This convo should speak for itself...

   CS Team:   Thank you for contacting the Newegg Customer Service Chat Team.
  CS Team:   Your reference number for this chat session is 1044110
  CS Team:   We will be with you in a moment.
  CS Team:   Estimated wait time is 0 hours 4 minutes 48 seconds
  CS Team:   Estimated wait time is 0 hours 2 minutes 21 seconds
  CS Team:   Estimated wait time is 0 hours 2 minutes 55 seconds
  CS Team:   Estimated wait time is 0 hours 2 minutes 33 seconds
  CS Team:   Estimated wait time is 0 hours 3 minutes 27 seconds
  CS Team:   Estimated wait time is 0 hours 4 minutes 7 seconds
  CS Team:   Estimated wait time is 0 hours 3 minutes 10 seconds
  CS Team:   Estimated wait time is 0 hours 1 minutes 23 seconds
  CS Team:   Kay B. has joined this session!
  CS Team:   Connected with Kay B.
  CS Team:   Hi Brad Phelps! My name is Kay B..
  CS Team:   I have reviewed the reason you are contacting us and I am happy to assist.
  Kay B.:   Thank you for providing me with that information. I will be more than happy to assist you. May I please place you on hold for a moment while I look into this?
  Brad Phelps:   sure
  Kay B.:   Thank you for holding, I show the USPS website states it has arrived the parrners facility though.
  Kay B.:   May I know what is your concern?
  Brad Phelps:   Well, considering that it shows the package arrived to DHL (shipping partner) on the 2nd, The package arrived in Orlando on Saturday (by the tracking on NewEgg site). I ordered the parts on the 30th for the standard delivery. The package should at the latest be delivered today (7th business day), however the package has had NO updates to it's status or movement since the 5th (this past Saturday)
  Brad Phelps:   The option for the chat that I chose was that there has been no movement of the package in 24 hours... of course, Sunday no movement would have been expected, but here it is Wednesday, more than 48 hours and the package has seen no movement
  Brad Phelps:   Looking on the USPS site, they don't show that they have the package in their possession currently.
  Kay B.:   May I place you on hold while I look into this for you?
  Brad Phelps:   sure
  Kay B.:   Thank you for holding, Brad. Upon checking, I show the ETA of your package is 12/11, please contact us back if you have not receive your package by then. And I am truly sorry that there might be a bit slower than usual since the big sale. The tracking information was not updated in time. I am sorry I am not sure the how UPS arranged the shipping, but the shipping address is to Howey in the Hills, FLORIDA. I think the package is on the way to you. As for the ETA, the package was picked up on the shipper on 12/02.
  Brad Phelps:   right, and again, the package arrived in Orlando (Florida), on Saturday, and hadn't shown any movement in over 48 hours, This is why I'd chosen the option for no movement in 24 hours. I'm not sure where you're pulling the ETA from however.
  Kay B.:   The ETA was counted as the first day after the shipper picked up( which is origin scan, or arrive facility) the package, 7 business days later.
  Brad Phelps:   Alright, but again, it's already out of your hands, and again, it hasn't seen any movement in over 48 hours, and USPS doesn't show that they have the package, even though that DHL shows that they handed it over to them
  Kay B.:   Please contact us back if you do not receive the package by tomorrow, then we can file a missing package claim for you.
  Brad Phelps:   my concern is the fact that it's left the original shipper's hands (DHL), and USPS has no info on the package other than "yep, there should be a package with this tracking number"
  Brad Phelps:   alright
  Kay B.:   Thank you for your patience to this matter.
  Kay B.:   Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
  Brad Phelps:   not that I know of. I suppose I'll be back here or on the phone tomorrow if I don't see the package.

Come now...

Alright, so for the last couple to 3 weeks, we've been dealing with intermittent slow speeds through the day, and constant slow speed come 8pm EST.

What we're paying for over here is a 10 meg download, 0.6meg upload DSL package (it's the BEST speeds available ... not to mention the ONLY "high speed" internet "option" to us). What we're getting through the day mostly is relatively O.K. ... 9-10 meg download, and steady 0.6 upload. Granted, randomly through the day, the connection will drop (no lights going out on the modem or anything mind you, just poof, no net for you) completely. Sometimes we'll get a short decrease in our speeds, but it won't last too long.

NO, we're not downloading pron, or any torrenting going on, so it's nothing internal to the network at all. The only "stressful" connection is watching Twitch ... When everything is fine and dandy, I can watch a stream AT BEST, on Medium quality.

