Lately, I’ve been covering a few spots on PayPerPost, mainly my disappointment with them. With that being said, I’d like to talk about another service called Smorty.

Smorty works in the same as way as PayPerPost - advertisers and bloggers are brought together in a marketplace for one purpose: to talk about products and services that people might not otherwise know about. They allow people who want to blog for money make that money writing their own unique articles.

These articles are then submitted into the system and upon review and acceptance, payment is given out on a weekly basis.

The process of submitting a post is fairly easy - campaigns are emailed to each user, who must then log in, accept what they would like to write about, and are then given three days to complete the assignment. Qualifications are few, the descriptions for the post short and to the point.

And while the marketplace seems small at first, I believe that given the right amount of time they will grow into a larger network, and more people will be able to get paid for blogging.

Recently, with the unveiling of Google’s backlash upon the internet, there have been multiple sides of the discussion over paid blogging coming from both sides of the field. High ranking sites, dropping from 7s to 5s in PR, and so-on. I’ve had my say on the pro-side for Google’s decision. Now I’m going to have my say on the con-side against Google.

Paid blogging is not going anywhere. Many people have pointed this out. Blogging itself is still a generally new market. Where people once thought un-profitable, many are finding a way to turn a profit. There are companies and people out there willing to front the funds to pay for unique advertising and there are people willing to write this advertising.

I don’t believe that dropping a websites PR is going to do any harm - if their PR was high enough to begin with, then that not only means they were doing something right, it means they have a solid readership and support community. And now matter how many places they fall in Page Rank, they will still have the same users, visitors, readers, and subscribers.

Smorty, among other companies that have ventured upon the field of blog advertising are not going anywhere soon. So long as there is a market, and there is a blogging community willing to write.

I’m not going to fly off the handle on some impossibly long rant, but I will say this: attempting to monetize your blog will not (I repeat) will not get you out of debt faster than just getting out of your house, walking down the street, entering the first fast-food restaurant you find, and filling out:

an application.

A job with a steady paycheck every 2 weeks (or every week, depending) will trump a job that you have to wait up to a month for payout on a single post.

There’s nothing wrong with monetizing your site through programs like PayPerPost, ReviewMe, Blogsvertise, or the like. But joining these programs without a plan for your blog, a solid readership, good Alexa/Google/etc. scoring, and the like with the idea that it is going to amazingly solve all of your debt problems will only leave you with 2 things: more debt, and disappointment.

I hate to repeat myself, but yes, this site is still dead. The only reason I am repeating myself is as follows:

On a whim, I decided to log in and see if I got any new reviews. After seeing that I didn’t, I decided to start hitting up the random website generator (it’s a random Yoursite profile that is displayed on the lower left corner of the screen.)

After clicking through 10 of these (each one leading to a website that didn’t exist anymore) and then realizing that probably out of the 2k+ websites listed within Yoursite, only about 45% of them were either broken links or dead sites, I re-realized the notion that Yes, Yoursite is dead.

So why do I keep going back? Habit, I suppose.

And maybe a dim hope that someday, Yoursite won’t be as horrible as it is now.

“You’ve been writing about Web sites, products, services and companies you love for years and you have yet to benefit from all the sales and traffic you have helped generate. That’s about to change. With PayPerPost™ advertisers are willing to pay you to post on topics. Search through a list of topics, make a blog posting, get your content approved, and get paid. It’s that simple.”

Jeremiah the Webprophet

“Your last non Opportunity-related post must have been within the 7 days immediately preceding your Opportunity-related post. After any break in blog activity of 7+ days, interim posts, that is, posts between Opportunity-related posts, submitted on the same day as your paid Opportunity-related posts will not count towards this requirement.”

Payperpost Terms of Service: 5.5 POSTING REGULATIONS, B:Interim Posts.

• It can take up to a month for you blog to be approved, up to a month for a post to be approved, and then 30 days after the post has been approved for you to receive payment for the post.
• Your post can be rejected if a previous post is “too short”, or the post that you submitted “can not be easily found”, or was not written within a certain amount of time from another non-paid post on your blog.
• If your blog has more than one author to it, it will not be accepted.

“How insane is that! I have been with them since May and loving every bit of it. How great is that they have acknowledged my efforts and like my blog! I feel so special!”

Source: Ashtonsart.blogspot.com

They list the Top Earners, but do not link their blogs. They have a “Blog of the Day” that seems to generate blogs randomly and without prejudice or concern for the over-all content of the blog itself. (Many of these so called “Blogs of the Day” do not state that the post they are writing was, in fact, sponsored as per their “code of ethics” on blogger/advertiser transparency in the Blogosphere.) It has also been stated that if a site implements a “site wide” disclosure policy, then they are exempt from the Transparency issue (and do not have to disclose on a post-by-post basis whether or not it was sponsored.)

In a way, this destroys that entire blogs credibility. Yes, I see that you disclose that you are paid for blog entries but how do I know which ones are paid and which ones are not?

“By participating in the PayPerPost Marketplace and accepting payment for the content you create you grant PayPerPost and the specific Advertiser purchasing the content a perpetual license to use, republish and distribute the content in all forms of media…Any use, publishing or distribution of a Blogger’s content by PayPerPost or any Advertiser must be accompanied by credit to the author of that content.”

Payerpost Terms of Service: 5.6 GRANT OF USAGE LICENSE

Any copyrights you may think you have within a sponsored post do not exist as the advertisers paying for the post itself hold the right through the PPP TOS to redistribute the material in question without your permission (but with your name intact).

“…but they offered me a LOT of money, and you know me - anything for a buck!”

Cause I’m Famous, Yo!

We’re going to focus on the current “top earner” of all time: Simple Kind of Life (Colleen 692). Disclaimer:none of the following information was obtained through illegal ways - it is all publicly available information.

The website itself is ranked 59,245 at Alexa.com with the bulk of its traffic coming from the United States.

It has a current Google Page Rank of 4/10.

It was created in 2003, and expires in 2008. Both Godaddy and DomainsbyProxy.com are listed within the Registrant information. Domainsbyproxy.com is a group that keeps registrant information (name, address, etc.) of the individual registering the domain private.

“When Jim woke me up this morning, I wanted into the bathroom to pee. Jim was standing (naked) at the sink, about 8 feet away from me. I noticed his rear had a red ring on it, and teased him about sitting on the can before he came in to brush his teeth and shower. Then the unthinkable happened.

I noticed a brown mark on my husbands ass.”

Is that poop on your butt or are you just happy to see me?

Link:simplekindoflife.com returns 522 Results. Taking into account that she runs 6 other blogs (and we need to filter the results for duplicates from the same domain). It would also seem that a lot of the backlinks are generated from within the PayPerPost community itself (or internet marketing type websites) as seen in small quantity here.

We can also look at a more filtered “who’s linking this site” view through Alexa’s own system: list.

We also see a spike in rank in the latter quarter of 2006 (around the time she joined PayPerPost.) Her first Paid post was on July 5th, 2006. Paying for my Hosting One Post at a Time.

(Before and after shots: Before. After.)

