Katastrophy

So, I recently went through some drama on some forums of mine. And really, I ended up posting a lot of rather personal shit that I think says a lot about me. Heck, the posts are long enough they may as well have been an LJ post. They're about par for the course for me. So I figured I'd post them here. For my own sense of posterity. And a decent distance away from the people involved.

For those people who weren't involved, and have no idea what the hell these are about (which I suspect is most, if not all of you) basically on the forums I frequent, one of the "admin," Blac, has lately been very aggressive. Lots of name calling and mud slinging, often disguised by not putting the person's name in the post, though it's generally very clear to an observer who they're referring to. It means the person can't really respond to the attack because then "Hey, I didn't say your name, it could have been about anyone." I was trying to ignore these for awhile, but then it happened to me, in a lovely burst of drama. And then it happened to another girl, who happened to be Blac's best friend, and the two are going through a fight. The other girl, Kit/Ishda was also an admin, but she was always an admin, and had been for months. Blac had only recently become one, because we had to move forums and she opted to make them herself before being asked. I hadn't actually realized she considered herself as more than a webmistress. But on track, every time I saw it happen to this to Kit I would speak up that I didn't want to see mud slinging on the forums. I'm still a moderator, and have been for longer than this girl has been admin, and I figured it was time to make that count for something. I tried talking to her privately a few times first though. Specifically when it happened to me. Results clearly weren't happening like that.

Both the public requests to stop mud slinging were quickly deleted, once out of personal spite, and the second after a bit of a row about how I was just ass kissing, and had a holier than thou attitude she was really sick of. At the time, Kit had left the forums already so as to avoid these kinds of fights, so I was really confused how I could ass kiss to someone who wasn't an admin and actually wasn't even there to see it, but whatever. Blac kinda seemed like she took the hint and stopped.

And then I found out about some new information. And well, I'll let the post speak for itself.

( My line in the Sand )
/End rant

Eyup, that's me throwing out the challenge. Publicly. It got locked and then later deleted, so I do rather want to record it here for that. But so drama ensues. There wasn't too much to tell about it, actually, except that some good stuff happened. Blac finally sat down and listened to why she couldn't just run around insulting people who are on the forums. Even if it was secretly just a "But she hurt me and I need a hug" like she thinks all the insults were. And we sat down as an administrative team and started drafting some nice rules about how you do and do not treat other members of the forums. And everything went all nice and smoothly through me suggesting that anyone who threatens to delete their account gets a warning if they do so consistently, and enough warning would result in a 2 day ban. And that we deal with our drama in private, impersonally, as an admin team. And how being an admin did not mean you didn't need to explain yourself to the mods, or a member, or vice versa. And most importantly, that we all respect every other member of the forums, and no more concealed insults.

And then one girl left, and Blac opted to "fix" this ban on Ishda/Kit because she "threatened to leave" (last week, mind you, these rules were drafted yesterday) and delivered a heft 21 day ban instead of the perma-ban she had. When I started to try to explain why that was completely unacceptable, she hushed that "This is personal, and she hoped I could respect that. And she's leaving before I start anymore drama."

Again, I'm clearly the cause of all drama. But still, I didn't actually say a word about it the next day. Which is why she had to post her "opinion" on the forums, with the disclaimer that we could all either accept it or shut up. Mostly talking about how I wouldn't let things die, and how we weren't letting her deal with personal things impersonally, and how she really didn't like that we suggested she be held accountable for her actions. The latter being something that clearly should have been dealt with the previous night, when we discussed it.

At any rate, there was a bit more of a flare up, which ended with her claiming she was giving the other mod her root admin account, then proceeding to not be able to find the password and ranting about it for awhile before giving up. Luckily, the other mod already had the password and proceeded to lock her out like she was clearly asking for, and we demoted her and got the rules up within the next hour.

