Author Archive

Really trying…

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

I know I said I’d update more but that requires effort and where’s the fun in that? I’m at work right now, yes.. I’m aware of the fact that it’s Sunday. I’m taking a break between phone calls to clear my head, it’s hard talking to southerners to get information for their cars when half of them don’t even seem to remember being in an accident… have to say it’s kind of weird haha. I’m working on my 10th hour of overtime this week and I can’t even begin to tell you how exhausted I am. I really can’t wait for any kind of a vacation away from this place.

I’m spending my birthday in Atlantic City with Sean. We’re going to stay at Harrah’s for two nights (three days) and then heading up to East Brunswick, NJ to float around his old neck of the woods. We’re going to the Jersey Devil Hayride to start off our Halloween celebration and I think there was another haunted house that he wanted to bring me to, but I’m not sure on that one yet. I just can’t wait to be sitting in front of a slot machine without a care in the world other than hoping to hit a nice jackpot to pay off some bills quicker. We’ve saved up and put some money aside but I’m one of those people who’s feeling lucky right now and I hope to be able to triple that money before we leave the casino haha. Instantly that would get my loan down to half of where it is now, and all credit cards would be paid off. Oh the joy of wishful thinking, I forget that it gets you no where heh.

I did some serious decorating at work, Franny and I hit up the dollar store and A.C. Moore and we’re overloaded with Halloween decorations and candy. Our department is certainly the most festive. Can’t wait for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’ll blow everyone else out of the water haha.

In any event, I have a few more phone calls to make and a shit load of other crap to do so I can get out of here and do some grocery shopping. I also need to start packing too… it’s not easy packing for two people when you’re going to be away for five days haha.

This should be fun.

I’m so addicted to….

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

Restaurant City I typically hate Facebook, and to be honest with you I’m not really a fan of social networks in general.  I was very turned off by Myspace when that Mafia Wars thing started up, and even more turned off of Facebook when it launched there as well.  Now, however, I’ve found myself playing Restaurant City on a daily basis.  You basically start your own little hole in the wall and over time (and expense) you can make things bigger and better until you have a fancy high end 5-star kind of a restaurant.  Right now I’m about 300 points away from a level 8 which means I get another employee and I’m going to have to put in a bathroom because it needs to cater to the extra flow of people.

I currently have 12 tables, two chefs and two waiters.  When things get a busy I setup one of the waiters as a chef and then keep switching people out so that things can keep moving.  Eventually I’d like to have one of the restaurants on Gourmet Street.  I know it’s just a stupid goal but if it’ll give me any ounce of downtime when I can just zone out and do something mindless, why not?

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Saturday, September 26th, 2009

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Ugh @ Saturday

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

So it’s Saturday and I’m stuck at work.  This is a common thing for me, and will continue to be until I’m lucky enough to find a better job where I’m just paid more hourly and don’t care to pick up the extra hours on the weekends to get by.  There’s a lot of crap to do but at the moment I needed some kind of a mental break from assigning the claims and making phone calls so of course I figure this would be one of the good chances for me to throw up a post being as I’m sure I won’t be able to do it over the course of the rest of the weekend.

I feel productive today and I’m really not sure why being as I’ve been relatively lazy.  I cleaned up the main hallway at the house because it was driving me crazy.  I did a little laundry and now I’m knocking out some claims at work and making some phone calls.  While I know that it’s more than most people do on Saturday afternoons… it still feels as though I really haven’t done enough.  Being as I’m going to be here for a while I think I’m going to have Sean and I do some grocery shopping tonight after I get home.  By the time we make it out to Pathmark it should be late enough where the store is pretty much ours for the taking.  So that’ll be a quick hundred bucks that goes out the window.  But I’ve managed to get things down to about $120 a week … reasonable considering I’m shopping for four people and 7 days worth of food.  Right?

Rollin’ along…

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

It’s only Wednesday and I’m itching for it to be Friday.  I can’t wait until my paycheck comes in so I can get some bills paid and enjoy a little bit of self-pampering.  I’m going to pick out a new uber-cool nail polish and head down to the salon to get my eyebrows done, I’ve let them go for three weeks and even though I’ve been maintaining them myself I’d really like to get them touched up.  I’m also going to dye my hair because the gray roots are getting way too freaking long and it’s about time I do something about that.

