DIAF U.S. Cellular

For those of you that are not intiated in the world of online gaming, DIAF stands for Die In A Fire. I have my theories of where this phrase came from and why it became so popular in the online gaming world. One reason.. well dying in a fire sounds horrifically painful. I mean you get shot in the head and boom.. its over. You get hit by a train.. and yeah.. its pretty much instant. Dying in a fire however sounds like one of the worst ways I can think of to die. Right after drowning... but that is because the thought of drowning is about the most horrible thing I can think of. I am not entirely sure why.. but it is. The though of being trapped under water.. not being able to breathe.. knowing that your body is going to make you try and breathe and it will be nothing but water. It just freaks me the hell out for some reason.

Anyway.. the other reason DIAF is so popular among gamers is that it happens when playing quite often. Many of the high end raid level encounters have fire breathing monstrosities, demons, dragons, or lava and flame effects on the ground. Part of the challenges of these encounters is having 25 or 40 people, depending on the size of the raid, staying out of these fiery traps as they will usuall kill said person in a matter of seconds. Its almost comical to watch the learning process on these runs. After you fail an attempt, you look around and see 15 people lying dead in random pools of fire and flame.

For an example.. check out this video of the fight against Alar the Phoenix God. At about 4:45 in on the video, you can see the change into phase 2 of the fight and see that he starts randomly dropping pools of fire on the ground.. and keeps doing it so that the floor slowly becomes a maze of places you have to avoid standing so that you don't DIAF :P Let the video load and then just jump to 4:45 if you don't want to watch the whole thing.



Anyway.. that is my really long explination for the term DIAF. Now why do I want US Cellular to DIAF? Well, being in a long distance relationship is not an easy thing. Luckily for me, my girlfriend is amazing and is willing to work through all the hard times with me and I assure you if you have never had to do the long distance thing, they aren't exaggerating when they say its rediculously hard. I mean relationships can be tough and take work when you are right there...able to talk about things face to face. Able to reach out and give the other person a big hug and a kiss when things get rough. When you are 1800 miles apart and only get to see each other every 6-8 weeks, well its a whole different story.

In order to stay as close as we possibly can we are in pretty constant contact. Phone calls, emails, instant messaging and of course text messaging. Other than emails, they are all supposed to be "instant" communication methods. Meaning that the recipient is supposed to be notified and the message delivered as soon as you hit send or their phone rings for a call. Normally this is the case. Lately though, we have had a number of issues with text messages not going through. Usually its not a huge deal, but let me tell you.. sometimes depending on the timing it can be.

One night we were having an important conversation and I thought she got tired or frustrated and stopped texting with me. I got frustrated and upset and finally went to sleep. My alarm goes off for work at 430 in the morning for work. I hit the snooze button when it went off and 2 minutes later I heard another beeping noise. I wake up enough to realize its my phone. I had 3 text messages waiting. I read them and find they are from Lisa who wanted to still talk. I thought it was odd that she waited so long to send them and that she was still up, but I didn't want to leave her hanging when she wanted to talk, so I call her. I hear a groggy voice on the other end of the phone wondering why in the bloody hell I am calling her at 230am her time. Whoops! I apologized for waking her and told her we would talk in the morning.

This kind of thing has happened several times now where for whatever reason I don't get text messages from her.. and then all of a sudden at some random absurd hour of the morning they will come through in a flood. It's very frustrating that it doesn't work at very random times and for no apparent reason. She gets no message on her end that it wasn't sent.. her phone says it whent through. I get no notification or message on my end.. sometimes not until 6 or 8 hours later. Its retarded in this day and age of technology that there is no way of confirming that the message has been received by the person you sent it to. There is no reason whatsover that the texting system should randomly not deliver messages for hours on end. I work in IT. If our messaging system suddenly stopped delivering messages for more than a couple minutes, we would be all over the problem resolving it and making sure it doesn't happen again.

I know you are thinking its a petty thing for me to gripe about, but when you use texting as much as we do.. and you are paying for a service, you expect it to work. We know now that if the other person is not responding, not to assume they are being rude or don't want to talk and to make a phone call to see whats up, but we shouldn't have to just to make sure the system is working properly. Fix your shit US Cell.. and then DIAF. That will be all.

On a happier note, its Friday.. glorious Friday. Fridays are quiet around here usually, its heading into a 3 day weekend and means only 5 days left! :D