Little while later, she comes on to find out what happened, and starts screaming bloody murder over twitter, calling the other girl a whore and attacking both the other admin and the other mod for not demoting me as well, amid the personal attacks and the attacks over typos. I didn't get to see much of this, she'd already blocked me on Twitter. Lucky me. When it was over, she went about blocking just about everyone else who frequented the forums on Twitter, most of whom weren't even online at the time. Meanwhile, the admin and mod were apologizing to the same people for having to do it there.

Once the dust settled, I added a new post to the confessions thread. Which is largely what I actually wanted to post here. I'm too lazy to re-write it for LJ consumption, but this was a rather personal post, and very heartfelt for me. So yeah, I thought I'd post it here. For my own record, and for anyone whom might be curious about my latest personal epiphany and personal musings.

( My confessions )

The tl-dr version of the story? My life has a theme song right now. "Raise a Little Hell" by Trooper.

/rant

And now I wash my hands of this. Cause that's always been what this LJ was for. For me to rant, rave, carry on about the dramas in my life, and in the end, walk away with a clean slate. In this case, with a pruned branch as well. I think things are looking a little brighter already.

My friend Kim (ace_girl) has decided to branch out into the world of commissions. Some of you may have seen her work before, but she's an amazing artist. I'm trying to help her spread her services around a little and get her a few commissions. If anyone here is interested in getting a custom picture done of a character you have, such as a WoW character or a character from a story you're writing, I recommend checking her out at Otherskies.net. Here's one of her earlier drawings, a character from one of our DnD games a few years back:



Kim is a really good friend of mine, and I'd love to help her out with this. Please go check her out, and help spread her name around. http://commissions.otherskies.net

Yay birthday! I'm 23 now. XD Or at least, it was my birthday about 3 and a half hours ago. I wonder if I can edit that...


Oh so I can! Okay, post says it was made on my actual birthday now. Still, it was a fun day. Didn't do much, just went out for dinner with Frank, but it was quiet and sweet.

And it's not nearly as dramallama as my last post was... Maybe some day I'll actually sum up all the reasons 2008 sucked. But for now, I have all of 2009 to look forward to.

Well, Christmas was awesome. I got an iPod, which I'm really happy about. I dunno what I would have done if I didn't get one. Probably bitched. A lot. I'm not an exceptionally materialistic person, but my parents have told me for the past 5 years I shouldn't buy one because "I might get one for Christmas." And when that failed, that "I might get one for my birthday." And when that failed, that "It was too close to Christmas and I should have bought one earlier if I really wanted one." So last year, I got an iPod, which was "lightly used" from my uncle. Two months later, it fell, hit the floor, and was permanently broken and only good for getting 10% off my next one. And my parents still told me not to go buy one in case I got one for Christmas. And I did. ^-^ It's a purple Nano, 16GB. I named it Mouse.

So, I was gonna post the first LJ post title of the month here. But apparently, I didn't post at all from Christmas day, 2007 to March 2008. So lets just do a quick recap instead.





... Hm... I just realized how depressing that whole year was. Fuck that review. Go read the LJ if you want to know more. I think there's only one thing in here I forgot to mention over the past year, and really, I meant to keep this actually a positive post, so if I didn't mention it then, I'll hold off on it a bit.


Yeah, I just finished looking through the whole year. There is not one positive post the whole year long. And that doesn't mention the little things, like the DnD campaign that was mostly just drama, the cat going missing, the breaking up of Woods 866 or the other DnD campaign that just really proves you considers you to be a friend and who doesn't. It just makes vague references to it.

Screw 2008. Bring on 2009. It's going to be a year of big changes, but after last year, it's hard to get much worse.

And a Happy Jingly too! =D Just spent all night opening gifts with family. More gifts to come tomorrow, but for now, the internet calls me. Just a little longer...

Also, new dragons. Very new dragons. Skipped a few batches of them already.

There's some days when I feel like my computer science side is coming through too much. I feel like that right now. Why? Because I'm cursing at fuzziness.

I'm sure there aren't many people out there who get frustrated that something is too fuzzy. I think language is too fuzzy. Why is there not an easier way to express something? Honestly!