I’ve already noted on acidgloss.net that I’d like to start doing a little more with my sites and I know I’ve been saying it here for a while but with the way things are going lately I think I’d be able to properly budget my time for a little while so I can actually get something done.  Lately I’ve been putting in a lot of overtime at work and being as it’s approved for my department it’s not such a major deal anymore.  I’m now doing the Saturday afternoon shift completely by myself. Originally I was alternating with another co-worker but she doesn’t really like coming in on the weekends and noted that she’s not hurting for money as badly as I am right now.  Sean is bringing in really good money with a few clients he’s working with but I’m pretty much stuck within the same price-range every two weeks.  It’s paying the bills, and that’s all that matters right now.

Over the course of the next few months we’re really going to be skimping and saving just about everywhere we can.  We both have agreed that it’s time to move on with our lives and we need to get ourselves into a larger apartment and I really need to have my own car. I set my car budget around $12,000 and that’ll be more than enough to get me a 2007 or 2008 Chevy Cobalt that includes everything that I need in a car at this point in my life… power windows and decent gas mileage to get to and from work.  I’m going with a sedan as it will give me a little less to worry about on my car insurance and I’ll have an alarm system to give me even more of a break.  There’s also a defensive driving course that I could take to drop things down as well.  I’ll take as many deductions as I can at this point of my life.  I’m hoping to put about $5,000 to $6,000 aside for a down payment so I’m not stuck with a loan for an extended period of time.  It would help me out in the long run considering I’m still paying back my personal loan and all of the credit cards that I’ve managed to max out over the last year.

I’ve been at my current job for over a year and if you didn’t notice it’s put a major damper on just about everything INTERNET related for me.  I hardly check my email, and really had no interest in blogging for a very long time.  I was dealing with getting used to a 10-7 and that took up just about all of my energy.  Now that I’m in a fixed routine with all of that I’m learning to deal with everything else going on in my life.

My best friend passed away in February and that’s really been kicking my ass for the past few months because it was the last thing I’d ever expect.  Sean and I were rocky for a little while but now we’re back on course.  Bella went through surgery to have the tumor removed from her stomach and a few other things have sprung up over the rest of the year that have had my attention – mainly health related issues with both family members and myself.  It’ll all work itself out in the end so I’m not going to get that far into detail about it.

In any event… it’s after 10pm which means it’s past my bed time.  I don’t ever actually fall asleep until after 11:30 anyway… but I do try to be in bed so I can get some decent amount of sleep.  I’m working on about 5-6 hours a night and I’d really like to sleep for a full 8 hours once in a while.  There’s always the weekends I guess… that’s typically when I make up the time.  I make up for it more on Sunday than I do on Saturday considering I have to work but either way things are getting done and that’s all that matters.

So yea… I’m still working at the same job… I’m still dealing with my own gripes and issues with life.  I’m also hoping to get some time to myself so I can actually start doing something with the sites that I own… it’d be great.

Nothings up…

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

OK… so it’s been a really long time since I’ve been able to sit down and actually act as though I own this website.  There’s no content updates, there’s no real major changes going on in my life that are worth posting about and everything as of right now is pretty mellow.  I’m still living in NY, I’m still working at the same appraisal company and we’re still bouncing between two different systems.  I have no real drive for anything internet related, hardly check my email half the time now that I think about it.  I would like to get back into the blogging world for the random days of venting but when you’re working 10 hours a day you tend to not want to focus on any of that by the time you get home. 

Sean’s working for a few different people right now, and making some decent money.  We’re working on getting another car and getting numerous bills paid off.  I’m also hoping to get down to Atlantic City before the year ends so that’ll certainly be a nice change of scenery for me.  We were down in Jersey last weekend cause his mother was going in for surgery and as far as everything outside of the hospital is concerned … it was a shitty freaking weekend.  I’m really not a big fan of NJ… that’s just about how I’m going to put that summary together heh.

I’m hoping to be able to get something accomplished here considering it’s been well over a year since I’ve really done anything.  Hopefully that’ll change but we’ll see what happens.

