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I’m gonna shoot somebody…

Friday, November 16th, 2012

I’m not a big fan of the stigma around “Christmas”. I don’t like the fact that, since July 5th, I’ve seen nothing but Christmas decorations going up in local stores and really hate the fact that finding Halloween Candy at Walgreens took a lot longer than necessary considering it was a week BEFORE Halloween.  Now that Halloween is over, and Thanksgiving is fast approaching – there’s absolutely NOTHING on TV except for crappy cop and dance shows, with a whole sea of “Black Friday” commercials from every single store that exists in America with an advertising budget.  Please explain why it’s so fucking important to push Christmas on people? Why can’t people just be happy with what they have and not even bother anticipating wiping out their savings accounts just to go shopping?

I did my shopping online, and only bought for immediate family. Why? Because I’m not made of money and I know they were a few key items that would make them happy. I didn’t go overboard like I have in years past. Why? Cause I’m still paying off those fricken credit cards from Christmas two years ago just because I wanted to include everyone and their mother.  I then realized, it was a complete and total waste of my time. The best gift to give anyone is money in a card so they can go out after the rush and get something for themselves.  Why? Cause 99% of the time – they either won’t use or won’t wear anything you bought them anyway!

So why am I so annoyed?

Welp, I went out tonight with the goal of picking up a few things from the dollar store so that I can make sure that I have everything I need to have Thanksgiving (yea, remember THAT Holiday??!) go off without a hitch. It’s only going to be the four of us for dinner (Sean, Karen, George and Myself) but I still intend to do it right and make sure that dinner is lovely and everyone can have a nice nap afterwords.  So anyway… I pulled into the Dollar Tree parking lot and it was pretty much a bumper-to-bumper situation to the point that I felt like I was stuck in traffic on the expressway – this is a fricken parking lot so what the hell is going on?

After the LINES of cars found their spots, I was able to find one by the store in the “30 minutes or less” parking spaces that are setup for shoppers.  I noticed that Dollar Tree, while a little busy, was no where near as crowded as they usually are on a Friday night.  After picking up the aluminum products needed to get through Thursday’s dinner and a new ruled legal pad as well as a few decorations for my new Christmas tree (which Sean will be putting up on Thursday), I proceeded to checkout.  I dealt with the usual old hag paying for $50 worth of products with pennies (mind you, that’s 50 items considering Delaware is a no sales-tax state), I then dealt with the confused pot head wondering how much his two items were going to cost him as he clenched a five dollar bill. After they cleared the way it was finally my turn. While my 22 items (Yea, I keep count) were being rung up I asked the cashier if this is a typical Friday night in this parking lot or if something special was going on.  Forgetting that there was a movie theater next store I was informed that another fricken Twilight movie came out at Midnight last night and this particular theater was basically doing 24 hours of glistening vampires that can hang out in the sun all day.  I stopped myself from vomiting on the spot, paid my bill and preceded to walk back to my truck.

This wasn’t the typical walk, this was the ‘dodge-every-ten-year-old-you-can-see’ and ‘run-over-the-ones-you-can’t-see’ type of walk.  The lines of people trying to get into this movie blew my damn mind.  Not only where there little teeny-boppers going nuts while WAITING in line and already reciting scenes to eachother, there’s also a crowd of older teenagers who are covered in white makeup (or they’ve never seen the sun themselves) and they’re taking all of these gothic/depressed looking pics of themselves cause they need to “OMG THIS IS GOING ON FACEBOOK” themselves.

Some douchebag on a skateboard damn near ran into my truck while he was trying some fricken awesome dunce cap move and to be my usual jerkoff self I decided to set the alarm as a warning that not only was I watching everything fucking going on around my truck, but proving that the blaring alarm is going to be the least of his problems when they’ll need to scrape his ass up off the pavement cause I had every intent of running him the fuck over.

I finally, after a good ten minutes of losing my patience, get INTO my truck. The line of cars still hasn’t really gone away but knowing that they sure as hell aren’t turning into a parking spot anytime soon, I sat there for a good 20 minutes waiting to GET OUT of my parking space because people are fucking rude and think that your trying to back out of a parking spot means you’re going to steal one that’s closer to the movie theater. Fuck you, I don’t think so.  This is a time when I wish I owned a monster truck so I could just reverse over the fucking line of hybrid cars and drive over everyone.  So the asshole behind my car decided it would be a good time to put himself in park and run into dollar tree (for whatever fucking reason) because he figures the row of cars to get into the theater isn’t going to move anyway.  He didn’t make it past my car door before I started screaming bloody murder in his direction.  I told him, as nicely as I could “Unless you’re interested in playing demolition derby – move your fucking car NOW!”  And apparently when a dumb southern boy hears a New Yorker screaming at them, they listen.  His wife almost got popped in the face for running her mouth but I was a good girl and didn’t even say anything to her (though I should have).

He backed up and finally let me out, then of course he got himself into the now vacant 30 minute spot that I inhabited and they (he and the wifey) both were trying to walk down to the theater and were stopped by a security guard who saw the entire fucking situation go down. He was told to move and try again. So I nicely sat there to keep him blocked in. It took me another 15 minutes before I could even GET OUT of the lot because it’s just a fricken one-way lane and I was all the way at the WRONG END of it.   So when I finally was able to touch my gas pedal instead of just coasting on fumes I quickly zipped out of the parking lot and went on my merry way.

I made it to my second destination, Food Lion, why? Cause even though I spent $200 on groceries three days ago – there was a lot of shit (Thanksgiving based) that was forgotten. Thankfully the store was empty, probably because everyone and their mother was on the other end of town for the stupid Twilight movie. I managed to get in and out of the store in less than 20 minutes, still spent $80 but what’s done is done.

I get back to the house, check in Karen (who’s not handling Chemo too well), bring in the groceries and then need to head outside for a cigarette cause my brain is pretty much fried at this point.  So I’m sitting outside with Sean and Bella, and now the dog insists its time to go out for her nightly walk (an hour early).  So I headed inside to get her coat, and her leash and we take off.  I want to assume that the movie got out because all of a sudden the entire complex was like grand central fucking station.  First there’s an endless line of cars coming in (two of which almost killed my dog by the way) then there’s a random dog chained up outside of their house (freezing his ass off) and barking away as the owner is telling him to shut up. (Could still call Animal Control on the douchebag, your dogs obviously shivering bring him the fuck inside!).  We continue to mosey on, the road clears up, my back is killing me, Bella’s done her business a few times and now it’s just time to come home.  Then out of no where there’s another fucking line of cars coming through the complex, one of them had to have been 40 or so miles an hour with the way he was bottoming out on all of the speed bumps.  It’s never good if one can see sparks coming from the back of your car, and even though Bella is as day-glow as she could possibly get with her bright pink neon jacket and her white fur – she still was almost run over by this fucker cause he was going too damn fast to realize there was even someone walking UNDER THE STREETLIGHT.  Cocksucker.

