RKNet Blog... Thing

You are hiding behind a stone wall being shot at by heavily armed cultist. You have had two weeks of training to deal with situations like this. But you’re only just starting to remember this. You know you should feel angry that people are shooting at you. But you consider that they would shoot at anyone trying to sneak into their heavily armed and very secretive religious compound. Instead you think about the figurative bastards that put you in this situation. They woke you up at four in the morning approximately thirteen hours ago. Bundled you into a car, then an airplane and whisked you six hundred miles from your home. They told you that that two week blackout you had was their fault. That two week blackout two years ago. A blackout that cost you a relationship with a person you deeply loved and very nearly alienated you from your immediate family. They said that you’d been taken to a secret government facility and been in their words ‘The Clockwork Orange’ treatment. Except instead of making you dislike violence they taught you to know how to do very unpleasant things to your fellow human beings. When you didn’t believe this as they quite reasonably expected they produced photographic evidence, timestamped and digitally signed. These memories slowly came back to you. You attributed this to the background music playing in the airplane’s cabin.

The current problem that you are to be injected into was explained to as a local disturbance which could rapidly turn into the European version of the Waco Ranch massacre. They explain to you that this is where you come in. You, they explain are to sneak into the compound and assassinate the leader of the cult as well as disrupt as much of the chain of command. Logically you try to explain to them that Solid Snake does this in the video games and he tends to die an awful lot in the attempt. They do not get the reference. They also suck their gums a lot which you take as a sign of ‘you’re not the first one we’ve sent in.’

The sneaking into the farm ran by crazy cult members did go better than expected. You made it past the official police line and through a field past the body of who you assume was ‘the first one sent in.’ As you reach the edge of the main farm complex however it all goes wrong.

Not the first one to be sent in seems to explain the problem well as you hide behind a dry wall. Your mouth is dry and your hands have almost stopped trembling. Their bullets have stopped firing. Cautiously you peer around the corner and see that three of the larger cultists are running towards you while brandishing very scary looking shotguns. You gulp. Aim the silenced pistol you were given at the closest cultist. Then you fire. It isn’t a perfect shot. It goes through his leg and he tumbles to the floor. He is screaming but the other two have upped the pace. You take aim again and fire. The next one drops without a sound in a mist of red. The third cultist stops. He raises his shotgun. You take cover. He discharges the weapon into the wall and the pellets bounce off the wall harmlessly. You feel you are getting the hang of this. Looking around the corner you feel slightly disappointed that he is running away from you.

You move forwards from this wall to the next. This is progress you think. Then they start firing a machine gun at you and you dive for the closest thing you see that looks like cover. The training you remember consisted of firing ranges, simulated close quarters combat exercises and training drills. Very little of the training (although you cannot be quite certain right now as your memory is still fragmented) involved being shot at and the immediate action to be taken when you inevitably come into the situation. You go on instinct here. Duck and cover, then hope that the machine gun breaks or runs out of bullets. 

The person manning the machine gun appears to be enjoying himself. Every few seconds a burst of fire removes fragments of the dry stone wall. The bullets are close and you hear some of them whistle through the air. The gunner however has a steady rhythm to his firing. You remember that you have a mirror on one of the cargo pockets. You take it out and use it to peer round the edge of the wall. There is only him. His burst finishes. You jump over the wall and shoot him in the head. The way into the main building is clear now. You kick the flimsy wooden door from it’s hinges. You hear a thumping noise.

You are cold and cannot move. Your head aches with a dull throbbing sensation. Your face hurts. Opening your eyes you see that you are in a cellar. The thin light of sunset comes in through an opening in the wall near the ceiling. You work out why you are cold and cannot move. Directly ahead of you  is a man.  He is naked and strapped to a gurney. His right arm has a horrific gunshot wound and his groans occasionally break his possibly drug induced sleep.

Four sky clad people walk into the cellar. One of them has a demonic mask and a evil knife. Another, a drum made from wood with a tight white skin with tattoo ink blue Celtic markings on it. The other two are women who start dancing and chanting as soon as they enter the room. The drummer starts to hit his drum and the masked man you watch move to stand in front of the injured man blocking him from your view.

“For your intrusion onto hallowed ground we punish you,” the masked man shouts.
“For your intrusion onto hallowed ground we punish you,” the others repeat.
You watch the masked man drag the knife across the injured mans chest. Blood runs to the ground.
“For your violent ways we injured you,” the masked man shouts.
“So we shall injure you again!” The two dancers say.
The masked man pushes the knife into the injured mans gunshot wound.
He screams!
“We the children of the gods say you must die,” all of the cultists say.
The injured man screams one last time.
You see the masked man turn to you. 

