Art by MeddygonThere is a fine line \ Between genius and madness. \ It is called timing.

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my brain is odd
my welsh is terrible

Originally posted on TCB Mon, 15 Dec 2003 01:27:59 GMT

Sandra sat at the terminal, leaning on her crossed arms in front of the keyboard. She couldn’t believe what was happening. Shock, worry, fear, and all the emotions she was told never to feel were washing over her face all at once, which resulted in her stone-cold visage squeezing out a few salty tears. These feelings, as she knew, were simple replacements, something to soothe her most prominent feeling of complete emptiness.

There was something missing in Sandra now, and she knew what it was. The connection had been severed. She was the most alone she had ever been in her life, though she was currently in a room with at least a dozen others, all in as much shock as her from the disturbing occurrences.

The air echoed with questions of Amanda’s well-being, doubts of her survival, and premature praise of the agent’s past life. The video feed was down. Audio was gone, too. Sandra, along with two others, waited at their terminals for any sign of Amanda.

But Sandra knew that there was no hope. Amanda was dead.

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I, uh, got a bit bored. Here’s an ancient post from the Jurassic Era. TCB was five years old in 2003. That makes it fucking old now.

Schroe
Thu, 11 Dec 2003 07:45:12 GMT

I made a huge mistake. I thought about upgrading from ib v3.0.2 to ib v3.1.2. As you can see, the Cork Board is currently on 3.1.2, but at no small price. While upgrading the Cork Board, the old databases became corrupt, and I had no working ones elsewhere. All the posts were lost. All 14K+ of them.

So it’s gone. The backups that I did have were no good. It’s all gone.

Not like there was much there, but I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lost what people had given.

The Cork Board celebrated it’s fifth year this year. It went by with no one noticing, and with me not saying a word.

I guess a new start is something I need, though. Now that it’s completely clear of any bugs, any missed images, I should be fine. I should be able to keep this up again.

If I don’t go crazy from everything else first.

So, the first question, which I do not expect to be answered about the board, as it is a Happy Question and must be answered happily (or at least in an entertaining manner) and I will not be happy with compliments or criticism right now – where was …. right, the Q.

How does it look?

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I should have posted these the days they were made but I’m lazy.

New playlist on my youtube account: Jonas

“Deadly Virus Man” was the screen name created by a wannabe hacker twelve-year-old that played the MMO “Otherworld” created by “Ettin Industries,” which was a company run by characters within a roleplaying universe known as the “Corkie Commune.” DVM is a triple troll.

DVM is a character in a character I used to role play. The group usually stuck to one universe that visited other universes. The Commune was sort of a limboish place that existed slightly left of reality and could only be first reached by necessity. One RP member decided that he wanted to play a different universe, but rather than start a story up in that universe, he had some convoluted idea. Instead of a new universe with new characters, he introduced an MMO that the characters played, and we were going to play our characters playing their characters. It was pretty obvious to me that he wanted to do a new universe, and I’m still not quite certain why he didn’t just say it. He still has some characters he made up for it in his D&D playing. All characters I made for this universe were silly and lighthearted.
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Echo exists because I had a dream about dying.

Echo is a main character of a story called Vivify that I wrote in October 2007. I recommend reading it before continuing. (Unlike a lot of my other writing, I’ve re-read this and didn’t hate it.)

Echo is the first of the fifth generation Vivified drones created by Dr. Weiss of the Vivifix Corporation. With all the vivi you’d think I’d named her that, but no. Echo’s past life remains an unknown to herself, but she has seen pictures of her recent past. The first two iterations of Vivified (Alpha, Bravo) were her, suspended in fluid for testing connections and controls. Future iterations had some motor skills, but the Echo line was the first to be able to walk and eventually be taught to function.
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Bus (SB, Schoolbus), started as a Dwarf Hunter character in World of Warcraft. Lame, I know, but that’s where she started. She spent her adventuring days hanging around with Underground (UG, Yuji), a man twice her height. Her adventuring days came to a permanent end when the account for Underground was hijacked and banned. My husband and I no longer play WoW.
In WoW, Bus had a flying snake named Aeroplane. She used to have a cat named Shortbus, but a GM determined that Shortbus was an insult and her name was changed to Littlebus. (I had another character’s pet renamed when they failed to recognize the greatness of Bagpuss.)

Bus later evolved in my mind, as I never wrote anything about her, into a young woman who left her family behind to go adventuring. Her life was rather droll, having everything she needed come to her whenever she wanted. She felt her life lacked a certain spark.
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I wish I had more time to write this out. For now it’ll just be a braindump so I don’t forget it.

The dream started with James and I going to Florida. (I have had two previous dreams wherin we accidently end up in Florida and need to get back home ASAP for work.) We needed a place to stay while we were down there, so we thought it was a good idea to steal the old mobile home I grew up in. (I have had several other dreams involving owning this mobile home or others as secondary housing.)

