JSmith

Hmmmm wouldn't y'all like to know And bite me, Mark. I was just fine with being left out of this conversation

Ah, but the donuts in the parking lots were amazing! So much fun!

Wow. I just read (almost) every post in this thread, and I must say that I'm not impressed. So far we've outlined some general 'statements' (not rules) about how certain people view the chatroom. I wouldn't even call them guidelines like the topic title says. I'm all for discussing ways to help police the chatroom, but so far none of this really helps. We've had chat rules since it opened. We've blasted them in open announcements over and over again. The site rules, which everyone agreed to even if they didn't read them, apply for any area on the forums, chatroom included. In the past we have been very lenient on moderation of the chatroom, but that's because it wasn't needed. A few years ago we never had problems like we are now. It was closed a few times due to lack of funding and lack of interest, but we never had as many issues as we do now. THAT'S what's causing us to get more heavy handed in the chatroom. We have two moderators dedicated to only the chatroom, while just a handful of other tackle the entire site. Even with that, most of the global moderators still have to help handle the chatroom. It was beyond control, and I warned people in the chatroom several times that it was going to be closed if things didn't start getting better. They didn't. I closed it. But to be totally honest, I don't understand how not having a chatroom for three days is causing this much drama. It's only three days, and most of you have each other on MSN/AIM/Facebook/Whatever to continue talking. When the chat reopens I have no doubt that things will be better for a while. The moderators will ease off because everyone will moderate themselves more. But once everyone starts getting comfortable again, we can't let that stop, or this will happen again. So no, we don't need a new set of guidelines. The same set of guidelines that have been in place for the past couple years are just fine. It's the members in the chat that need to follow them without a moderator in the room.

Kayden, once a year(ish) some of the GA members get together somewhere throughout the US. First was San Francisco, then Dallas, then D.C, and now it'll be Vegas. It's just a fun way to get to meet the people that you've been talking to online for so long. Oh, and count me in. If I can afford it. I'm planning another San Francisco trip within the next couple months, but other than that I can take the time off and maybe even drag Michelle's happy ass with me.

So I realize it's been months since I last blogged and a lot of new people on here are probably seeing this wondering who the hell I am, but oh well. Usually I write a lot on these when I did my 'monthly updates' but since it's been a while I'll try and keep it to short(er) bullet points - My first term is finally over. My professors seemed to think most of the essays that I half-assed at 3 in the morning were 'phenomenal' compared to the rest of the class... I just take that as me going to school with a bunch of idiots, but at least they earn an A for me. - Work is hectic to say the least. Corporate management is going through a bunch of firings and hirings so no one really knows what the hell is going on with that or who our boss actually is at any given time. I still get the same shitty pay though, so I personally don't give a damn. - I joined a bowling league with Michelle, my boss, and a co-worker, but I doubt you could really call it a 'league' when there are only 8 of us... most of whom suck. I went from 170s and 180s to barely hitting 120s when we play our league games. It sucks, but it's still fun to do every week. - My mom decided she's going to leave my father, but no one knows yet except for me. They just passed their 25th year anniversary and I honestly don't know why she waited to long to decide this, but I still support her decision 100%. Now it's just a matter of her going through with it. - Brother is still a fuck-up so we don't really talk about him. My sister decided to move out and up to Missouri to live with my parents so I took her room and Michelle is moving into my old room. The bitch made me paint it before she would move in. Bah! - I'm still single, as always. Went through a relationship since the last blog. That didn't last. He was slightly psychotic and very much attached and in love with me after about 2 weeks. I held on for a few months and then cut him loose. Still trying to get him to stop sending me 'I love you' texts now and then, but I've made some progress. - It seems that every guy I'm interested in is interested in someone who's interested in me who I have no interest in. It's like some sort of fucked up 'Interest Triangle' where I get the shitty end of the stick. It's quite annoying so I've given up on trying to find anyone. My right hand hasn't failed me yet, so I'll be good for a while I think. - My long-term ex, Mason, is coming in town next week and wants to hang out. There's still feelings between us even though he moved to California a while back and we've been split up for over a year now. Not sure how that'll play out, but I'm going out on a limb and seeing what'll happen. - I went Vegetarian again. It's a lot easier the second time around. I don't crave meat, but it's a pain in the ass to try and find something that doesn't have meat when you're too lazy to cook. I'm doing Thanksgiving at my boss's and I told her she had to make at least half of everything without meat, but we'll be drinking early that day so I don't think I'll care when it comes time to eat. - My Green Bay Packers just raped the Dallas Cowboys, much to everyone's surprise. I won a bet of a 6-Pack on it, which is the main reason I cared so much about the game. I'm assuming very few on here actually watched it, so I'll just stop there. - I've unintentionally lost a hell of a lot of weight recently, and unlike usual, I haven't been putting it back on right away. I tried going to the gym for a while, but I'm broke and didn't want to keep paying for the membership, and the novelty of actually going to the gym wore off after a couple weeks and I got lazy again. - Still depressed. Nothing new there. Constantly getting sick, usually with something throat related. And before anyone makes any jokes about it, it's not from doing that because like I said earlier, I'm still single and very much alone. - I've neglected a lot of duties on GA recently because of school and work, but I'm trying to keep up. I've only had a few authors really start bitching at me, so I guess I'm not too worthless to them. - I've been trying to do more to 'help society' and all that crap that everyone advocates but no one actually does. Volunteering at an animal shelter and towing people out of ditches and off the road are the main ones. Giving the bastard at the gas station a dollar so he'll leave me alone doesn't really count because I just don't want to listen to him whine. - Still an insomniac (as if you couldn't tell by the 3:30 posting of this). The only decent sleep I get is from a heavy dose of sleeping pills or when I'm cuddling with someone. The later of the two doesn't happen often and the former gets annoying so I just stay up all night now. I think I pull more all-nighters now for no reason than when I needed to do projects in high school. I think I'll stop there. I don't really know what the hell else has gone on recently, but nothing important. Most days I end up tweeting FML for some reason or another so it's just the Same Shit Different Day. And on that, I'm going to go be a nerd and play L4D2 for lack of anything better to do this late at night. Joe (Who would like to congratulate and thank all of the authors that participated in the writing contest. The stories were absolutely amazing!)