You are sweating heavily now. That evil knife is covered in gore and the blank look of the masked man you feel hides a sadistic smile. The drumming man carries on his vile rhythm for the dancers to follow. You see a small ball shaped object role through the sunlight opening. It bounces on the stone floor of the cellar.
“For your intrusion,” the masked man starts to say. You close your eyes in terror.

You hear a deafening noise followed by chaotic screams and gunshot. You close your eyes even more. The ringing in your ears stops and you open your eyes. You try to speak and a desperate whimper is all you can summon. You see eight people in battle dress and black full face gas masks. One of them approaches you and slings his weapon over his shoulder. You watch him take his gas mask off.
“It will be alright. You’ve done your duty. You’ve exceeded our expectations. Let us help you,” he says.

This story was originally entered into the SFX Pulp Idol competition. It didn’t win (aw), didn’t get shortlisted and it didn’t even get an honerable mention. No matter I’m well aware of it’s deficencies and it was a tracer bullet. Oh well it’s a success if someone enjoys it.

Will.

The truth hurts

So after watching the press conference this morning and getting super mega ultra excited, I spent a good couple of hours mashing F5 in anticipation of pre-order.

The press conference was interesting but not mind-blowing. It was, however, nice to get a better feel for the features and see some nice, shiny demo videos. Update: Engadget Mobile has posts galore about today’s unveiling. I won’t get into the few parts I gleaned from the demo.

This eventually lead me to log in, which had me so pumped I thought I would explode. Then… over an hour of server errors.

Eventually T-Mobile disabled phone upgrades altogether - right around 1pm, if I remember correctly - probably to figure out how the hell to handle that much traffic. If I were them, I’d see if they could borrow a server farm from Larry and Sergey until the pre-order is all over.

T-Mobile, taking a page from Pandemic's President Madagasgar, SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING. Ok, just the upgrade section, but still.

I will be poking at their servers for the rest of the day. While I realize this adds to their server load, I will not be the only person doing this, and with this kind of outage, coupled with the knowledge that there are supposedly 400,000 up for pre-order, it’s either be aggressive or get left scrambling on October 22nd.
Success must be mine! Wish me luck. :D

I DID IT!

FUCK YEAH

After a day of confusion and mild frustration, as of approximately 3:26pm EST, I am now one of the approximately 400,000 to secure a T-Mobile HTC G1 with Android and all that good stuff!

Because I could not stop for success, success kindly stopped for me. I had taken a break from my rabid F5-ing and decided to socialize with my co-workers, then I decided it was a good time to hit refresh on my T-mobile account page. LO! The upgrade phone link was back! I hit the promo image on the site and it actually worked! Not only did it work, but the site loaded as quickly as you please. I completed my order in nothing flat.

The phone cost, with the “upgrade fee” comes in at $197.99. Just under the originally predicted $199.

The G1 should be in my hot little hands on or about October 22nd. There will be an unboxing and setup post when I get it. Assuming I don’t get so excited that I just tear the whole package apart like a tazmanian devil.

For anyone curious, here’s the official T-Mobile overview page for the phone.

pardon my sloppy line up

The blank in the center? That's where the G1 promo pic SHOULD be.

That was the scene this morning when I went in to contemplate upgrading my phone, and check on my bill. I tried clicking through the broken promo image, and was let into a clearly unfinished area, offering the preorder of the G1, the first phone to feature Google’s Android mobile OS, which I was too excited to take screenshots of, and can’t seem to dig up a cached version of, to boot. :( If anybody has any thoughts on how I could wrestle these pages out of my history without the t-mobile servers interfering, comment!

It was really interesting. Where the details of a phone usually appear, all it had was Detail 1, Detail 2, etc. There were 3 versions on offer, black, brown, and white, but the only picture available was for the black model. (Brown, seriously? Who offers brown at launch? Talk about balls.)

Later in the day, after several server busy errors and general shenannigans, the customer area looked like this:

Billing was down for the count, upgrade phone disabled, an older promotional graphic was in place. Clearly they had some issues with this too-soon promo release.

Later on, billing and phone upgrade came back, but no sign of the new “google phone” in the upgrade list as of yet. With the official unveiling of the new Android powered phone a few days off, all the hubub today was clearly preparation for the upcoming preorder frenzy. Based on the errors seen this morning, and the general lag of the site, I would say this is going to be a serious preorder crunch!

I will be checking all morning on the 23rd, to see if I can get in on this. Full disclosure: I’m not really a gotta-have-it-first person when it comes to any bit of new tech, but if I can get a new phone with a qwerty keyboard and web access, AND get a rare chance to one-up my I-got-an-iPhone-and-can’t-do-what-I-want-with-it friends, well, I can’t pass it up!

