Author Archive

05
Mar
2020

Since it is the Lenten season and all, to note…

categories: personal; word count: 691 words

Before I was coerced into those religious conversion classes that Bub’s paternal grandmother rushed me through filling out forms to sign up for (you know, the ones that she intentionally did not even give me the chance to read), Bub’s paternal grandmother told all of her friends at church that I was actually interested in converting to Catholicism. This was news to me, given that this had never actually come up in conversation with me and I had never actually been told that I was interested in it. You know, because I wasn’t. Not at all.

Apparently she had also spoken with the instructors of the class and let them know that I was also interested in converting to Catholicism, so it was… surprising, to say the least, when I showed up to the first, last, and only class that I actually participated in, did not even know the name of the class, had no idea why I was actually there, didn’t even know that the instructors of the class were not priests themselves (as, having been coerced into attending Masses with my son’s father for weeks up until that point and various church functions and get-togethers, and clearly not wanting to [although it might not have been clear enough to everyone, including him, because they had their heads in the sand and could not see that it was actually clear as day that I did not actually want to be there or want anything to do with any of this], I was ignoring as much as I could about everything that had to do with the Catholic church, to include who all of these people actually were), and at the end of the class, that I had actually been an atheist without interruption since I was three years old. So, by that point, we were going on decades of non-belief in anything supernatural. They were stunned. What I told them did not match up with the impression that Bub’s paternal grandmother had given them of me. And I suppose it was then that she was outed as having lied about at least one thing (“my interest in conversion”, “signing up for the classes of my own interest”).

And then she had to find out that yes, I was actually an atheist and that I had been one my entire life. She would not be getting what she wanted. She would not be able to convert me by force into her religion, and she would not be getting the Catholic wedding that she so desperately wanted to “wash away the sin” that was her grandson being born out of wedlock. Not only would I have been dropped from the class roster at the point in which inquirers would have had to interview with the class instructors or priest had I not been dropped from the roster at the end of the very first class (I was actually dropped from the class roster at the end of the first class, and I was disinvited from all subsequent church functions and get-togethers after this, even though I was civil in… letting everyone know that I was actually a long-term atheist), but his church would not have married us because of my long-term lack of belief, refusal to participate in anything that the church would have required my participation in, refusal to consent to our child’s baptism or participation in anything relating to the church (I believe that children should have a right to choose if or when they participate in anything religious and would have virulently fought his father on this), and the fact that I am diametrically opposed to everything that the Catholic church believes and teaches. This has only grown over the decade, although it can also be said that my opposition to theistic religion has also exponentially grown as I have continued to study them. Evangelists have tried to wear me down over the years with absolutely zero success, even “well-trained” ones who “have a high rate of success getting individuals to want to convert, and planting seeds”. I have actually caused them, well, ire, because my objections are enduring.

04
Mar
2020

And as a conclusion to my last two posts.

categories: MMORPGs; word count: 507 words

What actually made me report the private server that I have been mentioning in my last two entries was the fact that I had actually stumbled upon sensitive, secret information regarding two of the server’s GMs — it came out that two of the server GMs were using money that had been donated to the server to pay their rent, utilities, and effectively making “being GMs” their full-time jobs, all while failing to divulge that they were doing this with the money that was being donated, and that they wanted to keep this a secret (at least for as long as they could). Given how popular this server still was, and how unethical I knew this was, I made the decision to report the private server (because hosting a private server is not legal) to Gravity’s Korean branch, and I gave them actual proof of what the GMs were doing with the donation money. Apparently, within two weeks of me actually doing this, it came out that Gravity had issued this server a formal cease and desist letter, and they responded to this by shutting down the server. I observed from the sidelines, not saying a word. I suppose it would have been different if the GMs in question had said anything, anything at all, about what they had really been doing with the donation money, but they never once did this. It was apparently supposed to remain a secret for as long as they could prevent it from getting out. (And I don’t think it actually “came out” for years until someone off-handedly mentioned on a message board that yes, two of the GMs were actually using donation money to pay their rent and pay their bills, which I myself had known for years because I still knew people that played that server in… shall we say, positions of authority.)

