Posts made by surreality

No, this won't make sense to anyone but like, the three people I warned last night about delays on stuff, but...

...ok, I can sleep now and panic marginally less for at least a few hours.

@ganymede I will cheerfully admit, I just lied to the crazy lady: “I’m sorry, but I’m lethally allergic to dogs. You will have to retrieve the beads yourself before I can give you an estimate on replacement parts, if I can get them.” (We use a lot of one of a kind components you can’t replace if someone stupids them to rubble, and say so loud and clear.)

She did not call back.

(We don’t, and never have, offered free repairs for rough handling of pieces, but people assume it anyway and push. For some of our long term customers, sure. Dog Poop Lady? BWAHAHAHAHAHA hells no. )

Dog Poop Lady was truly epic. I wish her on precisely no one else ever, even her poor wee adorbs yappy purse flurf-of-many-poops.

@faraday It isn’t just tech, too. Cannot even count the number of jewelry commissions that are exactly like this.

We will just not discuss the lady who pitched an actual public screaming fit that her $20 earrings were not 24k gold. (Lady, I can’t even get a single 24k gold ear stud for that at bulk wholesale, let alone make a pair of earrings covered in vintage glass and swarovski on top!)

Ahem. So maybe I will discuss her a little. But it’s good to know that like this lady, most people have no damn clue what they’re asking for, or even how plausible it even is —forget time or complexity. Just, uh, be prepared.

Also be prepared for people like the lady who gave the (30+ hours of delicate hand beading) necklace to her dog to play with for a month to expect you to fix it free... but she saved the poops with most of the missing parts for me, so that’s totally cool, right?

In short: people can suck in ways that will make you hate life and the things you love sometimes once $ enters the picture. Be careful, and choose your customers wisely if you can.

@faraday Pretty much. I may just have spectacularly bad luck with dice, but that always struck me as - well, what you describe, a routine task for their job. It gets worse because they're a lot more heavy-handed on the roll penalties than they are on the roll bonuses, and every task from the 'this is the simplest thing you could ever possibly do' to 'this is actually really hard' all have the same difficulty; one more or less dare not walk and chew gum at the same time, pretty much. It all doesn't quite work out so well as it should in the end.

@lithium said in Creative Outlets:

3 /should/ be a perfectly acceptable skill level for a professional soldier with experience...

I actually agree with you about this completely. And per the way WoD is written, it should be like that.

With the way they made the mechanics, though? I played a con artist who never once got a single success on a roll to lie with a 4 subterfuge and 4 manipulation. (And I rolled it a few dozen times over the course of playing the character, so it's just just a case of 'never rolled it'.)

Either that's really, really, really spectacularly shitty luck with the dice roller -- which unfortunately has been consistent in other cases as well for me at least -- or they maybe didn't quite figure their mechanics and intent in a way that matches up as well as may have been intended. Like, failure's obviously a part of the game (and should be), but you'd think someone who is a professional X wouldn't fail at it 100% (or even 80%) of the time, and success should maybe be part of the game at least sometimes, too... -.-

@ganymede My father was always able to drive me in because his schedule was flexible (journalist, sports, most of his work was evenings -- or in another town entirely). Mom also worked for a school district (different than the one I attended) so this would hit her, too.

We all concurred this wasn't helping anyone, and we were genuinely some of the least fucked-over by this that could exist in modern society.

We had to get up an extra 30 minutes early to listen for the radio announcement (since that's the only way they did it then, no clue now), and they always dragged that shit out until the very last minute, and we were still scrambling to get ready half the time when there was no cancellation or delay, so by default we just got up and got ready while listening.

We were absolutely not three people who should be made to get up early, fuss around at speed to get presentable in the one bathroom in the house, then cluster around the radio listening to annoying DJ banter about current events whilst wondering if we had to go rush to scrape off the cars or not. Morning people? Hahahahaha... NO. 75% of my genes are pure night owl. (My father's father being the sole exception.)

I mean, 'sleep in a little longer' or 'just go back to bed for cancellation' aren't even options at that point, and a 2 hour delay just becomes 'glower at each other for an additional 20 minutes while arguing over who gets to watch their show on TV before scraping off the cars, watch 20 minutes of a movie we collectively don't hate, then discuss the parts we love and were not in that 20 minutes while car-scraping and driving off to a land full of similarly grumpy cats'.

Odd question, but... does this mean access to the game itself would only be accessible through the web portal? I may be in the minority but I am one of those folks who likes my MUclient where I have all my colors set up to work with my eyes and brain and all that.

@seraphim73 Yeah, I am a costume design geek and that one proved a challenge even for me without getting super wordy. There are a few wild and really out there experimental designers and such I can see really needing the pics for to help make sense of things.

Other than stuff that far out there, though, I get all, "USE YOUR WORDS."

@seraphim73 In fairness, I had a character show up at a costume party in this once.

Or, well, she was going to, but the party was canceled or something. I don't remember why she didn't ever end up going at this point. But, uh, in that case... yeah, I'm totally just gonna link that. Because omg, sometimes the corner cases like that are 'I do not even know where to begin'. I think that would have been: Zoe is dressed like a fuzzy bird-dragon in what might be a dress and might be armor and was definitely expensive and probably designed by someone with too much time on their hands and twice too much liquor.

