So to purchase the digital copy I had to login to Battle.net, which I couldn’t remember my old account from way back in the day (like when I tried WoW). Whatever, so I create a new account.

Then when I login, it gives me an option to merge my Battle.net account with my WoW account, so I manage to figure that one out as well. Bam! Cool its merged—who cares my account is frozen because I haven’t paid for it in years.

So I get SC2 downloaded, purchased and installed. Then later on I get an email saying how the WoW character faction transfer I requested is underway. WTF? It didn’t ask me to login or anything, but it did say if I didn’t request this I should check my account. Oddly enough it was sent to a an email I don’t even use anymore (it just forwards to my Gmail account), and I mean I haven’t used this in years. Like 5+ years, which ironically is about how long ago I tried WoW.

I ignored it.

But then it kept bothering me so I re-read the email and tried to understand what the fuck was going on. So at the very bottom of the email is a link that brings you to the control panel (or so I thought). It seemed legit enough because it used the old email account, which I assumed is the one I used when I signed up for WoW.

Needless to say I fell for my first and only phishing attempt. They were pretty slick about it. They didn’t say “LOGIN HERE NOW GO GO GO”. They just casually said to check my account if I didn’t request, and then left a tiny link at the very bottom of the email.

I fucking panicked. I went through and changed every fucking account password I have. Which is a metric fuck-ton. The funny part is, I’m always telling people “if you ever get an email asking you to login somewhere, manually type it in your browser… don’t click links”.

I guess I should listen to myself more often.

(Oh yea by the way, we moved. More on that later)

Story related:

System: Welcome
System: Connecting to server. Please wait…
System: Connection with server established.
System: Technical Support Topic: DSL High Speed Internet
System: ANGELA has joined this session!
System: Connected with ANGELA
ANGELA: Thank you for contacting AT&T Internet Support, my name is Angela (pr2704). I see that I am chatting with Brandon. Am I correct?
You: yes
ANGELA: I see that you provided 909******* as the number associated with your DSL/Dial account. Am I correct?
You: correct
ANGELA: Thank you for confirming the details. How can I make you a very satisfied customer today?
You: i recently upgraded the speed of our dsl, just curious when it would take effect
You: i dont know why when we moved our dsl speed dropped so much
ANGELA: I apologize for the inconvenience you have been experiencing and we will work together to resolve this issue.
*** long pause ***
ANGELA: I can see that the order status is complete.
ANGELA: Have you done speed test?
You: DownStream Connection Speed 3008 kbps
You: UpStream Connection Speed 512 kbps
You: thats my router status
You: which is like half the speed it was prior to our move
ANGELA: Okay
You: http://www.dslreports.com/im/89306600/1835.png
ANGELA: What was your previous speed?
You: we were on the 6mbit package
You: upload was around 768 or whatever
ANGELA: Sure
ANGELA: lets try to test the speed again by the link I am providing
ANGELA: http://speedtest.net
ANGELA: Please inform me about the results
You: http://www.speedtest.net/result/826790558.png
You: i tried rebooting my router just before i contacted you
ANGELA: What is the upload and download speeds?
You: did you not get my link?
You: here: http://www.speedtest.net/result/826790558.png
You: 2.48 down and 0.43 up
ANGELA: Okey.
ANGELA: Let perform some steps to increase the speed.
ANGELA: May I know which browser are you using?
You: currently chrome, but I have firefox and IE
ANGELA: Have you cleared cache and cookies of browser?
You: what would that accomplish?
You: Im trying to speed up my connection
You: not clear my browsing history
ANGELA: Some time it happens because of some temperory files stored in browser.
You: wow
*** this is when I disconnected ***

(9:11:12 AM) Chad: oops
(9:16:13 AM) Brandon: where did it go
(9:16:19 AM) Chad: 1 sec
(9:16:31 AM) Brandon: ok lemme go grab a snack
(9:16:34 AM) Chad: kk
(7:24:59 PM) Brandon: I has fried rice
(7:25:14 PM) Brandon: also
(7:25:14 PM) Chad: I had chinese food about an hour ago.
(7:25:16 PM) Chad: i’m hungry again
(7:25:17 PM) Chad: damn you
(7:25:19 PM) Brandon: your livestream is offline
(7:25:25 PM) Brandon: I just went to get a snack
(7:25:28 PM) Brandon: where did it go?

If you don’t get the joke, keep looking.

Anyone who’s on the internet knows what email spam is and its become such a large scale issue that we start to become numb to it. Sorta like a dog that loses a leg. Yes the problem is there, but he starts ignoring it so much that he eventually forgets about it and just goes about his daily life. BUT HE’S STILL MISSING A LEG!

We all deal with it: we check our email box and sort through all the random bullshit. We don’t even think about it anymore. Just read, delete, read, remove, skip, delete, remove, OH LOOK AN EMAIL FROM MY FRIEND! Especially if you have a smart phone that gives you email notifications. Its like it never shuts up.