For the people who think I'm crazy right now, my issue is not so much with kittens, but with variability in language. I joined a facebook application that lets you input your relationship to family members. This sounds good in theory. And then they give me a blank textbox and go "Enter the relationship." Sounds easy... Not really though. So my mom is on face book. And I'm looking at this and go "So, I input Mother, right? Wait no. Would that imply that I'm her mother? Or should I say Daughter? Maybe it'd be clearer if I said "her daughter." Or "my mother." Or... Or..." Blargh. This is the same problem Foodster had. There's no easy way to do this stuff. If you go into foodster and try to add "Cheddar Cheese" as an ingredient, the goal is to then create a link, to search the database for places you can buy Cheddar Cheese. Problem there? Well, Cheddar Cheese and Shredded Cheddar and the same thing. But they won't search the same way. Same with 1 Tomato versus Tomatoes. They won't search properly. And this is also related to what the growers are selling, so it depends if people said they were selling Tomatoes or Tomato. Why is there not an easier way around this? How do you possibly create a standard way to input ingredients? Drop down list of all ingredients?

While I'm on the topic of Comp Sci stresses, I keep looking at programs and seeing all of the little sloppy parts. For instance, this dragon cave site? There's a limit to how many eggs and hatchlings you can have at a time. If you have 4 eggs, or 4 hatchlings, you can't get any more. So, you can get up to 7 eggs and hatchlings together, with no trickery at all, just by picking up 3 each of hatchlings and eggs before you pick up the 4th of either. Or you can get locked out at having just 4 eggs, for no reason other than that you got the 4th egg before you got your hatchlings. And of course, the members look at this and assume it was all intentional and such. And I look at it and go "Wow, I bet that's not what he wanted it to do." Because it seems really... awkward. If you're going to impose limits, you normally want to make those limits a little more solid, rather than just have them dependent on the order you did stuff in. By now, I'm sure the kid just shrugs and figures that if no one else has a problem, it's not worth worrying about. I mean, I wouldn't touch my code that if there was a couple thousand people who would assume it was intentional and now law, cause I said so.

Maybe I should be glad that I'm coding again next semester. I get to make my own little hacks, I shouldn't have to worry about fuzziness at all (Lower years courses give standardized formats that all input fits too, just to avoid the issue) and I don't have to make up bullshit about ethics in online communities. I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but all that drama that flared up in my LJ helped me fill out a few extra pages on that paper.

On the other hand, if I don't finish this philosophy take home exam, I might not make it to next semester. Anyone know anything about the Philosophy of Language? x_X

I got some new eggs today cause my last set of dragons grew up. =D



I'm thinking I might actually abandoned the one white egg, I just want to hatch it so it has a better chance of actually growing up... The first batch of eggs I got from breeding look like they all might not make it to adult.

You know, I think this says more about how I feel right at this exact moment more than how I feel overall. I'm pretty sure 2-3 weeks ago, I was feeling much less passionate about anything. Also, I suspect that the quiz just looks at the most promienent answer, rather than a number of factors like I think it should.

On the other hand, I do feel much better lately about life. Which is a little odd, because I've been really tired and sleep deprieved for the last few weeks. But more optimistic as well. I blame the snow. It's been beautiful outside for the last few weeks. Just nice and mild weather (Well, Canadian winter mild, which is to say, somewhere around 0 degrees Celcius) with big fluffy snowflakes filling the sky. It's hard not to feel Christmas-y with that kind of weather. Given another month we'll likely just get sleet and such, but for now, it's gorgeous.

This semester is almost over. We're in exams now, but I only have one exam anyways. So like, before Friday I need to pull out my notes and write a practice 1000 words to answer one or two of his questions, and then before Monday I need to write 8 pages worth of answers to 4 questions, and then email that to the prof as my take home exam. Oh, and on Thursday, my group and I need to condense about 100 pages worth of documentation on Foodster to a 6 page document. Which almost no one seemed to have actually used. =(

I lie, some of you did use it. We didn't do a very good job at actually changing the prototype though, which is a shame, cause I like it. It's still up there though. I think I put my recipe for Chicken and Wine Sauce on the site. I'd use the recipe section on it, if nothing else. Maybe our group will get bored enough to actually try and further develop it too.

