So last night the hotel had an Employee Appreciation Pool Party. I know it just sounds like a shit load of fun doesn’t it? Well I didn’t get in to the party until the last hour, so I can’t honestly say how it was.

I did grab a few shots of some co-workers. These pictures are of only really three people. My favorite target Stan “Is going to fucking pay for the dog remark” Lee, Jay, and Matt. Stan has been mentioned before on this site. Jay and Matt are the hotels only two regular set up guys and they are both long timers.

The only comment I will make is this. After everyone left I made my way to the frontdesk. Two of the party goers had just come back from te bar across the street. Dave a security guy and the Prince (best nickname I can think up). Part of the reason I went in to the party was to see if the Prince and his buddy (not Dave) would be there. I wanted to get a chance to converse with the guy and get to know him. To see if maybe I was wrong in what I thought of these two people.

So were are all standing at the desk and the Prince asks Dave if he would come join him in the hotel bar. Now I was standing right there. I would have gone down and had a drink with him, if asked. But I guess I’m just not good enough to drink with the Prince.

Oh well. I’m not going to lose no sleep over it. But it just confirms what I think about these people. So it goes.

So it’s been pretty quiet as of late. Which is a good thing. But it makes updating the website hard. Work continues to sap the life out of me. I’m stuck working the weekends now for no good reason. The only thing I can guess is that they don’t want the other guy working when it’s busy.

No more has been mentioned about me doing a website for the hotel. I assume they are unwilling to meet my demands. Which is ok because I really do have to get to work on the library site. I’ve been putting it off because I was waiting to see what the people at the hotel would say. But no answer translates into a no. And that’s ok.

The library gig is going to be a challenge. The server they have is a Windows based system. This will be the first time I messed around in that kind of environment. It shouldn’t be that bad. But I’m just a little nervous and maybe a little excited about it. It’s going to be a good experience.

Other than all this I’m also trying to get my main character in Dark Age of Camelot to level 50. I’m sitting at 42 right now. And I only have about a bub to go. With the newest patch that introduces the free level 20/30 characters I’m kind of anxious to get in and try some different stuff. Also player housing may be introduced here at the end of the month. Which will be neat depending on how it all works out. Of course cost will also be another deciding factor in how neat housing really is.

This post regards the mmorpg Dark Age of Camelot. I have been playing the game since after a few weeks of it’s release. I have one character that I’ve been playing since that time. Turk Shakespeare the Mercenary. I play over on the Bors server on the side of Albion. When I started playing I wasn’t very social. In fact I was pretty anti-social.

I used to tease people that played these games and got into them heavily. I joined a guild not to soon after I started playing. The guild is called the Acolytes of Destruction. I didn’t really know the people in the guild that well. I didn’t try to hard to get to know them either. I just kept to myself and did my thing.

That of course has all changed. I run the guild site (not the guild) and I happen to know a lot of the people that are in the guild. The whole reason for this post is that I had received some shit from a real life friend about playing the game. About how far I had got into it. I tried to explain that it’s not a bad thing, playing this game and getting into it.

He even commented about how it’s like a 3d chat client. Not in those words per say, but he was close enough. I suppose it is. But the thing is, I consider these guys and gals I play with all good friends. Sure there are some I don’t know so well. Sure some of them I don’t know on a real name basis. But that’s not the point. I enjoy the company of these people in this virtual world we play in.

My real life friend didn’t mean anything by the comments. I know that. He likes giving me shit and that’s ok. Given the chance he would get into as much as I have. But his comments did give me the idea to write about all this stuff.

One of these days he may get the chance. I have a second account and it’s just sitting there at the moment. So maybe one of these days I can get him to pop on and say hello to all these guild buddies of mine. And maybe, just maybe he will get into it as much as I have.

Well I got hit by the Bugbear virus that’s been making it around the net lately. This is the first time I have ever got this kind of virus. This page has a lot of info on this little bastard.

This thing spreads by sending out e-mails to all the people in your address book. To make it even worse it also will disable the popular anti-virus and firewall programs. It also infects a number of popular programs.