Many of us have public email accounts, such as Gmail or AOL or Yahoo or whatever. Yes they have “spam filters” but they don’t quite make the cut. They do a decent job, but our inboxes are still cluttered with worthless junk.

I finally had enough.

Just over a year ago I started fighting back and it’s paid off. It took a long time before I started seeing any decent results, a few months actually, but over time it began to get more and more apparent that what I had been doing really worked.

What did I do? It was simple: I started opting out of the emails. Believe it or not, 50% of the spam email you get is from legitimate sites that you signed up for and checked the silly little box that said “send me emails about site updates” or something along those lines. You’ll have to handle them on a one-by-one basis. Just login to the site, go to your options or contact preferences and opt out of the newsletter emails or whatever else they want to send you.

Another large portion of your emails come from mailing lists that you can unsubscribe from. Just scourer the email (usually at the very top or very bottom) and find the “click here to unsubscribe”. Its normally really small and often colored in a manner that hides it, but its there. Sometimes you have to click it and follow a set of instructions to complete the process but trust me, its worth it. PROTIP: some of these will require you to unsubscribe a few times before they get the point, but it will eventually work.

After you’ve taken care of those two categories, the remainder will be emails you’ll have to really work at. Some of them you can Google and research and find the sender, or you can try replying to the email its sent from. I really can’t give any advice on that except to just keep trying.

After time you’ll really start to see a big difference. In fact, the remainder of the shit that gets sent to me ends up getting caught by Gmail’s spam filter. I can stand here today tell you in all honesty: I have no spam email in my inbox

Just take the time to unsubscribe and opt out of emails, watch out for the checkboxes when you sign up for sites, and most importantly… DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT

You see… what this picture is trying to tell you is that FedEx cares. They care about you and your package and want to get it to you in good condition and as safe as possible. Its a good advertisement. The only problem is they don’t really care about you. Admittedly I can understand that maybe the company as a whole cares, but that isn’t reflected all the way down to the employees working for them… specifically the dickwads delivering your product (I had to add ‘dickwads’ to my autocorrect dictionary, but rest assured its a real word).

The reason I bring this up is because yesterday I saw the announcement Google had finally released the car dock for the Nexus One (FUCK YES). So I order the son of a bitch… expecting it to take a few days. But guess what? When the order processed and I got my tracking number it was on track to be delivered NEXT DAY (DOUBLE FUCK YES).

So anyways, I’m off work today and the entire family is home and we’re all hanging out. I walked outside for a minute and found a note on the door that said FedEx had tried to deliver your package but no one was home and they’re going to try to deliver it tomorrow.

WHAT THE FUCK?!

no no no no and NO. Fuck you FedEx dude—we were here. You didn’t even fucking try to deliver it. You probably sat in your truck and wrote up the “sorry” note and just walked up and put it on our door. Do your job and knock on the door you stupid lazy son of a bitch. DO YOUR FUCKING JOB—ITS WHY THEY PAY YOU.

Now, its not like its an emergency that I get this package, but how does he know that? How does he know its not an important business package, or medical supplies, or porn… YOU DON’T KNOW FEDEX DUDE, YOU DON’T KNOW!

So I called them up. I told the person on the phone that I was extremely annoyed and explained the fact we were home all day (not just one of us that could have been in the shitter or something, but an entire family). Although I was mad this happened, I was nice to her and even told her that I understood this wasn’t her fault but that I was frustrated. So she did something awesome. She called the local facility and had them get in contact with the driver and demanded he redeliver. About 2 hours later he showed up…

Brandon: 1   –   Lazy Fucker: 0

I first got to know Edward by playing Team Fortress 2 with him. He always played as the Medic and his name was "Edward the Retarded Medic"… he assumed the role very well. He would scream absurd things like "THERE ARE VERY BAD MEN OVER HERE! RUN! RUN!" in a silly retarded voice (I can’t stress the word retarded in this post enough).

He listens to The Cardigans. He makes French Onion Soup about once a week (which probably says much about what his breath smells like). He replaces the word "fuck" with "frak" because he’s an huge Battlestar Galatica fan. He has a compulsion to put sandwich bags on his head… because… why not put them there? He tweets non-stop. OH GOD DOES HE TWEET NONE STOP. Here’s a few examples:

I made my own waterproof skin for my netbook, it works really well, check it out; http://bit.ly/ckOXOO

I am completely out of food, I really need to buy more. Tomorrow’s French onion soup and Caprica day, I can’t mess that up, man.

Oh, I rule. I am the number one search result on google images for The Cardigans, and Viper checklist.

I think I frakked up my sub while experimenting with the brown note.

Just a few examples. Oh and my favorite part. He’s completely unable to communicate with females:

When a cute girl at my school asks ‘so what do you do outside of school?’, I really shouldn’t answer with ‘Mostly sit home and watch BSG’

Metaphorically speaking, this is what it’s like when he tries to do anything:

But at the end of the day, he’s a pretty good guy. I’m just glad we’re thousands of miles away from each other (did I mention he’s Canadian and lives in Canada? Sorry I should have said that sooner).

