Girls of Counterstrike

Myspace gives us so much. Like incredibly long loading times, vile pictures, horrible backgrounds and constant time outs when you login. It's a miracle that anyone at all can manage to get on to Myspace nevermind create communities dedicated to a whole bunch of dirty teenage whores who like Counter Strike.

My guess is they just sit and refresh the login page all day until FINALLY, their vision is realized.

Counter Strike loving skanks.

Note: When I play games, I do not wrap myself in duct tape. Just to make that clear.

Da Vinci Code.... O RLY?

I've been reading The Da Vinci Code on my morning train journeys. It's not the best written book I've ever picked up. It's not making me swoon with any sort of proactiveness in my writing. The characters seem dull and wooden, the story itself is the last 60 pages of Foucault's Pendulum without the funny parts.

The problem with the writing is just that it reminds me so much of the way people, or Livejournal users, communicate. Every sentence seems to want to be followed with an exclamation point. Like the below:

Da Vinci Code, Internets style:

Sauniere: OMG! MY SEKRIT IS 2 B FOUND. WAT DO i DO?!!11!!!?
Silas: im gunna kill u w/my gun. aftr u tell me ur sekrit!
Sauniere: Ok, its under sum copper
Silas: HAHA! I SHOT U NOW!
Sauniere: I WIL msg SP.

COP: OMG! hes ded. A msg for Langdon. He did it!
Langdon: OMG! Werdness.
SP: They think u did it!
Langdon: O RLY?
SP: Y RLY.
Langdon: oic
SP: ouc
COP: iawtc
Langdon: Need a wee. BRBAFK.
COP: OK
SP: UR Bign watched!
Langdon: RLY?!!!
SP: Not this again.
Langdon: OMGWTFBBQFUCK!
SP: Y!
Langdon: OK. wut do we do?!!!111!!!
SP: I will save U!
Langdon: OK. kthanx
COP: folow that truck! hez on to us.

Silas: OMG!OMG! OMG! TOTLLY FOUND IT.
Teacher: O RLY?
Silas: YA RLY!
Teacher: NO WAI! GO THEIRE AND FIND IT.
Silas:SRLSLY?
Teacher: SRSLY.
Silas: OK. TTYL.

Langdon: I KNOW EVRYTHNG.
SP: O RLY?
Langdon: .
SP: I no stuff 2.
Langdon: 2 teh embassy1
SP: We cant go thiere
Langdon: OH NOES!!!!
SP: Key to mystery here. Stuff happnd.
Langdon: addy! HOORAY! Google maps.
SP: K, drive there!
Silas: gives me somefin for smashin!
Nun: OH NOES!11!!!!111
Silas: TEH SUCK. PWNED. killz! MYSTRY.
Nun: DED.

That's about as far as I've read. I think my future endeavors will be more entertaining whilst imagining all characters as O RLY owls.

Pet Pocket

I had an argument recently about how dogs can, you know, be comfortably left at home every so often. It's not entirely necessary to drag Fido around with you wherever you go. A good romp around the garden whilst people make a little trek up to the shops would do most house animals nicely and it would mean less of a hassle for those of us petless.

Not that I have anything against walking them, in fact it's probably a good plan to drag their little furry asses out of the house every so often to keep them from getting enormously fat.

But there has to be a middle ground with dragging them to ASDA while you do your grocery shopping and letting them become giant canine sausages. I don't think that Pet Pocket accomplishes either independence or health in a dog. What it does is creep me the hell out with language like this: Keep your "baby" snug and safe next to your heart while leaving your hands free with the Pet Pocket.

The kids aren't alright, they're grotesquely fat.

The Motherland is apparently producing masses of overweight children who can't fit into child safety seats.

The fact this piece even exists and was researched means someone had to notice. No doubt, someone with a fat kid. Here's a tip, you idiots, if your kid resembles the Stay Puffed Marshmallow man more than they do an actual child, stop feeding them so much crap.

The UK isn't entirely fatless either (though not huge to the extent of the rich and bountiful US.) And when I go grocery shopping it becomes very easy to see why. The fattest kids are always with the mothers who are laden down with chips, sugary drinks, massive chocolate eggs and highly processed chicken meat products.

Catching up with....

I've been trolling around the Internet trying to find out what has happened to some of the people on the PCC debate team. I have good and bad memories of those times. On one hand I really loved it. Really, really loved it. But a deadly combination of ego and insecurity left me as sort of a misfit. Rightfully so.

