Whatever’s in bloom is killing me

I’ve felt crappy for the past couple of days. At first I thought I might’ve been catching what Jessie had. My sinuses have been killing me despite taking my medicine. In fact, I feel right now that if I peeled the skin and muscles off my face I might feel better. I was looking through my “mini medicine cabinet” here at work when it hit me: Spring is coming up … everything is either blooming now, or getting ready to bloom.

I’d slap my forehead if it didn’t hurt so freakin’ much!!

There are mimosa trees behind my house are already budding. God, I hate those things. I hope it freezes next week and every damned one of them dies!

Don’t get me wrong … I love plants, but I hate mimosas because they give my allergies fits. On really bad days, I wheeze so much that it hurts to breathe. Sure, their blooms are pretty and fluffy, and their branches look like miniature palm or fern fronds … but they also attract ants. Mimosa sap is like honey. And forget getting rid of one if it sprouts up in the middle of your garden. It took me two cartons of salt to get rid of one in front of my house one year. (I kid you not! I swear that when I sprayed it with weed killer, I heard it laugh!!)

Aaaaaaaanyways … Jim’s brother is coming into town this week. He’s in the Navy and has been abroad for at least the amount of time that Jim and I have been together (2 years), so I’m excited that I finally get to meet him. He’s also Jessie’s favorite uncle, so she doesn’t know yet that he’s coming home … she’ll be so thrilled. There’s no one she talks about more than “Uncle Mikey” … except maybe my brother. *lol*

Speaking of which, my brother has bought a house in Oneonta, and will be moving up there in a few weeks. I’m really proud of him, he’s doing very well, and I hear that part of the state is really pretty.

My boss keeps walking by my desk, so I think I need to start looking busy again … I think I’ll heat up some bojenmi tea and go raid someone’s chocolate stash. *evil grin*

Upgrades

I can see that the new WordPress was finally released, so I’ll most likely be upgrading this week. I attempted it earlier today, but a lot of my customized code will need to be converted. Don’t worry if sections of the site don’t work starting … about 3 hours ago.

I’ll be playing with it all week, and hopefully will have everything upgraded and fixed by Friday at the very latest.

One down, eight to go …

I think I have finally climbed out of my PHP hell-hole. I was able to find a program, called NaviCat, to convert the Access databases for me. For whatever reason, when I did it manually, some of the data kept dropping, and one of the date fields always imported backwards. (ARGH!! I hate Access!!)

While researching some automated backup scripts, I ran across a GUI program called PHPMaker . Really nice if you need a web-based front end for mySQL databases in a hurry! I was able to snag a copy for work use, and am thinking of getting a copy to use at home for a hobby site.

Jessie and I had spent last Friday afternoon out and about and saw a sign advertising a Halo 2 tournament at the end of this month … sweet! I might just have to reinstall it on my box and hone up. I haven’t been to a game tourny in a loooooooooooooooong time … though I’m wishing it were next month, or better in April (preferrably after my birthday of course). I’m hoping I get enough back on my income taxes to get a new monitor … the one I’m using now is an old one of Jim’s and it’s killing me to sit more than 4 hours in front of it.

*grin* I was tempted to scan this, but decided against it … the skin on my fingers that I burned a lil while back is finally peeling off. Looks like a really ban sunburn, but only on my left hand. I’ve been showing it to everyone at work … I mean, who wouldn’t want to see this?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Jim just surprised me at work with a dozen roses! Screw what the stupid commercial says, roses pwn.

What a day

I swear, Friday couldn’t come soon enough. I’ve spent the better part of this week fighting MS Access databases that don’t want to convert to mySQL. (I suck at doing this by hand … some of that $60 shareware soft is looking better and better now) Until today, I had a working model of a self-maintaining database, but one of the guys in our video/multimedia department threw a proverbial monkey wrench in my works. I had to restructure the whole database and rebuild it (AGAIN!).

Argh … I could just scream … actually, that sounds like a pretty good idea …

At least I did get a slight bit of creativity squeezed out — well, sort of. I created some plushie images for my Neopets gallery.

Well, there was one good thing about today: I got to see the sun for the first time in what seems like forever. It has been raining for over two weeks. Winter sucks. I’m ready for summer already. Give me unrelenting heat and humidity anyday, this cold stuff has *got* to go!