We get back to the house, I realize that I started making bread last night and never jumped back on it today.  I picked up a recipe for the Bertucci’s restaurant Bread Rolls (my favorite rolls in the world).  The starter was to be made last night, and 12 or so hours later is when the bread itself is to be made. So of course I let it sit for about 14 hours, and now I’m waiting on the first rising process to be completed.  It’s going to be another 10 or so hours before I can actually bake the damn bread, but that’s OK I guess – by the time I’m actually hungry for it – it’ll be dinner time on Saturday anyway.

So now I’m sitting here trying to not work on a template for as long as possible, I really would rather not even code this thing but money is money.  I just want to do some laundry and get some sleep but we all know how well plans go through when you’ve really got your mind set on something NOT work related.

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It’s too early for this crap…

Thursday, November 8th, 2012

It’s the middle of November and I’m freezing my fricken ass off.  It’s not even like I’m in a state where this type of weather is expected (ie: Maine / Minnesota), I’m in Delaware!! It’s supposed to be boardwalk friendly weather until December 21st!

The “Noreaster” rolled through yesterday, it was pretty much a windy day with a drizzle.  New York got hit pretty hard, I know my mom had about 8-inches or so of Snow, which for November is completely uncommon.  And while the power did stay on in numerous areas, there are people from the last storm who don’t even have power yet. To make matters worse, those who just got there power back within the last 48 hours or so, are already out.  I wonder if LIPA has been holding all of their machinery together with duct tape and gum? How the hell do you fix a transformer to only have it stop working two days later? No wonder Gvnr. Cuomo is as pissed off as he is – you people suck.

There are crews in from all over the United States and Canada to aid in relief efforts, but then you see arial views of all of the LIPA trucks just sitting around doing nothing while all of the out-of-staters are pretty much handling everything.  The North Shore of Long Island has been taken over by Kentucky and Tennessee power companies and there isn’t a single LIPA truck to be found.  It blows my damn mind.  These states are coming in to be kind enough to help you out and you’re just going to sit back and do jack shit in it’s place? I’m sure there’s some kind of a union bullshit thing involved here. From what I’ve heard LIPA is still pissed about a remaining bill of like $75,000 from Irene so they’re taking their sweet time.  Meanwhile, just based on billing periods, they can make that in two hours since there a damn monopoly anyway.  No one wants Con Edison to be involved with Long Island, the rates are absurd and the quality of service is just as bad, if not worse.

I think they should just take the innovative approach and put all of the damn power lines under ground to help keep things moving.  It would not only put A LOT of people to work, but you wouldn’t be dealing with the bull shit of “Oh no, it’s a windy day – I think I’ll be dealing with ANOTHER blackout”.  That’s the one thing we’ve never had to worry about down here.  Even with all of the damage that’s been done by storms in the past there’s never been a major blackout due to a storm.

But, going back to my main point.  I’M FUCKING COLD!!  I have no idea where any of my jackets are, mainly cause I’m too lazy to look for them.  I’m amused at how the dog is sitting next to me panting away like it’s the middle of the summer and I’ve got a chill going up and down my spine that just won’t go away.  All I want to do is lay down in bed and go to sleep but I know I need to put in at least 8 hours tonight (starting now) to complete a site for a client.   There’s still about 8 pages to convert from HTML to WordPress, and of course there’s the issue of needing custom fields all over every single template file so needless to say that puts a damper on things.

I also need to figure out a conditional tag, I don’t think is_blog() would actually work the way I need it to.  The site has two backgrounds, the initial one for the home page, and a more compressed one for the content pages.  Now using is_front_page() and is_home() are working to display the correct background on the index page, and the content pages, but when you think it’s going to carry over to the blog you’re sadly mistaken and all it does is display the background located on the index page.  I’m going to have to spend quite a bit of time figuring that one out tonight.  Not to mention I’m also going to be dealing with the issue of the fact that the site was so poorly coded it’s not even looking the way its supposed to in any browser lower than IE9.  Whoever the client paid (originally) to code this thing was a total waste in money, and now it’s a rush job to get it done by tomorrow morning (Friday AM).  We told them 24 hours initially because we thought it was just going to be loading the template into WordPress and creating a few custom fields here and there. I didn’t realize it was going to require a complete and total recode because the moron who coded it for WordPress took the Twenty-Ten (not even Twenty-Twelve) and copied and pasted the WRONG areas into the WRONG template files.  STUNAD!! 

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This is NOT a good time!

Wednesday, November 7th, 2012

So even though I’ve got my own little office and a nice comfy ‘managers’ chair to make me feel important – it still doesn’t void the “my back sucks” issues I’ve been experiencing.  As many of you know I suffer from sciatica, unfortunately with all of the weather changes and the constant up and down all day long I’m pretty much in the “heh, you’re screwed” category.  I don’t want to do it, but I have no choice – I’m officially working from bed.  My laptop is on the verge of death but I’m hoping it holds on long enough for me to actually get something accomplished before this client begins ripping my head off.  I used my dual monitor setup for ONE fricken night (last night) and now, not only am I only on ONE monitor, I’m also only on a 17″ screen.  That’s a big drop for someone who’s accustomed to working on a 27″ screen.  The biggest draw back would be switching back from Mac and downgrading to Windows for at least a few days until I start feeling better.  It’s driving me up a damn wall, but what choice do I actually have?

Bella and I took a nice COLD walk through the wind storm going on outside. Its been raining since about 5am this morning, it slowed down around 7:30 and even though everything is flooded, she still needed to go.  Poor thing was being knocked over with every gust of wind to fly down the road.  I felt bad, but she needed to do her business and that’s just the way things go.  I had her bundled up in two coats.  The one ‘sweat shirt’ type of coat she has to cover her stomach from all of the muddy grass, and then the cape looking coat to actually keep her warm.  I don’t condone dressing up animals for personal gain just because one thinks its adorable to put a tutu on their Pomeranian (you’re an asshole if you do it so just admit it).  However,  I do condone making sure that if you’re going to make it a point to put on multiple layers to walk your dog, the least you can do is make sure they’re warm too damn it! It bothers me whenever I see someone bundled up like they’re going out to climb Mt. Everest but their short haired dog is chattering in the cold and running back towards their homes because they need the warmth.  It takes two seconds to stick a cover on the dog, why is it so hard for people to do that?

In any event… time to boot this piece of shit – all the damn updates finally completed.  Hoping to be able to get this thing up and running without the ability to take a half hour nap before completing the work for tonight.

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Screw TV…

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

I’m so sick and tired of all of the damn Political commercials that I’m making it a point to have absolutely nothing to do with the idiot box next to me until Wednesday. Everyone is pushing to get their last cry out for todays elections and I’m done with it. I think, no matter which way you go, America is pretty much fucked anyway.

So I’m sitting here with headphones on and pretty much saying “Fuck it” while throwing myself into some pending projects. I’d prefer to be sleeping, but that never happens when I want it to anyway, so why would it change now?

