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sometimes it’s an honor just being nominated.

August 14th, 2010, posted in girl valet, nerdery, school, screw you cosmic muffin, semantics, work

It was an honor just being nominated.
I turned down Not!GradSchool today. It sucked, but when I explained what I was going to do instead, they were actually pretty cool about the fact that yes, I will need to take a couple of prep courses & to sit & determine the best way to do that there, which is nice. So next week when they have the fall schedule done, I’ll go in & figure out which course I should take this quarter, and go from there. :shrug: Such is life – or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Moments of technological commentary:

Talking to someone about being a valet & saying, “I pretty much get paid to play automotive Tetris – OH MY GOD, I never even thought of it, but there’s probably an iPhone app for Tetris!” :fist of triumph!:
Oh yeah. My valet time just got way awesomer.
Every time I get a set of keys that doesn’t have a clicker, I’m always like, “Daaaaamit, now I have to actually look for the car…” oh technology, how did anyone valet before you?

Yeah, I could play here.
Went over to Blankspaces on Tuesday & tried it out for a couple hours. It’s not bad – just basically office space. It’s more the gesture of going somewhere specifically to work instead of trying to do things at home & thinking, “I could work after my nap” or “Polgara did leave the Supernatural s. 1 DVDs… I could put them in & work at the same time!” (Is work done? yes. Is a productive amount of work done? eh… not so much, no.)

I have a free week to try out that begins on Saturday, so I’m going to remand my puppy to the care of her playmates next door (and, you know their human that pays the bills) and basically spend the time that I would normally be valeting for Dolls or Prem!Co working on trying to churn out the backlog of work that I have.

This is what Chuck feels like, isn’t it? Or, it would be if Chuck were a real guy.
So I haven’t gotten a check from EDD since oh… May. They keep effin’ up my claims. The good news is that by the time I get caught up to now on the forms, I won’t need to continue filing for checks, but having the last, oh, two months’ worth of checks would greatly help me do things like… get caught up on my rent. With that in mind, I went down to the office on Crenshaw to achieve an actual conversation with an actual California state employee. (I know, Cali residents! It’s rare & exciting – I feel like I should have a button that says, “I’m an EDD Slayer, ask me how!”)

In the course of talking to the gentleman on the phone (you don’t see people in actual person, you just get to use the direct line to call them) and when he found out that I’m a web designer, he began talking to me about how he had someone making a website for him, but before they’d do anything, he had to get “the PayPals” in order to send the deposit, and while he didn’t mind, he was a 58 year old guy who’d been through two wars & just didn’t understand this whole technology thing.

This resulted in me explaining PayPal & how it works to him, and why it is that they need to make small deposits into his bank account in order to verify that it actually exists. In return, he did… something to make sure my first check was expedited to me, set it up so I’ll get all the back claims at once instead of having to wait a week inbetween, & strongly urged me to go to the CA state jobs website since according to him, “We could use some nice smart girls like you working for us around here.” I dutifully allowed him to instruct me as to where the site is, & took down the url for a friend who could probably use it, but let’s be honest — I just wouldn’t work well as a full time state employee.

In the meantime, the first check showed up yesterday, along with the back claim forms — I kinda can’t wait to get that money in if for no other reason than that my landlord’s gonna be ridiculously happy when I’m suddenly caught up on rent!
(I’ve been in my building for nine years as of January ’11. Since most of us work in creative industries, a couple of us are actually a month or so behind, but in this economy it’s actually easier for my landlord to just let us skate along until we get caught up & keep the solid residents than to try to find new renters. and considering that West Hollywood has rent control, thank god for that.)

—————–

Overall, I feel like I’m making progress, but in the way that you’ve just organized a single bookshelf and still have the entirety of the Louvre to catalog before you’re allowed to take a break to pee. More to do, more to do, and I would just love it if I could put everything on pause & take a nap.

Music: The Scientist – Coldplay The

Pavlovian politeness, new toys, & hey – you just can’t fix stupid

July 29th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', girl valet, money, nerdery, rowing, screw you cosmic muffin, work

You know what, you’re right, this is totally my bad – I forgot to factor in that you’re an asshole.

Chat with Sylvie, part deux.
So in the other part of the conversation that I had with Sylvie, I was reminded that no matter how smart you are, or how much you’ve experienced, sometimes you really just need another person to tell you what you already know before you’re ready to accept it as fact and move on. One of the most notable incidences of that in my life was when my b-i-l looked at me & said, “That’s because your mom is a drunk, honey.” We all knew it, we’d all grown up with it, but that was the first time anyone I knew had had the chutzpah to actually say it out loud. And once it was said, & it was out there, I suddenly had the ability to accept it, factor that in as a reality, & move on with my life.

