Elin's Journal

If you read my Twitter feed (which helpfully cross posts my Tweets here), you may have an inkling of what's been going on with me lately.

In a cut, because it is LONG:
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And so, we have come to Thursday. All these events have happened IN ONE WEEK. I am worn out. I would also very much like to get a small break, so let's petition the universe for that. It'd be nice.

Now to eat some yogurt and toast, check on Batty again, and give him his second shot. I'm ready to fall over. But I have to close at the DayJob tonight, so I can't do that yet.

Blizzard announces that all Warcraft forum posts will display your real-life first and last name.

Um, how about NO? I only read the forums and very rarely post there, but this guarantees I will NEVER post there now. Sure, my name is already out there on the internet, but the whole point of Warcraft for me is to get to *play a game*, which translates to "escape my humdrum existence for a couple of hours a week". Aside from playing with some real-life friends and family, everyone else I've met in Warcraft (in my guilds, etc.) doesn't know my real name. Or if I'm really female. Or what I do for a living or what my other hobbies are. It's not relevant to the game. And I'd like to keep it that way.

But wait! There's MORE!

If you use certain add-ons in game, your RealID personal information is available to other players *whether you have accepted friends requests from them or not*. Also, I am getting conflicting reports on whether friends of friends can see your real name/information! That's charming! And so incredibly invasive!

Fortunately, there's a way to opt out. It's not the best way, as it means you have to set your account up as a child's account, but hell, I'll take it. It's illegal for a company to give out a child's personal information without a parent's permission, and as I've now set up my account where I'm my own parent, I don't authorize that.

It's an imperfect solution, but I'm sincerely hoping that Blizzard/Activision will see that a huge number of their players are NOT COOL with the RealID changes (at last count this morning, the thread on the WoW forums about the forum change had over 1800 pages, and hundreds of people were cancelling their accounts because of it). My hope is they will decide it's unethical and possibly dangerous to share people's information so freely and without express permission. I know WoW is a game that has almost as many female players as male players- speaking as a woman, I do not feel safe with the idea of total strangers being able to get my real name in the game. It sets up an unsafe environment for female players, who could end up stalked, harassed or threatened in real life. That's REALLY bad news.

I also wonder about the celebrities who are rumored to play the game. Many celebs play WoW for the anonymity it brings, forcing this RealID thing through means they will lose that.

It's a mess, certainly, but I am waiting to see how the chips fall. I will be very sad if the game becomes too risky for me to play anymore, since I really love it. But I'm not going to put myself in harm's way just to play my little orc and collect pets.

Lady GaGa's "Bad Romance" set to some drama-tastic elves from Warcraft. Really well made! But possible not safe for work, due to "mature situations".



Also, BIGBANG and 2NE1's "Lollipop", again with elves. Blood elves, but still elves. (Warning: the song is an insanely catchy K-Pop song that will take over your brain. I am addicted to this song. It's sad.)



I thought smudge_dragon in particular would like all the elves. ^_^

Have a Warcraft version of Shriekback's "Nemesis"!



This made me laugh also, because the video maker obviously misheard the one line as "priests and cannibals, retarded animals" just like I used to. XD

EDIT: Yay, Oingo Boingo!

Got a lot done today... work, errands, and some household stuff. The cats are all groomed for the week. Indy loves the grooming, including the Allerpet-C bath. Batty likes the brushing and doesn't mind the bath part. Bandito dislikes the bath part, but enjoys the brushing and being combed. We have been slowly integrating them with each other, with supervised visits. So far, no one has attacked anyone else, there's been some hiding and the occasional hiss. Mostly, there's a lot of nose-sniffing, meeps of annoyance or nervousness, and then a lot of pointed ignoring of the other cat(s) in the room. The possibility that they could all get along is something I hope for, though I'm willing to accept it if they don't all get along. They're already all doing better than they did at the apartment.

Anyway, I mentioned auctions, because I have new auctions up! Please buy my stuff! We are also working on clearing out things we have duplicates on, so there's some nice stuff up. And I'm also auctioning a couple of fairly hard to find PlayStation 1 video games for willworks. Check them out! More to come later in the week.
New eBay auctions are here!

Now, time to rest up for work tomorrow. Should be a busy week this week. There's so much to do! I lost a day of time (Sunday) to a sinus migraine, so I feel like I am falling behind.

Oh, and if you hadn't heard yet, Yoshito Usui, the creator/artist of the manga Crayon Shin-Chan was found dead in the mountains where he'd been hiking. I always liked his comics, so this news makes me sad.

This reminds me, I have to get things ready for the saasclub meeting on the 27th. Fourteenth anniversary of the club. Good lord!

EDIT: And yay, I was even able to log in to WoW a little tonight on my main. I now have 81 mini-pets, having just gotten the Pint-Sized Pink Pachyderm from the Brewfest holiday. I'm so glad my main is fixed- I was having an issue when I logged her out in Dalaran where she'd get "stuck". I'd log in, and be unable to move, and then get disconnected from the server. Very frustrating. I can now apparently move when in Dalaran, which is a good thing as I'm only four levels away from 80 and want to get there soon. I realize this paragraph makes no sense if you don't play World of Warcraft. ^_^;

Because I finally have a day off, which means I can do LAUNDRY! YAY! Thus, I do a meme in between loads, and cause all the cool kids are doin' it.