I bought a bed this past weekend. Random right? I know! I literally went into Sleepy’s with the intent of just looking around because my back has been completely screwed up since we’ve moved back down to Delaware and the biggest reason behind it rests heavily on the bed that was gifted to Karen.  It was a used full-sized bed that was pretty much shot.  We tried to modify it by adding a good quality 4″ thick foam piece on it. It isn’t a low quality foam topper that you’d get from Walmart, she’s had this foam for god knows how long and it’s held up pretty damn well for at least 10 years.  It had minor use as an extra cushy dog bed on the floor.  But it was basically just folded in half for the density. It’s a full-sized topper and did pretty well on the bed for Sean and I but there was really no way it was going to work as a long-term solution considering it offers more support as a mattress on the floor than it does as a topper on a crappy mattress anyway.

So, Karen and I ventured out on Saturday to do some minor shopping and see what Sleepy’s had to offer. I found a bed on their website the night before and wanted to see if I could find something similar in the store considering it was an online-only deal and there was no way I was buying a bed online without laying in it first.  So we walked in, met the salesman and he pointed us in the direction of the bed that was close to the one I’d found the night before.  After two seconds of laying down I knew it was going to be “The Bed”.  I ventured around the store a bit, don’t get me wrong, but I kept coming back to this one.  It’s a Simmons Beautyrest, typically around $3500 for a Queen size.  So, I showed him the paper I printed out that morning of the one found online, which was close in price / make / model but it was on sale for about $1050, taking about 60% off the cost.  He was able to price match everything to the point that I went for the King size instead of the Queen.  (Go big or Go Home – right?).

The bed as a King was $3800 for the mattress/boxspring, he price matched down to $1450.  That’s like what, 60-70 percent off?  We added about $50 for the mattress protector that the manufacturer requires in order for the bed to be replaced (if needed). I always thought that was a Sleepy’s thing, but it’s the Manufacturers call – they just have to throw it down your throat.

The issue I have with the protector is it’s basically mandatory  BUT – if there’s a single stain on the bed, even if it doesn’t bother you, it voids the warranty   Now, even if there’s a 5-inch deep hole in the bed because the springs are fucked up – if that stain is there and you didn’t get the mattress protector – you can consider yourself shit out of luck.  How fucked up is that shit, seriously? Because it’s 100% possible to not get a 5-inch deep hole in the bed as long as that covers on – give me a break.

Anyway – by the time everything was said and done and this guy made his fifty phone calls to see if any of this was even possible – he factored in that I already had a credit card through Sleepy’s that had a full $1500 limit on it, he was able to price-down just about every aspect of my purchase.  For a whopping total of $1499.98 (two cents to spare), I got a King Sized Mattress/Box plus a free bedframe, and free NEXT DAY delivery.  I woke up at 10am on Sunday and they were knocking on the door at 10:30 to deliver the bed.  Everything happened so fast I couldn’t help but be completely overjoyed to the point that I laid down after putting the sheets on and passed the fuck out LOL.

Now, nine times out of ten they’ll give you a free bedframe for spending over $1200 anyway. BUT – he tweaked the system a bit and got me the most expensive one that has it’s own 20 year warranty. It’s some fancy frame that usually costs like $300, I got it free. Doesn’t even look like a normal one but just based on its appearance you can tell its a hell of a lot more sturdy and I’m actually comfortable with the fact that Bella occasionally likes to be sleeping under the bed, I don’t think this thing COULD actually break.

So yea, with two cents to spare Sean and I have been completely upgraded and let me tell ya – minus the fact that my back is completely fucked – this bed is comfortable as shit.  I took the “Sleepys Comfort Zone” challenge and fell inbetween the Comfort Level 3 and 4 ranges.  This means that while I prefer a medium firmness, I also like luxury plush tops. So this bed (the Avondale model) is a slightly firm (good support) mattress with a two inch thick pillow top to keep everything nice and cozy. So softness AND support? My back should be feelin pretty good in the next few days.

My issue, cause we all know Sciatica is a bitch, is the fact that there’s ANOTHER pressure change in the atmosphere so I feel just about everything.  My back started acting up just before Hurricane Sandy started destroying the east coast, but now there’s the potential for another noreaster to take out the eastern seaboard again and I’ve noticed that as the “Holy Crap – Gonna do this shit again” day approaches, my back just keeps getting worse and worse.  To make matters worse, it’s not even really going to affect Delaware other than just some rain (as experienced with Sandy), it’s going to hit NY and NJ dead on, and there are still hundreds of thousands of people without power.

Mother nature sure is on the fucking rag this Fall. I swear to God.

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Killin’ Time…

Thursday, November 1st, 2012

I’m in the process of wrapping up another client, and the overwhelming feeling of “Finally!!!” has hit me.  It’s been an ongoing account, well over 40 total hours of work to complete and I just can’t wait to be done with it.  The problem now? Doing a full back-up from the testing server and then uploading everything to theirs.  When you’re lucky enough have a client that doesn’t believe in Cpanel it takes its toll on your internet connection because everything is being handled by FTP and Sequel Pro (SQL manager).  I’m downloading over 2,000 files to my computer (as we speak) and I’m now doing a back-up of their database via Sequel so I can begin pushing it on to their side.  I just hope that things don’t get all screwy when the database hits their side because it’s the last thing I want to deal with right now.

So now that everything is taken care of there I have a few options for my ‘next step’.  I can start cooking dinner so that my stomach shuts up, I can ignore my stomach and continue to surf the internet in hopes to gain some graphics inspiration being as I have 5 sites that require a complete overhaul.  I’m absolutely sick of the one here, the one on acidgloss.net needs to go, and the one on agndesigns.net is so unprofessional I want to just shut the site down until I can come up with something better.

I think the only thing that I’ve done graphically, that isn’t totally horrible, is the two new fanlistings I opened this past week.  I’ve created a fanlisting for Halestorm and In This Moment, two of my current favorite bands strictly because I’m into chicks rocking for a change.  It’s the exact same theme with different images but it works considering the context and that’s what matters.

I guess I’ll take the “Cook Dinner” route while the 2,000 files are uploading, lord knows that always seems to take longer.

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Absolutely No Inspiration!

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

I wish I knew what was wrong with me, I have no inspiration to do ANYTHING.  I’ve got sites coming at me from all angles but can’t mentally envision how anything is going to look when its completed.  When 80% of your pending work is from-scratch Framework – it really sucks.

I figured that it had a lot to do with the fact that I haven’t really gone down to the beach.  For some reason, sitting in the sand and staring at the ocean gives me more inspiration than Adobe can handle. I was hoping that today would help because Karen’s been itching to get out of the house so we headed down to Rehoboth Ave for a little while.  We browsed through a few different little stores and made our way to the boardwalk. Sat for a little while cause she was a little windy (rightly so considering she’s only got one lung and is still healing from surgery).  We ventured down the sand dunes to the water line and saw a huge family of Dolphins jumping in and out of the water. Of course by the time I got my camera to focus on them they were back under water. I did manage to get a fin, I loaded it to my Instagram account.  I wish I could have gotten a nice shot of them jumping but they’re in and out of the water so quick, the shutter speed on my cellphone just wasn’t going to pick it up.  Either way, I at least got to witness it for myself. It may not seem like some major event to most, but for someone who’s life-long dream has been to PET a dolphin, let alone SEE a dolphin – it certainly made my day.