Perusing through my feeds this morning, as I am wont to do, I discovered a blurb in Wired’s The Underwire about the whole MST3K crew putting in an appearance at this year’s Comic Con! Not only that, but they plan to do a live Rifftrax session of Plan 9 From Outer Space as well.

Then the part that really grabbed me (because I can’t attend Comic Con this year), the announcement of an MST3K boxed set! SQEEEE! It’s currently up for pre-order on Amazon, with a listed release date of October 28th of this year. According to the Underwire article, legal issues have prevented Shout Factory from releasing the list of episodes that will be available in this set. With 4 discs in the set, my hope is they get as many as possible or at least all the ones not covered by the currently available DVD collections.

I’m hoping for Sidehackers, some of the Godzilla movies, Castle of Fu-Manchu (which I own a copy of in non-MST3K format), and Time Chasers. (”Wheee we’re getting poison sumac wheeee!”)

Burning Questions:
What episodes are your favorites?
Joel or Mike Nelson?
Tom or Crow?
The Doctor or Pearl?
TV’s Frank?

NotCot.org strikes again. This morning they posted a blurb about a book called Fifty Designers’ Current Favourite Typefaces. The book only costs 3£ and 100% of that 3 pounds goes directly to UNICEF to help aid victims - specifically the children - of the cyclone which happened in Myanmar (aka Burma) this past May.

It is put out by a design firm in the UK called Create / Reject. You may order the book directly from their website. There are photos of the interior of the book, as well as a list of all the designers who got involved. I can think of no more enjoyable way to lend a helping hand.

The network administrator is one of the funniest, most dedicated, generally awesome guys I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet. This morning I got copied on an email he sent to one of my co-workers regarding a rather unfortunate circumstance: a client of his was one of those people who gets a chain letter and forwards it to EVERYONE in their address book. This naturally included my co-worker, and the presence of giant attachments, unwanted witticisms and lots and lots of animated gifs was really starting to cramp the guy’s style.

Network Admin to the rescue! Below, with some redacted names to protect identities (because I try to be polite like that) is the solution.

Hey Todd,

I can block his e-mail address from hitting our server, but unfortunately he wouldn’t be able to send any e-mail to us at all if that happened-/probably/ not a good idea if he’s a client.

You can delete them, but the best thing to do is to ask him to stop sending them in the first place. The easiest way to do that is to make **ME** the bad guy, so the fucking idiot doesn’t get all offended and shit. Try something like this:

/”Good morning Mr. Latent Pedophile,

I can’t put into words how much sheer, unadulterated joy your wonderful e-mails have brought me. You see, before I starting receiving your witty and carefully crafted mass-produced chain e-mails my life was but a meaningless shell. Being on your “send” list has truly been a divine gift from above. Not only has it made me a better man, but flowers smell better, the sky is brighter, and food tastes better.

Best of all, it no longer hurts when I pee.

Alas, there is a problem: You see, the network administrator here is a real “type-A” knuckle-dragger. He’s an angry, angry man-the type of guy who has driven away anyone who has ever tried to love him. He is verbally abusive to his co-workers, and his breath is so bad that the paint around his desk *is actually peeling. *He monitors all of the network traffic to and from our e-mail server. Yesterday he waddled over to my desk, belched, farted in my general direction, and //then started screaming at me about bandwidth issues and security concerns. For this reason I must beseech you to stop sending me these types of messages. He assured me that if I receive any more he was going to dock my pay $10.00 per megabyte-so you’re most recent message for example could cost me $13.20.

I’m not sure how I’m going to cope with not receiving future chain letter messages from you. Alas, I may have to take up clown punching, chicken choking-or some other constructive way to vent my inhuman rage against the man. Thank you for your understanding.

I weep alone,

Todd T.
Resident Badass
“/

Give that a shot dude. Let me know how it works out.
*
**
Chris
*

Oh Chris, it is truly an honor to work with you!

