EPT
Personal Contribution History: Volume Two of Two
by semioldguy
Chapter Six: Make it Blue
Hmm... where did I leave off. *goes back to check the previous blog
Oh yes, "new era of wonderful contributions." That sounds about right. Live2win and I were paired up for the MSL coverage and we decided to start it off with something different: Highlight Videos.
Let me tell you all something about highlight videos. I had no idea how to edit videos or do anything of the sort going into it. Knowing this, I gladly accepted our coverage format and then dove in hopelessly.
Turns out I figured it out though and did okay.
One thing's for sure, they take a long time to prepare the highlights for. Now once I know which highlights I want to include it is fairly simple and fast, but what takes time is watching every game, sometimes multiple times, and recording where the highlights I want to include in the game are and write it down on my notepad. Then I can come back later and slice out that part of the video for my highlight reel.
I also want to keep the highlights within a certain time frame, so not too long, but not too short either. Just the good parts for a couple minutes. So this requires some small calculation of which cuts to use and which not to use based upon length and quality.
Though actually I liked making the Highlight videos, or at least the end products of it.
Wow, I bet that part was really boring!
This was pretty much my only task as a staff member at this point. I also wrote a TLFE about Best and Luxury before everyone hopped on to those bandwagons.
I was doing okay as the newest promoted staffie, until something horrible and unpredictable happened near the beginning of April.
Chapter Seven: Hooray Identity Theft!
Note: This has nothing to do with Team Liquid or contributions.
It was April 9th when I checked my online bank statement to make sure I had enough money to buy I don't recall what. I had a lot less money than I thought I did. Right below an 85 dollar Hooters charge (I had a shitload of beer) I noticed a couple odd transactions.
There was a group of transactions for Airline tickets all over the past three days totaling $2700.
FUCK!
So I got in touch with a claims officer to get it sorted out ASAP, taking the rest of my day off work to handle it immediately.
Apparently a debit card which I had canceled, and had records confirming that I canceled it, was never actually canceled and someone got a hold of the card information as was quickly using it to use all my money.
The first things we did was to actually cancel the card and I asked them to freeze my account from any future transactions (later setting up a new account). There were still a lot of pending transactions that would go through over the next couple days. I then had to get into contact with several other people in my bank who handle this sort of stuff.
Over the next couple days the pending transactions showed up on my statement totaling over $4000. For a poor college student, it seriously sucked. My rent check bounced and I also had no way to pay my school tuition for the month.
So now I had to start dealing with my leasing office and the school in addition to my bank. On top of this I literally had no money. Making things like eating and getting gas to go places luxuries instead of usual day to day things activities.
After a couple weeks of this nonsense I ended up owing a bunch of friends a bunch of money and my bank finally credited my new account for all the money that had been taken. However, they reserved the right to take it all away if they couldn't resolve all these bogus transactions.
So I was in contact with them over the next several months filling out paperwork and a bunch of other tedious crap.
Then came the day!
July 1st.
I swear I am still going to take this letter and frame it on my wall.
Dear Kyle Dunne,
Our investigation of your dispute regarding the above referenced account is complete. The prior provisional credit to your account in connection with the disputed transactions in the amount of $4,266.77 has been made final.
We appreciate blah blah blah blah blah....
Our investigation of your dispute regarding the above referenced account is complete. The prior provisional credit to your account in connection with the disputed transactions in the amount of $4,266.77 has been made final.
We appreciate blah blah blah blah blah....
With a big sigh of relief I knew I could go back to living like me again, at which point I realized I hadn't even been to Team Liquid in over a month.
I returned to see the calamity of my disappearance and the loose ends of things I left such as an untended MSL Results and Standings thread and missing news coverages.
The complaints were numerous. It was good to be back.
Chapter Eight: Shirts
My "identity" had been recovered and I was ready to get back into the swing of things.
Almost immediately after I came back we had started to get CJ Entus shirts into the mix for providing to our community. Only we didn't know how we were going to handle shipping them to everyone since they only wanted to send a single large shipment out of Korea rather than 100 individual orders.
I volunteered myself as a shipper for North America, and Rage himself the shipper for Europe.
This could have been a mistake, but I'm glad to have made the mistake anyway.
I then was bothered incessantly about it over the next couple months (and actually still may be being bothered incessantly about something regarding this which I won't mention or get into here).
You don't get all my secrets.
We discovered it was largely just cheaper to ship from the US to most places in Europe than it was to ship within Europe for whatever reason, so I was volunteered (voluntarily) for the next big Korean order. But that will be in a later chapter.
I could feel my stock rising within the staff.
The next writing season was up and I was ready to do that again. And, you know, actually write this time instead of making those highlight videos.
Chapter Nine: Blizzcon 2008
This is the part zatic has been waiting for!
But I'm not jumping to that part yet.
With my own Blizzcon ticket secured it was time to organize the Team Liquid BJ's meet-up again. With my strange love for planning things I took care of most of this and was happy with how it turned out. Still wondering about the misleading name though.
This time people recognized or knew me, and I wasn't as surprised, but still curious.
I was back into writing coverage and my partner in crime, Plexa, gladly let me use his extra bed for the Blizzcon weekend. In exchange I was gladly available as taxi service. On the one night we probably had about 30 Team Liquid males crammed into the room watching MSL on my twelve inch laptop screen.
Though most of us in the MSL mosh party didn't watch a lot of that as we were too busy doing other important things like drinking and yelling across the room at GHOSTCLAW! These antics are better recorded elsewhere though if you have some strange desire to search them up.
Let's get to the Blizzcon you didn't hear about...
The day after Blizzcon Plexa, Zatic and I all went to the mall. I also took the both of them to The Yardhouse where we watched American football and I drank a half yard of beer, which they had never seen before. For the rest of you not in the know, this is a glass of beer that is half a yard (or about 45cm) tall. They come twice as tall too, but not at this bar for some reason.
I took an exhausted Plexa to the airport and came back for a troubled zatic, where we watched a movie and he expertly closed his keys in the trunk of his rental car.
After a long grueling conversation with the auto club, who couldn't contact zatic on his German phone number and my phone being nearly dead we discovered that there was not a street address close to the immobile car that they could locate us at. So we went off location, met them there, and led our auto club savior back.
Well... we broke into the cab of the car in fairly good time, but that still left the key in the trunk. The back seat didn't pull down and we didn't immediately find a trunk release either.
But we did find it eventually.
With a major crisis averted we parted ways. Zatic to the airport, and me for the drive home.
Another awesome Blizzcon weekend.
Chapter Ten: Flying the Heros
All this stuff happens in our forums before you even see it's development on your side. And things happen slow on our side in a lot of cases. But we do it right dammit!
Anyway, the MBC order landed itself in my room. Which basically took away a good portion of my living space for the next several months as three very large boxes inhabited my floor.
Add to that all the individual boxes I put together myself, and those inhabited the left side of my bed. I slept with them every night. I told my girlfriend that they didn't mean anything to me so that she would be comfortable with my sharing of the bed with 70 or so others during this time.
After hours of packing and labeling and several post office runs I ended up with receipts nearly triple the length of my height. But I still have not reclaimed all of my room as the after effects of living in cramped quarters have not been fully remedied yet.
During all this MBC delivery stuff something else was brewing in the mind and contributions of semioldguy. (how are you liking thise cliff hangers?)
Chapter Eleven: You Are My Fantasy
Over the past year I had been developing a system for Fantasy Proleague and was ready to present it to the community.
I had done this in near complete secrecy. And then the proleague went and took out 2v2 and changed their format screwing up all the balancing I had put into my scoring system.
So it was put on hold while I figured the new stuff out and could test it a bit.
As the first round of this season's proleague came to a close I found myself upon a weeklong vacation and crammed in a bunch of work to finish it up.
I presented it in all it's glory at which point a bunch of other staff members like Hot_Bid took over various parts of it relieving me from the assload of work it would have been by myself (which I was totally prepared to do, but is totally okay that I don't have to).
Then they went and moved up Winner's League on us making us do a bunch of the recalculating again.
Some people have told me that it the best thing on Team Liquid since TSL, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Simultaneously, almost all of my other duties dissolved. I was relieved from coverage writing, which I might end up doing anyway because I don't know what else I would be doing and I like to write. My MSL R&S thread has been hijacked, which is fine and gives me less to worry about, and future shipments will probably not be going through me, or at least not all of them.
I hate making and packing boxes.
but I suffered through that for all you guys!
Of course with the shirking of some responsibilities I have picked up others in these recent times. There are plenty of duties that many of you never get to see. Being in MiR is like being in the CIA. I'd expand upon that comparison, but then I'd have to kill you.
Epilogue: Because I've Never Written an Epilogue
The distant future....
There is more that lies ahead in my contributions back to the people, though I think I've successfully contributed myself out of the negatives from where I began, I will continue to give so that I may take later. *suppresses an evil laugh
Currently in the works I am working on another TLFE, and hopefully I will finish this one unlike the previous couple I've set out to do.
If these entries were either entertaining or inspiring to someone, and perhaps has influenced others to also contribute more in the future in some way or other, then my goal has been accomplished.
I am always trying to find more and new ways to contribute an I'll have Volume Three of Two out