Same thing happened when talking to Sylvie last week. I was scheduled for an appointment on that Friday morning for something & I was seeking her advice on how to approach it. Her response?

“You need to stop worrying about these people – they don’t give a shit about you. If they did, none of this would have happened in the first place. Don’t worry about being nice, don’t consider them in your plans. They don’t give a shit about you, and they never will because they’re children. Be like a man with the town whore – use them for what they’re good for, then leave.”
I know, right? I laughed at that one too, prudish American that I am.

And intellectually, I already knew everything that she was saying – I’d been saying it to myself for a long time now. But hearing someone else confirm what I thought was just me being a b*tch in the comfort of my own head… there was something about hearing it from an outside party that allowed me to emotionally accept it, if that makes sense. And now, I’ve found that I can look at people & think, “You don’t actually give a damn about me. No matter what you say, or how you act, or how hurt you pretend to be by all this, the truth of the matter is that if you cared, none of this would have happened.”

It’s kind of odd, really – after months of being tossed around like buoy in a storm, I walked in & there was just… nothing. I just classified them in the same cubby as my parents, & it made things way better – you’re here, I have to deal with you, but at any second if given half a chance & left the slightest bit unsupervised, you’ll f*ck me over in a heartbeat & act like it’s my fault.

I just need to remember what I was told by the lawyer I met with that Friday morning: “Before we discuss anything, I need to just say – I can do alot, but I can’t fix stupid.”

Can’t Fix Stupid. Check. Lesson learned, let’s move on.

Congratuations! You’re in charge!
On Saturday, I worked a Doll gig by Griffith Park. Saturday shifts are hard, because I get out of SpiffV!Hotel at 2am, then I crash in the boathouse parking lot until 7am, row, and then have a couple hours until I have a day shift, after which I go back to SpiffV!Hotel in Santa Monica for my Sat night shift of 7/8 – 2am, after which I usually head down to the boathouse at Long Beach so that I can do a coached practice, get there about 3 am (4 if I went home to get Zoey) & crash in my car in that parking lot until about 6:15am.

So working during the on Saturday? kind of a stretch.

Anyway, so I show up at this gig – I’m already 15 min late because of traffic, and LB says to me, “Oh, great, you’re here – what do you want to do?”

Being the Foursquare Mayor of States the Obviousville, I replied, “I thought I’d be parking cars. why?”

“Well, G called & said we’re training you to supervise today, so until SD gets here, you’re in charge.”

ooooooooooooookay. Me in charge.

This should be good.

Now, it’s not like I can’t Team Captain [TC] – I’ve been working on & off as a Doll for six years, I’ve stepped in when needed, I’ve been a trainer, and in a pinch I’ve TC-ed a couple small parties before. It just takes a certain amount of energy to do so that I hadn’t been prepared to expend that day, so when I found that out, I was like, “effin’ ay – really? I don’t wanna!” But, ya know, G & I had talked a bit back about me becoming a TC, so it’s not like this was happening against my will, just not on my expected timeframe.

So there I am, writing tickets, doing my thing, and SD stops me & goes, “You need to stop saying that.”

“Saying what?”

“Have a great time.”

Now, let me pause to explain a reality here – half the time, when I give some situationally-prompted pleasantry reply, I don’t even know I’ve said it. I’ve been working in customer service for different stretches since the day I turned 16, so for me the sheer habit of smiling and being cheerful to people is so ingrained that I can’t help it. I once had a friend point out to me that when I walk up to a cashier, I’m the first one to initiate the question, “Hi, how are you today?” (Which in my world, comes out as “Hey, how ya doin’?”) I could be in the worst mood ever, and I will smile and be pleasant to strangers because that’s the way I’ve been trained – Pavlovian Politeness, we’ve taken to calling it. The point being that I hadn’t even realized I was saying that. However, it did leave a question, which led me to ask…

“why wouldn’t I tell them to have a good time?”

“They’re here for a wake*.”

:pause for moment: “Oh… right. Okay. Well who know, right? it could be an Irish wake.”

*In hospitality, or maybe it’s just a California thing, they don’t call such events a wake. They refer to them as a “celebration of life”. Yah. True story. While I think that’s actually a better way to approach it, this has cause confusion on the part of a couple of girls who thought “celebration”=”actual party”.

But yah – upshot is that it looks like I’ll be doing more gigs for the Dolls where I’m actually in charge of sh*t, which also means I’ve finally got to get around to cleaning out my car so I can fit the sign in the back. :sigh: Mo’ money, mo problems – so friggin’ true.

——————–

I am both a PC & a Mac!
One of the items on The List is for me to acquire an iPhone for myself. This is less because I want an iPhone, & more because of work. To get work for Prem!Co, they send out a pdf of the upcoming week’s schedule, and then you email which shifts you want. Shifts are filled on a first come, first serve basis, so the quicker you respond, the better your chances.