So one of the questions that has been on my mind: how does a blog that has relatively no visability in the blogosphere go from zilch to over $10,000 in just over a year and a half? (these figures, while not totaling the actual value she has been placed at, are publicly available through her regular posts on her blog at Simplekindoflife.com.) Especially with a PR 4 blog and and a post limit of 3 paid posts per day with interim posts required between each.

Let’s do the math: At 3 posts a day for 30 days out of the month in the 15 months leading to the present, we’re looking at 1350 posts total. 3 posts a day + 1 interim post for each paid post would = 4050. That’s a total of 578 entries (if the total amount of her income is divided between her 7 sites and if those 7 sites are registered sponsored blogs.) Her main site lists 3290 entries (link).

38 paid posts per month between 7 blogs. Each blog is discerned into a different category (obviously her shopping blog can’t be put into mens topics) so we’ll assume that she has each different blog tailored for different posts. 5 posts per blog.

Now let’s be generous and say that the top post earns 20 dollars while the basic one earn 5. We’ll average it to 15 a post. 570 per month. We get 8,850. With a PR 4 blog, she is excluded from a lot of the higher paying post opportunities, and it’s hard to imagine that she’d make 2k+ in extra PayPerPost income.

Now without the hard copy facts in front of me, these are merely speculations, but they are speculations that make you wonder. Where are these numbers coming from? Especially considering that it takes nearly a month for a post approval (at the most) and another month for payout.

7 of the entries in her media-mom pre-date the first paid post, leaving only 6 that were made after. How many more entries predate the initial paid as well? How many of those 4050 (or 578 necessary) predate the initial paid post?

What also screws with the numbers is the fact that she posts within multiple categories - just because the category itself reads x amount doesn’t mean there are x amount of individual posts within that category - it could very well be 5 posts in 3 categories, thereby padding the numbers by 1 per category.

On a side note, she’s not listed as today’s highest earner, or even this month’s highest earner.

So what is the point of this, you may be asking? There really is no point other than to get you to start questioning the very sources of your income. “Why are the same people getting xxx amount of dollars without any clear reason as to why other than a sponsored blog?” “How do people with seemingly no visibility within the blogosphere suddenly sky-rocket to mass amount of income and back links seemingly overnight?”

But most of all:

“Why continue to pollute the internet with links to things that nobody in their right minds would want in the first place.”

There is a reason that these companies pay people to hawk wares - and it’s no different from the Carpet Baggers and Tonic Vendors of the days long gone.

If people knew any better, they wouldn’t buy them in the first place. Knowledge is your key. Use it on the doors that matter.

Let me start this post off by stating I will never damage the integrity of this blog. Let me also state that this is the first time that a post that I have submitted has ever been rejected due to this sort of “violation”:

Interim Posts. Your last non Opportunity-related post must have been within the 7 days immediately preceding your Opportunity-related post. After any break in blog activity of 7+ days, interim posts, that is, posts between Opportunity-related posts, submitted on the same day as your paid Opportunity-related posts will not count towards this requirement.

Private Posts. Interim posts must not be labeled “Private” or locked out. Interim posts must also be of a reasonable length, at least one paragraph, 3-5 sentences. If your Blog’s interim posts lack quality PayPerPost may terminate your account.

The post in question has bee removed, the post in question for the violation being The Linking Game (October 8th 2007).

“What is the linking game anyway?’ you may ask. More or less, it’s just a post containing links to various points of interest on the internet - stories that may have grabbed my attention, videos that may have made me laugh. Pretty random things with no apparent reason or rhyme (other than that they exist and they were of some sort of interest at the time of publication of the post itself).”

That’s what the Linking Game is, I’m afraid. A post containing… links.

I’m sorry to inform anybody that this is not a page rank builder for products that nobody will ever buy in their lifetime. This is a blog, and we write about interesting things around here.

The Sponsored Post that “violated” their TOS has been deleted and removed from the Opp list.

Let me also point out that it took them a full half month to even get to that post and tell me that it was rejected. I don’t know anybody that is making any real money with Payperpost as every blog that seems to be “the blog of the day” is just another splog, each post containing comments, spelling and grammatical errors out the ares, and poorly written interem posts, not to mention a 50/50 concoction of poorly written regular posts and poorly written sponsored posts.

Not to mention that most of them don’t even follow TOS, writing 2 sometimes 3 Paid poss before they even write a regular post.

I’m losing my faith in you, Payperpost. Are those that said you would fail going to be proven right?

And now a word from our sponsors.

Today I had the pleasure of witnessing a union of two toons in the Ahazi Galaxy. One I’ve only known for a little bit and the other I don’t know at all. But what I have seen in the bride is a caring and compassionate person, easy to get along with and likable in every regard.

The reception was about an hour long, during the course of which I took photos.

To the beautiful bride and the groom as well, I hope that your days to come are as happy as the days that have already passed and to new futures breathes new hope.

Congratulations, ‘Candi’ and Motown.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that trial accounts on SWG are worth more than they appear. Let’s go over a few of these.

About the RE Loot

Check the prices on your server by visiting the SWG Galaxy Trade Forum for your galaxy and simply asking. Most people will not drop 100mil for a gigantic stack of junk loot. Sell it in stacks of 100 at CPU that is the going rate on your server. I got best results by selling for 5cpu less than the other guy. You could also throw it on a vendor in a bag (listing what’s in the bag) for a combine price of all items, or throw it on the bazaar. Best results will come from the Trade Forums in my experience.

Dance Macro

This is the dance macro I will be referencing a few times. Once you create it, fire it off about 10 times.

Macro name: flo

/flourish 1;
/pause 1;
/flourish 2;
/pause 1;
/flourish 3;
/pause 1;
/flourish 4;
/pause 1;
/flourish 5;
/pause 1;
/flourish 6;

Tansanari Point Station.

Since this is the first place you go, and a place you cannot return to, creating a trial account to gain access to this spot is vital as you can grab a bunch of Rever-Engineering junk loot. Best thing to do is make a Commando, grind him to the point in which you get an area attack and then just sit in the Droid Room and area blast the hell out of everything. Using an auto-loot macro, loot the corpses while deleting things like armor and paintings (or keeping the junk dealer window open and selling them as you go.) (We discussed auto-looting and the junk dealer in this post.)

Chapter Gifts

Trial accounts last for 14-days. Chapter Gifts drop in 7-10. For every trial account, that’s one extra Chapter Gift to be sold or kept.

GCW Points

Create a trial account and grind them to within 10 levels of the character you want GCW on, as well as making them the opposite faction. Easiest way to do this is by grinding Entertainer using a simple flourish macro and /changedance ‘ing to the newest dance learned when leveling. You can only get GCW 10x a day from killing the same toon, so make plenty of trial accounts. Have a medic friend rez, and after the first ten, log on the second trial account. And so on and so forth until you get your fill. You can run both your trial and main account on the same pc by creating a new file in notepad and titling it “user.cfg” and placing the following in the file:

[SwgClient]
allowMultipleInstances=true

Two sets of Items

Grind your trial account to a level 90 Combat Ent. using a dance macro, and then complete the quests that give the items you want another one of without having to pay the inflated merchant costs of whatever server you find yourself on. Make sure you are going after trade items and not no trade.

Run your own Credit Farming Business

This one is less likely to make you friends as you this is a very frowned upon practice, but if you’re doing it for yourself and not monetary gain, then it does carry less of a stigma. This one will also require the use of several computers.

