barely fatal

Goes without words.

Worlds largest Windows error message – NetworkWorld.com Community

Okay a few words. I used to see some of these on the ‘mobile’ ticket terminals they installed in all our new trains and buses. First made me grin, second made me chuckle, third made me angry, ’cause I really needed that stupid ticket.

Over at fatalshadows.de we started a new project – or well, I started it, since I just cannot leave any great idea alone and always push everything to a higher level, make everything a project. Call me weak, stupid, hyperactive or simply “Great organizer” (Thanks). Anyhuh, it’s all about the guild this time.

The FS Legacy Project aims to collect as much data about FS and their members as possible. The history of games, big events, laughs and pure ownage. While searching for info on my hard drive – and I have a lot of stuff – I found old chatlogs, screenshots and names I had already forgotten. Thinking about the good ol’ time back in Jumpgate makes me all sentimental – and I am not the only one. Never before I got so much positive feedback from a newsletter or a new project.

I miss it. The point of this post is to speak about Jumpgate. I always want to reinstall, get a trial account and just practise dueling in the sim like back then. However, first of all I don’t have the time at the moment, and I know, yes I know how crappy the graphics look nowadays and how much it would drag me down.

So is it all just sentimental crap, the wish for old times to return, to again experience the feeling I had when flying into battle with a fleet of friends on my side? Something that will never return, never be the same again? Or is it my own fault, and it’s all there still, and I’m just too lazy or busy to find out?

Is there any alternative to Jumpgate? Not in the sense of skill-driven “first person” space game, there isn’t. There’s EVE, a game that I beta-tested ages ago and found boring. It might be worth giving another shot, a lot must have changed since then, but are there still Shadows around? I doubt it.

Planetside, now there might be hope. With the one-year-free program they announced some weeks ago, it could set the spark and get FS back together in a game of skill and squadron-based mayhem. It could. Fingers crossed, that I can once again experience the unity, the friendship and the fun I had in the beginning. Right now, I can at least create a record of that time, and preserve it, so I won’t forget.

Err…hello…this thing on?

Sorry, feel like crap, just spent the last three days looking after a two year old and a four and half month old and a poorly wife, and this is just after I have managed to recover from the same bug she’s got. Thank f**k for work tomorrow. (Wife’s a lot better now by the way, thanks for asking). Anyway, I figured I’d write something here, if only to see a name other than Jarod. Buggered if I can think of anything though, so this will probably be some random stream of consciousness thing.

Anyway, as most of you know, I’m not playing any online games, except the occasional bout of Bejewelled 2, partly financial reasons but mostly I just don’t have time right now. No point trying to do anything while Syd’s (my oldest) is around, she’s just learnt to use a mouse (at two!) and so wants to play on the PC all the time (yes, she has my genes). I’m not talking about randomly clicking around, I mean using the mouse to get to different parts of a website.

The family PC is Windows XP Home with an area for each member of the house. Those of you familiar with using multiple users on XP Home will know that you can select each user by pressing an icon on the opening screen. We don’t have passwords. Syd is now able to select her own area from the opening screen, open the CBeebies website and select her favourite show with absolutely NO HELP FROM ANYBODY ELSE. I just find that amazing, and a little scary.

By the way, is there supposed to some kind of point to these things?

Today I was given the chance to write an information sheet for our “product”, something the sales department did not manage to accomplish within a year. I totally love writing those. Not only can I think up the engineering chapter, giving all the technical details and requirements. No, even more challenging and immensely entertaining, I may write the marketing part and use all the fancy buzzwords and empty phrases you can read in every other product description. And I had to write it in English! Yay!

“Full service solution”, “Highly customizable”, “Unmatched performance”, “Constant revenue stream”, “Improved usabilty”. Woah! And you still have to include some technical details. Of course the management usually is not interested in those, but at some point they will show the paper to their engineers. “Extra premium value”. “Customer-enabled business logic”. “Web-based content delivery”. “Java-driven technology”.

My vocabulary grows. I cannot think of a better way to improve my English skills. Well, except actively speaking it, of course. You read product ads a whole different way when you had to write a few yourself. They surely sound a lot more hollow. Especially when you know that some things companies try to sell do not even exist at the time of publication (not true in this case). I suppose I am developing a talent here.