Two weeks ago, I was working SpffV!Hotel on a Friday night when I saw the email for the schedule for Prem!Co come across my phone. Well, I can’t see the pdf on my present phone which I really only got because I fell in the damn marina last March – I got out of the marina, my phone… still down there. (sorry phone!)

Anyway, the schedule came out at 6:30, so I stopped at a 24 hour Kinko’s on my way out of work at 1:30am & filed my shift requests… and they were already filled up. Ugh. Thus, I need to get an iPhone so I can see anything on the internet in order to be able to get work. I’m finally caving.
However, since my contract with AT&T doesn’t re-up until January, I decided to investigate alternate means. I got an offer from my neighbor for his unlocked 1G, which was tempting, but for only $40 more, I was able to win the bid on eBay for a 6-mo old 8GB 3G whose owner has already upgraded to a 4th Gen.

:fist of triumph!:

On the one hand my fear in this situation is that I shall never actually get off the internet. On the other hand, in 3-5 days of shipping time, I’ll totally be able to download the free app that lets you play your iPod like a flute!

Watching: Invictus

Snoop brought calm to my world. No, not like that.

June 18th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', girl valet, money, nerdery, pop culture junkie, work

Wow, that’s kinda… meta
So E3 Expo is in town this week, which means LA is even more chock a block full of geeks than usual. Possibly bursting at the seams, even. For valets, the amount of private parties & events has everyone hopping to fill shifts.

I signed up for two nights in a row at one event site, and while the organizers thought there would be 150 cars, they were mostly taxis & hired cars, so they were right about the estimate, just not about how many valets would be needed to handle it, which makes for a group of people in black & white standing by the side of a building in downtown LA all staring at their phones.

:pause for PSA:
Dear Internet – how did I ever pass the time as a valet without you? :hugs!:

So there I am, scrolling my Livejournal flist, and I see an article on the Microsoft Kinect and all the fuss around it, rah rah rah. Now, we don’t get told what the event is before we show up for Other!ValetCo. So I’m reading this article on my phone, looking at the people coming in, looking at the article, noticing they’ve all got Microsoft stuff… hey! I’m at the cool afterparty that people are talking about. Go me! Granted, I’m a valet, so the only reason I can get past the security on the 11th floor is because they assume I’m headed to the bathroom, but as I jokingly said to someone, “Right now, every video game geek in town wants to be me!”

Incidentally, after two nights of that was last night at a property which was simply described as “One of Snoop Dog’s places.” While I didn’t see anything, and I personally have spent my entire life footloose & drug free, I’m pretty sure that simply setting foot on the premises automatically invalidated my ability to pass a pre-employment drug screening for 30 days.

It also brought about this comment from me on Facebook:
is it a bad sign when you can say, “working Snoop Dog’s party last night was the calmest 4 hours I’ve had in the last two days”? I think it might be what I’d call “an indicator”…

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What I want is what I’ve not got, and what I need is all around me…

April 8th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', money, nerdery, screw you cosmic muffin

Well that’s a sad moment:
Goodbye, Norma Jean: Apple’s “Get a Mac” Ads are over

I’m gonna miss not watching the difference between a Mac & a PC.

“…I’m crying myself to sleep mode.” hee!

because I’m messed up, that’s why
I have a couple of things to do for work this week, and you know what I’m jazzing on? Not the steady, paying gig that’s boring but stable work. No no, I’m excited about the combat-landing-esque site that I need to bring live by Saturday for a client who called me because they lost their old company (no for real) and now need to start over… now.
(I know, right? But as long as they’re paying, the reasons for the work really aren’t a problem for me – check cashes the same no matter what, my friend.)

And it’s in this that I’ve come to the realization of why I’ve hated my job so much, and really, it’s the same thing that bothers most designers – I’m tired of dealing with people who say they want one thing, & then utterly eff up what I give them. I’ve got one right now – building what will be a fairly complex site – no stylesheet, conflicting directions from the marketing manager & the developer, and I’m just… I literally just don’t even want to do work for them. I procrastinate on it. Horribly. And what I give them isn’t my best work, because when I do that they just rip it up, so I’m totally in this space of, “Whatever, take this.” and gods know that’s not a good point to work from. :sigh:

So instead, I’m having fun with a smaller, emergency site that I’ll get paid way less to do but will have complete creative freedom over – hell, I’ve even re-written most of her copy, which is such a relief to be able to do, considering some of the horrendous English I’m occasionally instructed to post on the internet. (I’m sorry Internet, really I am.)

