Not that I do, or condone, or support, advocate, etc. piracy of computer software — but let’s just speak in the hypothetical.

Let’s say I was downloading an ISO (Disc Image…for disc copying) of a game I have whose disc is scratched so the game won’t play. I downloaded it, burned the ISO in my DVD-R, and it turns out it’s fucking ENCARTA 2006!!!! What the hell is ANYONE going to need this for when you have the internet??? And furthermore why was Encarta 2006 masquerading as Civilization IV (the game I was TRYING to download)? So I downloaded a different ISO, it was an archive. When the download finished, 2 GB later, I opened it and it was some OTHER game!?!? Double-U Tee Eff!

Again, I’m not advocating game piracy, but why would someone go through all the trouble to make their ISO look like it’s the ISO of something else?? You can’t tell me it’s ignorance because there’s no way you could confuse Civilization IV with Encarta 2006. They don’t *gain* anything by doing it. It’s just shear malice.

Ergh… people piss me off. Especially immature teenagers who are probably coming up with new ways to perpetrate frustrations on me.

Jay & Silent Bob had it right…. earn a lot of money, and get the name and addresses of every one of those little punks and fly around the US and rabbit-punch every one of them in the face.

I mean, for fuck’s sake! If you’re going to go through all the trouble of faking an ISO, at *LEAST* do what we may or may not have done back in the day and put trojan horse virii into em! That way you can have fun! (not that we ever did that…)

Fucky!

Tags: ass-hats, piracy, SIWOTI
Categories: Geekery, Rants
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I used to know this girl named Amanda. We met when I worked at Hot Topic. We hung out a few times and talked on the phone a lot. She was really cool. Shortly after we met I moved up to Richmond from Dayton. I never thought I would see her again, because we stopped talking both because I was dating a girl (and there was some tension between Amanda and I) and shortly after that Amanda started dating this one guy and ended up moving to Colorado.

I tried keeping in touch with her over the years, but it was hard because the only info I had was an outdated email and her home phone. Everytime I called her home phone (which wasn’t that often….maybe once every 8 - 12 months) she was in a different state.

Flash-forward to 2004, 3 years ahead from when we met. My friend got me onto Friendster (the internet equivalent of the kid that myspace used to pick on in junior high) and I found a bunch of my old friends I hadn’t heard from in a while, including Amanda. I shot her a message, we traded emails/phone numbers and I talked to her again. It was pretty cool catching up, she was in Cincy now, and we had many conversations on the phone.

After a few weeks / month or two of talking, she was able to make it up here to Richmond. We had lunch, went a few other places, and just chatted. It was good times. Nice to catch up. There was still a little bit of tension there, but not too much. She introduced me to some artists I hadn’t heard of, but absolutely adore now (eg. Rainer Maria, Mates of State, and some others). She came up here one other time to go to a Blues show here in town at 4th Floor. I had bought two tickets and the person who was *supposed* to go with me ended up punking out, so Amanda was cool enough to drive all the way up here from Cincy to do this show with me — she even got caught up in all the I-70 traffic over by the border for about an hour. What a trooper.

The show was good, she had to leave around 11ish to go back home, and I think we may have talked on the phone once or twice more after that, but I seem to remember playing a lot of phone tag. Then for no obvious reason, I stopped hearing from her altogether. She wouldn’t return my calls, myspace messages, text’s, etc. No “Sorry I’m too busy” or “We can’t talk, it’s complicated” — I would have even been ok with “I’m sorry, I can’t be your friend anymore” if that was indeed the case. I hate feeling like a stalker, and I don’t think that I am doing anything stalker like, but I just wish I knew why :/

But nothing. No farewell, no “fuck off”, nothing. Just silence. Emptiness. Lack of closure sucks. I guess in some weird fucked up way I’m trying to get closure by publicly writing, in front of potentially millions of people (although more realistically, somewhere between 20 and 50), my feelings on the subject.

Yet again, she disappears from my life without a proper goodbye. Maybe we’ll meet up again someday and laugh about this over chai latte’s with soy milk, maybe I’ll never hear from her again, who knows. The ever elusive Mandarin Panda.

Categories: Friends, Family & Pets, Rants
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