daily ramblings

Dear Congress: Grow a pair!

2011-07-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Congress: Grow a pair!

I apologize if that seems a bit crude, but as a whole you are all too dense to have noticed the more subtle signals that the American public, your employers, have been sending. So now we must resort to heavier tactics, and stronger words.

As your employers, I would guess that most of us would say that your job performance is well below expectations. You do not function well in a team environment, and not a one of you is able to check your ego at the door. This has resulted in stagnation of the system while the rest of the world is leaving us in the dust. Even worse, your inability to play nice has caused a crisis of historic proportions.

Now back to that rather harsh intro. And ya, grow a pair about describes it. The Cowardly Lion had more guts than the whole lot of you combined. He was willing to work in a team environment, even when it scared him. You all cannot even do that much, you are so scared of losing your jobs and your funding that you consider inaction the best course of action, and you are putting not only your own jobs on the line by doing so, but you are pulling the entire Unites States down with you.

Republicans and Fiscal Conservatives, you need to work on your "no" skills, and I don't means saying no to Democrats and Liberals. You need to work on saying no to companies that export jobs rather than support the US economy. Why do they deserve tax breaks when they don't employ US workers who would then make up that break through payroll taxes? You claim to be fiscally conservative, but in effect your policies give money away to other countries. Talk about spending more than you are bringing in.

Democrats and Liberals, you also need to work on your "no" skills, and once again the people you are saying "no" to aren't your Republican and Fiscal Conservative counterparts. You need to say no waste. There are problems in every system, and every entitlement program will have those who will abuse it. But just because it is there does not mean everybody needs it, and due to abuses some who do need it are rejected from lack of funds. You need to say no to abuses and make sure that the people who do need these systems are able to get the help they need when they need it. Wasteful spending is negligent spending.

Both sides need to work on their "yes" skills, particularly where the other party is concerned. While you may have fundamental ideological differences, there are people all the time with ideological differences that are able to overcome them through compromise. Kindergarteners are able to come to a compromise easier than you.

In summary everybody needs to address their fears and learn to face them. Every member of Congress has a fear of losing their job as well as losing the "funding" that your employers know you are taking on the side. Every member of Congress has the fear that even the slightest hint of compromise will make them look weak, weak to their own party and exploitable by the other.

Consider this your unofficial mid-term performance review. Your employers are watching, and the performance review that counts is next year. Your cowardice in terms of stepping up and showing the guts to be a team player may very well cause you to fail the review that counts. If that happens, there is nobody to blame except yourself.

So for your own good, grow a pair.

~Your employers, The American Public

XstreetSl Changes, my take

2009-11-20T10:48:00.005-07:00

So if you are a second life resident and haven't heard about the changes to the way that xstreetsl will handle not only freebies, but all products from here out... now is a good time to educate yourself.

Xstreet Changes Blog Link

Now before continuing on, if you have not read the above link, then open it and do so. Information is spreading in world, but not all of it is completely accurate from what I have seen. I feel it's much better for everybody to know for themselves what is being done.

Now to the reaction. I had an almost immediate kneejerk reaction to the proposed changes, like many others I'm sure. But honestly the only proposed measure that got me was the listing fee per month per item that was not a freebie.

Let's face it, running a website with as large a database as xstreet is not cheap. With only a 5% commission and a good portion of the catalogue being cheap enough to not bring in anything at all, it was only a matter of time before the admins were going to have to step in and regulate the use of freebies and cheapies.

With that in mind, I can see some of the reasoning for the measures of charging a monthly listing for the freebies as well as making a minimum commission. Though I honestly think that the price level listing for the freebies is a tad high.

It is the matter of the listing fees for all items prices L$1 or more that I have serious issues with, and where I think that linden lab is mistaken. There are much more elegant ways to deal with 'stale' items than what is proposed.

Probably the simplest is time based removal from the marketplace. A product that does not sell a single copy in a matter of x-months is automatically deactivated. The creator is informed, and is then given the option of paying that same fee in order to keep a product in the market, or removing it altogether. If the item sells again then the listing fee is removed again and the timer reset. This handles better the idea of seasonal products, as the creators would only be paying for a few months before the item is in search again rather than year round on an item that only sells a few months of the year.

Trial periods. It's hard to say which new product will be a hit or a dud, and how many creators can justify a listing fee on something new when there is the cloud of speculation? I can see the listing fee actually creating the problem that it is trying to solve as older proven product is left up and new items not taken the risk on. There instead needs to be a set period of months where a new product can be uploaded and not incur fees. This gives the marketplace a chance to flourish with new listings, while weeding out non-movers in a timely fashion.

Increased commissions. Now I am NOT advocating increased commissions in addition to the listing fee. But in leiu of the listing fee I would instead like to see the commission prices increase slightly. It is better justified IMO than charging up front for a service that has been substandard in terms of searching for product and minimal product value.

I would also like to see listing free freebies as a benefit to merchants. A percentage of product catalogue perhaps. Freebies do have amazing use, a way for merchants to share samples of their product with minimal risk to the customers, or in some cases are a necessity. Hair, shoes, skins and shapes are things that demo's are absolutely essential for. Yet without a demo catagory, those merchants will for forced to pay for those essential items. A percentage of freebie items in a merchant catalogue allows for demos to be boxed and handed out. It might not be perfect, requiring merchants to box several demos into a single box, but even that could have the benefit of not seeing a slew of demo sales over and over to the same buyer as they try different styles.

Overall, the goal of reducing clutter and keeping costs reasonable is a good one, but the method proposed is flawed and will only lead to stagnation in an increasingly tiny marketplace.

Pho's to do list

2009-08-21T17:04:00.003-07:00

1.Dust out cafepress store, upload new merchandise

2. cross post what is possible to imagekind

3. revamp web domains. http://Dreamsindigitalart.com needs a makeover, http://santafewrimos.org needs a bit of cleaning out before november, http://bumperstickerrant.com may need scrapped, http://phoenixwaller.com just needs a major overhaul

4. Get as much product made for sl as possible before 31 Oct. Make sure xmas stuff is ready before then. Not making ANYTHING for sl during nanowrimo (I hope I can keep this vow)

5. Decide the best way to web promote my sl stores.

6. try to get some new poser products together, and into the renderosity marketplace. Lots of new stuff and lots of stuff purchased with particular texture ideas in mind, then SL swallowed my life.

more to be added as necessary. too many things to do and not enough time

:-?

2009-08-21T16:58:00.000-07:00

bit dusty in here

/me takes out a duster and looks around

eep

Internet Musings

2007-03-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

The web can be a fickle thing. One can see exactly how fickle it is with the consideration of small business websites.

Some small biz websites do extremely well for the company that they represent. They make potential consumers more aware of the products and services offered by the company. Some websites allow the small business to grow from a local player to a world player.

And then there are other small biz websites. Maybe badly executed, or perhaps not even necessary to the functioning of the business. Sometimes these websites arise not as much from the need to grow into the internet economy, as to have one as it's the IN thing to do.

I honestly think that before any small business starts a website they honestly need to consider their goals for having such a site, and if it's worth the monetary and time commitments.

Lately I've been dealing with a small biz website that I feel not only fails in the execution, but also is almost entirely unnecessary for the company that it is supposed to represent. Why was it started? I believe that the owners started the website in the misguided belief that a website will attract customers on its own.

What didn't seem to be taken into consideration was exactly HOW it was going to attract customers. The business cannot sell goods over the internet because of the nature of the products, so no e-commerce is possible, and the services offered are for a local area. Even the nature of the services are of no use to the website as a customer is probably more inclined to look for the service in the phone book rather than wade through search engine results to find a local service provider.

Despite those challenges, however, the website that I was working with could have attracted customers another way. But those other options were constrained to the point of impossibility by the hosting and outside management of the website.

For a website that exists mainly to drive traffic into a physical store, you need to give the customers something that will draw them to your website in the first place. And then you need to keep them coming back. The best, and easiest way to accomplish this is to, give them timely and relevant information. A dynamic, content driven, website will bring customers in and back again. By combining relevant articles that answer questions that a customer may be looking for answers for with web special coupons you not only provide a valuable service as far as answering questions, but you also give the customer the incentive to visit your store instead of your competitors'.

But it was the execution of the website that forced the inability to give the website the content that it required without going to an external source. Rigid constraints by the website management service allowed only limited customization options of the site, and no clear or convenient manner to add relevant content. In fact, the limitations were so severe that only certain (pre-named) pages could be added to the website. Nothing could be added that didn't fit into this rigid structure. Even the links page was populated with logos and links for vendors, and there was no way to add other links that the company deemed relevant to it. Any other links had to be located on other pages. In fact there was only one redeeming feature of the website management, but I sorely doubt that the one feature could make it worth the exorbitant price that was charged.

Had the owners charted out the goals and looked realistically at the possibilities for their website before entering into the management they could have saved themselves a lot of time and money in a website that appears to have provided no return on investment.

I am telling this not as any sort of business guru, nor someone who has worked in small business websites for years, as I am neither. I am presenting this as a cautionary tale. I am trying to prevent just one person out there from making the same mistakes.

If you're a small business owner and are looking into starting a web site ask yourself some simple questions:

What is the purpose of my business having a website? Am I trying to sell goods through the site? Am I trying to drive traffic to my store or service location?
Is my product or service one that customers would turn to the internet for answers for in the first place? If not is there another method by which a website can be useful to my business?
What do I really require in a website? Do I just need a simple page where customers can find my address and phone number and minimal information? Do I need a content driven site? Do I need an e-store?
Do I have the technical skills, or am I willing to pay an employee, to run a website? Or do I need a third-party service?

Ultimately, the decision on whether or not to have a web site is up to you. But by being realistic about it, and having clear goals for it in mind you can hopefully avoid the frustration of being saddled with a website that does nothing more than eat money and time.

I guess I do care...

2007-02-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

Now I wonder if I should be switching parties.

I just threw my support behind a candidate for the '08 prez race. Not much as I always feel poor, but I've never felt strongly enough before to even bother looking at campaign websites.

This time I feel different. And I decided that I wanted to actually support the candidate that I want to win. So I made a campaign contribution.

Strange coming from me, as I refused to vote for prez in the last cycle because I couldn't stand any of them.

Of course that now leads into the next question. Should I switch the party that I'm registered under? I'm currently registered republican, but the candidate I'm supporting is dem. With the race on the dem side being as tight as it is, I wonder if I should switch for primary reasons alone. It does no good for me to keep my current affiliation when I would be forced to choose from the republican candidates on primary day, when it would really be better for me to be hitting a dem button.

I guess I have time to decide on the party question. Current predictions are that candidates will have to raise between 70-100 million in the next couple of months to even be able to make hillary bat an eyelash. And since many of them won't make it I expect the field to shrink considerably before the end of the year. (All the more reason I contributed so early the money at this stage is incredibly important)

Anyway, as silly as it sounds, start looking at the candidates now. I know that we're still a year from the primaries, but many good candidates will be forced to drop out if they can't raise funds. The people need to put up a candidate that can do some good for the country, and some of the current front runners aren't it (IMHO), even if you've never cared about politics before now's a good time to start.

/end political message

Bye Bye Rummy

2006-11-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

Donald Rumsfeld finally announced that he's going to step down. And what better way to celebrate than with a Bye-Bye Crummy Rummy shirt?

Get yours here

Crummy Rummy Value T-shirt

Er?

2006-09-18T14:06:00.000-07:00

Religious extremists make no sense. Period.

The statement above is very broad, and with good reason. Extremism is exremism, no matter which book you read. So I'm equally annoyed with the christian fundamentalists as I am with the islamic extremists, and while I don't hear much of other extremist religious sects I'll make an assumption that they'd annoy me too.

Today's random rant brought to you by some choice quotes from a news article following the anger inspiring words from the Pope.

If you want to read the full article here it is.

My favorite bits:

"On Sunday, Benedict said he was "deeply sorry" over any hurt caused by his comments made in a speech last week, in which he quoted a medieval text characterizing some of the Prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman" and calling Islam a religion spread by the sword."

