Venting

[RedEye]

Or try using a Disk Cleaning system. You chuck in a special disk, and voila' it works again.
Think dust on the laser or the lens.

[outwarddoodles]

Oh, those are great ideas! Thanks!

My dad was actually suggesting replacing the disk drive himself -- I'm just afraid of blowing the warranty, and I wasn't aware that you could buy Xbox drives seperately.

[Whisperwind]

Hey, Einstein! If I had a job, I wouldn't be trying to start my own business, would I?!

Sounds like we have a lot in common. One of the last jobs I applied for was to be a cashier in a cupcake store. . . Yes, that's right. Not a bakery, just cupcakes, and when I gave the guy my resume, he told me that he was "concerned" and "had doubts about my level of responsibility" because I was presently unemployed.

It was on the tip of my tongue to say: "Well genius, if I already had a job right now, I wouldn't be looking for work in a freakin' cupcake shop, now would I?!"

That's the Catch 22 I was alluding to earlier. Evidently, with unemployment shooting through the roof, all the employers out there have decided they can be that much more picky about who they hire on for even the most menial and abysmal of job openings.
Today I saw a job offer on Craigslist for doormen: "must have prior experience." Huh!?!

I'd swear they smell the blood in the water. They see the figures, the latest layoffs, and see it as an opportunity to get more out of their employees for less. I didn't graduate from college and I never got my driver's license -- with that in mind, I'm not expecting to get my dream job. . .
But I still think I should have qualified to work the counter in a freakin' cupcake shop!

ughhh i'm in the same boat. unemployment is insane around here and everywhere thats hiring is being anal because they can have the pick of the litter.. even if you can get a job around here thats no guarantee that you'll have it next week, cause employers i've encountered have this "well there are tons of other people out there now!" attitude. and course if that happens to you you dont want to add that to your resume, that you worked at a store for a week and got laid off for someone better who just happened to walk in looking for a job when you had just recently filled the position... way to up my low self esteem.. not.

[Terastas]

even if you can get a job around here thats no guarantee that you'll have it next week, cause employers i've encountered have this "well there are tons of other people out there now!"

That's what happened at my last job. It was at a convenience store; they had this "help wanted" sign up forever (in fact, it's still there over a year later) and they only kept me there for a month; they conveniently decided to let me go right before I was due to come off of the training salary.

They didn't even tell me they were letting me go until they'd given away my shift, and I know they didn't pick the new guy because he was more experienced (I could see him picking his nose through the glass door before I went in), so I'm convinced the only reason they took him on and let me go was so they wouldn't have to pay me the extra fifty friggin' cents an hour.

Like I said, they smell the blood in the water.

[Silverclaw]

I quit my job at Hollywood Video a few weeks before Christmas. I liked the job ok, it was just the boss being bipolar with us workers, not giving me many hours, and stupid company policeys that made me leave. I swear, I asked about 20-21 places if they were hiring after the holidays. Most are not, and others are like, 'we are accepting applications, but are not hiring at the moment.' I did a few online applications(that take forever to get through) that claim they are looking for workers, then I get an email back saying that they actually are not hiring but they will call sometime in the future it they are.
I'm starting to have to look in places where I would really not care to work. It's kindof sad that I hope I get the position at Dunkin Dounuts I hope it doesnt come to a point where I have to work at a McDonalds or Walmart just to make some money That'll happen when you can't get your first two dozen or so choices...

[Whisperwind]

so I'm convinced the only reason they took him on and let me go was so they wouldn't have to pay me the extra fifty friggin' cents an hour.

Like I said, they smell the blood in the water.

exactly. and whats worse is around here high schools and some college programs have something set up where the degrees/diplomas require work experience, and have it worked out with the city/state that if an employer hires one of those students, they only have to paythem half of minimum wage, and the students will get the other half from the city/state. even less incentive to hire the people who need the jobs for, yanno, money!



(not that students don't need money, its just frustrating because i cant afford to go to college right now and i see 16 year olds working at stores talking about how they're going to buy the latest iphone/blackberry/ps3/what have you while im scraping pennies together for gas money to go put in more applications)

I hope it doesnt come to a point where I have to work at a McDonalds or Walmart just to make some money That'll happen when you can't get your first two dozen or so choices...

i'm at the point where i've applied to those and every other crappy place around and STILL no ones hiring. this is getting ridiculous.

[Terastas]

Most are not, and others are like, 'we are accepting applications, but are not hiring at the moment.' I did a few online applications(that take forever to get through) that claim they are looking for workers, then I get an email back saying that they actually are not hiring but they will call sometime in the future it they are.

That was one of the few useful things I learned while I was in Vegas: that "now accepting applications" does not mean "now hiring." It just means they're hoarding applications so they can replace anyone at the drop of a hat.

