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.

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?)

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.

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.