Upon examining the interrior of the trailer, I found that my parents had not completely emptied it and many of my mother’s old business clothes were there. I held up a dress and said to James, “I should take all these home and wear them to work. I can totally start bringing the 80s back.” (I need new business-casual clothes, getting old stuff might be a good idea). Inside the bedroom, my parents old waterbed was still there, along with some fans.

A fellow named Joel, whom I know from deviantArt, is doing another mega collaboration for the new TF2 update. The previous one, for scout, can be found here. The images in this post are the two I did for the Sniper Vs. Spy update collab. Total of about three hours of work on both images.

Citibank refunded the charge on 5/19 (it didn’t show on the online statement until 5/21). Even though this was resolved, I still received a new message from Valve’s support. They asked me for a screenshot of the fee. I obliged and gave also a screenshot of the Citi CSR stating which charges were considered foreign transactions.

Here’s the conversation through Steam’s support:

8 « Message by Thomas on Tue, 19th May 2009 5:11 pm »
Hello Amanda,
We are still working on this issue and have been talking to the bank, can you please confirm the dollar amount of the foreign transaction fee that they are charging?

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Jacs has a thing for slave traders. A hate thing. A passion to destroy the market of owning people. It may have something to do with her TRAGIC HISTORY of being a slave herself.

Jacs is a privateer sanctioned by several governments to stop the trade of living souls that is legal in the majority of countries in her world. These governments would rather not get involved in direct confrontation with the larger ones, so she doesn’t let on that she’s doing the good work of the small guy. She also wants some profit. So she knocks off the captains of the slave ships, claims the merchandise as her own, and gives them two options: Stay and work on the ship or swim back home. She pays a small wage if they stay, which they can save (to pay Jacs her fee for saving them) or spend (she let’s them buy whatever they want … from her) as they please. Once they’ve paid off the fee, they’re free to go wherever they want. Many end up staying because they’ll make more and be safer on her ship than if they would go back home.

inspired by Valve’s “Meet the Spy” video

Thankfully, there is something good about my credit card. The ThankYou network. For each dollar spent using my AmEx, I get 1 point. A point is about a half a penny to two cents when compared to retail prices of items (it depends on popularity and inventory) trading them in. So, now we have:
Silversun Pickups – Swoon
Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown

EDIT on 05/21/09: see bottom for more details

Update on the foreign transaction fee issue. After waiting a few days for a response to my previous call, I decided it would be better to call them. After explaining the situation to “Hugo,” I was transfered to a supervisor (“Mr. Thomas”). I explained the situation to him, and he stated that the foreign transaction fees are automatic and they do not watch for them. Since it is so common for US businesses to process through Canada (and warn their customers of possible fees) they don’t bother with alerting customers of foreign purchases. He waived the $1.92 and thanked me for being a customer. I’ll be checking my account online at the end of the business day to verify that it’s been taken off.

If Valve had at all stated that they process payments outside of the US (in plain text would have been nice, but they didn’t even have it in legalese), I would have made the purchase in a different manner.
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I, like many others out there, avidly review my credit card statements. I view the card’s activity online before statements to make sure there aren’t any unauthorized purchases on there. I don’t think I’ve actually found any in the eight years I’ve had this card. When statements come around, I like to know exactly what finance charges are applied. This month, for the first time, I saw “FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE.” Having never made a foreign transaction on this card, I immediately questioned it through their secure messaging system.

Subject: FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE
Date/Time: 05/13/09 07:22:15 PM
You wrote:
I would like more detail on the following as I do not recall making any foreign purchases:
05/12/2009 FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE CHARGE $1.92 Transaction Type: 3 Post Date: 05/12/2009 Reference Number: 00000000 Charge To: Standard Purch

Pyro’s flare gun done up as a wooden popgun, will do more changes if I feel like it.

I had a dream about playing some third person shooter and this was one of the guys in it

blah so tired

There’s a whole bunch of new Jonas pictures on Picasa.

Also, Jonas now has a twitter. Mostly we’re keeping tack of feedings on it.

SleepDepJoel @ Apr 16, 2009, 8:44:13 PM
I request a portrait of Malaclypse the Younger, the founder of Discordia. A bun-less hotdog should be worked into the piece in order to avoid heresy, eternal snubbing, etc.

And there you have it, folks. I read Principia Discordia before I drew this, fun read. In other news, I bought some games on Steam for my brother (L4D, Orange Box). AND I have a working copy of ps again. 

And happy anniversary, parental units.

Gimp is still not my favorite image editing program, but it has improved since the last time I used it. I just know where everything I want is in photoshop, and I don’t want to take the time to learn where everything I want is in gimp. Oh well, you can’t always get what you want.
Anyway, new art.

Just when I was getting in the art groove again, photoshop craps out on me and I have to wait for it to reinstall again. There’s not even a guarantee it’ll even work right. Time to acquire other image manipulation tools. Capital SIGH.