Assorted Thoughts

In shuffling through my email this morning three things became readily apparent : 1) Email has become virtually useless as a means of communications, 2) What you don’t get in spam, you get in spam commenting on the blog, and 3) My webhosts don’t bounce emails to non-existent email addresses, thus filling up my server space with crap I didn’t even know was there, which means I’m paying to store spam I didn’t even know I had. 1542 spam emails and about a dozen spam comments later, I am not amused. I’ve been putting off installing MTBlackList, but I think now, I may have to resort to more drastic measures. The time it takes for me to deal with all this crap I never asked for in the first place, is time which could have been better spent working on blogging, various projects, and the game of BlogShares. If only I could have collected $1.00 for each spam email and comment, I wouldn’t mind so much, as it would have paid in one day more than I earn in an entire month. So, spammers, if you feel the need to fill my email inbox with all of your unwanted advertisements (which included approximately a dozen worms and viruses of various flavors), please feel free to donate $1.00 per item to my PayPal account and make this worth my while. You’ll find the link to it in the lower right portion of the sidebar, yes, down there at the bottom of the page. Could I entice you with the possibility that I *may* just look at your spam if you do so? I didn’t think so, but hey, it was worth a try.

What’s next? Oh, yes, the fiction : I’ve started writing a little more on my fictional storyline at Endsville, which involves Eve Quinlan (aka The Evil Queen). There had been a hiatus of several months while I got my act together and dealt with various unpleasant personalities online. Luckily for me, I did make backups of the blogs in which my fiction was first published, so it was a matter of restoring those backups to bring them back to life. Lesson learned : always make backups. The storyline is taking a decidely different turn from what it was, but we’ll see where it goes from here. She’s currently in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, having just arrived on the Statendam III. The Orient Express sequence is coming up soon.

In BlogShares : We’re still working on fixing a number of bugs in the core of the game system. One player has decided that certain kinds of gameplay are suddenly illegal, though there was never anything in the “official rules” making that sort of gameplay illegal, and he’s appointed himself as judge, jury, and executioner, even to the point of figuring out what fines we all face, which completely flies in the face of the authority of the BSEC. Suddenly I’ve become a target of what the accuser often likes to call a “witch hunt” when it’s applied to himself, but which he says in no way reflects what he is now doing. I say “balderdash!” to that. This, after we had supposedly made our peace with one another. He even made a point of bringing up past sore points which had nothing to do with the post he was responding to from another player, and which I had absolutely nothing to do with. I’m tempted to have a scream fest with him, but that would only fuel the fires he keeps setting. In any case, fine me, don’t fine me, I really don’t give a shit what you do, but I will continue to play the game however the coding allows me to do so… that’s my job. This is how you find bugs. This is how you determine game policy and rules. If you aren’t going to allow me to test the limits of the game with game play, then you are not allowing me to do the job I am getting paid to perform. Therefore, you are interfering with my ability to do my job, and you can answer to the game owner when he asks why I am not doing what is part and parcel of my job. Fair enough? I think so. For what it’s worth, there are other mechanisms in place which bypass the time limits in the game as well, most notably Market Orders, in case you weren’t cognizant of the facts, and it’s been like this since the game was originally created. If you now wish to change the rules, and fine players for play that has been going on for months with no complaints from anyone in all those months, then perhaps you should be a part of the governing body which decides rule changes and make the changes official. Expecting to retroactively fine players for play that has been legal up to that point is, imnsho, unrealistic and stupid. It’s like enacting Prohibition and then fining anyone who drank in the past ten months. Get a grip. If, in six months, you take it upon yourself to decide that Market Orders are illegal because they bypass the time limits, we might as well wipe the entire slate clean and start over with $500 per player with a very crippled game interface.

At home : My spouse has finally found a part-time job. He’s helping to build log homes. The one he’s working on right now is for a friend of ours whose original house burnt down due to a faulty wood-burning stove. He’s off today, however, because some of the materials needed for the next stage of the building process won’t be available until tomorrow. He’s been unemployed for over a year, but earning money fixing peoples’ cars and doing classic car restorations, so this new job takes a little bit of the stress away, and it’s also making him feel a little bit better about himself… it’s all good. No word on the tax refund check from last year’s taxes yet, so we’re still waiting to hear on that.

Web Design : I’m not happy with the project I agreed to do and have been slacking heavily on it. I’ve let someone down on that, and I feel bad about it, and wouldn’t blame them if they told me to forget it, but between the sickness, the other work I’m doing, and the stumbling blocks I’m running across, I’m pretty much at a standstill with it. Designing things for other people is probably not my fort�, I much prefer designing things for myself, so it’s become very difficult for me to get motivated on it. I’ve not only disappointed this person, but I’ve clearly disappointed myself as well.