Last Night...

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Entry posted by xccj November 19, 2007

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Last night turned out to be a wild night, both in my dorm and on BZP (mostly on BZP...)

Anyway, I'll cover a few points about it all.

Point 1) Nighttime Stroll

I had Chem homework to do last night that's due today. So I went on a midnight stroll down around the nature park at around midnight. I did it once before, and had a great talk with Orion, but it was cloudy last night so I couldn't see him. I'm sure he was having a nice conversation with the clouds about the predicament on earth and everything. Anyway, last time it was really dark, and whenever I saw a city light I totally lost my night vision. But last night, the clouds reflected all the city light back down and I could pretty easily make out the entire trail. I didn't meet up with any serial killers who were waiting for the dumb college student to come wandering out on the trail at Midnight after it had rained all day... he must've been on break / not existed in the first place. (I also assume that he's blind so if he tries to stab you he'll miss and get your shoulder instead. Gives you plenty of time to run away screaming). However, I did see a Raccoon that reminded me of my cat. It was afraid of me at first, and started to climb a tree... but then decided that was too much effort and just decided to stand at the base of the tree. Unlike my cat, I didn't decide to go pick it up and bug it... you know, it's still a wild animal, even if its probably living off the trash of a thousand college kids.

Point 2) McDonalds Toys

Walking back from my stroll, I happened to catch a glimpse of the golden arches glowing in the distance. Just a way to remind me I'm still in a big city (if the busy freeway bridge and huge dorm buildings didn't get that point across). Anyway, I started thinking about the new Bionicle toys rumored to hit happy meals with greasy bad-for-you food sometime soon, and I was thinking how they were going to make them. If they did the same basic thing as they did last year, then which characters would they choose, and what functions would they have? Carapar would be cool with snapping claws, and Kalmah could spin his tentacles or something. The Mahri would be cool if they had some sort of foam Cordak blaster... big and light, so a kid can shoot it but not swallow it / get hurt by it. Of course, they'd probably choose like Kalmah, Pirdak, Ehlek, and Carapar, and not include my favorite Barraki, Mantax. As for the Mahri, they'd probably have Jaller, Hahli, Matoro, and Nuparu, against disregarding my favorite Mahri, Hewkii.

Then I get this cool idea... what if they got characters that transform into sea animals? I'm sure they've have transformers toys there before, and I even remember getting a car that transformed when I used to eat there ten years ago. So maybe they could do the same thing with the Barakki and Toa. Think, Pirdak is so shark like already that he could easily turn into a Takea. Mantax can go sting ray, and Carapar can go crab, and maybe Kalmah does squid or something. I'd like to see Hahli turn into a dolphin or something, and maybe Kongu could do a turtle. Then, even though they would also be characters, the sea animal versions could be used to play with the actual sets as part of the Barakki's army.

Point 3) BZPower Last Night

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Talk about crazy. Luckily, I was not a victim of the attack... I got notified by the bazillion warning topics posted. (At first, I thought they were the problem in and of itself... somebody going around posting spam to warn about spam. But it was genuine). Of course, it did get out of hand... people posted more than one warning topic per forum (unnecessary) and bumped needlessly. I posted only once to *bump* when I first viewed the topic, and it wasn't at the top of the page. Unfortunately, in the minute I was typing, somebody else also posted. Afterwards, when I looked back on it, my post was really unnecessary. I made another post pointing out the shortcomings of the constant "bumps" but it was promptly ignored until the forums went down for the night.

First of all, I am completely amazed at the work some members put into setting up these warning topics. From what I remember, Swert, Bioran, and Adventurer were out there giving warnings to everybody. They got the point across and helped me avoid any trouble. I am curious to see what the staff's response to such drastic measures is. Rama-Swarm seemed to approve of it while he was the only staffie online (and I noticed COT got cleaned up right after he came online) But was the overall idea something the staff would approve of, given the situation? (Few to no staff members online at the time of the attack) Because I did notice a few problems with the topics.

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

For one thing, it inspired some members to start spamming heavily to 'bump' the topics and such. But what if said attackers also posted in those topics after making their initial mess? These attackers obviously had the patience to act normal enough to get through BZP's new early member security... they might have the patience to search in these topics and then post in them, thus turning the warning topics into the landmines they wished to warn people of. How could members warn others about that when those topics suddenly become infested? I would like to see a better, more silent system put into place. Obviously, the best way to act against this is to quietly report said topics to the staff to deal with, but I don't think it was a coincidence that the attack happened when there weren't any staff online. From what I remember, there was a full two hours or something that the majority of the topics remained unchecked, with the only staff name in green being Rama-Swarm. I'll be interested to see what BZP's next security step will be.

And because I'm paranoid, I'm placing all these thoughts in two spoiler tabs. The spammers might be patient enough to go through some security restrictions, but are they patient enough to read all my mumble jumble? Also, are you? :blink:

And if anybody deems this section of my blog unnecessary, please reply and tell me, and I'll delete it as soon as possible. However, I just wanted to express some of my feelings on the subject... what was done well, what was messed up, and what could be done. Or wondering what could be done.

Anyway, last night was quite a night. In the time it's taken me to write up this blog entry, I've had to save it and go to my lecture classes. As it turns out, I didn't get any of my chemistry homework done at all. (I was having a brain freeze on it, but I still could've put more effort into it.) On the bright side, our professor extended the due date to next Monday. That means I can take the homework home over Thanksgiving break and have my dad help me with it. ^_^ (Yes, all you crazy Canadians, we have Thanksgiving in November!!) So my only trouble was staying awake through lecture class today. :lol:

Enough of my rambling. Thanks for reading this far. (Eh, it's not that bad if you skip the spoilers) I feel in the mood to write something... unfortunately, it'll likely be one of my stories off BZP, but after that I may get inspired to work on Slizers...

Awe, what am I saying, I won't be writing anything until January when I'll be forced to take another English course. I've found it much easier to write fiction when I really have to write that other nonsense.

*hmm, long blog*

:music: