Its been about a week, so I guess an update is in order. So how has everyone been? Swell I hope. Things on my end have been… annoying, mostly. Nothing terribly exciting to report (nor any further pictures of cute girls cosplaying I’m afraid, at least not tell next year or something). For the most part, I’ve been just trying to concentrate on getting stuff done, primarily the book (its only a little over two weeks now till due day). Unfortunately, I’ve been dealing with assorted nagging annoyances, which by themselves is nothing much, but the sheer volume of them all is starting to get in the way of things, let alone drive me nuts (hence why I’m also in a pissier than normal mood as of late). So in no particular order…
- First off there’s Cingular. As some of you might recall, not too long ago some crazy crack-head trashed my cell phone, so I called Cingular the next day to get a new one; I’ve been paying $4 a month for insurance just in case “unexpected” happened to my phone and figured getting a replacement would be no problem (at least, that’s what I was told would be the case when I first signed up for it). Hence why I was confused when I discovered that it would cost me $50, with the reason given that “all insurance providers charge a fee”. Whatever. But then I told that the phone I was using, the Sony Ericsson Z500, was no longer being produced, so the the next model up had to be sent, the Z525a. Okay, that’s fine. But then I heard that I would be getting a refurbished one. That I wasn’t happy to hear… paying $50 for a fucking used phone?! But hey, I needed a new phone, so I agreed to the terms. A few hours later I went to lunch and decided to stop by the local Cingular store to check out the new phone, and naturally, I got pestered by a sales person. But I ended up finding out from him that I would have gotten the phone for absolutely free if I simply renewed my contract that was already up! So I called back Cingular and they basically told me “Sorry, but you already said yes. We can’t stop things now.” Needless to say, I was pissed. The next day I got the phone, and it’s neat and all, but its still a used phone, refurbished or not, so I called again to bitch. This time I got a much nicer rep (though fairly dimwitted, more on that in a second) who understood how fucking asinine it is to charge someone $50 for a used phone when they could get the same exact one for free if they had paid a little more attention. So she profusely apologized, awarded me a $50 credit, and said a second, this time brand-new phone, would be sent. Then I explained how I wasn’t able to properly back up all my contacts on the Z500 to the SIM card since the displayed was broken (I did it once before, but back in January or something, meaning only about 75% of my address book was retained), so I replaced the missing ones when I got the Z535, and since I was now getting yet another phone I wanted to do another back up, but I couldn’t figure where the SIM setting was on this new phone and asked for help. But she couldn’t understand what I was talking about, and finally had me on hold as she checked (yes, its something I could have looked up at home in the instruction manual, but she did ask if I had anymore questions). About fifteen minutes later she walked me through how to add a phone number to my address book, which obviously was not what I asked for, and I simply hung up.
Next day the second brand-newer phone arrived, so I opened it up, popped in my SIM card, and made a call to Jason. A few minutes into the conversation things went silent and I couldn’t hear a thing (nor could Jason hear me on the other end), so I closed my phone and re-opened it to make another call, but the screen was all white and everything appeared to be locked up. I closed the phone again and waited, which seemed to work, then tried calling Jason once more, and this time there was no ring tone (even though it was ringing on Jason’s end, who once again couldn’t hear anything from me). Tried calling again and went through everything I just described about four more times, till the phone totally freaked out and shut itself off. Afterwards I went back to the first, re-furb phone and wondered if what had happened was a fluke or an issue inherent to that model, so perhaps sticking to a refurbished phone was maybe ideal since whatever flaw might have been fixed. I would then spend much time online doing research into what happened and discovered that it’s a fairly common problem. But then my theory of it being something that was addressed in the used phone was proven wrong when the same thing happened when trying to talk to MK a few days later. I then went back online for answers, and of course, I didn’t get jack-shit from the supposedly most authoritative internet community about cell phones on the net but from the Gaming Age Forums, of course. Discovered that I needed to download the firmware update, but to do so I needed a special data cable (one that costs like $30-40 btw) and a PC. Another call to Cingular was made, to find out if they could help me get the firmware, and they basically said that was the folks who made the phone, Sony’s responsibilities, and not theirs. I tried speaking to a tech, but they gave me the whole “We don’t transfer regular people to our techs; don’t call them, they’ll call you” busslhit. What assholes… Also, when they sent me the second phone, they forgot to include the return packing slip. I had to to call them yet again to point this out, and they assured me that I would not be charged for a second phone. Call me paranoid, but I simply hate it when any account has constant charges, refunds, and readjustments, all in such a short duration, because inevitably something goes wrong. Though if there has been one good thing to come from this was how when Katie and Robin first heard about my phone getting smashed, they felt bad and thought about raising money so I could get a new one, which was very sweet.