The general method of choice is to have 7 trial accounts and 1 main. So that’s 8 people in the group, a possible of 2 accounts running on one very strong machine, and 1 person doing all of the work. 3 computers at best.

Grind all of the accounts to lvl 90 entertainers, make them Combat Entertainers, outfit the main toon (the one who will be doing the destruction) with good armor and a good weapon. Have a multi-person vehicle and set everyone to /follow the main toon.

Have all toons select two missions from a terminal and then proceed to all missions. Don’t worry about the mob surrounding the mission, just go for the kill and take out the lair/flag/whatever.

Repeat.

Keep in mind that each trial account can only hold 500k in credits, so once they are full, transfer credits so you don’t lose any in the Trial Account Cap.

1 mil per two toons at cap, with 7 toons will give you 3.5 mil every cap with a mission limit of 16 for the combined group. Each mission should take roughly 5 minutes to complete, and possibly travel included if you do the smart thing and get missions in the same direction, so you’re looking at roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes per 16 missions.

There are plenty of other things that trial accounts are good for - these are but a few.

A full list of // commands can be found by typeing “//” and pressing enter, although a) the list cuts of at a certain point and b) not all of these commands will work for your chosen profession. And as a side note, it would appear that the // command is more for the devs than anybody else as it includes commands like /setGodmode, /renamePlayer, and other commands that a normal user would most definitely never have access to. Also keep in mind that some of the slash commands that used to work if you either typed in the target manually or had the target pre-selected, now need you to physically hover your mouse over the target. They are not all like this, but some of them have been changed within the last year with the NGE.

/bug
Typing this will open a window that will allow you to report a bug anywhere in the game. Includes several options to check off so that you can be specific with the information you are sending.

/unstick
If your toon becomes “stuck” this will attempt to put you elsewhere on the map (usually within 15m) of the spot that you became stuck in.

/t (playername) (message)
This will send a private message to a specific user.

/r (message)
When using the private message function, this will send a response to the last person to send you a private message.

/g (message)
When in a group, this will drop your message into your group-chat tab.

/rot (left/right) (1-180)
When placing items in a house, this will rotate the item to the left or right the degree amount you specify. To angle them (as in trying to place items in corners, rotating by 15 or 45 degrees works best.)

/mov (up/down) (1-???)
When placing items in a house, this move the item up or down the amount you specify. Best integers to use are 1, 5, 10, 15, 25, 50 and 200.

/target (name)
Targets the item, person, or whatever you specify. Works best when you are in a multi-level structure and are not sure of where something is. Say that you’re looking for Ackbar and have no clue where he or she or it is. Type /target Ackbar and press enter. Then, move the camera around until you see Ackbar being targeted. Works on different levels of a structure and even targets through walls.

Also remember the pressing alt and y (separately) will take you into free target mode and out of “over-the-shoulder-annoying-NGE-mode”.

/notepad
Opens a notepad like text feature that you can (you guessed it) write notes in.

/report (player name)
The player must have entered text in the chat session for this to work.

/getv
Tells you how many days you have logged.

/claim
Claims any rewards you may have earned. If none, a window will pop up stating so.

/follow
Hover your mouse over a player or npc, and type /follow and press enter. You will now follow that person or npc wherever they go.

/forage
You will search the surrounding area for random things. Will more than likely turn up enzymes, but has a possibility of turning up a treasure map (one out of every 100 is what has been reported on this one.)

Macro name: Forage

/forage;
/pause 5;
/macro forage;

Fire the macro, forage, walk forward for about a second, forage again, and then repeat from step 2.

/way (coords)
Replacing coords with the first and third set of coords (the middle is not necessary) will create a waypoint in your datapad to that specific location. Typing /way and pressing enter without entering coords will create a waypoint at your immediate and current coords.

/pvp
When Rebel or Imperial, /pvp will turn you combatant and typing it a second time and pressing enter will turn you Special Forces. You have to visit a recruiter of your faction to go on leave.

Going combatant is usually almost instantaneous, and going from combatant to SF usually takes 30 seconds. Going from SF to combatant or on leave will take 5 minutes.

/paymaint (amount)
When in a building you own, this command will pay maintenance fees of however much you place in the amount. (Increments of up to 100k). Players with a Mustafarian Bunker or Guildhall can place any amount into the structure and be able to withdraw from the treasury menu option. Regular houses do not allow for maintenance withdrawal.

/guildr
Will remove you from your current guild.

Known bugged commands
A bug with /watch is that it will give you the message “You have stopped watching…” and you actually have to radial menu the player and select “watch” from the menu.

While you can no longer /burstrun, you can still /gallop while on a mount.

Typing /unstick in front of a pvp line will not dump you on the other side as on-leave or combatant since when entering a PVP-zone your status is, in fact, LOCKED as Special Forces. If you are on-leave, it will continue to push you back, and if you are combatant, you will be locked in as Special Forces.

In Quests Forgotten: Part 1, we talked about getting the Fibertech Steel Plating, Protecto-Net Shield, Quantum Ion Drive, and Corellian Beamrail Gauss Cannon by doing Nym’s Starmap. Now we’re covering getting 2 sets of Clone Wars Paintings, getting the complete set of Katarn Armor (you will need 10 slots free in your inventory or you won’t get it all), getting the RIS Armor Schematic (Master Armosmith), the 2 Warren Badges (Compassion, Imperial Hero), and one quest you should avoid because it does absolutely nothing.

I would also like to point out that Swg.allakhazam.com is probably the best resource on the internet that is free and openly available to anyone who finds themselves stuck on a quest in the Star Wars Galaxies.

I would also like to point out that of course we did not write the guides we are linking to - merely pointing to them as a quick reference for those who either didn’t do them, forgot about them, or never knew about them.

Two Sets of Clone Wars Paintings
The Clone Relics: The Hunter Quests on Tatooine for both paintings.
Collecting Survey Data on Kashyyk for the Clone Trooper painting.
The Big Cover-up on Kashyyk (quest line gives General Greivous painting on Second part.)

Katarn Armor
Neutral (no faction)
Imperial
Rebel

RIS Armor Schematic (Master Armosmith)
Save you some reading:

I just went to see Mol today for my first time, and this is what he has to say…if your a Master Armorsmith.

Mol-”You believe you have learned all there is to know about being an armorsmith? You haven’t! I know far more than you ever will, but still there are a few lessons I could teach you. Learning these things will not be easy for someone such as you. It will be expensive in both time and in credits. Furthermore, I have no patience for insolent students. You do as I say and don’t bother me with stupid questions! Give me 50,000 credits and we’ll get started. Be quick about it! I’m very busy.”

You-”I am ready to begin. Here are the credits.”

Mol-”I suspected you would agree to my terms. Let’s get started. I’m going to teach you how to construct my masterpiece invention: R.I.S. armor. This armor has no equal in battle. Everything else is junk compared to this! Of course, it is exceedingly difficult to create, especially for a fledgling armorsmith such as you. But, no matter. We’ll take it slow so you can comprehend. Are you with me so far?”