Overwhelmingly my memories are pretty positive. Some of the smartest people I could ever hope to know like Jerome Cole, and Larry Galizio were part of that society. Without going back into academia I can't imagine ever being in that type of an environment again. A fact I find sad on almost a daily basis.

Bickershaw Festival, May 4th 1972

I was randomly searching blogs for information on the tiny village I live in when I discovered several pages devoted to something called the 'Bickershaw Festival.' 34 years ago thousands of people converged on wasteland just across the road. The tour rider is pretty impressive for the day and includes the Grateful Dead. There are several accounts and some great photos that folks have put up on the Internet.

How cool.

Gypsies and dirtbikes in Wigan

Site update: Still having problems with my website access. Sometimes it displays, sometimes it doesn't. It's definitely not on my end considering there's pretty much no one else in the office this week. I'm dreading the conversation that's about to ensue with my host. I expect it will be like last time (which I can't link, since I can't browse to find the previous posts) which was a back and forth that was left unresolved because I got so damned irritated. I'm already more frustrated than a weiner dog with small testicles.

Some actual bona fide local drama has come up to the surface recently. In no particular order of importance they are:

Police in Wigan have dirtbikes. According to this article the police have been given offroad motorcycles to track down the scum using the old mines for fun. They don't appear to be doing a very good job in our neighborhood though, just yesterday two local idiots came buzzing past without helmets from Kennington Flash. Mr. Me and I prayed they would fall off but alas, we went unanswered by an apathetic god.

It's only a real problem in that they're loud, irritating and often driven by people who can barely tie their shoelaces. I wouldn't entrust the operation of a toaster to most of the adults nevermind something that could run over cats. I expect this thing is just hot air. I have very little faith in the capacity of Wigan Council to do anything proactive.

Well, except for move some gypsies on from Platt Bridge.

For a few months a proper pikey camp had landed in Platt Bridge. We were throughly entertained by their presence since I'd not really seen modern gypsies before and was hugely curious. I was not disappointed. They came by in caravans with lots of dogs and one had a great lamp sat at the table with golden beads hanging from it. They even had real Snatch accents. When they came in to the salon to ask for acrylic toenails with said accents Mr. Me could barely contain his joy.

Even more interesting was the potential for social commentary. I'd heard that travellers weren't exactly welcome in a lot of places but hadn't ever seen the prejudice first hand. I expected a little of it since it's the type of place where most people know most people and only certain types of outsiders are accepted.

It's so closed that the people who have been working at the Coop for 5+ years easily remember who I am though my visits are only about every 6 months. I walk in and they grab the brand of cigarettes I smoke in packs of 20. Seriously. So I waited desperately for at least one of Mr. Me's clients to complain about them being right in their backyards and how horrible it was. Just to see if what I'd already experienced on television was true. It finally happened last week that some of the local menfolk were going to go around and give them a seeing to. Took a bit longer than I expected.

Yesterday Mr. Me went around to drop some stuff off at the salon from the wholesalers. As he entered the parking lot a mass exodus of caravans began. He said it was like a military training mission, all in perfect formation. Whilst he was putting his stuff away one of his coworkers said 'What's a Tactical Aid Unit?' To which he responded 'Er, the people with guns.' Apparently about 3/4 of the police in Wigan had turned up less than 5 minutes after the gypsy migration.

The only information I've been able to find is from this barely literate thread on Leigh life about some others just off the road. I think it's likely that the ones near us were ordered out as well.

I must say though, the site they left behind is clean as anything.

More site down time. The trouble with webhosting customer service.

As I write this my website is down. Thankfully Blogger has an external editor so I can vent now, publish later. Which is a very good thing, rage at draconian hosts is only shortlived and the moment should be captured.

I have very little tolerance for evil overlord webhosting companies. A long time ago in a land far, far away, I had a website hosted over at Angelfire. I managed to generate some traffic by irritating a posse of mothers who Photoshopped deceased babies and entered them into beauty contests. (I am not making this up.) One reported me for copyright violation, which turned out to be true and over 4 years worth of work on my site was completely trashed.

I was livid, I checked the Ts and Cs as provided by Angelfire and found that they were well within their rights. But still, it's a horrible policy. The person answering e-mails at that point very much came off as being 'well, we did you a service that was FREE and now we don't like you anymore.'