- Then you have UPS. I basically have a package from Sega that they can’t seem to figure out how to fucking get to me; I got a slip on my door late Thursday stating that they tried delivering it three times already, which is bullshit since I don’t have any slips for those attempts. Then on Friday, very late in the afternoon might I add, I get a postcard saying that I have to call them by Monday or the package will be sent back. Since it was too late to call at that point, I had to wait till Monday, so I made sure to call super early in the morning, around 8:30. Talked to a rep and asked for the package to be re-routed to my work address. But when nothing showed up yesterday, I called back to check the status and discovered that it was sent back to sender, a full three hours after I phoned in with the new address. I then demanded to speak to the person in-charge at the Brooklyn branch, which was where all the problems were coming from, and the asshole there couldn’t give me an excuse to why they had fucked up. He also basically said “make new arrangements with the shipper” and I called him on such bullshit, stating that why should I have to do anything when they were the ones who had made the mistakes, so the guy agreed and said it would be retrieved and sent back. I just tried calling this morning to find out the status was, and not only do they have no records of yesterday’s arrangements, but they had as my work address some business in South Carolina. Seriously, what in the fuck UPS? I demanded to talk to the person in charge, but of course, no supervisors were available and they wouldn’t give me the number to the Brooklyn branch because “We don’t give out phone numbers.” Son of a fucking bitch. Now I waiting to hear what that douchebag has to say now.
- I also discovered that a GameFly game that I returned over a month ago was never received; when I started only getting one games instead of two, I figured that was because my free gift trial was up and that I was automatically put on the low-end subscription. But when I went online to check my que to see what was next and read that I still had Blood Will Tell out. So it got lost in the mail or something, but thankfully they’ve been pretty cool about it.
- Because I’ve been so busy with the book, I’ve had to pass on freelance work over the summer, and I’m really feeling it now. And I believe I may have already mentioned how a particular client who was supposed to pay me at the first on this month decided to wait till the first of next month, meaning I’ve been ridiculously poor as of late. So what does a video game geek do when they need cash? Sell stuff, of course, on eBay (when MK first heard about this, she gave out a “Awww…. you shouldn’t have to do that” response, which again was very sweet). Problem is, gamers that are attracted to eBay are on a totally different stratosphere of stupidity. Case in point: I’m trying to sell my spare copy of the Zelda’s Collector’s Edition for the GameCube, which collected Zelda 1, 2, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask while I still can get a good deal for it. At a certain point a mint/sealed copy such as what I have could fetch but with the Wii’s Virtual Console on the horizon, and the chance to download each game for a (hopefully) low price point, the overall appeal and point of the package is going to soon become irrelevant. The auction was going great at first when it got a few bids far earlier than I expected, and I was ecstatic when the bid amount went past what I was hoping to get. Then I got a panic stricken email from the highest bidder which basically went “OMG, instead of $45 I accidentally put in $4500! OMG, OMG, help me!”, so I had to go through all the shit involved in repealing a bid. Which naturally brought the bid amount back down. Jason and other wondered why I bothered, that I should have forced the kid to stick by what he put in, but I knew the fucker would flake out. I just want the money and run. At least getting rid of my NES special edition GBA SP was nowhere as complicated; I ended up just selling that to a fellow Insert Credit chap. It was a great little system and all, but once you go with the DS’s screens, there’s no going back. Plus now I can finally get a Game Boy Micro! Though I will admit that the money earned from the GBA SP is already gone; it was used towards the purchase of some bitGeneration titles and Rhythm Tengoku.
- Had a brief encounter with one of the many dumbfuck hipster pieces of shit that’s in my neighborhood. I was waking down my street when this dipshit hipster-fag is heading towards me the other way, and in a zig-zaggy, irregular fashion. And naturally, as he comes close, he all of sudden starts rushing towards me, yells “Watch out!” because I’m the asshole who should get out of his fucking way, and just narrowly misses running into me. Why? Because… get this… THE ASSHOLE WAS HACKY SACKING AS HE WAS WALKING, I SHIT YOU NOT.