And of course it gets even better. This thing also creates a backdoor into your computer so hackers can do whatever it is they do. This is the part that makes me nervous. Here is a list of things they can do with this backdoor this virus creates:

• get information about infected computer
• upload and download files
• start files
• delete files
• terminate processes
• get process list
• start keylogger
• start HTTP server on a selected port

Did you notice the keylogger entry? Yeah that’s just great. Here are the specifics on the keylogging feature of this bug:

It saves user’s keystrokes into a file with a random name and DLL extension located in Windows System folder. The worm periodically sends this file to a randomly selected e-mail address from the list of addresses stored together with the corresponding SMTP server names inside the worm’s body.

I don’t know jack about these kinds of things. But this virus sounds like it’s a clever piece of software (or whatever it’s classified as). I just hope my pc is clean now. I downloaded a few different programs to try to make sure this thing is purged from my pc. As a last resort I’ll just reformat and reinstall my os. I’m not going to dick around with this thing. I’m due for it anyway.

My bout with the bugbear virus is over with. I had a minor set back when I tried to format and reinstall xp pro. But that was fixed by downloading a few utilities to check the disk and partition it and format it. Nothing like a clean install of an os. Now I just need a bit of luck and I should be all good.

I got this e-mail today. It was absurd enough to put up here. Take a look:

From:Jacinda Pearson
To:webmaster@hotelblues.com
Subject:hotelblues.com

I discovered hotelblues.com in Yahoo, my favorite directory. I am requesting that you create a link from hotelblues.com to my client’s web site if you feel that their content is in some way related or complements your site. In exchange, I’ll post a link from their site to yours.

Exchanging links will help bring in more business for both your web site and my client’s. An added benefit is increased search engine traffic because the search engines rank sites higher that have a good number of relevant links.

This is not a free-for-all link exchange, I don’t waste my time with them and you shouldn’t either. I am only linking to related web sites so that all my links are relevant to my site.

I would like to send you my client’s web address, so that you can review their site. My client is a leading corporate team building and teamwork consulting firm providing fun leadership skills development, management training, and teambuilding programs.

Please let me know if you are interested in exchanging links. I’ll send you more details once I hear back from you.

Looking forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
Jacinda Pearson
jacindapearson@link-builder.com
http://www.link-builder.com

P.S. If for any reason you don’t want me to contact again, just email me and let me know.

The part that says:

My client is a leading corporate team building and teamwork consulting firm providing fun leadership skills development, management training, and teambuilding programs.

That made me laugh. Because it makes me wonder if these assholes even read the sites they send spam out to. Because I wonder if people read Hotelblues.com and think “this guy needs links to sites that are a leading corporate team building and teamwork consulting firm providing fun leadership skills development, management training, and teambuilding programs”. Either this person didn’t read this site or I’m losing my touch.

Of course the site they mention in the e-mail has a faq. Here is what they say about their e-mail being spam:

That is a difficult question to answer because of the many different definitions of SPAM. The first thing to note is that most state laws governing SPAM have to do with advertising for a commercial purpose. Exchanging links hardly falls into that condition. And the federal government has not enacted any SPAM laws governing this condition.

Sounds like they are dodging the question. Spam to me is when someone sends me shit that I didn’t ask for. And that’s what this e-mail is spam. I would e-mail this chick back just to see what her “clients” site was, but I would just be giving them a reason to spam me more.

I only hinted at what I was really trying to say a few posts ago. The post called Virtual Wolds just didn’t some it up will enough and I’ve thought about this subject for a bit. Before I start let me make you read a passage from Henry V by my bud Bill:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition

This comes from a speech that King Henry gave to his men right before a major battle. A battle that the english army had to face a far superior french army. This speech is my favorite of all of the bards work. It just says something that is hard to put into words, yet Shakespeare was able to do it.

If you never read this one I really recommend you follow this link (scroll down to line 30) first and then come back here. This Crispin’s Day speech is even used for military recruitment over in england. And you have to admit it is a pretty powerful bit of text.

It’s rather fitting for the game Dark Age of Camelot. But it is something that just may transcend this mmorpg I play. These people I play with no longer are just buddies I have in a game. It’s become something more than that. Friends are what they all are now. It doesn’t matter what age they are. It doesn’t matter if they are male or female. Race or Color has no bearing in this friendship I share with these people.

And in a world with so many problems is this “virtual friendship” I have with these people so bad? I don’t think so. As the Bard says “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother”, and it applies to real life and mmorpg’s. And that’s good enough for me.