Some time later, the server made an attempt at “coming back” with a base of operations in another country, apparently an attempt at circumventing the cease and desist with the actual server’s data being located in another country. However, it could never break a player base of 1,000 people when at one point in time between 3,000 and 4,000 people were logged on at any one time. After awhile, it faded back into obscurity. And to be honest, I did feel bad about reporting the server, because a lot of people did play it, and there were a lot of good players on it. But the corruption with that one server seemed like it would honestly never end, and it seemed like it would not stop getting worse. And since this involved people’s money in the form of donation in… extremely questionable ways, I felt that I had no choice but to report the server to Gravity so that it could get dealt with in an ethical way. I felt like my hands were tied in the matter. This wasn’t just some small screw-up, or even a series of small screw-ups, that was occurring. All of these were really large.

03
Mar
2020

Referencing my last entry about this…

categories: MMORPGs; word count: 434 words

One of the first real “problems” with the server (at least that I knew of, because I knew some of the people that ran this server) was the fact that the GM that this server was named after was actually caught embezzling money that had been donated to the server and using it to finance his drug habit. Some people in the years that would come would turn this into a joke, but I can attest to the fact that this actually happened. In the days and weeks that would follow this being confirmed, control of the server would be wrest from this individual, and he would no longer have access to the money that was being donated to the server for what I can only describe as the most obvious reasons in the world. He would never again have access to the money that was being donated to the server. All of this happened when I was a teenager, but I knew enough of the people that were “at the top of this server” to confirm that this actually took place. And as the years went by, his interest in the server actually appeared to… wane, as did my own. I was just never comfortable with the actual knowledge that someone that had built what became one of the most popular “low-rates” private servers for Ragnarok Online had actually gotten away with making it so popular that so many people regularly donated to it that they were able to finance this individual’s drug habit, and that they actually did so for awhile. That’s the kind of “black market” stuff that I desperately want to stay out of, heh.

That wasn’t the only reason that I actually reported that server to Gravity, though.

At that point, that was water under the bridge. It almost became text meme with how often people who were into private servers would joke about it. “Oh, that’s the server where the GM used donation money on drugs”. Never mind the fact that it had a good player base and a lot of good players actually played there at some point in time (since it wasn’t their fault that the corruption started from, and stayed with, the top). To me, it was just the fact that a lot of corrupt things kept happening with that server, and that was what the server seemed to be the most known for. Some people still actually remember that server for the corruption.

If it had started and stopped with this, well, I honestly don’t think I would have reported it to Gravity.

02
Mar
2020

Have I ever actually mentioned this here?

categories: MMORPGs; word count: 417 words

I seem to have been the reason that a particularly large private server for Ragnarok Online was issued a cease and desist order, which by the looks of things led to them actually shutting down years ago. Years and years ago, I actually went to the trouble of reporting them to Gravity (and at that, the Korean version) because of all of the corruption that had been… present on that particular server, we shall say. That server seemed to be plagued with corruption, and coupled with the popularity of that server, I felt like I felt the most prudent thing to do was to report them to Gravity. It wasn’t something that I felt particularly good about, as “tattling” has never been something that I have felt particularly good about, but I had become aware that donation money had been misused on more than one occasion and for more than one purpose (and when I say that, I say that in a broad sense). I just felt like that this would keep on, and keep on, if I did not do this.

Weeks after I made the report, the server itself actually appeared to shut down, which impressed me.

Based on what I could tell, it tried to “re-emerge” in another country, but it never attracted the somewhat massive number of players that it had at its peak, which was a somewhat impressive number of players to begin with, and it eventually closed for good at some point in time after that, which eased my conscience.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about the incidences that caused me to report it to Gravity to begin with, but I did have concrete proof of the… second incidences that caused me to feel it necessary to report it, and I did give proof of those incidences to Gravity, namely in the form of them being brought up in conversation by the individuals that they benefited. It didn’t make me feel good to make that report then, and it doesn’t make me feel good now. But it did come up in conversation when I was discussing the “prime” of private servers with some friends of mine who remembered how popular they used to be and was bringing up some of them in particular, namely one in particular that had… persisted for a number of years.

I suppose if there is one thing about me, there is my conscience when it comes to, well, this sort of thing.