Ok. So the moderates said that it wasn't enough, but also advocated peaceful demonstrations as protest.

The extremists just decided to prove that the spread by the sword part was true with...

"Al-Qaida in Iraq and its allies issued a statement addressing the pope as "a cross-worshipper" and warning, "You and the West are doomed, as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere.

"You infidels and despots, we will continue our jihad (holy war) and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism, when God's rule is established governing all people and nations," said the statement by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups in Iraq."

and...

"Another Iraqi extremist group, Ansar al-Sunna, challenged "sleeping Muslims" to prove their manhood by doing something other than "issuing statements or holding demonstrations."

"If the stupid pig is prancing with his blasphemies in his house," the group said in a Web statement, referring to the pope, "then let him wait for the day coming soon when the armies of the religion of right knock on the walls of Rome.""

Hmm, I see. So to prove that your religion doesn't do what was said, you're going to do exactly what was said. I fail to see how words such as these can help to prove that the religion was cast in a bad light.

I'll admit upon reading the full text of the speech, that the words can easily be taken out of context. But I still see no reason to lend truth to the words so hated by acting in exact accordance to the offending part.

I guess I'll never understand.

Announcement... and a question.

2006-08-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

I guess I'll start with the question.

Do .png's show up on macs? I made all the freebie wallpapers (to be announced later this post) as png's because that's the image format I prefer to work in. Only this morning did it dawn on me that they might not work on a mac. I would think that they would, but one never knows considering the different file formats between pcs and macs. I'd prefer not to just convert them because the png format is soooo much nicer than jpg, and if they work there is really no need.

ANNOUNCEMENT

after much hinting and teasing I've finally gotten around to setting up Dreams in Digital Art on a proper web page rather than just fowarding the domain to the cp shop.

It has a proper gallery, and freebies (including the wallpapers mentioned above).

I still have quite a bit of work to do on it, but it's got enough to announce right now. What I have left to work on is some linkback banners, links to other sites and other smaller stuff. As well as reworking the css to make it more in line with the focus of the site.

Anyway, please check it out... and lemme know what you think.

clothes shopping... or how to make the fat girl feel fatter

2006-08-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

I need jeans. I think I am down to one pair of black and one pair of brown jeans.

With this in mind I went looking for jeans for a little while yesterday. After cringing at the price at one place, and cringing at the selection elsewhere I decided that I was going to see what wal mart had to offer after dancing.

So I walk in wearing size 24 jeans, and they are slightly loose even. So of course the first size I try is the size I'm wearing.

No Luck.

Disappointed, I go back and grab the next size up. I mean differeneces in manufacturers and cuts can sometimes do that.

Back to the changing room.

No Luck.

Now I'm upset. I don't even bother going up to the next size. I may just have to pay at the one place (lane bryant). I mean no clothing manufacturer can expect me to swallow that I've gone up 2 or more sizes than the one I'm wearing. Besides that even finding anything in the next larger size is next to impossible at wal mart.

But what rubbish. I wish that there were an industry standard of some sort, not whatever the manufacturers feel like making the size. Or maybe they need to revamp the entire way that women's clothing is done. I mean men have a waistline and inseam measurement. Those are pretty hard to mess with without changing how long an inch is. But women's clothing is some arbitrary number that has almost no correlation to an actual size anymore.

Maybe I should just start buying men's jeans. Not only could they not mess with the numbers without my body actually changing, but I might actually get some quality jeans instead of the crap that they pawn off on women.

Agreeing with the Shrub

2006-07-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

While I'm confident that we're getting a spin on the story from one side or another... I have to agree with the shrub for not immediately pushing Israel for a cease fire with Hezbollah. I also agree with his comments that Israel "has a right to defend herself."

I must say, however, that it is unfortunate for the Lebanese people to be caught up in a conflict such as this. And while some of the spin is trying to make it look like the Lebanese support Hezbollah's actions, I honestly believe that the people would not encourage actions that put them in this position. Of course, since the government of Lebanon didn't appear to try to disarm Hezbollah despite requests from the international community, you could argue that they did just that. If you don't try to disarm the people who could put your country at danger by their actions against another, then you could be viewed as helping the attackers and thus just as responsible for the actions that they take. And once the border was crossed and soldiers taken, and the recent rocket attacks, it could easily be viewed as a declaration of war.

One thing that I am seeing that I believe is that Iran and Syria probably played a role in this whole affair. That nutcase that runs Iran has been spewing threatening and hate filled comments at Israel since the day he took office. And while it would be incredibly idiotic for Iran to openly declare war on Israel, I do not doubt that they would use a terrorist group to instigate a battle and then declare that Israel started the conflict. And it appears that other countries believe that this may be the case.

Even the now slightly overlooked problems in gaza seem odd. I find it hard to believe that Hamas would further jeopardize getting the international funding that was cut after their rise to power by pulling the stunt that occured in Gaza. Doing something like that makes it nearly impossible for them to prove that they are a legitimate government entity rather than another terrorist government like the Taliban. But if they were being pushed by these other countries it becomes much easier to believe.

But the whole thing is worrying. There are too many conflicts in the middle east right now, and the whole thing is like a tinderbox just waiting for a spark. And with the increasing sectarian violence in Iraq, the recent bombings in India, and now Israel fighting on two fronts it seems that sombody is already striking the flint.

protection, or barrier?

2006-07-05T11:30:00.001-07:00

When I was dancing the other night one of the other people there started talking to me, and pointed out an apparent paradox in my personality. They said that I seem both extremely shy, and extremely outgoing at the same time.

I replied that while I am somewhat shy, I am more guarded. And I'm guarded in such a way that it probably does give the impression of extreme shyness. They mentioned something about how that's probably a great protection, and then somebody else asked me to dance and the conversation was ended.

But it made me think.

It's been slightly more than 2 years since Luke and I broke up. And in that time I would be surprised if any guy has even bothered to look my way.

I know that I'm not physically attractive, and as guarded as I am there is no way for guys to see my personality without getting close as friends first. But I know firsthand the dangers of wanting to take a friendship further. And even if a guy does get close enough that way I wouldn't blame him for not trying to take a friendship further. I've been burned enough times like that to know to stay out of that fire, and I'd rather keep my feelings to myself anymore than lose the friend.

I know the easy solution is to let my guard down, and see what happens. But I surround myself in so many layers of protection that I don't think I could do that. I don't even know how many there are. All I do know is that I have to be a complete emotional mess for them to be gone entirely. I was like that 2 years ago, with the breakup and then the death of a grandparent. And I know that I don't want to be in that dark place again.

I wish that there were an easy solution, but life is never like that.

ups and downs

2006-06-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

This weekend was good. On friday I tried changing my serpentine belt in my car... but I just don't have the strength to loosen the nuts on the tensioner. So I ended up taking my car to jiffy lube on sat and having them replace the belt. :(

But I was able to return the belt that I had purchased when I thought that I would be able to do it myself. So at least I wasn't out that money. :)

Then I went down to Los Lunas and got my hair cut and colored. I now have plum colored hair :D

Sunday I did nothing :D I watched movies and then I watched it rain. I watched FF7 Advent children. Which I wondered why I bought it after the first time I watched it. But after this last time I found more storyline than had been evident the first time. It is still mostly an eye candy movie, but at least the story made a bit more sense this time.

After that I watched disk 7 of X. For a while I wondered how the series would compare to the movie. And now I can see why people said that the movie was butchered. There is just so much more depth to the characters and the whole story in general with the series than could ever be expressed in a 2 hour movie. Unless this last disk (8) horribly disppoints than X (the series) will be on my must own anime list.

Of course to counter a relatively good weekend something had to go wrong at work this morning. When I got in I saw that the water tank had run completely dry over the weekend, which had caused the circulating pump to overheat and melt some of the pvc fittings around it. That left us at least 2 hours unable to sell water while the fittings were being repaired and the pump primed. And the ice chest is doing something funny, which we can't figure out. we have bags of ice melting in the cooler. We have a thermometer in the cooler, and it reports that the temperature is below freezing, yet the ice still melts. The only thing that any of us can figure is that heat from the room is making the temperature higher by the door, but even that really doesn't explain it.

OK, enough of my babbling. Laterz ya'll.

FYI

2006-06-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

I'm changing hosts with phoenixwaller.com toward the end of this month. I don't know how long it'll take me to get everything back up, even though I think I should have a simple placeholder page in place fairly quick.

stuff

2006-06-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

So my father is headed out to missouri again today. But he should only be gone for a couple of days, and he'll be bringing my grandfather back when he returns. The nursing home here in Santa Fe called last week and said that they had a bed for my grandfather, so now my parents are in the scramble of getting everything in order.

I'm enjoying netflix so far. I'm almost done watching Trigun, and I don't think I will run out of things that I would like to see for some time. I figure I'll get more anime through them than anything else. Right now I tend to watch about an hour to an hour and a half every night before I go to bed. And I was starting to get tired of the series that I already had, so this seems to be a good solution for now.

My car is acting funny again. It's trying to stall at lights again. The last time it did this a fuel filter, oil change, and new spark plugs solved the problem. But I'm thinking that may have only been a band-aid solution. If any one of those things could have really solved the problem than it wouldn't be happening again now. I'm thinking that it may be something to do with the tranny, but the fluid is still good looking. I don't know when it was last serviced though, and I know a fluid change would never hurt. I also need a new serpentine belt. Somebody told me that to change the belt in that car would require the removal of a motor mount, but both my and my father looked and neither of us saw a mount anywhere in the loop. So we'll most likely just change the belt at home and save me a whole bunch of money.

L8R

Oops!

2006-05-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

It seems that my daily ramblings aren't so daily anymore.

Well, rather than dwell on it I guess I'll update ya'll on what I've been doing.

I've been trying to pull BSR into some sort of shape. I'm turning it more into an affiliate site for bumper stickers. I still want to have a community side, but I think I'll need to have traffic to the site first.

I'm also still futzing around with the 3d art stuff. Since I still need more ram I haven't been doing as much there as I'd like. System slowness can cause frustration.

I've also tried to continue working with shadowfall. I feel slightly stuck. My characters have only moved slightly since the end of NaNo. And while I've figured out how to get them out of the building that they're stuck in, I just don't seem to be moving much when it comes to actually writing it down. And of course I still need to figure out how i'm going to fill in the storyline gaps between some of the scenes that I already have worked out in my head.

Of course the majority of my free time is taken up with playing video games. I think that there's just a mental exhaustion that takes over with the added work of two stores. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but with both stores getting busier I just can't seem to adjust. And since video games are only slightly more than mindless button mashing it seems to be the kind of relaxation that I need.

I'll try to get this blog running at a slightly better updating pace. But also check out my livejournal. Since many of my friends are LJ user as opposed to blogger I sometimes post more often over there. Not that it's in any way daily, but sometimes it is more often or different.

l8r

sign, sign, everywhere a sign

2006-05-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

Do humans just honestly not see some things, or are we so accustomed to ignoring certain things that the mind sees them and then dismisses immediately what it saw no matter how important or pertinant to our situation?

There are signs everywhere, advertisements, warnings, info. And it may be that we just are so used to them that many people really don't even acknowledge them anymore.

Unfortunately, that is one of my pet peeves.

I'm sure that most of you know that I am still stuck running two stores. And since I cannot be physically in two places at once I have to use signs to let people that come a direction I can't see knpw how to get me. So I have a sign, it used to be on the locked door, telling people to come next door if they need service and get me. And still there were people who assumed that the place was closed since the door didn't open and would leave. Now, since I have to prop the door open or it gets too hot in there I have placed the sign right next to the door, where it's impossible to miss. And yet I still get the odd person who goes in and waits and waits and waits.

And don't even get me started on the reserved parking space and its sign.

Makes you wonder if anybody would actually notice if all the signs just up and disappeared one day. I mean it's gotten to the point where customers ask me about the hours on a particular day when the sign is clearly posted that list the hours.

sigh...