Even with that experience, and the jolt of energy I still have absolutely no inspiration for ANYTHING.  I know I have at least 7 sites to build/rebuild and trying to get to the “Alright, lets go” mindset is proving to be more difficult than anticipated.  I’m not sure if I’m just exhausted and can’t focus or if there’s some mental shit going on behind it.  All I know is even with extra cups of coffee today, all I wanna do is curl back into bed and fall asleep.  I’m, for some unknown reason, not getting any type of a good nights sleep and wish I could figure out why.

I caught a glimpse of Dr. Oz today, they were talking about sleeping patterns and tips/techniques you can use to help you achieve a proper nights sleep.  The problem is there’s absolutely no way for that to happen in this house.  They tell you that you’re supposed to go through 4-5 rem sleep cycles per night. I thought the list was pretty interesting.

  • No alcohol/caffeine up three hours before bedtime.
  • Keep notepad near bed to jot down the ‘daily worries’, creating a problems/solutions list so you can clear your head to help you fall asleep.
  • No Lights.  Try to keep the room as dark as possible for no visual distraction.
  • No TV. The flickering lights, and sound omitted (even when on mute) can interrupt your sleep cycle.  If you like to have the TV on while falling asleep its recommended to have the “Sleep Timer” set so it shuts off soon after you fall asleep.
  • Limit pets to their own beds (if possible). The constant up and down or general movement of a dog (large or small) is enough to keep someone from properly falling into a deep sleep.  (Lord knows Bella is constantly on and off the bed all night long).
  • Silence is Golden – The quieter the room, the better the rest. Turn off cellphone, no laptops or books and figure out a way to keep your spouse/significant other as quiet as possible. (Unless Sean and I switch our office setups – this will NEVER happen).

 

It seems like a mighty long list of overall-changes, but with a few minor changes to my own life I actually see it as being 100% possible. (As strange as that sounds). Sean and I have been talking lately and figured that since I have so much trouble falling asleep while he sits there typing away – it would be easier if we changed rooms so that he could be in the spare room and I can be in complete and total silence when I need to get some rest. At the same time, I’m realizing that I did have a much better ‘rest’ when I actually kept a journal. Not a blog, a real handwritten journal because it worked to my advantage to get all of my woes out before I went to bed. Of course I’d figure out some kind of a way to make up a digital one, for ease of use and the ability to get all of my thoughts out without my hand cramping up. I found that the more I type, the less I’m able to physically write something legible. I left my Netbook up in NY, I figured after seeing Dr. Oz today that it was a mistake on my part because it would be the perfect companion to my non-existent bedside table.

The biggest thing for both Sean and I that would help EVERYTHING would be to finally upgrade our current bed to a larger one. I’ve found a few down here that are pretty comfy, and not that expensive. I’m trying to figure out if (space wise) it would be possible to get out of our Full Size and upgrade to a Queen Size. I know that we’d be really limited on space if we decided to go all the way up to a King, and while I would absolutely adore that kind of roomy sleep, I highly doubt it would happen without removing furniture from the room all together. Obviously it means that the dog would have less of a chance of sleeping on top of one of us if she’s got her own designated area, so that solves the “No Pets” rule.

Either way we’ll have to make some kind of change, but I’m sure it’ll be possible.

Funny how I have inspiration to redecorate but absolutely none to work on the sites pending on my to-do list LOL.

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Can’t concentrate for shit…

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

Even though I’ve already put in 5 hours (on ONE damn site) today, I still feel like I haven’t accomplished ANYTHING.  I still have an urge to put in another 3 hours but it’s after 2:30am and all I want to do is go to sleep.  I’m not sure why I’m having trouble concentrating, I just keep getting this feeling like I need to be doing something else.  Typically “pay the bills” is on the back of my mind.  Today, however, it’s been “I feel the urge to Google random shit, just ’cause”.  It’s not even anything good.  Hell, someone posted on Facebook about how they have a random itch (down there) and can’t figure out what it is.  I, for some reason, spent a half hour researching it while over a PM with her.   What the hell is wrong with me?  Her oonie should be none of my concern, but she posted it on FB and it was a distraction for me so I veered off course.

I know that up to this point I’ve accomplished everything I’ve set out to do today.  I got another 10 or so pages completed on the eCommerce backend, the kitchen’s clean and the chicken was taken out of the freezer to thaw for tomorrows dinner.  I watched my Monday night shows, and spent some quality time with a very fidgety dog who’s terrified from the one crack of thunder we experienced with the random storm that passed through Delmarva this evening.  There’s really nothing left to do, my To-Do list is empty.  So why do I feel like I haven’t completed a damn thing?

On the home front things are OK. Karen’s having some post-surgery issues that we’re working on fixing.  It’s my hope that we can fix everything with over-the-counter based products before it turns into a trip to a specialist, but we’ll see where things stand on Wednesday morning and go from there.  I don’t want to venture over to Maryland but for the sake of her health we’ve got no choice. I don’t trust a single damn doctor in Delaware and if I need to cross state lines to get in with someone who actually knows what they’re doing… so be it.

I decided, this past weekend, that Comcast/Xfinity is the absolute worst company in the world (and I’m an Optimum/Cablevision hater too).  With the move to my new “office”, Sean went out and picked up a cable box from Comcast that was supposed to have been activated within an hour of getting off the phone with tech support.  Of course after four phone calls and constantly being told “wait another hour” (over the course of three days), I decided to take out my frustration on Twitter with a #comcastsucks hashtag, PLUS tagging with @comcast to prove my point.  I get a message from a Comcast employee offering to assist me and within 10 minutes of providing him with my account # and the serial number on the box in question – everything was fixed.  I still don’t understand how it was possible for him to fix something in a matter of minutes via Twitter when FOUR phone calls did absolutely nothing!  There was only ONE phone call that showed any level of being “productive” and that’s when they somehow conned Sean into signing up for a triple-play when we have absolutely no need or use for a home phone. We’re not getting any kind of an upgrade with channels, we’re only getting Encore for six months free.  Who the hell watches Encore? At least offer Showtime so I can watch Shameless in January for crying out loud!  It did wind up costing us like $25 less than we were set to pay, but the point is we didn’t call to alter the plan – we called for the damn box to work so I’m not sitting here in silence when I’m not in the mood for music.

I have found that my concentration level goes up with a TV in the background, mainly because I find TV to be so boring that I’d rather be in Dreamweaver.  That’s not even working for me though.  I’m extremely sound sensitive and wanting to just fly far far away and get away from it all.  I’m halfway tempted to head down to the beach since the storm is now off shore and I’m sure the surf on the Atlantic’s gone up quite a bit.

In any event… gonna try to knock out another hour and go to bed.  My major goals for tomorrow are to get some clothes folded, put in at least 6 hours and hopefully remember to watch “Extreme Cheapskates” on TLC because the show just looks that interesting.  Not to mention the fact that after NCIS (the original, fuck LA) there’s really nothing on TV accept the news.j

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Malware and Masses BE GONE!!

