Apparently my sub-quest to locate an exterminator has presented a new challenge in which the true quest has shown itself to be getting the exterminator to the house. My least favorite type of quest, presumably: an escort quest.
You see, a road crew ripped up our street this morning.
Sure, we had some idea this might be coming. For days they’ve been making marks on the road. Unfortunately there was no indication as to when they’d start the actual construction, and as my luck would have it, it began right over the window of time when the exterminator is supposed to come deal with our ant problem. I’m more than three-quarters of the way through that window with no sign of him, and I’m looking out the front window at a very un-driveable street. Also as luck would have it, my husband is on a day trip out of state, and although he’ll be back later today, he won’t be able to answer his cell phone during the time when the guy would likely call him to say, “uh, hi, I can’t get to your house.”
[Brief break to go look out the front window.] Okay, it looks like he might be able to get close enough to the house if he comes down one side of the street now instead of the other, and if they tell him he can park along the street there since he won’t be able to get to our driveway. Unfortunately I have no way of knowing whether he already came and gave up and went, or will arrive in the next 20 minutes or so and do that. I’d really like to be able to let the cats out (they’re in the back rooms so they won’t get in the way of any spraying), but I don’t know if I can yet.
I’ve gotten kind of hooked on a particular LotRO forum: the suggestions forum. The posts tend (in general) to be more constructive by nature of the forum’s subject, however, it still has its share of entertaining nitwits. My favorite is the guy who haughtily declares everyone else to be snobbish/elitist/unreasonable in their suggestions, while simultaneously coming across as far more snobbish/elitist/unreasonable than anyone else. He’s the forum entertainment as far as I can tell.
I also can’t help harking back to something I found via Glod’n’epix: a post on Molten Boron that states, in part,
I also find the whole Shutupicrat philosophy that underlies most of the comments fascinating. Until I got onto the internet I had never met somebody who gets actually angry about the fact that some people care about things that he or she doesn’t. It would be sort of interesting to meet some of these people in real life:
IN A GERMAN LANGUAGE CLASS:
“Excuse me, but why in the hell are we learning German? I don’t want to speak German, and I don’t see why anyone else should. Can’t we all just speak English and shut up about stupid foreign languages I don’t care about?”“If you don’t want to take German, why are you enrolled in this class?”
“I’m not; I was just looking on a bulletin board and noticed that German was being taught, and since I don’t think German is interesting I felt I should come here and let everyone know that they’re being stupid and wasting their time.”
AT A DINER:
“Why do you serve blueberry pancakes? I hate blueberries, and I don’t really like pancakes that much, either. If people would just shut up about their blueberry pancakes I could get back to ordering waffles in peace.”
I particularly like the diner example. This entertaining forum troll has a particular hatred reserved, apparently, for anyone who dares to make a suggestion he doesn’t agree with. It really is like going to a diner and insisting that others stop ordering pancakes so you can be sure to get your waffles. After all, the devs are perfectly capable of prioritizing the material suggested on the forums. The only way the troll’s assertions that one (apparently) shouldn’t suggest things that aren’t absolute necessities when other, more important things need to come first would be true would be if the devs created their feature and change list via going to the forums and simply writing down what they find there in order. And if that’s true, LotRO and Turbine have far bigger problems than simply what we players are requesting!
Uh-oh. Is it a bad sign when they’re working on the street outside your house and your power flickers?
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