Course, with the semester over, it means Paul and Shazeema are graduating. It kinda depresses me, we've been together since first year, and now Frank and I are the slow ones, trying to finish up when our friends are gone. On the upside, I do know a whole bunch of the second years who I'll be working with, so it should be much easier to actually get the work done next semester.

I actually managed to get my laptop to turn on. Yay! Now I'm just trying to do maintenance stuff I should have finished already, like getting important stuff off the laptop. Stupid 20 GB music folder, taking up my external hard drive...

Also, I think my friends and I are restarting some DnD next semester. Which should be awesome. I'm looking forward to having a reason for people to actually stay in touch. Even if I probably am the worst culprit for losing touch with people.

And these dragons should finish growing up. I want to try and get more autumn eggs.

Even though I think my biggest issue with them right now is that I'm impatient. They have enough views to grow up, they're just still going to make me wait til Friday or something.

So I got new eggies today, since the old ones grew up. I'm so addicted now...



I'm so proud of the last one, he's a special seasonal one. Spent an hour trying to grab one.

Today was fun. Saw Transporter 3. Fun movie, even if it really does have next to no plot. Still fun though. But now I'm tired.

Oh lovely, I went and started a bloody war.

In case people missed the very heavy suggestions, my point there was that all that shit? It's over. It's done. I'm still a little miffed that Arch decided to burn the bridge. And if, by some random chance, he ever did see this, I wanted him to realized that I still would like to talk to him about what the hell happened that I deserved the silent treatment. But failing that, I don't care. I made a post from my point of view because rather than give me his own, he disappeared, and I really really want to know his point of view. The desire to know his point of view is the ONLY reason this is still something relevant in my life. So stop telling me this is one sided unless you want to tell me the other side. I am completely in the dark and confused by this all. It's the last thing preventing my from moving on, and I essentially have moved on anyways.

The relationship itself? It was toxic. It was evil. It was an abomination that makes Bella and Edward in Twilight look like the dictionary definition of a healthy relationship. I'm pretty sure we both acknowledged this. It had it's good side. Once upon a time. But most of it was toxic. Was it his fault? Was it mine? Well I can tell you who's fault we thought it was, and generally the answer was "not mine." In case that's too cryptic for people, we were both at fault. There was no cheating. If there was even a slight bit of "cheating", it went both ways. We both had our next lover lined up when we finally gave up the ghost.

Do I blame Lauren for anything? No. She didn't steal him, nor do I think she encouraged him to stop talking to me or that she has any way to make him start talking to me again. Her only connection to this at all is that she is currently my only remaining connection Arch and to this chapter of my life, and I believed she was cutting me off her list. But hell, she's right, she might not have been referring to me at all. In her position though, I probably would, but then I'm making assumptions about her that I don't really have a right to make. Maybe I'm just stressed, I think all my friends are secretly plotting against me right now. Or secretly hate me. Or something. Yeah, I'm stressed.

Huzzah for stirring up a maelstorm of drama when attempting to end something. Did I sound particularly malicious there or something? I was aiming for contemplative. As in "It happened, and now it's probably ending."

I always did regret how things turned out between me and Arch. I mean, we had a good relationship for awhile. And then the relationship ended and we didn't notice. And in all reality, we should have broken up then. Everything bad that happened between us was basically because we were too slow to notice that we weren't in love anymore.

But that's not what bothers me the most. What really bothers me is how it went after the relationship ended. Because we were still friends. Or at least, we were trying to be. But I was at University, and having an amazing summer hanging out with friends. The problem with hanging out with friends IRL is that you don't have very much time to surf the net. So I didn't. Not enough for Arch, at least. I was still on, but he was never on at the same time. And my attention span was rather short, given that I was in the living room, and waiting several minutes for a reply is not nearly as interesting as what was happening in the kitchen.