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

I received a couple of emails informing me of Malware on the site, unfortunately with everything going on I wasn’t able to actually login to work on things more than just upgrading WordPress via my phone. Turns out the Malware was no where near as bad as some of the sites that I’ve been working on. One of the Malware hits was so severe I had to completely recode the website because every template file was infected and beyond repair. “Why not just upload your copy of the theme?” simple – I’m in Delaware – not New York and don’t have access to the original files. Redoing the entire site from scratch was the only way to go.

In reference to the attack here, however, the only effected file was index.php which is two lines of code pulling the blog header file from the WordPress directory. Once I went through all of the template files to confirm there was nothing else to worry about and did a fresh reinstall of the current WP version I now no longer need to worry about anything. I submitted my site through the Webmaster tools with Google so it stopped kicking the error back to me and hopefully there won’t be any problems moving forward. I don’t understand how it happens, but at this point all I can say is “Whatever, it’s gone now” and move along.

So, as I noted, we’re in Delaware. Typically it would be our usual work during the day and head down to the beach at night, being as that’s what we always did when we actually lived down here during the summer months. However, it’s been much different this time around and now instead of “Go to Beach” it’s “Catch the hell up!”.

Unfortunately Sean’s mom has been having medical issues and instead of going to any of the doctors down here (since they suck balls) we made the trip up to Baltimore to spend some time floating around the numerous departments in Johns Hopkins main hospital so she could actually get proper care. After having some chest pain, shortness of breath and elevated heart rate the choice to walk right into the E.R. was pretty much manditory. From there, she was admitted and wound up in the hospital for about 5 days (in total). We went up on a Friday, wound up waiting until very early Saturday morning before she actually made it into a room. I attempted to get some sleep in the car but it was during the middle of the heat wave and we were in a parking garage so that just didn’t happen. Sean wound up crashing in his mothers room a little after 7am and got a few hours of sleep while everyone was trying to make heads or tails of things.

After he woke up we decided to head back to Rehoboth because on top of needing to take a shower and get some proper sleep – we also needed to do some light laundry and get everything together for Sean’s mom due to the fact that none of us had any idea that she would be admitted to the hospital and had absolutely no clothes or any kind of ‘overnight’ supplies with us. We wound up driving two cars back up, which was not fun AT ALL being as we got stuck in the middle of a monsoon on Sunday night. It wound up turning the 2 1/2 hour trip into a 3 hour trip just because we had no choice but to pull over. If I can’t even see the tail lights of the car in front of me there’s absolutely no way in hell I’m going to keep moving. My choice for stopping was warrented, and confirmed when we got back on the road after things had let up and saw a pretty major accident on the south bound lane that was more than likely due to the lack of visability.

So Sean and I stayed at the Tremonth Plaza in Baltimore for a few nights. The hotel in its own right was really nice, the people were friendly and having the car locked away in a parking garage made me feel very safe knowing that nothing was going to randomly disappear. They offer a shuttle service to the Hopkins hospitals so that you don’t have to worry about navigating your way around Baltimore AND paying additional money for parking.  They offered parking for free at their facility, so that cut down on expenses quite a bit.  It also helped that they offer their rooms at a discounted rate if you’re family of someone who’s currently admitted.

After two nights in the hotel, and countless hours floating around the hospital she was released and we’ve been back down here ever since. Unfortunately it’s taken me forever to catch up on everything when considering I was on some pretty serious deadlines that I had to post-pone for clients. It also didn’t help that my backs been bothering me from all of the excessive walking with horrible unsupportive sneakers.

We’ve been down here for a few weeks, it’s not like we just showed up and instantly went up to the hospital. I just know that his Mom wasn’t feeling too hot the night we came down and things have just kind of spiraled from there. Thankfully everything appears under control now, there are still more appointments to get through but I think after this coming Monday things should be OK. We’re heading back up to Baltimore so she can have the mass on her lung looked into. There are also issues with her heart that need to be looked after, but I highly doubt we’ll be able to get into any offices for that while we’re up there.

Needless to say, this one-two week trip has turned into a longer than anticipated stay. It’s just my hope that everything begins to work itself out, and I’m able to get through the weeks worth of work that I’m backed up with. I’m seriously considering hiring other hands but haven’t seen anyone floating around that can really be trusted with “hush-hush” type of clients. Everyone wants to put something into their portfolio and don’t seem to understand what NDA actually means. It drives me crazy, but that’s the caliber of people floating around these days I guess. I think I’m better off just pushing through exhaustion and trying to get as much done as humanly possible over the course of the next few days.

I just know that I some how need to force myself to sleep by 10pm on Sunday so I can be ready to leave the house by 6:30 on Monday morning. Not looking forward to dealing with Baltimore traffic on a Monday so we’ll see how well this goes. :crosses fingers:

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Well…this sucks.

Friday, May 25th, 2012

The past week has been absolute torture for me, and probably everyone around me.  I’m not sure what I did, or even how I did it but I’ve managed to completely throw my back out to a level that I’ve never experienced before.  I’ve always dealt with Sciatica so it’s no surprise to me if I feel a random twinge here and there, but the flare ups have always been the issue that I can’t seem to avoid, no matter what I do.  This past weekend was probably the worst of the worst, even getting up to get myself a glass of water is a half hour event due to the fact that walking is more painful than breathing.

I noticed the twinge on Saturday and figured “Ehh, Rain’s coming – I’m used to this happening”, but waking up on Sunday I was instantly hit with the feeling of “Oh shit, can I even get out of bed?” After a half hour of working on it I was finally able to, but since then things have just been beyond painful.   Standing up straight isn’t possible, I’ve been leaning to cater to the pain, which has sent my entire back and legs out of wack.  As I said, breathing isn’t easy either – especially if I’m laying down cause the pressure on my back is excruciating.  Sleeping isn’t working out too well either as I’m a stomach sleeper and turning onto my stomach is more effort than its worth so I’ve been sleeping flat on my back for the bulk of the week and I feel that’s making things worse.  It’s just too painful to roll over in order to attempt to get comfortable.

Sitting at my desk hasn’t been much of an option either, I’ve got a small laptop table for the bedroom that I’ve been using, and laying in bed while working is the only way to go at this point.  I’m about a week behind on EVERYTHING because I wasn’t even able to bring WORK into the equation until last night.  There are clients waiting (very patiently) for me to get things done, and I feel like a complete asshole for not being able to sit down long enough to do it before I break down in tears cause I moved my foot and sent a shooting pain straight up to my shoulder blades.

Last night I was able to knock out about 8 hours of work, but that wasn’t even a ‘catch up’, kind of thing.  There’s much, much more to be completed today and I’m hoping I’ll be able to sit down and knock everything out.  I would say “Thank goodness for Memorial Day weekend” but all of my clients are located overseas at the moment so that doesn’t even help me out in the long run.  It would be nice to sit down for three straight days to catch up on everything and hopefully I’ll be able to do it.

