7 posts tagged “event”

A little while ago, I made a post about how I'd destroyed my credit card, and instead of the bank just doing a direct replacement, they decided the card as stolen, causing all my automatic bills to fail.  A few days later, more to the little story was added though it was a little to embarrassing for me to mention at the time...  Until now -

So, about two weeks ago, I received the new credit card.  And promptly lost it not more than a day later.  I used it in one ATM, wrapped it up in the little receipt, and put it in my pocket.  When I got home, I took it out, removed the receipt and added it to my other slips (which is how I know the card itself got home), and promptly vanished the card.

I went searching everywhere.  I looked through nooks, crannies, between books, the bathroom, under my bed, in my fridge, and I even dug in all my trash bins a good long while, all to no avail.  Until about ten minutes ago, when I found it at the bottom of the washing machine in absolutely perfect condition.

But the disturbing thing is, I've done at least five or six loads of laundry since it went missing...

Anyhow, in other news:  Our heatwave seems to be abating, leaving me with a desire to actually use my computer/space heater again.  I should be back to posting more regularly, and hopefully, about more interesting happenings.

In response to my iPaq PDA/cell device being stolen on Saturday, I've decided not to, A:  Wait and see if the begrudged employee who stole it cools off, leaving it to magically reappear somewhere, or, B:  File a police report, the first step needed in my phone insurance replacing it for a small deductible.

Instead, as of last night, I am the proud owner of a Sidekick 3.  And despite having it less than 24 hours, I have to say, I'm very happy with what it can do.  The new versions of the Sidekick can easily handle everything my old PDA could and are even more specialized at what I actually need it to do, such as IM services - Something my PDA needed third-party and often unreliable programing to handle.

On that note, my new mobile AIM SN is 'Broken2go'.

The old SN, 'BrokenPDA', will likely be retired and go unchecked.

The Phoenix, a physical, actual, factual, and real newspaper in Boston, not only recently printed an article on Second Life, but went so far as to mention Taco.  You can read the about it on page three.

It's not a very big mention.  But it is a mention.  And that's totally awesome with me.

Also, I've been trying to post a comment asking why Taco is the only location without a link, but their server has been giving me strange errors all night, and the entire site seems to be rather sluggish right now.

I finally broke the 1000 Gamer Point mark today on my 360 by grabbing the 'get to wave 10' achievement in Joust.  Actually, it was a pretty amazingly played game, as me and Mark were totally tearing it up in a wonderful display of aerial acrobatics, pixels away from each other countless times, and never once killing one another.

The curiosity is that we barely made it to wave ten, and for the first time in our many attempts to do so, yet one of the achievements is to hit wave 100 with default options set.  I think it's safe to say that this will be yet another arcade game that I will never, ever manage to capture all the achievements.

Oh well, at least I'll always have you, Uno.

The credit card that I use for more or less all my subscriptions and automatic bills recently found itself snapped in half, and while still usable for online activities (all I used it for, really), I decided I'd go and ask the bank to issue me a replacement.

Now usually, the bank would just issue me a new card with the same number and everything pretty muchly untouched.  But this time around, even though I told them the card had been safely destroyed and everything was fine, they decided to count my card as stolen.

Of course, this renders all things that use it for billing to be completely invalid, and the new card won't come for five more days, so there's even a wait before I can change over my billing to keep things happy.

So now I'm scrambling to change all my accounts over to a temporary card before I find my cell, cable, internet, and about a dozen other services all pissed off at me in unison.

I've been a long-time subscriber of GameTap, the little PC front-end program that basically allows you to temporarily download older console and bargain bin PC games for about ten bucks a month.

I tried the idea on a whim; I don't entirely remember why, but watching Adult Swim and not TiVoing through the commercial fast enough possibly had a lot to do with it.

Anyway, I came to the realization last night that I'd been paying them for at least a good four, five months now, and hadn't even logged in to look at the by-and-large crappy games in almost that entire time.  In fact, I think I've played maybe three or four of their library of '200+ games' in the entire time I've been paying them.

Unfortunately, there is no easy process to cancel via the web.  Actually, I could remove 'easy' and just say 'there is no process to cancel via the web'.  Which I totally hate.  There really is no reason in this day and age for me to have to call and wait on hold for someone to give me an 'exit interview' and basically beg me not to go.

Of course, that's exactly what happened.  But at least it went by pretty fast.  And the heavily accented Texan who pleaded with me not to leave GameTap did give me one very good idea-

He offered me 30 days free just to stay..  I wonder if calling any of the other services I subscribe to would allow me blackmail them like that.. [this is my scheming face]

And with my mad scientist-like skills, I will bring this blog to life with a telling of events occurring yesterday at my place of business. [mad cackle here, plz]

I manage a restaurant in the Silicon Valley.  It's a little diner and caters to nobody in particular, but mostly teens, mall rats, and soccer moms.  And at lunch time, we deal with a lot of well dressed business clientele.

During the slow times, to no surprise, my employees and I like to chat about the things that all bored people chat about at work-  Television, computers, sports, pirates versus ninjas, the traffic and/or heat of the Bay Area, and of course, the ever popular hypothetical question.

Yesterday's question was 'If you had one superpower of your choosing, what would it be'.

It's taken me twenty years to come up with this, but I've decided:  If I had one superpower, it'd be to force everyone around me to suddenly and spontaneously burst out into synchronized, choreographed dance.  Moonwalker eat your heart out.

So here's where the story gets interesting - We have regulars, and of course, during the slow times, we also talk boredly with them.  One of which happened to mention that he thinks we should dance along to one of the 70's tracks playing through our overhead speakers, to which I promptly informed him of the irony and timing of my own previous conversation.

"Hey, I have a friend who is a lead writer for City of Villians/City of Heros, do you mind if I pitch that to him, he'd get a kick out of it," he said.
"Sure," I replied with some amusement, already expecting never to hear of this again, "Lemme know how that turns out next time you stop by."
"Oh, I'll tell you right now."

The next thing I know, he's whipped out his cell and is on the phone with the aforementioned lead writer, pitching my idea of a superpower of synchronized dance.  Worse still, he suddenly hands me the phone, and I'm rather unexpectedly talking to one of the more powerful people of one of the most popular MMOs.  It was both very exciting, and very flustering.

Of course, the lead mostly chatted about how it'd be hard to implement, because whoever didn't get the power would complain of nerfing and stat balancing, and all the things that the MMOkids like to forum about.  But I didn't care; the fact I was on the phone with such a figure still had me plenty excited.

My only regret is that I forgot to jot down the fellow's name, leaving him only as 'a lead writer for CoV/CoH'.

I'll ask my regular next time he stops by.