Today I am going to pretend that you are all my husband. Now before you get excited about the prospect of lazing around in bed until past noon and having breakfast and innumerable cups of coffee brought to you whilst you potter about on your iPad, let me set the scene.
Two weeks ago I managed to get tickets for The Great British Bake Off: Extra Slice and we arranged to meet two other friends down on the South Bank. We set off with plenty of time and got within 200 metres of the South Bank when a taxi driver pulls up beside us and shouts that we have a flat tyre. Indeed we have, the back left tyre is starting to sag, and husband gets annoyed and starts to curse, so £120 and 30 minutes later at Kwik Fit, we are on the road again and get to the Bake Off studios.
There is no sign of our friends and a quick call reveals they are in Yo Sushi! finishing off a meal. No problems, we still have ten minutes before the doors open and we can spend an afternoon with Mary Berry and cake. Our friends take slightly longer than expected to arrive but there is no one queuing for  Bake Off so we’re bound to get in, or so we thought. It turns out they opened the doors early and the studio is now full, now there’ll be no delicious baked treats for us!
A flat tyre and now no Bake Off? Disaster! Or at least it is if you are my husband who proceeds to have a bit of shout and then sulks for the rest of the day. I have a slightly different view of the proceedings: crap happens, there is nothing you can do about it and no amount of sulking will make it better.
Which brings me on the weekend’s PSN outrage and the usual outpouring of bile and hate towards Sony, along with finger pointing and the heroic worship of the people behind the DDoS attacks. People got annoyed and thanks to the relative anonymity of the internet, complained like spoilt children.
Despite what some have claimed, Sony have assured us that nothing was hacked and no personal details were stolen. Customers are wary of Sony since 2011’s massive PSN hack, as they should be, but Sony did learn from that attack and would not have released a statement saying they had not been hacked if that were untrue. To quote George W. Bush, “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
Will Sony get attacked again in the future? Of course they will, and so will Microsoft, Blizzard, EA, Activision and every other big company and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Like blown tyres and missing Bake Off’s, crap happens. Circumstances are beyond your control and you are going to have to live with it, whether you like it or not.
The question is, what do you do when life throws you a curve ball? You could, like my husband, sulk, moan and generally be depressed, annoy others around you and have a miserable day. Or you could do what I did and say, “Sod it, let’s go to the pub instead.” It’s not Bake Off, but I had a very pleasant afternoon and let Jo Brand and guests judge the latest bakes without me.
The failure of the PlayStation Network is a minor inconvenience, a trifling matter considering what else is going in the world, and indeed your own lives. It doesn’t deserve four pages of hate on a blog, two hundred tweets or photoshopped images of Sony’s John Smedley in stocks. Sony are not going to work harder just because you tweeted them and told them they are nobs, they will be going flat out to solve the problem without your input, which you means you are wasting your time as well as theirs.
There is more to life than a good game of Killzone multiplayer. The PSN is down, so what? Do something else, take the opportunity to finish that single player campaign you never completed, go down the pub or go in the kitchen and start baking. Perhaps next time the PSN fails you won’t even notice as you will be in a tent waiting for Paul Hollywood to sink his teeth in to your soggy bottom.
Crap happens, but ranting and raving does absolutely nothing other than annoy you and those around you. Just be careful you don’t turn into the guy in this video:
XisTG
I’ve never read a text involving cake as lovely as this one; you make a good point, both with the PSN and the “let’s hit the pub” bit :)
Dan Jones
I didn’t even notice that PSN was down.
Stefan L
Yeah right, and I didn’t notice that the football season had started… ;)
Tuffcub
Has it? Oh god, time to mute Davs on Twitter then.
bladesew
The sum effect of the attack was that PSN was down for a while on Sunday rather than Monday. Woohoo….
Forrest_01
Only trouble I found was that my PS4 was pretty much shouting at me ‘you must connect to psn to use this bit’ on pretty much everything which is somewhat annoying & then although I did think about playing a singleplayer game, I then grew wary of which games had online integration (leaderboards, additional content etc) as a lot of things these days do & had heard that some games simply didn’t boot at all (Fez for example).
So I just thought “sod it” & went to bed instead.
(Its probably worth pointing out that I was out most of Sunday doing in-law visits, so by the time I got to sit down to play anything it was pretty bloody late anyway. I didn’t go to bed at 2pm for a sulk!)
Stefan L
The best way around it is to uncheck the Network box in the settings somewhere. If you do that, the PS4 doesn’t even try to go online, but if it’s left checked then games can hang at load times, because they’re waiting for a server response.
Youles
I would never have thought to do something like that. Perhaps they should have that as a pop-up message to suggest such work-around if stuff doesn’t work.
Forrest_01
Ah, ok – That’s a fair shout. Didn’t consider tinkering with settings if I am honest.
Wasn’t an issue in the end though, as when I woke up yesterday, everything was magically fixed.
What a difference a good nights sleep makes eh? ;)
Stefan L
I do tend to disable the network and have all my notifications turned off because otherwise people will see what pre-release games I’m playing.
Also, it acts as a rudimentary download manager, so I can play and not have the PS4 decide it wants to download some ludicrously large patch that would kill my pitifully slow internet for half a day.
Youles
That’s odd about Fez. Is that cos of the PS+ subscription I wonder (unless you purchased it)?
Forrest_01
I should point out that I hadn’t tried it myself as I had heard it didn’t boot for others (& thus didn’t really see the point in trying it for myself).
If it was a plus thing though, then it definitely wouldn’t have worked for me, as I wasn’t about to pay for Fez at the price they were asking for it (before it went on sale).
JR.
I was busy playing The Last of Us on Grounded mode and getting my ass seriously kicked. Loving the challange so far though. I’ve just arrived at the bus depot so the end is in sight.
gazzagb
I count myself lucky enough to have never seen a single episode of the british bake off thingy, but I busied myself playing Red Dead single player over the weekend and yesterday so it didn’t affect me at all. Surely other’s could have just done the same and only played single player?
stigdu
Some of the guys over at DVD Forums are saying they couldn’t even play single player with The Last of Us, as the game requires a PSN connection. :/
Starman
“expensive device not working properly? Go do something else!” Great advice, ha ha!
Pixel_nme
At the end of the day it was down for less than a day,what makes me laugh is all the people who rant at Sony and say they should give them something because they couldn’t game for a day and because they pay for PS+ im sure it doesn’t cost nothing to run a network,don’t get me wrong i love my gaming and was peeved that PSN was down but i don’t blame Sony or expect anything from them,as the article says just wait find something else to do for a bit.
tactical20
I was getting wasted in Skream’s trailer at SW4! :-)
pdannysan13
Sort of had a similar reaction when my PS+ ran out just few hours into Catherine. I got a year of PS+ from my girlfriend last year for our anniversary (best girl out there I have to add !).
For a few seconds I was tempted but then I remembered about my huge backlog and I also recently bought The Wolf Among Us through the Summer Sale. I have Rayman Origins, Tearaway on my Vita to finish, solve the puzzle in Hotline Miami and I also have Heavy Rain on the PS3 I bought while abroad. Oh and at some point I also fell victim and purchased Might and Magic game for the PS3 and there also is my never ending save in Skyrim….so long list. I just said to myself univ is coming I gotta finish these, no purchases until I checked my list.
Then again I promised myself I’d get into MGS series and buy MGS1 for my Vita…
BTW I wasn’t affected by the PSN going down.