Depending on when it is, I'm down for it. I'm going back to San Francisco in February for a week or so, so as long as it's not directly after that, I should be able to make it. Shoot for a late July early August?

Alright, I'll admit the Packers had a bad second half of the game, but you didn't have to include them with the 0-2 teams! Come on now! Go poke fun of the Vikings!

That might have made my day right there I'll add a couple from Friday night. This was after a wedding and I was a tad bit drunk, so don't hold them against me

The bandwidth most likely wouldn't be a problem. We have enough that we don't use that it's feasible to do something like this without having to pay for any kind of extra bandwidth. The issue, however, is finding a team to do all of this work on a regular basis. This is why our Newsletter is rarely used. We have a small team, but they're also involved in other areas of the site that take up a lot of their time. A lot of people don't realize what kind of work goes into running this site so a lot of people get burnt out and leave because they can't consistently volunteer all of their extra free time. I know for a fact that the admins wouldn't be able to handle this kind of work right now. The tech support team (which consists of 3 people including myself) is booked up. A few on the moderation team might be willing to help out, but the Newsletter team probably wouldn't because we don't actually have one. The Newsletter is done periodically by people from various teams. Don't get me wrong, the Podcast is a great idea, but keeping up with it is the hard part. With the Newsletter, we had a lot of people volunteer to help in the beginning, but as time went on, people started dropping out and it's hard to find replacements. If you guys want to try and get it going, that's great. We can add a section to the site to hold them and even a private forum for you guys to work in. But as for getting much help volunteer-wise from the members already on staff, that's where you're going to run into some trouble.

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="https://clients4.google.com/voice/embed/webCallButton" width="230" height="85"><param name="movie" value="https://clients4.google.com/voice/embed/webCallButton" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="FlashVars" value="id=d1167fd3fb5e22b145efce74133767842213cb87&style=0" /></object> <p><br /> <br /> Google sent me an invite to use their new Voice technology. So basically they gave me a phone number and I can have it ring any number of phones I want. It's like call forwarding, but with a ton of other options. So I figured I'd test this one out and put a call me button on my blog. You won't actually get to talk to me, but I have it set up so you can leave me a voicemail. </p> <br /><p>We'll see how it goes. If there's a feature where I can send a text from the number they gave me, or make a call from it, then I'll likely keep it because it makes screening calls a hell of a lot easier haha.</p>

I still haven't been able to get her out. I've been up for almost 24 hours trying non-stop to get her out, but the bail bondsman I'm going through is f**king me over every step of the way and making it damn near impossible. The most recent being that he insisted I needed my parents signature on the bond because it was such a high value (instead of the $500-$1000 quote, it was $5500 instead, making it a $575 bond). Well I finally broke down, called them up and confessed everything to them just so I could get her out, and right as I get off the phone with them, the bondsman calls and tells me it needs to be someone local instead. Meaning my parents who live in Missouri can't do it. So right now they're doing some type of background check on my GM. I'm hoping they'll call back soon and say everything went through. Because they're pricks and it's about god damn time. I've been up for almost 24 hours, I slept 3 hours the night before, and I can't sleep before I have to work a 13 hour shift. Oh how wonderful my life is...

