So I finally did what every responsible WoW player is supposed to do now that I'm playing more regularly again, and attached an authenticator to my account via my iPhone.

I will now get to spend the next several days (most likely) trying to restore access to my account, after a series of what I would consider to be normal events that has resulted in being completely locked out of my account.

First and foremost, my iPhone died.  It had been giving warnings for a bit, saying there was no SIM card installed (even though there was).  This phone was brand new (less than a month old), so I wasn't expecting it to crap out on me, but it became completely nonfunctional last night. 

Today I took it into an Apple store and they told me it was too far gone and just gave me a new one.

Those of you who have an iPhone authenticator probably already know where this is headed...but I'll just say that when I got home and tried to do a restore on my phone, only to have Blizzard tell me it didn't like my information, I got a little irritated.  After further researching into the issue, I see that I'm likely going to have to make few calls and wait on hold for a ridiculous amount of time.  Annoying enough as it is.  But what I'm much more frustrated about is that because my phone died w/o me having a chance to retrieve the old serial number attached to the authenticator, I'm probably going to be asked to jump through several more hoops, delaying access to my account several days if not a week or more. 

Again, you're probably thinking to yourself, well why didn't you write it down or store it somewhere safe?  Well, I did.  And unfortunately kiddo has gone into a paper & cardboard destroying phase, and nothing is sacred (particularly notepads and books).  Code has since been destroyed.

I'm not saying authenticators are a bad thing, but I am not thrilled at all about the time and effort I am going to have to make to resolve this.  I really wish they would just keep the serial number tied with the app somehow so that when you restore your iPhone, it keeps the same serial number as before.  Just saying...

I know I'm hardly in-game any more (most recent adventure:  after buying fancy new hardware to upgrade our computer, managed to kill the hard drive that had wow and all my tediously configured addons installed on it...).

However, I have been a part of the larger Downfall community for years now, and this is one of my most prominent internet-based social networks to which I belong.  And it is also unique, because it blends many of the facets of the internet into one community; video games, websites, IRC, blogging, etc etc.

I'm taking this brand new course at PSU (just started back at school this week!) called "The Internet Age".  I'm very excited about integrating this in to my other academic and eventually career pursuits, as more than ever, the Internet is going to have a significant impact on every aspect of businesses and communication at a fundamental level.

I am doing a half hour presentation on the following topic, and I welcome any and all comments on this topic for integration in to my assignment:

Describe the web as a social phenomenon. What are all of the mechanisms available for people to communicate with each other? How are they different? How are they the same? In particular, focus on the history of e-mail, NetNews, IRC, instant messaging, social networks, wikis, microblogging (i.e. twitter), blogs, and on-line games. Compare the functions of these services and the kinds of communication they are good for (i.e. small group, large group). Can one mechanism completely replace another one?

Obviously I'll be drawing on a lot of my own experience, both personally and professionally, but I'd like to incorporate your thoughts on this subject as well.  Considering <Downfall> has managed to utilize the internet to create something BEYOND a virtual community, I figured it would be a great place to start =).

Cheers,

-Karli

Hi Downies!

I'm trying to explore gift ideas for my awesome husband, and I'm a bit at a loss because honestly we have most of the crap guys would tend to wish for (speakers, tv, computer, iphone, bla bla bla). 

I was reading up on some gift guides and saw that Verizon has a product called the MiFi 2200 which can be used to convert a cell phone signal into wireless internet for your laptop.

My husband is very weird about the idea of jailbreaking his iPhone; don't ask me why cause I don't understand it myself.  If I had my own iPhone I'd jailbreak it in a heartbeat.  But I digress.

As we have AT&T, the Verizon product is obviously not really a viable option, especially since they have some crazy fees to actually USE the damn thing.  So not particularly interested in that.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a product that does the same kind of thing, that will work on an iPhone, and doesn't have any costs past the initial purchase of the product.  I was looking at this 3G-to-wireless Portable Router and am thinking this might be what I'm looking for, but I don't want to spend a ton of money only to have it not work out.

Any help and tips will be appreciated!

I got an email from Blizzard this morning requesting a password reset and then another saying my account was banned for 24 hours.  Since all I have done in the last few days was do a Headless Horseman run on Karli, I'm concerned that my account has been hacked in to in some way.  The email read: 

"An investigation of the World of Warcraft account *** has produced evidence that the account has been accessed by someone who is not allowed to use it."

I can take care of the annoying details, but since I have no idea what kind of activity occurred after I last logged in I was hoping someone else might. 

<3 Karli