I feel bad that I can’t just get up and go, especially since the annual fireworks are going on in Sea Cliff this weekend.  I really would like to go, but the only way to get anywhere near there would be to park at Muir’s house and walk down and that’s a downhill climb that I can’t even think of accomplishing. I’m lucky I’ve made  it to the sidewalk of my own house to bring the dog out to pee.  To make things worse, I’ve been (somehow) getting to my Aunt’s every day for the past week to throw some food down for her cat as she’s in Myrtle Beach until Saturday and then going out east to spend a long Memorial Day weekend with her friends.  So regardless I’m stuck on the North Shore for this holiday weekend (again) anyway.

Sean was really helping me get around for the past week, like a trooper, but over the last few days we’ve noticed his foot has swelled up to at least 3 times the size and he’s having trouble moving around.  He thinks he stepped wrong, I personally don’t know where or when, but he’s hobbling along much slower than I am.  The two of us look like we should be walking into a hospital when you actually see us outside.  It’s to the point of being comical.

So yea, today’s agenda includes knocking out as much as humanly possible – which will be the theme for the entire weekend.  The only addition that I would like to hold off (but really can’t) is wiping this laptop completely and reinstalling Windows.  I don’t know what the hell happened to this thing but it’s slower than shit and random errors keep popping up.  Figure I’ve had it for about two years, and we all know Laptops under $1,200 can be considered disposable  – especially after two years of Photoshop constantly running.  It wouldn’t be such a big deal considering I have that massive 27-inch iMac on my desk but SITTING at my desk hasn’t been a possibility in almost a week so of course I can’t really count on that just yet.  So I’ll complete what I can, from bed, and then hopefully I can spend some of Monday getting this thing back to where it’s supposed to be – proper working condition.

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I need a designer…

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need someone to build PSD’s for me on a some-what regular basis.  Trying to balance 8 different accounts just isn’t working out too well for me right now, especially when you factor in there are a few waiting in the wings that have absolutely no idea what they want and I need to take all of my photoshop efforts and push them to constant emails back and forth about what is liked, unliked, and ‘the cool thing cause I don’t know what I want’.  I’m about 10 minutes from ripping my hair out.

I hired Muir as an assistant to help out with the tedious bullcrap, but she doesn’t really know Photoshop other than for quick photo manipulation, building an entire PSD and labeling everything just isn’t an option right now.  Thankfully for her, she’s picked up another job with someone local in town so she’s able to get more of a paycheck being as the tedious gruntwork on my part (right now) is Photoshop based.

I’m thinking of going through my friends list on FB and Twitter and putting out an S.O.S. to anyone who knows what they’re doing.  I’m not looking for someone to code everything, but having an ounce of a code background (especially in WordPress, Joomla and Mangento) is a big help.

Any takers?  Email me.  krissy (at) agndesigns.net

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Absolutely Fricken Fantastic!

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

I woke up in a mood today.  There’s a few things going on around the house that are slowly beginning to take their toll on me and I had a moment this morning where I completely blew up and just couldn’t handle things anymore.  I called Muir and basically said “Get your ass over here, NOW!”.   She showed up, I got to talk things out and we then got everything setup outside so we could work outside for the remainder of the day.  We hung a few tarps up around the gazebo to block out the excess sunlight so the glare on the laptops was almost non existent, it definitely did the charm – that’s for sure.

She got a lot done out of her task manager, the big one was getting Dreamweaver setup on her MacBook.  After 40 minutes of transferring it to her off our in-house server and then installing it – we found that it wasn’t acting right.  Sean did a quick assessment of it and came to the conclusion that her hard drive is corrupt.  We thought of the numerous different ways that this could happen and settled on the diaper bag.  There’s a magnet on the front pocket and we think that the laptop may have gotten to close to it and now we need to work on fixing everything.  From there we also were able to figure out why her cellphone is so screwed up – magnet strikes again.

Needless to say, minus the fact that Sean, Muir and I enjoyed our time working today – when you include my morning bull shit and her laptop – it’s just absolutely fricken fantastic.

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Whew! I did it!

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

I was able to get the bulk of my list accomplished yesterday.  There’s still a lot to be done, but at least the heavy hitting was completed.  I still have a slew of emails to get to, and that can take upwards of an hour depending on how many require an immediate response.  I almost feel like I’m back at the appraisal office.  The only thing I really took away from that job was to follow up on things as soon as they come in.  It’s a little annoying when I have to actually wait on things as far as the other end is concerned, but I’ll continue to crank things out as quickly as possible to keep it moving.

Muir just left, if you notice she posted earlier today about Rodan + Fields.  She’ll be posting more often here, as well as on acidgloss.net about her life and the products.  I’ve mentioned before but we brought her on as a Lead Consultant for AGn Designs as well.  Things have been so hectic lately, plus she has a strong background with project management considering everything she’s got going on, so of course we thought she’d be a perfect fit for the AGn team.

In any event, time to change into some more comfy clothing and sit down for the rest of the night with my iPod and a buttload of work.

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Woah there!

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

It’s been a pretty eventful couple of weeks, some good events, some bad events.

We finally got back to NY very early on Wednesday (26th), we were so busy with everything in DE that we just didn’t have the chance to come home until then. We left at like Midnight on Tuesday, and got home about 5am.  We stopped along the way because 4 1/2 hours in a car is just annoying without some kind of a release, which is probably why I’m not thrilled about the idea of going across country in an RV.

We came home and found that there was little to no work and began to worry considering we need to come up with anywhere from $35k to $50k in order to even truly consider moving forward with purchasing a home in DE.  There’s too much debt to pay off before we throw a mortgage and utilities on top of it. So we figure, just continue to work our asses off and go from there. We were at a complete and total stand still for about 4 days and now things are slowly beginning to trickle in. Today, I was finally able to write things down and I have 8 projects to work on over the course of the next 7 days, which means its great that I was finally able to get AGnDesigns.net up and running 100%. Hopefully this will help us to get closer to our goal. At this point, whether the house is still there or not, is irrelevant. Of course to me this would be a sign that it was meant to be, but if not – I’m OK with that because I know that when it does come to the right time, we’ll be 100% financially stable to do it.

After a few days of being home my neighbor, Jake, finally poked his head out. I was told that the reason I hadn’t seen him was due to the fact that he was in the hospital for 9 days and only came home on Monday night (before we got home) so he was resting until he could gain enough strength to come out for a bit to say hello. From that day forward I made it a point to check on him on a daily basis. I spoke to him on Sunday evening to make sure he was doing OK and if the house was warm enough for him (the thermostat for all of the apartments is in our apartment because its baseboard heat that just does the whole top floor. I don’t know why it was setup that way but things happen).  He noted he was fine, just a little sleepy and said he was going back to lay down, did his usual smile and told me that he’d be outside tomorrow since it was supposed to be nice out and he wanted to tell me everything that was going on. At this point I still did not know why he was in the hospital, but figured I’d leave him alone until he was ready to tell me.