In the cut, foo's:
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It's crazy busy. I am working my normal shifts at the comic shop day job, we have a passel of deadlines sitting on our heads and making us cranky, and there aren't enough hours in the day. Today, I had to spend a couple of hours of my after-work Radio-time dealing with the new PCI DSS compliance certification thing that all merchants who accept credit cards have to deal with now. Here's hoping our online store gets certified, because otherwise our credit card processing company will tack an extra charge onto our bill every month. (And this of course comes *after* ViSA and MasterCard raised their rates for everyone... ah, to be a retailer, all of the risk, none of the enormous wads of lovely money.) I'm peevish about this because we have an SSL certificate, use solidly secure hosting for the online store and have good encryption going on. On top of that, in the four years we've had our online store set up to take credit cards, we have had exactly *ONE* attempted charge-back, which was reversed in our favor thanks to tracking on the package. (We used to be PayPal-only before the new store went live, until they instituted their snarky "nothing mature ever" policy- which is when we promptly cancelled our account with them...) Anyway, this new certification thing has me all nervous, because I am worried they will think we don't do enough to safeguard our customer information, though we have taken every precaution possible and I know our hosting company is exceptionally good about security. It's still worrisome. Because if the credit card companies decide they don't approve of your PCI DSS certification? They can *fine* you- to the tune of $1 million! (Which, really, good luck trying to get that from me, har har...) And naturally, the regular quarterly certification service is going to possibly cost money as well- not 100% sure or clear on that yet. Cost of doing business...

In other stuff, we are beating our heads against these deadlines. Three books we're working on- one of which is Furrlough #187, so if you have goodies for that, let willworks know! (that email again is willworks (at) gmail (dot) com!) Remember also, we have the larger page count limit in Furrlough, because of the new 48-page format! That means stories can be up to 22 pages long! Woot! We just got Furrlough #186 in from the printers, so I'll be updating the Radio online store tomorrow, most likely. Oh, and we sent off the solicits to Diamond for the March 2009 books, and I have been getting more trib copies packed up for people (but far too painfully slowly for my liking...).

Tonight there is a midnight release for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Because I still have that monkey on my back, I have been saving my pennies for months so I can buy my copy tonight. I won't get to play it until next week-ish sometime though, if then. Work comes first. (My new "wake up at 6 am every morning with the husband" sleep schedule doesn't help things either... though I get a lot done in the three to four hours I am awake before I go to work... the downside is being exhausted by 11 pm, which makes me feel like a grandma!) I still seem to be working 12-13 hour days most days, if you add up the day job shifts and the Radio work time. So, it's a reduction of my former 16-20 hour days of the past. Yay?

And finally, of course, I have new auctions up! I have lots of stuff to clear out and need money for various sundry things I am saving up for (fun things, like taxes and convention expenses!), so please feel free to take a look! Lots of comics, manga, magazines, etc.
New eBay auctions are here!
(I'd like to post more FurBid auctions too, since I have a bunch of stuff that can only go there, but I have had no time...)

Now, to finish up an editorial for the next Radio Waves, and then eat something for dinner.

I went and voted this morning. willworks and I walked over to Churchill High School before I had to go to work, which caused me to have flashbacks to high school. (I had to walk there every day I went to school there...) But my patriotic duty is done. Now comes the waiting!

In other news, of especial interest to obimom, singing legend Yma Sumac died at the age of 86.

Don't know who she is? She was an awesome Peruvian singer with a five-octave vocal range. My Mom and Pops always listened to her records in the house when I was a kid, because they were awesome.


My sinus infection is clearing up. Thank goodness for antibiotics! I've been falling behind on Radio Comix work because of the long illness, since the day job was wiping me out. But now I am doing better and catching up with all kinds of stuff. Of course, now we've got an issue with the SinFactoryComix site- we've got to get that taken care of this week. If it's not one thing it's another. We're also finishing up Milk Presents: Greek Fire #1 so we can turn that in; next up is Furrlough #187 and a couple of other fun books. I've also got mountains of email to answer.

Because of all this Radio work, day job work and sickness, I've had very little time for gaming, but I did manage to get the new Vampiric Batling pet in World of Warcraft. I also got the "50 minipets" achievement a few days after the big patch, so I got the skunk pet as well. I sadly have not had time to play The Sims 2 for well over a month or more now. I miss my video games!

Anyway, back to work for me. I have until 9:30 to get as much Radio work done as I can.

New eBay auctions, since I still need to sell a ton of stuff:
Check them out in this link!

Suspect arrested in EB Games manager murder. I'm glad they caught the guy, and as we suspected, he was a former EB employee. (Only an employee would have known the schedules of the people working and the morning procedure. Of course, any smart criminal former employee would have also known that there's never much money kept in the safe or the store...) I remember when this happened, we were all horrified because no one found the girl's body until the second shift came into the store. The district and regional managers didn't even show up until after the body was found. (Unlike how the article says...) What a waste, to kill someone over some consoles and $1500. (I'm surprised they had even $1500 in the safe, personally. We never had that much money in the safe in the morning at our EB Games...)

Anyway, sad news. But I'm happy they caught the guy and that he's going to trial. The local news websites have this story as well, and also have pictures of his terrible Venom tattoo. Seems like he was a real winner all ways round.

In other things, I picked up an extra shift on Saturday morning. Thus, I will have to miss checking out San Japan, the local anime con they are trying to put on here. I have Mephit Furmeet at the end of the month though, which means I need to bug thphilster about arrangements.