Blood Bowl: Scheduling Frustrations

I've been enjoying Blood Bowl less and less in recent weeks. Not so much the games themselves... But what I haven't been liking is sitting around not playing Blood Bowl. Sometimes this is even my fault! Last week I made plans to play a game at 9pm. And then I sat around at my computer playing Heroes Clicker and forgetting to check the FumBBL tab from 8pm until 11pm. I idled my way through a game I wanted to play because it slipped my mind to check on it.

Now, FumBBL has a terrible UI for chatting which didn't help. I get notified through IRC if someone sends me a new private message on the website, and I get notified through IRC if someone mentions my name in an IRC channel. But if someone responds to an existing private message, say one where we planned on playing at 9pm, then I don't get notified. So my opponent showed up a little after 9pm, responded to the private message, and then just sat around for a couple hours waiting for me to reply. (Ok, eventually he gave up and ran some errands... He came back when I clued in that I'd missed the game and we were able to play at 11pm.) I feel bad that I made him sit around. But if he'd used IRC to check on me, or if the website itself was set up to notify me whenever I got any message, things would have been a lot better.

That instance beats some of the other ones I've run into, where my opponents will say they'll show up at 9pm and then never do. It's very frustrating. I'm in one league that purports to play a game every 10 days. I last played a game on August 19th. So pretty much 2 months without getting to play a game with my wrestling themed Orcs.

I'm also running into issues with my sleep schedule. Two of my leagues are set up with almost all NA players so most games take place in the evenings. Which is when I'm asleep right now. That's on me. If I could get my opponent to give me a firm time to show up I'd set an alarm, or I'd stay up one day to push forward... But he won't really communicate. It's all a vague 'let's play during the evenings' and then I suggest the next day and he doesn't get back to me until I've gone to bed and then I don't know if I should wake up or not. I'm betting we don't get this game in, and I'm betting it gets counted as my fault despite my being available for pretty much a 20 hour window every day if I have advance notice. I can't say I blame them if they go that way, since I'm asleep during prime time right now and that's my fault. But it makes me frustrated, and it makes me not really want to keep playing.