The Internet Needs An “adult filter”
Yeah, I’m about the ten thousanth person to say something like this, but it’s starting to get to me.
And yes, I’m about to complain about Trade Chat in World Of Warcraft. :p Hush, you.
I would like to know when wanting to actually discuss a TRADE topic, as in, look for something for to BUY, in TRADE CHAT became the big no-no
And I’d really like to know when, exactly, it became a forum for bitchy teens to complain to each other about how badly they raid.
Now, I know that the answer to these questions is “when the game was created” and “what the hell do you care?”.
I don’t. It’s more that I finally got fed up of asking to buy something eight times and being COMPLETELY ignored in favor of the drivel.
Oh, hey, they noticed, though, when I complained about it! -sighs-
Normally, my posts are a bit more thought out. And more important. And less stupid. I’m aware. This is stupid. VERY stupid, as a matter of fact, since I know I am sitting here ranting about a large group of teenagers, and at age 27 (almost 28, oh god, no…) I really should be more mature than this.
But damnit, my father died three months ago. I’m not doing well. And I just wanted to fuckin’ buy a damned gem!
OK. Done ranting now.
OH! OH! NaNoWriMo is coming up! Get your ideas ready, you only have a month to go! 50k words in 30 days. You can DO IT!!!
Read MoreSpam or not spam?
This morning, I got an interesting email. It’s impressive in that I didn’t know I had that many DevArt views, and in that they have two URLs for me, which indicates that even if it IS spam, someone had to at least glance at the page to gather the information.
So, that being said, take a look and tell me if you think this qualifies as spam, or if I should be flattered that they’re asking my opinion.
I’d rather the second, but sadly, I’m leaning towards the first.
Read MoreHi,
I came accross your page at http://trinitylast.deviantart.com/, 27,000+ pageviews is really impressive.
I just wanted to share you with FindIcons.com (http://findicons.com), an ultimate icon search engine with 287,194 free icons in 2,102 packs. It is launched last week and already impressed a lot of designers on the web.
Hope this new service is helpful and make you feel pleasant to use. We will appreciate if you spread words on your blog,http://www.trinitylast.com. We are also looking forward to your comments and suggestions to help us improve.
I apologize for any inconvenience this message may have caused. If you dont want to receive any messages from us, just click the link below and we will be noticed:
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Greetings
FindIcons.com Team
A post rather than an email
NOTE: There’s apparently some question as to whether this email was the result of an interview or if it’s a hoax. I feel the warnings are important anyway, so I’m leaving this post here. Whether or not the man’s credible, and whether or not he said it, these are still real problems facing us today, and even disregarding the ‘predictions’, the information itself has real value.
Rather than post this to a thousand in-boxes that are not interested in reading an infinitely forwarded email, I am posting this here for all to see, and linking. Because yes, it’s important – but no, I don’t believe in chain letters in ANY of their forms.
Read MoreAdvice from an Israeli Agent
Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent upon whom the movie ‘Munich’ was based. He was Golda Meir’s bodyguard, and she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.
In a lecture in New York City he shared information that EVERY American needs to know — but that our government has not yet shared with us.
He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O’Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week. At the time, O’Reilly laughed, and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show. Unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had occurred.
Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East) to the Bush Administration about 9/11, a month before it occurred. His report specifically said they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments. Congress has since hired him as a security consultant.
Now for his future predictions. He predicts the next terrorist attack on the U.S. will occur within the next few months.
Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as they know the people onboard will never go down quietly again. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke — that we have been reactionary rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective.
For example:
1) Our airport technology is outdated.. We look for metal, and the new explosives are made of plastic.
2) He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire. Because of that, now everyone has to take off their shoes. A group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives. Now we can’t bring liquids on board. He says he’s waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on his underwear; at which point, security will have us all traveling naked!
Every strategy we have is reactionary.
3) We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates.
Aviv says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times on the front end of the airport when/where people are checking in. It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink, and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. In Israel, security checks bags BEFORE people can even ENTER the airport.
Aviv says the next terrorist attack here in America is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate. (I.e., Disneyland, Las Vegas casinos, big cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, etc.) and that it will also include shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, etc., as well as, rural America this time. The interlands (Wyoming, Montana, etc.).
The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country (terrorists like big impact), involving at least 5-8 cities, including rural areas.
Aviv says terrorists won’t need to use suicide bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, they can simply valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.
Aviv says all of the above is well known in intelligence circles, but that our U. S. Government does not want to ‘alarm American citizens’ with the facts. The world is quickly going to become ‘a different place’, and issues like ‘global warming’ and political correctness will become totally irrelevant.
On an encouraging note, he says that Americans don’t have to be concerned about being nuked. Aviv says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s effective; and they have an infinite abundance of young militants more than willing to ‘meet their destiny’.
He also says the next level of terrorists, over which America should be most concerned, will not be coming from abroad. But will be, instead, ‘homegrown’, having attended and been educated in our own schools and universities right here in the U.S. He says to look for ‘students’ who frequently travel back and forth to the Middle East. These young terrorists will be most dangerous because they will know our language and will fully understand the habits of Americans; but that we Americans won’t know/understand a thing about them.
Aviv says that, as a people, Americans are unaware and uneducated about the terrorist threats we will inevitably face. America still has only a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks, and Aviv says it is critical that we change that fact SOON.