In other news, I watched that FUD movie last night, bird flu in america. And I'll refrain from all the jokes about it being another disease movie. And I'll ignore the cut and paste dialog.

NO I'll go straight to the heart of the matter. What's the government hiding that they are hyping up this bird flu so much? Really, worldwide there have been slightly more than 100 deaths since this strain appeared. And while, yes, it's deadly to birds, even if it does mutate to a form transmissible by humans (which is possible, but you think we'd have seen it by now)how do we know that the mutation wouldn't knock the teeth right out of the virus.

Honestly. There is a lot of FUD, and the government allowed ABC (if they didn't encourage it) to spread the fud even more. The bird flu seemed to be the basis of all of their programming last night, I even saw that it was going to be on nightline. Even the way that it ended was intended to scare people. All in all the movie and the night of FUD programming only reaffirms my personal belief that ABC is staffed with ambulance chasers.

Ok, enough for now. Bye all.

Language barrier

2006-05-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

It's this time of year that I get horribly perturbed with a language barrier.

It's this time of year when all the servicemen come in to buy supplies for the hotel pools. Unfortunately most of them speak only spanish.

I tried spanish for several years, and not a bit of it stuck. I finally ended up taking German as a language in high school, and even though I haven't spoken it in years I still feel more confident in that than I ever did when trying to learn spanish.

But these guys sometimes get upset that I don't understand them, and then they start treating me like an idiot because they think it's because I'm a girl that I don't get what they are trying to say.

No, it's because you don't speak english.

Granted... I do have a few very good servicemen who come in, and despite the language barrier it all gets cleared up fairly easily. Of course these guys come in prepared. They bring in the information from the nameplates of the equipment if they need parts, and they know (roughly) how to pronounce the chemical that they need. If all else fails for the good ones diagrams and pointing to similar parts to the ones they need usually solve the problem.

But my gripe isn't with the prepared servicemen. No it's with the ones that expect me to be able to get parts ordered for them with no information. Yes, some parts can be used for several pieces of equipment, but it just doesn't work when the only english these guys speak is 'you order?' and they don't understand when I say I need more information.

For those of you wondering... no I'm not against immigrants. They are needed in many areas of the workforce. But they need to at least learn how to speak the language.

A matter of faith

2006-04-19T15:09:00.000-07:00

Scott Adams has been having an interesting set of blog entries on his blog as of late. Centered about the topic of religion he's asked over a few days such questions as 'why do you believe 'your religion' and not another?', and 'what do you think GOD (allah, jehova, whatever) thinks of the other 4 billion people who don't share the same religion as you?'

Now, I'm all good for a few laughs with religious discussions. And normally I wouldn't be inclined to blog about the topics on another person's blog, but several things have struck me as particularly notable.

1. The tendency of people to use the doctrine of their religion to support their reasons for following that religion. And I'm not talking the book so-and-so says do good things doctrine. No I'm talking about the book so-and-so says not to follow false prophets, and the other religion is differnt so their prophet must be false.

1a. the sheer number of people who spouted this nonsense and had obviously never bothered to even ask a question about the other faith. You could tell which those were by the mass market assumptions that they made. Of all the arguments that were made... to me the best ones were by people who had either taken the time to actually inform themselves, or those who had been religion shopping.

2. Particularly notable was the hatred. Once again I think that the majority of this came from the mindless religion drones that don't have the sense to inform themselves. One person was even so blatant in their anger toward another group as to comment that the other group shouldn't be allowed to comment because they were just a drug-induced cult. (Honestly, that comment upset me. The group being attacked by this commenter had some of the politest responses and would probably not be considered a cult by most people)

2a. Of course, seeing all the hatred only helped me to see once again why vast portions of the world hate americans. When vast portions of the world are controlled more by religious governments rather than secular ones, and we go about insulting these other religions and sometimes outright calling them murderers, rapists and other horrible things I can see how that would be upsetting.

I also noticed a small number of people trying to gain converts through the comments. Which is kinda annoying.

I'll finish off with another annoyance that I noticed... the 'my religion has done no wrong stance.' Many of the 'christians' mentioned how islam was so warlike and how they only got the numbers they do because they converted people by force. And then they acted like the christians had never done anything like that, as if christainity had spread peacefully and that's how it's the "right" religion. Whether they truly didn't know, or thought it was a hoax by the 'non-believers' was hard to tell, but it's scary how many people actually seemed to think that. I would like to think that one day those people will pick up a history book, and read about all the atrocities committed in god's name and the cultures destroyed, but for some reason I fear that if they don't already know it they will never learn it.

sniffle

2006-04-17T12:40:00.000-07:00

had to go through the blogroll a bit today.

Had to delete a few of my favorite links. Last week both the 5th circle of cubic hell, and Bullshit's Bullsit suddenly disappeared.

By today both had already been taken over by squatters. And I'm not in the habit of supporting spam sites, which one became, and the other was not interesting at all.

I also ended up taking off some links to some that hadn't been updated in months.

Well...

2006-04-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

Haven't updated in a while. Haven't really had much to say.

But here's a bit of an update.

My mother left for St. Louis on monday, and she and my dad should be coming back next friday. Hopefully by then my grandfather will be settled into a nursing home. For about an hour there was a fear that my parents might try to bring him here to live, and it would have been at least 2 months of living with us before we could have even started to look for a nursing home. Luckily with family friends adamantly saying that it was a bad idea, and me basically saying that I would have no part of such an idiotic plan it was resolved t let him go to a nursing home out there.

It really made my day, of course, when the next day the doctor even said that it was a horrible idea and that the hospital social worker shouldn't have even mentioned it as a possibility.

Work has also been stressing me out lately. It's starting to get to the busy season for both stores. I ended up overfilling the tank again the other day, and this time it was a bigger mess. It still stinks in there.

I think that probably one of the most important things that this job has taught me is when to say I cannot handle it anymore.

Of course saying that you can't handle something by yourself and actually getting the required help are two completely different things. And it looks like I won't be getting the help.

For a little while on friday it seemed like the actual manager for the water store might be coming back on a reduced schedule. But now I hear that his wife is getting released from the hospital sometime this week, and he is taking her home to care for her. And that's a full time job in itself. According to the boss he won't be coming back at all.

And they're not going to hire anybody new to fill his position either. That store is in flux. Somebody bought the name, and some of the equipment, and will be changing things here soon. Latest news is that it'll remain open for only another six weeks or so, and it really is pointless to hire somebody for that short a period of time. So I'm stuck running both until that store closes.

Anyway, I guess that's enough for now. l8r

quick update

2006-04-06T13:43:00.000-07:00

I have a few minutes, so I thought I'd update ya'll on what I've been doing the past couple of days.

In addition to my normal sitting around at work I've also been attending the ecomexpo. Which is nice, because it's a virtual trade show.

Most of it is really above my means (the services offered), and others are things I would not be interested in. But I am enjoying the differnt presentations, and as little as most of this will affect what I'll have the means to do, I do feel like I am actually picking up info on how to work web stuff.

Anyhow, that's what I've been up to the past couple of days

Later

Giving it a try

2006-03-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I went ahead and listed some of my copies of Torn with amazon. Since these are signed copies they're listed under the collectable category.

Now just to see if they actually sell. If they do, that's great. It allows for people who otherwise wouldn't have an oppertunity to get a signed copy to get one. And if they don't sell it hasn't cost me to list them since they only collect their commission when a product sells.

Now... of to get some lunch!

word veri

2006-03-29T10:01:00.000-07:00

Sorry all, but I've turned word verification back on. Since I'm not participating in HNT right now, and since the spam comments are getting bad again I felt that it was time to do this.

But I guess that means that we can make u words with the word veri on here again.

Weird Weekend

2006-03-27T11:25:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should have titled this post 'pile on the stress' but I won't. Because I did have some good things happen along with the bad.

Last week was interesting. Granted I spent most of the time working, but between getting to see my grandpa (which may be the last time (keep reading)), cousin and seeing my brother for a part of that I actually had a semi-good time. Despite the smoke.

Of course I was glad to have the normalcy of life return on friday when grandpa left. I was more glad to have the smoke gone.

I used my last paycheck to set up a savings account. I had several hours of overtime on top of my raise, so it was for more than I had expected. And even though I've been attempting to pay off my credit cards faster with my excess money, my parents still look at my purchases and complain that I'm not saving any money. So now I have a savings account on top of paying my credit cards off faster. Which really means that I'm doing even better.

No, I didn't set up the savings account to placate my parents. I had already been tossing about the idea before the latest round of 'you should save you money' speeches. Mostly to save up for a vacation or for any larger purchases, but I had already been considering it. It just happens that something that I was already considering worked to shut them up for a while. At least until some more stuff shows up.

Speaking of stuff... I've been watching several box sets of anime on amazon. And today a whole bunch popped up really cheap from a new seller. I have the feeling that these are import editions, and not the US releases. Common traits seem to be fewer disks. But has anybody had experience with import editions? Quality issues?

I guess I should also be worried about bootlegs. Especially at some of the prices I'm seeing.

Anyway, to get back on a sort of topic. The calm of having the house empty again was quickly shattered almost as soon as I got home from work on saturday. (here comes the stress)

My grandfather had no more than gotten home before he was in the hospital. As of last night it sounds like he not only has some clots in arteries from sitting in the car for so long, but he also had a stroke in the hospital yesterday morning.

My dad could be heading out at any time to help, but we just don't know yet. And until we know more it's just a waiting game. It just also has the additional worry factor of my grandfather's stubborness. That man refuses to get his affairs in order.

Well, that's my excitement for the past week in a nutshell.

RAM and wh I couldn't date a smoker

2006-03-20T16:38:00.000-07:00

I know... those two topics have nothing to do with each other. But those are what I'm talking about today.

I'll start with the RAM. I need more. My laptop has 512 mb of RAM, and when I bought it I though that it would be enough. Of course when I bought this laptop I never foresaw that I would be getting into 3d art. Heck, I didn't even think I'd use GIMP as much as I do. But here I am, with one scene that I can't position right nor render because I finally overloaded the ram when trying to work with it.

I guess that I should mention that I really am enjoying playing with the 3d art. Since I can't draw, but get stuck with these scenes in my head it is a nice thing to be able to get it out and looking the way I want.

Anyway, right now I'm thinking of taking my laptop up to 2 gigs of RAM. Of course that'll take me probably 2 months to save up for. I roughly priced laptop ram a few days ago and it look like it'll be close to $200 for each 1 gig stick.

On to the other subject, why i couldn't date a smoker.

ANybody who read my saga from my last post knows that my grandfather is now in town visiting. And I think I mentioned that the man smokes like a chimney.

Well I had pretty much known that I would emotionally have a hard time dating a smoker because I've lost one grandparent on each side due to smoking induced lung cancer. And I just couldn't set myself up for that pain in my later life if it were to ever go beyond dating.

Well as I'm absolutely miserable today from the second hand smoke I can safely reaffirm my conviction not to date a smoker. It was a relief to go to work today, it meant that I got to get away from the smoke.

If anybody's wondering if it's that bad... yes, it is. He rolled into twon about half past noon yesterday, and by one I was already coughing and my allergies (which were starting but not horrible yet) were in overdrive and my head felt like it was filled with fog. I even had worse sleep than usual beause I was breathing all that crap in the air.

Of course the worst was when I was trying to eat dinner. There was no escape, and I get semi-nauseous (sp?) when there's smoke around me when I eat. So even though I was really hungry I ate almost nothing. After a few minutes I couldn't force anything else in me without being sick from the smoke.

Even though I love my grandpa, I'm now counting down the days until I can breathe again.

update

2006-03-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

busy, busy, busy...That's how this whole past week has been.

On monday afternoon we got an early buy in. The initial portion of it consisted of about 2 pallets of assorted stuff. I was glad that I had already reorganized the back room to make a space for some of the stuff that wouldn't fit out onto the shelves. But it still took a reorganization of the front in order to get it to fit. And there was still close to another pallet load on backorder.

It took me until tues. afternoon to get the store organized enough to have all the initial boxes either out on the shelves or in the back, and I still had to input the order into the computer.

