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Development Bonus Update 7/2 Just wanted to touch on some issues... Currently we just got out of a long meeting to go over the item normalization procedure. You've seen the announcements and know that we're going to be closing down the site for a few hours on Monday morning. There is a lot of planning that is going into this, point-by-point plans and fallback options and emergency scenarios planned out. If all goes well, you won't notice a difference. Realistically, there will be bugs, and we will be ironing these out on Monday. Towns and Rallies: Yes, we took out the train station, and the users screamed, and we put it back. Actually, there were a number of changes that we did for towns: some improvements to reduce the number of connection errors, changes to the heatmap, the wheel, and a couple of other things. The auto-placement was put in because we thought a) that the train station was confusing (we've seen users trying to talk to the NPCs) and b) thought that it was no big deal to simply click another button to go to a different room. Boy, were we wrong. The Gaia servers are incredibly close to us, and of course we have a great link, so the problems of lag don't affect us as much as they affect most of the users. So, while we thought that it was no big deal to hit another button to go to another room, most of our users were instead saying, "zomg the lag makes this unbearable." So, we put it back. Why Don't You Ask The Users Before Making Changes Like This?: We have been doing more of that lately -- that's why we started the Gaia beta guild, for example. However, it's untenable to ask the user base about every single feature; there's simply too much going on at any given time. I do think we're going to make mistakes... in fact, I think it is good to make mistakes sometimes, because it means that you're pushing the boundaries and little bit and veering outside of the staid and boring. I think previewing features and whatnot in the journals is a good medium -- the interested people read it and provide good feedback. We could definitely do more of it, however, and we have someone that is dedicated to it. Inventory changes: Ugh. We pushed it, reverted it, tweaked it, pushed it, and reverted it back again. Users hated having pages reload when the tabs were hit. That the individual pages loaded faster was not important; instead, having to wait for the tabs caused the "flow" of making an avatar to drastically change. We're looking at this right now, trying to decide what to do. At this point, any fix we do for large inventories in the next few months will probably have to involve some sort of pagination; we might make it optional or selective based on the size of your inventory. However, there is a complication -- since the inventory pagination code is mixed in with item norm, we may have to live slow inventory pages for a few days while item norm settles out. More information when we get it.

Posted by: Panagrammic Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 02:24am

Read my journal!

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pantherwisdom
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Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 02:34am


	I actually prefer to have the tabs, I hope you make it optional. I have a lot less to look through at any one time and only have to see the options available for what I want. ie tops and dresses, bottoms, shoes. I don't like waiting for the whole inventory to load just so I can go to the arranger. First, well that is a first.

Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 02:47am


	The thing I don't get is, inventories used to load great back in.. 06 I think it was? Maybe early 07. 1) You should make it so the page loads before all the individual thumbnails/items finish loading, that way it wont crap out mid-load. Also you can still change your avi with broken thumbnails. 2) Maybe I missed it, but there wasn't an item limit before. I know 100% sure that the limit used to be higher, because I gradually have to keep removing items from my inventory, periodically. At first it was 1.8k items, then in a month it crashed again and I had to go down to 1.6k. Then in another month it was down to 1.3k items. And most recently I think it has gone down to 1.2k items. Can't you go back and figure out what keeps changing to drastically decrease the amount of items it takes to crash a page, and fix it? Personally the distressing part is not load time, considering once the page loads it's smooth sailing (solely because, thank god, each tab does not reload the whole page and you can switch instantly). The distressing part is the fact that I can not even keep all of my items in my inventory without the page crashing. I wouldn't mind a long load time if I could at least use all my items. I had to put half of my MIs into storage, and I am running out of things to tuck away. Shorter load time would just be a bonus, as far as I'm concerned.

