Lost a Day & My Identity

Irony seems to follow me like... well, like my dog whenever I'm not where I'm suppose to be.

I lost an entire day and possibly sleep yesterday. Why? I got Spore in the mail almost immediately as soon as I got home from school on Monday. So all day, despite the protest from Skippy for not taking him out to the back yard for potty (I'm still surprised he was able to hold it for 12 hours.), I was glued to the front of my computer screen impatiently evolving my creature and playing through the game to get familiar with the controls and other settings. The in-game achievement of Galactic God is a fitting one. As well as the other two I can earn for spending 50 hours in the content creation editors and 100 hours playing the game.

But for what it's worth, I enjoyed every moment of it. I found it very difficult to delete my first game, which was a dry run anyway with no intent of keeping it. The game does an amazing job of making you emotionally attached to your creation through very subtle things, like the occasional breaking of the 4th wall when it stares back at you because you haven't given it a command after several minutes. And once they get to the next stage of their existence, you cannot help but want to build their houses and cars in a way that is kind of like spoiling your favorite grandkid. It's addictive to the point of madness, but I love it.

I'm sure my tone and opinion will change in about three weeks.

Meanwhile, as I was staring into the shiny picture frame of a monitor that is my computer, someone found my debit card number and has been making purchases.

I found out fairly quick, as you have probably guess given the timeline of event. The total damage so far is only $50 at the most, but still. That's my $50! They were, strangely enough, all online purchases that had the name of the website posted on them. What hinted to me that they were ID Theft related was the purchase from iTunes. I didn't purchase anything since the Kanye West video was released. The others were for adult porn websites that I never visited. I do deal with the dirty videos, but when I do, I keep a strict eye on those purchases. That's how I found out that my bank account was compromised; I was checking up on a purchase and saw that more than what I bought.

The ironic part? My thesis involves identity and avatars. One one hand, you have me playing God channelling myself into an alien creature who will function as my identity in the game. On the other, my real identity is being used to make porno purchases I know for a fact I didn't make.

Life's funny sometimes.