What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[Hobie-wan]

In retrospect, I am glad that the valve - literally - flew off the pipe while we were at home. If it had happened while we were on vacation or otherwise away, there would have been water running out of our front door...

Anyway, good luck!!

Indeed. A few years ago the ice machine in my fridge decided to break at some point when I was away for 3 hours on a Saturday night. I'm in a apartment too, but thankfully I have a small shop vac and the carpet kept most of the lake in the kitchen.

Good luck, watch out for the green pipes!

[flex wood]

I just got fired/demoted. I was managing my dads cleaning company and I was in charge of a couple buildings. I guess I pissed someone off because the property manager told my dad he didn't want me working in the building anymore. Now instead of being able to work 3 hours a day I'm going to have to be working almost full time and during the day to make the same money. I'm also looking into getting another job now too.

The worst part is this had been in the works for awhile probably about three weeks and I found out just two days ago. That's what pisses me off I could have another job set up if I had known it was coming.

[J T]

Smile: Working with a student today who actually seemed interested in our discussion of research methodology and not simply in trying to suss out what's on the test.

Ticked Off: So, the Direct2Drive download service was a reasonably good service, but they were bought by GameFly a few months ago, and after backing up my games to an external drive before the merger, I haven't gone back other than to double check that I would still have access to my game purchases online under the new ownership, which I do. I haven't been giving them my business though. So, I decided they deserved a fair chance and visited GameFly today. First, I find GameFly's web design to be convoluted and sloppy, but I found my way to the PC Downloads. I thought I would checkout Dragon's Age II, since it's no longer at Steam.

This is where I get ticked off. I click on what looks like an embedded trailer video. It opens up a new window with a gamefly ad banner on the side. OK. Then the video forces me to watch an ad before I can watch the trailer. WTF? You're making me watch an ad so that I can watch the ad for the product I might purchase from you? How obnoxious. But not only that, the ad I am forced to watch is one for FUCKING GAMEFLY! I'm on your site bitches! Don't force me to sit through video ads to get me to use your site when I'M ALREADY USING YOUR SITE. And then when the Dragon Age II commercial finally loads like I was waiting for, it CRASHES in the middle of it. I try to reload and I have to watch the Gamefly ad again if I want to see the trailer, but I now no longer care. No purchase made. I believe that is the exact opposite effect you want your advertising to have.

[Ziggy]

This is where I get ticked off. I click on what looks like an embedded trailer video. It opens up a new window with a gamefly ad banner on the side. OK. Then the video forces me to watch an ad before I can watch the trailer. WTF? You're making me watch an ad so that I can watch the ad for the product I might purchase from you? How obnoxious. But not only that, the ad I am forced to watch is one for FUCKING GAMEFLY! I'm on your site bitches! Don't force me to sit through video ads to get me to use your site when I'M ALREADY USING YOUR SITE. And then when the Dragon Age II commercial finally loads like I was waiting for, it CRASHES in the middle of it. I try to reload and I have to watch the Gamefly ad again if I want to see the trailer, but I now no longer care. No purchase made. I believe that is the exact opposite effect you want your advertising to have.

That's actually hilarious. You can't make that up.

[sabrage]

I refuse to use GameFly. When they made the transition, they took a lot of games and guides off the download service, so anyone that didn't download and back-up their Direct2Drive games they had already bought lost them permanently. Their prices haven't seemed particularly competitive compared to the GoG/Gamersgate/Steam/GMG cadre anyways, so it's not like boycotting has been any inconvenience anyways.

[harper]

: Home sweet home!! My mom's surgery was yesterday and fortunately everything went very well and she was able to come home today. I'm so glad that shit is over.

And some other good news, I talked to a lady today about some financial aid for the hospital bills that I'm racking up on and it looks like it should be able to cover all of the shit I've had to do so far and hopefully everything I've yet to do. This is awesome news because my dad's insurance sucks ass and seeing a cardiologist aint cheap.

Only thing that sucks about today is seeing my mom in pain and the fact that I'm just about running on empty as far as food and sleep goes.

[Ack]

This is where I get ticked off. I click on what looks like an embedded trailer video. It opens up a new window with a gamefly ad banner on the side. OK. Then the video forces me to watch an ad before I can watch the trailer. WTF? You're making me watch an ad so that I can watch the ad for the product I might purchase from you? How obnoxious. But not only that, the ad I am forced to watch is one for FUCKING GAMEFLY! I'm on your site bitches! Don't force me to sit through video ads to get me to use your site when I'M ALREADY USING YOUR SITE. And then when the Dragon Age II commercial finally loads like I was waiting for, it CRASHES in the middle of it. I try to reload and I have to watch the Gamefly ad again if I want to see the trailer, but I now no longer care. No purchase made. I believe that is the exact opposite effect you want your advertising to have.

Sorry, JT, but this guy designed their website:

[J T]

Oh this shit gets worse! I just tried to re-install Call of Cthulu and Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, which I previously purchased from Direct2Drive. They install just fine, but you can't run them until they phone home to Direct2Drive with some "activemark" protection software. Unfortunately, this piece of shit DRM software they use can't tell I am connected to the internet, so it doesn't work.

Here's what their customer support FAQ has to say:

**If you see the below screen (without the red circle) your game will not activate. That system is closed. Your game will be on the GameFly Client now or soon.


So now these two games (and probably others) are completely unplayable even after being installed on my computer.


I even tried redownloading in case they had been updated, but that didn't work either. What a crap company.

[BoringSupreez]

I only have two games from D2D, which I got several year ago and both for free: Deus Ex and some flight sim. I'll have to make sure not to lose the original install files.

[J T]

It won't matter. I had the original install files for these games. They install, but the ActiveMark DRM will prevent you from playing them unless you know how to crack it.

I'm glad I didn't buy more games from D2D than I did. Of the 53 games I had through them only 22 are available in the new GameFly client, which appears to be the only way to play them now, though I haven't checked to see if all of the 31 missing games use ActiveMark, so it's possible that some of them still work. Either way... fuck.