Tagged with Life …

Mar 05 2011
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Thinking of a couple of new blogs.

I know, I know. For someone who barely updates the blog she has now, you would think I wouldn’t bother making others, but I’m thinking of shifting into a few new blogs to keep myself, and my internets, more organised.

They’d probably be Gaming, Reading, Music, and Food related– I know it seems like a lot to manage but it’ll seem less amalgamish and it’ll give me something to focus on when it comes to my writings. Instead of feeling like a post need be personal or somewhat witty, I can just write about what I love– some of you may not understand that, but I get the feeling some others might get it entirely. That being said, I’m going to start working on them now and see how it all goes. Wish me luck. <3

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Jun 16 2010
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Internet, Life, Personal, Web Design

Web Design and Me.

It’s funny how long I’ve been designing web design and the fact that over this period of time (10+ years) I don’t seem to have improved all that much. There is, of course, the base improvements I’ve made where content actually matters and I don’t have a page full of glitter graphics or random midis, but I still feel like everyone keeps moving forward in the design world and I lag behind.

That’s due in part to the fact that every time I get closer to a design I like I end up finding flaws in it and editing it down to basics, and end up hating it– or I overload it with fancy crap I just learned and want to dive off a cliff before it’s all over. I don’t know exactly what I’ve been doing wrong all these years, but I feel like I have a capability to learn better techniques, but I need a no-nonsense way of learning them, and at this point I lack in such tutelage.

What’s giving me most of my issue right now is the fact that I can’t get my head around coding a decent layout regularly, let alone figuring out how to convert that into the love that is WordPress– yes, folks, I would love to make a design of my own but I feel I lack the technical knowledge and ability to do so.

I have found a new tool to help me a bit with my sometimes stupidity in coding (closing tags and nesting them properly sometimes eludes me), and that is Aptana. There’s a lot more to it than I’d ever be able to explain, and there are probably some people who read my blog who might literally squee their pants off about the open-source yada and all that, but I’m completely oblivious to all that– I do know that it has plugins for me to test my layouts and helps me by reminding me to close tags and all that jazz. As demonstration, I used it today to design a new layout for Yasunori Mitsuda’s fanlisting. It came out all right, but I know I’m probably capable of better. Meh, I suck at this.

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Jun 15 2010
2 Comments
Gaming, Internet, Life, MMORPGs, Personal

Blizzard: Customer Service

I’ve been dealing with this all day and decided perhaps to make a few points on the status of Blizzard customer service. I’m going to try to get this out in as succinct a way as possible and still manage to make my points clear.

Overall

While I respect the ability for Blizzard Customer Services to be polite and as ‘prompt’ as possible given their ability1, I’m not sure I’m at all happy with how things have been going as late. Calling the phone-line is pretty much a bust, as if you do get through you still have hours to wait until you get an actual person and not just a customary “we’ll get to you soon” type of response, and the tickets are only answered between certain hours, which means if you ticket comes in late in the day, you’re kind of boned because they do it (supposedly) by when they were put in.

I’d love to say amazing things about the Blizzard Customer Service department, but I can’t, I really can’t say much– they are highly polite, but overall we’re talking a major lack.

Payment Options

Oh yes, forget asking Blizzard to offer more payment options for things– you can pay for your account up-time with paypal, but you cannot pay for Character Faction Changes or any other Character Service with anything but a credit card– they used to encourage you to use the Paypal plugin to do it if all you had was access to was PP, but PayPal has since discontinued their plugin2… which leaves you /very little else/ to do but hope you have some good friends or someone willing to spot you a credit card if you transfer them the money.

This is what I did on Friday. I had some money I’d made from blogging right here at bated-breath.net and decided to cash in and get my Faction Change on, only I had to wait for the money to clear the bank into the credit card in question, and then try to use it– it finally clears today and I dive right in to try and actually get my shit taken care of, and maintenance is going on– that’s fine, you know, it’s Tuesday, it’s always going on on Tuesdays… usually not until like 5pm which is only a few hours before the end of their ‘work day’ at Customer service, but whatever. They got it all back up and I go to do it all and it’s denied. The man uses this card to pay for his goddamn account and buy pizza out several times a week and yet somehow here I am unable to give Blizzard my money for something I’ve been waiting five days for. Now I kind of just want to do it out of spite and because the money’s already allocated for it– right now I’m so pissed at Blizzard actually devoting time to the game seems moot.