Otherwise, yeah.

I don't mind the outfit posing thing save for in one specific case: when it's all label name-dropping and no practical description of what anything looks like.

Usually, the people doing this will be label name-dropping something in every frickin' pose ever even if it's not about their clothes, though, which makes me constantly have to fight the urge to drop OOC and be like, "Look, I don't even know what McGuffintyre Special Reserve Gold XVIII Louis Gourmand Edition is supposed to be from the context of your pose beyond 'expensive', so could you stop name-dropping brands of shit no one either of us even knows can probably afford to just let me know if we're drinking bourbon or beer right now so I don't have to google random shit thrice per pose just to know if you're talking about your shoes or your dinner?"

(I have the same eyetic about some of the anime characters on Shang using the Japanese terms in poses for mundane objects that have perfectly serviceable words for them in English, like 'bowl' or 'dinner' or 'shoes', which was a huge trend a handful of years back. Do not make me slog over to google translate just to understand your pose, people. Please. It is not impressive, it's obnoxious.)

Please, tell me about every frilly petal embroidered on your jeans if you want to, down to how many hours the couture embroidress slaved over it all and then studded your character's tasteless signature heart in real diamonds right across the crotch, but please, oh please, for the love of all things holy, unholy, and somewhere in between, do not be that guy/gal described above.

@tat I was just wondering about setting up something like that, for exactly that reason (I love this kind of thing, too), but wondered and was hesitating out of a fear it may only have been me. Now it is definitely going to happen.

(Thank you for being a very well-timed nudge! Stereotypical libra girl me waffles forever on these things without one miraculously appearing.)

Well, that's surprisingly apt for this week!

@sparks Also, someone just pointed out: Finally, we got it in our lifetimes: the first flying car.

Yet another spit-take.

I wondered if that was... a not-quite-accidental pronunciation. It's pretty dang clearly not Falcon in that first blip...

@sparks The car was launched while playing it in the car, too, apparently. I teared up a bit, not gonna lie.

Also: Best. Navigation. Panel. Ever.

My inner 5 year old also lost it, and I choked on my coffee, when listening to the mission control blow by blow, because so help me god, 'Falcon Heavy' really does not sound like Falcon when spoken very quickly over a radio, apparently. (The link here, it's reaaaaaally glaring in the first few seconds. Actual spit-take. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/videos/95856359-132.html )

Apologies that the image is huge, it's the only copy I could find.

Every part of my inner geek went 'squeeeeeeeeeee!' just about at once.

We're on the registry, too, not that it matters... ever.

I always love the 'we're calling about your car's warranty' -- I don't have a car. No, really, I don't.

'We're calling about your credit card account, this is impo-' 'Which card?' 'Your card!' 'Uh huh. Which card?' <click>

My favorite are the microsoft computer virus scammers, though. We only have macs here. I am a lifelong mac user. I have never once owned a computer that runs on windows. The most recent anything that ran windows in this house was when Spider lived here.

Sadly, I also know how many elderly folk fall for this shit, so I will keep those fuckers on the line for as long as possible now and then, and often enough, they're dumb enough to use the same fake spoofed number on caller ID, so they can be recognized easily. I consider these soulless fuckers my venting stress relief therapy and means of continuing education in improv to keep the skills sharp.

For a while, they were calling multiple times per day, at which point I got tired of their bullshit and when I answered the call, it was with best phone operator voice I could muster:

Me: "Hello, Microsoft Headquarters Wilmington, how may I direct your call?"
Them: <click>

And for months, there was blissful, wondrous silence.

I made sure I didn't fall off into Davy Jones' Locker of freeze the other day for a reason: this place is lovely, and the people on it have been universally lovely. (Well, except that one dude that promptly got banned for being a creepshow, but that again speaks volumes as to a place's awesome factor.)

Holidays, then got sucked into the Reno HALP!!! wiki hell (which is still not done but the frenzy of yanking before mechanipus closed is over so it's slowed), then just a combination of things has my 'head not where it should be, focus on code, not games' switch flipped to code. I stay off games when I don't trust my chill to be totally solid, or my general ability to people is expended. (Holidays have a way of doing that.)

They did a beautiful job with this place, and way more people should try it. People are friendly, chill, and it was never hard to get involved in things. It's pretty easy to set up a character, and I'm impressed with how things are set up. People were massively helpful when it came to getting set up, too; I'd not tried any games using any of faraday's systems before and it was easy to pick up for a new-systems-averse person.

(Yeah, this is the 'is secretly trying somewhere' place. I don't publicly share alts on MSB any more, but if you also are there and want names to ensure you never have to be in the same room with me on a game or something, PM and I'll let you know; I'm chill with that. One's only ever been IC once, the other was around a bit; so far as I know, neither stepped on anybody's toes, face, or any other bits IC or OOC. Needless to say, if you ever asked somebody if they could play and 'I wish I could but omg I have so much code to fight today! I will nudge the moment I get through it!' that was probably me, and I'm still slogging through code even now. )

@arkandel In a nutshell, this is why I hate not having a laptop. I suck at texting, let alone dealing with this dodgy interface from the phone while off to wherever for a while.

(The question of my masochism was answered so long ago even Moses would consider it part of the ancient historical record.)