Firelight

We created a countdown to the new year at firefall.com.

2020 has been a the year that somehow packed a decade of life altering events into just 365 days while also seamlessly blending each day into the next. In these grueling twelve months, we all retreated to the solitude of the places we call home and sought comfort through screens and virtual interactions. And with the constantly changing atmosphere of health and safety, we were forced to adapt in isolation.

But with the new year right around the corner and a glimpse of hope on the horizon, we can look forward to brighter days ahead filled with things we might have taken for granted.

So here’s to…

• Unlimited lunch options at your local workplace establishments. Personal choice of poison would be reasonably overpaying for a filling bowl of Oyakodon from Niko Niko.

• Crowded commutes on constantly delayed Path trains or the scenic but bumpy rides on the NYC Ferry.

• The luxury and comfort of ergonomic office chairs and not settling for makeshift work spaces.

• Office parties, casual happy hours at any hour of the day, and honestly any in-person social gathering.

• Taking a casual walk outside near Pier 11. Enjoying the breeze and lack luster views of Brooklyn across the way.

Who knows what 2021 will bring. I would settle for a little bit more normalcy, but here’s to something better!

We had been after firefall.com, on and off, since 98’, in what seemed to be a fruitless battle. The White Whale to our Captain Ahab. At the time “Firefall” a 70’s American country rock band out of Boulder, Colorado had ownership of the domain. In 2000, we decided on firefallpro.com to match the company name.

A scant 14 years later, the domain transitioned to Red 5 Studios in 2014, when they launched the ill-fated MMORPG Firefall.

With minimalism in full effect and a wide range of exotic Top Level Domains (TLDs) to choose from we shortened the company name in 2015 to Firefall, LLC and moved to firefall.io. The .IO could be interpreted as data I/O (in/out), or just be less to type. Either way we inched ever closer to our ideal.

Little did we know, on a random day in December 2019, a mysterious figure would reach out from the shadows to inquire about our interest in firefall.com:

Mike Turner approached us stating that his company was “about to sell the domain and wanted to check in… just in case.” We were shocked to learn the site was even up for sale because after 20 years, we had all but given up. The hope of obtaining the domain from an aging band was one thing, but once a video game publisher had ownership, we assumed it was pretty much over. In response to us asking for more details:

Mike gave us his offer.

Something seemed fishy and a little research went a long way into revealing the scam. After running a simple “whois” on the domain, it appeared to instead be owned by a site called DropCatch, affiliated with the registrar NameBright. We reached out to Mike again revealing this fact and asking his relation to DropCatch.

Sadly, we did not hear from Mike or IFC-Group again. But from the generosity from your everyday scammer we were informed about the intriguing change of ownership.

DropCatch was a simplistic and slightly chaotic auction site, with listings for domains going all the way down the screen. It had a similar feel to surfing Craiglist for a cheap couch, the kind that might come with free bedbugs. This was the unlikely new owner of firefall.com.

We stalked the auction’s site for a few days. We didn’t want to start bidding right away lest we’d artificially drive the price up. Another user by the name Andrew21 was our biggest threat.

And there it was, mere minutes away and we were ready and willing to go down with the ship.

As the count down had been reset for the second time, we began to litter the Slack channel:

Time moved slowly as we waited for the culmination of the auction but we prepared for success and failure in the same way.

The original 5 minute clock stretched out only about two folds but felt like an eternity staring at the timer tick down. Luckily, by 3:03 PM we hit the minute mark and Scott, Aric, Gena and I counted down the seconds.

Silence hit for those last few moments. All of us hoping our last bid was enough to stave off any potential last minute suitors. By 3:04 everything had been decided.

Finally.

We caught the great white whale we had been chasing for the past 20 years. All thanks to a poorly executed scam. In the words of Captain Ahab, “All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”

As an addendum to our previous blog post, here is an article written by Christina Chaey on the great news-gathering tool viewer, Vineviewer.

Firefall and SS+K got together to make vineviewer.co and we are pretty pumped about it! You’ve heard of vine, right? It’s the newest app to share 6 second videos and now you can use vineviewer.co to search by hashtag and pull up a page of videos to enjoy (or get creeped out by since we are not responsible for whatever crazy things people post). We loaded it with cats to start you off because the internet loves cats and damnit so do we. So check it out! Search the Vine and see what you find.