Which I started to do on wednesday. Then the boss called, with a request to do the most loathesome job imaginable... collections calls. I got lucky, I got about half machines, and the other half were fairly cool with me calling. But I absolutely hate doing that. Maybe that's why I was told about the raise I'm getting right before they asked me to make the calls. Cushion the blow a bit.

Oh yeah... raise! I'm back up to the Santa Fe minimum wage. My raise was for a whole dollar an hour, which brings me up to $9.50/hr. Of course that's the Santa Fe minimum wage for companies with more than 25 employees and a couple of other conditions, but I don't feel bad about making less here. I mean where else could I practically surf the internet all day with the owners knowledge and still keep both my job and not get reprimanded.

I've also been told that I'm officially the manager here. But the only person I'm managing is myself. I think I got the title because there was no one else to give it to.

On to thurs. Collections calls made I finished getting the first part of the early buy into the computer. And then the rest of it came up that afternoon. So more unpacking, pricing and figuring out where things were going to go.

I finally got a chance to rest yesterday, and by then I didn't want to even think about updating my blogs.

In other news... I'm still running two stores. Hank's (the guy who usually runs the water store) wife is getting better after her stoke, but she is still paralyzed on one side. Of course running two stores doesn't mean much except I will probably end up with overtime hours. Not much, probably only three or four, but... eh. I only accumulate those because it takes longer to close two stores, and I have to work every saturday instead of every other.

Finally, I have familly coming out to visit this next week. My grandfather and a cousin are coming for spring break. The cousin is bringing a friend. I don't know exactly how I feel about all of this. I'm looking foward to seeing my grandpa, and even slightly my cousin. But I don't knwo about this friend, and I've learned to grow wary of some of my relatives from that side of the family. Guess knowing that the real father of the cousin is in prison, and the older brother is in juvie makes me nervous. I'm also not looking foward to a week of a smoke filled house and tv blaring at obscene hours.

I'll have to keep a good eye on my babies. Smoke is really bad for birds, really really bad. Also really bad for electronics.

Oh well, now just to see how everything goes.

Later.

Understanding

2006-03-11T10:31:00.000-07:00

I think I'm finally understanding a small portion of my exhaustion as of late.

I need a break. It's been more than five years since I've been on a vacation, and I think that part of the problem is the endless repetitivness of the 'daily grind'. I mean I went straight from school to work to school to work.

Of course, even if I had the money for a vacation (which I don't) I still have another fundamental problem. Vacations are no fun by yourself. At least not to me. I mean sure, you can go on one by yourself, but the enjoyment factor would be signifigantly less. Roller coasters are no fun without someone to scream with, and museums are boring without somebody to share in your discovery or to discuss the finer points of the art.

I also have no idea of where I would want to go. There are plenty of places I want to go to, but would cost more than I could save up for right now. And all the close places need that extra person doubly so because I've been there.

I think that I probably will be saving up to get my passport renewed. I don't think it's much, as long as I didn't let it sit long enough to have to get a completely new passport. Then I think I'll start saving for a trip to Europe, or somewhere abroad. Maybe Canada.

Yeah, I know. It'll be even longer to go on vacation if I'm saving up to leave the country. But maybe by the time I feel I have enough money to go there will be somebody to go with me. Besides, it's been ten years since I first went to Germany and Italy. And I really had a lot of fun seeing the historic sites and being somewhere where the culture was so different.

I guess in the meanwhile I should really think about something that's not quite so lofty. But for now it looks like I'm still stuck.

Final HNT, for a while at least

2006-03-08T21:39:00.000-07:00

I hate to say it, but I need to stop. I do hope to come back in the future, and I really hope that you will all still come and visit me here once in a while.

But so I don't leave ya'll hanging here are the reasons why:

1. Participation: I can't participate as much as i'd like. I find it harder and harder to go and look at everybody else's pics and comment. At home I'm on dial up, and some of the page load times make it impossible for me to comment even when I can see the pic. If I'm lucky I can go through twenty pics.

2. Pictures: It's hard for me to both find time to take the pics, and get a shot. I really think that to get some better shots I need to have somebody else to take the pictures, and I have no such luxury right now.

3. Personal Life: Right now I just have too much going on to actually be able to have fun with this. The past couple of weeks I didn't get pics up at all because it felt like a chore. And something as fun as HNT should not be spoiled by such feelings.

I think that fairly well sums up the reasons why I'm stopping. I really do hope that future circumstances will let me come back and play again. And please do keep visiting.

For now I'll leave you with one of my favorite HNT pics. It's silly, but I hope that it makes you smile.

sour peas and where we're headed

2006-03-07T12:19:00.000-07:00

There is a thing I fear. I fear that the world is on a course that will take us straight to a cyberpunk world where the government is a puppet, and corporations hold the true power. One even more so than it is now.

I Don't know what we can do to keep it from becoming that world though. All we can do is fight it.

I'm fairly sure that none of you have heard of the great sweet pea lawsuit. But I'm hoping that by reading this you will become aware. While it doesn't affect you right now, the long term impacts of this case and how it's handled could hurt us all in the future.

Personally, since I know one of the defendants I'm probably too close to the story to be reasonable about describing all that is wrong with it. So I'm gonna drop some links and let you decide for yourself.

Miami Herald Article
Sourpeas.org

Now to tie all that in with my opening statement. Some of you know that I am a fan of Tales from the Afternow, and things like this only prove that we are currently on a collision course with the world described in the series.

I would like to say that the court will laugh and throw out the case. We all know that this is a case of internet extortion. But the way laws are currently set up the plaintiff is working within the letter of the law.

I'm not saying that a company shouldn't have a right to defend it's marks. But trademark law needs to be reexamined. We cannot continue to allow blanket trademarking of common terms and phrases. A recognizable mark is one thing, but if the plaintiff in this case wins it will be obvious that our government is selling the rights to own words.

Gaaaahhhhh! Part 2

2006-03-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

ok I know that I skipped part one here. So if you need to figure out what happened in the interim check here.

Quick update if you don't want to go over there to read: I overflowed the water tank a little this morning.Not much, but enough to stress out.

Ok, now to the update.

I went at lunch to the bosses house to grab the wet vac. But the fun didn't start there, no it started in the parking lot.

As I was leaving the lot I was nearly hit by somebody. They were turning in, and had their turn signal on. But I've learned in Santa Fe to not actually pull out into traffic until the person turning has actually turned. Sometimes turn signals are on for fun out here.

Anyhow, as they finally stopped about six inches from the drivers side door the driver then looked annoyed at me as if I had done something wrong by waiting for her to enter the parking lot, and then waved me on.

Had she been any closer I would not have been able to go.

Then once I reached the bosses' house. I went to grab the wet vac, and then the alarm started going nuts. Luckily I remembered how to turn it off, but it sure did give me a scare.

Then of course after I left I saw public safety aids and cops headed in that direction. No lights, and I even went back to make sure that I had reset the alarm properly and they weren't looking for an intruder. As far as I can tell the alarm wasn't on for long enough for it to call the cops.

Of course things settled down again once I got back to work and had vaccumed the wet area. But I hope that this isn't a sign of the week to come.

things in threes?

2006-03-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

So the exhaustion is continuing, albeit a bit less with the rest from the weekend. But I'm only an hour into this monday morn and I already know that this week has a greater than average probability of being the week from hell.

Ok I'll start off with this. 2 businesses, 3 employees (including me), 2 owners (married).

Employee 1: Wife had 2 strokes last week, brother in law dies over the weekend, and god only knows when I'll see him again. Hoping for a speedy recovery for his wife, but knowing better with 2 strokes.

Employee 2: On vacation, had airline tickets since late dec/early jan. Will be back next week.

Owners: His mother died over the weekend. Owners now on their way to Missouri for services. Hoping to see them back next week.

And anybody who's keeping count can now see my problem.

As long as both stores are relatively slow I'm ok. But with the warm weather I have no idea what this week will be like. All I can do now is hope.

I guess I should maybe clarify something. Some of you probably already know that I've had to run both businesses before. But not like this. Always in the past there's been somebody I could call in an emergency if I absolutely had to have help. This week I have no such luxury, and additional responsibilities since the owners are out. When they're out I also have to run the deposits to the bank. Finally add to this the, sometimes impatient, service customers who may or may not understand the circumstances as to why there are no services this week.

Anyway, I guess I won't know until it's over, but that's what's going on.

tired

2006-02-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

I've been horribly tired this past week. I think it got started on monday when I didn't get home until nearly one in the morning and then didn't get enough sleep.

Since then it's seemed to spiral, and while I thought I got enough sleep last night I find myself just horribly tired today.

In other news... I'm ready to actually make a clickable link for Dreams in Digital Art. I still have a lot of work to do with it, but I have a few things up. And once I stop playing with the software for making gallery images and get to making images that I'd offer for sale again I'll have even more to offer.

It's funny, but I can actually see an improvement in the art from when I started too now. And I haven't even been playing with the software for a month yet. I would have thought that it'd take me longer than that to see an improvement in my own work.

Finally, it's thursday, and I need to mention that I don't have an HNT image up. I'm thinking of ending my participation in HNT. I may go back to it later, but for now, with all the other stuff I'm piling on myself I think I need a break. Of course I don't know for sure yet, but I'm thinking I'll post a farewell to HNT pic next week.

Domains, and movies, ad gas prices... Oh My!

2006-02-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

This is liable to be a long post. SO in interests of reading I'll try to seperate the rambling by topic.

Domains:

So I bought another domain over the weekend. I have been having enough fun with the 3d art stuff that I decided that I might as well sell prints and stuff, and since it really has more of a theme than my mishmash PD store I decided to just create another store just for those things.

Anyhow, I'm still getting it set up, but the domain is dreamsindigitalart.com. I hope to have it looking nice by the end of the week.

Movies:

Somebody lent my parents a movie called Martial Law. I ended up watching it saturday night. And while I must say that there were many things about the movie itself that I didn't care for (scare tactics), it really consolidated a lot of what's been happening and brought up a bunch of good points about 9-11 that lend easily to believe the conspiracy theorists.

Of course it's a movie I actually wouldn't recommend to hard-core republicans, or anybody who wholeheartedly believes whatever the government tells them. It would just anger them.

And for the rest of ya'll, I do recommend watching this movie. But with more than a grain of salt. Because as many things as I knew to be true, there were as many questionable points. At minimum though, this movie will make you think about many of the things that have happened in our government.

Gas Prices:

Santa Fe is in the middle of a gas price war. Some of it is due to the legislature being in town, the prices always drop a little when they're in session. That way the business doesn't find itself the victim of state government scrutiny, but this is more than normal.

Gas prices in SF are ranging from 2.15/gal to 2.45/gal right now. Normally all the stations in the city are within a couple of cents of each other, but there are some that just can't afford this war any more and have had to bring their prices back up at least to cost. Yes, most of the gas stations in the city are selling gas at a loss.

From what I've been told it all started when on station dropped their price, and then the rest followed suit. Of course there is massive fluctuation each day because of this. I've seen stations at the high end in the morning, and then competing with the rest come afternoon.

Of course the big question now is whether this will continue once the legislature goes home at the end of the week, of if the competition will continue.

Other:

On Fri. night there was a dance at the Eldorado Hotel. The SF community orchestra and the SF great big Jazz Band were both playing, and Chris Calloway was a special guest.

It was nice, but the dance floor was way too small. I only got in like three dances in as many hours. Also the way the room was set up was a pain. I could only watch the musicians from the back because all the tables that allowed a view of the performance were reserved (sponsored) and all the community tables, of which there weren't enough,, were in bad locations.

But probably the highlight of the evening for me was that I got to see my old HS band instuctor. I hadn't seen him in several years, and us band rats from up here all enjoyed having him as a teacher.

Finally, Last night I was invited to go out to eat with other dancers again. This time I did not make the mistake of declining. While I was quiet for most of the time I at least got out and did something besides the norm.

Anyway... I think that's enough for today.

Thursday already.

2006-02-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like that time again. HNT.