You-”Yes”

Mol-”As you know, creating armor starts with the armor segment. That is where we shall start as well. Like all armor segments, R.I.S. segment require resources which I’m sure you already know how to acquire. They also, however, require some special components. For strength, they require bone fragments from a Woolamander Harrower. For flexibility, they require the hide of a Recluse Gurk King. Use this schematic to create the armor segment and bring it back to me. I don’t care how you get the materials, but you must construct the segment yourself. You can only learn by doing it yourself! Now go busy yourself with making the armor segment and come back to me when you are done.”

Now you have the draft schematic for the R.I.S. segment. Required resources follow:
-160 units of Titanium Aluminum
-160 units of Chanlon Intrusive Ore
-75 units of Rori Fiberplast
-1 Woolamander Harrower Bone Fragment
-1 Gurk King Hide
-2 layers and 1 segment enhancement are optional

The Warren Badges
(as of October 12th, 2007 the Warren has been infested with ALOT of high level high agro creatures. You have been warned.)
Getting into the Warren
Compassion
Imperial Hero

A quest to avoid
(no experience, no faction, no items. Does nothing.)
Battle of the Witches

So in the spirit of having nothing to do (or maybe needing a couple of quests to get your levels up) let’s take a look at the quests that you may have forgotten about (or didn’t know existed).

First up: Nym’s Starmap

Part I
Starting Location: Narmle, Rori @ coords -5725 -2492
The starter map is on a timer - if it’s not there, wait 30 minutes.
Once it is in your inventory, use it. This will start a quest.
Go to -5306, -2317 and talk to Nym.
He’ll send you to Fort Tusken on Tatooine.
Go to Fort Tusken, go to the very bottom of the inside of Fort Tusken.
Click on “Ornate Box”. Return to Nym.

Part II
This time, he’ll send you to Kashyyk. Go to the Trandoshan Slaver’s Camp. (It’s a POI.)
Kill Trandoshan slavers until you get a mission update.
Continue killing until you get all 7 pieces.
Return to Nym.

Part III
This time, he’ll send you to Dathomir. Shuttle into the Trade Outpost.
Go to the Nightspider Cult Cave (it’s a POI).
Goto coords -1086 6128.
Open skeleton. Grab contents. Return to Nym.

Part IV
This time you’ll be going back and forth between Nym and Han Solo in the Lucky Despot in Mos Eisley, Tatooine. Coords 3406, -4579.
Pay him for the map.
Return to Nym.
Done.

Rewards:
Quest XP
148,805

Items
Fibertech Steel Plating
Protecto-Net Shield
Quantum Ion Drive
Corellian Beamrail Gauss Cannon

“Base Busts aren’t ruining the game - you are”
[follow this thread]

[] The Good
I got challenged to a duel by a random combat Entertainer credit grinder. (You know the score - big group of randomly generated names following one guy, run to flag of spawned MOB, destroy flag, run to next, all follow.) First I drew agro, and then watched him get incap, then I watched him destroy the flag and he walked over, challenged me, and died.

I walked over to the guys that were in the skiff and asked them if I could help them as they were just sitting there. A few seconds later, they drove back in the direction of Theed.

[] The Confusing
I don’t do a lot of pvp. This last week has seen a big change in that as I finally went to Restuss just to see what all the fuss was about. I’ve gone on my combat ent -Kidd- and then I made an appearance on the Jedi that I am leveling.

As I was running into the center of the city, or ruins, or whatever they are, an SF rebel jedi began running to the center. As I began attacking him, he began running. So I ran after and continued to attack him. I didn’t really think anything of this as this was standard for most of the Jedi I’ve seen in pvp. Attack, see lots of people, and then run. After killing him, the few imps standing around began laying into me about he had said to “Please stop” and that he was a returning player and whatnot.

I was pretty confused as I had just gotten finished with dealing with a cloaked spy who was doing nothing but cloak+venomous ploy and other sneak attacks. So I spoke my mind and began to leave. The same Jedi started to make a run back and I stopped, said “I’m sorry - if you were saying stop, I didn’t see it. Go ahead and get your kill.”

One of the SAME people who was getting upset with me for killing him began fighting him! I was confused.

What the hell is up with this? Everytime I go to Restuss, the only thing I see is people inside the PVP zone and then the opposite faction standing outside of the PVP zone. Every time.

I also remember that a long time ago, when a member of the same faction was attacking an NPC of the same faction, they’d jump right in and enjoy the killing. Now, people just stand around and either laugh at you when you are incapped or laugh when you die.

Am I the only person helping out when I see somebody attacking the opposite faction? I’ve jumped to SF to help people out, and I’ve jumped combatant to help out (even if I knew I was going to die or actually did die). I didn’t get mad - I just enjoyed the gameplay.

Some people have noticed the sig on my ent toon which is “This is just a game, and I play it.” That’s pretty much my motto when I play. However, it seems like more and more people are just “going through the motions” or just doing certain things to be asses.

Gone is the commradery (no, I can’t spell. I just woke up.) and the factional brotherhood.

I attended a bb the other day (not naming names, not saying what toon, not saying where.) I didn’t stay to see the bases go up in flames, but I did stay long enough to see the biggest gathering of toons on Ahazi that I’ve seen in months. Hell, since I’ve seen since the NGE hit. There were people standing around and watching entertainers, running in and out of the bases, talking amongst themselves and having a GOOD time.

Imagine that - a good time can still be had on a game (that I’ve talked to various Vets who still log on) that is only being logged on to because “they’re waiting for their account to expire”.

Playing with the mechanics of the game is not ruining the game itself. The many bitchers, moaners, gankers, and other *ers are ruining this game. Your bitter, angry, infantile and sometimes questionable ways of playing this game are ruining this game.

I’ve stood by and watched. And watched. And watched. I’ve talked to many people who enjoy this game and play it fairly, honorably, and well. And I’ve seen people who play this game like it’s some new game for the SNES that they’d just rather pop in the Gamegenie and cheat their way to victory.

Nobody is going to stop you from continuing to do that. But with the amount of people I haven’t seen logged into Ahazi, you’d think the more friends you can get on your side, the better it will be. Because I bet I can name at least 5 guilds with 100+ members and only 5 of them are active.

I bet I can fly to any city on any planet and 5 out of 7 of those cities will be filled with houses that are owned by toons that no longer play, or are ghost towns thanks to the Demolition Program.

There are a lot of great things coming to SWG - no, the CU or pre-NGE is not coming back and we should focus on what’s ahead, not behind.

I know not a lot of people are actually going to read this, and will probably comment with something like “First” or “/flame” or “Shut up whiner, bla bla bla.” Which is half of what I expect from this server.

And that right there is the sad part.

I speak my mind on many issues that affect us all (or at least the ones who are still trying to enjoy this game) and for what its worth, I’ll probably get flamed back to the stone age.

Flame away, mother fuckers, flame away. I don’t give a shit.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had spells (very rarely) wherein I could hear a very high-pitched whining noise in my left ear. Never in my right, always in my left. The sounds coming into my ear would drop dramatically in level, almost as if ceasing to exist at all, and then the whining noise would replace them, almost un-noticeably.

Sound, another sound like going underwater (without the splash) and then the whining.

I did some looking around (because if it’s happening to me, then it more than likely is happening to others) and came across an article that listed Tinnitus as being a possible cause for this.

