Useless Conversation

[Ironwood]

Why do you do this, Sky ?

[lamaros]

Today has been a shit day.

[Morat20]

Comcast is legendary for the shit it pulled. It's only been tolerable SINCE u-verse, because suddenly people were switching away from them and they couldn't make their equipment out of cast-offs from high-school eletricial projects, chewing gum, and tinfoil.

Well I'm guessing by what you said earlier, you live in the middle of nowhere? Mostly rural or a subdivision far off the grid?

If that's the case, you're fucked. No provider is going to what to waste time, resources, and visits to low pop areas. That means you'll have to be doubly loud to get anything done.

Actually, no. Live in a city of about 30,000. I'm just at the back end of a neighborhood in the older part of town. I've been consistently about 1000 feet out of uverse's range, but I've had DSL here for like a decade+.

I've resigned myself to waiting until they've extended their range, because they're not going to hook up a booster to service three streets at the corner of a neighborhood.

[Paelos]

Contact your Public Services Commission for your state. Describe your issue and tell them your problem in order to file a complaint. Then call the company with your complaint number and whatnot. You should see better results.

[Bunk]

So, about a month ago me and friend had an urge to play some Minecraft, and the f13 server hadn't been updated. Did some digging online, and found a cheap hosting company. Setup a hosted account for $7 a month. Nice service, good tools, seemed great.

Paid for it with PayPal when I signed up, and didn't think about the fact that PayPal won't run recurring monthly payments. I missed the invoice in my email, and didn't realize until they cut the server off over the weekend. Went back and checked, they sent me a notification April 11th that I'd missed payment. So I went in this morning, updated the payment, and restarted the world. The empty world. Checked the backups (I'd made about six) - empty as well. So I opened a ticket. This was the response:

Jonathan Martin
Staff 16th April 2012 (18:35)

Hi,

It seems your service was actually terminated, but due to a connection issue to our MySQL database it was not updated on the billing system to reflect this. Unfortunately during the termination process your files are deleted from the node and backup systems, meaning we have no way to restore your files.

I can either refund your payment made today and cancel your service, or you will have to start a fresh.

Regards,

Jonathan Martin
Chief Operating Officer
jonathan@mpserv.net

Guess that's what I get for using a hosting service that was obviously being run from some dude's basement. Never occured to me that someone would setup a hosting service to delete the entirety of a customer's account two weeks after missing a payment. I went with online hosting entirely for the sake of data security and easy backups... I'll give him the day to respond to my rant before I start posting warnings about this on the Minecraft forums.

[Yegolev]

Why do you do this, Sky ?

I suspect being employed at a library is a less intense sort of job than mine, and hours must be filled with a hobby.  Although I have a lot of other things I'd do before I started hoarding wood, if I had the time.

[Mrbloodworth]

So, about a month ago me and friend had an urge to play some Minecraft, and the f13 server hadn't been updated. Did some digging online, and found a cheap hosting company. Setup a hosted account for $7 a month. Nice service, good tools, seemed great.

Paid for it with PayPal when I signed up, and didn't think about the fact that PayPal won't run recurring monthly payments. I missed the invoice in my email, and didn't realize until they cut the server off over the weekend. Went back and checked, they sent me a notification April 11th that I'd missed payment. So I went in this morning, updated the payment, and restarted the world. The empty world. Checked the backups (I'd made about six) - empty as well. So I opened a ticket. This was the response:

Jonathan Martin
Staff 16th April 2012 (18:35)

Hi,

It seems your service was actually terminated, but due to a connection issue to our MySQL database it was not updated on the billing system to reflect this. Unfortunately during the termination process your files are deleted from the node and backup systems, meaning we have no way to restore your files.

I can either refund your payment made today and cancel your service, or you will have to start a fresh.

Regards,

Jonathan Martin
Chief Operating Officer
jonathan@mpserv.net

Guess that's what I get for using a hosting service that was obviously being run from some dude's basement. Never occured to me that someone would setup a hosting service to delete the entirety of a customer's account two weeks after missing a payment. I went with online hosting entirely for the sake of data security and easy backups... I'll give him the day to respond to my rant before I start posting warnings about this on the Minecraft forums.

You could just play on my server, I have lots of open slots for non douchebags. But yeah, that's a shitty experience.

[Ironwood]

Why do you do this, Sky ?

I suspect being employed at a library is a less intense sort of job than mine, and hours must be filled with a hobby.  Although I have a lot of other things I'd do before I started hoarding wood, if I had the time.

I get that.  My question is more geared around heating and the choice thereof.  Anyone who knows me knows I like burning stuff, so I'm not asking why on that score.   

[Xanthippe]

You could just play on my server, I have lots of open slots for non douchebags. But yeah, that's a shitty experience.

Mr. Bloodworth has a very nice server.

Bunk, that sounds positively awful.

[Yegolev]

I get that.  My question is more geared around heating and the choice thereof.  Anyone who knows me knows I like burning stuff, so I'm not asking why on that score.   

I assumed it was about 80% due to wanting to be weird or too much free time, and 20% for cost-effective heating.  It would be a lot more convenient to use a liquid propane setup.  Now, I grew up with a wood heater, and those things can be fantastic, but there's the interminable chopping, hauling and stacking to go with it.  Plus awful things like to live inside woodpiles.  Makes me think of that terrible show on BBC where a shithead couple decided to start farming in their urban backyard.

My wife has "banned" me from burning things since I "recycled" a bunch of stuff in the yard.  Including a worn-out water hose.  I quoted the words which are not real.

[Bunk]

You could just play on my server, I have lots of open slots for non douchebags. But yeah, that's a shitty experience.

Mr. Bloodworth has a very nice server.

Bunk, that sounds positively awful.

Yea. His eventual reply to the rant I made in the help ticket was very polite, but basically said "You should have read the Terms", which I found quite funny considering my years of Customer Service work.

The one thing that really irks me (other than my friend losing 30+ hours of effort) was that that was the only world I'd ever gotten a skeleton to kill a creeper on, and I never even got a chance to try the disc out.

[Sky]

My question is more geared around heating and the choice thereof.  Anyone who knows me knows I like burning stuff, so I'm not asking why on that score.  

I thought you were just making a funny on the latter point. What is your why about heating choices?

Wood heat is cheap, gets me out in the backyard for some fun afternoons a couple times a year. But it also saves me a bundle of money and provides superior comfort. With natural gas, forced-air furnace heat, even setting it at 70F doesn't take off the chill as I live in a 1930 drafty house. But that's perfect for wood heat, enough fresh air coming in to keep it from getting roasting hot.

With my current old early 80s stove, I'm saving about $500-600 bucks per winter. Because it's a pretty inefficient stove, I don't like doing long slow burns in it; so few overnights (generally when it's teens to below 0F) and no burns while I'm at work. And as I mentioned, the gas furnace is expensive but doesn't make the house warm, just knocks the chill down. When I upgrade to a modern stove (about $3500 installed), I'll be able to step up to 24/7 burn and save at least double what I'm already saving.

(edit) Re: woodpile critters - there's a gang (herd? murder?) of wild cats in the woods, they generally take care of things too big for the birds. My pile is a single row, so it's not deep enough for the worst critters. I did get a pretty big centipede this year. The spiders don't bug me (though I hate jumpers) and I saw a new variety in the tarp pile, a light grey one who had a cool side/back movement; pretty thick hunting type about an inch long. I'm mostly wary of ticks this year, they're supposed to get bad.

[ghost]

Snakes?   

[Merusk]

A group of wild cats is a destruction.    source

I prefer to call them a pride, like lions, because if there's any animal it applies to it's a cat.

[Ironwood]

ta.

[Lantyssa]

A group of tas?

[Jherad]

Ta-tas.

[Sky]

Snakes?   