I'm kinda nervous about today's pic. It's probably the one ya'll will like the best, knowing how you like TandA. Then again, the lighting was so soft that you may not even be able to make it out very well.

Anyhow, before the link for the pic... a request. Some of you know that I have a site dedicated to bumper stickers. Well, I've started doing polls so that come end of year review time I don't have to slog through all the bumper stickers for a year. The idea is to have a favorite sticker from each month, and then use that list to compile the end of year poll.

Well, it's polling time for January's sticker. So if ya'll could check out the finalists post and then vote at the BSR Community page I'd much appreciate it.

Ok, with the request out of the way. Here's what you came for.

Plea for Votes

2006-02-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

I think most of you know about Bumper Sticker Rant.

Anyway, I'm really trying to get the site more popular and get a community feel.

One thing that I have done is started putting weekly (mostly) polls on the BSR community page. The goal of this is to have readers vote on their favorite stickers every week, and then compile another list for monthly faves.

Well January is over, and I need people to vote in all of the weekly polls from the month, so that I can make the poll for January favorite tomorrow. So far I have very few votes, and I don't want to be a major factor in these polls. So if ya'l could look at the Jan. archives and then vote for each week's fave I'd much appreciate it. You don't need to sign up with BSR to vote.

January's BSR archives
Polls page

Thanks All.

HNT

2006-02-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

So I was playing with shutter speed and candles as lighting for this week's HNT Pic. Nothing too risque, but fun to try and get a good pic that way. If you don't know what all this is about then please click on the HNT link in my sidebar.

Happy HNT All.

[edit: If anybody is interested... I'd really appreciate as many peeps as possible to head over to Bumperstickerrant and take a look at the recent stickers and then vote for your favorites at The BSR community page. I'm trying to get a favorite sticker of the month thing going there and need people to share their faves. TIA]

Daz Studio

2006-02-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

So I downloaded Daz Studio yesterday. It's interesting, the software itself is free, but you pay for the different things that go into it.

I found a few free things to go with it, a couple of people and clothes for one of them. That way I can test the software and see if I like it enough to actually buy some of the stuff that goes with it.

It looks like the fairy is supposed to go with a tutorial, maybe I should go back and read the thing. For now I've only just played with it to see what all it can do.

Anyhow, here are a couple of the things that I've done with it so far. I'm actually tempted to buy some clothes, hair and poses for the people I've downloaded.

Backdrop of life

2006-01-31T14:56:00.000-07:00

Driving to work this morning the sun was hitting the mountains just right to make them look as if they were the background to a painter's perfect painting.

It doesn't happen very often that the mountains look like that, but it always makes me think.

I wish that I would have had the time to stop and take a picture for you all. There really isn't any way to describe how it looks. I mean you can imagine a realistic oil painting, where the mountains stand out from the sky and everything is vibrant. But it would be different for you than what it really looks like.

It almost calls to your soul, and begs you to stop and appreciate the perfection of the moment.

Maybe I should have stopped this morning.

Once I got to work we discovered that a bucket placed below a leak next door had overflowed, and most of the area around the desk was wet.

I spent close to to hours with a wet/dry vac getting as much water as I could out, and even still the carpet is wet. But no more would come out when I gave the vac to the guy next door so that he could use it.

After that the day has pretty much been boring. I got the confirmation that my tax returns were accepted. Now just to hope that the refunds come in quick. If I pay my laptop off before the 23rd of feb I won't have any finance charges for it, but if I don't I'll have about $300 more in finance charges to pay. And my refund should just pay off my laptop.

Moving on... I am thinking of heading over to Hobby Lobby in a day or so and picking up a sketch pad and one of those art sets that has the pastels and pencils and other stuff in it. The urge to draw still hasn't gone away after the dancer, and in fact it's gotten worse.

See what all those nice comments did.

But if I'm really going to draw it would be better for me to do it in a notebook so that the drawings don't get badly crumpled or lost. And I'd like to add color. Anyway, we'll see.

Later all.

That time of year...

2006-01-30T12:25:00.000-07:00

All of my tax info came in on time this year. Good. I hate it being the middle of Feb, and wondering where that stuff is.

I know I'm in the minority... I just filed my taxes this morning. I don't particularly know why I got into the habit of filing as soon as i had all of my info, but I did. I guess it's really a good thing. I get my refunds a lot quicker, and the servers on taxslayer aren't bogged from heavy traffic (yes, I prepare my taxes on the internet. I have for several years, and taxslayer is awesome).

I think it took me all of an hour, and that was carefully looking everything over. Now just to wait for that acceptance email. I guess the only worries I have about that is that this is the first year I'm not a dependant, and this is the first and only year that I'm claiming the tuition adjustment. I don't know why I never put in the tuition stuff before, I just never did. I just hope that it doesn't raise any flags now.

In other news... Hastings had a sale this past weekend. I went in search of used games, but the ones I really wanted they told me they don't carry anymore. But I did end up with some game guides. I had a book coupon that pretty much said that until noon it was buy 2 books get one free. Since game guides are usually $15 each I used the coupon on that.

After that I went to some game stores. I did end up with one game, even though it wasn't one of the ones I really wanted, just one that I want. And I ended up with 2 more guides, which I lucked out on and one ended up being half price.

After that the weekend pretty much turned into a weekend filled with gaming and anime. I did some spot cleaning around the bird cages, and that was it.

Guest HNT

2006-01-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't been feeling too good this week. Allergies mostly, but there is other stuff mixed in.

Anyhow, my brother got ahold of my camera during christmas. He took some random pics, and i found this one of his foot on my memory card. I think that makes it fair game. And since I'm not really feeling up to posting pics of myself this week, I give you...

My Brother's Foot

better on the face

2006-01-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

ok. Got my better camera out, and was able to get a non-blurry pic of the dancer's face. Thanks for leaving nice comments about her yesterday. I'm trying to force myself to not crumple drawings and actually maybe (one day... when hell freezes over) get confident about sketches like this.

Early Morning Doodling

2006-01-24T14:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes creativity takes over, whether you want it to or not. I had been having this strange urge to draw the past couple of days. Even though I have no drawing skills whatsoever.

Anyway, I finally let the urge take over this morning. For once I didn't crumple my drawing.

and a close up on the face.

Sorry about the blur and the photo problems, only have my cheap camera with me today. May have to scan it in to show ya'll properly.

I'm actually kind of pleased with the way she turned out. Probably the best I've ever done.

Too bad she was supposed to be a swordmistress instead of a dancer. Oh well, sometimes things have to change.

Weekend, Etc.

2006-01-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

So my Aunt Sarah's new online drama project started. If anybody's interested in reading a new story from the beginning here is a good chance. Head to http://newdrama.blogspot.com/.

I'm now amost 20 hours into Kingdom Hearts. That's what happens when I play all weekend. The sad thing is that I kow that is barely a drop in the bucket where that game is concerned. I wouldn't be surprised at all is I managed to go over 100 hours of play before I finish. And I could easily go longer if I decide to do some of the optional stuff.

I also managed to finish watching the box set of Point Pleasant. DAMN!!! They took that show off the air right before it really got good. And what should have been the season finale was awesome. Too bad they didn't continue the project. Seeing what happened next to devil chick would have been good. If you didn't catch the series when it was on TV, I think that the $30 odd for the set isn't bad. And even if you did catch it, I'd still buy the box. The last five eps that weren't shown on tv are worth it.

Maybe Fox will pull a Family Guy type of deal and bring it back. Wishful thinking, I know. But I really enjoyed the series, and would continue to watch it they brought it back.

In other news I don't think I am going to go dancing tonight. I'm just not feeling too well. It makes me sad, I always look foward to dancing. But I can barely stand today without doubling over in pain, and even that is only being controlled by medicine. Don't ask. I'll be fine in a day or so. It's just something I have to deal with.

That's all I can think of for now. Later all.

Brave HNT

2006-01-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

So for this HNT I decided to post more of me than most of you have ever seen. Granted, most of me is clothed, but believe me... THIS IS BRAVE. Especially since I nver look good in photos.

So this HNT, rather than having ya'll click through to the full post, I'm just adding a linky here. So click this one rather than the one at the bottom. I'm hoping that this my be a suitable solution to me to keep my HNT here.

HNT Pic

Since BS Asked...

2006-01-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

Since BS asked, the games I have so far are final fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts. I also have final fantasy IX, which I have had for a while. I just didn't have a way to play it until now.

I spent about 3 hours playing KH last night. I've kinda got mixed emotions about it, mostly because I'm having to start over.

To clarify, I had been more than half way through this incredibly long game before Luke and I split up. And since I didn't have a memory card of my own if my save game still exists from then he has it with him. Maybe I can borrow the card for long enough to find out next time I see him.

I think the hardest part of buying this system so close to the release of the PS3 is bulding up a games collection. Most of the games I want are actually PSone format, and getting harder to find every day. And then since I play mostly RPG's, I would also want the strategy guides for them. There are some games I cannot imagine using a strategy guide for (The Sims), and then there are the RPG's where you could spend hours trying to figure something out and actually use the guides, not to mention the bonus goodies.

That's a lot of money, that I don't have.

At the same time... I am actually happy with my purchase. This is my first new system in close to 7 years. The last system I bought was a snes, and that got sold to my brother when me and Luke moved in together. And until this the only system that I still had was my sega genesis (blast from the past).

I guess here soon I'll have to make a run to hastings and to game places to peruse the used games sections. At least that'll help a little. Unfortunately I don't think I've ever seen used guides with the games. I hope I'm wrong, since nowadays the guides for those games are more expensive than the games themselves.

In the meanwhile... maybe my amazon ads will start to get some traffic.

Boredom and Stuff

2006-01-17T16:37:00.000-07:00

I need to talk to my boss. I have invoices that I need to send out, but haven't yet because one thing or another needs to be looked at and fixed before I do.

But I haven't seen my boss since friday, and he was too busy then to look at them. I have a slight hope that we may get some stuff looked at tomorrow, but I know better than to count on it.

In other news: The toys r us in santa fe is closing. I went in yesterday, and bought myself a PS2. The discount wasn't much, but for a brand new system I knew that I wouldn't be able to find one any cheaper since sony doesn't have any plans to come down on the prices. I put it, some games, mem cards, and extra controller and stuff on a CC. I know that I shouldn't have, but I've been wanting one of my own since Luke and I went our seperate ways.

SO far today my brain has been in a blah mood, so I've spent a few hours on amazon playing with my recommendations. Mostly marking the i'm not interested box. But at least that gets a little of the crap out for when I actually do care to shop from that list later.

Eh, I guess that's enough dribble for today.

On reading blogs

2006-01-12T21:56:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that reading blogs can sometimes be straining on my eyes. On some it's just a matter of font, and increasing the text size often helps. For some reason, I think it's just because my eyes don't have to work as hard.

But I've started to notice that I really can't read more than 2 or 3 posts on the minima black template before I start seeing lines. Something about the text on a black background is incredibly hard on my eyes.

Of course that sucks for me. Minima black is a popular template, and I bet almost a third of the peeps on my blogroll use it. Heck, I even have it as the template on one of the blogs that I set up.

Oh well, I guess that's why you don't often see professional pages set up with white text on black. Just too hard to read.

HNT, anti-valentines, and other dribble

2006-01-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

SO I'm trying to decide something when it comes to the HNT posts. Since this is my main blog I wonder about the continued posting of these pics here. No, don't worry, I would continue to play, just on a private blog. I don't even think that it would be an issue, except for the point that I am at in life. Having just got out of college, and still in the job finding process I worry about potential employers being put off. Even though I'll admit that there isn't much I can do at this point. But I also worry about potential buyers of my book (yes that amazon ad that never changes) being put off by it.

I know that these are things that I should have thought of in the beginning, but they are what's bothering me now. I guess I'll decide what I'm doing soon enough, and don't worry. I'll let you all know.