Now, I've been calling and complaining about the speed drop at the times above, and have not spoken with two supervisors about this issue. My first call to complain, the technician fiddled with the internal settings of the modem to turn off the wireless and failed to turn it back on. When I went back into the modem myself to turn that back on, the modem's internal setting showed that yes, it was on, however the light on the modem was off. Devices that connected wirelessly could not locate the signal at all even being right next to the modem. Called again the next day and was told the modem must have gone bad, and of course needed to be replaced. "We can get one sent out to you and it will be there in 3 to 5 days, and we'll need to charge $19.95..." woah woah ... I'm not paying for your broken equipment people. Seeing as that was a weekend, the local office / sales store was closed until Monday. Went in, got a replacement modem, installed it that day, plopped in the wireless settings, everything good to go. Until that night of course around 8pm when the speed dropped to poo again.

Que another call to service, technician states that something must be wrong with the modem, and would need to do a hard reset on it... WAIT a moment there dude... the modem just got installed... "resetting to default" isn't going to fix anything now will it? this prompted them to get a technician set up to come out...which wouldn't be until later in the week (Wednesday I think it was?). Tech comes out, checks the line at the box outside the house, hears static, and whatnot. He explains that there's actually TWO KNOWN stretches of line that service our area that are bad.

This is the same tech that we've had out on previous issues with the net here, wherein one of the previous visits, he had to put in a new connection whatever in the DSLAM that we were connected to supposedly... something that he could then come out and check reports from whatever he was putting in to be able to see the issues we were having back then (slow speeds / intermittent connection, go figure). He stated that it's obviously not something internal to the house, and it's all on their side of things, and he would be trying to put us over to a different pair to hopefully fix the issue, and that he would call me back on my cell phone that night, or the next day when he finished this pair swap. I did NOT receive a call back though.

I call again on this past Saturday because ... lo and behold... around 6:30 this time... the net went to poo. I asked for a supervisor at that time, but the tech basically refused to do that, and wanted to try some stuff himself... one thing in particular was resetting the modem to default settings. I told him that the modem had JUST been installed on Monday... it shouldn't need that ... his response was "there are old errors in the modem so a hard reset will clear them" ... how can you call some errors that are less than a week old ... OLD? ... anyway ... he resets the modem... then he can't get back into the modem through their tools ... YAY! ... I tell him again that it's nothing that HE can do, get me a supervisor so this can get escalated properly, he explains that a supervisor would just be putting in a support ticket to have a tech come out again... whatever, get a tech out....tech scheduled for Monday ('cause yep, no tech calls on weekends). Supposed to have a tech out by 5pm Monday.

Monday rolls around, around 9-10 A.M., the net completely drops (modem lights actually drop during this time). I figure maybe the guy forgot to swap the pair like he said he was going to do, and is doing it at that time. No phone call to either the house line, or my cell (as requested). 5pm rolls around with no contact still, but I figure meh, it was down earlier, maybe it's fixed. Nope... 8pm, poof, 1meg download. call AGAIN ... get an actual supervisor this time. I'm on the phone for over 45 minutes with the supervisor alone trying to fix this issue, see where the problem lies so that it can properly have a maintenance call on. He can't get the performance information for the server that we're connected to, so he can't see if it's having issues load-balancing or if it's a port issue or what's going on. He states more than likely it's something with the server itself and it needs maintenance, and he'd let me go seeing as we were on the call for so long, and he'd go through and poll other customers in the area to see if they're having the same issues. He stated that I should get a call back by 5pm today (Wednesday the 26th).

Nope, no call, between then and now. I start watching and testing net speeds around 6pm every half hour or so, just to see when things started to go south for us.

• 6:00pm: download 9.5meg
• 6:30pm: download 9.0
• 7:00pm: download 8.0 (20% of speed at this point, what they are supposed to at LEAST get us)
• 7:30pm: download 7.3
• 8:00pm: download 5.0
• 8:10pm: download 2.4

Ok, that's enough, time to call ... get another supervisor ... they state that the ticket that was opened by the supervisor was closed because the "reason" he'd put in was "packet loss" ... why that? well, because the server and modem are showing that supposedly they're talking at 11meg down, 0.7meg up ... so THAT shows things are fine supposedly. The packet loss at this point in time of day are only 5%-7% packet loss ... NOT ENOUGH for them to warrant an issue to look at stuff! So, this new supervisor gets on with the maintenance tech department and they're trying to poll people around the area to see if they're having issues or if it's just us. Go figure, supposedly no-one's getting the same problem as us. After an HOUR of being on the phone with him, he gets a new ticket to try to move us to a different DSLAM bar or what the fark ever in the box that we're connected to. This is now supposed to happen in two days (Friday) ... So, let's see how this goes! ... oh... and here, this is a test I did when I started writing this...

