Month: October 2007

Last night – or rather earlier this morning – I dreamed that I was back in college, sharing a gigantic dorm room with a former co-worker. The room was so big, we had two toilets – except one wasn’t hooked up and functioned more has a heavy ceramic bedpan. My room-mate had filled it with water and then used it – and then left it behind when he left the room. I was about to dump it into the other toilet when a neighbor walked in and poured the contents of the toilet on the floor. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and – displaying more violence than I actually get to do in real life – I shoved him out the door while swearing profusely.

In the seconds it took to get him outside the dorm room, two things happened. One, he managed to tear my shirt and scratch me – resulting me being literally covered in my own blood from an injury I couldn’t even feel. And two, the police showed up along with the hall manager who then prompted arrested the toilet spiller and from their tone – sent him straight away to a gas chamber somewhere.

As a result – I’m suddenly a hero with a bloody shirt and my stupid former co-worker room-mate and I get a room upgrade. A crowd of well-wishers were called in to move all our stuff to an even bigger room with windows and two working toilets. Apparently, the room had been set up as a reality show, but it was decided that it would be a poor idea to actually turn them on. Or so we were told. The hall manger presented me with a new shirt, filled out all the room-change paper work and bought my books for the semester – and sent for a doctor to take care of that nasty scratch that was finally pointed out to me.

All in all – a good dream, I guess, other than the odd focus on toilets.

that’s it for now… later….

So, I head over to BP yesterday to get some gas and decided to use my new BP Credit Card. I pull up to the pump, insert my card but instead of the “select fuel type” option – I get a terse message suggesting I “see the attendant”.

Great.

So, I head inside and wait for the guy in front of me to finish getting his fritos and his beef jerky sticks, then talk to the attendant. He asks how much gas I’m getting – I reply that I don’t know yet. We estimate $20 and I try my card again at the register. And he tells me that my card has been declined and that I’ll need to call the company.

Great.

So, I thank him and tell him I’ll use my debit card. Which I do and which works fine.

I head on home and try to make the call – but the digital phone isn’t working just then.

Great.

Now I’m pretty well steamed up with both the card and the phone – so, I’m not captain happy-pants when I finally call them again and get through this time.

I put in the last four digits of my card when instructed and a woman comes on the line with a thick accent from Somewhere Else. She proceeds to ask me a series of multiple choice questions to verify my identity.

Which is dumb – if I really wasn’t who I said I was – would I really be calling the credit card company?

From her tone, I’m pretty sure that if I’d gotten any of them wrong – homeland security would have been at my door in 5 minutes.

The accent makes it very difficult to understand the questions and on one of them I simply couldn’t figure out what she was saying. She started to loss her temper with me, but I finally figured out she was asking if I had my card with me. Which is also dumb since she’d just asked me my card number 30 seconds before that.

Finally, with the questions done, she “clears my account”. I tell her that I’d just activated my card the day before – and asked if it was really activated. She says yes, but tells me that sometimes they put a hold on the card so that they can get more information from me.

Wait, what?

So, it was activated – but locked. I ask try to ask her about that, but she tells me to have a nice day (which I know she didn’t mean) and hangs up on me.

End result? I’m still not sure if my card even works. I had half a mind to call them back and just cancel the damn thing – but the lure of fuel discounts still has me in it’s grip and I’m eager for savings. If it fails me again, I’m going to cancel it in a heartbeat.

So, I did some dishes and had some tea – both things that help calm me down a bit and I got on with the rest of my day.

I’m still, obviously, cranky about the whole situation – mainly because I did everything right and still got treated like a bad-credit criminal or something. Annoying.

That’s it for now – busy day ahead of me. later…

I swam a mile yesterday – 36 laps in the pool. Took me a little longer than my usual swim, but I got it done and felt okay afterwards. Slept really well last night too.

Worked on my costume yesterday – section two is coming along nicely.

Talked to my parents a bit last night – shared a few good laughs about work. I’ll be headed to see them for my mom’s birthday in about a month.

I got my BP credit card in the mail yesterday. I had to call to activate it – and instead of just doing that, they had to put me on the phone with someone trying to sell me a credit protection plan. By the end of the conversation I was running short of patience – but I got through it.

Otherwise, pretty quiet for me – time to get back to work…

At the recommendation of my cousin, I recently fired up the game “Runescape”.

I didn’t care for it.

For one thing – too crowded. As I logged in, people were “fountaining” into existance in the same spot. The game was also kinda clunky and hard to control – which is a little typical of a java-based platform.

And it was… mundane. One of the first quests once I got off of tutorial island was to pick some wheat to grind at the mill to make flour so that the baker could bake a cake.

Wait, what? Where are the orcs? Or rock trolls? Or demon zombie wizards?

So, I logged off and headed back to the solo adventure of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. I’ve played countless hours with all the characters and I still enjoy the game – but why?

For one thing, in the real world, if I was to bake a cake – I’d go to the store and buy some damn flour. If I’m playing a game, I want to get in there and play, not do a half-assed life simulation in the guise of a dungeron crawler.

Two, other people annoy me. I hate to say it and I’m really trying to work on it, but unless the doses are small, people get on my nerves. And strangers are worse. I was only in Runescape for a few minutes when someone started following me around. They finally got my attention in the endlessly scrolling chat window and asked if I was new. I said I was and they asked if I knew about the “wild lands” – which I’m pretty sure is a player-vs-player area. I said yes, but that I was still just checking things out and get the feel of the game.

They then said “wome!” and wandered off.

Were they trying to lure me to the PVP area so they could kill me? Did they want me to join them in a quest? Hello? I’m at the lowest level and no good to anyone in any kind of non-baking quest.

A solo game of diablo is heart pounding. Me vs. evil. I might have a minion or two backing me up, but it’s essentially one guy against the forces of darkness. No baking or farming – just big swords and chain lightning. As nature intended it.

In other news… I watched “alone in the dark” last night – a movie based off of a video game. Umm… it was pretty lame. The fire fight against the monsters was kinda cool, and the song in the ending credits was good – but the rest was a mess.

that’s it for now… later….