did some searching the interwebs and found a fan’s blog with a lot of info about the movie.

Amadeus

I’m sitting in the lobby of one of the halls at school, waiting for my class to start, so I thought I could crack open the laptop and write a quick post of what’s been going on this weekend.

Last Tuesday me and Mrs Fireshaper bought a dog — a Basset Hound — and named him Amadeus. We had a rough start with him but now I think things are getting a little smoother. When we got him we didn’t think about his potty training and quickly came to the realization that a dog that is outside all day will go to the bathroom anywhere he wants to. It became our first priority to get him crate trained and have him going to the bathroom outside, not on our carpet. Amadeus has gotten a lot better since last Tuesday night, only having one or two accidents during the day, and he’s even started coming to us when he needs to go out so I see that as an achievement. Now if only he wouldn’t lick Mrs Fireshaper’s toes!

That’s all I’m going to be able to write up today. I’m off to class.

More scams

Yesterday I wrote about a scam job email I got after posting my resume on CareerBuilder.com, well today is another day and apparently since I didn’t respond to his email, the scammer decided to send me another one. This morning I received not one but TWO scam emails from another fake company (maybe the scammer thought that one wasn’t enough), this time from a company called Admin Solutions. Because of yesterday’s scam, right away I did research and Google’d the company and found the site Dynamoo.com which gives a list of all the sites that are owned and operated by Alec Defrawy — my “scammer”. I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to do your homework when there are so many ways someone can con you out of your time and money. Make sure you take the time to research before committing to something.

Woot-off!

Woot-off today! Looking for Bandoliers of Carrots!

Edit : Gizmodo has posted a “friends only” link to Woot.com with a wonderfully-priced Zune!

World News Voice Scam

Dear Rory ,In a recent review of online resumes, I was impressed by your qualifications and feel that you would be a great candidate for the position of Web Developer with World_Voice_News, the fastest-growing online news organization in the world.

For this particular position, we’re looking for someone who is proficient in several programming languages such as MS SQL, Cold Fusion and ASP.net and who has at least one year of professional experience. If you do join WVN, you’ll be responsible for the day-to-day management of the site as well as continuous updating of content and advertising.

The salary we offer to our Web Developers is very competitive, with an annual salary ranging from $70,000 to $95,000. The compensation package also includes medical, dental and optical benefits, tuition reimbursement, an expense account, paid vacation and a fast-track advancement program.

If you are interested in joining World_Voice_News as a Web Developer, please click on the link below and fill out the online application.

http://wvsite.net/careers.aspx?A=8382675

You can expect to hear from me one or two business days after I receive your online application. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Brian Egelton
World_Voice_News

I received the email above this morning when I got up and immediately set out checking their site and googling the site name. The web site looked in need of some help and I thought that’s why they are looking for a web developer. I had never heard of them before, though, and did a little research only to find that they are a huge scam to farm identities and never pay their employees just take everything they give them, including their IDs.

If you have received a job offer from this or any other company that you don’t know about remember to do your homework, it’s all too easy to think that everything is legit on the interwebs.

The mourning of a friend…

Friends, loved ones — today we mourn the loss of a great friend. He was loved by all and his passing will most definitely hover over us for days weeks a long time. Please join me in a moment of silence for The Tube’s moving from our world to the immortality of our memories.

Note: New theme!