At that point I realized the favor goes both ways. The more sites they host, the more likely they are to get folks in to see the advertising. Try explaining that to their employees though. They also lost a customer. When I had my original site I was too poor to pay for hosting. Now I have a full time job and would never use a Lycos or Angelfire paid service because of that initial first impression. Even though I was a free customer, I was still a customer and we all deserve much better than that.

It's not so much about the actual site deletion, it's the lack of communication about when they hit the 'confirm' button. One day I just found my site down, had to e-mail and received the rather unpleasant answer. Would it have been too much trouble for a warning? Or an e-mail letting me know? Apparently, yes. I had similar problems with my old host Valcato (Warning, site uses sound.)

With Valcato any time I wanted an answer to a question it took me ages to get through to anyone. That was for downtime, hosting questions (they used CPanel and I was bewildered,) billing, passwords... or just about everything. The straw on the camel's back was when the number on my debit card changed and I forgot to update my account information. My site was instantly deleted with no recourse. Then they had the gall to try and charge me 6 months later under the next billing cycle. It took several angry e-mails over another 6 months to get them to stop trying to charge me.

My current host is also rather lacking in the communication department. This downtime and even scheduled downtime in the past was a trial of pain and error. The last time I had to explain over and over again that the reason they could see my website was because they were at the same location. Outside of their network, it timed out. I never actually did get a satisfactory answer as to why.

It makes me wonder where the huge amount of effort would come from just for someone to send out an e-mail letting us know we're down. This wait for the customer to fire off exasperated, sarcastic, barely polite or just plain abusive e-mails game doesn't seem to be a very good strategy. By time we've found out, we're pissed off and unwilling to make concessions. A pre-emptive approach would be a hell of a lot better and would probably keep some from asking for their money back.

Right now they're just letting us e-mail, call and post on the tech support board with no explanation. Way to go guys. Way to go.

Women in game shops

I'm a woman who has spent a long time hanging around all kinds of game shops. From the types where you just buy things for PCs and consoles to the other darker types where 10 sided dice are as plentiful as the smell of people. I have been condescended to in these types of establishments and usually put them in their place. It's been happening to me for almost 10 years.

You would think that opinion columns regarding that situation would make me happy. Well, they don't. Why? Because there's absolutely nothing pro-active about writing articles about how difficult it can be for a female game shopper. They hinder more than they help because they just reinforce stereotypes that are on the way out. If you're the type that's burdened by humanity's endless boxes, then articles describing all the difficulty without other easier options are a huge barrier to becoming involved.

This article (Laura Parker, Technobile in the Guardian) was the most recent to inspire some righteous rage. Like any good newspaper reader I decided to respond in turn.

The technology editor obliged my anger by printing my response in this week's letters. (Deadlier than the males)

I am very excited.

StarForce error -6005

At the beginning of the year I mentioned some reservations regarding StarForce protected games. I'm facing a similar dilemma now but in a far worse way, it appears as though StarForce is so good that I can't play a legitimate copy at all.

I won't mention the name of the game just yet in case that isn't what's going on but I have a sneaking hunch. See, shortly after I wrote that blog entry I went through and cleaned up the StarForce drivers left behind from the Singles and CRC 2005. I happily played Black and White 2 with minimal disruption. Even better, my system has been a hell of a lot more stable and faster since then. I doubt very much that's a coincidence.

Now, I go to install a different game and lo' see what I find in my device manager:




I'm not impressed. The other two games at least gave me some sort of warning. This one, not a thing. The icing on the cake? The game isn't even installing properly. When I attempt to it gives me some generic error message and then falls over. I've been trying since Saturday with two different DVD drives to get it to go. Tech support are telling me I should run off and download it from some absurd file sharing place that wants me to sit in line for 44 fucking minutes.

I really hope it is a problem with my kit and not the game.

Talk, Talk Broadband. A good story

My husband and I have had a moderately late jump for the broadband bandwagon. We're now on the newst train, the one that promises 8 MB. For us, it's all a lie. A vile, horrible lie. The idea of an 8 MB connection where we live makes me laugh until I pee myself a little bit. But as much as I know that the majority of the copper wiring here has decayed so much as to virtually be useless, there is some truth to the statement that BT have been improving lines as much as possible. They've even done so here in backend Wigan and now, by god, we can get up to 1 MB.

Enter in the late 20th century.

I am a regular reader of the Consumerist and all the broaband woes they publish. Subsequently I was planning on the activation, installation and implementation to be a complicated and horrible affair. Akin to doing taxes with a gang of rabid dogs chewing on my neck with nothing but James Blunt playing in the background. Or much like my experience with my Father-in-Law's Telewest setup.