Another HNT concern I've been having is that I am getting so many nice comments, and yet since I'm on dial up at home now I have a hard time getting to go around and look at everybody else's HNT pics. And since the page loading takes so long even if I do look at them sometimes I have a hard time commenting. I do try though, and I'm sorry that I'm not commenting more.

Finally, the other topic in the title of the post. Anti-Valentines. Cafepress is having an anti-valentines contest. The rules were posted today, but we all knew about the contest a few days ago. I had been busy working on some designs, and have even posted a few here for readers to see (scroll down a little to see). But any hope I had of even having a chance in the contest was dashed when I saw that the winners would be determined by sales. I just don't have the visitor counts or anything else to even start to compete. Either way... I guess I'll finish making the desings that I've already got planned out, but I don't think it'll do any good. If you want to see what I've got besides what's listed below than check out Phoenixwaller Designs and click on the anti-valentines section.

Ok, if you waded through all of that I guess you know the drill. Click on for the full post with pic. And if you need to know what HNT is about, then click on the HNT button in my sidebar.

A side view from the same photography session that produced last week's 'butt boobs'. Thanks to Nikki for taking the pictures.

Realization

2006-01-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

I have come to a realization about Bumper Sticker Rant. I can either pay for everything out of my own pocket, and do it all as a hobby. Like I have been doing...

Or I can make it into a money making venture, for minimal work over what I had already been doing.

This realization came to me as I was looking at out of pocket expenses for the rant. So far I've invested something like $10 (plus a camera that is small enough for me to keep in my purse), that's for the domain and I'm throwing in a few dollars since the community page is now residing under my domain on a hosted server.

I'm already tinkering with the idea of expanding the BSR store though. I have already picked up another cafepress extension... bsrant, and in a couple of days I'm going to expand that into a premium store which will focus on bumper stickers.

for now I'll try it out for a month. Tack on another $7 to those expenses. But the potential for more money coming than going out will increase with that.

I guess my biggest qualm is that when I set up the rant I wanted a community feel to it. It'll have been a year in may, and at the time I had this absurd though of pluggin all the money right back into it. But I now realize that I can't really make it into a community without branding it, and branding it will be increasingly hard without doing something to get the name out there. And the easiest way to get the name out there is to go this route.

I still plan to plug some money back into it, but I think I need to get over these qualms and just do it. I just need to realize that if I'm successful in this, really successful, I may end up making more money than I can plug back into it. And if I'm only mildly successful than at least it will pay for itself now.

Anti-Valentines at Phoenixwaller Designs

2006-01-09T13:33:00.000-07:00

Valentine's Day is coming, and with it comes all the hearts, flowers and candy that we have come to expect. But what about those of us who have a more cynical nature, and can't get into the spirit of the holiday?

Well, not to fear. Anti-valentine's day stuff is popular now too. And Phoenixwaller Designs has some great anti-valentine's day designs to celebrate.

Here are the first of the anti-valentine's designs, and keep checking back, because there are more to come.

Bumper Sticker Rant

2006-01-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry about not posting much lately, I've been working on a community page for bumper sticker rant.

Now I'm happy to admit that it's ready.

Check it out at: bsr.phoenixwaller.com

Why I HNT

2006-01-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

If all you want is the pic of the week, then scroll down and click through for the full post. But if you want to know a little more about why I decided to participate in HNT then read on. And if you still need to know what all of this is about, then click on the HNT banner in my sidebar.

I can be a strange person. I hate needles, with a passion. And yet I force myself to give blood. Why? So that I desensitize myself to the needle. I still can't bring myself to watch when they stick it in, but once it's in I do ok now.

What does that have to do with HNT?

HNT is a similar thing for me. I hate having my picture taken almost as much as I hate needles. I'm not a very attractive person, and seeing myself in any picture only reminds me of that.

But I'm learning to accept that it is nearly impossible to avoid the camera. So I need to desensitize myself to the flash, and get over my self-image problems.

HNT is similar to giving blood because in both cases I have decided to do something beyond what would normally be encountered in order to desensitize myself. Just like medical work would never require a needle that big (seriously, that thing is huge), you wouldn't expect pictures of yourself to be 'half-nekkid'.

Anyway... it's probably more than any of you wanted to know, but it's something that might as well be said.

So with that out of the way, click through for today's pic. Happy HNT all.

I call this the 'butt boobs' pic. Mostly because, while it's obvious that those are boobs, the way that I was holding them made them almost look like a butt. :-)

Been Busy

2006-01-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

SO due to some sugar induced hallucination I've been rather busy these past few days with a project that may very well be futile. But I'm offering it up anyway.

I've been designing checkerboards to go into my shop. And while I must say that they are rather neat looking, I fear that the sheer cost will drive potential buyers away. But I'm hoping that they go better than I am expecting right now.

Anyway, if you want to see some examples and read the ad I put over on the DTSS blog click on the click for more link.

Later.

Introducing a new line of gifts at Phoenixwaller Designs. Speciality checker sets in fun colors or patterns.

Choose from sets made for breast cancer survivors or awareness, sets for ladies who wear red hats, or just fun colors or patterns.

These sets are perfect for any checker lover. The large sets can even be held to a vertical magnetic surface (fridge) with the magnet pieces. The other bords can be worn as shirts or carried as a bag for a game wherever you go, or as a unique expression of your love of checkers.

Of for the full selection please visit the Games Section of Phoenixwaller Designs.

Author Chat?

2005-12-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

So just after Torn was released it was mentioned to me to have an author chat. Well for the longest time I didn't really know where to have said chat, and then once I put a chat room on my page it was too close to the holidays. Well, now that things are settling down again I've decided that I'm ready to give it a try.

Right now I think I'll have to hold it on a weekend, because of time differences. That way there isn't work or commutes interfering.

Right now I think I'll aim for early to mid-Jan, to have a chat. But I don't know for sure yet.

I do have a question though... I'd like a rough guesstimate of how many of you might be interested. And what times would work best. That way I can figure this thing out.

Anyway, if ya'll want to see the chat setup go to Phoenixwaller.com and click the chat link. And while you're there check out the forums and some of the other stuff that I've been doing over there.

Then once I fgure out this thing watch either here or in the announcements over there for the chat info.

End of Year HNT

2005-12-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

welcome to the last HNT of 2005. I had been thinking of doing a review of several of my HNT pics, but Os made it even easier by suggesting that we just pick our favorite.

So while this pic may not be the most revealing, to me it is definately the most fun. It's got some silliness, and my hair was still purple in that pic.

Happy New Year everybody, and Happy HNT.

Post Holiday Blowout Sale

2005-12-28T17:38:00.000-07:00

If anybody has actually been wanting to buy something from Phoenixwaller Designs now is a good time. Today was the start of a blowout sale. Below is the sales banner, which lists what is on sale.

Happy Shopping everyone.

Returning Update

2005-12-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

So the returning is over, but the buying of new stuff isn't.

I now have two gift cards, one place gave cash back, and I'm still stuck with the purse.

Of course my big gripe of the day is with verizon. I went in to upgrade my phone, and was told that I couldn't get the upgrade credit because of a policy that recognizes phone numbers rather than accounts. I've already sent in an angry email, but I know that's more for me than for anything else. I really needed to gripe at them about it, mostly because it doesn't make sense.

So now I need to decide if I want to use the gift cards online, or if I want to go into the stores again. I guess I may have to look at the policies.

Anyway, that's enough for now. For all you HNTer's who keep checking, check agin later. I have a post ready, but I'm not going to put it up until Os opens the comments.

Holiday update

2005-12-27T23:25:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Since my work is closed for this whole week I haven't been online as much and have therefore been neglecting this blog. But I decided that I might as well give ya'll some sort of update.

X-mas went ok, lots of food and fun. I am going to end up playing the return game a lot this year. Yep, unfortunately.

let's figure it out...

I got 2 copies of charlie and the chocolate factory. I'm keeping the deluxe and returning the basic widescreen. And then for some reason my parents decided to get me a copy of war of the worlds. I hadn't even seen the movie, and hadn't heard anything good about it either. So I rented that one, and we watched it tonight. Yeah... that unopened one that was in the box... it's goin back to the store and I'm getting a good movie instead.

Then there's the clothes to return, 2 different stores there. Why oh why couldn't they have come from the same store? Dunno if I'm gonna get more clothes or not. I have more pants than will fit in the drawer, and I'm pretty good on tops as well. Hopefully I'll either find something that I can use, or just get money back. Even though I have heard rumors of return policies being tightened.
Then there's still the unknown gift handbag set. Dunno if I'll return it or not. I don't think I'll use it. It's red, and not my style at all. But I have no reciept to return it with, and I think that wally world has already put all that holiday exclusive stuff on clearance. which means that I'd probably get half at best. I may take it and see what happens. I guess I don't have to return it if it doesn't feel right.

I feel bad. I almost never return gifts. And this year I'm looking at returning about half. Even worse is that I'll probably end up getting things that are completely different from the original gift as well.

I'm just hoping that the majority of people are returning to work, and I won't have to fight quite as bad to return these things.

In other news, the dollar gift exchange game went well. The friends of the family whom we asked to play this year seemed to have fun with it. I think that the worst of my dollar gifts was a second cd wallet that was a nasty purple and pink. I think my brother ended up getting stuck with a whole slew of dollar movies, (hehe) and of course various other random dollar stuff was around. I really like that game, and I hope that we continue to play it.

Umm, that's all I can think of for right now. I'm headed out to face the stores tomorrow.

A blogger has gone missing

2005-12-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

There was a blog that I enjoyed reading. The Rudicus Report. You can find it in my blogroll on the sidebar. While I may not have always agreed with the points made, I always enjoyed the presentation and the open atmosphere.

Even though the last post indicated a new direction for the blog, I was looking foward to that new direction.

Alas, I fear that there has been nothing new for some time. And I haven't heard from Rudicus in some time either. I even took the unusual step of actually emailing him, but there has yet been no reply.

I fear that Rudicus has gone missing, or at least disappeared from the blogosphere.

So as my blogosphere x-mas wish... I wish for Rudicus to return.

New Products in the store

2005-12-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

So for all you HNTer's, my HNT post is below this one, so just scroll down a bit. Or read this if you wanna.

SO I introduced a new line in Phoenixwaller Designs today. It's called Former Goth and it came about after a conversation with Nikki about how I make my designs.

I especially love the paradox of the line 'former goth' on black products, but have also offered a white version as well.

Please click on the link below for some preview images of these new products.

Very Merry HNT

2005-12-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Holidays everybody, and a very merry HNT. I do have a pic if you want to click at the bottom. And if you still need to know what HNT is all about, then click on the HNT link in my sidebar.

But for the HNT gifts...
1. BSoholic- I'd get him some binder clips, because we always need more binder clip people.

2. Thomcat- I'd get him a nice writing journal, because all writers need one.

And I can't single out one other HNT Participant for this game, since the one other I'd really single out I'm already giving a gift to in RL.

So

3. All HNT bloggers, I would give the wish of a wonderful and safe holiday season.

Oh, yeah. This gift for all you HNTer's as well. I'm all wrapped up for the holidays.

Thanks to Nikki for the use of her scarf.

Ugh...

2005-12-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

I started off having a nice few days to relax after coming back home from school. Slept in, got the car unpacked, found out I passed (that was a huge stress reliever), and pretty much just had a nice time of it.

Until yesterday that is...

I was all ready to go x-mas shopping with my aunt yesterday afternoon. And then she called, from the hospital. My grandmother had fallen after the church services and was taken to the emergency room. My mother was at work, so first I had to call her, and then I rushed to the hospital.

Luckily, my mother had found a moment during her busy working that she was able to call a family friend whom she had kept informed on my grandmother's meds and other medical info.

My grandmother was fine as of this morning from what I hear. She was released from the hospital at about 5 yesterday, and was already doing better by the time that she got home, but what a scare for us all.

Then today I was looking foward to a relaxing return to the working world. But no sooner had I plopped my butt into that chair than the guy who runs the water store comes in and tells me that the store had some sort of leak over the weekend. It was rather wet in there.