Short blog this time. So my sister is in jail. Apparently she had a DWI and also got a ticket for hitting an object on the highway and failing to stop. Which probably means she hit a cone or something and the cop pulled her over and found that she was drunk. She called me at 8 this morning asking me to come bail her out and not tell my parents. Well that's hard to do when I don't get paid until Friday and don't have the money. So my brother and I called just about everyone we could trying to find the bail money to get her out. We finally found it, but now we have to wait for a judge to SET her bail before we can go get the bond. And that won't be until 'this afternoon' they said. I feel bad because there's nothing I can do right now to get her out and there's no way to get her word that I'm working on it, but at the same time it should do her some good to learn not to drink and drive. Especially since she was 10 minutes away from home and my brother and I were both up until after 3 and were able to come get her. She's done it before, but she didn't this time. I would have much rather taken 20 minutes to pick her up last night than have to call into work and find a way to bail her out of jail. Plus all the stuff she's going to have to deal with when she gets out. So yeah I'm feeling bad that she's having to sit in jail, but it should do her a little bit of good. At least, that's what I'm telling myself to keep from feeling worse. Just in case any of you are ever arrested in Dallas, don't call me to bail you out. Because it won't happen after this. I've had enough of the bail bonding experiences for a while

CNN and Fox took a while to confirm it, but yes, now all news outlets are reporting that Michael Jackson has suffered from a cardiac arrest and died. The radio station here is playing an hour straight of MJ songs in memory of him.

Banking pages were a problem for me with previous versions of Opera as well. But I know at least with the newest version, Bank of America will work now without any kind of fuss.

Well that wasn't very polite.

To all of those that are having issues with Opera 10 and Vista, are you sure everything is updated on it? I've been using Opera for years and I haven't run into any problems with Java or Vista when I upgraded. I've had my browser crash ONCE since I've been using it. And the only reason it did so was because I was trying to mess with too many settings at once with the new technical beta preview that's out. For those of you that DO use Opera and have the beta version, may I suggest getting a new version with the Opera Unite build. I've been playing around with it and so far I think it's amazing. My desktop stays on and connected to the Internet 24 hours a day, so this is perfect for me. As long as I leave Opera open in the background, I can have secure access to all my files and music from any other computer using any other browser. It beats the hell out of dumping all your files on a server or paying for a service that basically does the same thing.

Actually with the new Opera 10.00 Beta that's out, you can customize your Speed Dial now. You can increase or decrease the amount of websites you have listed. Which is perfect for me because I usually had 10 or 11 and had to trim down a couple so I could fit them in the 9 spaces. I rarely use my bookmarks folder unless it's something I'm saving that I'll never really need. Using Ctrl+1 to switch to my first speed dial site comes in handy a lot too when I'm at work and don't want people reading over my shoulder so I quick switch. I love being able to open Opera and have all my regular sites opened in tabs so I don't have to open them all. Call me lazy, but it's freaking amazing. Every once and a while I'll run into a site that doesn't work with Opera, but it's getting more and more rare. The only time it doesn't allow me to use the website is when the programmers specifically make you use IE or FF and disallow any other browser. Which pisses me off because if they would follow the most recent web compliant standards, they wouldn't need to do so. But some programmers are just too lazy and program only for IE and FF and don't care about the others because they have such a low market share. Granted when I code websites for GA I tend to do the same thing, but for Opera. The thing is, if it works in Opera, it usually works in all the other browsers. Every once and a while I'll have to add IE or FF specific code to get everything perfect, but Opera is the most web compliant when developing IMO.

Hmmm I haven't posted one in a while. That's applejuice... I swear

Opera FTW! I haven't used anything but Opera as my main browser for a good 2 years now. I used FF before it started gaining popularity and after that it started having problems so I found a better one. Chrome is pretty good too, but unless I'm on a computer that's not mine, I'll always use Opera.

Alright so I guess I wasn't completely clear in one of these blogs. I never intended to just walk away completely without saying anything. I've been burned one too many times like that and I know how it feels to have someone just walk out of your life without any sort of parting words. When I cut ties at the time, it was more of a "let me get my shit together before I talk to him again" type of thing because I knew if I did talk to him, I would have ended up in the same situation. It's damn near impossible for me to say no to someone, especially someone that I care about. He doesn't have a cellphone so the only way I could have said anything to him would have been to call him which would have put me in my not being able to say no situation. I did, however, tell this to David in an email. I told him I wasn't going to just walk away without an explanation, yet his friend is still harassing me. It's getting irritating that he keeps making threats, but he never intends to do anything about them. I finally called him on it last night and told him to either follow through with his plans or shut the f**k up and leave me alone. He then ratted on David and said the threats were his idea from the beginning and showed me the IM messages to prove it. Which could have been fake or changed, but I really doubt it. And if they were his idea from the beginning, it makes me wonder what kind of person he really is. I feel like I didn't really know him at all because I never would have guessed that side of him was there. But yes Kevin, I don't blame his friend for being mad. He has the right. But he doesn't have the right to constantly harass me and send me threats when he's not attempting to solve anything. He's just trying to cause drama and drive an even further wedge between David and I. He's tried before, and now he's actually getting his wish, but it's just pathetic that he won't stay out of something that he has no right to intrude upon. Truth be told, David doesn't even really like the kid. He's highly annoying and just causes drama for him. So when he's not even that good of a friend, he doesn't have the right to do what he's done. Yes, he can be pissed all he wants. Yes, he can try and talk to me about it. But when that little f**ker just sits there and trys to cause more drama, I get sick of it. Joe