So Monday comes around and there’s no sign of him.  His apartment was closed up and I personally didn’t sleep the night before because my stomach was telling me that something is terribly wrong.  About 7am or so I did hear some noise in his apartment, figuring he’d dropped the remote or something I didn’t think anything by it. I went about my day as normal, wondering when he was actually going to come out of the apartment to relax for a bit but that opportunity came and went.  At about 8pm I went outside for a cigarette and saw that his light was not on and instantly started to panic, I had this overwhelming feeling in my stomach telling me that I needed to get into that apartment to check on him. I rang the bell and knocked on the windows – no response. I waited a minute in the chance he was sleeping and tried again. With no answer I ran back into my apartment to get the keys (we have the master set as we’re acting landlords when the store is closed downstairs) and then proceeded to his door with the assistance of my father cause I’m never comfortable with going into someone elses apartment alone.  So we banged on the windows a few more times, rang the bell again and all I heard was a faint groan coming out of the apartment.  We opened the door to find Jake on the floor.  He was breathing, but he was blue.

So we called the police, the ambulance showed up and brought him out of the apartment to the hospital. I noticed while he was on the stretcher that his arm was sitting in a weird direction and instantly knew that he’d had either a stroke or a heart attack.  I went digging around his apartment in search of his phone only to find it in the garbage can with two numbers recently dialed – both of which were to his son.  I don’t know if he’d tried to call for help, or they were just the last numbers he spoke on, but either way I knew that I needed to call his son right away.

The ambulance was here for a while, they were working on him in the back. The second they put the tube down his throat I saw that it just became more severe than originally thought and scrambled to get in touch with his son. I called the house twice, the cellphone like four times. I didn’t get a response until a half hour later.  I went to the hospital to try to get in to see him but they wouldn’t allow me in since they were working on him. His son showed up an hour or so later and we all just sat there feeling helpless until the doctors could come out to see us.  They said that there’s a lot of fluid on his lungs, and around his heart. I learned from his son that the reason he was previously hospitalized was due to congestive heart failure, my stomach knotted up knowing full well that based on all of this I’d probably never see him again.

Over the course of the past week we’ve learned that he was borderline pneumonia when he was released from the previous hospital, and all they did was provide him with a water pill and antibiotic. I then learned about all of the excess fluids that they’re draining from him as his lung was almost collapsed.  After numerous catscans and blood workups they noted that he suffered a major stroke to his left side, they’re unsure if when he comes to if he’ll be paralyzed on that side of his body or not.  We noted to the son, and the doctors, that before the EMT’s showed up he was in and out of consciousness and he was trying to pick himself up off of the floor, so the only reasoning behind him being paralyzed is the reaction to him being a medically induced coma for as long as he has.

As it stands, right now, his condition is stable. They still have him under being as he needs the breathing tube, they’ve also put him on a feeding tube on top of all of the other tubes to keep him somewhat healthy.  Either way I don’t personally think I’m ever going to see him again. I’m not permitted in the ICU to look in on him, and being as I’m not the official form of “Family”, they won’t permit me anywhere near his room.

My father, being a hospital employee and knowing quite a few people, did take one of the nurses aside and just asked if they could give him any information.  The only response is that he’s in really bad shape and will be in the hospital for a very long time.  I haven’t heard from his son in a while either, but I’m taking it as no news is good news for this moment in time.

It’s breaking my heart, honestly. Not only is he a dear friend of mine, I’ve considered him family for quite some time as well.  He’s always included in holidays, I always make sure that he has a plate whenever I cook something big (which, as an Italian, is frequently).  He’s always outside for BBQ’s with us, I’ve always gotten him something for his birthday or Christmas because to me that’s what you do with Family.  It’s upsetting that I can’t get into the hospital just to see him, and equally upsetting to know that I could have checked in on him sooner and maybe the result wouldn’t be so bad.

The hospital ran some tests on him and informed his son that he wasn’t on the ground for very long when he suffered the stroke. If we didn’t check on him until the next morning he unfortunately wouldn’t be with us anymore, but we’re to find some peace with the fact that he wasn’t by himself for very long.  This makes me feel a little better only because I can’t help but think to myself that I could have found him sooner.

We’ve had quite a few people in the apartments up here over the years. I can honestly say that only two have really touched my life. This one is hitting me the hardest though, it’s not like he’s moving out just because he found some place better.  He’s leaving because of medical reasons.  It’s just hard to look at his truck every day and his ashtray on the table next to his seat and not want to break down and cry.  When it comes down to it though, as I haven’t heard from his son I’m treating it as no news is good news (for the time being).  I’m going to continue pushing until I can get some kind of answers.  It’s heart breaking, and very, very hard to deal with but hopefully over the course of time things will work themselves out. I hate the thought of him laying in the bed in a coma, but I guess that’s just what happens to numerous people.  He’s only 66-67 years old, he’s got a lot of time left. I just hope he gets to see it.

Minus all of that, there’s really not a lot going on other than having to keep up with work.  I’ve taken a bit of a break just to clear my head as I haven’t yet been able to type everything out. I’m just hoping to get some kind of news soon. This whole situation is distracting me from productivity and the only way I know how to clear my head is to go full force into things – but I literally do not have the heart to do it right now.

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Getting there…

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

I’m doing everything I can to work myself back into a proper routine.  In the past few days I’ve finished up a couple of sites, and based on my inbox there’s at least 4 projects that need to be completed no later than Monday morning.  With that I’m setting myself into “Get it done and get it done NOW” mode.  It’s a little difficult being that I’ll admit I’m a little rusty, but it’s also helping my ego to know that a man whom Sean’s been working for, for about a year now, loves my work and wants to take me under his wing as well.  This instantly has me stepping up my game, there’s absolutely nothing that I don’t want to learn to secure my spot on that team.  Right now everything has been heavy graphics work, AND a lot of WordPress jobs.  I’ve already knocked out about 4 of them, two more to go at this moment in time.

On top of all of this I’ve been drawing up a few template ideas to merge acidgloss.net and krissys-portfolio.net, there really is no need to have to separate domains, however – I do still wish to utilize acidgloss.net as a business/technology blog.  I’ve been going back and forth with a few people in reference to product reviews, so this will help to bring more content to the site itself.  I’m sure you’ve also noticed a few sponsored entries popping up here and there on this site as well, it will be a regular occurrence, however I will be back to properly blogging on a regular basis so you shouldn’t see any major flow of articles that are 100% sponsored… I actually take the time to work them into a real life experience.

My only NEED right now is a proper chair.  I’m sitting on a wooden chair with an absolutely horrible cushion, no matter how many cushions there are – there’s a major lack of support which means that half way through the day my back is absolutely killing me.  For the time being I’m going to deal with it, it’s my goal within the next couple of weeks to pick up a proper desk chair, I’m not looking to spend any more than $100, I don’t need bells and whistles, I just need something with some padding.  I’ve already added cushions, even tried pillows – nothing works. I need a decent amount of foam for comfort, there’s no way of getting around it.

I’m going to have to head over to Staples to pick something up, there are also a few ‘office’ supplies that I could use but thanks to my wiping out my desk at my previous job, I do have enough to get by for the time being.  OH! That reminds me of other crap that I need to take care of.  I’ll be utilizing my post-its more than I thought. LOL

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Woah!

