Tuesday 14 August 2001

Pic of the day: Brightness ahead? But first, some uphill. (Recent picture.)

Double disappointment

I woke up before the clock again. Without even attempting to hide my addiction, I went to turn on my computer first. But LiveJournal was down due to "overload". Well, duh! When you give away an excellent product for free, overload is the natural reaction. Years ago, I formulated "Itland's Law": There is no unemployment for those who work for free.

Ironically, I am one of those who might pay for my LiveJournal account. The price is not bad, $25 for a year, or less for shorter stays. But as long as it is free (and good) the guests will keep flooding the place. Some people take Free Speech very literally.

Anyway, I waited a few hours between each time I checked, to not add my weight to the overload. Finally the system was up some hours later - probably most Americans had gone to sleep. I went to get a paid account. I was transferred to PayPal, who now actually have international accounts! Yay! Here I filled out a largish and not too obvious form, which I eventually got right. Then I had to give PayPal some credit card information, which I risked to do in order to help the poor nerds at LiveJournal. My credit card was not accepted. I have a pretty good idea why: On the credit card, my name is in ALL CAPS. But when checking the card, PenPal insisted on using the surname of my account, which was Itland rather than ITLAND. There was no way to edit the field except to create a new account, which is expressly forbidden in the terms of use.

So now I have a worthless PayPal account, and the idealists at LiveJournal are no better off than before. But that snot is not in my nose. When you depend on morons, you won't get far. I guess I'll check back every few months, if they are still there, and see if they've got a more competent partner.

***

The second disappointment was the Acid Reflux forum. Normalcy has never been a defining trait there, but lately there is little other than nonsense post. I don't mean off topic - those are par for the course - but sheer static. Like free word associations, and non sequitur questions.

Perhaps this is the evolution of a group mind, where each individual knows as little of the meaning as the individual neuron in the brain. Then again, perhaps it is just the senseless chattering of a tribe of apes. Or perhaps they are the same thing. Who knows? What I know is, this seems like a good time to regain some bit of time... I still intend to check up now and then, to keep an eye on the roleplaying thread and anything that might look interesting. But I guess it will soon be time to wander on.

Come to think of it, online comics message boards are a bit like churches; only their life cycle is much much faster. The focus gradually shifts from the original source of interest to a wilderness of emotions between the various community members. I guess you can't really be disappointed. Humans will be human. (And how inferior would I feel if they weren't?)