One of the possible causes of Tinnitus was listed as “low levels of serotonin”, which is believed to play a part in mood, and is believed to be associated with many disorders, one of them being clinical depression.

Since I have already been diagnosed with this, I can only conclude that a possible cause for the ringing is tinnitus. However, being the diagnostician that I certainly am not, and being an American without health care (and no possibility of it unless we (ha!) get Universal Healthcare like so many of the counties that are smart enough to do this instead of just watching their citizens die in the street (more or less)), I can only say that this is a good guess and can not actually diagnose or confirm it.

The more you know…

Now I’d like to talk about Home Improvement (no, not the delightful show we all remember from the 90’s but actual home improvement.) If you’re going to buy resale homes or are just planning on improving the home you already rent or own, then this can be a big task to undertake without the proper knowledge and preparation.

It’s one that I’ve been through on a countless number of occasions. I’ve been volunteered (either by myself or by my friends) to help fix up a house, or an apartment, or a shed. Anything that needed help fixing, I was usually the one that somebody would come to. (My inability to ever say no to a friend was probably got me into a lot of these situations, but that’s another story.)

We would eventually get it done, but the point is, we would eventually get it done. We never planned, we never really prepared or really thought about how big the project was we were taking on, we just knew what we wanted the end result to be.

They say that “Knowledge is power“. (We definitely needed a little more power.)

When taking on projects like this, it’s always important to plan and know what you are doing. Knowing what you want the end result to be is a helping hand, but it will not make things happen. Only your ability to do the tasks required will do this.

Doityourself.com is a free community, filled with loads of resources for just this kind of undertaking. A place to find helping hands in your projects. It even offers dvds to help, which would come as a great visual aid to any project!

With over 100 topics and forums on Do It Yourself projects, there really is no excuse to let the project you start fall apart before you can even finish.

And now a word from our sponsors.

Creating a distance learning program site always has a good potential. With cheap domain name registration and dedicated hosting services, not much cost is required. Using phone systems like skype one can conduct direct marketing. Using data backup software for would help in avoiding data loss.

Obligations at home have kept me from creating any new music. Well, that’s not entirely true. But what is true is I’ve undertaken certain projects that demand a certain amount of time. But this is not to say that I have completely forgotten about EAD and it is not to say that I have completely forgotten about putting out any new tunes.

Quite the contrary - I’ve been thinking of how to implement a music player for these tunes as well as what the next album will sound like. I’ve been thinking of a possible re-mix of the original Martyr for a Day as well as a new direction to take with the piano melodies.

It’s been weighing heavily on my mind and I regret that I haven’t been able to sit down and belt a few pieces out (and then spend countless hours wondering what’s wrong with them, changing them as I come up with new reasons to do so.)

So it hasn’t been far on my mind - there have just been a few things that needed to be closer.

The digital age and the creation of Wordpress themes has become so integrated as a social project into the daily lives of so many people that the creation of themes has become more streamlined than ever before.

Pick any theme available for Wordpress, and I can almost guarantee that it shares common roots with almost every other theme released, save for the ones coded by the left-over remnants of the Notepad-era.

With an open library on the very subject of code, and the helping hands put forth by the community in its entirety, its a wonder to me that there still exist companies that try to sell Wordpress themes that are nothing more than shiny versions of more standard Free Wordpress themes.

Anybody with a little bit of ingenuity and common sense can look at a theme anywhere on the internet and figure out what Wordpress function to use to get the same effect.

Saying that Wordpress is a CMS is saying nothing more than “I can place certain elements in certain places and make them appear when certain pages are shown”.

Manging content is no more complex than categorizing information and making it easy for the end-user to reach said-information.

And I think once people realize this fully, that they can make themes on-par with the ones that are being sold, the whoring of yet another great innovation in the Internets history can stop completely, and we can get back to what it was meant to be.

Impressionistic art, voyages of the 1850’s, natural sciences, night clubs, performing arts, and more. These are but a few things that you can find in the hidden treasure that is Raleigh, North Carolina.

Mysteries of the Lost Colony, an exhibit found in Raleigh, examines England’s first view of America, focusing on more than 70 watercolors made by John White on the voyages to Virginia (now North Carolina) in the 1580s, and is the being shown for the first time in over 40 years, in its entirety, outside of England. Also on exhibit are items from the 16th-century that are related to the watercolors, and a look at 70 years of history, which includes an outdoor live-drama entitled “The Lost Colony”.

You can register to win a FREE Raleigh Getaway, which will include:

One night accommodations for two at the Courtyard by Marriott Raleigh Crabtree Valley
$25 gift certificate to Bloomsbury Bistro
Free VIP admission for two to Rum Runners
2 tickets to the North Carolina Theatre
2 tickets to the N.C. Museum of Art’s Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism
2 tickets to Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences

Some places to consider visiting while on your Fall Getaway could include the NC Shakespeare Festival, featuring “The Comedy of Errors”. Other performances apart from the Shakespeare Festival include “The Marriage of Figaro” (performed by The Opera Company of North Carolina accompanied by the N.C. Symphony), “A Few Good Men”, and “The Man of La Mancha”.

Also in the fall, “Tyler Perry’s What’s Done in the Dark”, and the Broadway performance of “Mama Mia!”.

There’s also the Capital City Bike Fest, hosted by drag racing legend Ray Price!

There is so much more to do in the fall in Raleigh than I have been able to go into! So what are you waiting for? Visit, learn, and register to win a free trip to this amazing city.

Two pictures currently submitted for approval:

There’s more to life than the internet and what’s currently on it - get outside and live a little. Starting now.

And now a word from our sponsors.

The Painting

“So in the interest of keeping the peace, and to ensure that the community’s focus is on the coolness of the purge event and the upcoming release of Chapter 6, we have decided to go ahead and grant all players the “Redemption” painting. Rest assured that our primary goal was and is to get as many people to play Star Wars Galaxies as possible and we feel that this event is a great step in that direction by appealing to those folks that have already made a large investment in the game in the past. We will continue to look for ways to appeal to former players to come back and rediscover the game with all of the cool new features we have added over the last year, but we certainly have no desire to alienate any of the current users that have been so loyal to the game.”

I was digging through the announcements on the forums and came across this thread. What I find most interesting is that instead of improving on game-play, instead of improving on professions, instead of improving period, they felt that offering players a piece of house decor would pacify them. Especially the vets.

Is there something totally fucked with this logic or is it just me?

A few days ago, I talked to my dad. (For the first time in over a month.) I made more money via Adsense over the few days that I blogged about SWG, macros, afk grinding, and credit farmers than I have in the three years since I originally signed up for it (combined). I’ve become more isolated in the past few months than I’ve ever been my entire life and for the first time: it scares me. My van is still randomly stopping and I don’t know what is wrong with it. I am still waiting to take it into the mechanic to have it checked out. I’m turning procrastination into an art form. My inability to connect to people is not by choice, circumstance, or anything else, other than the fact that I just don’t know how to. I’m losing my faith in 90% of the online population. That’s down by 2% in previous years. I don’t think you, the reader, will care about any of this because it has nothing to do with you.

Prove me right by doing one of the following:
[]do not comment
[]do comment, but comment by saying “you’re absolutely right”
[]Press the “back” button on your browser window.

This has been a Woe is Me Production. Your regularly scheduled broadcast will re-commence shortly.

We’ve released a new theme called Nottke and will offer no support. It is recommended to be downloaded by those who are very confident in the creation and implementation of Wordpress themes as it is a direct rip of of this site and is not ready to simply be dumped and then activated on another site.

There is a lot of code that needs to be edited and we offer it strictly on an as-is basis.

If you feel like your skills in php and design are sufficient, then why not give it a shot?

The following is but a small sample of threads started here in the Ahazi section that are completely and accurately 100% SWG related. 

So who thinks the Phillies can do it?
Halo 3
Just Curious… Military Vets, take a look!
Did you know? Stupid State Laws
iPhone Blended
Blendtec vs CHUCK NORRIS!! Will Chuck Blend?

That is just a few of the 100% SWG related posts you will find in this forum.  But wait, there's more!

DE TROOF ABOUT iPHONES! (among others) are also prime examples of very informative yet articulate pieces are they relate to the Galaxies.  Note their carefully chosen composition of titles, and spaces per word. 

Amazing!

How are these (and other) topics so carefully crafted for your SWG consumption? 

Here's my hypothesis:

A crack team of specialists sits around a giant picture of the known universe (the Star Wars universe!) and carefully molds threads (that's forum topics for the rest of us!) out of meticulously chosen buzzwords (again, that's hot topics for the rest of us) and then carefully and yet ingeniously write well written and formulated articles on the chosen topic (Star Wars Galaxies) until finally posting this content to the forums for all to see.

The next step in the procedure is to then have all of you comment on these articles, thus furthering the spreading of information about SWG to the entire forum population. 

Neat!

But wait, there's even more! 

Certain topics that are un-related to SWG or spark an actual conversation may become lost in the fold or deleted entirely.  This is due to the fact that *edited* and the mass production of *edited* in relation to *edit* *edited* in the known universe.

OMFG!

Furthermore, *edited* and *edited* in the *edited* for your pleasure to *edited*.

And there you have it!  A complete run-down of how topics relating to SWG are formed and created and posted right here on the Ahazi forums for all to see!

I hope that we've all learned something, and that tomorrow will be brighter for you than today was.

Goodnight and good-luck!

Ahazi

Revisited the Road to Nowhere and snapped over 100 new pictures - take a look!

On Thursday, September 27th at 4:00 AM PDT all U.S. and European galaxies will be taken down for server maintenance and a live update.

When the update is complete, all galaxies will be live but unavailable while we complete final testing. All galaxies will be made available after that time.

4:00 AM PDT (Los Angeles) / 6:00 AM CDT (Austin) / 7:00 AM EDT (New York)
12:00 PM GMT (London) / 1:00 PM CET (Berlin) / 8:00 PM (Tokyo)
Click here for a Time Zone Calculator.

Beast Master:

* Fixed an issue where beasts would stop auto-firing specials in multiple target scenarios.
* Fixed an issue with beast regeneration rates when the beast was fighting multiple targets.
* Fixed issue with all beast enfeeble attacks. Beware the Lava Flea!

Jedi:

* Moving while the Forsake Fear ability has an active countdown bar will cancel the ability.

Medic:

* Serotonin Boost no longer removes the Bacta Overload debuff.

Trader:

* Increased the Action cost of hand sampling.
* Increased the base amount harvested for hand sampling.
* Added a maximum of one notification box per special event per character for hand sampling.

Imperial Theme Park:

* Characters who previously completed the ARC-170 quest for Queen Kylantha can now continue to advance in the Imperial Theme Park.
* Fixed an issue with Lord Hethrir’s commlink window displaying the player instead of Lord Hethrir.

Miscellaneous:

* The character selection screen displays [UNLOCKED SLOT] in red after the character name for a character that was created in the unlock slot.
* Fixed an issue that could cause vendors to break when being packed up and moved to a nearby location.
* Removed Nym’s Quartermaster on Naboo.
* Removed the loot tables of Jedi sentinels and lowered the level of Jedi sentinels.
* Characters must now wait 2 hours after a successful character transfer before logging in on the player’s new server.

SWG Forums

“The forums and the game are down for 12+ hours, and they work even worse now? SOE never ceases to amaze me.”

Is this a Joke on the SWG Forums

There have been plenty of vocalized complaints about many things that have come the way of SWG playerbase. But nothing speaks louder than videos. (Because apparently, no matter how many words are being expressed, they still think they’re doing a good job.)

Of course, if the direction the game is heading is any indication, videos don’t much either. (But they are quite entertaining.) Some of these are tributes to PRE-CU, which, according to most of the elders (including myself), would happily be welcome back over the NGE and the many things they have managed to fuck up along the way.

FU SOE: Star Wars Galaxies Tribute
Star Wars Galaxies Playground
SWG Pre-CU
Goodbye SWG = Pre-CU
Goodbye SWG
Pre-CU SWG First Jedi Video Ever
Jedi Night (Star Wars Galaxies oldschool)
CU Jedi grind (very nice quality, btw)

“I wonder how SoE acctualy managed to come up with the ide to ruin something that there costumer loved….
Oh wait.. It wasent SoE.. its was all of you. Complaining. Whatever SoE did, you keept on complaining. Next time you play something you love. Shut it”

Then how is it that games like WoW continue to do so well and yet never have to “revamp” at the rate that SWG does and has? How is it that games like EQ continue to grow in popularity and never really lose the main focus of the game itself? How is it that these games are not only able to perform so well (especially WoW. Flawless performance even with every graphic setting turned up all the way) and yet SWG continues on a landslide downward?)

The players aren’t coding the game. We aren’t changing its direction. We’re merely voicing our opinion of a service that we not only pay for, but draw enjoyment from. It’s asinine to even begin to blame the customer. We have at one point asked for game enhancements, but not once did we ask for them to completely break it.

“i just mailed SOE yesterday and today i got a mail back that pre cu comes back in the next 2 month god im so happy”

That would imply that they actually listen to anything the player base has to say. Which is incorrect. (However, fuck me running if I’m wrong.)

It really is kind of sad.

I totally agree to “get the violence off the ice” and stop the Canadian Seal hunt but I think the message would get across in a more timely fashion if there more of this:

and less of this:

I know where fur comes from - it comes from the bloody carcasses of animals that are bludgeoned to death. However, if you want to get the message across, more of this:

and less of this:

(Check out PETAs new campaign: Animals Used for Clothing. Much more effective, and yet…)

Not really.

Bill #036: Addition of 5th Gen Lightsabers

Proposal:
What I hope to show you here is a solution to level the playing field on ALL sabers (1H, 2H and Double-Bladed), so that Jedi can choose to craft a Lightsaber based on the choice of look, rather than what does the most damage:

1. Add the next level of 5th Gen schematics at CL88-90 to the profession wheel and use the current Jinsu stats for the base of all 5th Gens.

2. Make the Jinsu and Old Republic Hilts 5th Gens, however since they are looted, the CL requirement to craft them can stay as they are.

3. The addition of 5th Gens will add allow the placement for another damage pearl/crystal, and since the removal of the 2% resource buff that was available prior to Chapter 5, stats will then remain about the same.

…read more!

First, some silliness.

But for a real nerdgasm, click here.

Anybody who’s seen AOTS knows who Zach Selwyn is (I know he’s been in more than just a cable television show…)

Presenting his latest project: Damage Done.

Profession: Entertainer

Equip only the following:

Captivator Cloak
Captivator Boots
Captivator Gloves
Captivator Pants

The end result is:

When checking the validity of html in W3, it gives you not only the errors, but what line the errors are on.

When you break something in Wordpress, it outputs an error message with what line the error occurred on.

Wish-list item numero uno: when coding in the theme editor, a simple little digit somewhere easily seen on the page (no matter where you are) that tells you what line you are currently editing.

(note: as is the nature of MMORPGs (Massively multi-player online role-playing games) to change over periods of time (sometimes short, sometimes long) certain aspects of this guide may become out of date and thus may need to be updated or removed all-together (in the case of a patch that wipes out the existing content that was there at the time of writing the guide). We will try to keep this (and other guides that we may or may not write) up to date with the current patches and fixes).)

Contents

Combat XP & Quest XP
AFK grind for BH
AFK Grind for BH reconfigured for other battle classes
AFK Grind (both of the above) with added auto loot for more credits
Grind Spots

Leveling any battle character from 1-45

Combat XP & Quest XP

CL 01-10 - Tansanari Station
CL 10-45 - Legacy Quest
(Which also includes quests from Coronet Murmurs and the entire Corsec line)

From this point, there are various places that offer high lvl characters relative to your own level. Coronet/Tyrena have herds of Meatlump type NPCs that range from mid 20’s to late 30’s (level wise) that will net you upwards of 300+ XP per kill with a pretty fast respawn rate if you keep an auto-loot macro going while you kill.

Macro Name: loot

/loot;
/macro loot;

Mouse over the desired target (from up to 25ms away) and it will loot everything on the body. (Even allows looting while in the middle of combat).

AFK Grind for BH

For Bounty Hunters who reach lvl50, the Razor Wire ability bleeds your targets which can allow for an AFK grind from here on out (which can include factional grinding if necessary).

Macro Name: razorwire

/ui action toolbarSlot 00;
/pause #;
/macro razorwire;

Place the Razor Wire action in the first slot on the bottom row and the razorwire macro anywhere on the top. Change “#” to the amount of refill time for your razorwire action so you can have it reactivate at the appropriate time.

Macro Name: cycletarget

/ui action cycleTargetoutward;
/pause #;
/macro cycletarget;

Change “#” to approx. amount of time it takes to kill single enemy. (This works best when you have a very excellent weapon or somebody healing you.) You can also change the “#” to a shorter time to agro entire group if you have somebody healing you at the same time. (Healing macro) Place this one next to your razorwire macro.

Now, you’ll need an anti-afk macro. Something very simple.

Macro Name: afk

/yell you wanna live forever?!;
/pause 120;
/macro afk;

Place this next to your cycletarget macro and run all three at once. Make sure the Cruelty, Lethality, and Trap Extension branches of Bounty Hunting are maxed out so that you get the best overall effect from Razor Wire.

The razor wire will bleed your targets continuously while you shoot them repeatedly.

One final step:

Options -> Keymap -> target -> Primary attack. Rebind this to the space bar and then weight down the space bar so that you can now truly go afk.

Works well with factional targets and MOBs alike.

AFK Grind for BH reconfigured for other battle classes

Do all of the above, replace razorwire with special attack of choice.

AFK Grind (both of the above) with added auto loot for more credits

Do the above (depending on whether you are BH or not) run the auto-loot. Make sure you have a backpack to drop the non-stackable items in and keep the stackable items in your base inventory to continue to refill.

(For Smugglers with the call Fence ability)
Once inventory is completely full, call fence, sell goods, rinse and repeat.

(For everybody else)
Type /dump to stop all macros cold in their tracks, go to nearest junk dealer, sell all loot, and then start up again.

Grind spots

(A listing of good spawns to grind up Combat XP on.)

CL 01-10

CL 10-20

CL 20-30

CL 30-40

CL 40-50:
-3646 101 2870 (Corellia) (Closest starport: Kor Vella)
NPCS: a Crazy Durni (CL 38)

CL 50-60
CL 60-70
CL 70-80
CL 80-90

We are corrupt. I’m not some dub founded school boy who has found his way to the light due to some unexplainable finger flipping the switch or showing me the way - I’m a person who’s already had their eyes open but didn’t know exactly what they were looking at to begin with.

If something is broken, then how is it supposed to know that it’s broken? It can’t fix itself without the help of outside influence; it just merely continues to exist within its state of being broken.

There are those who do not understand and there are those who do. There are those pushing for change and there are those who are continuing to allow the perpetuation of this existence merely because they don’t know any better.

But the fact still remains: we are corrupt.

I welcome the end to this age and the beginning of the next because maybe in the next we won’t be so blind, so stupid, so mislead. Maybe in the next age we won’t be so eager to accept what is given to us with the hopes of maybe getting the same (or less) the next time - just as long as we get something.

It’s a sad state of affairs that we’ve all come to call reality. It’s something we either deny or exclude from our current scope of what reality is. We’ve come to even agree that reality is subjective.

I’ve come to agree that reality is subjective.

Free will doesn’t exist and there are forces beyond our control that plan and plot and we do nothing. This is not a subjective sentence.

“I don’t get it.” will be the phrase that leads us to our damnation.
“I don’t get it.” will be our anthem.
“I don’t get it.” will be what we say simply because we weren’t informed otherwise.

You didn’t get the memo - neither did I. The memo was never written. Perhaps it’s a good thing that people like me - like you - aren’t in the spotlight. It’s people like me - like you - that bring the whole system down.

Don’t listen to what I’m saying - maybe I’ll live a very long and healthy life. Maybe I won’t.
Don’t listen to what I’m saying - maybe that’s just the survivalist instinct - the need to live.

But then again, do listen to what I’m saying. What you’re saying. And maybe I won’t have to worry about my survivalist instinct. Maybe I won’t have to worry about a thing.

Maybe this will all blow over. Maybe you’ll forget about it in the morning.

Or maybe there’s simply nothing you can do about it.

We’ve all been pwnd.

The video in question as pointed to in the SWG forums *came across it after a few hours of trolling this morning.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Fool.

Before anybody panics, I’d like to clear the air up for just a moment and let you all know this: Polar Shift is a theory that on December 21st 2012 Earth will experience earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or other natural disasters. Oh, and I can save a lot of money by switching to Geico.

ABS has compiled a nice little directory of famous internets peoples (or Internet Video Celebrities, if you will) which include but are not limited to the Star Wars Kid, the Numa Numa kid, Chocolate Rain, Super Greg and others).

Jason Kottke posted about a pair of unusual videos which featured Eva Herzigova. (And of course, Youtube being the corporate wasteland whore sell-out that it is - or just because they are “teh suck” - who knows? - the second video is “no longer available” because it probably breaks some sort of copyright law that the owners of Youtube/Google just made up. Or it was “too adult”. Who knows. All I know - download your videos, please.)