So, what can America do to protect itself? From an intelligence perspective, Aviv says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence. We need to, instead, follow Israel’s, Ireland’s and England’s hands-on examples of human intelligence, both from an infiltration perspective as well as to pay attention to, and trust ‘aware’ citizens to help. We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens; however, our U. S. government continues to treat us, its citizens, ‘like babies’. Our government thinks we ‘can’t handle the truth’ and are concerned that we’ll panic if we understand the realities of terrorism. Aviv says this is a deadly mistake.
Aviv recently created/executed a security test for our Congress, by placing an empty briefcase in five well-traveled spots in five major cities. The results? Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago, someone tried to steal the briefcase!
In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well ‘trained’ that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizen(s) who know to publicly shout, ‘Unattended Bag!’ The area would be quickly & calmly cleared by the citizens themselves.
Unfortunately, America hasn’t been yet ‘hurt enough’ by terrorism for their government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens or for the government to understand that it’s their citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.
Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children here in America who were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11, who were ‘lost’ without parents being able to pick them up, and about our schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until parents could get there. (In New York City, this was days, in some cases!)
He stresses the importance of having a plan, that’s agreed upon within your family, of how to respond in the event of a terrorist emergency. He urges parents to contact their children’s schools and demand that the schools too, develop plans of actions, just as they do in Israel.
Does your family know what to do if you can’t contact one another by phone? Where would you gather in an emergency? He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even our youngest children to remember and follow.
Aviv says that the U. S. government has in force a plan, that in the event of another terrorist attack, EVERYONE’s ability to use cell phones, blackberries, etc., will immediately be cut-off, as this is the preferred communication source used by terrorists and is often the way that their bombs are detonated.
How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot speak to each other? You need to have a plan.
If you understand, and believe what you have just read, then you must feel compelled to send this to every concerned parent, guardian, grandparents, uncles, aunts, whomever. Don’t stop there. In addition to sharing this via e-mail, contact and discuss this information with whomever it makes sense to. Make contingency plans with those you care about. Better that you have plans in place, and never have to use them, then to have no plans in place, and find you needed them.
If you choose not to share this, or not to have a plan in place, and nothing ever occurs — good for you! However, in the event something does happen, and even moreso, if it directly affects your loved ones, then this e-mail will haunt you forever.
Telling yourself after the fact, “I should have sent this to so and so, but deleted it as so much trash from old Bill Jones, plus, I just didn’t believe it”, will not change anything. You were alerted, had the chance to do something, and instead of erring on the side of caution, you chose to disregard, if nothing else, a sensible, valuable warning.
NANOWRIMO HAS BEGUN!
The countdown clock to the right has been changed. We have 29 days and change until NanoWrimo ends, ladies and gentlemen! START YOUR ENGINES!
So you know, 50,000 words works out to roughly 1667 words a day for 30 days. That’s around three to four pages. You can do this. ANYONE CAN DO THIS!
If you don’t have an outline, don’t worry. Just start writing. Don’t worry about plot, don’t worry about character histories, just write. You can edit, change anything you want, and impose plot later. Get the story DOWN. Get the sequence of events WRITTEN. Don’t worry about syntax, tense, grammar or punctuation. Don’t worry about how corny or not corny it may sound.
Just write.
Now, no, chances are, no bestselling books will be written during this month. Not unless you’re already published and established and you have some SERIOUS experience writing under deep pressure.
Which should take the pressure OFF. Don’t write the ‘next great American novel’. There isn’t one anyway. Write a novel. Write a story. Write something insane, and amazing, and ridiculous. Write something that will make someone’s eyes cross, write thousands of twists into it, write it so fast and hard that it makes your blood pound as you type.
You are not required to keep it g rated. *wink*
And just to give you perspective? This post is roughly 290 words long. That’s a fifth of a daily count already. It took me maybe ten minutes to write.
You can do this, guys. Anyone can. It doesn’t have to be great. Just do it. You’ll be thrilled with what you’ve got when it’s over. As bad as it may be? To write a 50,000 word novel in one month…no one will care.
Because they’ll all be jealous of what you’ve done.
Read MoreGet your write on!!
OK, only one day left!!! If you’re interested in NanoWrimo, now’s the time to sign up and get ready. Find yourself a write-in group, go to your kick-off party and get yourself movin’ and groovin’!
Boys and girls, remember your goal: 50,000 words in one month.
Don’t try to edit, don’t make it flow. Just write. One the material’s on the page, you can do whatever you want with it. This month isn’t about perfection – it’s about getting your ideas down on paper. It’s about getting your thoughts moving, your juices flowing, your muse a-hoppin’…anything else you can think of. It’s about WRITING.
Don’t worry if it sucks, if the plot’s bad, if it has no plot. All of that can be fixed later. No one cares right now if the characters all have the same names, if they all sound the same, if they all went to the same school.
Get your ideas DOWN. Get it hashed out. Turn your thoughts into those little black marks. Once the black marks are on the white page, they can be moved, changed, edited, or deleted. You can do anything you want with them. But they have to BE there for you to play with them.
So write! And we’ll see you on the other side. 😀
Read MoreEight days and counting!
Eight days to NanoWrimo. Are we excited? YES WE ARE! :p
For those of you in the OC area, who AREN’T sick as dogs right now, there’ll be a kick-off meetup at the Orange Circle this Sunday, the 25th. Thats Old Towne Orange, for those who don’t know, and it’s being held the big-ass area in the middle of the round-about.
I may not get to go. I are sick. But you guys should go! You are not sick!!!
I will NOT be this sick next Friday, when our first write-in happens, though! Claudia Suzanne will be giving a talk and you’re all invited!
These write-ins are officially hosted by Nyx Goldstone so head over and say hi as well. 😀
And don’t forget to register for NanoWrimo itself!!!
Read More