So I call the hiring officer of the job in question today to ensure that she received my application last week.

She's on vacation.

No seriously. I'm not making it up. .....priceless.

The "possible new job" drama never ends. After a few months of minding my own business after the last failed attempt to get that blasted Business Writer position... I got a call. This past Friday I received a call while I was at work advising me that they were going to post a brand new position that they just received the complement for in that division. Essentially it's the same title, Business Writer, but I start out with the publishing end (fine by me!) and eventually lead more into business writing. I was encouraged, FOUR TIMES, to apply for the job. Since this'll be the third time I'm applying for a job in this division and I've already gone through three or four interviews, I was a bit forthcoming with them this time round. Not that I was rude, but I wanted a bit more information on what I could do to *actually* get the job this time. Especially since we're about to hit the 9th month that this hoopla has been going on for I wanted something concrete that I could do to ensure that I had a reasonable chance of getting this job instead of being wait-listed (or whatever) yet again. She was able to give me a few more clues on what I should put on my resume but did indicate that this specific job was more geared towards me and my abilities. She said I was at the top of their list for hiring (I've heard THAT before) but that if somebody in the same department applied for the position, they'd essentially be screwing me over since they'd almost be forced to hire someone that was above me. (This new position is a level 5, I'm currently a 4.)

So I don't know if it's even worth getting my hopes up for this one. Of course I'll apply for the job, since she said she couldn't stress enough how much they wanted me to apply and wanted me to get my foot in the door. But how ridiculous am I going to feel (and them as well for that matter) if they reject me a THIRD time? I almost feel like I've become a running joke in that department... along the lines of "Let's see how many times we can get this chump to apply for the same job! hahahah" Of course, I've already been told I've already made it past the preliminary set of interviews should I decide to apply...

Wow um... not being a student SUCKS. Since I still had leftover education credits left on my income tax return last year, I got a big fat cheque in the mail after I'd filed my taxes. Not thinking even twice about it this year, and figuring maybe I'd get $100 back or something I pushed off doing my taxes until tonight. Since I'd never done them before it was a bit daunting to go through the whole process (my father had processed them before.) So I fill in all the lovely boxes and do exactly as it says. I eagerly scroll to the summary page to see how much "free money" I would be getting back. And instead of a nice green $ sign, I get a big fat RED $ sign saying I owe the government $300! And of course, since I sat on my ass figuring they owed ME money, I've now got late payment charges, which, granted, aren't that high... but goddammit.

Bah.

Some IDIOT holed away in our tech department somewhere seemed to think that instead of bank branches having nice photocopiers like we already have, should INSTEAD hook up a fax/scanner to a high-speed printer and call it a fax/photocopier in one. The damn thing was installed this morning and it has disconnected not once, not twice, not thrice but FOUR EFFING TIMES since 10am. It constantly tells us that the cable to the printer or scanner is disconnected, and YET it just provided us with a copy. Turning it off and on produces nothing for a little while, until miraculously, we get one copy and then it tells us it's disonnected again.

*strangles tech support*

I was finally able to sort out flights to England for Christmas this year. When I'd last looked at the prices they were roughly $850 including taxes, which is more than I would normally pay (usually Air Transat is about $500-$600) but I figured it was Christmas, this was probably the best I was going to get. When I checked the prices over the weekend, they had risen to about $1300! WHAT! I'm not paying that ridiculous price! So I figured it was a weekend gimmick, and the prices would drop during the week, and sure enough, they did... only no matter what I tried, none of the flights were available. Bah. I gave in, and finally booked a direct flight for us via Air India. We'd heard some unfavourable reviews regarding that air line and were trying our best to avoid them. But I wasn't finally to spend $400 just to avoid an air line I hadn't even used myself. Plus, all the others had layovers in either Amsterdam or Germany. So I booked our flights yesterday with Air India for $865, taxes included. So we'll be in England from December 19th until the 28th. Redeye flight there, and a normal afternoon flight back home.

Well, after my rather depressing last entry (for me anyway, pretty sure not many other people cared), I can say that Blizzard has restored not only all of my gear, but all of my consumables and gold. Twas a good day when I got everything back. And I finally "finished" my character. Aside from higher end raiding, there isn't a whole lot left to do with her. So I'm as done as I can possibly be for her. (And managed to surpass a few naysayers on my way up as well... that felt awesome.)

As for what else is going on... my competitive soccer team in division 1 is uninspiring. So that hasn't been a blast to play for/with. Mike and I are going to be going to England to spend Christmas with his family, so we're sorting out flights this weekend at some point. We'd also hoped to go to Hawaii in the fall but I don't think that will be happening now due to my own money issues.

Well, I've been virtually raped. And I do mean virtually, so nobody freak out. My World of Warcraft account was hacked two days ago and my main character and her alts were completely emptied of their gear, consumables, enchanting items, EVERYTHING. I don't care for my alts all that much since they're not over level 25, but my main, my level 70, is a freaking work of art. The amount of hours, gold, and resources that went into that character is almost innumerable. And it's shocking to find that somebody can go in and just DELETE all that hard work and effort. I logged off Thursday night to go to bed, and when I woke up the next morning and went to my computer to log on to WoW I discovered that my password didn't work. I didn't freak out, since it occasionally happens that the servers bork up and I can't get on. But after 15 tries I was a little perturbed. So I went to the account recovery page on Wow Europe and got a new password sent to me. Plug that password in and IMMEDIATELY I knew something was wrong when my level 70 character popped up on the login screen. I'm wearing the yellow coloured Inscribed Legplates of the Aldor that I was going to equip later once I'd had more gear upgrades and not the Wrynn Dynasty Greaves that I normally wear (defense issue). I log in... and instead of sauntering around Ironforge, I'm standing outside a mailbox in Allerian Stronghold. I'm sorry what?!? I check my character's bags... they're empty save for my epic flying mount, a hearthstone, and oddly enough 3 badges of Justice and like 31 fel blossoms. My bags are never empty, they're filled to the brim with quest items, mana and health pots, elixirs and about 300 reagents for pally buffs. And of course, I'm no longer in my guild. But for god's sake... WHY am I standing outside Allerian Stronghold? One of my friends messages me, concerned, asking why I didn't respond to her last night. I tell her I wasn't on, I've been hacked. She freaks and tells me I wouldn't respond to her, went and entered Shadow Labs. Shadow Labs! Of all places! It makes sense since my hearthstone is now set to Allerian Stronghold, which is the nearest inn, but it's not like Shattrath was THAT much further. I get reinvited back to my guild by a friend and everyone welcomes me back, horrified that I'm missing most of my stuff. In a panic, I fly back to Shattrath and find that my entire bank has been emptied. Even the goddamn containers for extra bank slots have gone poof. We're talking over 500 items here that have been built up over the months. I'm missing an entire other set of raid healing gear, I'm missing all my epic gems, all of my flasks, reagents, herbs, primals, food, supplementary weapons, EVEN quest items! (Asshole went in and deleted part of a quest item from Gruul's, what is the POINT in that?) I *understand* why somebody would sell all of my consumables, or mail them to somebody else. That makes sense to me. They're making money off of selling my stuff off. What I do NOT understand is why someone has to be malicious about it. It's bad enough to go in an destroy somebody's months or years or work. But I don't get going to the point of actively deleting stuff that cannot make somebody the gold. Deleting my extra bank slots is useless to them. In the end, it will cost me the gold to get them back. And they couldn't even vendor the items. I checked my other characters, and they'd done the same thing... vendored everything, and deleted everything else. Oddly enough, they let me keep my highest quality gear, I'm assuming to make themselves money in while they were sauntering around SLabs.

I did some research on the net, and it turns out that there's a hack for Shadow Labs where you can port between chests and herbing units and make a lot of money that way every hour when the dungeon resets. So basically my character had been kidnapped, used and abused (and I DO mean used and abused, I've got over 30 gold in repair bills which means I've died at least 4 times when they using my character) and left for dead outside of a mailbox. I've heard worse stories where people are left completely striped naked, no gear whatsoever.

It was heartbreaking though. Mike and I are pretty sure it was a problem with a keylogger so tonight I've got the nasty task of reformatting my harddrive and reinstalling everything. I've petitioned a game master online to get my gear back and from what I hear, you can get MOST of it back, probably none of the consumables (which is an extensive list) however. My ticket has been escalated, however I have yet to hear anything concrete back and they haven't locked my account yet. Reformatting might be unnecessary, but I do not wish to run the risk of this happening again. I seriously considered just giving up the game. But now, after I've run the gauntlet of emotions (disbelief, rage, sadness, depression, etc.) I just want to get back to make everything secure and get back to making my character better than ever before. I don't looke forward to collecting the money to replace some of the epic gems since I doubt those will be restored (and I doubt my gold will be either) but I don't want to give up either. If I could though, I would hunt down that little prick and make him suffer. It's cheap to hide behind a computer to make someone suffer, and if I could they'd be feeling massive amounts of pain. I wish I could take away THEIR paycheque for making gold off MY character.

Fucking hell... they even deleted my little cat carrier for my pet. :( That's just downright MEAN. Poory kitty.

 
Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl

//I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chap stick
I kissed a girl just to try it//

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade