hello pimpy.

We have A PIMP in our store.

happy Halloween.

not Enough Time To Do My Moon. Get Over It.

I don’t get my PayPerPost money (from the puzzle I put together) until Wednesday. It would make the difference I need in covering my bills.

Job searches are going horribly today.

All I can do… is pray.

So, I’m cruisin’ the ’sphere this morning, and pop in on my WP dashboard to check the news and latest PPP offers.

I spotted that once again, [tag]Mike Arrington[/tag] is going on and on (again) about that paid blogging craze known as [tag]PayPerPost[/tag]. It’s like he has a hateboner or something over it.

In his recent rant, he states:

Don’t look for PayPerPost to require blogger disclosure anytime soon. Instead, they are creating a distraction, designed to keep the buzz about PayPerPost going strong, as well as to move people’s attention away from the core issue of blogger disclosure of product shilling.

Yes, he’s right. Don’t look for it to be an absolute requirement. PayPerPost is just the intermediate between advertisers and bloggers, just like eBay is the intermediate between buyer and seller. Each can ask the parties involved to behave responsibly, and in the case of absolutely unfair actions on either party, throw the offending party out on their ass.

PayPerPost can ask us posties to offer a [tag]disclosure policy[/tag] of some sort.
eBay can ask sellers to not sell Hong Kong bootleg DVDs.

Let’s take a moment to look at the word that seems to pop out of his mouth all the time: shill.
As a noun, this word is defined as:

1. A person paid to endorse a product favourably, while pretending to be impartial.
2. An accomplice at a confidence trick during an auction or gambling game.

I’d suggest he finds a new word, or actually learn just what PayPerPost is, rather than just declaring in a single glob that posties are scum and shills.
Things that I have mentioned in my PayPerPost entries are things that I actually am interested in.
My family is enjoying [tag]Cellfire[/tag], which I can thank that advertiser for (again).
I’m enjoying [tag]Amie Street[/tag] immensely, and particularly am absorbed with Now On (which has that old-school, Jurassic 5-like feel).
I can actually push [tag]List’d Express[/tag] as an easy to use tool for selling things on eBay: I hate the several pages of crap they make you fill out, just to sell an item for a few bucks. It’s a verifiable headache. List’d shortcuts you through all of that.

Strangely, his whole rant reeks of a lack of research, once again, tinged with a hint of jealousy.
He sees that PayPerPost is moving in the right direction, in giving users the ability to generate a policy (though I wrote my own, and you can locate it in the sidebar as “I disclose”), and still has the need to say what he does.

Should’ve tried a different angle, like, “Oh, PayPerPost now offers a Disclosure Policy Generator, but it needs _____.”

Thanks for the free links, I guess, but [tag]TechCrunch[/tag], please, lay off that horse. It’s dead already.

May you block 8000 more in the future.

MMORPGs have given me a way to ruin my life, and I took it. It’s like marijuana, but it doesn’t show up in your bloodstream. Instead, it shows up in your money stream.

I’ve been clean for two weeks. I gave up Anarchy Online. I want to go back, immerse myself in the escapism it provides. It gave me interaction, and things to kill time with.

I need a job to replace it with.

If you’re in the Tampa area, and know someone who is looking for a part time assistant of some sort, be it data entry, or word processing or something… or if you’re in the know of someone looking for telecommuters, and the pay is a decent hourly wage… Please, let me know.
My local job searches aren’t turning up enough that I can do. I just need something I can do alongside my current job.

Also, if you or someone you know can help me file for bankruptcy, for the love of God, please, contact me. I need it more than some of these mega-corporations. I’m having 25% of my pay deducted, which makes me unbelievably short on my bills each month, and I can’t keep borrowing money from people. I want to pay these people back, and my current budget says it’s not possible unless I work three jobs, and don’t sleep, eat, or bathe.

The stress is really stretching me thin.

Fortunately, the guys at PayPerPost (where I get paid to blog) seem to realize this. Here’s a video of Veronique, also known as the Flaming Tamale, just letting it ALL out.

By the way, honey, Vitamin Water is good, but green tea rocks better. ;D
Though, I wouldn’t complain if PayPerPost were to hire me on as an employee to help out with stuff. I like to think that I specialize in helping customers out.

I just can’t move, though. I have this house to save.

Incidentally, this hoses my attempts at earning a free Wii, unless the guys behind that site have alternate plans.

Don’t bother buying from Sony ever again. Any division. Any company that just bullshits their way like that to close a site like Lik-Sang is truly not worth my cash.

And I thought they were evil back in the days, with the release of the PS2. This just cements my dislike of Sony.
Read it, Digg the article. Cancel your PS2 Preorders. Get an XBox360 or a Wii, or just upgrade your PC.

There are many reasons that I am leaving behind the one MMO that I actually can say I enjoyed for a while.
The major reason is budget constraints. I can’t keep forking over $36 every three months for a game that I’ve stopped playing that much. $36 is two tanks of gas for me.
The second reason is that I came to a realization, after reading another blog entry that Dan linked to. For some odd reason, I decided to go monetize the number of hours I spent in Rubi-Ka and the Shadowlands… and realized that if I had spent those play hours working another job…

At $9 an hour, I’d have $13,000 at my disposal, before taxes.
At $12, I’d have had $17,000 before taxes.

