This is probably just opening myself up to attack by some lame spammer, but so I’ve gotta say it. Spammers suck. If I actually wanted to buy some viagra, what do you think I’d do… visit some random person’s blog and start reading comments about random topics until I found one that contained a link to some online vendor I’ve never heard of or go talk to a Doctor? Apparently there’s a bunch of losers out there that think it’s to former and that they’re doing the world some great service by posting links to their pathetic sites everywhere they possibly can. Do I sound upset? It might have something to do with, yet again, having to waste my time deleting comments that only contain spam links. Sure I can ban that IP address, but more likely than not whoever is the person behind posting these spamlinks is on a dynamic IP address. After all, I don’t think any reputable company would want to piss of a bunch of people by littering their personal blogs with links. Which brings my to another point (I have those?). Why would anybody deal with spammers? Giving them money (even if it’s $.50) just encourages them to continue doing what they’re doing. Besides that, these companies seem to be most bottom feeding pharmaceutical companies selling “male enhancement” drugs. Who would honestly want to by medication from some random company they’ve never heard of? We’re not talking about some cheap “as seen on TV’ do-it-all knife/kitchen sink, we’re talking about medicine; the former is just a waste of money, bad medicine can kill you.
SWG Developers Chat
Unfortunately I was unable to attend the developers chat this evening hosted by Stratics.com. Fortunately, I was prepared for this possibility and had my IRC client logging. I filtered the logs to remove many of the join/part/quit messages and put them on my site. I haven’t had a chance to read them yet, but will be doing so shortly :).
Another new time sink … I mean character
Sony Online Entertainment had some problems with a patch they did this morning resulting in many of their galaxies (read, servers) being down for an extended amount of time this morning. This included the ones I normally play on. While I was waiting patiently (ya, right) for the game to be playable again I created a new character… as if I didn’t waste, I mean spend, enough time on the existing two. Anyway, this new character’s name is Oplem Koped and he resides on the Sunrunner galaxy. He hopes someday to be bounty hunter and a loyal servant of the Empire (even though some Imperials don’t like bounty hunters). I spent most of the day playing this character and helped him to learn a couple of skills. He’s about half-way to the required faction points to join the Empire… I really forgot how fast that initial 200 FP took to earn.
School’s starting soon….
Has anybody else noticed a decrease in my posting frequency since I bought Star Wars Galaxies has decreased significantly? If you haven’t, I certainly have. My other online activities have also fallen by the wayside (such as Bugzilla‘s documentation. Heck, bugzilla.mozilla.org transferred to their new server and I didn’t even know it until I was actually going through my bugmail and clicked on one of the links to get more information. So let that be a lesson to you: don’t buy Star Wars Galaxies… it’s full of bugs and extremely addicting (does that even seem like a possible combination?). Maybe now that schools starting I’ll play games less and accomplish more. Maybe.
Character Bios … Saved Some Time
Came across a really slick site today: Stratics guide to Star Wars Galaxies. One of the features the site has is the ability to create character bios that are tailored to Star Wars Galaxies (such as what Skills the character has). I set up a bio for both of my characters: Aliena Shiring on the Valcyn Galaxy & Accacattiurra on the Kettemoor Galaxy. The site seems a little slow, but it’s probably because of people like me who use the service but don’t buy the advanced membership
More work units than 81% of SETI users?
Will the surprises never end? After rebuilding the front page with my last entry I noticed that my SETI ranking is now 18.316%. That means I’ve done more work units than 81% of SETI users… and I’ve only been at it for less than a month. I imagine the percentage increases will come slower now as I’m probably up against the type of hard-core SETI users that would buy a PCI card whose sole purpose is to do SETI work units.
Searches that end up here
Today I was looking at my referrer logs and found it quite interesting to see not only the sites from which people are finding my blog, but also the search-terms they’re using to find it. Below are some of my favorites along with an attempt to answer the question they were most likely trying to ask. It is, of course, just a bunch of guesswork.
- bugzilla documentation
- Yes, I am the person currently in charge of Bugzilla’s documentation. No, I did not write all of it… most of it was written by Matthew Barnson. No, this is not the site to find the documentation. It can all be found at bugzilla.org.
- contacts wear shower
- When I got my contacts, they recommended to me not to wear them in the shower. They said the reason for his was actually that if any shampoo happened to get into your eyes, you not only have to get it out of your eyes, but also out of the contacts. It’s just easier if you don’t wear them. Besides, you should know where everything is by now :).