And then he mentioned that he and Seven were going to come to Toronto for a bit in September. And I looked at their hotel and realized that I would be working around the block. Hey, we should meet up! He agreed, but had to leave for work. Promised to discuss it the next day.

You know, I never saw him again. Never. It's been a year and a half. I know he's still out there, but he deleted the hotmail/MSN account that I had, and probably the AIM account as well. I didn't have an email address anymore, since mine had been from when he was in University. So I never got to talk to him since. I've heard it was my fault. Hell, I know him well enough to realize that the most likely reason is that I said something to insult him, and he decided it was enough of a reason to never speak to me again. At the time I was rather upset and offended. Now? Now I don't know. Kinda numb.

I still want to talk to him. I don't know why, maybe just to understand why he did it. But it doesn't really matter now. I'm pretty sure Seven is removing me from her friend's list. She doesn't want to discuss it, which is essentially why I'm being removed. She never wanted to talk to me, and has now realized that I'm a rather unimportant person on her list. I'm not surprised. With Seven will go my last real connection to his life. Maybe it's for the best. But all I see is a burning bridge, and one that I never wanted to see burn.

Or maybe it's all just ashes now.

Well, I just forced myself out of bed despite only having a couple of hours of sleep and my stomach hating me for, all so I could get to class today. Even had Frank call me from campus to make sure I was up. Only to realize now that my class is cancelled. Guess I should just be thankful I checked my email first.

Apparently it's some kind of medical emergency. I really hope my prof is alright. I like this guy.

Now I'm just trying to figure out if I was supposed to be there for a different reason.

Also, my dragons are hatching. =O

So awhile back, over the summer, I bought a book called Poison Sleep and posted about it in here. Thought it was a pretty cool book, but got the feeling it was a sequel and didn't know where the first book was. And then the author commented in here, confirming it was a sequel, and I promptly got so excited by pointing out this comment to friends that I forgot to reply to the author. Oops. >.>

At any rate, I finally managed to FIND this first book, Blood Engines, by T. A. Pratt, neatly sandwiched between Tim Powers and Terry Pratchett. It was about 2 shelves away from the multiple copies of the second and third book, Poison Sleep and Dead Reign. You know, after Terry Pratchett, where it should be. At any rate, I bought both of them. You can never have too many good fantasy books. I also bought the second and third book of Piers Anthony's Incarnation of Immortality series. Technically, I'm saying this was for Frank, since I already read them, but you know, good fantasy books.

( My impressions of the books. May contain some spoilers. )

Anyways, tl;dr version is this. The series is awesome. The characters are funny, the books are fast paced, and you never feel like you're missing information. Or you always feel like you're missing information, whichever you prefer. The setting is pretty awesome too. I would recommend these if anyone on my list is out looking for something new to read. Or looking for Christmas gifts.

Also, you should click my dragon eggs so they grow up.


*shameless plug*

I am such a follower. Click my eggs please so they don't die.

Trust is such a fickle thing. It can take years to build up, and one small incident to destroy. And you know what? Even when you know it works like that, when that small, trust-destroying incident arises, it still blows 4 years of friendship out of the water.

What if I really am as horrible of a friend as I think I am?

Or maybe I'm just really really emotional today for some reason. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there's this little voice telling me to stop over-reacting.

( Please help me out! )

tl;dr version:

I need help testing the usability of a prototype for class. Please check out this site and leave some feedback on what would make the site easier to use.

http://foodster.codeshack.ca/

Well shit.

I had an essay due today. Only technically, it wasn't due today, it's due on the last day of classes. However, he said this last week and my partner missed it. So some time around 3 AM, I realized the essay isn't gonna get done, send her an email saying we should give it in later, and assume it's fine. I think she was trying to reach me all morning cause she thought it was due in class...

And now I'm skipping class, and didn't notice her problem til class started. Oops.

