We got more spam today (58 comments). This has added the specific names of a pain killer and an anti-anxiety medication to theblacklist.

Also, there were three suspect accounts that have been created. They were deleted. If they were f’real, then please e-mail me and I’ll fix that. Because you wont’ be able to recreate. Since I disabled “Anyone can register” since the spam-asses took advantage of it.

Wow. Did I seriously just make a Thundercats joke?

I need to get out more.

Anyways, we’ve been getting a LOT of comment spam. As of now, I’ve implemented a blacklist on words.

If you’re fond of speaking of flamboyantly gay singers, German parliamentary practices, or misspell “coming” in your comments, you’re screwed.

Seriously, though. If you comment on something and it doesn’t appear in a reasonable length of time, let me know what you said because a substring may be matching.

I have updated the back-end (HAW HAW) to Wordpress 2.1 from 1.5.

As an aside, I swear to god I updated to 2.0. I discussed it with KK.

Regardless, if anything’s broken, let me know.

love[dot]pirate {at} foampirates {dot} com

So I got my shiny new monitor. Received it Jan 4th. From this day (Jan 24th) back to Jan 4th is exactly 21 days. 21 days is the amount of time I can return said monitor for a full refund. The Dell 24″ I currently own is version A03. Since I received mine, they have released a newer version of A04. It has better HD quality and 1:1 Aspect Ratio.

However Dell is saying the 21 return policy starts when I order the monitor. Not when I receive it. (Which was my understanding of the whole return policy. Had I known that it was 21 days since I purchased it, I would have had this conversation with them earlier.) So now I’m in a standoff as to what will happen about it. I will not pay 15% restocking fee for an $800 monitor. I am not asking them to do anything that is unreasonable. (That is of course my opinion) So I am waiting for the Dell person’s supervisor to call me back so I can have a nice conversation with them as to how we are going to resolve this issue. The Dell support person told me that the 21 days included shipping time and that they had made sure to include those extra days due to shipping. < sigh >

I’m not giving up on this one. It’s something that was unclear and should be able to be easily resolved.

KK

Update: 1-25-07

I was finally able to find a Dell rep who understood my plight and is allowing me to return the monitor. It wasn’t easy convincing him that I was not asking for anything special or for something free. I just wanted to get what I paid for and the A03 didn’t have what they had advertised on their site. After a long tirade and talking over him when he tried to interrupt me, he went and got permission to make a special exception. This shouldn’t have been so hard. This is an expensive item that I have purchased and semantics should not keep me from being able to return a product.

So I packed it up and it is on its way! Whoops. Forgot to add the VGA cable in the box. I called UPS and they told me they’d hold it till 6pm tonight so I can rush over there and drop the cable in the box. Maybe I can just stuff it in the pick up hole in the side of the box. That’d save me some tape and some time!

Back to playing with my 19 inches… Rawr!

Yar Pirates!

We have had an influx of new players to our Lightninghoof guild and I wanted to take this time to welcome them. We are regularly having around 14 people on a night which is great. The more the merrier. Because many of you are new, I thought it’d be a good idea to go over some of our guild rules.

1) No cross-gender male characters. If you are female you can play a male or female character. We’re cool with that. If you are male, you can only play a male character. No one wants to see a large bulge in your tight Blood Elf lady’s pants. This is just a precautionary measure put in place so there will be no awkward experiences when talking to someone for the first time on Teamspeak. Why the double standard for women? Because I think we can all agree that lesbianism is HOT! And please ladies, if you do take it to Teamspeak shoot me an email first.

2) Do not ask for free stuff. Every time you ask for something from another guildmate, you will be fined 3 pretzels. As you can see, we take this rule very seriously. And don’t think we’ll only go for your regular pretzels. We want those damn chocolate covered ones! I guess you can ask for help now and then, but if you continually ask for items/dungeon runs/happy endings from every member 7 days a week, you will find yourself guildless! That is until you get invited to < donkey Nutz >. I hear they are a very mature roleplaying guild.