Oddly enough, the place I first discovered that at was another Hollywood Video (small world, eh?). I turned in my application and went through their online crap-thingy less than a week after I'd moved there. Three months later we drove by there on my way to the airport and they still had the friggin' "now accepting applications" sign up in the window.

My brother and I actually had our final confrontation because I didn't apply at such a store. But here's the thing: not only were they just "accepting applications" like everyone else, they were only accepting applications Tuesdays between 12:00 and 2:00 P.M. Why would I believe they had any vacancies if they could afford to do that? Everywhere else in a five mile radius I applied to work at, including McDonalds, Burger King, and yes, even WalMart. The only other exception I made was for KFC, because just the smell coming out of that place was enough to make me sick to my stomach. They were all "accepting," but none of them were hiring.

[Whisperwind]

maybe i'm overreacting, but im quite pissed off at the moment.

theres a free to play MMO thats in beta testing - indicating that they want bug reports and feedback.

ive been playing it for a week or so, and i found a bug.

when you die in the game, you get "death debt", which takes a good portion of any xp you gain and pays off the debt slowly. this is based on your level/xp/etc.

also when you die, you cannot be resurrected without your consent.

i was fighting something, lagged, got disconnected, and assumed i died. no biggie. but when i logged on, i had more than double the death debt than i was supposed to have, and i knew that someone couldnt have rezzed me while i was still lagging without my consent. So i went and wrote out a quick bug report saying what happened and what i was doing when it happened.. this was 3 days ago or so.

i get an email back today from an extremely rude person saying "no we wont give you back your debt, sorry." besides the fact that i never asked for it back, they go on to ask that i not waste their precious time with things like "that" and push me towards the forums (which i had already checked and there was nothing similar already started).

what happened to actually reading what people have to say and politely responding when you ask for their help? even if i had been rudely demanding the xp back, they shouldnt have responded like that!

just pisses me off, that's all. sure, maybe someone had a bad day.. but then they shouldnt be working with people. especially since it's an email and you can stop and check what you have to say before you say it!

[Terastas]

I went through something similar at Neopets once, and am currently going through it now with Gaia's zOMG game. I've been sending feedback to Neopets for months about various bugs and glitches; the only one I ever saw any results on was when I reported a couple of users for hacking and pointed out that they had high scores in some games that weren't even possible; one had a recorded high score of 5000 in a game where the maximum score possible was around 950, others had high scores that ended in numbers besides 0 in games where points were awarded on a scale of 10 -- really juvenile stuff like that, the kind of things I can't believe it took me to point out for them. Even then, I don't even think they actually cracked down on the hackers and beefed up their security; suddenly the top scoring tables started resetting at the beginning of every month, and those obviously hacked high scores still pop up every now and then.

Everything else I've reported I just got the generic "thank you for your-" reply and never saw any results on.

The sad truth is that, more often than not, online game producers don't care if the gaming experience is pleasant, frustrating or glitchy up the yin-yang; they only care that we're playing it and willing to piss away money on it. Gaia is the worst when it comes to that; their MMORPG has glitches up the wazoo but they keep coming out with more and more useless features to encourage gamers to buy cash cards. The kinds of people that you typically meet on online games are my #1 reason not to play them; the kinds of people that make them are my #2 reason. I get that they work hard on these games, but they often have this serious air of defiance about any suggestions you make to them, including bug reports. Sad, isn't it?

[Whisperwind]

see thats the whole thing, this is the first mmo ive been on where the people are actually really cool/nice/helpful! at least on the server i play on they are.. how can a game with such a great community have such asshole-ish devs/etc? especially since they've been posting news asking for opinions and whatnot cause they're coming out of beta soon!

the game itself it actually pretty fun.. but if they continue with this trend of ignoring the people who play it/insulting them then its definitely gotta go.

unfortunately there will always be more people finding it and joining up and getting addicted, so its not like we can even make an impact, just hope one day that they'll get the hint.

[Terastas]

What the hell is this?!!

I. . . Argha. . . Nyurrr. . . Dammit, this is too stupid for words!

*facepalms*

[RedEye]

It's a political cartoon.

The guy also treated Dubya that way too. He seems to have a thing for chimps.

And no taste at all. But then most political cartoonists tend to have (to be kind) a sort of Juvenile mentality when it comes to their stuff. Junior High juvenile...

[Gevaudan]

The NY Post sort of apologized for the cartoon.

[Set]

To users of Internet Explorer:

STOP USING THAT BUGGY PIECE OF s***. As a web developer you people are making my life hell by continuing to browse with it. I have to code in HACKS solely so my web pages look halfway decent in IE. Microsuck can't seem to get it's act together long enough to make IE standards compliant, and I'll be damned if I'm going to cater to a company I have come to absolutely loathe.


To Microsoft (and the media in general):

f*** YOU AND YOUR DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT.


