EA Games and The Sims Social

I promised myself I wasn't going to write about this, but I need to rant.  If you don't feel like reading a rant I'd highly recommend skipping this post.

I love The Sims.  Or maybe it's more accurate to say I used to love The Sims because I'm never playing it again.  I have played The Sims since 7th grade when I went over to my friend Paige's house and she showed it to me.  I've owned several editions of The Sims and countless expansion packs.

I was really excited when The Sims Social came out because I thought it would be a great way to play The Sims with my friends, and it was free!! I hyped it up to my peer group, and even got my boyfriend playing.  And then one day I stopped cold turkey.

The Sims Social was buggy sometimes, quests would be announced but wouldn't show up, my skirt would appear and disappear, floors were missing, accomplishments wouldn't be recorded, but none of that is why I quit.  I quit because one day I finished a quest and my game wouldn't load.  I finished building a room in my house, and this completed the quest.  A box would pop up telling me about it, and as soon as I'd close out of that pop-up, I'd receive an error message.  Every time I logged in the same thing would happen.

After a few days I reached out to EA customer service. At first they were really responsive.  I got a case number and a real human being emailed me (albeit with a form response) and I went though all the basic troubleshooting but to no avail.  Clearly the issue was a bug in the software and not something on my end.

After a few days of emailing, my customer service rep told me he needed to escalate my problem to his manager, but after that I didn't hear back from EA.  I gave it a few days, and then I emailed EA. No response. I emailed them again. No response.  I went on their site and emailed their formal customer service system.  No response.

After two weeks of this I emailed them again, explaining that I was upset with their level of service and that my game still wouldn't move past the error message.  I told them I was quitting the game and would never play or purchase EA products ever again.  And that was the end of it.

The end until today, when ONE MONTH after they stopped getting back to me they emailed me again with a survey and an apology.  A month in a game that rewards you for each day you play?  It's total crap.     I'm more mad than ever and I'm standing by my commitment to boycotting their goods and services. Rant over.

Maybe I Have 500 Page Views Because You Can't Look Up Pseudo Problem on Wikipedia Today

Today I reached 500 page views.  Woohoo!

I was planning on writing something momentous when this day came, even though it isn't really that momentous and is actually sort of sad when you think about the number of people who read things on the internet and the tiny fraction of who have glanced at my blog. 

However,

This post isn't actually about the number of page views I have.  It's about SOPA/PIPA.  I'm against these things. I have about a million links about this stuff, here are a few:

http://theoatmeal.com/sopa
https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/One-Page-SOPA_0.pdf
http://dyn.com/sopa-breaking-dns-parasite-stop-online-piracy/
https://www.eff.org/free-speech-weak-link
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html
http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

I'm not asking that you take action, just that you be well informed. 

List Series: Pleasant Sounds

A basketball hitting pavement
A shovel scraping against the pavement and through a foot of heavy snow
Small zippers
Cloth rustling against cloth
A knife passing through a juicy apple
My new keyboard with its cover on when I’m thoughtfully typing slowly and without too much pressure
Skin brushing against skin
Coffee beans pouring
Scooping ground coffee beans with a plastic spoon scoop
Water trickling through a small brook or a water feature
The new carts rolling through Target
The fan whooshing noise of the TNG Enterprise
Steady rainfall on trees, wood, plants
Seismic charges in Star Wars episode 2
British people saying "luv" as a term of endearment

List Series: Annoyances

Jack Johnson

Lack of oral hygiene

Facebook posts like “I have the best girlfriend ever”

Kissing profile pictures

Caring what race you date/marry/have babies with

Anti-gay marriage

Anti-cross dressing

Afraid of sexuality

Too much in the way of PDAs

Girls who dress like Kim Kardashian

Men in leather thong flip flops, a loose polo, and khaki shorts who haven’t showered in days