On a lighter note, I got a new phone. I was really excited to get the T-Mobile G1 when it first came out, but as the Android OS has been developing more and more, and the phone wasn’t built with specs that could keep up. I’ve been stuck on Android 1.6 while 2.1 is already out.

Not only that, but I’ve gone through 3 G1 phones. Its a great phone when its working, but not so much when the camera stops working or the phone locks up for random reasons (trust me, its a hardware issue, not the OS).

So I upgraded. The Nexus One is pretty amazing. I can’t believe how fast I’m browsing websites (especially with the new multitouch). The camera (with flash!) is really good, and my pictures Gallery even syncs with my Picasa account so I can see any image from my Web Albums. Right now I have no complaints, but to be fair I’ve only had it for a few days so I’ll be sure to do an update in a few weeks or a month or so.

I need to start writing more about what I’m working on. People are always asking me and I never know where to begin. Here’s the thing: I’m always working on something. What it is can be totally different each day. Although right now I’m pretty focused on Zinger!. We’re closing in on the deadline for the Fretta Contest and we’re really excited about it. Not much is left, actually we’re just finishing up a few odds and ends.

I’m going to be writing a few articles related to Lua soon so you can look forward to seeing those. Actually I’ve already started… I just need some spare time to finish the first one (work has kept me so busy lately!). Technically I shouldn’t even be writing this now, I should be writing those… GOTTA GO!

I’m just sayin’

First of all… their name. What the shit is chihuahua? It sounds like a made up word a 2yr old with a speech impediment would say. Or like the tail end noise of someone trying to not sneeze, but sneezed, but didn’t want to get snot everywhere so they let the air out weird at the end… yea like that. Totally. And whoever decided to spell it that way is fucking dumb. Che-wah-wah. What’s this ‘hua’ thing? ‘Hua’ doesn’t sound like ‘wha’ it sounds like ‘wooah!’, like what a cowboy says when he takes off on his horse.

And then what’s up with the way they look? They look like someone took a rubber squeeze toy and squeezed the shit out of it and it got stuck that way. Like when god was molding them out of the clay of life he sneezed and clenched down too tight on the neck and the face swelled up and the eyes bulged out and he was like “FUCK I’M NOT STARTING OVER AGAIN!” and left it that way. Which probably explains the name because that’s the noise he made when he sneezed.

THEIR BARK! Oh man, oh god, oh man, oh god. They don’t woof like a normal dog. They have this high pitched piercing noise that goes on forrrevvver. Which is compounded by the fact they BARK AT EVERYTHING. Our dog will bark non stop whenever anyone knocks at our door. Its so embarrassing to have friends come over and during that initial “omg hiiiii how have you been” moment all you can hear is the ear shattering yelp from a piece of shit dog.

Not only do they bark at everything but they also have little dog syndrome. They think they’re big, tough shit and can fight off anything, when in reality they CAN’T DO SHIT ABOUT SHIT. My cat beats up our chihuahua. Every so often when the dog is acting stupid he just walks up to him and punks him across the face with a single bitch slap. IT. IS. AWESOME. The dog runs off with his little tail between his legs and I swear the cat smirks at me like, “lol did you see that shit? what a pussy”. Which is what I was thinking anyways.

Chihuahuas shake like a bitch. Seriously its non stop like someone who has Parkinson’s. I think the little fuckers are just nervous because, really, anything that fell or stepped on them would pretty much kill them. Which adds to the fact they piss everywhere. I lean down to pick up our dog and he pisses. Anything I do, he pisses. If I take him to piss… he don’t piss, but when I lock the door behind him after he’s been outside, the noise of the door locking makes him piss. WTF?

They’re high maintenance. They’re needy little twats that require you to baby them left and right. They need special food and special collars and special steps to get onto the couch and special this and that and this and ughhhhhhh! Can’t you be anything close to a normal fucking dog and just chill the fuck out. If our sprinklers have been on and our grass is wet, he walks across the grass like some stuck up bitch stepping in mud for the first time. I stand at the door and watch him and the only think I can say is “GOD DAMMIT JUST SHIT! JUST SHIIIIIIT. TAKE A DUMP YOU STUPID DOGGGGGG. UGGGHGHHHHH!”. And he looks at me with those bulging, creepy, rat-like eyes and his nose twitches back and forth like some diseased rodent and I close my eyes and dream of a hawk swooping dog and snatching him up and tearing him apart and feeding him to the baby hawks— err, you get the picture.

They have separation anxiety. If we lock him up because we’re leaving (because if we don’t lock him up he’ll piss and shit all over our house) he starts yelping and crying and shit. Seriously. Its truly pathetic. The purpose of a dog is to be a companion; not a parasitic, shit expelling demon that needs assistance in every aspect of life. They can’t even be an outside dog. Put aside their size and their wuss-like behavior; but their entire life revolves around their owner doing everything for them and they know it!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m an animal lover and I really like dogs. But the key element is that a dog acts like A DOG. Eat grass, chase birds, roll around in dirt and lick your own balls and ass. THAT’S what being a dog is all about.