This morning my mother copied to me via IM an email or a page she had found. Within contains the most complete list of paranoias, hoaxes, wishful thoughts, and general falderall ever generated via email chain letters. It is a tremendously entertaining read and I absolutely have to share with you all. Oh, and if you don’t digg, del.icio.us and put this on your facebook then bad luck and extreme misfortune will infest your pathetic soul for all eternity. Bill Gates told me so. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

This is pretty cute and I thought you’d get a few healthy chuckles from it. :) I just want to thank all of you for your educational emails over the past year. Thanks to you, I no longer open a public bathroom door without using a paper towel. I can’t use the remote in a hotel room because I don’t know what the last person was doing while flipping through the adult movie channels. I can’t sit down on the hotel bedspread because I can only imagine what has happened on it since it was last washed. I can’t enjoy lemon slices in my tea or on my seafood anymore because lemon peels have been found to contain all kinds of nasty germs including feces. I have trouble shaking hands with someone who has been driving because the number one pass-time while driving alone is picking your nose (although cell phone usage may be taking the number one spot) Eating a Little Debbie sends me on a guilt trip because I can only imagine how many gallons of trans fats I have consumed over the years. I can’t touch any woman’s purse for fear she has placed it on the floor of a public bathroom. Yuck! I must send my special thanks to whoever sent me the one about poop in the glue on envelopes because I now have to use a wet sponge with every envelope that needs sealing. Also, now I have to scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason. I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl (Penny Brown) who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time. I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft and AOL are se nding me for participating in their special e-mail program. I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me, and St. Theresa’s novena has granted my every wish. I no longer eat KFC because their chickens are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers. I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day. Thanks to you, I have learned that my prayers only get answered if I forward an email to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes. Because of your concern I no longer drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains. I no longer can buy gasoline without taking someone along to watch the car so a serial killer won’t crawl in my back seat when I’m pumping gas.. I no longer drink Pepsi or Dr Pepper since the people who make these products are atheists who refuse to put ‘Under God’ on their cans. I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer. And thanks for letting me know I can’t boil a cup of water in the microwave anymore because it will blow up in my face…disfiguring me for life. I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS. I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me. I no longer receive packages from UPS or FedEx since they are actually Al Qaeda in disguise. I no longer shop at Target since they are French and don’t support our American troops or the Salvation Army. I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a num ber for which I will get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica , Uganda & Singapore and Uzbekistan I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus since I now have their recipe. Thanks to you, I can’t use anyone’s toilet but mine because a big brown African spider is lurking under the seat to cause me instant death when it bites my butt. And thanks to your great advice, I can’t ever pick up $5.00 dropped in the parking lot because it probably was placed there by a sex molester waiting underneath my car to grab my leg. I can no longer drive my car because I can’t buy gas from certain gas companies! If you don’t send this e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 70 minutes, a large dove with diarrhea will land on your head at 5:00 PM this afternoon and the fleas from 12 camels will infest your b ack, causing you to grow a hairy hump. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbor’s ex-mother-in-law’s second husband’s cousin’s beautician… Have a wonderful day… Oh, by the way….. A German scientist from Argentina, after a lengthy study, has discovered that people with insufficient brain activity read their e-mail with their hand on the mouse. Don’t bother taking it off now, it’s too late.-

Nothing makes you think harder about the quality of your life than having the shits. Truly. Nothing gives you more pause for thought than when your colon is doing things you know damn well it oughtn’t do at all.
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Despite my vehement aversion to being up before noon on any weekend day, I am very very fired up for the NH Media Makers event this Sunday. It will be held at Crackskulls book store, coffee haus and cozy nook. I look forward to meeting a lot of folks I’ve been tweeting back and forth with for the last couple months.

The goal of this get together is not just to serve as a general #NHTWEETUP but to also gather up people from the area interested in, well, making media! Specifically internet-related ventures like vlogging, podcasting, blogging, and making the most of social media outlets. It’s going to be a meet-and-greet and round table discussion, and thankfully for non-morning people like me there will be plenty of coffee on hand.

For those that have already pledged to be there, I look forward to meeting you. For those NH folks who might come across this, make sure you pop by the NH Media Makers blog and RSVP so everybody knows you’re coming.

• @bloggersblog hear hear, viva la literature! #
• Gah. I wake up to an internet fight over twitter. that’s like waking up & walking into a bar argument #
• pro baseball? overpaid children. for most people, the local bar owner is more personally important. #
• @chrisgarrett huh. we were just talking about ALICE yesterday. I heard she was a bitch. looks like it fits your theory #
• @chrisgarrett it goes back to at least the 19th http://tinyurl.com/3b2s96 #
• When I read about the internet being an instrument for social destruction I think "good, there’s a lot of cleaning up to do" #
• @chrisgarrett omg, no wonder you’re so up in arms, these strumpette people can kiss my ass. paranoids. #
• Riddle me this: how can you espouse your negative opinions about the internet on the internet, and expect any respect? #
• I’m not so sure that a luddite, pro-expert, pro-professional should be arguing on twitter. it screams hypocrite #
• @chrisgarrett you have to be published on dead trees or harass someone who’s been on tv to be pro, duh #

Editor’s note: man I was a twitter whore today. cut for length.
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