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Non Stop…

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

This week has been the week from hell and unfortunately it doesn’t look as though it’s going to let up any time soon.  On Wednesday it was announced that we’re switching over to the new system at work that has been in the ‘creation’ process for the past couple of months.  The problem with this is the fact that there has been absolutely no training put towards this system so everyone is basically lost right now.

We had a little bit of a ‘training’ session on Wednesday and come Thursday morning we were all kind of thrown into the system that has so many errors it’s unreal.  It’s heavily coded with ASP/AJAX and with the way it’s trying to read the database things just aren’t working out the way they’re supposed to.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much choas at work as I have in the past few days.  We’ve wound up switching over to the old system mid-way through the day on both Thursday and Friday because the productivity that we usually have with the old system was well beyond what we’re able to accomplish with the new one.  So it’s my hope that we’ll get to use the old system a little longer just so we keep moving at the pace that we’re accustomed to.  This new one has slowed us down so much it almost feels as though we’re wasting our time with it.

Over the course of the day on Thursday we were able to input about 100 assignments with the new system – this took us 8 hours.  However, when we got fed up and switched back to the old one we managed to put in about 150 assignments in the course of 45 minutes.  This has to tell you something when it comes to how things are going to look within the next few weeks.  As of right now I’ve got about 6 hours of overtime, this includes the two hours I’ve just spent at the office this morning (Yes, I also go in on Sunday mornings for a few hours – I told you this place was sucking the soul out of me!) – so my next paycheck should at least be for something decent which helps me considering there are a lot of bills to be paid in upcoming weeks.

On Friday I left at 6:30 – when I’m actually supposed to leave – and ran home in time to wash up and wait for Alicia and Dave to get to my house.  We were treating Dave to dinner for his birthday and went to Friendly’s.  Yesterday Alicia and I were out for a few hours at KMART and Dollar Tree to pick up stuff for the surprise party we’re holding for him later this afternoon.  So right now I’m finishing things up at work and Alicia’s going to pick me up and then we’re going to head back to her house to finish getting things together.

We have this pretty elaborate plan in order to keep Dave out of the house for the afternoon.  He keeps wondering when Sean and I are going to get married.  So I said “RING SHOPPING!”  So I gave Sean my dinky $7 walmart ring and said “Here, this is a half size too big for me, go to Zales and do some ring shopping – take Dave with you and then I’ll text you when I want you guys to head back to Alicia’s house”.  Alicia thought it was a great idea, Sean was confused (as usual) and Dave is completely clueless as to what’s going on so it’s working out VERY WELL right now.  As of my last text from Sean he and Dave are eating lunch at Johnny Rockets and then probably surfing through a few jewelry stores in the mall to see what he can ‘find’.  So that gets Dave out of the house and gives Alicia and I plenty of time to get the rest of the stuff setup.

I also told Sean to throw his bathing suit in the trunk of the car cause it’s a rather warm day and I know the pools open at her house.  Granted there really isn’t anyone going in the pool but I know Sean will more than likely dive right in anyway so at least it gives him something to do.  We more than likely won’t be there for that long, everyone has work tomorrow so she’s expecting things to clear up around 6:30.  Which is fine for me, I still have some things to do to prepare myself for the week ahead.

We’ll be down one person in Dispatch tomorrow, she’s taking a much deserved day off.  But Monday – unfortunately – is one of our CRAZY BUSY days.  So on top of going to the new system plus all of the claims we’re bombarded with on a Monday morning/afternoon – I’m hoping things run smoothly!

In any event, Alicia’s on her way here to pick me up.  Sean just sent me a text where he sounded surprised because the waiters/waitresses dance at Johnny Rockets during certain songs.  Boy is it going to be an INTERESTING day!

Yea….ok

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

So I know I said that I had every intent to update more, but as you know – reality tends to take over internet.  I’ve been floating around some blogs – some new, some old – and it’s shown me that the internet really just hasn’t changed.  I’m to a point now where I’m just questioning as to whether or not I really want to be involved anymore.  Working on a Bachelors in Multimedia is starting to seem like a waste of time considering I don’t have the drive to do it.  I don’t even have to drive to finish a template I started on over a month ago for this domain – why even try?  It’s not like I’ll ever get back to where I once was, and that was my own stupidity with all of the paid content and not enough real-life content.  On top of that…when it was non-sponsored content it was basically drama because there are people in this world who were just never meant to get along.