Not really any around here. Growing up we'd get a lot of garter snakes...I usually found them with the lawn mower. Totally harmless, used to like playing with em. Their only attack is defecation, so you'd have to scare em good to empty them out first. Not that I ever told my city friends that 

[ghost]

We used to get a lot of copperheads where I grew up.  It could be a real issue with a woodpile.  There were some rattlesnakes, but they were much rarer. 

[pxib]

Growing up we'd get a lot of garter snakes...

I remember hiking with some friends in the early morning and spotting a garter snake in some low brush. It was too cold to run away so it basically pulled back into a threat posture rather than slithering off. I thought it'd be a great chance for folks to see one up close so I pointed at it and made an effort to call my companions over, "Hey, look at this!"

The snake decided my extended finger was an excellent target, sprung from the defensive crouch, and bit. I pulled my arm back instinctively and, with the snake's jaws locked, took the whole animal right with it. When it released my finger (either by choice or by the harsh mathematics of centrifugal force), its body was still completely extended... so it went pinwheeling through the air end over end and landed in a nearby thicket.

"WHAT WAS THAT?!" someone said.

"A garter snake."

"FLYING?!"

[Bzalthek]

That's a cute story and all but no matter how you dress it up you aren't going to obfuscate the important piece of information that everyone should be taking away from your post:

Under certain circumstances snakes can fly.

Nature can always be improved upon.  Usually this involves fire.

[IainC]

Nature can always be improved upon.  Usually this involves fire, pepper, salt and butter.

There you go.

[Murgos]

Nature can always be improved upon.  Usually this involves fire, pepper, salt and butter.

There you go.

I really think  you still need the fire...  Raw buttered garter snake doesn't sound so appealing.

[RhyssaFireheart]

But does it taste like chicken?

[Bunk]

Repeat picture from another thread, but hey.

This guy's defense when I nearly stepped on him, was the "hold perfectly still and pretend to be grass for five minutes" defense. Didn't budge, even when I had the camera two feet away. Finally had to just poke him to get him to slither off (it was right on the only trail I had to climb up from a river bank, so I didn't want to step in the area til he moved.)

[Lantyssa]

Pretty.  One nice thing growing up around here was a ton of different snakes.  Cone-nosed were the most common, but I've seen just about everything at one time or another.

[Furiously]

There is a great trouser snake joke in there somewhere but I'm not thinking of it.

[Merusk]

So I just read a pro-"thinspiration" article and had to facepalm at one comment in particular.  I thought I'd share so everyone could laugh.

And then Instagram was busted, too. Alexa Chung, the 28-year-old TV personality and would-be It Girl, posted a snapshot of herself looking spindly to Instagram this week. Commenters expressed revulsion at the knobbiness of her knees.

Internet memes:  Not everyone understands them.

[Lantyssa]

Sinus headaches suck.

[HaemishM]

So I just read a pro-"thinspiration" article and had to facepalm at one comment in particular.  I thought I'd share so everyone could laugh.

And then Instagram was busted, too. Alexa Chung, the 28-year-old TV personality and would-be It Girl, posted a snapshot of herself looking spindly to Instagram this week. Commenters expressed revulsion at the knobbiness of her knees.

Internet memes:  Not everyone understands them.

Win.

[Johny Cee]

Bleh.  Have a film crew from Food Network in, so the entire office has to be very, very quiet.  Of course my office shares a wall with our test kitchen, so I need to be extra quiet.

[bhodi]

Bleh.  Have a film crew from Food Network in, so the entire office has to be very, very quiet.  Of course my office shares a wall with our test kitchen, so I need to be extra quiet.

Our? Wait, what? I thought you were a CPA. Which Show?

[Viin]

Someone has to count the beans.

[MuffinMan]

[Johny Cee]

Bleh.  Have a film crew from Food Network in, so the entire office has to be very, very quiet.  Of course my office shares a wall with our test kitchen, so I need to be extra quiet.

Our? Wait, what? I thought you were a CPA. Which Show?

Left public to be comptroller at a corporation that does internet retailing of specialty baking and decorating products.  Pay hit, but hours are lovely and it's been fairly interesting. 

The owner is going to be a judge on Cupcake Wars.