So I spent some of my morning helping over there, since it's the same owners, and it's starting to look better. I guess the carpet needed cleaned anyway, and now it just looks like they'd shampooed it.

But geez... what a way to end a weekend.

Graduated

2005-12-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

I passed the last class that I needed to graduate, which means that I should be receiving my chemical engineering degree after the regents meeting in feb.

Happy Dance.

HNT

2005-12-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

So it's half nekkid thursday yet again. For this week I have another safe photo, but don't worry, I have something more bold already in the works for next week.

So here is my safe pic, and Happy HNT everybody.

And if you still don't know what this is all about than check out the HNT link in my sidebar.

phoenixwaller.com

2005-12-12T13:22:00.000-07:00

So I've pretty much decided that phoenixwaller.com is ready for the public. I still have a bit of work to do, mostly the crafts page. But since I'm going to implement a shopping cart on that I'm going to need more time on that section.

I also still have to figure out how to fix the error that I am getting every time that I try and install the bulletin board module. Once I figure that out I'll be adding a BB.

But my writings are up, and enough other stuff is ready for now that I'm ready to open up the site for you all to look at.

So head on over to phoenixwaller.com to check it out.

Busy Weekend

2005-12-11T23:47:00.000-07:00

So after going through my photos for my photography class I came across a few really good ones. Good enough for me to put in the store. I also added a new 1337 design... 1337 slaxxor. You can see the designs and my cut 'n paste ad from the DTSS Blog by clicking for more below.

On top of that I also moved a good portion of my stuff back to Santa Fe this weekend. My dorm room looks barren on my side now. Now all I have to do is pass my final on Tues.

And I guess that's all for now, don't forget to click for more below to see the new designs.

Just Added: One new 1337 design and two new photos.

There's still time before the holidays to pick up these new designs. Head on over to Phoenixwaller Designs to see these new additions along with all my other products.

Happy HNT

2005-12-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

Ok, nothing much to say. HNT is something that you need to click for. Other than that... visit the links in my sidebar for more cool stuff, or the other blogs in my profile.

Happy HNT

Tired of Waiting

2005-12-07T00:14:00.000-07:00

Don't mind me, just venting a little. You can click for more if you want, but it may not be recommended even though it's just text.

Hit another one of my lonely spells tonight. I don't know if it's the holidays, or my usual mood swings. It's not bad yet, at least I haven't felt like crying for no reason. But if it keeps going this way I may get there before going to bed.

One of the worst things about being single and hating it is the 'advice' from married (or sometimes practically married) people. It's almost as if the unhappy single people aren't allowed to express their discontent in public. And the 'advice' is always the same line.

"Give it time, you'll meet someone"

and then they promptly change the subject.

Well, I'm tired of waiting. I get lonely waaaayy to easy, and there are days when I just want to cuddle up to someone.

Of course if you ever get past that first line, then the next is usualy... "then do the asking, don't wait for them to come to you."

Tried that... been burned. You learn not to do that after you scare off about the third guy friend. Sometimes the friendships are too important to risk in that fashion.

And that brings me back to where I am... lonely.

I could ramble some more about that, but I won't it's just more of the same words in a different package.

But to you married people out there... I don't want to hear either of those lines again right now. So don't even think of using them in the comments.

New Print in my store

2005-12-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

Announcing a new framed print available in the Space Dreams section at Phoenixwaller Designs!

This print is yet another view of the depths of space from the mind of Jennifer Waller. It's perfect for hanging in spots that are wider than tall, but still need a bit of color. Or use it in a room that already has a deveolped space theme.

This one here took me about an hour to make. Of course that doesn't include the initial time I spent months back to make the background pattern.

Sorry about the sales pitch, but I'm starting to realize that thigs like that show up better in the search engines. And I need things like that to show up if I want to see one sold.

Between that and surfing that's about how I've spent my morning.

Eh, whatever

2005-12-05T23:25:00.000-07:00

So after not updating for a few days I still have little to talk about. Well, maybe not, we'll see...

Started a new team blog last night for members of the dead t-shirt society. For the rest of you that means a new blog that showcases (when it gets rolling in a day or so) designs and products from a whole bunch of cafepress shopkeepers. I've already set up a link to the feed if anybody is horribly interested, and the blog is at dtssshops.blogspot.com
Started getting Phoenixwaller.com into shape again. I'd like everybody to stop by and make sure that it works in your browsers and let me know here. It's not done yet, but it's a good start. I think I am only missing the crafts pages right now.
Bloggy Button: I may have started a nasty trend, or maybe somebody else started it. But right after I made the button for Bumper Sticker Rant available I started seeing lillte buttons appear everywhere for linking to blogs. So, not to get lost in the shuffle, here's one that ya'll can use to link back to here

(a href="http://phoenixwaller.blogspot.com" target="blank")(img src="http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d82/phoenixwaller/Logos%20and%20web%20stuff/dr-phoenix.gif" alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com")(/a)

As usual, just change the ()'s to <>'s

Ok, more than I thought, but still not much. L8R

Happy HNT

2005-11-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

So Since I'm running out of family safe HNT options I have decided to set them up behind a cut. That way I can continue to play, and not have my family members who read this be subjected to something that they do not want to see.

But I'd also like everybody to head on over to Bumper Sticker Rant at some point. And since I get more visitors on HNT's than any other day of the week I thought I'd mention it today. Please visit.

So, now that you've waded through my rambling, click on to see my HNT submission this week.

My HNT this week. I'm still not as brave as some,but this is more than I'd subject my family to.

Still don't know what HNT is about? Click the HNT button in my sidebar.

And don't forget to visit BSR. (please, I'd like to get more visitors there.)

Kerplunk!

2005-11-28T23:12:00.000-07:00

Thought that you all might want to know...

I'm psyched right now, and I can barely type. My fingers are mad at me for the haul on words this weekend.

Even better, I barely got into the second part of the book at 40 K words, and I think that the second part will be longer than the first. Heck the first chapter of the second part was nearly 10K itself.

I will continue working on shadowfall, but probably not at the same pace. I hope that you all keep reading it.

Just in case I go missing...

2005-11-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

So I've had a good run at writing this weekend. Shadowfall is coming along nicely, and last time I checked I was at just under 42.5K words. Go me.

For some reason I think that I wrote 20K words over the break, so far, but I can only remember about 18K of those. So I must have wrote some and then forgotton about it and counted it toward another writing session without realizing it.

So I have until Wednesday to hit the 50K mark if I want to be declared a winner. For some reason I think that I can do it too. I just need to get this post up and cross post it between LJ and Blogger.

Anyway, if you want to see how my progress report looks and read an excerpt then please go to my NaNoWriMo profile

If you just want to start reading then go to the Shadowfall posting blog.

And if you don't hear from me much until wednesday, now you know why.

Spam Blog?

2005-11-26T10:31:00.000-07:00

So the past few days I'd been having trouble trying to publish my updates to Shadowfall with the word plug in for blogger. I opened the plug in this morning, and found that it had somehow lost the settings.

But I was still having problems posting. So I went through the blogger dash to update the book.

What was strange was that somehow Shadowfall had been mistaken as spam blog. WTF?? It doesn't even have many links on it. The links were pretty much to my other blogs, the torn web site and an amazon ad tower in the sidebar. I mean Bumper Sticker rant would be more likely to recieve that kind of attention because of the amount of links that I got goin on over there, but Shadowfall??

I'm happy, I mean the spam blogs piss me off as much as they do everybody else. But I would like to know the criteria that they use to determine what constitutes a spam blog. And the kicker, until a real person reviews my request to look at the blog and say yes, it's not a spam blog, I will have no traffic to it from the next blog button. It will also not show up in the recently published list.

Wow, what a way to kill any new readership. And right at the end of NaNowriMo too.

Oh well, you want to determine for yourself? Click the My NaNoWriMo button in the sidebar to go to Shadowfall.

Happy HNT Turkey Day

2005-11-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

So, For this HNT I decided that ya'll needed a half nekkid turkey. But I don't have any turkeys, so you'll have to deal with this.

Begin

Head

Green

Blue

Yellow

Red

Brown

Oops, It's a fully nekkid turkey. Oh well. Happy Half-Nekkid Turkey Day

Bumper Sticker Rant

2005-11-21T14:52:00.000-07:00

SO after taking a break from Bumper Sticker Rant, I'd like to say that it's back up and running again. I've opened up some forums for the people over there, and I made some cool buttons for people to grab and put on their sites to spread the word.

In other news... I completely buggered my hosting account last night. So it'll be even longer for me to get phoenixwaller.com back up again. But only a day longer. I had only started playing around to see how I want to do things different when I did it, so I didn't lose anything.

Ummm, and that's all I have time for right now. I need to look at my saxophone before going to class. It was giving me problems last week, and while I think I can fix it I can't do that even if I'm blogging. So I'll see ya'll later.

Oh yeah. Don't forget to check out Bumper Sticker Rant!

Happy HNT

2005-11-16T21:48:00.000-07:00

It's not me, but I figured that everybody could appreciate this lady. And if you want to see some of me on this HNT scroll down a bit more.

If you want to know what HNT is about then click the HNT button.

2005-11-16T21:47:00.000-07:00

My fat legs on this HNT

Not quite HNT yet

2005-11-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

Wow, you guys are coming round earlier and earlier. I'll get one up, but where I'm at right now it's only 8:30. I'm stuck in MST if that helps, and I will not be posting until Osbasso's comments come back up at least, ok.

But do come back. I have my pic ready, and another pic that I'm sure you'll all appreciate.

In the meanwhile, why not check out Bumperstickerrant.com.

Or start your holiday shopping online and visit Phoenixwaller Designs

Until then, Happy not quite-HNT.

Nap time

2005-11-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

So for now I've moved the pointers for the graphics back to my old geocities page.

And of course after I get me a little more sleep I will probably be redirecting phoenixwaller.com to that old page for the time being. At least then I'll have a little bit of time to fix the mess.

But for now my brain is dead, and I'd like a nap. So till later.

I should live in a tree

2005-11-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

Grrr. It's my birthday damnit.

Sorry about the missing images. The raid on the server phoenixwaller.com is on died. And I don't know the extent of the damage yet.

Right now it looks like I'll be redoing my page from scratch. I have no idea what's there and what's not.

What's worse, is that since I didn't have everything finished yet I didn't have anything backed up.

Add that to the todo pile I guess.

I really did not need that stress right now. Luckily, yes there is one good thing, I hadn't yet started offering my various crafts for sale there. Otherwise I maight have lost actual data that would have been money related.

But still... Grrr.

I'll probably switch the graphics for the blogs back over to geocities soon. Until I get everything back up on my hosted server. But I just found out about this, and have class, and then I was going to try and do something with friends.

Between this, being ten thousand words short of where I'd like to be and today being one of the lamest birthdays I can remember I'm just ready to say fuckitall and go live in a tree.

2005-11-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

A set of Jewelry that I am hoping to sell at the art show on wednesday. I have handmade beads for the center of the necklace and on the earrings. And then I hve finished out the piece with pearls and used sterling silver throughout.

2005-11-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

A closer look at the set. You can really see the beads and pearls in this pic.

Since it was laughed at

2005-11-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I added that donate button. Everybody laughed or said something that was not bad about it. SO I decided i'd go ahead and put it up. I guess more of wishful thinking than anything else. But I finally figured that there was no harmin putting i up.

Anyway, I can't think of anything else right now. I may think of something later. And I'll probably be posting some pics of some of my glass either later tonight or sometime tomorrow.

Random Musing

2005-11-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

So My Birthday is on tuesday. And while I have absolutely no hopes of anyting coming from it, I was thinking of putting up a pay pal donation button on some of my web things for a few days because of it.

Kind of a I wonder what would happen thing. But I need to gather some opinions. Is this completely tacky or what? I asked one person in RL and they laughed and said that it wasn't tacky, but funny. But what do you all think?

Happy Half-Nekkid Thursday

2005-11-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

Happy HNT everybody. Yes, I know that my hand is wearing a pair of earrings. But I'm proud of those earrings. For one thing I had finished making them only about two minutes before taking this pic. And second except for the little bead on the bottom I made all the beads.