Since then…I’ve grown and stepped away from that.  It’s not my fault that some people are still holding onto bull shit but when they’re stuck in their little houses all day long with nothing better to do – it seems – it’s hard for them to let go of it to.  So basically – leave the house, enjoy the fresh air, summer’s right around the corner and a few of you could seriously use a tan, don’t burn though – that would suck.

On real notes – Work is taking it’s toll on me, I’m to a point of extreme exhaustion and I could seriously use a day off.  Unfortunately I don’t have enough PTO (paid time off) to even consider a vacation without screwing up my finances right now.  So while I’m at work all day, Sean’s at home trying to pick up as many clients as possible and right now they’re coming out the wazoo ever since he applied (and was accepted) to NYIT.  It’s going to cost A LOT of money for him to get his Bachelors in Computer Programming so he’s doing everything he can to bring in as much money as he can.  If he gets lucky and can load up on scholarships and loans, plus work study, he should be able to swing it.  It’s just going to be rough for a little while because I believe his everyday work will suffer and I feel like I’m going to be the one picking up the slack.  My monthly income is limited and being as I have no drive for design the only option is sponsored posting so I can bring in the extra $1,000 a month we need to live.

We’re trying very hard to save up money so we can finally get into our own place.  Unfortunately bills just keep showing up around us that we have no control over.  I was just hit with some BS penalty from HSBC for my loan because they claim that I’ve made late payments and it’s a $150 fee.  I’ve paid my loan between the 11th and 15th since the day I got it (about 2 years ago) so I really don’t understand why there’s an issue now and of course everytime I call I wind up having to talk to someone in India.  I went into the bank and was told that being as it’s a different department I should just call the customer service line.  Either way I’m sitting here about to rip my hair out because they’re shooting this shit to me and I honestly don’t even feel as though it’s legit.  So money is tight, tensions are high, it’s just been a crappy freaking year.

Gaining Inspiration…

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

I have to say that moving to a new host is giving me a whole field of inspiration.  I’m going to actively work on a new template this weekend as I really have nothing else to do.  I’m making it a point to setup one that not only allows me to properly integrate advertisors and personal links.  It’ll also give me the ability to get back into paid blogging.  I know that having a hiatus for the last year has kind of thrown me out of the running to bring in the money I was making before, but this doesn’t mean I can’t at least bring in a few hundred dollars a month just to insure that all of my bills are getting paid without having to worry about doing the full 80 pay-week to depend on income.

I’ve had a lot of requests lately for sponsored articles that are done personally through email.  I was also considering taking up an offer for a freelance writing position, but I’ll have to see how much time that would actually consume.  If they want articles written by 2pm on a Wednesday I’ll either have to drag my laptop to work or figure out a way to do it while I’m at work without having to take away from the endless wirlwind of shit going on in this place.  I find myself having loads of inspiration to do things while I’m sitting at work but by the time I get home at night I’m too tired to even look at my laptop.  I think I’ll just bring my notebook in with me so that I can doodle things out and hopefully find the time on the weekends to turn them into something pretty with Photoshop.

In any event, it’s about 11:30 in the morning and emails are really starting to pour in.  I think the insurance companies are trying to accomplish everything so they can leave early on Friday.  Of course this means that there will only be work for US but we have Monday off and my usual Sunday overtime will be spent cleaning things up instead of working on assignments since nothing can really be done until Tuesday anyway.

Pain in the ass…

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

So I’ve moved my personal accounts over to a new host.  I’m very unhappy with my current hosting situation and as of right now would just prefer to mark it down as a loss.  I had to fight to get my database released to me because for some strange reason it magically was deleted off of the server, even though I hadn’t touched it in days.   I was charged $15 to restore the back up and given an attitude about it the whole way.  So I went to Sean and basically said “move over, I’m coming to dreamhost”.  Now, I personally hate this host, but there isn’t any reports of them deleting databases and charging you to restore them.

