The Downward Spiral

I tried stuff like this to get the battle net mobile authenticator for blackberry.  I looked up user agent strings for BB 8830 and tried to download this:

http://wap.bizmobil.com/content/games/XXX/blizzard_mobile_auth_US_BattleNetAuthenticator_Blackberry_1_0_0.jad

and when that didn’t work I tried the 9000 Bold…

http://wap.bizmobil.com/content/games/XXX/blizzard_mobile_auth_US_BattleNetAuthenticator_Blackberry_8900_9000_1_0_0.jad

Ya.. I tried twice.  Undoubtedly I paid $2.00 for no reason… but I couldn’t ever get it to work no matter which user agent strings I used.  So instead I found a Blizzard Mobile Authenticator US jar file. This isn’t exactly optimal since this isn’t written for blackberry, so not everything will work… it’d be nice if I could find a copy of the jad I mentioned above.. that would work much better

Anyway, then I just emailed that to myself on my Tour, opened it, and it installed.  I ran it and it gave me a code to input on the website.  Again, the buttons didn’t work, so I had to exit and come back in.  Then it gave me the second code to enter on the website, and it worked!

The icon isn’t right.. you can’t go to Menu inside the app.. you CAN resync with # (Alt-Q).. but it works.  You open it and it gives you the authenticator code to login.  Works in WOW and on the website.  Woot.

If  someone out there reading this wants to send me the blizzard_mobile_auth_US_BattleNetAuthenticator_Blackberry_1_0_0.jad file, that would be rad of you.

after 1 billion casts I still don’t have old crafty.. maybe I should nuke the water.. that’ll help

already told ATT to go fuck themselves this week… DSL light out as
just about always happens when it rains (I know I’ve talked about that
before on here), but it seems that they do “something” but never tell me
what it is to fix it… or it just resolves itself

this last time
I just told the tech support lady I don’t want to “diagnose” anything,
it’s always something on their end, just send out a tech.. she said that
there will DEFINITELY be a charge if they just send someone out, even
it’s something on their end!!

I was like.. ok.. what do you want
me to do?  She said be at the store and go through the steps.. I said ok
let’s pretend I’m there, now what?  She asked me for the serial on the
router.. I had that.. gave her that.. then she asked me what the lights
were doing.. I had been there a half hour before, so I told her that too

she
said sounds like a broken modem!  I laughed and said NO WAY.. it’s not a
broken modem.. it’s something on your side, probably right behind our
location… “you guys always come and do SOMETHING, and it fixes it
right away.. you never come inside.. and you never tell me what you
did!”

then .. oh this is GOOD….

she told me to put a
DSL filter in between the DSL “modem” and the single jack run only for
DSL on the back wall of the store… nothing else connects to it I told
her.. additionally that that was insane!! .. a DSL filter ON a DSL line
will certainly KILL the DSL, if it already weren’t working.  She
diagreed… said that I HAD to do that… I said that’s crazy, I’m not
doing that, send out a tech… yes I accept the charges and we’ll fight
it with billing.

She told me the earliest tech could come the next evening..
that’s when I dropped the f bombs

I said screw it.. don’t send a
tech

guess what?  came back up by itself over night.

we
are replacing them with Time Warner soon

Now another thing with sprint!

I have a U300 3g/4g card..
3g works fine (connects and routes with my static IP, stays up all
night, all that), 4g connects but doesn’t route and doesn’t give me my
static IP.. so I emailed customer care.. they told me that they had to
“swap out the card”, what’s the ESN?

I gave them the ESN on the
bottom which is in HEX..

and I get

I do apologize for any inconveniences you may
have experienced. I’m
not able to swap the phone out with the ESN number that was
provided. I
would actually need the DEC ESN number, the long number. I’m not able

to replace the equipment in my system. This would need to be
done
through our telesales department at 866-805-9934.

I told them that wasn’t listed, but converted the hex to decimal
for them.. in you know.. windows fucking calc

I also ask.. uh.. you can’t replace it?  I thought you said you
were swapping it?

then I get

I do apologize for any
misunderstandings that I have put out there in
the previous email. I would be happy to swap out the device, but didn’t
know that the device was already on the account because I did not have
the information I needed as far as the ESN on the device. Now that I
have the ESN number and found out that the ESN was already active on the
account, if you have problems this would have to go to our technical
support department at 800-211-4727.

wow.. just.. wow

• bundled software with the JRE
• the westboro baptist church
• windows updates that didn’t run at 3am like they should have
• PPPoE DSL connections that won’t stay connected
• Comcast not having a 4 tuner DVR
• bugs
• arthritis
• did I mention the westboro baptist church?

the “playstation network” is “down” for users of the older PS3′s

this isn’t exactly true… the PSN is UP, it’s just that older Ps3′s can’t connect to it.  The date was reset to 12/31/99, which is outside the settable times.  Any game that stores trophies online won’t load, saying quit and reload to try and connect.