So yea... grade F ... let's test again now... roughly 40 minutes later... 

hmm... that looks to me like we've gotten SLOWER ... yea... I'd say that this is a progressive drop in speed as described to technicians on the phone, that have come to the house, and supervisors! ... This is OBVIOUSLY something wrong with the server balancing the load when loads of people start getting online at the same time.

Meanwhile, the ONLY way I can watch streams on twitch right now without stupid buffering... is on MOBILE quality ... I can't even watch on LOW ... tell me, how is

supposed to be enjoyable? I'd put in a DVD to watch but yea...I don't have many to watch... and other reasons but that's beside the point for this post.

Here's hoping that SOMETHING gets fixed soon... this is getting redonkulous over here. I've not been able to play FFXIV (what I'm trying to watch someone do is something that I should be doing too soon, and I wanna freaking learn so I'm not clueless when we get to it) due to the inconsistencies and unstable nature of the net right now. I can't reliably tank anything if I can't see when things leave my side, or go after other players because everything downstream sometimes takes 5 seconds to update on my end... by that time, poof, someone's dead!  

I despise some things some times...

A'ighty then, I've not written in here in FOR-EVER ...

So, what brings me here? Oh, just something that's tooooo long to be able to write on Twitter.

For those that may be new to this (very rarely updated) blog, or know not much about me or what's been going on in my life.... let's do a break-down.

We start, some time ago as most stories do. This one starts sometime around May or June of 2001. I was in the USMC at the time, and our platoon Sgt that I had at the time decided it would be a good thing to do a short platoon run the day before a battalion hike. He ran us through a neighboring platoon's area, which had loose large rocks. I twisted my ankle in that area unfortunately. I went to the BAS (battalion aid station... AKA: The docs), they claimed I was just lying, and just gave me some Motrin and told that they wouldn't give me a light duty chit (form that would allow me to limit my work load for some number of days), and that I wasn't getting out of the hike. Cut to the next day, the hike was with a 50 pound pack, along with our weapons and Kevlar helmets. Now, back then, I was fighting constantly to be able to maintain a weight of 120. So you're talking I'm having almost half my weight added in on my back, with no support mind you, for a 5 mile hike through the hills of California .. I made it the whole way, no thanks to the fact that our platoon was in the tail, and the whole battalion was doing the caterpillar ... so it was more like a freaking 5 mile run with all that extra weight. Needless to say, I was hurting afterwards. I limped over to the BAS again, where they had to cut the boot-string to get my boot off... my ankle had swollen so much that the knot couldn't be undone. They THEN gave me a light-duty chit for a week.

Week goes by, and while the ankle had gotten better, my back was hurting. I complained about it and they did nothing more than "here's some Motrin, go away"... which unfortunately was standard operating procedure for them. couple weeks later I go to lift one of those 5 gallon water jugs to put it in place of the spent bottle of the water dispenser in my work area. My back proceeds to twitch, and I collapse to the floor, water bottle included, now draining on the ground. I had to be laid up there for like 5-10 min's until I could move again. Went to the BAS again, new person there... first thing they put in the notes was "complaining about chronic back pain". I then get put on a regimen of muscle stimulation and realignment of my back at the hospital... every other day. Third week of that stuff, and the pain level won't go below a 3 or 4 (on that stupid 10 point scale). They send me back to my BAS, wherein an idiot claims that "the problem isn't with your back, it's your tight hamstrings" ... think about that for a bit please. Now, I've not been able to bend straight down to touch my toes since I had my growth spurt back in HIGH SCHOOL ... Also... how the FUCK can hamstrings... which are in the legs ... affect how my lower back feels? And I'm not talking the muscles specifically, yea they were in pain, but the pain that I was mostly feeling was within my back.

So, they give me the options of: Wait the month or so and get out on Honorable Discharge, or start the process to get out on Medical Discharge. For those that don't know, Honorable = able to get jobs really easy if people look at the DD-214 (discharge papers) as reference to military service, while Medical = still kind of easy to get a job 'cause yea military, but it'd get you in the door of the VA (Veteran's Administration) instantly. The other big difference was at that time the Medical Discharge process would have taken 6-7 months. I had had quite enough of getting dicked over on other aspects of the military career, and decided get out the next month on September 8th, 2001 ... please remember that date for further down the line.