It’s strange that it takes the concept of monetizing time spent to get the idea that maybe I’m wasting my life doing something useless, instead on focusing on the important things. I need to focus more on getting a better job, or two of them, so that I can make sure it’s not ME who loses this house.
I need to earn the money to get insurance on the car I have — Haven’t been able to afford it just yet.
I need to earn enough to pay off the debts I owe, or have them all flushed down the toilet, whichever comes easier.
I need to earn enough, so I can go see a doctor, and finally have my health issues hacked, sorted, and patched with the latest bugfixes.
I need to have money, so I can go out, have social time with other people, and get out of the house more.

With the only MMO that I really gave a rat’s ass about out of the way, I have less incentive to sit down and waste my life playing a stupid game.

What bothered me is, I said I’d never get involved with an MMO, and largely, I was true to my word.
Ragnarok Online, I got bored with in a couple of months, even with private servers, GM abilities, and a Balmung to rape everything with.
Mu Online, I never really got into — I don’t think I ever leveled a character over 21.

World of Warcraft, I couldn’t stand, and it deserves a story to explain:
I was doing a lot of trash talking about WoW a long time ago, but I had never played it. I caught myself being a hypocrite, too, in telling someone that they can’t trash talk a game that they’ve never played. So, I stopped talking trash about WoW, and said, “Okay, I’m going to try that free trial of World of Warcraft. I won’t talk trash about your game until I am done with the trial.”

So, I downloaded 2.5 GB of Blizzard, unpacked and installed the monstrous game — 5 GB, installed, mind you — to give it a whirl. Then it wanted to patch. An hour later, we were good to go.
I started up the game, created a mutant cow thingy (she was cute, I’ll give you that), and tried the game.
I started to suffer from near-instant grinditis, but there was this odd, lingering effect that was happening at the same time. It was the Train Wreck effect. The game was horrible!, but there was that nagging, “Don’t stop now. See if it gets better with a few levels?” effect dragging its way through my brain.
I found myself burning about 25 hours into the trial, with that mutant cow girl thingy, and with a human, before I snapped, and uninstalled the game in disgust. I went back to AO, and said, “How the hell do people play that shit?” while doing stuff that was quite similar to what happens in WoW, but didn’t really mind it so much there.

Maybe it’s just the community that some of us get absorbed in. We make online friends here and there, but never really get to know each other outside of the game environs that well, either by instant messenger, by phone, by actual snail mail, or, God forbid, in person. Yet, many of us are willing to ignore our significant others, our families, our friends, just to sit down and collect three dimensional objects that “give us bonuses”.

I admit, I let myself get sucked into AO. I started enjoying it when people were willing to talk to me, and give me advice on how to become a better Martial Artist in game. I learned to raise Brawl, Martial Arts, Bio Met and Sensory Improvement, so I could hit harder, heal more, and generally dance on the shoulders of the gods themselves in the game. I was good at taking damage, despite my breed (Nanomage are suited for support roles, not direct action roles), and I was just as good at delivering damage. I actually topped out at nearly 11,000 Damage Per Minute, fully buffed, with a trader running an Umbral Wrangle for level 100+ characters.
I had First Tier Martial Artist Armor on, by level 100 on her.
I started joining regular teams and Kite teams, to get some heckler exp under her belt, since everyone was flying past her to level 200 and above, leaving fewer and fewer in teaming range to play with.

I had a Keeper, and had a Frosty on her before she hit level 30.
I had a Styg on her by 39, and it was only over-equipped until she hit 40.
I kept her under level 60, because I was going to burn creds to twink her out, so she could go kill Aztur the Immortal with very little outside help (She was able to solo Guardian of Tomorrow, a BIG HORKING ROBOT THING, with an Essence of Behemoth, and the best First Aid kits she could use, combined with her dual Heal Over Times).

I realized that this was all stupid, because I was proud of the wrong things.

I have friends who make more in two weeks than I make in two months.

I have something I cannot let go of. This house is almost all I have left of my mother, who gave her blood, her sweat, and her tears, and ultimately, her life, to make sure my aunt and I have somewhere decent to live. I don’t want to be the one who is responsible for this house going by the wayside.

I have my morals, and my standards, though. This is why I haven’t bombarded you all with PayPerPost entries that don’t fit here. This is why I’m heading out to drop off my resume with a couple of staffing services, so that hopefully, I can do some work that fits on my days off, and my mornings off from my day job.

I will succeed, and this is not an option.

MMORPGs be damned. I’ll stick to something I can pick up, spend a little time on, and then easily put it down without feeling left behind.

Amie Street is a relatively new service that has its own independent artist offerings, and a rather unique way to compensate the artists.
All the music on Amie Street starts off as free. As users download, and recommend it to others, it slowly grows a price tag, according to its popularity. The concept is quite grand, to be honest — no need to cough up 99 cents for 58 seconds of silence, like I saw on iTunes a long time ago. Just snag it for a low cost, and support the artists who’re just trying to share their music and spread their works.

Amie Street has a leg up on Magnatune right now: [tag]DRM-Free[/tag], AND the ability to pay for singles. Sometimes, you just want that ONE song on an album, and not the rest of them.
One of the songs I snagged while looking through [tag]Amie Street[/tag] today is named A Useless Living, by Fadeliss. I enjoyed it quite a fair bit, too. I enjoyed the noisy beats at the beginning, and the steady rhythm it put forth.

If there were one thing that I’d like to see out of Amie Street, it’d be consistent tagging requirements on the music, rather than some of the songs having tags, others having mismatched tags, and others having no tagging at all.

Have a look around Amie Street — you might enjoy it as much as I did.

Update: You might even go back and spend a little money to try out some of the other artists — that’s what I did earlier today, and some of you have also received emails about this.