Hello again. This is a three parter. So let’s get to it.
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The first thing is something I’ve been dealing with for many years, and have only taken advantage once.
So I’m sure you folks know what ‘Amazon Prime’ is. Some if not most of you already use it. And this topic has nothing to do with Prime itself. Prime is awesome for what it does, but I don’t buy stuff on Amazon enough for me to feel $14.99 a month is worth fast free shipping.
My beef, is with Amazon itself. Back in 2018, I touched this topic right here. As you can
see, this issue has gone on for.. as I said earlier. I have addressed this issue to Amazon support after they tricked me thinking I was getting a ‘free trial’.. when my trial has already expired. Yet the bothersome bullshit ads keep going.
Yesterday when trying to buy stands for my upcoming Valve Index shipment (click here to read about that), I had possibly the best ad show up.
Giving away a free 30-day trial of Prime. WOW!! Too bad I CAN’T FUCKING USE IT!!
Again, to Amazon support. But this time, trying to hammer fear into the rep’s.. ‘face’ that I’ve had enough of this horseshit.
This time it seemed I finally got progress, explaining “no it’s not coming from email, this is coming from Amazon.com itself. Everytime I try to place an order, I keep being harassed by a free trial I can’t use! Either do something about it, or I’m going to stop using your website! Got it?!”
The response I got (and has been screenshotted where I can use as evidence nothing was done about it.. again, is below. For security reasons I’ve erased the rep’s name.
I can already see what’s going to happen;
Rep Person (goes up to Amazon Prime): Hey, Amazon Prime?
Amazon Prime: ..Yeah?
Rep Person: I.. just spoke to a very frustrated dragon. Sir, he wants you to stop harassing him with free trials when he’s already used it. *hands him the conversation*
Amazon Prime: ..*takes it and looks at it* Hmmm.. *starts laughing and throws it in the trash*
Rep Person: But sir.. I promised we’d help him!
Amazon Prime: Yes, yes you did. And you lied perfectly.
Rep Person: Yes sir. We’ll do nothing about it, as he’s only one dragon.
Amazon Prime: That’s what I like hearing. Now get back to work.
So.. yeah. That’s likely what’s going to happen with this. Nothing will get done, and I will continue being harassed. Because they promised they’ll “fix it” back in 2018 and.. obviously nothing’s been done to address it, and nothing will ever BE done.
Gotta love Corporate America! Land of the liars, and the home of the corrupt. Yaaaayyy…
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Second thing. This one has to do with what I was talking about the day I came back from hiatus, that I’ve been doing in VRChat. I call her ‘Secret Project’, or ‘Emeriss’ being the codename of the project.
Anyway, been doing poses for her. Well, trying at least. I’m more trying to take the easy way out and make the pose into an animation– making her look more lifelike. And the best place I know for free poses is Mixamo. That’s where I got all of my animations from back in the day. However without the original Best Boi Discord, I’ve lost very critical knowledge to convert the keyframes into the avatar I want to use.
By default, they’re named ‘mixamorig’, and Unity cannot work with this. I’ve tried looking and nearly everyone says “upload the model to Mixamo”. But there is a major problem with this, with the VictonRoy model I’m using for her.
Mixamo, refuses to handle the rigging. The first time I tried to do it, the legs were facing the other way and the model was bent over in a very bad cringeworthy angle as Mixamo was trying to rotate it to show me how the IK looks like (and it looked baaad). Now it’s telling me “Sorry, unable to map your existing skeleton”.
VRChat Discord’s animation channel, absolutely zero help. Noone knows apparently (a dev claims). More like noone wants to help me… not even the devs. Bet it’s because I’m using 2.0. Being shamed for using it now by getting no help. Shows the direction the game is going.
*sigh* My only option is to just give up on the ‘lifelike’ want, if I don’t want to manually recreate every keyframe to fit to the correct armature. Not to mention being forced to throw away 1/3 of pose ideas I had.
Can’t even do VRChat’s default idle animation, as I sadly cannot have “none” to force a default animation when it comes to World Fixed IK. Can only do that for an avatar, not an avatar-like object. I have to use the stripped idle pose I use for BTD 3.5 for her to not be in the ‘under the ground crouching’ pose.
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And now the 3rd and final one. A feeling very personal, has nothing to do with games or getting pissed at some company. I don’t even know how to start this, but I’m hoping a certain someone who I never really had a good relationship with would forgive me.
My father, and why even now at times I swear I almost see something looking back at me from the grave.
It’s been over a month since I moved into what was his room, and sometimes I can picture what it looked like. I can still see him on his death bed. I remember every detail as if it was yesterday. But I do my best to shake it off. I mean, why bother talking about it? It hasn’t scared me from coming in here (thankfully). I can handle it better than my mother can.
But at times I know he’s looking down at me in shame. “You took advantage after I died just so you could have more room for VR.”
..Yes, but also no. I did it to help my mother out. That was the primary reason. Secondary was, of course, more room for VR. …But did we do what he wanted us to do? Originally I suggested we’d seal up the room, forget about it. Never did I think about more room for VR. But our cats liked going in the room. We were forced to keep it open.
My mother also.. fucked up here and there in her desperate attempt of trying to remove everything that reminded her of him. Including a nephew of a neighbor that seemed nice but took things we didn’t say he could have, and this caused the neighbor to be defensive against my mother.
See, my mother had a written document stating the person was allowed to take anything. She just didn’t understand the person being so greedy. She blames herself to this very day as what the person took was a very rare piece my father had, and it caused a lost friendship of a neighbor who refuses to see this from my mother’s perspective.
Thankfully we have other, kinder neighbors who have offered their arms in support, such as one who took the time to clean out my father’s garage.
I just.. pray I’m not going to hell over this when I do die. I don’t think I am. I pray he’ll be happy the room is being used, and that I promise to take care of it.
I actually think that’s what he’d want– the room to be used and cared for.