Miles To Go
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Maakuu
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Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 02:50am


	nice

Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 02:51am


	I would really prefer it if you gave us an option for the way we want our inventories to load... actually.. let us have a choice for everything especially PM notifications. (Birthday reminders and Label Maker) I kept my inventory small and prefer loading one page and seeing everything at once and being able to seamlessly move around my dress up page. The new inventory is only inconvenient for people that know how to restrain themselves with their inventory, but obviously something needs to be done for the people who can't dress up at all. I have no idea how much work or coding is needed for it, but giving users a choice on how their inventories load seems like a win win scenario. Keep up the good work Pan and thanks for keeping us informed. :3

Yuji Ikaido
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France Hopper
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Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 03:34am


	Ah good towns and Rallies went back to before. Good, good. That's all I've got to say. EDIT: I lied. Got a few Towns bugs for you. 1) Collecting gold still gives that weird error. 2) Find me a room does nothing and just makes the characters disappear. 3) I can't get in my house or any other house! (EDIT) Seems to be my zipcode. I've gotten into others now, some a little slower than before. My address: 13 Barton 040044 (EDIT 2) Got some more info. If I click the "Visit my house" in my profile it gets stuck on Connecting to Town server: Saving location. The bar keeps flashing but nothing ever happens. (EDIT 3) My zip seems to reside at s2.cdn.gaiaonline.com if that helps any too.

Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 05:32am


	I'm glad that you put the train station back in. :3 For the inventories, will the multiple pose window ever be locked? I love that you can move it now (off of the horrid Flaunt It/Lablemaker banner), but it's very annoying to have to constantly move it when you're viewing the different poses of the item. It would be nice it it just locked in the top left corner of the inventory box and stayed there until you closed it. Also, with towns and the cinemas (great choice of movies by the way biggrin ) - I needed to report someone, but it was next to impossible. To make a report, you have to manually type in the username. In the cinemas, that's very difficult, especially if the user is sitting down - you can't see the user name clearly. I would also like to see an ignore button which would instantly vanquish the ignored from your screen. Could you someone incorporate that clicking on a user gives three options: > friend list > report > ignore Thanks and I appreciate your hard work. :3

pirhan
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Gamine
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Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 06:18am


	I just wanna start off by thanking you guys for busting your asses trying to make the site work better. The unsung heroes of Gaia, you are. 3nodding Pagination: I'm sorry but...I hate it. So much. I get that the breaking inventories necessitated a change, and this was probably the best band-aid, but...argh. It's actually one of the simple pleasures Gaia has to offer, I could sit for hours playing with my little dollie. But I found the constant reloads to be a complete deterrence from wanting to fool around in dress up. I wish you guys good luck in trying to find a viable solution, I don't imagine it's as easy as it sounds, and I s'pose I could grin and bear it for a few days once item norm hits (good luck with that too, by the way!). But as a permanent fixture? I'm afraid I'd have to fight tooth and nail. sweatdrop

Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 07:12am


	Yeah, we aren't efficient dressers, going back and forth between different items in inventory. Loading everything only once would be easier. Good luck getting to bed at this hour. sweatdrop

Spriteless Girl
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Pokariii
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Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 09:12am


	France Hopper EDIT: I lied. Got a few Towns bugs for you. 1) Collecting gold still gives that weird error. 3) I can't get in my house or any other house! (EDIT) Seems to be my zipcode. I've gotten into others now, some a little slower than before. My address: 13 Barton 040044 (EDIT 2) Got some more info. If I click the "Visit my house" in my profile it gets stuck on Connecting to Town server: Saving location. The bar keeps flashing but nothing ever happens. The exact thing is happening to me, but in any location. D: I want to hunt bugs! It was working fine earlier today.. and it's odd, because I can almost always get into towns, rallies, any of our little flash places. CAPTCHA - requires WORDS, after I forgot to put them in. xD

Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 10:44am


	nuzzlenudge Are you guys doing anything with item norm today? Because I can't get to my inventory or dress up page at all. When I try to select "Avatar" from the shortcuts menu, I get a "Database Error: Unable to retrieve a list of valid base models" and when I try to get to my inventory from the same menu I get a "Inventory Error: Unable to load your inventory at this time. Please try again later. Error: Database error while trying to load inventory. Please try again." Which sucks because I wanted to try out the new evolutions of my itemzzzz crying flail Otherwise, keep up the great work, we appreciate all you do! hug EDIT: Ah, also, trying to get to websites not on Gaia that are links out...keep getting a "System Error: We're sorry, but we cannot access the URL you requested. Please try accessing this URL at a later time.Object id #" Not sure if they're related or something's gone HORRIBLY WRONG AT GAIA HQ. sweatdrop hehe... It's VERY late and time for sleep. Thanks again for everything!~ Next Morning Edit: Hmm, all the problems seem to have either fixed themselves or have been fixed! Oh well!

