Your spaceship is fine

June 9, 2009 by Barry J Morgan

Dear Mr Biscuit,

I hope you are doing well, I regret not being able to talk to you in person since I have a tragic (and ridiculous) issue. I accepted a contract from your gracious self not many hours ago. It was my first one; an experiment into the meta-game, testing the waters for making money in our player driven economy, trying out something new in this vast and splendid universe. I felt ready, I felt confident, and I’ve fucked it all right up the arse I’m afraid.

The lack of collateral in your contract (a mere 1,000 isk) attracted me since I’ve never done this before, so I had nothing to lose. And as an honest chap (don’t let my smuggling ancestry fool you, we’re not all skimming off the top) I thought I could be trusted with your business. And at a single jump I would pocket 100,000 isk for delivering 5,000m3 in goods, so how could I resist? Never mind that my Sigil freighter holds only 3,300m3, I’ll just do two runs. Parked in the Domain region, contract accepted, click!

Ah.

Yes, your single package can’t be split up can it? Not wanting to go the route of a failed contract and not knowing any better my eager (yet honest) hands tear through the packaging, hoping to find many smaller units within. No problem I think, lots of minerals at 0.01m3 would be perfect, two trips, bish-bash-bosh, disaster averted!

Oh. Cock.

Right, so now I’ve got all 47,000m3 of your shiny new Amarr designed Coercer destroyer freshly assembled in my hanger and a vast amount of pallet wrap all sticking to itself in a giant clump. I must congratulate the Emperor Family Academy on packing it so efficiently, it certainly fooled the eye from the outside. But anyway, this has started to go a bit wrong. Short of sawing the bow and aft off to squeeze it in my cargo hold I’m out of ideas… But wait! By shear coincidence the Coercer is one of the few ships I am qualified to pilot! I skim read the manual a week ago (“Let’s see here, forward, backward, blah blah, fire, self-destruct, blah blah blah, okay let’s go!”) so I’ll just take it across myself. Genius!

So I took the helm of my now probably-technically-stolen vehicle with renewed enthusiasm for getting this baby delivered on time and with only a few hundred astronomical units on the clock. Let’s hope it doesn’t get destroyed like the last two Coercers I took out on that ill advised L2 mission against “deadly” pirates. Did you know that 1AU is approximately 93 million miles long, and is the actual mean distance from our planet Earth to The Sun? I hope my little factoid lessened the impact of the previous anecdote, but I thought I should be completely honest about the man that has climbed about inside your ship. I’m afraid it’s all very much like hiring a juggler to clean your glassware. With bricks.

Fortunately for both of us I didn’t warp straight into a worm hole, and safely docked in minutes at Kor-Azor Prime. Hurrah! Your package has arrived, although I’ll admit it is entirely inside out from any perspective. Finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel I carried out with me this confounded wrapping hoping that you’d be none the wiser and I could crawl away under a stone and donate the reward to an Impairor retirement fund to feel less guilty about the whole affair. So let’s just assemble this container, repack the ship stuff… it… back….. in….. Oh, bollocks.

Shitting nobbing bollocks.

So I guess that’s how we’re stopped from putting anything illicit back into the containers huh? No refunds unless still in original packaging I guess. Well, that’s that, I’ve failed you and I’ve failed common sense. I offer my apologies for cancelling the contract but I see no other way of doing this now. I’ll be offering you the Coercer back as a private sale now, I hope I can at least hold the crayon steady enough to do that right.

Next time you answer the door and find your postman stuck inside the packaging of an Amazon delivery with the books neatly tucked under his arm and a confused look on his face, go easy on him.

Warmest regards and sincere regret,

D’Frost

—–

Special tl:dr version.

I’m a stupid noob and opened your parcel by accident. I’ve cancelled the contract but have made a private contract back to you for half the amount you were going to pay me. Please don’t flag me as a criminal or anything, I’m just an idiot. I’m sorry.

Look at this test

June 1, 2009 by Barry J Morgan

Famous /b/-tards

January 25, 2009 by Barry J Morgan

My guess:

Kevin Bacon
Charlie Brooker
George Clooney
Johnny Depp
Stephen Fry
Jonathan Ross

Gaming round-up

September 16, 2008 by Barry J Morgan

Alone In The Dark, demo – lol, BALEETED!
Too Human, demo – lol, BALEETED!
Lost Via Domus – 7/10 apparently
Braid – game of the year, 23/10

Your list of top games is wrong #01

September 8, 2008 by Barry J Morgan

ActionButton.net starts off with about five paragraphs of pre-emptive justification for the Twenty-Five Best Games of All Time, but it’s no better than the usual crowd. Allow me to run it through the Fact Filter.

25) Castlevania: Bloodlines Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
24) Spartan: Total Warrior
23) Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G
22) Secret of Evermore
21) Dragon Quest V Final Fantasy VI
20) Breath of Fire V Final Fantasy VI
19) The Lost Vikings
18) Metroid Prime Super Metroid
17) Winning Eleven 7
16) OutRun 2
15) Doom
14) Ikaruga
13) Panzer Dragoon Zwei Ikaruga
12) Katamari Damacy
11) Shadow of the Colossus Ico
10) Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Metal Gear Solid: Intergral
9) Chrono Trigger
8­) Cave Story (Doukutsu Monogatari) [highly recommended]
7) Street Fighter III: Third Strike II’ Hyper Fighting
6) Gears of War Halo
5) Pac-Man Championship Edition
4) Mother 3
3) Half-Life 2
2) Super Mario Bros. 3
1) Out of This World Portal [it's always Portal]

One-handed sandwich packet opening

August 23, 2008 by Barry J Morgan

On Friday, after one false start last week, I finally had my first donation of magic yellow goo extruded from my only needle-friendly and most dexterous arm, so considering I’m normally very right-handed it turned picking up a heavy mug of tea into Crotch-Burning Russian Roulette. Overall it was about as painless as a whole blood donation, but took a lot longer. It was the first time I’ve ever had anything shoved back in so that was a bit different — the anti-coagulant agent gave my blood a slight chill, and and my lips permanently had that “first kiss” tingle due to citrate pollution.

I was invited to join the blood clinic in Tooting at St George’s Hospital after some previous analysis revealed I had a good platelet count, don’t bruise, have never feinted, and am an unemployed layabout with nothing else to do so I may as well help AIDS sufferers, cancer patients, and new-born babies with post-natal trauma survive using my bodily fluids. The vein gravy was pumped out, spun in a Wall of Death centrifuge so that these smallest cells in the plasma could be isolated and syphoned off for a greater purpose, and then they shove the doggy-bag of leftovers back into me.

Unlike a whole blood donation they want me in twice as frequently (every four weeks or so) and I’ll be sure to try my best to make it there as often as I can. And there’s not a lot of positive reasons I can think of to visit a hospital. I may as well make the most of it.

Ten months well spent

August 14, 2008 by Barry J Morgan
"What's outdoors?"

Achievement unlocked: "What's outdoors?"

Hello world!

July 19, 2008 by Barry J Morgan