Just wanted to fill you guys in on my progress. I played AHII for about 2 years and ended up cancelling my membership (no NOT because of the arena changes.. this happened just before) due to me losing my job and financial troubles.
No it wasn't the $15/month that was the problem.. it was because I trashed my computer... It was an XP2200 system.. not the fastest thing in town, but worked fine for the most part with AH. It kept overheating.. I removed the processor fan/heatsink to clean it out... and my computer never worked again after that... must have cracked the motherboard or something. It was like rubbing salt in the wound... "HAHA you're out of a job..." then two days later "HAHA you broke your computer.. no AH for YOU!" very, very depressing times!
I had been using my 450mhz backup system as I didn't have the money to repair mine. Spent 2 months out of work total.. but a month into it I was hired by Pitney Bowes to do printer/internet maintenance at two local IBM offices here.. YAY! two bosses, but both residing out of town.. half way decent pay (but still not close to what I made as an automotive mechanic)... but after waiting 3 weeks they never sent me my "welcome aboard" packet, nor would they return my phone calls.
I finally gave up hope on that position and got lucky with a Service Advisor position at a local Honda dealership. Besides having a PITA boss, they treat me great and the pay is very very decent. I took advantage of being out of work to finally get away from wrenching, and it seems to have finally paid off.
Two weeks into my new job, I get a call from.. guess who? Pitney Bowes... asking if I'm ready to start... so I asked them why it's taken a month and a half to even contact me and they gave me some excuse about closing the position and then reopening it.. and promised me I had the job, but I'd have to reapply...
Well by this point my wife had decided to find work more enjoyable and less stressful and I could not afford to take a pay cut at this point for my "dream job".. and they've kind of ticked me off about the whole thing anyway.
Now I've been with this dealership just over a month. It's very stressful but nothing I can't handle. I only hope to get back into a system so I can finally relax with my favorite stress relieving game! The Sims!.. er wait that's my wife's favorite stress relieving game... ACES HIGH!!!
I'm finally at the point to where we're just about caught up on our behind bills.. bank account balance finally staying in the positive.. and I can start saving up for a system... if I'm going to spend the money I might as well upgrade.
Unfortunately the Wife isn't exactly ecstatic about me getting back into AH.. but whose wife is? Besides her Sims2 game is collecting dust and she wants to be able to play it just as badly as I want to try out the new Arena formats here!
Hopefully by Christmas we'll be in a position to buy the parts for me to assemble a better system, and we'll both be in "angry at each other for spending so much time on the computer" heaven once again! YAY!
Thanks guys for helping me out in other threads.. you helped me through quite possibly the roughest two months of my life (mentally AND financially). I don't think I can say I couldn't have done it without you, but you did help me out quite a bit! I was so afraid we'd lose this house.. our first house together.. and even though it's a rental it's still a HOUSE, but thank God our Landlord was VERY understanding and FORGIVING... and blatently REFUSED to even consider eviction or even charging us any late fees on our rent, even though it's very clearly stated in our lease.
And thank God for my father.. who is my second-most best friend (next to my wife)... who has been there for me, even though he's going through his own problems...
For those of you who think there are no good people left in this world, and I'll be honest I was starting to think that myself for awhile... think again.
Hopefully I'll be shooting you down soon! OKOK you'll be shooting ME down.. but I'll at least be having fun.
And by the way, that 450 mhz old Monorail system doesn't do half bad.. I loaded it down with spare ram sitting around in the basement.. got 384Megs in that sucker.. takes 2 minutes to post.. even WITH quick boot! I put a decent AGP video card in it... and it actually cranks surprising quick... still not quick enough for AH... but quick enough for common uses. I had to unplug the floppy though, because for some reason it would reboot every time I rolled by my computer chair... I guess the vibration shorted out the floppy somehow dangdest thing I've ever seen!
OK.. enough... have fun guys and THANK YOU!
