I had two more teef out today. Rather painful when one of them was litrally yanked forth from my bleeding gum, but apart from that it's been less bad than before. Just a general ache at the moment. I think if I put my brace in I'm going to be beside myself with agony.... heyho!!!
Tomorrow morning at about 11:00, we're leaving for Brummy land to see Jo and Nic and their fambily. I'm really looking forward to it although, typicical girl, Jo is worried we won't get on. Doh :D
Hope you're all enjoying erm.... life and that uh... life is treating you with the respect you deserve!
Played a great session of Conan with Steff this morning. No bugs or glitches, Rhino's all around what ho?!
We went to Youth Club this evening, had some fun. Shawn didn't come, but Tom did. Played more touch rugby.
Tomorrow is the brass 12 hour test of endurance. *sniff* It's just so hard! Not really, well it will be hard, but it should be fun. We'll have a couple of breaks so it won't be too painful!
Aunty Amy has flown up to us today (posh de?) and has arrived safely, yet very tired... LOL, I nearly wrote 'tried' Haha. Anyway yes, who wouldn't be tired after flying 900 odd miles. Drains one does this flying bussiness, so hard to keep your back straight when in the most areo-dynamic position. Eyes up, shoulders back, legs straight. NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeooowwwww
Tomorrow night Steff is leaving for Greece! I'm happy for him as it is his first family holiday in FIVE YEARS. I'm also sad (rather selfishly) because I'll miss my best mate. Hey ho! I expect it will help me to get on with work and stop thinking about Rhino's stampeding innocent gyrgoyles into the forest floor etc etc.
I love jugglers! And that's what this video's about...
I wish I could just stand on the blinkin' box with the tube lol!
I'm ok though, it came out easily enough after two injections.
Throbbing now though, the anesthetic sucked big tiem in my opinion.... I don't like having a cheek that feels like a rubber in-sole and that feels like the size of a watermelon but looks perfectly normal!
I stayed at home whilst the others swam this evening. Doc's orders!
Tomorrow is much music practice and then youth club.
After three day's of being extremely neglectful and selfish I have finally got round to writing a blog!
So much to talk about so I'm afraid some of it will be slightly condensed.
On Monday I bought a packet of pringles of Mum... this is very unlike me because I'm usually a tight fisted little begger and just uh... beg (lol) crisps off H and J. Anyway, they were on offer in the shop so I felt able to spend a quid on a massive pack. Mum took the money and then said, 'Ahahahah! That was the packet that cost nothing! If you had picked the other packet up you'd have got one pound for free! FOOLED YOU!!!!!'
Now quite understandably I was more than a little confused at this outburst, which wasn't at all helped by the fact that she seemed to find my expression rather priceless and continued her barrage of laughter for a few minutes more!
Mothers eh!
Band went well in the evening, we prepared for the "Music Marathon" which is coming up on Saturday. The organisation is playing for twelve hours non-stop to raise money for the band.
TUESDAY: Great day again. Lots and lots of music practice for our upcoming exams.
Violin lesson in the afternoon. Margret was in a bad way because she'd had a bad two weeks at the Ei-wotsit-ffod which was a shame. People can be very cruel. 'nuff said. My Violin Grade 3 exam hath been postponed for a week because the examining board mucked up and put her down for a time when she said she 'Was NOT available'. People are fools.... 'nuff said ;-)
Youth Band went well in the evening. Paul got some cocky remarks from H and I. We're too clever for him :D. We started learning Pirates of the Caribbean theme music which was fun. I've played it before but it's a great score so tis still as fresh as ever.
I got banned from the computer for being generally out of control with regards my blasted big hair tongue towards Mum. Anyway, despite my tongue being big and hairy and Mum being ever so correctly angry with me, I did get a lie in until 10:03 because the computer was not so paramount as it was the day before :D
This is where I begin the explanation of my 14 day battle with a very large Norwegian game company called Funcom.
"Several weeks ago I pre-ordered a game called Age of Conan, produced by Funcom and bought from Play.com. With it was a promotional code which unlocks a War Rhino Mount which you can let your character ride in game. This was not available to anyone other than those who chose to pre-order from Play.com.
The email arrived with the code inside and so I was happy with that. A few days later the game arrived right on time. I was over the moon. I installed the game and created an account. I put my bonus code/key into the correct box and entered it..... up popped an error: 'This code has no promotional item to claim for this code' Why is nothing ever simple? I couldn't write to Funcom because their customer service system was all bugged up and they were too busy with the launch of the game to worry about helping their customers... The forums didn't work for me either so that was a pain.
