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I have returned to the fine city of Norwich, and am working through the thousands of emails that demand my attention. After all, all that Viagra isn’t going to order itself. This mail particularly amused me: Continue reading In which I am offered an adventure, and decline it. Slow posting at the the moment. I’m visiting my Dad down in Dorset.  Not a bad spot to spend Christmas! For the past thirteen weeks I’ve been spending my weekdays with an organisation known as A4e (Action for Employment). They’re a for-profit company that has a contract from the UK government to help people who’ve been unemployed for eighteen months or more find work, or work placements with an eye to gaining enough experience to be employable. I was somewhat unusual amongst the clients there in that I have worked a fair bit in my life thus far (though admittedly not much very recently), and am eager to do so again. As it turns out, they decided to take me on for a work placement actually at A4e, as they had need of someone with my modest word-processing skills, so I have spent the last ten week writing the CVs for all the new intake, and helping them find work, with varying degrees of success. During this time I have also, of course, been expected to constantly look for work myself. While you might expect me to be unhappy by this state of affairs, I’ve actually enjoyed it. It was good to be back in the workplace, proving that I can do whatever tasks are put before me. It also did me the world of good to have to get out of bed at 7:30 am every morning, and my confidence and concentration have been greatly improved by the experience. Today, my thirteen weeks have come to an end, and as things stand, I am still out of work. While I, and (at least some of) my co-workers at A4e, would have very much liked me to have been able to carry on there, at this time there is not a suitable opening. What I have discovered, and indeed been told to my face (well, over the phone) by recruitment companies, is that no-one is interested in hiring somebody with my exciting collection of health issues. It’s illegal to discriminate, but everybody does anyway. It is rather depressing, but my cold fury has brought me to the realisation that if I can’t persuade somebody to give me a job to which I am suited, I shall have to create such a job for myself. In any case, if my legs keep getting worse I’m not going to much feel like leaving the house anyway, and most employers don’t appreciate you raising your feet above your head. For now, my time is my own again, and you can expect to see more regular posting here and elsewhere, while I try to navigate the art of making a living wage from home. This is what we should have all been doing today instead of being cooped up inside. Dancing around the Maypole and making merry is not something we seem to do much, any more. I didn’t see a Maypole anywhere in Norwich. Perhaps they’ll come out on Monday. If I see any celebrations, I’ll try to take some pics. A blessed Beltane to you all. Update: A Bonus Track. One of my favourite Madrigals, “Now is the Month of Maying.” by Thomas Morley. I was lucky enough to get to perform this many years ago. It’s splendid fun to sing! As so often with a lot of the folk music of the middle-ages, most of the recordings I can find are a bit too choral for my tastes, which sucks some of the sheer joy out of it, but this recording is fairly merry!: Ahoy! For whatever reason I’ve not much felt like posting recently. Given that I rather fancy watching some Colbert report, and that means posting it here, I thought I’d better write a proper post first! I’ve not logged into WAR since I went to visit my Dad over Christmas. His computer can’t handle it, so I took EQ2 along, figuring I’d have a fiddle around with the Frostfell events during any break from filling my face with food, watching Sci-Fi (a great weakness of both me and my Dad!), and arguing geopolitics. I only played maybe three or four hours during the week I was there. When I got back to Norwich, I just kept on logging into EQ2. So, I keep meaning to log into WAR. I don’t hate it, and my subscription is still running. I do also still quite want to become the greatest Engineer on my server, but you can only really play Warhammer Online during prime-time, because you can do very little of interest on your own. EQ2, on the other hand, I can always be doing something that feels fun and productive. It is, of course, not productive in any world-improving sense of the word, but it is at least fun! Maltheas has done more quests than anyone else of his level on any server, and I take a certain amount of satisfaction in that. I can chat to people I like, and shut the idiots out. I can turn off all the global chat channels without missing out on anything I need to know. In WAR, I have to work with those idiots, which I find a little stressful, and I think that is probably what is causing me to hesitate when my mouse-clicker is hovering over the WAR icon. I just have enough negativity to contend with at the moment without foolish Order faction nonsense. I do need to get back to it though, seeing as that’s what all my friends are playing at the moment. Apparently today is known as Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. I have been a bit on the rubbish side since I got back, as may have been concluded by my lack of posting. Amongst other things, the war in Gaza has made me rather miserable. How reasonable the Israeli PR folks make it sound to kill a thousand people, including over 300 children. Cluster bombs and white phosphorous have been rained down upon one of the most densely populated places in the world. In a sane universe there would be prosecutions for that sort of thing. Tomorrow things change. Change for the better, perhaps. I am filled with hope and dread, for I find it hard to place my faith in anyone, god or man, and deep down I expect to be disappointed. Yet deep within, there is a small voice which whispers “Cometh the hour, cometh the man!”