Jinx has a whole line of WoW shit. (Like hats with exclamation points and shiznit). Threadless, on the other hand, just wants your nuts.

Shocked and amazed that I had spelled “Lisa Lampanelli” right on the first time (I know I spelled it right because not only was her website the first in the list of results, it didn’t say “did you mean…”), I found myself wanting to see ginormous tits. Seeing as how she “regularly fucks the blacks” I figured that there’d be a few pics somewhere on the net but then decided that a hot Jew was just as good.

And of course, the Google thing:

*you know what, I can’t think of any.

I’m giving WoW (World of Warcraft) a shot. I’m tiring of the constant changes that the devs are making to SWG (all of them seemingly worse than the last) so I’m interested in seeing what WoW is like.

Who knows, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

(First, the legal: most of these videos/links/etc. link to sites that may or may not contain material that may or may not be work safe and may or may not be suitable for persons under the age of 18. Yadda yadda yadda, view at your own risk.)

(Second, the technical: we have no control over the content or the validity of the links and they will appear to you as is from the moment we found them. If the links you click on are dead, we’re sorry. What do you want us to do - write to the webmasters of those websites and tell them, look buddy - put that link back or we’ll kick your collective asses all over the interweb! While a good idea, it’s hardly doable. So - any dead links - we apologize. That’s the best we can do.)

(Third, the rest of this bullshit: If any of this offends you as a person - then why aren’t you somewhere else?)

The Videoed
(We kind of Wiki’d our way through a few of these videos. From one to the next with no real goal in site.)
“Asian girls kissing”
“Sexy Cheerleader Shows her Bum”
“Sexy Naked Blonde”
“Sexy Asian Girls Making Out”

The Self Explanatory
Beauty & Braces

The Favorites
Suicide Girls

The end.
No really, this was a short list (on purpose) and will no end after this word.

When writing a post that holds what most would call “Questionable Content”, please take the following tips into advisement:

When posting something that has an embedded video (one of the most popular is Youtube), and you own your own server, and the video is of QC, then consider that sometime in the near future, that video will no longer be available. May I suggest something like Video Downloader (Firefox extension)?

There is nothing worse than reading a post with an attached video and then finding out that the video (which probably glued the post together very nicely) is no longer viewable.

(aka “In case you missed it the first time, and then the second, and then on the news, and then on every other website”.)

Make sure you only pre-install genuine Microsoft software, or your customers will only get to use our crappy OS for 1-hour periods, which, I hear, promotes getting out into the real world without having to worry about downloading updates every minute for an OS that was broken from the beginning.

“You make me touch your hands for stupid reasons!”

It’s Hugh Laurie (Gregory House from TV’s … “House”) playing the guitar on SNL. Watch it, I dare you. Of course, other things:

“Former ER cast member Michael Michele will be once more donning scrubs when she appears on House in the show’s upcoming fourth season. TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello says that the actress will play a CIA doctor who works with House when he’s called in to help a patient inside the agency. Reportedly House is very impressed by Michele’s character, and the character could potentially continue to appear on the series.”

IGN.com

“Near the start of a recent Q&A with the entire cast of House — Hugh Laurie (Gregory House), Lisa Edelstein (Lisa Cuddy), Omar Epps (Eric Foreman), Robert Sean Leonard (James Wilson), Jennifer Morrison (Allison Cameron) and Jesse Spencer (Robert Chase) — a reporter brought up the fact that clearly, given their presence on the panel, Epps, Morrison and Spencer were still on the show in some capacity and presumably would be working with House himself again, despite all their characters leaving at the end of Season 3.”

IGN.com

Has anyone tried Snotr.com, from the creators of Mininova? Showcase of some interesting/funny/serious/misc. videos from around teh Internets.

Ultimate addition to your home - Solar LED Address Numbers (sorry if this is a repeat for Scarform, I just can’t remember if I already posted about this tbh).

Lastly, more for the Google engines:

minus the mingus
chicken purple road
videos of me wanting
matthew trevino is a nobody

Is it hot in here or is it just me? (I checked. The thermostat was off. I turned it down below room temperature. We should be fine now.)

Since I’ve re-opened my account, I’ve been finding difficulty in completing quests that aren’t in my journal but were already completed before the NGE. I’m finding it difficult to level properly as now that most of the XP is quest based.

Before the NGE, I had switched to Entertainer and mastered it. When I came back recently, I found myself a very very very low level character, and leveling up from that low level character has been more difficult than it needs to be due to the fact that some of the quests I need to do to gain this necessary experience are either bugged or simply will not start.

I would also like to know if it would be possible to get an ITV (instant transport vehicle). If not, that’s ok.

My main concern is the inability to complete the quests and the difficulty in finding new ones (since most of them are interlinked and stem from previous quests).

Thank you. (Oh, and since I’ve switched over from Rebel and regained positive faction with the Empire, I have not been able to claim Imperial again. They keep calling me a traitor and a terrorist. Would be great if they would stop that.)

Response:

Greetings Kidd Star!

I am GM Mansus. Thank you for contacting Star Wars Galaxies in-game Customer Support. I understand that you wish to claim the 3 Years Anniversary Reward, the Instant Travel Vehicle. This reward is available to those players whose character is created prior to June 12th 2006. I searched the necessary records and found that your character is eligible for the reward. I am glad that I have been able to grant you the item. You will find the ITV deed in your inventory the next time you log in. Use the radial menu on the deed in your inventory and choose the option to ‘Grant Ability’. Once the ability is granted, the ‘Call for Privateer Pick Up’ ability will be added to your Abilities window and your toolbar.

Also, I am sorry to hear that you are finding it difficult to level up after NGE as experience is quest based now. If you would like to comment on this, we invite you to submit additional feedback to our Developers via the version issues thread on the http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m./. We try to make the game as interesting and appealing as possible and we welcome any thoughts or suggestions you might have. These boards are checked daily and the Development Team is very appreciative of all constructive ideas, suggestions, etc. Please keep all feedback constructive in nature. The forums are the best way for players and our Developers to communicate.

Please note that after you resign from your current faction; you need to wait for at least 5 days before you can join a new faction. The server reset days are not counted within these 5 days. Server reset takes place every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 4 AM PST.

Finally, concerning your character level, I am escalating your petition to a Senior Game Master for review. You will receive a response from one of the Senior Game Masters as soon as possible, so your patience is greatly appreciated while, we investigate and resolve your issue.

If you have any additional information, regarding your current issue that you may have forgotten to put in your original ticket, please feel free to reply to your petition at any time with any new details you have.

Take care and safe travels!

(very quick response, and resolution of problems - and yes, I can patiently wait while the bugged quests are give a looking into.)

Some times you hear people say the devs hate you and then sometimes they do something nice for you - if you ask the right questions. No complaints here. Will post follow ups.

Wishing on a star is nothing more than wishing on something that can not be changed. To look upon the stars and wish for a brighter future is absurd; they are nothing more than remnants of things that have already happened.

And more than likely, the star you’re wishing on died long ago. And it will only be a matter of time before your wish dies with the last fading bits of light that are still reaching the view of the Earth.

Don’t wish on a star - take action to make the things you want come to fruition.

Otherwise, you might as well be praying. Different course to what you think you want, same outcome.