So after extracting just my comments/posts/categories – I installed a clean wp installation under a dreamhost account and now I’m back to where I need to be.  All old plugins are gone, the only thing left is the barebones of just the important stuff.  I could care less about stats or anything else considering I’m never getting my PR4 back and that’s something I’ve learned to except.

Unreal…

Monday, May 18th, 2009

The past few days have been absolutely annoying. There was a huge issue with my database being deleted. I wound up having to pay for it because supposedly it’s OK for hosts to charge you to restore a back-up even though you weren’t the one to have anything to do with it crashing in the first place. So someone finally realized it wasn’t my fault so thankfully I was refunded for it. I was up until 3:30 in the morning on Saturday trying to get that one fixed.

Sunday – I was supposed to go into work with Fran because there’s A LOT of cleaning to get done but since I was exhausted from the night before and Fran wasn’t feeling well because her back was acting up we both decided it would be best to just stay home and relax for the day. Unfortunately you can never relax around here, there’s some kind of a daemon walking around and he’s taking out just about everyone he can.

Last week, a few people passed away. Now, thankfully I didn’t personally know them but other people surrounding me were connected to them (six levels of separation..). A kid that went to school with my boss overdosed. A man was hit by a car and thrown a good 50 feet onto the grass of one of the churches in town and the ass hole who hit him decided to just keep driving. How can you hit someone with that kind of force and just take off?

Sunday (yesterday) as I was sitting down to begin working on the new template for krissy.nu we had a power surge and I lost everything. About a half hour to an hour later that one mini power surge then turned into absolutely no lights at all. I get a phone call from Alicia because she’s currently on her way to some huge accident in Locust Valley. Someone going east-bound wound up crossing over the west-bound side of the road and splitting a light pole completely in half, they were then air lifted for medical attention and this entire section of town (it was about 6 blocks up from me) was completely out of power for a few hours. Sean and I wound up heading down in that direction before we went grocery shopping. I’ve never seen a pole look like that before, and I hope to never see it again.

So I get my shopping done – excellent deals going on this week if you’re a Pathmark shopper btw – I come home and make dinner, I take a shower, and try to relax for the rest of the night. I get a text message from my boss asking if I could come in at 9am instead of 930 and then with my response to her I got nervous because I hadn’t heard from her in a while then I come to find out that in this major accident up the road there was a silver altima involved (which she drives). Thankfully, she wound up calling me a little while later, explained the delay and then instantly 200 pounds was lifted off of my chest.

With the way things are going lately… I know things come in threes but there are way too many triplets to deal with right now. There is a major evil entity walking around the Gold Coast and I truly do not like it.

WTF?

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

I have to say …. I’m pretty annoyed with WordPress right now. For some reason my database is corrupt and this only came up after the move to the new host. I did manage to fix it for this domain but that required overwriting a lot of files and generating a back-up of my database so I could make the attempt to start fresh. The screen I’m getting is telling me that I’m at my initial “Welcome to WordPress” installation screen. Considering there’s 4 years of archives I’m a little annoyed by that. I want to have the archives active so that when I get around to reactivating the domain there aren’t so many damn problems with it and I can go back to doing what I was going to do without any interruptions.

So if anyone else has come up with this error OUT OF NO WHERE please let me know what I can do to fix it (if you figured it out) and hopefully it doesn’t require completely reinstalling the entire program.

I’ve never once had an issue with WordPress before, and now it’s nothing but issues that are just pissing me the hell off!

What the hell?

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

I went to blog earlier this morning and was then interrupted by a “Welcome to WordPress” message.  I’m sitting here thinking “Crap, either I was hacked or there’s some kind of database malfunction”.  Sure enough it was the database but seriously now, why did that come out of absolutely no where?  Maybe it was a sign from someone that I needed to reconsider the template that I had in my head, I really don’t know.  All I know is I’m dead set on doing something light and airy and when I did finally have the idea in my head? Someone else already did it!  I wanted to just do a simple sidebar/blog combination that didn’t take up much room but was primarily a CSS only layout with no images at all.  Why? Cause simple is always better and I can code a CSS template on my laptop while I’m on my lunch break and not totally kill my battery being as I’d only be using Notepad anyway.