Service?

Let’s talk about service– service, when you’re making as much money as a company such as Blizzard would make– seems like it should be number one. I realise it takes time and resources to accommodate new employees and new systems and all that jazz in, but come on, this isn’t a wholly new issue for Blizzard… they’ve had months of these complaints, if not years, and we’re still chomping at the bit for a better system. How is it that this kind of thing continues to happen when they’re raking in billions of dollars? Why is it so hard for me to get them to take my damn money?

Haven’t even had a response on the forum post I made in their specific Customer Service forum just yet– interesting. Interesting. Other posts are getting answered, yet while mine was detailed with the exact issue and everything I’d done, posts like “WTF IS UP WITU GUYZ” are getting answered and I’m not. Service my ass.

—–
I realise this turned into more of a rant on a few points than anything actually even verging on actual content, but I can’t help but think that venting helps everyone– maybe that’s what Blizzard needs, for their employees to whack each other around with Whiffle bats for a few hours and get out their pent up bullshit so they can work for an extra few hours– or, oh, oh! I know! Hire another shift of workers! Criminy christ, that’d be awesome, wouldn’t it? Yeah, then I could get my shit done. Shifty ass game.

… /end-rant

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  1. I realise there are a crazy butt-ton of people who play this game, so the numbers of petitions and the like must be through the roof, but yeah [↩]
  2. dumbest move ever, it was the only reason I was ever going to have to verify my account, and it’s also a shifty move to encourage people to sign up for their debit and credit– but that’s a rant for another time [↩]

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Jun 15 2010
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Life, Personal, Uncategorized

My Hair is Pink and so is my Bathtub.

Recently I’ve tweeted about the fact that I took to dying my hair a couple of nights ago– that being said, I figured I should post a bit about that in depth, considering I haven’t done this kind of crazy hair dying in ages.

I was browsing Hot Topic for some reason or another that I cannot really recall and stumbled across their Punky Colours’ Flamingo Pink Hair Dye going for relatively cheap in the clearance bin, and considering my boyfriend has an inane fetish for Pink Hair, I decided to give it a whirl. This, of course, meant I had to purchase a bleach kit, and had I remembered1 how small they were, I would have ordered two.

Let me start off by saying my hair isn’t nearly as long as it was a couple of months ago, and doubtfully as long as it was when I originally dyed it blue with Raw hair colour, but somehow this bleach kit just failed to cover all of my hair like it needed to– I was… well, the bleaching wasn’t bad, it was just spotty. I had dark colour spots all over that had barely faded to a light brown because of my inability to properly cover my hair in the bleach2. So here I was with blondeish, spotty hair and my boyfriend telling me I was cute3 but staring in the mirror like I’d somehow made the biggest mistake– I had a feeling right off the pink dye wouldn’t be exactly what I wanted, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

The results were not absolutely terrible, but they weren’t exactly great, either– as you can see in the following picture, the colour came out a bit more fuschia’y purple than true pink4 but overall I’m happy with the results. The next time I dye it, however, I’m going to be doing Manic Panic’s Vampire Red, AMP… which I’m hoping will look badass… I also might refrain from dying my tub pink by seeing if we can’t invest in a real freakin’ shower head instead of this old school 80s house type shower head. I WANT MY REMOVABLE SHOWER HEAD, DAMMIT, THAT WAY THE TUB WON’T BE BRIGHT PINK NEAR THE FAUCET. Balls.


Bam, picola. Blurry like a mofo, but you can see the colour well enough. One of these days I’ll have a webcam that doesn’t suck.

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  1. as I recall them as being much bigger [↩]
  2. it didn’t help that my eye was, that night, acting like a complete bitch like it did last year and fscking me all kinds of up [↩]
  3. I think he’s bound by law to say that [↩]
  4. though I think I failed to rinse the dye out properly and fully– we’ll see after my shower tomorrow how it looks [↩]

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Jun 14 2010
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Life, Music, Personal, Recommendations, Uncategorized

Music is my Life.