Elliandra McTiernen
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Ginger Flare
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Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 01:23pm


	I'm just glad that you guys corrected the Towns and Rallies issue. It was sad to see the NPCs go emo I remember learning about towns with them, after I figured out they weren't real people. rofl sweatdrop Anyhoo, the refreshing of the pages definitely killed the fun of customizing for me. I wouldn't mind if I had the large inventory, since at least it would work... but my inventory isn't that large, (hmm... I wonder how many poses I have though?) and it just killed to have to refresh to go over to shoes. It was really annoying, when you're looking for a certain MC but you can't remember what tab it's under. D'; They seriously need their own tab.. I hardly ever use the MCs in a pose that actually fits to the tab it's in. (gift of goddess for example, I only really use the shoes... which always used to confuse me, but I'm used to that ONE now. XD)

Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 05:55pm


	Hey I just noticed fishing was added to the games page again. You guys finish it 'cause I don't think an announcement went out about it going back up. Maybe I just missed it... Anyway, nice to know that's back up. Have you guys been able to get any sleep over there with all that's going on? Any hammocks in cubicles yet?

France Hopper
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Autumn
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Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 06:29pm


	Just a suggestion. Please please please don't make the inventories anything like marketplace pagination! For one thing, you can't get to the bottom of your inventory that way without spending who knows how long going through 48-50 pages of stuff, or reentering the url with the page number you want to go to. Another suggestion would be in arranger, to have an option in account access to have it load a certain way. I know with the current system where it loads the name of the item, price, plus picture it takes longer to load my ~4k in inventory items than it would to just have them all appear as icons. Hope this helps. I'm looking forward to being able to equip items again without tek teking myself and then spending 20-30 min. getting arranger to load so I can pick out certain items to wear out of storage. Good luck!

Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 06:48pm


	Thank you for putting towns back to how it was, but can anything be done to make it more difficult for people to run scripts?

Tonedefff
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Dreda
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Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 07:36pm


	skips over other subjects I has a large inventory so I know the white page bug @__@ I get it everytime I try to load my invey and when It finally loaded on to get to the pages, I wasn't surprised. I actually liked the page way, even if it was a bit annoying to have each one load when you tabbed over. It's nice to have a way like that because that's one of the biggest feature and people that have been on the site are all getting to the point that inventories /don't/ load it's a bit unfair. I found out it was always around 2800(or so) that it shut down, but that's 2800 poses, and when you guys started doing 10 poses per item, it screwed up a lot more xD ~

Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 09:29pm


	I honestly don't mind that I had to load each tab/page when I clicked. The thing that bothered me was that when I tried to go back to a previous page it had to reload everything. I'm not sure if there is maybe something that can be done to stop that. I didn't get much a chance to play with it as by the time I noticed you guys had gone live with it, it would go down a few minutes after. It would be great if you could do it like the shops are set up. So when you load a previous set of items they're still "loaded" so to speak and you don't have to wait for all the icons to come back. I think I'd also like it more if you could have more visible items in a section. I mean it loads fine if you have say 800 items anyway. So if you could just set it to load up to 800 items for each section per page, I think it would work great and I think most people would be happy. Cause then you wouldn't have to deal with page issues and have to reload them if you decide you want something on a previous page because chances that someone will have say 800 hats/tops/pants/etc is very unlikely.

Bria_Teragram
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Arcadian
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Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 09:37pm


	Wait, Gaia Beta Guild? goes to look for it, and fails Nani? gonk

Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 09:45pm


	I'm pretty sure it's a hidden, invite only guild. For those lucky enough to be beta testers... I loath you...

France Hopper
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Arcadian
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Commented on: Fri Jul 04, 2008 @ 11:08pm


	Ohh, okay. NOW I understand. Thanks. sweatdrop

Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 12:29am


	I just want to change my avatar PERIOD. sad And you can't compare Gaia now, to Gaia years ago... There are way more items and way more people... of course things aren't going to be the same... to whoever commented about old inventories

Kathleen Starr
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Arli
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Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 03:01am


	To people wondering about beta testers... In the site feedback there was a non-stickied thread opened by developers looking for 18+ Gaians to be Beta Testers. This was back in November 2007. The reason for the age limit is because we had to sign a legally binding contract (a non disclosure agreement). They opened up applications again to get more users. This time it was announced in the forums. Maybe they'll open up applications again one day~ smile

Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 02:05pm


	Thanks for the heads-up, Yuufa. Guess I'll lurk in Site Feedback more often.