Finally I found out that Steffan had the same problem and, being the resourceful family that they are, he worked together with Geth to find a way to contact a real human being, or at least as human as they could find in Norway. (hehehe) Geth finally found the email address (key-replacement@ageofconan.com) and the information needed:
Subject:
Country of Origin: Version: Account name: Broken Key:
So Steff found out that this email got a real person reading it at the other end of the line and had his problem resolved within two days. Good for him.
I then found out from a reply from Funcom that my key was being used by someone else. They gave no indication of what I should do next so I seemed to be stuck. The next Friday Youth Club, I talked to Steff at great length about the whole thing, and he said that his first impressions were that the code was not, as stated in Play.com's email, unique and that the code had been used by someone else before me.
I wrote another email to Funcom suggesting this possibility and they confirmed it, but again with no other helpful information as what I should do next.
Throughout the next few days I continued to refine my emails to Funcom, and get them more and more to the point and including all the information I had about my problem until someone called Ben Kay wrote back saying:
"Hello,
You are correct, that Key is in use by another customer. Normally, it would be up to game to take care of the situation, but if you can scan a copy of the key and your receipt and send them to me, I will be able to issue you a key. You can also fax it to the attention of Ben Kay at 001 *** 806-0365.
Thank you!"
FANTASTIC! A break through at last! I sent off a copy of my receipt attached in an email, and copied the message from Play.com into it as well.
I waited and waited and waited. Two days later I received a reply from a Mr Jonathan Malchiade saying:
"-- Greetings
I apologize but there has been a mix up. We are unable to provide you a key at this time. Please contact your retailer as they are responsible for issuing you the correct pre-order key for your mount as they were the ones advertising and selling it.
I apologize for the inconvenience.
GM- Lugal"
Ok so not so great.... the one person who I had sent loads of emails to, worked on and convinced, and who had finally consented to helping me, had been replaced by someone new; someone determined to be as removed from from the source of the problem as possible.
I thought I might have to end my epic campaign at this point but by this time I was so enraged at being fobbed off onto my nice innocent retailer that I reasoned that my problem had gone way past getting my promised item, it was the whole theory of the unfairness of it that was bugging me.
*****
The next day I phoned Play.com as this was the only way of contacting them. Positively spam proof :P
I got a nice Scottish bloke on the other end of the line who laughed like he was going to crack when I explained my problem. He said:
"Funcom are doing this to everyone. They gave us the correct number of codes for the people who pre-ordered it from us but obviously some of them were duplicated. We know this because we supplied codes to everyone and have none left to give you, sorry, and yet people are telling us that they have problems. I know this sounds stupid, but you need to get back to Funcom and tell them that you've contacted your retailer like they asked. To be honest it is them that screwed up."
Well, that's useful I thought, I have more ammunition to bombard Funcom with now.
So I wrote my final draft of the email:
"Country of Origin: Wales UK
Account name: Tarvii10
Version: UK Standard Edition
Broken Key: FDF5JN9SCYNU46FF
This is a code for a bonus Rhino mount which is non-unique.
I have been told to contact my retailer by Jonathan Malchiade who said: "We are unable to provide you a key at this time. Please contact your retailer as they are responsible for issuing you the correct pre-order key for your mount as they were the ones advertising and selling it."
I phoned Play.com today and they informed me that they have no codes left to give as they have sent out all the codes that were given and have none left, and, even if they did, they told me that Funcom have discontinued that batch. I am therefore left with no other option but to come back to you and request that you supply me with an alternative code. I have already sent information to Funcom proving that it is my code (see copy below and attached receipt) and I am authorised to receive one.
Awaiting a reply,
Tarvi"
Note: I omitted the receipt and Play.com email from the blog as it will take up too much room :D
The next day, just after 12 noon, I received the following from my late acquaintance Mr Jonathan Mac-the-Knife (something like that anyway):
"-- Greetings!
Alrighty! I managed to dig up a war rhino pre-order key to replace the lametastic one the retailer provided you since they were unable to help. Thanks for supplying me with the needed information to get it to you so quick.
TGXQ45YTEFQ59REA
Enjoy! and have a nice day!
GM- Lugal"
YES!!!!!! I had done it! I nearly went through the roof with excitement. Not at the prospect of my shiny new Rhino, but at the fact that I persevered to the end and, because of that, I achieved my aim."
Well goodness gracious, what a blog. It's taken me over one and a half hours to write so I hope it's been a good read! If you haven't been able to read it all don't worry. I'll batter you later ;-)
VIDEO: The song in Mary Poppins, 'I love to laugh'. I think its happy sentiment is appropriate ;)
Love it! "And some, they just blast...............BAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!" I think that could be me from time to time :D!