01
Mar
2020

Some more thoughts relating to my last post.

categories: personal; word count: 494 words

In reference to my last post, I’m actually surprised (but in a good way, and I hope that things continue to hold like this) that as few people as there have been have… continued to reach out to me on social networking sites wanting to be my friend on them. In the year or two after graduation, there were the occasional trickle of people wanting to keep in touch with me, but that almost completely tapered off after I gave birth to my own son, and I will admit that a lot of that was by my own doing. Almost hilariously, Monster’s father attended the same schools as me for a lot of the time that we spent going to school together because, being six months younger than me and one grade lower than me, we spent a lot of time going to school together and happened to be on the periphery of each other’s social circles. But as I would later come to find out due to the severity of his mental illness, none of us authentically knew who he really was at all. After the court order was drawn up and finalized that denied him access to our child for… the reasons that had to be done to keep our child safe from harm at his own hand, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with anyone that had gone to school with any of us, and the only school that he “claimed” any allegiance to was the school that he attended during his senior year after some re-zoning had been done (one that I had never attended, having graduated one year before him), because it was one that very few people in our social circle attended, and it was his way of obtaining one of what would become many “fresh starts”. (This is a real big thing with him.)

Still, though, I am more than comfortable not being in any sort of contact with any of the people that I went to secondary school with at any point bar the one individual that I am friends with on Facebook, and I would like it to continue to remain that way. I think it was actually firmly solidified for me when I actually saw a picture circulating on Facebook from a class reunion that had been held for our class — if you can even call it that — where only one Caucasian student was invited, no Asian-American students appeared to be invited, no perceptibly mixed students were invited, maybe a third of the students present were of Hispanic origin and the rest were African-American. That stood out to me, and that still kind of stands out to me to this day.

All in all, I just don’t want to really have a relationship with any of them, let alone my graduating class.

I don’t really bear any ill will toward any of them — I’m in my thirties — but I don’t… want to befriend them.

29
Feb
2020

I’ve never actually mentioned this here.

categories: personal; word count: 746 words

With the exception of one individual that I am friends with on Facebook, I actually go to considerable pains to avoid friending people that I have gone to secondary school with on social media. Around the time that my ten-year class reunion would have taken place, I also went to concerted lengths to “lay low” on social media (again, particularly Facebook) in the hopes that none of them would attempt to reach out and contact me, seeing if they could get me to attend something — the answer would have been a polite but firm “no, and please do not contact me for these purposes again,” and I probably would have blocked the individual that sent me this message. (I also began perusing Facebook to see if any “Class of 2004” groups had popped up with my high school’s name in them to see if it would just be easier to block people that way, and was actually relieved to see that one had not. Other classes had groups for their ten-year reunion, though.)

I don’t actually see myself changing my mind on this whole “don’t friend any more of these people” stance.

At the end of my graduating year, I actually turned an on-again, off-again boyfriend in for making comments that he would bring his father’s gun to school and “shoot up the freshman class because they annoyed him”. The school found out that his father owned the exact make and model gun that I had told them he mentioned (which lent a lot of credibility to what I had told them), and after talking to him, were concerned about his mental state. However, his parents intentionally stonewalled the investigation by nearly immediately withdrawing him from attendance as a student with the intent to homeschool him for the rest of time that he would have spent in public school “so that this wouldn’t go down on his permanent record and ruin his life,” not even letting the school complete the investigation that they had been working on. This really bothered the school, because this was seen as an intentionally evasive maneuver, and they were right — they couldn’t continue the investigation, or do anything further about it, if he were no longer a student. All they could do would be to call the police on him if he did follow through on his threat and show up on campus at the end of the school year with the gun (and he had been clear as to when he wanted to do this, which was something else that I told the school). I was told all of this by the principal herself when she told me the results of the investigation and how this boy’s parents had intentionally stymied it. It was around this point that I just wanted to graduate and want nothing else to do with the school. I could not safely attend my own senior prom because this boy, obviously mad because all of this had gotten out, had told his friends that continued to attend school what had happened, and my safety at prom could not be guaranteed if I were to attend. The school’s literal response to that was exactly that. My safety could not be guaranteed…

I would find out more than a decade later as a result of some of Bub’s father’s friends being friends with the person that would eventually become his wife that due to the egregious oversight that allowed him to be withdrawn from attendance nearly immediately into this investigation that there being “nothing on paper” actually allowed him to join the United States military. That could have ended disastrously for everyone involved. I’m actually surprised that it hasn’t. Because the school couldn’t complete this investigation due to his parents withdrawing him really early into it, he was allowed to enlist in the military. That was appalling.

Like, his parents moved fast in how quickly they withdrew him as a student, and they made their intent extremely clear to the school even though they didn’t tell them why they were doing it. It was very evident.

But with all of the things that I had to deal with while attending school in this district, that being the absolute icing on the cake, is it really any wonder why I do not keep in touch with anyone that I went to school with (there being one exception, someone that attended the same school as me freshman year) and never will?

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