Archive for October, 2003
Today I did something I haven’t done in a long long time, I devoured a novel.
It was Fool’s Fate, the final chapter in Robin Hobb’s ‘The Tawny Man’ trilogy, which itself was the third and final trilogy of novels based around, and writtent hrough the eyes of the bastard Fitz.
At the end of the Liveship and Farseer trilogies I had been left unhappy with how everything was resolved. In the case of the Farseer trilogy a character I really enjoyed died in a manner that I felt was pointless and unworthy of said character. In the second, The Liveship trilogy, I felt the end was too rushed and compressed, resulting in some fairly vague memories of what actually transpired. Nothing wrong with this ending though. The truth is that I am extremely hard to please when it comes to endings in my novels, but in this case the author pushed all the right buttons and wrapped up basically every loose end from the previous 8 books, all in a neat little package that fit into the story and didn’t retcon a single thing.
Good book, good series, good author!
So that was 8 hrs of my day today , I then spent 2hrs watching the latest ( 4th ) Tarantino film, “Kill Bill, Vol.1″.
Whoops.. I urge anyone who has any choice in the matter to please not go and see this film, it is a shockingly bad film, with poor dialogue, acting and story. Lets not even touch on the fountains of blood..
Tarantino, I want those 6600 seconds of my life back, after watching your film I could actually feel them being torn from me.
October 23rd, 2003
Still waiting for my free account to be deleted. The sign-up process took less time than trashing the account is taking, seems wrong to me.
I’ve sent them off another email but they keep refering the issue to their Billing Department. Why a free account should be the responsibility of the Billing Department is anyone’s guess…
They’ve made a bit of a mistake, they let you nominate what email address you redirect your incoming mail to. Up until 10minutes ago it was going to my Yahoo account. Now all mail is being deleted, in 24hrs I think I might redirect it to their address info@virtualave.net - see how long it takes them to delete the account once they start getting all my spam on top of whatever they’re already getting.
Pricks.
Virtualave = bad!
October 21st, 2003
A few years ago I signed up for a free VirtualAvenue.net website, they offered a subdomain for free with a little bit of space and ftp access, with the one problem of massive banner and pop-up ads…
I had a rather large site there, there wasn’t much content, but there were lots of files and lots of time spent learning all about the wonders of nested tables. Dont need it now though, haven’t needed it for a few years to be perfectly honest, but I kept the domain active, mostly because whenever I signed up for anything online where I thought they might send me offers, I used (something)@wolfden.virtualave.net as a spam trap/redirect. Thus, if I was filling in a form at GameSpy.Com I would use the email address gamespy @wolfden.virtualave.net and all email would be directed to my Yahoo account.
Want to stop that now. I now just give out my Yahoo address, the one I try to keep free is my PlatinumWeaver email, and I keep my ISPs address completely off the ‘net.
Unfortunately, VirtualAve dont seem to know how to remove an account.
There doesn’t seem to be any automated way to do so.
The Tech support crew cant do it.
Now we have ‘Sales Analysts’ looking into the problem.
I bet if I wanted to upgrade my account they’d have a solution immediately…
October 16th, 2003
So there’s a little bit of a gap between my previous entry and this one. Two weeks or so actually, which is fairly unusual as I’m normally complaining about something new every week. It’s not my fault this time ( is it ever? ).
There is a certain feeling that comes over you when you know that someone might be listening in to your conversation, this feeling seems to have progressed into the digital age..
A little while ago I was talking on the phone to someone who is overseas at the moment, staying in a Hotel in South Africa. The conversation was fine for about 30minutes, then there was a click as if someone had picked up a phone, and then rapid tones indicating something like a speed-dial button being pressed. Although the conversation was in no way sensitive, the interuption and the possibility of someone overhearing the call quickly ended the call.
Then we have the mess that was the brief hosting of the Circle of Eight boards on this site. Here I am comfortably ranting away to a select group of people who have the misfortune of knowing my webpage address, and then suddenly there are thousands of people whom I have never seen before running around in a sub-folder, doing god knows what and totally changing the whole feel of the place.
It’s not like i’m posting personal things here, or that I have posted that much personal stuff online at all.It’s just that the idea of strangers visiting what is basically my own private corner of a very public place still bothers me.. which is why I wasn’t posting…
See, I told you it wasn’t my fault…
{edit} Edit for clarity {/edit}
October 12th, 2003