- Yet another awesome random encounter: earlier this week in the morning, some crazy Chinese woman on the train to work identified me as the devil and gave me a piece of her mind for the greater part of my commute. She didn’t yell or scream, but just calmly told me that “I know of the evils you perpetrate, and we will not allow it” and other stuff in that vein.
- According to MK, that weird thing on my right ear lobe is just getting weirder. It?s a good thing I can’t really notice it change shape and color and all that jazz.
- My PixelJump email address is also not working. That’s going to be fixed soon (hopefully).
- Why hasn’t YouTube signed off on my upgrade to Director Status? I’ve been waiting to post Taste of Bread and Karate Ruler for almost two weeks now. Perhaps I’d have more luck if I was some 16 year old blonde bimbo with webcam vids of myself doing the Numa song or some other “wacky take” on an internet meme.
- I’ve looked everywhere I can’t find the Weiland-Yutani patch that I was going to have sewn onto my Nintendo World messenger bag. Weiland-Yutani btw is the name of the big bad company from the Alien movies. I got the patch from Steve (Dickenson) when he was at some con and he knows how gay I am for Aliens/Lance Henriksen/cool logos from movies and tv shows. Anyway, I’m totally pissed off since that’s yet another thing I may have lost during the process of moving (I distinctly recall seeing it right before moving to Brooklyn… the last thing I lost due to a move was a PaRappa doll I got in Chinatown many years back and which got misplaced about six or seven years ago.
… and a number of other things which I could go into, but I won’t since I think I’ve done enough complaining for the time being. Plus some of its sorta sensitive work/industry type stuff, and it would be reckless to bitch about in the open air (or just plain boring), though anyone who knows me personally has it heard most of it already (especially MK who’s had to hear me bitch and moan constantly for the past few days).
But there have been a few bright spots over the past week: got to see high definition The Shining at last week’s movie night, and that was pretty cool. Didn’t do much else besides work on the book this past weekend, but I got the chance to take a break by going up to the Bronx for Jason’s daughter’s birthday party (she just turned 1). Jason’s folks are awesome cooks, and it was just nice to see little kids today, whom many people, my self included, have become worried that their brains might be sucked by the internet at the age of 6, still go ga-ga over candy. Though it wasn’t as much fun when both Jason and I had to protect the birthday cake like soccer goalies from all the errand flying balls being kicked around by said hyper kids. Jason’s friend Brian was also in attendance, and I discovered that he used to live near where I am now, and he took got tons of shit when he said that he lived in Park Slope. Though whereas he later said Sunset Park, I’m still adamant, simply because it legitimately pisses people off. We also spoke of the power moms that rule the streets, followed by their sheepish, broken-spirited husband, face deep in their Blackberries. God I hate my neighborhood sometimes.
Oh, and I did get some time in to play some games, and this weekend also marked the first time Meteos finally “clicked” in my mind, and now I can’t stop playing it. Plus earlier today I found out that I might have an official fort90.com shirt in the works, featuring one my my favorite witticisms, courtesy of Colin, everyone’s favorite shirt maker at the IC forums. Hopefully he’ll like the Konami desk clock that I have which he’s expressed interest in for exchange.
Also, I finally saw the Strangers With Candy movie last night with MK, Dave, and Raina, and it was pretty awesome! Any fan of the show ill not be disappointed. It’s basically an episode of the show, expanded to an hour and a half. It’s also a prequel of sorts, which depicted Jerry Blank, the 46 year old ex-junkie/whore/con’s attempt at re-entering the world of high school, as well as examining why she’s doing it in the first place. Most of the stars from the show make a return, with assorted “big name” Hollywood stars making special appearances here and there. I really like it, despite the absence of the Incredible Hulk music, but hey, you can’t have everything.
As for video game news, I’ve tried my best to keep on-top of thing, but with things being the way they are right now, its been rather tricky. I had some stuff I was going to pass go over (much of it “old news”, but folks have been asking for my opinion on certain things), but it?s almost time for me to meet up with MK for dinner (and later tonight its Clockwork Orange in HD!), so I’ll have to continue tomorrow.