So I get out, am traveling back to Florida from California ... no real connection to the world around, just taking time to drive back with my wife and under year old son. Get back to Florida, get started on paperwork to try to get into the VA system to try to get at least noticed about the back issues. It took me a YEAR to get into the VA system, and another almost year to get my first review. Initial review set me at 20% disability rating. Not much of course, but I was diagnosed at that time with "degenerative disc disease". Time goes by, I start getting worse, I complain, get another review after some time of waiting. They up me to 30%, YAY, a cut-off point somewhat. See at 30%, they start compensating for dependents. Which by that time, I've had two more kids (which are all separated by 3 years mind you), so now the system has me as married with 3 dependents. This nets me an astounding .... $500 a month.... that's it...I had gotten to the point of walking around with a cane, and I couldn't stand or sit for too long or my back would start twitching. Cut a bit later, complain some more, finally get another review, they bump me up to 40% ... which only nets $750 a month or thereabouts.

Things start getting worse still with my back (let's just say at this point in this tale, I'm constantly at a pain level of 6-7, so really hard to do much of anything, and some days I can't even move 'cause the back locks up), I contact again to try to get reviewed yet again. I don't get seen officially by anyone, but they pass judgement on my review, claiming that basically seeing as in my records there was nothing stating recently that I've been staying the same, or getting worse, that I MUST be getting better, and they decided to knock me back to 30%. This is the same timeframe that my now ex-wife moves out. So I'm stuck with the mortgage of the house we were sharing, and a decrease in my disability looming on the boarders. I send in their paperwork saying that I dispute the decision, but that gets ignored it seems. I manage to land a job at Sea World, but they don't listen to me when I tell them multiple times (while walking with my cane) that I'm disabled and can't stand for long periods of time. They stick me in the kiddie section of the park, and expect me to bend down repeatedly to do some tasks. Yea, not good. I complain and they send me to my doc with a form for them to fill out for limitations. The doc I had at the time (the VA docs I get are constantly on rotation, I think I've seen a good 2-3 DOZEN different docs at this point) fills out the paperwork stating "no stooping, bending, or climbing; no lifting over 5 pounds; no pushing or pulling anything over 5 pounds; must have change in position (IE: standing, sitting, laying down) every half hour" ... the rotations of the area I was in were 1 hour at a time. I couldn't do anything there in rotation any more by doctor's orders. They couldn't get me a new position and thus was let go.

Now I have no outside income, and I'm trying to pay for a mortgage that is monthly more than what I'm getting in disability ... let alone having anything left over if I could have been paying to pay for power or any other necessary utilities. I start getting paperwork for trying to save the house, re work the mortgage, but the mortgage company obviously didn't want to work with me... I kept sending them paperwork that they requested, and they either kept loosing it, or not acting on it quick enough and I'd have to re-send the paperwork. Needless to say, that house got taken into foreclosure, and I had to move. I moved in with a friend not too terribly far from where I was, and all was swell. While there I asked about getting tested for sleep apnea seeing as I thought I was showing signs of it, and yep, certainly do have it, and probably have had it quite some time. Unfortunately, I met a lovely woman that I am now engaged to, however, where she was living was not that great, and the owner of the house she was renting a room from wouldn't fix things... like the air conditioning for the whole house ... and again, this is Florida ... it's freking HOT. Anyway, she obviously can't move in with me at the friend's house 'cause yea, no room. So, we start applying for income-based housing, some looked promising, but none had any openings for us within the timeframe of needing to move the fiance out of where she was at. Que my parent's option of finding a travel trailer and hooking it up next to their mobile home. Find a trailer, parents buy it, and now I'm living in this travel trailer and paying my parents back for it.

The following February (2014), I still hadn't gotten my review that I requested the year before when they reduced my disability. I went to the VA office, and they saw that I was SUPPOSED to have been seen back in December of 2013, but no appointment was made and it was still awaiting that. I asked to try to get the sleep apnea and also the migraine headaches included in my rating. October 2013 I get a phone call to set up to be reviewed. I ask at that time of the phone call if this was for the review I was supposed to have had November of the previous year? or if this was to include the request back in February to add migraines and sleep apnea. The person stated it was ONLY for the back, and to expect a separate review to add those things. Get to the review, ask AGAIN if the review that was going on was just for the back or to also add the other things, the receptionist states that it was only for the back. Get into the review office with the doc, ask HIM if this was supposed to be adding the apnea and migraines, he states the review is just for my back, and nothing in his stuff says that he should review the sleep apnea or migraines, and I should probably expect a different appointment to add those. Result from that review was that they were putting me back up to 40%. I did get SOME retro-pay for that review, not much, but enough that I was able to actually splurge a little on my kids for Christmas.

Cut to yesterday, I call in the morning to the VA office, have to leave a message 'cause yea they're busy or whatever. I don't get a call back until like a half-hour before they're done for the day. The guy there asks why if I'm concerned about the apnea and migraines being added, why didn't I contest the decision from that review in November? I told him the above about them stating numerous times that the review was ONLY for the back, and I stated that the review results that I got didn't say ANYTHING regarding the apnea or migraines, positive or negative. He states that that review should have included reviewing for the sleep apnea and migraines.