To my fellow web developers:

STOP using JavaScript. 99% of the time you don't need it. Your websites should not break when I don't have JavaScript enabled. No amount of badgering will make me enable it, either.


To Symantec:

No antivirus should ever mimic the properties of malware. Go die in a fire. Now.


To Apple:

You're not as innocent as you claim to be. After all, you came out with QuickTime, a program which reinstalls itself after you've taken it off of your computer with absolutely no interaction from the user. QuickTime needs to die with Symantec.

[Terastas]

The NY Post sort of apologized for the cartoon.

What they're basically doing now is exactly what they accused their critics of doing: using the firestorm as an excuse to attack all of their critics.

And they had to know this would happen. Remember all the controversy over the New Yorker cover, which was actually a parody of how Republicans were trying to depict Obama? They had to know people would be upset over that cartoon. How could so many people, many of which I'm assuming have degrees in journalism, have looked at that cartoon and not seen anything wrong with it?

They knew what they were doing, and this is the reaction they were hoping for. It's like calling somebody's daughter a ho so you can take him to court after he gives you a black eye. I honestly think they published that cartoon with the deliberate intent of outraging them so they could attack them for being outraged.

These are the people that give free speech a bad name.

[Set]

Jeez, now Amazon is doing it?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090227/0128303920.shtml

[MoonKit]

Man, I really hate some of the members on WereList. It's always the ones with like eight hundred theriotypes and personalities that jump down your throat.

Im sorry if I offend any body here but I do not believe in Polyweres nor being more than one OtherKin "race".

[RedEye]

Meh... I think that's ExtraSpiritual Insecurity raising it's many heads.

While I suppose it is possible, most Therians tend to focus on a line of animals; as in Dire Wolves to Modern Wolves. They may have parts and pieces and memories of several evolutes, but the line is what usually seems to be strongest.

Odd, but I've never met a Starfish therian...

[Terastas]

Usually I'd be pretty pissed to see a blatantly stupid movie like Medea Goes To Jail be #1 at the box office. . .

But since it beat The Jonas Bros. movie on it's opening weekend: BWA-HYA-HYA-HYAH!!!!!

[Noir-Okami]

But since it beat The Jonas Bros. movie on it's opening weekend: BWA-HYA-HYA-HYAH!!!!!

I agree. I HATE THE JONAS BROTHERS.

They sound like crap anyway.

[Gevaudan]

But since it beat The Jonas Bros. movie on it's opening weekend: BWA-HYA-HYA-HYAH!!!!!

I agree. I HATE THE JONAS BROTHERS.

They sound like crap anyway.

Don't get your hopes up. They're coming out with a TV show.

[Terastas]

Don't get your hopes up. They're coming out with a TV show.

Big whoop. TV shows about singing teen sensations doubling as average everyday kids in fake-a** materialistic America are ten a nickle. Just you wait: in 2010, nobody will even remember who the Jonas Brothers are, and by 2012, I'm willing to bet at least one of them will be dead, in jail or in rehab. Hillary Duff, the Cheetah Girls, all of them had their own freakin' television show on either Disney or Nickelodeon -- it's only a matter of time before the tweens get sick of Miley and the Jonas Bros. and move on the same way they got sick of every generic singing tween icon before them. If anything, a band having a TV show is a guarantee that their days are numbered.

It'll all be over soon. I guarantee you before the year is over, we'll all be complaining that someone else we presently haven't even heard of yet is way too overexposed.

[Silverclaw]

So, I just found my first case of art thieft against me. I used to frequent a Lion King/furry rp forum and chat room. About 6 years ago, I drew a picture for a friend of his fursona. Been years since I've talked to him, I think the website is dead now anyways. Had some good times there. We used to be pretty close and just drifted apart. Anyways I was browsing furaffinity when I came across his account. I was like 'Oh cool! We used to be best internet buds!' Used to flirt a bit and all that. lol. (So young and dumb). His account is just of commisions he paid for, 'cause he is no artist. Then I saw the old picture I made for him in a thumbnail. I was then like, "Aww, that's sweet, he still has that old thing". Clicked on it and it looked different. Looks like he traced what I drew(poorly) and added/changed a few things around and gave it some color. To make it worse his description claimed that he made it, his work, yadda yadda yadda.
So yeah, kindof mad and a little sad that he would do that. Not going to bring anything up though; it was old, not-so-good work from me. Also I don't want to get involved with him again. *sigh*
Oh well.

[WereWolfBoy]

i hate my darn school they block everything

[Wingman]

i hate my darn school they block everything

Yeah, but in many cases it's for good reason. Regardless of the fact that a student actively searched for it, some parents are going to hit the warpath if they find out their precious little snowflakes discover they didn't spring into being fully formed.

The highschool I used to go to even had lots of webcomics blocked.