Arcadian
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Kiyoske Dante
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Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 02:09pm


	Hey Panagram, nice to hear another journal update from you, and so soon! @Inventory Pagination: Thankyouthankyouthankyou. I can finally equip items without having to shove half of my inventory in the storage bin. I was in the feedback thread beating back the dullards who said that "you were ruining Gaia". @Towns/Rallies: I think a lot of lag issues came up with the fact that "ZOMG INK WORTH SOMETHING?". Not that it's a bad thing. @Item Norm: Congrats! Have you guys gotten your hopes up for them to fail drastically when the code push fails and everything goes into a spiraling downhill hell hole? o: This isn't pessimism, this is one coder to another, attributing the laws of Infernal Dynamics and Sod's Law to the project. Good luck pruning bugs on the 11th hour!

Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 03:07pm


	Hey pan, I just found a bunch of gaia look-a-like scams that were liked to in a YouTube video I was watching. Looking at the comments, an unfortunate bunch are falling for it. How do I go about reporting that since it's not posted on the site? Should I PM a mod or something?

France Hopper
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Lazarus Larkin
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Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 06:27pm


	PLEASE make pagination optional. My inventory takes ages to load but honestly I'd rather start it up, go fix myself a snack, and then come back to find it all there for me than to have to deal with pages sweatdrop Thanks for listening to us though, it's nice to know we're getting through! whee

Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 08:12pm


	Equipment pagination is back. Please make a setting to opt in or out of pagination. I'm glad there's a solution for giant inventories, but I'd rather keep my inventory under a certain number of items and have one long load than have to reload it for 10 seconds every time I want to find my next item. This is particularly obnoxious when it takes 10 seconds to load a page in one of the tabs that has only three items. Additionally, couldn't you just increase the time before your Avatar Server request times-out? Isn't that the source of the white-page error or does it come from somewhere else? But yes, a choice between paginated and non-paginated inventories is clutch. Because as nice as it is for the 1% of users with overlarge inventories to now be able to dress themselves again, it's gotten much harder for everyone else. Now I'm at a place where I won't bother changing my avatar until the pagination is an option, and if that's the case, I won't bother buying the items.

Kunai Jones
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Violue
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Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 08:24pm


	OPTIONAL! Definitely make pagination optional. I'd rather have to wait forever for my inventory to load and be then be able to move smoothly around it once it does, but I understand that not everyone feels that way. So optional would be awesome.

Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 10:27pm


	I absolutely HATE the pages. gonk I have a large inventory on the brink of breaking, but this isn't much of a better alternative. Back to the drawing board, please? cry

Katarra Bloodstone
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France Hopper
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Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 10:59pm


	My inventory is small but I too agree, lose the pages. One load for all. It's loads fast but is more of an annoyance than connivence, especially for those of us who aren't overloaded.

Commented on: Sat Jul 05, 2008 @ 11:43pm


	Hmm...I wanted to actually bring the issues of the two giant buttons, the show off your avi one and labeling friends one. I don't know if I should poke at you here for it, make a thread in feedback, or what...so going to do all eventually, starting with you. ^^ I don't like the buttons being there. Because whenever I click something with more than one pose in my inventory, the poses go over one of those buttons down there. They get accidentally click a few times a day. X.x Its a little annoying. I agree with you about the whole not posting every little thing for the Beta guild. Though some of us would want you to put every little thing through, most of us understand the hassle that would be or how at times you guys don't think about it. And learning mistakes and stuff or testing all of gaia with new changes now and then is great. Atleast thats my opinion =3. I'll be sure to comment later. =3

PinkMeansEvil
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Ellavemia
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Commented on: Sun Jul 06, 2008 @ 01:44am


	Not to seem a suck up, but it's journal updates like yours that make me love you best of all, Pan. Keeping us in the loop this way is helpful and appreciated. Keep up the great work.