Needless to say, I'm now SUPER pissed. Here I was told by no less than 3 people that the review that happened was only for the back, and to expect a separate review for the other stuff. So here I've been sitting ... since November, thinking my request for a review back in February was still in processing ... but that wasn't the case and never has been the case. So now I've gotta go back down to the VA office, fill out and sign the paperwork stuff to get ANOTHER review attempted to be set up. Here's hoping that this review comes swiftly and they can add the stuff. Basically what I'm being told by some other people, that the sleep apnea should, on it's own, add 30-40% to my rating, while the migraines can be 10-30%... so we're talking a fair chunk of change that I SHOULD have been getting since November of last year... vary it be the nature of things, I don't expect to get retro-pay from all that time seeing as, to them, I didn't complain about it not being included.

So, now, you might ask why I don't go to some of those "Help a Vet" places. Unfortunately I've not found ANY way to get in contact or into the systems for any of the well known ones... Specifically if you wanna hear some more craziness... one of the well known ones... "The Wounded Warrior Project" ? ... yea, they only take people that actively served in the military on or after September 11th 2001 ... remember, I got out 3 days prior! so I can't get in their program. Oh, not to mention there's other not so veteran friendly things, like not allow vets to carry weapons (you know, that right that the military fights for constantly?) to their events, even if they've got the proper licenses and training. 

Anyway, rant over for now. just had to get this shit off my chest 'cause yea... I'm super pissed, so pissed that it actually has affected me being able to relax and play anything.

Speaking of playing, I'm back in FFXIV, and have been having a blast :P I just need to get a new computer and get onto some SSD's so that I can load stuff a bit faster... of course, moving to a place that doesn't have potato-net would improve things as well...Gotta pay off this trailer first then I can start saving up for possible income based housing that the ex-wife got into... perhaps get a real house again, and be able to afford it thanks to it being income based ... also the fact that I'd own the house once it's paid for, not just renting like most other income based places.

Wanna help financially? http://www.gofundme.com/sqf8a46n is something I started up to try to get money to get a new computer

update to stuffs

Ok, so, I've managed to throw a bandage at the computer, and have it BACK on the net at "normal" speeds. I still need to kill off this old thing and get everything up and running properly with non-lightning-struck gear.

So, I'll be able to get back to my cast, yay!

Why???? why oh why??

Ok, so... it's been a LOOOONG time (again) that I've updated this blog. Mainly because I've been doing most of my stuff in short sweet stints via twitter ... Anyway, for the last 57 days (today would be 58), I've been Live Streaming to Hitbox (and only recently to both Hitbox and Twitch thanks to a cool friend I've made on hitbox named Lawng). Everything's been running fairly smoothly with the internet that I'm living on. Until today.

So, I wake up this morning to see that stuff isn't connected. Lovely. Go into the network stuff of windows, see that it says that everything's fine, so I do my normal of disable the NIC. Went to get ready to re-enable it, and it dissapears! What? Go into device manager, and it says there's no driver for it. How is that the case if it was working LAST NIGHT?!?!? (not to mention ever since I plugged the darned thing in some time ago). Now, one might ask "why do you have a NIC plugged in? Why not use the on-board LAN port?".

Well, let me answer that for those that may not know. Some time ago, this very PC was subject to the lovelyness that comes to Florida all the time, that of thunder storms. I did have this computer behind an APC power supply, and for the most part it did it's job. The only thing that got fried at that point was the LAN port on the motherboard, and the power supply. Luckily for me, I had a spare PSU sitting around that I could use. It worked for a while until I found out that I needed a bigger one to supply the power necessary for my video card. A cool friend helped me out and got me a new PSU to cover the problems I was facing with the video card derping up. Why didn't I contact APC and get them to pay for things?? Well, I did actually. I contacted them and they did send me out a replacement unit, and I sent them the lightning struck one. They also supplied me with something to fill in with details of the stuff that got damaged. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to care that I'm A+ certified and had tested my stuff out and found the bad parts. Nor did they care that I have no money (even back then) to replace the parts that'd gotten nuked. I supplied them with the cost to replace the parts that got hit, I got NO check that should have covered it (per their guarantee of covering the cost of things that are plugged into their units). So, I was forced to use hand-me-down parts to keep the beast running.