. Our world is teetering on the edge of multiple precipices, and it is now that we need a hero to lead us through all the sacrifice and joyous endeavour that will be necessary. If Obama can do that, and lives up to all our hopes, what a story that would be for future generations. If he turns out just to be another politician, then I’m doubtful of there even being many more generations. Think happy thoughts. We’ll find out very quickly which path he will tread. Long-term readers are familiar with my occasional attempts to free myself from the tyranny of the demon-weed that is tobacco. If you have never smoked, what follows is probably going to sound a little pathetic, but nicotine addiction makes weaklings of us all. And hey kids, don’t start smoking. I was watching BBC News 24, when along comes a story about a pub that is trying to beat the smoking ban by selling these fancy electronic cigarette devices. Essentially, they’re a battery powered stick that vapourises nicotine and propylene glycol into a sort of heated mist. The story was not entirely supportive, talking about how these were still addictive, and not particularly good for you. But you know what? I didn’t care about that. I’ve shown that I am a weak-willed creature who is not, right now at any rate, in a place where I am able to kick nicotine. However, while I am physically addicted to nicotine, and psychologically addicted to sucking hot gases out of small stick shaped things, I am not addicted to the 4000 or so other chemicals that are in tobacco, that cause the vast majority of the health problems. So I ordered this one, and it arrived on Friday. I’ve not smoked since, and I don’t want to. My Electronic Cigarette is filling all my psychological and physical addiction needs. If you are a smoker, get one of these. By the way, I’m not being paid to say this. If they had an affiliate scheme I’d sign up for it, but they don’t. But I am fairly sure that discovering this little gadget is a mildly life-changing experience, and I’d be extremely remiss if I didn’t try to share it with all my fellow prisoners of tobacco. I’m feeling a little unwell at the moment. Some of the usual withdrawal symptoms you usually get when giving up smoking. Without the constant addition of layers of tar, my lungs are beginning to heal, and are starting to feel sore, which will probably last a week or two. Without the carbon-monoxide in my blood, I have crazy amounts of oxygen in there, which makes me feel a little dizzy and nauseous. With the slow return of my sense of smell, I’m thinking I might need to clean my kitchen a little more often. These things shall pass. But the withdrawal symptom I don’t have? Craving. There is no craving. Even with the strongest nicotine patch I would crave the sensation of smoking, but with these, nothing. I may, or may not, be a vaper for the rest of my life. I’m still addicted to nicotine, but this method of getting it will not give me cancer (Nicotine, while addictive and toxic, is not a carcinogen), and will cost me about a 6th of the money. The possibility is there for me to move to vapours with less nicotine, and even ones with no nicotine at all. Right now, I’ll stick with the medium strength ones that are working for me. Firstly I should say that I am still enjoying AoC, and I belive my guildmates are also. As I get further into the game though, I am coming across more and more cases of things being done half-arsed. Funcom has time to fix these, and there is a patch taking place right now which may help (No patch notes released yet). Here’s a few of my major quibbles. The Trader made it in finally, but unfortunately the Auction House does not show stack numbers, so you do not know whether the leather that is for sale at 5 silver is a single unit, or a stack of 20. You have to buy the whole lot, either way, and the price is for the whole stack, regardless of size. Needless to say, no-one feels much like buying crafting resources under these circumstances, and I am confused as to how anyone never noticed this. Also, the mail system has been routinely swallowing any mail, items, or cash that anyone tries to send via it, so I would suggest not using it right now! Crafters are also hurting from a bug that was introduced last week. Cotton and leather from before that patch no longer work in any of your recipes. Leather found now does work, but cotton harvesting is completely broken. There are also issues with some sorts of resource nodes not refillling. Gem cutters cannot advance their crafting quests, though it is just as well, as if you mouse-over an item that has a gem installed it in, you will immediately crash to desktop. The bug which caused structure building to fail, costing you your exceptionally pricey ingredients, has been squashed, but at this time no city building gives any benefit, so there is little point in making them other than for bragging rights. Fortunately bragging rights appears to be enough for many guilds, but my own is going to wait until they are working correctly. There are still reports coming in from the PvP servers of folks managing to use exploits to destroy eachother’s PvE guild cities. Speaking of exploits, with great fanfare there was a mass suspension of many accounts earlier this week. Mostly Guildmasters and Architects who, as mentioned, have to deal with vast amounts of money in order to build their towns. Since then, most seem to have had their accounts reinstated with rather less fanfare, so I’m a little unclear as to how many people caught up in this dragnet actually turned out to be exploiters, rather than just having been flagged for having a bunch of cash donations from their hundred guildmates. I have been finding more and more unfinished areas. Take the Treasury of the Ancients. Nothing in this small dungeon drops anything at all, even money, and the two ladders at the end of the corridor, should you climb them, drop you outside of the world geometry on a long fall to your death. The nearby Pyramid of the Ancients, while at least dropping some basic loot, is also completely bugged, with the main quest uncompletable, and the whole area giving a feeling of menace, not because of the enemies, but because you never know if what you’re doing is going to break something. Now, as you know I level slowly, so the usual argument that the high end content doesn’t have to be in at launch does not stand. I am talking about level 30-40 content, which is reachable even by the most casual players by this point. Even in the Outflow Tunnels underneath Old Tarantia, the numerous human opponents down there once again drop nothing, ever (With the exception of one Boss). There’s also some profound game engine issues, but I’ll go into them in depth in another post. Basically, polish is rather hit and miss once you leave Tortage, and I would strongly recommend that new players be in no rush to leave that island, to give Funcom some time to sort out the problems with the mainland. In short, those who claim this is the best launch ever are wrong. It is a pretty much average MMO launch with the sort of bugs that make anyone who has ever been involved in software production, such as myself, boggle with disbelief. Seriously, MMO companies, hire some real quality control people, and stop taking advantage of our patience. We older MMO players are starting to get grumpy about it. An update on my guild’s progress. We have booked our City Spot in instance 7 of the Lacheish Plains, but we’re still a little way away from being able to afford to build our first building, the Keep. Architect is a fiendishly expensive profession, and it is going to be difficult for small guilds to build very often. Difficult, but not impossible! In any case, for now we’re just going to build the keep until the other buildings start giving the bonuses they’re supposed to. |
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