Hello fellow readers!

It’s about time we update our blog with all of the fun stuff we’ve experienced at FireFall Pro, pre- and post- new year. There’s no better way to describe our fun than by using Pusheen the cat to depict it all.

How we spent Thanksgiving:	How we spent Festivus:
How we spent Xmas: Who knew that Christmas trees could be so tasty?	How we spent New Year’s Eve:
How we’re spending the New Year in the office:

Happy New Year, everyone!

We decided to enter Intuit’s Small Business Big Wishes contest because we love free money. So you should vote for us to win because you love us…you do love us don’t you? So click on the link, look at the image of our sad, but stunningly beautiful employees and VOTE.

Click Here to Vote for Firefall Pro

If we win you can totally come to our office and enjoy our new bar…er I mean heating system, yeah heating system.

Look at how sad we are:

Greetings from Firefall

Dear Clients and Friends:

We wanted to take a moment and reflect on the events of Hurricane Sandy last week.

We hope everyone is safe and secure throughout the Tri-state area, and our thoughts are with those that continue to be without power and basic necessities, which will be further compounded by the upcoming Nor’easter storm on Wednesday. If there’s anything we can do to be of assistance, call us at 917-464-5231, or E-mail us at [email protected]. Day or night, it doesn’t matter.

With services restored to our offices this weekend, we began bringing all systems back online. I’m happy to report that our web hosting platform maintained full availability, without interruption. As of today, we’ve resumed normal operations at full capacity, and we’ll be reaching out to all our clients with ongoing projects to make sure that everything’s ok, and to get back in sync. And feel free to let us know how you’re doing, as it’ll help us breathe a little easier, and worry a bit less.

Thank you for your support as we work to get NYC back up and running again.

Always at your service,

The Firefall Team

As New Yorkers begin the hard road to recovery, I’m happy to report that our team is safe and secure, and that we’re continuing to assist our clients in any way that we can. As our offices in Manhattan (and everything below 27th street) remain powerless, we’ll continue to be reachable at [email protected], or at 917-464-5231.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. More updates to come, here on Firelight.

Julius

We’ve recently had some inquiries regarding the various departments and staff within the FireFall Headquarters. So, here we are to dispel rumors, and to enlighten those who may be interested in gaining further knowledge about our company.

Our tentative mascot (as of July 17, 2012)

Meet Harry the baby wombat. He’s thoroughly upset when people misspell his name (see: “Hairy”, Hairball”, “Hairywomb”). Don’t make this mistake.

Our PR Department
One may believe that our PR department consists of a handful of people (if you’ve called our office, you may have had the pleasure of speaking to multiple representatives), but in actuality we just hired a voice actor to play the role of three different employees – Scott, Jess, and Lily. Hiring voice actors is advantageous because it reduces the workload of employees and gives the impression that we in fact care enough to have you on hold for 15 minutes while we “forward you to a higher up”.

Our Resources Department
Thanks to our Craigslist solicitors (refer to our Illiteracy Contest Awards), we have a plethora of potential employees we could recruit on our team. Fortunately, we don’t want any of them.

Our S’mores & Liquor Department
Have you ever seen the show “The IT Crowd”? This department is comparable to that show– they hide out in a basement and only ever come out for office parties, i.e. every day after 5 when S’mores and Liquor make an appearance.

This list is already getting too long and bothersome to deal with. Call our Customer Service Department if you want to know more: (917) 464-5231

Until next time, fellow readers!

For those of you unaware, life as Jess Tayts The Project Manager is stressful. Lots of irregular sleep patterns due to all-weekend Phish festivals, lots of Project Managing-esque jobs to tend to, and on top of all of that — lots of tormenting and an unusually large display of hate from Scott P. You may wonder who this “Scott” character is; to many he’s an anomaly, to others (by “others” we mean Jess) he’s the equivalent of Jewish hell if Jewish hell were in existence.

If we had to describe this “Scott” guy more accurately, we would plaster his face on the head of a feisty cat whose owners neglect to feed him. Lack of food equals lack of affection. Occasionally, Jess attempts to feed him in an effort to loosen him up and prevent him from lashing out on her. Sadly, her efforts are futile.