What happened surprised me and since this isn't an actual complaint I shan't include any humiliating details.

Reasons why Talk, Talk win.

1. The line was activated on the date they said it would be.
2. The modem showed up only a day late. This can be blamed on Royal Mail.
3. The staff (Simon in Preston) on the 14 days or less technical help line were friendly and helpful.
4. The installation process was only a little bit painful due to some screwy wizard. This is probably why they had lengthy call times on the free tech support line. In the end I worked it out and didn't even have to go through someone's scripts with them.
5. Installation and the modem were all free as confirmed by the invoice for 00.00 included in the box.

I still wouldn't recommend it for someone who thinks that P4 is text speak. I would recommend it for people who have a pet techie at their disposal.


Isn't it nice to be a happy customer?

Depeche Mode: Manchester setlist for March 30, 2006

Just checking my referrer logs and discovered the Depeche Mode Blogger search. Hello there Depeche Mode searchers.

One of the Wembley shows was just as good (or better?) than the one in Manchest-or. It's good to hear other people were just as pleased as I was.

My fandom has been resurrected.

Via Londoner's Life, Empty World 3 have been providing setlists for the concerts as they go through all of their pain and suffering. Nice little feature if you have a memory like mine (full of holes.)

My highlight from the whole Manchester evening was the piano and vocals of Shake the Disease, one of my all time favorite songs. The bare bones performance gave it a wonderfully fragile feeling. The simplicity really showed the beauty of the music and song itself, in a similar fashion to Johnny Cash's interpretations of Hurt.

Here's hoping for a re-release.

Clifton Bennet gets off and then off again

The younger Bennett confessed to police that he and Wheeler sodomized the 11- to 14-year-old boys with broomsticks and flashlights in at least 40 incidents, court documents show.

So, you hear of two young men who take a large hunk of wood and shove it up the backsides of young boys and then get caught. Do you think that perhaps they'll spend a year in prison? Maybe 18 years in prison? Or perhaps that they will eventually get no jail at all because a judge agreed to lesser charges.


The answer, in the AZ Daily Sun may surprise you.

(via Metafilter)

Pray as you go, religion on the move.

I am not a religious person. Nor am I spiritual or inclined to any particular aspect of higher power worship. I'm a secure atheist, comfortable in my knowledge that there isn't a god and probably not anything after you die. And unlike many of my ilk, my godlessness is personal and not to be spread over forums or in the streets

I'm also comfortable in thinking that perhaps people should be left to their own devices, to make decisions based on where they find succour. Not everyone is ok with being left floundering around wondering what it's all about. A lucky few Christians feel heaven like they do their dinner or a fuzzy little kitten. It's tangible and real for them, just as much as my void is for me.

I believe that should be respected.

I was raised a Christian, Presbyterian to be exact. When I hit 13 I went through a phase of trying anything and everything. I ended up at an O.T.O. shop, was invited to a Golden Dawn spring rite. I met members of the Temple of Set and church of Satan. I spoke with Wiccans, Baptists, Catholics, Buddhists, Hari Krishnas and various other flavors of spirituality. Portland seemed to be the Mecca for every imaginable belief and gave a curious girl insight into how the rest of the world lived.

That diversity contributed to my atheism.

I also think it’s what created my tolerance.

It also and most importantly, created this sense of respect. The thing all of those religions had in common was a sense of morality and decency at their core. How else do we, as animals, learn how to treat each other? The socialization process tries to answer this problem through elaborate types or steps. But simply, we learn about how to behave by watching the world around us. If that world is filled with moral guidelines and a colorful punishment, surely we absorb some of it?

My own early childhood wasn't filled with fanaticism or with any particular hatred for a group of people. The Lovejoy protesters were always at the other end of town. Sure, I’d go have a look every so often. I liked watching their faces red with rage that someone disagreed with them. I wondered what it was like to feel something so strongly, to be so insecure that you had to force yourself on people in disagreement. But they were present, even when I was across the street, over in a place that I would never feel I belonged in and would never visit. So with my detachment from the worst, my opinion of what Christian values lends to children is actually rather positive. Lately I've been wondering if what it can lend my adulthood is just as valuable.