Lately, I've been noticing my computer acting up, to the point where I would love to format and re-load the whole thing. Unfortunately, when I got ready to do that, I noticed that while the BIOS sees the DVD drive, it doesn't read disks. Plug the same disk into another computer and it reads the disk fine, so I know it's not the disk. Within windows, it sees it, but again, it doesn't see any disk put in it. Hell, it can talk to the drive enough to be able to eject the disk tray when prompted to do so, but it's not reading anything. I even went so far as to swap out the drive with another KNOWN GOOD drive (hey, I did say A+ certified right? so yea, replacing with known good stuff is the clear way to identify if something's borked), still no go. Plugged the drive I'd swapped out into another computer, boom, reads the VERY DISK I'm trying to get my beast to recognize. So yea, communication between the motherboard and the DVD drive are sketchy to the point of not working.

So, to get back to the LAN card... looking at the card, it's getting the green lights and they blink to show there's attempted data travel across the LAN line I've got hooked up. Thinking maybe it's something goofy with the seating (the case is made of LEGO after all, so, some stuff can move if not careful). Turned off everything, took it next door to use the air compressor on everything to clear out any dust (wasn't too much really). Brought it back over here, plugged it all back in... LAN card get's it's green lights, everything looks fine... get into windows... nope, it doesn't even see the card now in device manager! I can't move the LAN card to another slot, as there's not one accessible (the only other PCI slot is covered by my big video card's cooling case / fan / whathaveue, and without an on-board video output, I wouldn't be able to see what's going on if I took out the video card and whatnot)

So, here I sit, dealing with

right now due to having to connect via wireless that's ... none too happy right now... I'd love to be able to get THAT better, but it's only getting 1 bar of signal (hince why I ran the CAT-5 from the modem+router out to my computer). 

If APC reads this (which I plan to tweet this out and @mention them on it if I can find one for them) ... Realize, that I've been through a TON of stress, when the lightning struck the computer, it was during the whole divorce/separation stuff going on that happened so long ago. The only thing that's changed for my financial state, is that I'm now getting LESS a month so REALLY don't have the money to be able to get replacement parts for this thing. So, if you guys want to get hot on this shit and make me a happy customer that is willing to tell people to use your product while I do my streaming ... maybe you might want to get in contact with me again and try to set things straight. As it stands, with what I've experienced out of you guys... I'm not pleased at all. I've moved TWICE since that talk with your reps, so yea, there may need to be some digging done to find out WTF happened to cutting me a check to replace the parts that got hit. Basically I really needed to replace EVERYTHING inside the computer.

Motherboard died in bits and pieces; power supply completely fried; had lost a hard drive but it was a secondary so I wasn't too concerned at the time but hey, it did take a hit too. Only things that survived that was IN the PC? one hard drive, the processor (I think at least it's still good, seeing as it's running right now, but who knows if/when that'll die due to the hit), the memory sticks were un-touched as well.

So...here I sit, hoping to god that somehow the VA gets off their collective arses and gets my review completed quickly so that I can hopefully get some extra funds in to be able to catch up on some bills that have been falling behind, then maybe start saving to get the replacement parts that I need to FIX this beast (IF APC doesn't get with me, and fixes this issue)...if I have to fix this myself, it may be some time before I can get streaming again, because I WILL save up and just replace everything inside the computer to really just upgrade the whole thing... I'll probably not have to replace the memory or the video card... but hey, why not get everything I'd love to have for a streaming PC ...

(another) SO ... if you're reading this and wish to help out, I've got a donation page for my stream over on https://streamtip.me/t/kinamkrindar ... any donations would be AWESOME and everything donated there is used towards my streaming. This means that the $12 that I've gotten so far from streaming is being saved up to go for upgrading this PC first and foremost. 

I'll try to keep this updated daily until things get fixed for me to be able to stream, but it's better to just watch my twitter honestly.

FFXIV:ARR ß phase 3...

Now, seeing as there was somewhat of an NDA on showing stuff off, I didn't really get much for screen shots, however there are a ton out there in the Reddit forums for it. I am going to state some stuff here about what I experienced in the short 2 days that I got to play this past weekend (and I believe I'll be getting in on the following weekend as well if this phase of testing continues).

First and foremost: WHOLY FARK! This... this is what I expected the game to be like when I was first wanting to experience it. They have stepped away from making the PC version feel like a console port what with it's horrid menu system. They finally made the menus pretty much non-existent (before, if you've read through my blog before, you may have noted my distaste that everything you wanted to do, you had to pull up the menu to even interact with something in front of you). The gathering "minigame" is done away with from what I was able to experience. The crafting system is much better as well, still feels like an actual "task" to complete a craft as you get higher in the levels of the crafts.

Let's step into some finer details that I'm sure they won't mind me disclosing, as these are what has convinced me to actually wish to purchase the game, and work more to get paid enough to pay for the MRC of this game.