3) Initiation is required for all players. Since we are on a roleplaying server, this part of the guild is a very serious matter. There are many things that may be asked of you during a guild initiation process so be prepared. Every initiation is governed by Hresh and Erissa so make sure you don’t piss them off. They are quite inventive. One sure way to get on their good side is to use L337 speak in every situation possible. This should keep the beatings to a minimum. One of my favorite hazing experiences is when Hresh made a new level 50 Warlock member delete his character and reroll a Troll priest because the guild needed one. I was really impressed when he did. Too bad we had to let him go the next day because he just wasn’t working out.

4) Guild Donation (aka noob tax) is a requirement for all new members. Every new player must buy an established member an epic mount. Excuses like “I’m only level 5! I don’t have the cash” are not acceptable. The horde have Blood Elf females and the /dance command. Get busy!

5) Attendance is required for all Guild nights. I don’t care if your pet hippopotamus is dying of a rare venereal disease that causes it’s horn to turn black and rot away. We need you to be online in case one of our main members gets disconnected while in an instance and we don’t have another main member to replace them. If we can’t find a random person outside the guild to fill that spot, you may be reluctantly called to step up. The only excusable reason to miss a guild night is because of “an act of God”, like dying.

6) Sign up to the foampirates mailing list. This will ensure that you are up to date on the latest guild related news, pictures of some member’s kid and other spamming from our members. It is suggested that you use Gmail for this because the mass influx of spam, er important messages from our members will be handled better by Gmail. If you’d like an account, just request one via the comment section of this post. Those who send nude pictures of Natalie Portman will be placed at the top of the list for invitations.

I hope this has cleared up exactly what we Pirates are about. I hope our existing members will post any rule that I may have over looked in this post. Welcome to all the new Pirates!

KK

Ever wonder what the old Raid bosses are up to now Burning Crusade has been released? Thanks to Roode for this awesome link.

“What about old content Bosses?”

KK

A few months back LP sent me the link to this video. Rangers/Hunters are HAWT! I’m still working on perfecting this move for Willowmane.

KK

Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday dear KK.

Happy Birthday to you.

(You look like a monkey,
and you live in a zoo!)

Time to give some Props.

In my previous post I mentioned that my sexual advances were turned down by the EB Manager. I really wanted that Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition even if I had to lose my “virginity” per say! After I resigned myself to being a regular joe, I decided to live as if there was no such thing as a Collector’s Edition. Just like the Yeti, Bigfoot, Loch Ness and Duke Nukem Forever; it was a urban legend.

Last night I get a call from one of our guild members (Pherez) telling me he was in Best Buy and there was a Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition at the store. He asked if I wanted one too… My god! There IS a Santa Clause! I said “YES!!!!!!11!1!!!1!!” and he said he’d pick it up for me. I then sulked over to my wife and told her that I was about to buy a copy of the Collector’s Edition. I can only imagine what went through her mind. It probably sounded something like this: “WHY! You said you were OK WITH THE REGULAR ONE! You said it didn’t exist!” or “You’ve already installed/used the key of your regular version. Why do you need the Collector’s Edition now?” She had a point, but it was a Collector’s Edition! They don’t make that many and I would be one of the few, the proud, the one with a sweet drake! I could show everyone that I did what it took to get a CE while they futilely searched for one! HAHAHA!

So now I have the Burning Crusade CE and I am trying to figure out what to do with the key code for the game. Sell it? (Someone could get the drake swag.) Give it away? Or do I upgrade my regular edition to the Collector’s Edition? (Which would basically only give me access to a new pet.)

Thank you Pherez. I am a very happy camper. I’d say it doesn’t take much to make me happy, but it’s looking cloudy outside and I don’t want to risk it. To all you who wanted and are looking for a BC CE, I have this to say: NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH!

KK