Axe body spray

Old school pink bottle Herbal Essences

Gross bathrooms

Lol cat writing or speech

Festering wounds

Condensed soup

Raw or partially cooked eggs

The smell of burning cheese

The fact that I have internal organs

List Series: Reason's Relationships Can Suck

Swapping a cold or flu back and forth

UTIs

Risk of STIs

Risk of pregnancy

Having to shave closely

Caring what underwear you’re wearing and when you last wore it

Washing the sheets more often

Having two sets of everything

Clearing out space for his stuff

Watching his shows

Listening to his music

Watching him play sports

Watching him play video games

His friends

Fights about nothing

Knowing 90% of what you talk to your friends about is him

Knowing you don’t hang out with your friends enough

How it changes things with male friends

Never having a moment to fart or pick your nose

Your period

Spending money on dates and presents

When he doesn’t get along with people you love, or they don’t like him

Beardface hair in the sink

Face stubble

The way the bathroom smells

Feeling fat or not sexy

Stressing in the beginning about how he feels about you

Are we moving to fast or not fast enough

When do you know it’s over

Is he cheating

Would I be happier with someone else

What if this is it forever

Brown Eyed Girl

While reading The Huffington Post yesterday, I came across this article about a doctor who created a procedure that turns your eyes blue.  Dr. Homer uses a laser to remove the darker pigment from the eyes which reveals a layer of blue under that.  Apparently, brown eyes actually have blue under the brown.  The article doesn't go into depth about green eyes or about if this is why many babies start out with blue eyes and then develop brown eyes as they mature. 

Luckily, Wikipedia  covers all of this.  Yes, it does seem that this related to how a baby can be born with blue eyes but grow into a brown eyed child.  The layer of pigmentation, which causes the eyes to appear brown, develops after birth and covers the blue eyes.  There are different processes that lead someone to have brown, green, blue, or any other color of eyes.  It seems possible that Dr. Homer is only able to remove the brown layer, leaving it unclear what would happen if he tried his procedure on someone with green eyes.  Huffington post explains that only 20% of people have blue eyes, but Wiki mentions that green eyes are even rarer.   

Personally, I prefer dark brown eyes.  I'd be sad to see people lining up to have their dark eyes laser-ed away. My eyes are brown.  I was born with blue eyes and they stayed that way until I was a few years old.  Then, they darkened to a hazel color about the same as my mother's eyes.  When I was in late telemetry school or early middle school they darkened yet again until they were decidedly brown with only the faintest hint of green or yellow.  They are now like a pond in the forest, deep brown with the faintest touch of pond scum here and there.  Wikipedia points out that changing eye color later than infancy is very rare and often brought on by disease or trauma (10 to 15% of people change eye color later in life) but that the most common genetic color change is from hazel to brown.  I experienced no disease or trauma.  I guess that means it was genetically motivated. 

Bottom line: I like brown eyes. My eyes are rarer than blue eyes. Dr. Homer is possibly a shallow person.

NaNoWriMo

It's NaNoWriMo!

Who's-a-what-now?

It stands for National Novel Writing Month.  The idea being that a lot of people want to write a novel but are so daunted by the task that they never get to far.  Instead of viewing novel writing a write, edit, throw out, rewrite, cry, write some more, process, you just take one month to try to write 50,000 words.  It doesn't matter if 3/4 of those words are "poopy" copy and pasted over and over again on your screen, at least you wrote something.  By limiting time and setting a goal of word count, writers are encouraged to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and simply get words out there.  Editing can come later, plot can emerge on its own.  I think the biggest accomplishment is in showing people that it can be done, that writing lengthy works isn't an insurmountable block. 

Personally?  I'm not doing it.  While I love novels; series of novels; shows with multi-episode, multi-season story arches; and movie series, I don't consider myself to write in that fashion.  I enjoy writing in 1-5 page spans.  I've been corralled into writing longer pieces pretty much only in an academic setting.  I got though two such papers based on my own research, and I could see myself writing a book along those lines, but like many academically inclined books, the chapters would be independently sustainable with only common themes emerging between them.

Maybe when I'm older I'll be more interested in writing a novel.  However, I like the idea of doing something creative with my month.  I'm going to make more of an effort to blog, paint, craft, and read this month.  We're still a ways off from New Years, and Lent was a long time ago.  Some consider this to be the Holiday Season, but I think we can leave December as a time for family and charity and make November a time for creativity. 

Good luck to you NaNoWriMo-ers!  I look forward to reading your future novels.  Be creative, have fun, and prove to yourself that you can do it!  Happy November 1^st to all!