Commented on: Sun Jul 06, 2008 @ 01:56am


	I have a large inventory which caused me to be unable to equip anything. This fix is good if you only want to change one or two items on an avatar, but it would be very frustrating making a new one from scratch, especially due to the lag. If the lag between page loads would be decreased (it seems to be much more than just regular loading lag for the inventory images) this would work better, but honestly I really like being able to load my whole inventory at once. One thing I do think really helps though is that items with multiple poses load separately for those poses. I think that alone would cut down on inventory load time if those and those alone loaded separately and may even help with the large inventory equip error from before.

Dieidiotscum
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Comica
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Commented on: Sun Jul 06, 2008 @ 04:02am


	I don't like the changes to the avatar system. While this inventory pagination is a positive change for those with large inventories, it's a total pain for those of us with a lesser amount of items. Please, please make this an option.

Commented on: Sun Jul 06, 2008 @ 07:14am


	[♥] [♠] [♥] ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ I'd like to go ahead and thank you for your hard work on this project.I know it's been getting promised forever and it's been hassle,but I'm glad to see parts of it trickling out already.I cannot tell you how happy I was to be able to add some off my items from storage back into my inventory and for my customizer not to go back afterwards. Like everyone else,I do not care for the pagination,but considering it use to take 5-15mins for it to load on top of getting run script errors,I rather have this than the former.I find it annoying that the pages have to reload everytime,but they load abit fast though.Even so,I think it should be optional or at least have the item listing either expanded or stay loaded.This would cut time down completely,but I guess if customizer goes to flash it won't matter too much I hope. Anyway,looking forward to item norm,hope everything goes well -crosses fingers-. ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ [♠] [♥] [♠]

Makoto_Gin
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DogCow
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Commented on: Mon Jul 07, 2008 @ 12:01am


	On Friday, every other page load which involved the inventory: avatar equip, invo itself, and gift-giving; was giving an error of some sort. Gift giving is so old of code it actually gave a critical error. Anyway, refreshing the page worked, so I assumed it was just some databases having the problem or not others. PS: captcha was: Lanzer rulez!

Commented on: Mon Jul 07, 2008 @ 03:29am


	Item norm goes out tomorrow! It'll be interesting to see how many bugs are patched... and how many new appear as a result... Good luck Pan, I'm sure you guys have to waiting to do this for a long time now.

France Hopper
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Anto J Lareneg
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Commented on: Mon Jul 07, 2008 @ 07:55am


	I'm not too fond of the way my inventory has two pages in the tops section and when I hit forward or backwards it reloads the entire page. It'll be a huge hassle if I ever am trying to decide between two tops that are on different pages. ): I hope maybe you can figure out a way to make it load more smoothly, though I guess just the huge inventories is a load on the servers. I don't know... I guess it's better than it not loading at all. D:

Commented on: Mon Jul 07, 2008 @ 08:57am


	.......

A Cats Curiosity
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xxmadness
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Commented on: Mon Jul 07, 2008 @ 07:26pm


	journals r for babys idiot what a loser rofl dont kill me wheit u cant cuse ur just a loser rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl hahahahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhaa ahaha aghahahahhaha ahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhaa ahaha aghahahahhaha ahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhaa ahaha aghahahahhaha ahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhaa ahaha aghahahahhaha ahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhaa ahaha aghahahahhaha hahahahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhaa ahaha aghahahahhaha ahahahhaahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhhahahahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhaa ahaha aghahahahhaha ahahahhaahahahahahhahahahahahhaa ahaha aghahahahhaha ahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhaa ahaha aghahahahhaha ahahahha _________ l hi l l_________l /)/)" ( . .) c(')(') BUNNY

Commented on: Mon Jul 07, 2008 @ 08:34pm


	wt the heak are you wearing you look kinnda like a noob but your cool for it

Emo Staplez
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Wizler
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Commented on: Thu Jul 10, 2008 @ 12:47pm


	Can't the amount of items being load as a page be customizable by users, maybe? I really don't mind waiting a while for my shirts to load, for example. It's kind of annoying having to browse back and forth through 7 pages to find the right shirt. I'd love to see the dress up page load by Tab. Click shirts, shirt tab will load, click pants, pants tab will load. And then make pagination each 800 items or something. Lol.

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