I will state, that even the Beta community was freaking awesome. I realize that this was a closed beta, and most of the people in it were people that were previous (v1.0) players, and people that really wanted to see the game work, but the community ... my gosh, it's what I remembered for community when playing EQ1 back all those years ago... and FFXI before the expansions started making the game more "casual" (the expansions that started raising the level cap, seemed to make the community turn to shiot, and I stopped playing quickly thereafter). While this was a Beta, and bugs were to be expected, one bug in a certain quest, wherein only one person could initiate and do the quest at a time, made it a big mess... until people started doing the only reasonable thing ... form a freaking LINE in the world, and just wait their turn. Rather than have everyone standing around the NPC that would trigger the quest (which, sometimes wouldn't work from what I heard), and everyone trying to spam to get into the quest instance, people respected the fact that waiting in a line would be better than randomly possibly not getting in, and causing someone else to possibly get kicked out of the scene, or whatever nonsense was going on with it (I didn't do that quest, I left the area to pick up another class somewhere but witnessed the line on the way by). Everyone in /shout chat was awesome as well, even talking about some "good old" times in FFXI :)

The graphics... well, they've gotten improved a fair bit... no more is the blinding lens flare and glow effect that was present before (pictures found in previous post). Dynamic lighting is freaking great. Stand between two light sources? Get two shadows! The environments feel so much better also, with some skills causing parts of the environment to "float" around or be kicked around depending on where the skill lands (standing on a dirt path, and use a skill on a mob in the grass? see leaves spurt around from the slash / spell around the mob... mob walks to the dirt path to you, use the same skill, and dust comes up instead!)

Sounds... they actually put a freaking slider for you, to allow you to adjust WHERE you want your sound localization to be originated from. Basically allowing you to place the location of where your speakers are getting their "input" from. Anywhere from the character's current position, to where the camera is I believe was the further setting. I left it as default, which was a little behind the character. I realize that the next thing is present in many single player games, but I've rarely seen it in MMO's .... walk on grass, hear the crunch of it, walk on train tracks, hear the metal under your feet... change to the carpet in town? yep, soft "fluff" sounds. The music also... (I will say, I'm not much of a music listener... BUT...) the blends that they have between areas, was very smooth. Almost like they actually had "bubbles" around spots that had their own ambiance music.

Quests… Alright, time to gripe ... maybe ... They followed the "bandwagon" of "get your quest HERE (!)" exclamation point over the heads. They made it pretty easy also to find quests on the maps ... they show up on the maps as !'s ... Now, I will say that they didn't go the "fairy poop" trail like Neverwinter Online did, which was refreshing. The did however, mark the map with a DIM circle on the map if it was a "kill stuff" quest, which, admittedly for me, was hard to see (map was dusty / tea stain brown, circles were a very translucent red, which almost blended in). Any colour-blind individuals may have issues with that. I couldn't find a way in the Beta to change it's settings.

Grinding? Well, I will admit, there wasn't really much need for grinding, however I do see where it would come in to play when you start leveling a second class from the same town. The quests are a main source of EXP, which is fine... but once you get into your second class, unless that second class is from a different town, you'll be having to just grind mobs outside town until you level up. If you wish to grind, the best thing to do is to kill mobs that are your level or higher, and do the kills fast. If you keep popping down stuff your level or higher, you can get into exp chains (linked kills as they are called), where you'll get more exp per kill as you're going on. This isn't a whole lot at first of course (1-2% I think on the first "chained" kill, 3-4% more on the next, etc), but it does add up, especially in the later levels where the kills will start granting more exp per kill. It isn't the FFXI standard of 100 exp per even-leveled kill.

Partying? Well, the parties I did join were impromptu ones, when a "fate" popped up and someone figured it'd be much easier in a party lineup for healing (completely understandable). The parties were easy to join and set up from what I experienced. You can have up to 8 people I believe is what I saw in the keybinds (F1-F8 for targeting party members), which is cool, massive, but cool. Reading on Reddit, some people were trying grind parties, wherein they found that if they tried to set up camp (ALA FFXI style with one person going to pull, while the rest sat ready to ambush the mob pulled), the puller would attempt to pull, and they'd get multiple mobs...equal to the number of party members! (of course, that's if that many mobs were available to "link" with) This made it where, while partied up, it didn't make the quests super easy if everyone were doing quests. I'm not certain how well this will work later on when it may be necessary / best to be grouped for killing, especially when on a second, third, fourth, or further job.