Dear Body,

Please stop the hate. =(

Sincerely,
Brain

So, according to a friend, who's opinion I trust, I'm a very argumentative person. This is no surprise to me. I'm pretty sure he knew I wouldn't be offended by this because I know it already. I know that I occasionally fight just because there's two sides to an issue and I feel one isn't being fairly represented. I know that occasionally, I switch sides in a fight just to keep the playing field level. I play the Devil's Advocate a lot, just because I enjoy it. And according to said friend, I do often come off as forcing my opinion on someone. Quite possibly because he hasn't seen me back down in an argument.

What I find curious is why this still seems to offend some "friends." It's not like I've denied that I do this. Nor do I really care what the opinion is in the end. You'd think they'd notice this eventually. Some topics, yes, I feel strongly about. Most of the time, I just like the debate. Hell, I'll argue both sides of the "intelligent creater" sometimes, in one debate. But then I have a friend getting really defensive at me cause he thinks I was trying to force my opinion that Warhammer Online is better than World of Warcraft. The saddest thing is this discussion wasn't with him at all. It was with his girlfriend. And I went out of my way to NOT debate it. I think my wording was "I think WAR is better, but I barely played WoW." And then I planned to asks her BF if he planned on playing it ever, because he'd been really excited for it and she said she'd only play if he did. I never did ask. I never got beyond a hello. Or rather a poke. Because I've used the word hello like, 4 times in the past year. This was when I got told I was forcing my opinion. And that WoW was the far superior product and a couple of other phrases which made it sound like I was a moron for my admittedly biased opinion. When I actually got back to respond, I got a couple of "Did you even bother playing WoW?" comments which seemed absurd because I'd already repeated that I was biased. Obviously the message didn't get through.

What's sad is he honestly seemed to think I cared which game he played. Oh yeah, I cared so much. I wanted to know if I could expect to see him in game eventually. That was it. If the answer was no, so be it. There are some people I would really like to play WAR with. Then there's some who I would play with if they were in the game. There's a difference. He claims I cared because I went through the trouble to ask. Truth is, I was mostly just talking to his girlfriend because it was late at night and no one else was on. I was lonely. Maybe I did care a bit. But not really enough to fight about it with him. And I'm not sure he ever got the point. He kept telling me that the bottom line was he thought WoW was superior and that was it. I kept trying to point out that the real bottom line I was looking for was that he was attacking me over something he thought I said. I'd truly stopped caring about the game at all. It wasn't that important to begin with. To some level, it came down to a "He said, she said" game. Cause he kept claiming that his girlfriend had "summarized my points and that I had to chose my words more carefully." I'm not sure how I'm supposed to chose which of my words get summarized. I don't think the girlfriend took it this way. Or at least, she wouldn't admit it to me if she had. I would have apologized to her. On the other hand, I'm not sure how I apologize for something that I didn't say or intend to say. I mean, even if I like to argue, I don't particularly like forcing my opinion on people. I know it happens, but it's never my intent. I'm sure I've said this to people before when we meet. I think I'm getting lazy about repeating me to every new person I see. Honestly, if you're getting offended, you've taken me too seriously. I should put this in my LJ somewhere.

I think situations like this remind me why I prefer to make my own guilds, rather than join them. Drama is a BAD thing for me. It's awful. Why is that? Because I like to argue. And whenever drama occurs, it's almost always because two people get in a disagreement, and they both think they're right. You can imagine how given a situation where I'm offended AND I think I'm right, I don't ever stop fighting. I'm pretty sure one of those conditions alone makes me keep up the fight. At least with my own guild, I feel a little more responsible over the people, and I don't get into fights. Not to mention the whole "have the power to remove exceptionally drama-prone people." I suspect my inability to handle drama in a good way is why I have so many male friends, and such odd female ones. I simply surround myself with people who are less likely to cause drama in the first place.

Then I get my drama fix from reading stupid people fighting with smarter ones on the internet. Nothing quite like reading someone be blatently and obviously wrong about everything.

This may be the best blonde joke I ever saw.

http://gomer21xx.livejournal.com/1025639.html