- how much does army reserve get paid
- Well, that varies based on a number of factors, such as what your rank is and how long you’ve been in. I, as an E3 with less than 2 yrs of service, get $180.92 pre-tax for a weekend. After taxes and SGLI it ends up being $130.60. In addition to that pay, there are also the benefits such as the sign-on bonus, GI Bill, and tuition assistance. Only a recruiter can tell you exactly how much any of that would be as it varies based on the job you want and how badly the Army wants that job filled.
- star wars galaxies on laptop
- I had less than good (eg, no) luck getting it to work on my laptop. The video card is the sticky part as it has to support “Hardware Transform and Lighting” which a lot of the ones embedded in laptops apparently don’t. I saw somebody on one of the forums mention the use of software emulation for that once, but can’t find it now. I never tried it, so I can’t say if it works or not.
- swg entertainers
- Yes, I have a character on the Valcyn galaxy that is an entertainer. More specifically, she’s a musician. When in the cantina, she’s normally in the one at Theed. However, being that she’s also an aspiring tailor she’s not always in the cantina.
Who needs sleep?
Still spending lots of time playing Star Wars Galaxies. I’ve found this game to be a lot of fun, both in the interaction between other players and doing things by yourself. Although it is the former that is more fun. I’ve found that there are some people who are very generous and others who are so stingy that their proverbial wallet must creak whenever they open it… kinda like in real life! For example, one night I was talking with a person and mentioned that I had to earn a good chunk of credits before I could go to bed because I need to pay maintenance on my harvesters for the entire weekend. He completely floored me when he instantly handed me 1,000 credits. I certainly wasn’t expecting this, but do truly appreciate it. Another example was last night. I was playing in the cantina just to earn some musical XP when a player said he wanted to hire a musician for a couple hours. Though it was 10pm and I did kinda want to be in bed early, I decided I’d do his gig. He paid very well for that time. Although it wasn’t exciting as the cantina, it was worth my while. The ironic thing is, his shop isn’t too far from where my harvesters are and in the same neighborhood that I want to put my house. After that gig last night, I could certainly afford a small house, though I’m not sure if I want to hold out for a medium or not. The shop I was in was a medium and I think it was a very cool place. I guess I just need to see a small in order to make up my mind.
At some point in the future, I’d like to put up a Bio page for my characters. Maybe start making up some history for them and such. I’m not sure when this will happen, though, as I’ve intended to put up a personal Bio page for quite some time now. I guess I’m still waiting to find that magical round tuit… if you have a spare, please let me know!
SWG – Loads of Fun, Loads of Time
As I play Star Wars Galaxies more, I begin to realize that this is definitely a game that can consume a lot of your time. And for some strange reason, I chose to start developing two characters at once, each in two professions!! I have one character that is a Medic/Marksmen and another that is an Artisan/Entertainer. They are both still in training in their respective skills, but I’ve managed to get some 2nd level of experience for each of them. They’ve got most of the first level stuff that I want for now (the one exception is my Medic still needs Chem I). What that really means is that it’ll take longer to advance again because 2nd, 3rd, and especially 4th level skills require a lot of XP and those take time to earn. Financially speaking, both characters are doing OK though neither one is getting rich quick. I still do a lot of delivery missions, especially if I want to go to another town. I generally try to find a delivery mission that’s going to end up where I want to… I figure if I’m going there, I may as well get paid to do it! One thing I have noticed playing the two different characters is that people tend to tip the medics better than the entertainers. I don’t know that I’ve gotten a tip as the entertainer yet, but I’ve gotten a few 500 credit tips as a medic. I’d say roughly 70% of the people I’ve healed wounds for (not just used a stimpack on) have tipped me. That is appreciated because the only two ways for me to heal wounds right now is to buy medicine on the Bazaar or take the hit on mental powers and battle fatigue. I think that will change as soon as I get Chem I. I will also say that it’s more expensive to be a medic than a musician. I’ve probably spent well over five thousand credits on medical supplies, but I’ve only spent 150 on an instrument (I did also trade some resources I had gathered) and that was only because I was too impatient to wait for Musicianship II where I would be able to make my own! So maybe it’s fitting that the medics get tipped better than the entertainers.
The beast lives
Yippee!! My “new” machine is alive. I got it running last night and got Windows installed (it has WinXP because I want to use it for gaming). I say “new” because it has a lot of old parts in it as well. The only things I purchased are: a Motherboard, a Processor, a stick of RAM, a cheap hard drive, and a Video Card. My grand total for this equipment: ~$470 after taxes and rebates. I don’t think that’s terribly bad for a new machine. I even got Star Was Galaxies installed and running. I created a Wookie medic. My wookie is a female who’s name escapes me at the moment. Unfortunately, I can’t play the game right now because all the servers are down for scheduled maintenance. It seems like they could bring them down one or two at a time instead of all at once for 3 hours. But I suppose that’s a separate rant.