All Around Update

[imood mood at time of entry: annoyed]

Warning: Long entry ahead.

It’s funny how much music can remind you of the simplest of memories, including the way you felt while viewing your favorite movies.

I’ve been listening to the classical music station for the better part of the last 20 minutes or so, and I’ve heard music that resembled that of both the “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” soundtracks. The HP music was from the third movie, and the LOTR parts very close to the music of Moria. Or, at least what could have been used as something for Moria. It also made me think of Gandalf quite a bit.

The third reminder I had was not from a movie soundtrack, but of the music I once imagined would be playing from the description I once read in “Night” by Elie Wiesel. There is a section in the English version (the shortest version of the book, might I add!) where Mr. Wiesel talks about a violinist playing while they were all essentially dying. It’s been years since I last read the book, so I can’t get the text just right, but as soon as I heard that piece of the Opus, I knew that was what I heard in my head back when I read the book in my Freshman year.

I just found that to be interesting what one can be reminded of while listening to a long piece of music. But then again, I honestly don’t believe that I should be surprised. There are only so many notes to play, and music has been played for thousands of years. Eventually, some of those same notes are going to get together and resemble music I’ve heard elsewhere.

At least that is what I try to tell myself when I hear “Star Wars” or Heaven knows what else in the music of other soundtracks/on the classical channel.

I hope that everyone is doing well. I am okay, but I had a somewhat rough last week. I don’t want to go into, but I’d certainly like to avoid having to live it again.

I did have a couple of nasty things happen to me that I do need a rant about. First, I do know that AOL is evil, what with their outsourcing to India, but there’s supposed to be some new deal about them charging to send emails or whatever. I might need to re-read a couple of the notices I have in my Inbox, but only had time to scan it. All I can say is that I am going to be pissed to high hell if they start charging me anything more than what I may per month or give out my email address to spammers. Although I don’t use my AOL account very much these days (I haven’t used it on a continuous basis in months, actually.), I still don’t want to occasionally open my Inbox to a load of Junk Mail.

The second thing that I want to have a rant about is Neopets. It’s this virtual pet site, that’s quite a bit more than the average. There are tons of fun games and items and guilds and stuff. Heaven knows that I love stuff! You know, packrat that I am.

Anyway, I was on the Avatar and NeoSignature Board talking about ways to get new avatars. I mentioned two sites that have helpful guides to the person I was talking to. While, not too long after this conversation, I’d say maybe an hours or so, I received an Official Warning from the site staff and a threat to freeze my account permanently. My only guess is that some snot-nosed bastard decided to report me for “linking to an outside site.”

First of all, every-damn-body who helps out on that board all tell the other users about mindlessinvalid. And the second site that I mentioned (nuttyaboutneopets) was also picked up from the boards. People direct users to these sites all the time, so why was I slammed for doing so? Maybe I’m just unlucky, or maybe Neopets staff is composed of a bunch of site admins that pick and choose which outside links they want to pay attention to.

If they want to crackdown on anyone, they need to crackdown on the sites that make user profiles and shop backgrounds. They put links to their sites all over their graphics, but no one’s sending those users threatening messages for having “outside links” on their account. At least not enough to stop site users from making use of the pre-made backgrounds.

I have been trying to think of the best way to voice my opinion on this matter to the site staff without getting my account frozen. I don’t see how I can do this, since every single message posted is censored. Well, censored for certain things, i.e. saying anything negative about the site staff or calling your favorite avatar “pimp.” But everything else is considered a-okay, until someone takes the time to report shops (galleries, message board posts, user look ups, etc.) for having things like “Buy something or I’m going to kill you.” as their shop’s welcome message.

*sighs* I really fucking hate that site sometimes. Continually threatening to freeze people’s accounts is not the way to invoke a happier place to play on the Internet. People put hours of their lives into their accounts, and to have that wiped away in an instant is maddening. This same treatment is a big part of why I left my arena job. I don’t respond well to being constantly threatened with being cut off. It’s all so fucking ridiculous and irritating that I can’t stand the very thought of the site at times.

Another thing that royally pissed me off was the way I left my guild last week. I loved that damn guild, and I ended up leaving it because the Guild Leader, Michele, apparently skates around on two-faced ice. I sent her a note about the rate at which messages where being deleted, and expressed how I felt about this. Basically, I told her that there was no point in my posting if the messages were being erased so quickly. I also asked her to speak with the person I thought might have been responsible, since he’s always the first to post in the morning, and our time zones didn’t allow us to get online at the same time so that I could ask him about it myself.

Well, she put on a nice face to me in emails, but then attempted to write a note about me to the other Guild Leader, Cuppa, about the note I sent to her, Michele. Instead of being competent enough to double check the person she was emailing first, she ended up sending the note directly to me instead. It pissed me off so much to see someone who I thought was a pretty nice person sending such a missive, that I left the guild immediately.

Of course, Cuppa contacted me about the incident. From what she told me, Michele managed to figure out how to message Cuppa instead of me to give Cuppa her version of what happened. I told Cuppa that I was okay, and that I wasn’t coming back (I’d already joined a new guild in the short amount of time that it took Cuppa to email me, which was about 30 or 40 minutes later. Yeah, that surprised me, too.). Of course, this left my old guild at loss for a Spokesperson – again. They’d already had one Spokesperson leave due to a disagreement between Michele, Cuppa, and Pat (the 1st Spokesperson) and lies on Pat’s part.

So now I am a part of a new guild, but I miss my old one terribly. I miss being the Spokesperson and enjoying everyone’s company, but I was growing resentful while I was there. I suppose that it’s rather hard to let go of a guild that I’ve given so much to and received so much from. I was there for four months, which is most of the time that I’ve been a part of Neopia. Even though it’s better to know what’s really said behind-the-scenes, I can’t help wondering if I’d be happier not knowing. I loved that guild. I still do. And, I’d love to return to it. But, I know that I can’t because of what I know about Michele and Cuppa and the fact that someone else has already filled my council position, the same one I was elected to in a close race. I just don’t know sometimes.

*sighs*

There’s also the issue I am having with LiveJournal’s Scrapbook feature. For some reason, it won’t upload larger images. This means that I can only upload small button-type images like my mood theme or support buttons. I pay for that photo hosting, and I should be able to use it! Maybe I can contact the site admins directly and see why this is so. I need to be able to store images that I plan to use on Neopets on LiveJournal for long term purposes. Since Neopets is a high-traffic site, all of my free bandwidth I receive from Photobucket would be used up in no time at all and I need that for all of my other images.

God, I feel like I am being bitchy and am complaining too much right now, but I know that I’m not. I’ve simply been internalizing so much of this for some time now, that it’s all coming out as one big whinge. I still need to write out what truly happened with my former wives, and I know that that entry is going to be the true bitch.

I suppose that I better get ready to leave now. My water has been ready for quite some time now.

Danielle