Bumperstickerrant Needs you!

2005-11-09T16:40:00.000-07:00

So I've been discouraged with the visitor counts for Bumper Sticker rant lately. They are sporadic at best, and oftentimes I have fewer than 10 unique visitors per day. Some days that number drops to less than five. More the latter lately.

But I also believe that my little pet project will work out if I can give it some time to develop. So I'm not willing to drop the project yet. And since I bought the domain name I plan to at least play with it for a couple of years.

Here's the deal. I'm taking a short break from posting on Bumpersticker rant. This will allow me to seperate myself from the project a little and try and determine the best way to go foward.

What I'm looking for is for people to take a look at the site and give some feedback on how it can be better. I'm fairly open to suggestions.

I'd also like to gather an opinion as to whether people feel that the bumpersticker pictures are better or the linked images from online so that people can buy the stickers are better.

So if you've never stopped by the rant please do so and help me make it better. And if you would rather use a feed than visit each day the feed is http://bumperstickerrant.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Black, Black, BLACK!!!

2005-11-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

I'm excited. I just logged on to my cafepress account to see that we can now put desins on BLACK apparrel. While the shirts won't actually be for sale for another few weeks, we will finally have black!

I had been starting to think about ways to work with my space dreams section. I was wanting to offer personalizations on some stock images. But I didn't want to be tied to mugs and small things. Now I can put it on a shirt!!!

The only thing I wish is that they had done this a little sooner. Now I'm going to be trying to write and wanting to make my designs for black shirts.

anyway, here's a sneak peak of one of them. Just remember that they aren't for sale just yet. But I will let you know when they are.

Of course I will be getting some geek designs done, but for now this is what I had that I could put on quickly.

Progress report

2005-11-05T19:22:00.000-07:00

So I posted a whole bunch more to Shadowfall today. I have now posted the whole first two chapters. My current word count stands at about 6700. 3700 of that being written today. I'm hoping to get that must done again tomorrow. If I can manage that then I will be right where I wanted to be by the end of the weekend. Of course I had really been hoping to get ahead. But just being where I need to be will be a good start. If you haven't already started reading now would probably be a good time.

And don't forget, it's still not to late to sign up for NaNoWriMo. Just in case anybody was getting in the mood to write.

Shoving Religion down our Throat

2005-11-04T13:23:00.000-07:00

So I came across this article during my daily news routine.

Now I have found myself upset over this particular law firm before for the one line we frequently hear from them. "... a group whose mission, as explained on its Web site, is "to protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square."

Of course this upsets me because by protecting the rights of christians, the firm in question is trampling the rights of everybody else, or at least advocating it.

I don't know of anybody who is going into churches and pushing the preacher aside and calling everybody fools for believing in God, but these nutjobs want to go into schools and deny what I believe in. Science!

Whatever happened to freedomn of religion? I ask because if these people win we will have none. We will all be forced to listen to christian dogma no matter what our beliefs.

That really seems to be the goal of these people.

And of course since we have the fundamentalists who want to bring the country back to the stone age backing these people up.

What's worse is that even the Vatican is calling for another direction. As is evidenced in this article.

I am starting to fear that this trend will make us no better in 20 years than the countries in the middle east that we keep trying to change into a democracy. We scorn these countries for having religious law, but that is exactly what some groups in our country are trying to turn the US into.

Fundamentalism is dangerous in any religion, and yet it is growing here.

SO to those of us still in our right minds... Beware the Sheeple.

Happy HNT

2005-11-03T01:16:00.000-07:00

You can almost see the purple in my hair in this pic. Happy HNT!

Walkin round in Women's Underwear

2005-11-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

So this past weekend, sice I had a little bit of money, I decided that it was time to buy new underwear again.

I wear that there's a reason why I try to avoid that little task.

Ok, last time I checked guys only had three different cuts of undies. Boxers, briefs, and boxer-briefs. Pretty straightfoward. And since there aren't as many options it's pretty easy to settle on something.

I counted at least five different cuts for women. Briefs, hi-cut briefs, bikini, thong, boy short, and probably one or two more that I don't remember.

Now let's add to the complexity. Let's add fabric options, cotton, satin, lace, other. Then let's throw in some colors.

Finally let's mix them up in no percievable order. And we get the women's undie section at Wally world.

Why??? Why??? Seriously there is something wrong here. First, why do we need so many cuts? And second, why do we need useless cuts? I mean what is the point of a thong? You don't need to floss your ass!

And the kicker... the hardest thing to find is the one that probably should be. Simple briefs. Cotton ones prefereably.

I'm starting to think that those are a dying breed. I spent about 20 minutes looking before I found some, and then I ended up getting the wrong size and had to return them.

I finally ended up with somthing liveable, but geez. They're only underwear, chances are the only one who'll notice is the one wearing them. So why do we need this complexity?

Here we go...

2005-11-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

SO I took some time just before midnight last night to keep myself distracted before the start of NaNoWriMo. In the last hour before midnight I ended up picking up my stuff around the room, clening a little in order to have minimal distraction. I also made another design for my geek section. I have had enough success with my if you can't integrate design that I decided to add another math based design.

Here it is...

And while I have no idea how it'll do, I figure I see enough geeky stuff around to give it a try. And for the non-math geeks around... it says math geek, just spelled out in greek letters.

Anyway, I did manage to get almost 250 words out between half past midnight and a few minutes past 1. So chapter one subchapter 1 has been posted. Time for me to go now. Later all.

Shadowfall

Killing time

2005-10-31T22:27:00.000-07:00

KAPOW!

Only about an hour and a half left before I can get started on Shadowfall. I'm getting impatient. I'm trying to work on DS a little more, but my mind keeps going back and trying to figure out what I'm going to do.

I guess it's not a bad thing to be thinking about it. I don't have many details figured out yet.

Let me explain. I know where I'm going, I just don't know how I'm going to get there.

Of course I find that is the best way for me to write at times. But sometimes it does hurt.

I am also worried that the story itself won't hit the mark. I'm pretty sure that it will, but with so much of it still in my mental shadows I have no way of knowing.

Anyway, I had a concepts sheet prepared since the story first started sticking in my mind. I've now printed out a copy of that so that I don't have to keep opening up a file. And I've pinned it to the wall next to me. Hopefully I will find that a help as I try to do this.

I guess I'll try to do some necessary tasks as I wait. Wish me luck.

Happy Halloween

2005-10-31T13:48:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween all. May you get lotsa candy.

So I failed in my goal. I still have not finished Dark System, and NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. But maybe it'll turn out for the better. I may need a break from Shadowfall every now and again, and DS is probably different enough.

I would really appreciate some of you checking out Shadowfall for me on a regular basis. the URL is http://phoenixnanowrimo.blogspot.com. I would like to know how you all like the story as it unfolds.

In other news I got my hair colored yesterday. It is now a rich purple. And not just highlights like I did before. Granted I still do have highlights, but after he colored those Edward (my stylist) also colored all the non-bleached portions of my hair.

Right now I still love that color.

For now that's all I can think of to say. So L8R all.

Google

2005-10-30T21:08:00.000-07:00

SO I was going through my news routine this morning when I came across this article. And it got me to thinking.

Now the article is about the advertising monster that google has become. And I'll admit, there are plenty of sites that have the little text that say ads by google on them. Bumperstickerrant included.

It also discusses how some people are getting worried about how big google is getting because of those advertising dollars.

But that isn't what got me thinking. What got me thinking is how much of google's stuff I use.

Even this blog is because of google, because google owns blogger. Then on top of that I have ad sense on bumperstickerrant, I have 2 gmail accounts, I use hello, am thinking about picasa, and will probably continue to use more and more google projects in addition to the search engine as they are released.

And for all of it I don't pay a dime.

Yes, i know that some think that it's bad because google keeps records of everything. But everybody else does too, so that doesn't worry me.

And the ads are nice, they are what pay for all of this stuff. And they aren't annoying popups, nor hideous flash animation. Simple text that catches my eye only with its simplicity, and allows me to click only if I feel like it and not to close it.

Of course I have to come back around to that wonderful price tag again. I mean free is such a nice word. And the stuff is top-notch.

I guess the only thing that really worries me after thinking about it is... what'll happen if google ever crumbles?

But don't take this as an open invitation to expand into too much google people, keep some modesty about you.

strange things

2005-10-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

So for some bizarre reason I have decided to try reading The Book of the Five Rings again. This is a book that has always interested me in some way, but I have never been able to read. It's one of those that has a knack for putting me to sleep, or confusing me.

But it's been at least 6 years since I tried to read it last, and I decided that it was worth another go.

Somehow I must have matured enough for the book to really start to make sense. I still don't know if I'll be able to get through it, even though it's excruciatingly short. But somehow understanding what is being said makes it less likely to put me to sleep, as long as I read it in short bursts.

But opening it this time brought back something from the past. When I started reading it again a newspaper clipping fell out.

It was an article about how a librarian from my HS died, and the article was written by my brother's wife (God that still feels wierd to say). This was a librarian whom all the geeks respected, and I remember that there were about half students at the funeral.

But I don't remember trying to read this book when that happened. I mean I must have been, but I don't remember having picked up the book in a looooong time. Strange. Could be coincidence, could be something else.

But still it's strange.

HNT post below this one.

2005-10-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

So I was going through the news today when I came across this article. And it worries me a little bit.

All throughout this supreme court nomination season, we've been hearing about how the shrub was going to pander to the far right and nominate sobody who satisfies their goals. And both times so far he has surprised us and actually nominated somebody fairly moderate.

But now Meirs has withdrawn her nomination. And once again there is pressure on the prez to nominate somebody that the extremist churches want.

Now the article talks about how the far right is trying to get him to repay his getting back into office. But unless religious fundamentalists make up half of the poopulation, he shouldn't have to repay anything. Because they didn't do it alone.

Besides, he really does need to put up somebody who won't have a huge battle. Even though republicans control congress, there are still some options left open to the dems. And despite the attempt of republicans over the summer to get rid of the fiilibuster, it didn't happen.

Besides that, there are still a few moderate republicans. And if the nominee is too far right they might side with the Dems, heck I would.

I guess only time will tell.

2005-10-26T23:06:00.000-07:00

OMG!!! It's me! look quick, because you'll probably never see a pic like this again. Happy HNT

daily ramblings

Dear Congress: Grow a pair!

XstreetSl Changes, my take

Pho's to do list

:-?

Internet Musings

I guess I do care...

Bye Bye Rummy

Er?

Announcement... and a question.

clothes shopping... or how to make the fat girl feel fatter

Agreeing with the Shrub

protection, or barrier?

ups and downs

FYI

stuff

Oops!

sign, sign, everywhere a sign

Language barrier

A matter of faith

*sniffle*

Well...

quick update

Giving it a try

word veri

Weird Weekend

RAM and wh I couldn't date a smoker

update

Understanding

Final HNT, for a while at least

sour peas and where we're headed

Gaaaahhhhh! Part 2

things in threes?

tired

Domains, and movies, ad gas prices... Oh My!

Thursday already.

Plea for Votes

HNT

Daz Studio

Backdrop of life

That time of year...

Guest HNT

better on the face

Early Morning Doodling

Weekend, Etc.

Brave HNT

Since BS Asked...

Boredom and Stuff

On reading blogs

HNT, anti-valentines, and other dribble

Realization

Anti-Valentines at Phoenixwaller Designs

Bumper Sticker Rant

Why I HNT

Been Busy

Author Chat?

End of Year HNT

Post Holiday Blowout Sale

Returning Update

Holiday update

A blogger has gone missing

New Products in the store

Very Merry HNT

Ugh...

Graduated

HNT

phoenixwaller.com

Busy Weekend

Happy HNT

Tired of Waiting

New Print in my store

Eh, whatever

Happy HNT

Kerplunk!

Just in case I go missing...

Spam Blog?

Happy HNT Turkey Day

Bumper Sticker Rant

Happy HNT

Not quite HNT yet

sniffle