It’s a gloomy day today.  We had four days of sunshine and then magically the clouds came back and now it’s just…blah…. I’ve noticed on days like this that weather really does play a factor in not only MY mood, but the over-all moods of those around me.  Everyone is coming across as really grumpy today, and it sucks!  The lack of oxygen in this place doesn’t really help either.  There really is no point in having so many windows and none of them can open.  If I ever had my own office area, the biggest requirement would be the ability to crack a window!

I’m Lost

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

The past couple of months have really been hard on me.  I’ve found myself having a lot of trouble completing things that I start.  I also have this overwhelming feeling of lonliness even though I’m surrounded by friends and family who care about me and are part of my daily life.

I think my problem is that I still haven’t accepted the fact that Lu is gone.  It’s one of those things that’s haunting me and I just wish I could figure out why.  There are so many unanswered questions and that’s really what’s taking my toll on me.  I want to know what happened that night, and I know exactly who to ask because I’m confident that they had everything to do with it but I’ve kept to myself because I just don’t want to interrupt everyone else’s ability to move on.

Work is also taking it’s toll on me.  I’m tired, fidgety and smoking about a pack and half a day just to cope with everything going on, on top of the stress.  I want to have the time to sit down and do something for ME but I keep agreeing to everything else for everyone else and even blogging right now just seems out of place for me considering I’m doing it from work (which I would probably get in trouble for) but there’s absolutely nothing to do right now.  I don’t think we’ve ever been this DEAD at 6:30 before.  It was a relatively slow day, which I guess was a good thing but at the same time it’s kind of annoying when you know you’re being paid hourly to basically sit on your ass with nothing to do.

That’s probably why I’m having such a hard time lately.  While I really have no time to myself, the line of work I’m in gives me a lot of time to be quiet and THINK during the day.  To spend 9 hours a day THINKING it really begins to take it’s toll on you.

I’m rambling, I don’t even have a complete thought for an entry right now…there literally was just nothing else to do.  I just know that I’ve sat here all day wondering how I can change things on this site.  I’m sick of the premade template, and I do have some ideas floating around in my head for a new theme but I honestly don’t know when that’s going to actually turn into a physical project.  Maybe I’ll have some time this weekend.  I was thinking of doing something tonight considering Sean is watching the season finale of LOST but I was thinking of just making some Mac & Cheese and curling up outside until it was time to go to bed.  The only thing I really look forward to is FRESH AIR.  I work in a place that’s overloaded with windows, but none of them can open so there’s all kinds of ’stuffy’ going on!

In any event, there’s 20 minutes before I get to leave…maybe I’ll find something to do.

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Downtime

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

OK so I forgot to renew my domain. Thankfully a .nu is only $30 a year now as opposed to the $60 for 2 years price tag that it once was. So I thanked myself for not touching my paypal card and managed to clear the $30 registration fee. There are a lot of plans that I have with this domain, as well as the others that I own, but I honestly just don’t have the time or the care anymore. I just don’t want to let this domain, or acidgloss.net die because they were my ‘babies’ for the longest time.

I’ll say this though…with the way the economy is going and the never ending cycle of crap that I’m getting thrown at me financially…when this site does become active again – you’ll have to excuse all of the sponsored articles. Just treat it as a word of warning!

Time to head off to work.

Sun….where are you?

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

For the past 5 days it’s been raining and it’s absolutely taking it’s toll on just about everyone I know. Now, I don’t know about you but I don’t think April is really supposed to be damp and cold. The weather lately has been so screwed up that I don’t even know what season we’re in! For a few days it reached 85*(F) now it’s down in the 40’s? Last night was so muggy and humid that I wound up cranking the air conditioner just so I could comfortably sleep.

I hate driving in the rain – no that’s not true – I hate how OTHER people drive in the rain! Ok the ground is damp it’s time to do 10mph! GET OFF THE DAMN ROAD IF YOU’RE THAT UNCOMFORTABLE!

All I want to do is wake up one morning and see the sun shining for more than just a few hours (as it did yesterday). I want everything to dry up so I can just sit outside and enjoy the nice weather. I understand the concept of April Showers brings May Flowers – HOWEVER – When said April Showers have killed your flowers, that theory goes out the damn window.

GRR @ YOU RAIN! GRR @ YOU!