Multiple job system? This is not as you may be used to for FFXI, but it is acceptable to me at least. See, each class has skills/spells that are usable by themselves, while some may have multiple classes able to use them. At the lower levels, you can choose 1 skill additional from another class that has the skill unlocked, eventually getting more "slots" from other classes available. The key factor here though, is that once you've gotten to level 10, and completed your starting class's level 10 quest, you are allowed to "join other guilds", which basically allows you to change class from then on as long as you go to that class's guild and talk to them for the starting quest. Yes, you're stuck with your initial choice for 10 levels, but it flies by honestly (pretty fast at least currently, but who knows if exp may change eventually). The main "problem" for some may be that if you say ... pick Thaumaturge (DD spell caster, think BLM, but not) as your first class, and wish to go Conjurer next (also DD, but has heal and protection spells eventually as well) ... well, you've got to travel to a different starter town.

Traveling? Yes, there are chocobos available. You can use them once you hit level 10, and there's a couple restrictions and methods of use. At least from what I saw in my small amount of time in, the rented chocobos come in two varieties. The first (and cheapest) is taking a chocobo for a small fee depending on how long the ride is from where you're renting from. This trip is self-guided, meaning you have to do nothing but click that yes you want to go to some destination and agree to the fee. The trick to that method however, is that you have to visit the main town, and the outposts and talk to the "chocoporter"s, you can't go somewhere you've not been (their in game reasoning is that they don't want you to get out somewhere that you've never been to, and not know the way back yourself). The second option for rented chocobos is a 10 minute rental, but only from a town (not an outpost). You have full control of the chocobo, and can go where you please. You CAN get damaged and draw agro while on chocobos, and from the in game description, the first (guided) choco rental will give you the money back if it doesn't make it there LOL. The trip between the starting towns is roughly 8 to 9 minutes by chocobo, so well within that 10 minute time-frame. The cost of that second option was a mere 80 gil (I had almost 4k by level 11 on first class, with minimal purchases).

Let's see, what else to say... over-all, I'd say this is an awesome game they've finally pieced together. Oh…Streaming ... my system's not the best beast for streaming, but I cranked up xsplit (notoriously bad for eating FPS for some games), and cracked local recording on... I didn't "feel" it at medium graphics settings... I got absorbed, turned off xsplit, and later turned up the settings to maximum. Without xsplit running, I was still running awesome FPS wise. I will state, that they had a built in option to have borderless windowed mode, which was great as one of my scenes in xsplit was just capturing my left monitor region, so it was able to see the game no problem.

All said and done, I've even gone so far as to look around for an el-cheapo copy of the game... managed to find one for like $23, including the discount from using a supporting link from another streamer I watch (TenShotsTV). I've not looked at how much the MRC / Subscription will be... but I'd be glad even to pay $15 a month for this honestly ... the environments ... the play controls ... the sheer awesomeness ... oh, not to mention, that PS3 users are bunched up with the PC players seamlessly.

SunTrust ... Really now??

So, long time since I last posted, and figured that this was going to be a small post about a little event that happened today at SunTrust in Clermont, FL. This is partially because the last time I made a blog post concerning the bank, I got a response. I'm not looking for a full response or explanation... but I'll say my peace and go from there.

I got paid by my parents on work that I did for them. This work was for their business, so the check was from a business account. This check was from SunTrust. I wanted to cash the check because this check I'd rather have in cash, rather than go across the street (literally, across Highway 50 was the UPS store that I could deposit the check into my USAA account for free, with no fees)... After I'd passed this SunTrust check to the SunTrust teller, and she had taken my personal information (Driver's License number), she stated there would be a $7 fee to cash the check ... the SunTrust check ... inside the SunTrust.... what?

The teller's response to my stating the above, was that check cashing places charge a fee. I understand check cashing places charging a fee, as it's not from an account that they can look at right there on their computer, so they're taking a risk at cashing it, and that fee is their risk cost. But a bank, cashing one of THEIR checks ... charging a fee?? The teller then stated that if I had an account, then I'd be able to avoid the fee and get other bonus'. I explained I used to have an account, and even still remembered the account number (seeing as I used to hand-write the account number when I was depositing checks at midnight-2am sometimes for a little over a year) ... I left because of some monkey business that was going on where they kept changing some fees and it wasn't pleasing.

The next time I go in, I suppose I'll just have to do the following: Attempt to cash the check, hear about the fee... state that I'd like to open an account right there, then deposit the check... which, seeing as it's from their own bank, the funds should be available instantly... then, once that was done, close the account and request for the account's balance... Oh hey... did I just cause you more trouble by making you create an account and then closing it, thus eliminating yet another account number from your system, additional paperwork for the creation process, and whatever else would happen. All to avoid this stupid $7 fee to cash YOUR OWN FARKING CHECK. Why oh why is it that I would have to do this to get cash, that YOU ALREADY HAD, and thus HAVE NO RISK to cash this check from your bank???