Friday, June 10th, 2011

It’s been one hell of a week.

When I was finally home on Thursday after a very long weekend at my aunts house, Bella was picked up by her groomer and things have been – interesting – ever since. I’m not sure if something happened while she was with the groomer but to be blunt, the dogs been crapping liquid for the past 7 days.  We’ve finally gotten it to solidify but its taken a lot of different food ideas and quite a few days of bringing her out every 3 hours, and let me tell you that waking up at 5am when I no longer have to was kicking my ass.  Last night after giving her some pepto (who knew?) her and I were both able to sleep the entire night for the first time in almost a full week.  I think my body was confused because I wound up crashing until about 1pm this afternoon.  While she’s been very clingy today being as she’s still not 100% (and the storm to roll through scared her a bit), there’s still a dramatic change in her.  She’s eating more, drinking more, playing with her toys, and not scratching on peoples legs every 20 minutes to go outside.  It’s been peaceful.

On Monday I officially started back up with AGn Designs, spending a lot of time on numerous freelancing sites.  By Tuesday morning things were beginning to worry me being as I hadn’t heard from anyone.  Tuesday night was a whole different story, I wound up picking up three projects which is bringing in a decent chunk of change for what’s going to be three days of work in total.  I’m almost finished with one site, it’s the matter of loading it onto her server and tweaking the wordpress widgets so that everything flows right, and the others I’m waiting on a few responses from.  Either way things have been picking up, and so far everything is going beautifully.

I had to spend some time tweaking my template on krissys-portfolio.net because the Lightbox script I was previously using was very obviously out dated so I needed to upgrade to Lightbox 2.  That solved the issues I was having with the images, the bigger issue right now is how horrible the template looks.  However, that’s going to be a long drawn out process to change. I want to some-how merge krissys-portfolio and acidgloss.net.  I was thinking of coming up with an over-the-top template that would work on both sites to just flow everything together. I have the idea in my head, and some doodles in photoshop but nothing has really stuck yet.  I don’t just want AGn to be a blog, I want to bump it up but I don’t want to lose k-p.net… either way I’m sure I’ll have something figured out within the next couple of days being as the creative juices are flowing.

I have to say, and don’t want to admit it, but Sean really kicked my ass this week with a revision to one of the sites he’s been working on.  Whatever script the idiots from India came up with was NOT working when trying to recode the site for the WordPress template.  There were like 7 DOCTYPE tags, numerous HTML and BODY tags being called for absolutely no reason.  When running it through the validation check it was coming up with over 600 errors.  I just about shit my pants when I saw that!  I’ve never seen so many errors on such little output in my life, and that’s including a time years ago when I actually started to care about validation and recoded everything I had!

In any event, I have a few more emails to respond to and a bed that’s calling my name.  I missed staying up until 1am, but it’s kicking my ass – that’s for damn sure!

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Not sure what’s going on…

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

This past week was a bit better than last weekend but not really by much.  September is just turning into one of those months that could probably be wiped off of the planet as far as I care.

WORK
Things have been going OK.  I’m learning a lot of new things and it’s a lot to take in but thankfully I pick up on things pretty quickly so I’ve been OK so far.  For the past week or so I’ve been in the training process by an uber-cool chick who’s had a lot of patience with me, even though I took over her desk.  Supposedly when I go in tomorrow I’ll have my own desk and computer but who knows if that’s going to happen because the one making it happen keeps changing his mind on things.  Either way I hope to be less of an inconvenience to her soon.

I know for sure that I’m going to keep this job, while I would prefer to be doing something in the design field, I guess I can handle just having a decent desk job for the time being.  The people are all nice, it’s relatively easy work (once you get the hang of it) and the downside for me is the amount of time I’m probably going to have to spend on the phone but eventually I’ll suck it up and get over it.

DOWN WITH THE SICKNESS
Everyone is sick.  A kid at work had walking Pneumonia, I had my abscess kicking my ass for a few days, colds and germs are flying around all of the schools right now thanks to whoever was incapable of covering their mouth when they coughed.  Lu got pretty sick this past week as well, but her’s was more chest pain than anything.  Sean’s allergies have been kicking his ass pretty bad this week as well.  I really hope that there’s enough medicine in the world to cover everyone else that’s sick.  Thankfully I was able to steer clear of the Pneumonia because of the antibiotics that I’ve been on.  The downside is the abscess is coming back on the other side AGAIN.  I don’t want to live on antibiotics the rest of my life so I really need to get my teeth straightened out.

I want to hold off until I have Insurance this way I’m not shelling out $2k per tooth considering the three root canals that I need as of right now.  I kind of wish everything would just fall out and then I can worry about implants or something.  At least they wouldn’t hurt as bad as the real ones.  I’ll take a screw over an infected nerve any day!

STORMS n SUCH
Alicia was in New Orleans when the hurricane hit this past week, and upon evacuation she made her way up to Mobile, AL which was currently under tornado warnings.  Thankfully after a lot of shit she was able to make it home so she’s at least safe and sound right now.

The storm that was supposed to be “oh so bad” for the Island was a total dud last night.  It moved itself further north than originally anticipated so we were hit with some minor wind but I’ll admit it was a fairly decent amount of rain.  I was soaked to the bone TWICE before I picked up an umbrella and all of the wind managed to knock that out of play within a half hour of it’s purchase.  Why can’t they make them stronger the way they used to?  Dad had a huge umbrella for the last 20 years or so that finally gave out on him, it was solid wood and never once had an issue.  I know you can get them for $3-$4 but Jesus…make them last  a little longer!?

AGN STUFFS
I’m a week behind on email, I know it’s pissing a lot of people off but the lack of time does play a major role in things right now.  I’m trying to figure out how to schedule everything so I have a few extra hours during the day so I can maintain my own business but I’m not sure how that’s going to happen if I can’t change my hours at work.  I’m doing 10-7,  I’d like to do 8-5 or even 9-6 this way I’m home at a semi-reasonable hour where I can sit down and have dinner and then work until I have to go to sleep to do it all over again for tomorrow.  I don’t personally see that happening right now though.  Maybe in the future I’ll be able to do it, but not too sure as of right now and trust me when I say that’s getting on my nerve.

I have three accounts to complete – to my knowledge – and the only REAL time I have for them is on the Weekends. I look at a computer all day long but I’m not permitted to check personal email at work. I can understand their reasons for it, most of the sites are actually blocked anyway, as far as I know.

CELL PHONES n SUCH
Within the next couple of weeks Sean and I are going to get the cell phone stuff situated.  We’re going with Verizon because they have better coverage on the Island (mainly due to the slew of cell towers, on the north shore at least.  I know for sure that I’m picking up the Voyager and slapping a data plan onto it for unlimited browsing and what not.  My second choice is the pink BlackBerry Curve (8330).  Either one would give me all of the options I need.  Sean is looking to pick up a flip phone but he does want the ability to get online so I have no idea of what choice he’s going to make.  Either way we should have all of that taken care of soon.

In any event, time to check my email. – oy!

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