The first mail about it was from a Blizzard PR guy, and it came in around 7pm.  The first mail from anyone else came in around 8pm, so true to his word, he did give me/the D2 site a jump on everyone else in terms of posting about the patch.  His mail basically said they were doing it in beta and that I could post my article and say the patch was coming up in beta very soon.

Unfortunately I was out from 4pm until midnight, and Elly and Rush and Gaile were all offline that whole time also, so the D2 site went from potentially having the news an hour before anyone else on earth -- to me finally posting about it five hours late. Bleh.

This also further sucked the already feeble life out of my v1.10 Bliz North play test article, which was posted and well-received, but far from big news since 90% of the people who read it probably had the patch hours before my article went online.  See, that's why I never leave my cave and my precious; when I go out and try to have a real life for one night, it always comes back to haunt me.

Speaking of coming back to haunt me, dad's friends (well, mine too, but I met them through him and have never seen them other than with him, so anyway) at some point poked around this website, and for a belated B-day card they had printed out a huge, full-color image of my one snake porn photo from the dubiously-titled Sexy Flux photos page, and put a "happy birthday" type note below it, in pretty computer scripty font.

People shouldn't be allowed to print out that sort of smut on a color printer, I tell you.

I actually thought it was pretty funny, but dad seemed to be borderline mortified at his glimpse of the card.  He doesn't read this website much, or look at the photos, and while he's never voiced any disapproval of things around here, I'm sure he feels some.  And such a card was just rubbing his face in it.  Which will make it funnier in a year when I'm telling the story to some people, but just made it weird Thursday night.

Anyway, I got home around midnight after that, saw the patch was out, posted my article and news about the patch, and then Malaya called and we chatted for a couple of hours.  By the time that ended it was nearly 3am and I was really tired, and had to spend an hour playing the patch to see how it differed from my experience of it at Blizzard North, and write up a few forum posts about it.

With those finally done throwing together some crap for a sub-standard blog entry seemed like way more work than I could deal with.  So I just skipped a day, thinking I'd make today's better than usual, to make up for it.  And that's certainly off to a good start, eh? *cough*

Here are a couple of somewhat amusing weird news items, just since I've already got them written and have a headache and it's bedtime.  Yes, again.

¤ The incompetence of this criminal made me laugh.

A highway patrolman was shot in the lower leg with an arrow, while he was talking to a woman he'd pulled over.  This happened way out in the sticks, no other arrows came in, the cop had no idea who had shot him.  The damage wasn't life-threatening, but it broke his leg and you can bed it hurt like hell.  So the cops descended on the area that night, doing house to house searches.

When they knocked at Lam's residence in the 40 block of King Eider, he opened his garage door and deputies saw a bow and arrows that matched the one that struck the deputy, Amormino said. Lam was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and booked into the Men's Central Jail, Amormino said.

Um, after you shoot a cop with a very distinctive weapon, it would be wise to hide the weapon when the cops come looking, Mr. Lam.

¤ Three high school boys somehow managed to install multiple cameras in the girls locker room, and got video off of them for more than two years. The news item discusses a court's ruling that the tapes not be destroyed, since not all of the victims have yet been identified, and also since the various families of the girls are suing the school, and there are apparently shots of the school principle and other school officials looking for the cameras and not finding them.

I mostly found it amusing for the details of how many women the guys got on tape.

The criminal proceedings ended in December, when high school students Eddy John Newman, Ben Frankforter and Matt Thomas pleaded guilty to felony burglary charges and admitted they surreptitiously watched and filmed female athletes from locker room hideouts using multiple cameras for as long as two and a half years.

Twenty-eight plaintiffs are named in two civil suits — these are parents of girls' basketball and volleyball team members from around the state who used the Deer Lodge locker rooms during practices, games and tourneys, according to court documents. Their lawyer, Alan Blakeley of Missoula, says that number could swell to 600 as victims or potential victims come forward.

Testimony indicates the tapes included footage of female athletes from as many as 18 schools who were filmed and watched during or after almost every girls' basketball and volleyball game.

What a fricking gold mine! *cough* I mean it's all very very wrong, I mean the very concept that teenaged boys would try to peek at teenaged girls naked is just shocking and horrifying.  And to think, before the days of pinhole cameras guys had to settle for peering through cracks in the walls or drilling holes to get a peek.

I think the most amazing thing is that at no point in the article do the words, "selling images over the Internet" appear. Not the most entrepreneurial set of peeping Toms, were they?

his email amused me.  It just came in tonight from MusicBankBarb.  (Yes, "barb" not "bard".)

There was no subject entered.  Despite the fact that he can spell and punctuate, I bet you can guess his ISP first try.

Sorry but your review of Alice In Chains is absolute crap!

He is referring to the Band Names entry, or at least so I assume, since I don't think I've mentioned Alice in Chains anywhere else on this site.  Well, that's not exactly true, they are listed a couple of the site design type pages, since a misheard lyric from one of their songs more of less provided the name of this website.

Anyway, their Band Names entry can be seen here, and I'll just quote it here to fill some space.

Alice in Chains

Genre: Grunge Name Score: 8 Bonus Points: -2 Total Score: 6

One of the "big four" Seattle grunge acts, and my personal favorite, at least for their first couple of albums.  It all fell apart very quickly after that, as they couldn't handle their opium.  It's sort of a pity that Layne Staley waited until 2002 to finally kill himself with drugs; if he'd gone out in a blaze of glory back around 1996 the band would be remembered much more fondly.  They'd done all their good music by then anyway, entirely due to Layne's inability to get off the horse.  He finally killed himself in 2002, OD'ing on cocaine and heroin.  His was one of the more pathetic deaths, since he was so out of things by then that he laid dead for a couple of weeks in his Seattle apartment before anyone noticed he was gone, and came to discover his decomposing corpse. This costs them a couple of bonus points.

The band name is great.  It's evocative and somber, and that's definitely the appropriate vibe given their sound and origin and genre.  Happy fun grunge band names just wouldn't do. Exactly who is Alice and why she's chained is unknown, and essentially irrelevant, for our purposes.

While I think this emailer is of the "I don't grasp that the whole concept is sarcastic humor." school of Band Names emailers (a list of frightening proportions, which will become more true when I finally get around to updating the Band Names Feedback page), he does sort of have a point.  It's definitely not one of my stronger entries. Think I mentioned heroin issues often enough?

Given that they were one of my favorite bands for several years, and that I have a funny story about an on and off and off again girlfriend who also liked them a lot and was supposed to come over to my place to listen to their new album for about 3 months, I really can't dispute the emailer's conclusion.

Often when I read Band Names entries I laugh out loud and am surprised, since I so seldom remember writing a damn word of them.  Well, I laugh since they are often funny and audacious and snarky; the not remembering them at all (despite the fact that I wrote them all just a few months ago) part provides the surprise.

I was going to write more about it and quote a few of the other funny angry band names mails, but it's nearly 4am and my left eye and temple are throbbing, so I'm going to sleep.  Perhaps tomorrow's blog will be better. Or at least longer.

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