Proud mamma …

Jessie and I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon and last night finishing her website. Well, as finished as it will be until tonight — she wants to add more pictures! *lol*

I laid out the structure and she typed most of the words and drag’n'dropped the pictures into Dreamweaver. Even when I dropped her off for school this morning, she was already thinking about all the Harry Potter and Yu-gi-oh pictures she wants to add, so I’ll have to show her how to split it into more pages.

*sniff* My baby’s made her first website. Of course, I told her that when she got a little older, she could get her own domain and write the pages herself. She’s already excited about that.

ISP woes …

I was reading a post on Michael Hanscom’s blog where he’s talking about his net connection being down, and the ISP’s tech support was a little more “honest” than most others I’ve ever spoken to. LOL

I was going to post a comment on his post, but couldn’t due to difficulties beyond my control — thought I’d post it here instead because he’ll most likely see it anyways via the trackback.

When BellSouth’s (or BellSloth, as I dubbed them) DSL service goes down, they take the denial approach.

[this is an actual conversation I had with a BellSouth tech support guy not too long ago]

Low-tech monkey: Did you check the network status page on our website?
Me: If I could, that would mean I had internet access and wouldn’t need to be calling you. (*mutter under breath* We all know that network status page is a joke)

Monkey: I show no outages for your area.
Me: Well, I’ve reset all my routers twice, rebooted my servers, checked my network connections, and unplugged the firewall. Have there been any other calls from my area?

Monkey: Is your telephone line plugged in?
Me: *blink* Excuse me?

Monkey: I mean, have you rebooted your computer?
(Oh boy, their favorite excuse: it’s you, not us!)
Me: The problem is not my machine, it’s my choice of internet service provider.

Monkey: Thank you, ma’am. We are glad you chose BellSouth.
Me: You mean ‘BellSloth’.

Monkey: Yes ma’am.

*click*

(Honestly … where do they find these people?)

Crispy critters

I had meant to post yesterday, but I burned the skin on my left hand while steaming some rice and had to keep ice and burn ointment on it for about 8 hours. God, it hurt!!! As of right now, I have red splotches across my index, middle, and ring fingers — I look like I have sunburn across them — and the skin is rather “sensitive,” so I’m having to do everything one-handed until my skin heals. (getting ready for work this morning was an experience, let me tell you!)

Anyways, had a decent weekend. Jessie was with her mother, and Jim left Saturday to go to a WoW LAN with some friends, so I had a whole day of ‘quiet time’ to myself … I sat on my backside and did very little, and enjoyed every minute of it. Got to talk to an old friend, worked on a new website for Jessie, and ate take-out and a coupla slices of chocolate pie. Yummmmmm!

Watching the Superbowl yesterday was cool. I am really pleased with both the opening and half-time shows. I’ve always loved the Beatles, and Paul McCartney is my fave. The pyrotechnics were beautiful, I wish I could have been there in person. (mmmmmmm, fire! *lol*) The commercials were funny, I especially loved the Careerbuilder.com, GoDaddy, and BudLight ones. I was hoping that “Lovelorn Larry” would also have a commercial; as I’m sure a good bit of the country, if not the world, have been following the story, I wanted to see if he was able to procure a commercial spot to again plead his case to Marianne. I’ve been pissed at Jim plenty of times, but damn!

Oh well … time to look busy. I’m probably going to spend this week looking for a PHP solution to integrate with an Access database. Ugh.

Deadbeat bastard or buyer’s remorse?

Well, I was in a good mood this morning until I read my email on my home account … a client I had done some 3-4 hours’ worth of graphics for decided that I ripped him off and wanted his money back. (Despite the fact that he LOVED the shit last night, and had already paid me for it.)

I’ll save you the messy details, the gist of it is that as the artist I am well within my rights to keep the money and tell him to fuck off. He was bound by an auction to contract me to do the work … up to 4 hours’ worth, at $25/hour. I only charged him for 3 hours of work.

Either he had buyer’s remorse hit him last night or this morning, or he’s a cheap bastard who tries to cheat his way into free stuff. I’m leaning towards the latter considering the fact that he has modified versions of copyrighted images on his website already — without consent of the artist I’m sure. He’s playing up the “I’m new and naive” act, but I ain’t buyin’.

Rather than argue with him and carry on about whether or not I owe him shit, I just gave him his money back and blocked him from all emails, IMs, and bids. However, I will be monitoring his sites … if I see *any* of my work appear, his ass is mine. I have every bit of work, transaction, and communication well documented and will press charges for violation of copyright.

I have two lawyers at my disposal, one on retainer and the other in the family … try me, motherfucker.