Today started like a normal day. I wake up, hit some keys on kato, move the mouse on bell, and watch the monitors come back to life. I get on Wesnoth, lalala, all normal.

Then during my testing of Stoss’ Bloodbath2, I hear a gAIM beep that isn’t from Wesnoth. I change the game from full screen, to find some random dipshit sending me ICQ messages.

Now, normally this wouldn’t piss me off. Just one moron sending me messages, right?

Wrong. Not too long after that, another idiot adds me to his MSN list and starts bothering me. So I’ve decided to write a short HOWTO on contacting OwlManAtt. It’s rather simple, too!

First, ask yourself if you fit the following criteria:

  • Are you an idiot?
  • Do you use chatspeak?
  • Are you asking me to code something for you?
  • Are you an idiot?
  • Are you going to use my contact list as a billboard?
  • Are you an idiot?

If you said yes to any of the above questions, DO NOT CONTACT ME UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. You will just waste your time.

So, if you’ve gotten past the first ‘test’, you just need to follow these simple rules when contacting me over some sort of messanger service.

  1. Identify yourself in your initial message. Say something more like ‘Hello, I am xxx from xxx. You don’t know me.’
  2. Give me a reason why I should waste time talking to you. Not just ‘because’. You need a reason.
  3. Don’t just add me to something that will request my authorization and not talk. That’s just stupid. In thirty seconds, I’ll just block you for failure to identify yourself.
  4. DO NOT USE YOUR DISPLAY NAME AS A BILLBOARD. Plugging your shitty website in your display name pisses me off. My contact list is not a fucking billboard, asshole.

In some cases, if you add me and it tells me you added me, I’ll demand identification and a reason why I should waste time on you instead of waiting for you to tell me first. But not always.

If you fail to identify yourself within thirty seconds, you will be blocked!

And of course, WHEN IN DOUBT, DON’T TALK TO ME!