Love you all, hope you enjoyed Tarvi's longest Blog!
I really can't write much tonight. It's very late and I have a long day tomorrow.
The concert went well, my bits were a bit fluffy but with the band I played better than I did in Blackpool :) There was about 900 people there.... half the population of Wales de?
The stage was too small to do the marching malarkey on. It goes without saying that Paul was more than a little 'cheesed off' about the whole thing, as he was promised that we'd "Have the big stage from Amlwch", but obviously some other cheeky beggers paid tuppence more than the concert organisers.
Tomorrow we're going to Snowdonia Christian Fellowship in the morning (they really need to abrehviate that name 'SCF') and we've been invited to lunch with them. Then we're blitzing off to Ebenezer for a tea preceding a baptismal service in which Anastasia and Carys are being submerged and, God willing, yanked back up again :P
Then I'm going home to level up my character on Age of Conan >:¬)
Improv- everywhere is the video tonight. They go into a cafe and do a musical to the bemusement and amusement of all the nice 'normal' people who are customers of said cafe.
Legend :)
Well tally ho and nos da!
†arvi
P.S. This post didn't go up last night due to connnection problems. Posting tonight instead with a small update.
SUNDAY We went to SCF this morning and had a good time of fellowship and um.... eating (lots of eating...) with the members. We left for Ebby to go to the pre-baptism tea at the church where we stuffed our stummiks to bursting point which was rather a fun sensation. I must try it again sometime. Anyway, Carys and Anestasia (spelling mistook? O.o) were baptised this evening in a boiling hot swimming pool which singed their clothing and made them shed their skin like snakes. Quite biblical really if you look at it upside down! Great to have another baptismal service after so long a gap.
In the afternoon Mum went to see our MP! O.o Yes, what a marvel :) She said she came away with more questions than answers but nevertheless it must have been a good visit because she had nothing to complain about!
In the evening we went to Youth Club. It was J's first official time and he brought his friend Sean along with him. They both really enjoyed it and got stuck in with some hardcore touch rugby (like rugby only with no hard tackles) and they both scored a few trys.
I'm quite tired now obviously.... and tomorrow evening we have a huge concert in Valley so that's kinda scary :D
Video: Top Gear. To be honest, the ending is so unexpected I laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of it!
I'm back.... ok ok, I was back yesterday and I've been bad and lazy.... but you knowwww....
MY EXAMS ARE OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is no font size in the WORLD to explain the enormousety of what I'm trying to tell you!
O my GOSH!
MY GOOOSHHHHHH!
THEY'RE OVERRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!
NO MORE WAKING UP AND THINKING "argh.... I've got exams coming up" WOO!.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. Oh wait... I have a violin exam in like.... 3 weeks.... and a huge concert with band on Saturday!!!!!! Why me?
Anyway yeah, today I played on the computer.... a lot, with Steff, and it was amazing. and S cut someone head off O.o Yes, I know, gross... I do ask him to restrain himself but, well you know what teenage boys are like!
I also had my hair cut! I KNOW! Totally insane. Ok ok, it was just a couple of inches, but still, it was cut :) Layered and much neater now.
I think I'm going to record videos on my webcam of me talking about interesting stuff..... yes, wouldn't that be fun.... no, because I've just remembered that... I HATE MY VOICE! Catch 22.
We (the fambily) watched a film this evening which was nice, although slightly weird, it did have the undeniable bonus of Gwynedd Paltrow and Mike Myers as two of the main people. Gosh they rule :)
Well here's someone who thinks he rules! Iiiiiit's SIIIiiimon "nasty" Cowell!!!!
I went to a three hour band rehearsal with H. Played really well and Paul was so high by the end of it one would have thought he was on something......somethaaang strong ;)
Anyways, we got back to Church thanks to Grampy, and had some lunch that Mum saved us from the lunch from the fellowship 'luncheon'. Then we went home and chilled in yo afternoonage, watched Dr Who (scary) and played PC. We went to Chapel in the evening because we didn't want to burn in the h-e-double 'l' place, coz that would have been a disgrace and I'd have to hide my face.... yeah, I own at rapping.. NOOOT! :P
I'm afraid I can't write any blog until Wednesday night, I guess that one will be short as well because I'll be really tired after my exams.
Video of one of the pioneers of Parkour jumping across the gap in the moveable roof of the millennium stadium. Incredible.
I'll see you all soon.... apart from those who don't know me, who I will never see, unless of course you're a stalker, in which case............I'm behind you