So I took my own advice from last blog and that a few others said to do, and I just walked away. I didn't say anything to him because I knew I would end up caving and just end up miserable again. So I let it all go and ignored the calls. Well, I went up to Coppell tonight to hang out with an old friend I haven't seen in years, and while I was there my phone wouldn't connect to the network, or it was down or something. Either way I couldn't receive calls or texts until I was on my way home. I was up there for a good 3 and a half hours so when I finally got all of my messages, I got this one from his best friend: Him: "I said I'd f**k you up if you hurt my boy. You have. Watch your back." I didn't know whether to laugh or be pissed. So I did both. I laughed because it was funny that someone like him would actually try and threaten me. But I was pissed at the same time because he really did threaten me. I know I should have continued to ignore it, but I couldn't. And while I was tempted to send something back along the lines of "Good luck, I have plenty of people to watch my back for me..." I didn't. But I did respond with the following: Me: "I was in Coppell and the AT&T network was down. But I just got your... threat I guess it was. And I just want to say that you can't even begin to comprehend what I'm going through, but thank you for the warning." Alright, so it wasn't exactly mean, but I did make a little poke at him being stupid. I kinda took the high road, but I responded so I guess I didn't. Him: "Look I'm dealing with a very upset friend. I won't do anything. I'm so sorry about w/e happened, but some word needed to be communicated to David. I hope ur okay but I don't see how not even a 'shit happened, can't talk for a while' couldn't have been sent to David, or me or Lance or anyone." Me: "Actually I did communicate that a while back and asked him to let me finish school. He didn't and I wanted it to work so I let things start again. Then as you say, 'shit happened' and I snapped. I couldn't say anything that would make things better so I didn't. I walked away to save whatever part of me that wasn't f**ked up, left. I knew it had the potential to hurt, but my mind went into survival mode. Fight or flight kicked in. I'm not one to just leave without an explanation and would have come around to talk about it, and then you threatened me. So if this is what you wanted, then there you go. A vague explanation that won't help the situation between us, but will only cause me to be more f**ked up. So thank you." Most of that is true, and while I really would have liked to explain things to David eventually, I couldn't do it just yet. And this little f**ker trying to threaten me didn't help in the least. It only made it worse. I know David didn't put him up to it because that's not the kind of person he is, but even so, in the back of my mind I'm still slightly blaming him because this particular friend has never liked me to begin with because he's in love with David. He just responded with the following: Him: "Joe i defended u since u disappeared but after this long with no contact I couldn't anymore. I figured the situation with u was exactly as u are telling me now. I understand why u did what u did, I never didn't. But the complete cut off communication-wise just isn't okay. Again, I hope ur okay." So he can understand why I did what I did, yet it's not alright. And he goes from threatening to "f**k me up" to "hoping I'm okay". I really think the first message was just to provoke me into talking, which it worked because I'm not the type of person to take a threat, even if I do laugh at the person it's coming from, without saying anything in return. So I think I'm going to do the smart thing and just stop talking to him again because he turned my rather good night of hanging out with an old friend into a ranting one that's leaving me exhausted and wishing he would try something on me just so I could punch him in the face. I may be non-violent and non-confrontational, but if someone else is going to start the fight, then you better believe that I'm going to defend myself. And if I get in a few punches against a f**ker that annoys the hell out of me, then there's nothing wrong with that. That feels better Joe

Hey if he's being roofied, then he's getting on that damn plane and coming to Dallas!

Just as a side-note: The GA Administration approved this message before it was posted, so please don't think it's spam I personally would love to attend as I'm a fan of Christopher Rice, but sadly I won't be able to make it to NYC. If anyone from here does go though, I'd love to hear details!

Well I've been in class and working all day so far so I haven't talked to him. He tried to call me when I got out of class but I just let it go to voicemail. Surprisingly, he didn't leave one for once. And thanks Robert, but truth be told I haven't actually done so yet anyways, so option two won't really work And option one would probably work, but I did kinda go off on him a little and I'd rather not let him read it. He's seen me on GA and knows I'm an Admin here so he might have already done so actually. I wouldn't put it past his stalking capabilities to find GA and hunt down my username just to check my blog. Thanks everyone

Damn... if only you lived closer