I was doing some tedious work this morning, filing off course CDs into various folders as a hard archive. I thought perhaps I might like to hear a sermon and found one easily enough. Pray as you go has one per day. But they're not just readings from the Bible, they're also hymns and the priest speaking to you about what the passages mean. It’s mini church for the masses, a way of using technology to preach and soothe. It’s an anonymous and safe way to consider the lessons behind the Bible. What you get from it is simply what you take. What they offer is what they have. And even if they can’t give you a god, or a sense of something beyond, they do tell a good story.

Depeche Mode: Manchester show 30/03/2006 with The Bravery

I wasn't sure what to expect from the whole show. It wasn't until the day before that I even discovered The Bravery were the opening act. DepecheMode.com is, as usual, a little lacking with the accurate updates.

I did think I would like The Bravery but found that they weren't actually the band I was thinking of. It's an easy mistake to make with the post-punk revivalists running around. There doesn't really seem to be much difference between The Killers, The Rapture and The Bravery. Right down to 'The.' Their set was.... ok... but nothing to really get all that excited about. They didn't have a single track that I could remember the next day. Not overly offensive, just bland and a little bit Cure-ish.

I doubt these guys will ever write a 'Close to Me.'

As for the Depeche Mode aspect, I again decided to leave the groupie-ing to 1998. So, unlike the the last time I went and saw Mr. Sexy, I didn't try and violate him. No need for a restraining order just yet.

We pushed until we got up to the left part of the stage. Tip for people considering seeing Depeche Mode, the left side is the best side. That's where they lean. On the right you only get Mode's answer to Bez, Andy Fletcher. He is without drugs or maracas, so not as entertaining to watch. Though I would pay good money to see him hyped up on methamphetamines at a Mode gig. 'You're twisting my melon man....'

On the Fletchless side we ended up about 3 people deep with a perfect (read: short people in front of us) view of everything. Yay!

The stage design was very good. They had this great metal planet thing with an LCD screen. At the beginning of the concert it said 'hello' in red scrolling letters. Oh, how my geek love jumped when I saw that. Oh yes. Throughout the show it showed various themes; love, pain, remorse. Melodramatic yes but this is Depeche Mode. A heavy dose of angst is to be expected.

I was saddened to notice that Martin Gore started off pretty weak vocally but improved througout the evening. At one point he even... SMILED and the miserable little bastard seemed to be enjoying himself.

For the most part it was a standard Mode show. There's the sing-along bit which Mr. Me thinks could be fleshed out with a monitor and a bouncing ball. There's the hand waving bit, the Dave Gahan getting sweaty and taking off clothes bit (oh, oh yes. YES YES.) But that's what I like. They have their routine and they stick to it. Why mess with the formula?

Surprisingly the crowd wasn't as rabid as they were for the Singles or Exciter. We didn't get smashed, everyone apologized for ramming into each other. It was pretty sedate. A little disappointing but having been to quite a few concerts where my feet were inches off the ground because of the volume of people surging toward the stage, I'd have to say I prefer it.

We met the guy that does (or did) Midi for the Masses. We had a nice chat about how our fandom has suffered with the demands of 'real' jobs. And everyone else there looked like they had that concern as well. The blonde lady in front of us, whilst she did do a bit of beer guzzling, had a photo of a rather cute little girl on her phone wallpaper. Oh, how times they are a changing.

The Manchester Evening News arena has also introduced a stroke of genuis for those of us on the floor:
GIRLS WITH BEER STRAPPED TO THEM WHO ROAM AROUND.

No kidding. No queueing at the bar, no fucking around with people pushing in. Just girls with plastic pint glasses who give you beer. Expensive beer (the price, not the quality.) But still. I'll drink Carlsberg if it means I don't have to risk life and limb to buy it.

The downside was people were very, very drunk before the show even began. Blessedly they weren't aggressive, just a little uncoordinated and slurry. The most er, Mancunian thing I saw all night had nothing to do with the beer girls. It was Chav/slutastic who showed the arena her boobies during the camera man's obligatory 'show faces in the crowd' bit. Look, girl, no one wants to see your implants. We want to see Dave.

I'm mildly hacked off to find out they charged over the odds (5 pound more) for this. But I do love it anyway. And it makes me want a tattoo again.

Afterwards we met up with a couple guys who flew in from Dublin for the show. They had a great time. I was serenaded at the Retro by a bunch of others who had been to the concert and then accosted by even more after last call with 'Goodnight Manchester! We'll see you next time. Thankyouverymuch!'

It was a good night.