I think Ps3s that were turned on yesterday connected and then disconnected and then some flag was thrown south and now we can’t reconnect.  With the trophies thing, I can’t believe they wouldn’t know that PS3s wouldn’t be connected all the time, and so I’d think they’d cache the trophies locally… I think they had to… so that leads me to believe “something happened” upon connecting to kill the trophy cache, and now we can’t reconnect.  So, two problems.

Either that or there is another timer inside the PS3 besides the clock.. my “black box sense” is telling me it’s one of those two things.

Anyway, there’s been a lot of speculation about trophies… we HAVE NOT lost them… even though they aren’t listed on your PS3.  If anyone is worried, login to the PSN website and you’ll see that they are still there.  No big deal.

In a word: Punishing.

You die?  You start over.  You do a level, no, a part of a level, 100 times and you like it.  There is no starting over where you die.  You start at the beginning, every time.

Everything is based on souls.  They are your currency and your leveling up.  You buy equipment with souls, but you don’t sell the equipment, you kill more.  If you die, you lose all your souls.  Had 3000 souls?  Well you just got one shotted and now you are dead and have none.

Also, you spend most of the game in soul form.  That means you have half your life, most of the time.  You only get your body back when you kill a level boss, which always look impossible.

But, it’s not all this bad.  First, after you kill the first boss anyway, you can sink your souls in to levels.  So you can do part of a level that you know how to do, over and over, and accumulate souls.  Then you can run back to the beginning of the level and power up.  Now you can get the same souls, but easier, and press further in.  All the guys come back and attack in exactly the same way.  So you end up memorizing levels as you do them, over and over.

Did I say after you kill the first boss you get to level up?  Ya… so… you just kinda have to accept that your starting character is how you are going to play the first 2-3 hours of the game.  If you are having a hell of a time, you suck at that kind of character… or… maybe there is a better choice of starting character.  For instance, if you want to be a mage type character, the magician sounds like a reasonable choice right?  Well, no, actually you want the Royal.  The magician can’t regen mana yet.  That means to beat the first stage, you have to carry probably 20 mana restoring things.  Well, those cost 350 souls, which take about 20 minutes to collect… so.. ugh.. that blows.  I restarted as a Royal and it was way way easier… easier meaning perhaps possible.

So then about the character class.  It really only affects before you defeat the first demon.  It’s your starting equipment and stats.  After that, you can spend souls however you want and get any of the starting equipment pretty easily in the first stages of the next worlds.

And back to dying.  Yes, you die and lose all your souls.  But if you can fight back to where you died you can get them all back.  If you die before you get there, then those souls are lost and your new current soul count is what you have. So getting “scared out of pushing forward” is a common thing.

The game is multiplayer, but in the sense that you see wispy apparitions running around doing about the same thing you are doing (only 1 at a time, it’s definitely not annoying) so you can kinda watch them and see where they go and how they move around the level.  You can also leave stock notes to each other.  Like “watch out ahead!” and stuff like that.  You can also team up and PVP in to other worlds and kill, but I haven’t done those yet.

Even though it’s really tough, I really dig it.  It’s a real challenge.  I feel bad that I restarted as a Royal… seems a little like giving up, but it’s really fun now.  I had been reading online a little, but I gotta stop that… the exploration and the dying over and over is all part of the fun

so I got Tattooine and Jedi Academy dlc’s for Force Unleashed together for about $20.. I played through both of them in about as much time as it took to install them.  They were fun and interesting, but there really just needs to be a part 2.  Which there is… coming out this year!

What’s a jip is that the force unleashed ultimate sith edition has both the Tattooine and Jedi Academy campains AND another campain that takes place on Hoth in the parallel universe where Starkiller kills Darth Vader and basically does all his stuff… so I’m kinda out the $20 and not gonna spend another $30 or $40 just for a 1 hr expansion level to kill Luke… I probably just need to find a youtube video

also, before all this, I got up to the Emperor and was getting in to the swing of how to kill him.. so then he knocks me off the platform outside the blue force field, then I die finally and I start fighting Vader.. gah… so I killed Vader just because, again, and then it start me back in the tie fighter factory… so I didn’t get to beat him again

oh well… anway.. I think I’m totally done with the game now and will move on to something else… it’s still a blast.. one of the best I’ve played.. it’s a big deal to replay a game and still have fun… I think that’s the only game I have that I really want to replay.

I went through on the game Sith Lord difficulty since it had trophies now.. this time dark side… the gear you get is pretty cool looking.. even though the dark side ending leaves you feeling “man, I really should have gone the other way” … and official cannon says Starkiller did go light side … so I’ll probably beat it, again, the light side way and get the trophies with my dark side costume… anyway.. that felt fast.. it was like 10 days playing some nights and mornings.

there are some expansions for it… I might have to get those…

Matt and Kat had their baby girl today… Gillian Ann Mossie.. 8 pounds somethin and black hair.