I woke up too early this morning, at least by my standards, and I can’t really put my finger on why, but it has left me kind of groggy, and in that, it has left me kind of pensive– I find myself thinking about music and how it relates to me, and things I want to get out there– so I decided to take a page from Tess in her post here and write a bit about songs that speak about me, or will speak of life. In that, a lot of them will likely be personal and I’m not sure everyone will agree with my choices, but we shall see, non?

Slow Show by The National

Okay, let me talk a bit about how I just happened to stumble across this song and somehow ended up in love with a new song a few months back. It’s one of those songs that creeps up on you, and before you know it, you’re stupidly in love with the entire message and feel of it.

You know I dreamed about you
For 29 years before I saw you
You know I dreamed about you
I missed you for, for 29 years

It’s ridiculously sweet to think about, and it speaks to me, because sometimes in your life you just have someone that creeps up on you that you feel like you’ve known forever, and like they’re a part of you. I think we’ve all had that, at least once or twice. Slow Show by The National lyrics.

Grey by Ani DiFranco

My lovely Ani– no one sings with such passion and hurt, at least in my eyes, and gets the point across as beautifully as Ani does, and this song just… screams ‘me’, and I’m not sure if that’ll fit the rest of you, but I guess…

As bad as I am, I’m proud of the fact
That I’m worse than I seem

That lyric along speaks volumes. Hiding your hurt behind what you need to get through the day is a constant in most people’s lives, and they need to learn to be proud of the fact that… I don’t know, they’re capable of existing and living their lives regardless of how hard they’re breaking deep inside. That being said, the entire song has this feel of soft regret, but also a bit of hope, and also how no matter how happy you are, you’re always going to want something more, something else, or something different. That, is the very essence, of pain. Grey by Ani Difranco lyrics

Happiness by The Fray

I love how most of my songs have this weird depressing sound about them, but in the end they’re a bit hopeful– this one in particular sounds like one that’s just screaming about how much things can suck, but really, it’s quite beautiful and full of hope once you get right down to it.

Happiness damn near destroys you
Breaks your faith to pieces on the floor
So you tell yourself that’s enough for now
But happiness has a violent roar

It’s funny how incredibly true that lyric is– no matter how good happiness is sometimes it can seem so real that it kind of breaks you, you’re terrified of what’s going to happen after the floor falls out from under you that you’re preparing for a crash that might never happen– also, this song is kind of my chosen unofficial anthem for my best friend, the dork. Happiness by the Fray lyrics

Snuff by Slipknot

Honestly, don’t look at me like that– I love songs that scream of pain and need, and this one of those songs. To be fair, I’m sure this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it really does make me feel emotional, and that’s what songs should do. They should inspire you, and break you, and they should be able to make you cry or smile, depending on the situation, or just make you feel completely out of it. This one can break me down at a moment’s notice, and that’s /powerful/.

If you still care don’t ever let me know

That alone is pretty much a summing up of what the entire song speaks of… being broken and all that, and I realise these songs are meant to be a bit more open to everyone, but can you honestly tell me you’ve never had your heart broken to the point where you just kind of wished you weren’t that close to that person so you could find some reason to dislike them, to make it easier? That’s how we get sometimes, and this song summarises that feeling. Snuff by Slipknot lyrics.

Make This Go On Forever by Snow Patrol

One of my favourite songs by Snow Patrol on the face of the planet, and for good reason. It has this epic overture feeling to it that you just know is going to make you feel something. It’s kind of one of my personal theme songs, but honestly, it really could fit with a whole mess of people.

We have got through so much worse than this before
What’s so different this time that you can’t ignore
You say it is much more than just my last mistake
And we should spend some time apart for both our sakes

It’s hard to deny the fact that the song has something to it that makes you feel at least a bit like closing your eyes and sinking down into your seat to just let it wash over you. It’s one of my favourite songs for a reason. Make This Go On Forever by Snow Patrol lyrics.

—–
I realise all of these songs won’t be speaking to everyone, and in the end it’s kind of a subjective type of subject matter that will require a kind of personal reflection on, but these songs are worth that kind of moment to be given. If people are interested, I’ll see about getting a playlist set up for you to hear all the songs– what songs to speak to you? Do you agree with any of this? Lemme know.

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