Kate & I were talking at San Diego two weekends ago, and she confided that she was thinking of leaving her PhD program because she just… didn’t like it. As she pointed out, she could make the same amount of money working at Starbucks & enjoying her life a hell of a lot more than she does as a grad student. And I’m thinking… maybe that’s not a bad idea. I may walk into the Gap I used to work at today or tomorrow & grab an application – I’m pretty sure at least two of my old managers are still there, they’d probably be willing to hook me up with 20 hours a week or so – not much, but something so I at least feel like I’m getting something steady and can relax a bit instead of constantly feeling like I have to take every client because I need the cash.

I dunno. I think I’m just tired of always having to think. I have at least one side project for the summer, and I’ve done my part thus far, but it hasn’t been made an official go yet, and honestly, I don’t feel that I can completely trust the people involved on a business level — the programs are good, the money would be solid, and I’ve already got clients lined up to participate, but that last step hasn’t been done, and based on some behavior that I’ve seen over the last year, I don’t feel secure that someone isn’t going to turn on me & have everything fall through. I’m going to work on getting everything in writing beforehand, but even then I still don’t entirely have faith that I’ll get paid. And I can’t live like that any more, so yes. I think applying to the Gap it may be.

——————-
More than anything, I just feel like I’m not… getting anywhere. I’ve got this whole “shouting at the rain” thing right now. The worst thing about having an idea of what’s coming is the part where you have to wait for it to get here, and carry on with life in the interim. I’m kind of crap at that part.

Note: I just got an email offering me a brand new website for my portfolio site from some spam company. Wow, Universe, thanks so much for that obvious reminder. It’s on the list.

Okay. enough with the kvetching. Back to the salt mines… fun project first, dammit.

Music: Jimi Thing (Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds – Live At Luther College)

I look at the ground & give the sky the middle finger…

April 7th, 2010, posted in completely random, nerdery, pop culture junkie, screw you cosmic muffin

So last week just… sucked. Big giant monkey balls kinda sucked. To start with, I was sick. Now, I’m not normally sick, and for the most part when I am, I can muddle through. I’ll be annoyed & surly, but things still get done.

This time? Not so freakin’ much. As I used to joke about the end of a 2k test, “My body just made an obscene gesture at me & died.”

The pinnacle of this being when I was coaching a Sculling I on Thursday morning, turned to say something to a student on the wrong side of the dock and… fell off the dock.

Yes. Totally. Fell off the dock. Fully clothed. In layers. In jeans. With sneakers on.

With my cell phone.

:pause for a moment of mourning:

Oh yeah. and it’s not even like the phone got fried, but I could transfer the SIM to another unit. No. I came out of the water, the phone didn’t. For all I know, it’s still down there next to the dock, watching the boats come by until its little battery gives out. Which reminds me:

Dear environment:

I’m sorry I accidentally disposed of electronic waste in an irresponsible manner.

My bad,
Me.
—————————-
I kinda liked my old phone, man. I really did. Thankfully I’d just gotten a freelance check so it didn’t break me economically, but there’s $250 I didn’t get to put towards tuition, ya know?

Due to the fact that I’m not due to upgrade until Jan of next year, my new phone is not as awesome as my old one. it’s all right, but I liked the old one better.

It also means that I have to reconstruct my entire address book, which is both a pain in the ass & also kind of freeing.

Pain in the ass: having to email people (including clients) and ask for their numbers
Freeing: deciding that I don’t need to keep certain people’s numbers anymore, even just in case.

Because yeah – if I get caught no longer having people’s numbers, I can now just say, “Oh my god, I must’ve lost it that time I fell in the marina! I’m so sorry.” In some cases this will be sincere. In some cases, a polite excuse. How can you know the difference? I’m not telling.

I actually brought the first phone I used back & traded it for another, because the first didn’t have conversation view for the texts, and having each twitter come across individually was driving me freakin’ beserk. That’s when I learned the spiffy thing at AT&T where the minute you walk out of the door, there’s a $35 restocking fee – even if you have the phone for less than a day. What? Since when is that cool? For realsies? However, my $35 got credited off my bill, mostly due to the fact that I think I scared the salesguy with the power of my raised eyebrow and quiet inquiry of, “Are you freakin’ kidding me?”
Note: When I’m upset or annoyed, I’m kinda noisy. When I hit actual anger & am just freakin’ done — that’s when I get very quiet & either stop talking to you altogether, or speak to you very quietly & calmly. I have been informed this is scarier than any yelling ever could be, so should you ever find yourself in this position, I suggest you run.

Bright spot of that, since I refuse to get an iPhone & there’s no internet usage on my account, I only pay about $50/mo for my cell, so now I don’t have to pay my bill this month. Yay no bill-paying!

My new phone also came with Tetris already built in. This is fantastic for me, as Tetris is one of the few things I require in my phone since I use it as a time-waster galore and general method of calming myself before job interviews. I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little Tetris-obsessed. However, based on today’s comic, it seems the guys at xkcd feel the same way:

Music: Dumb Girls – Lucy Woodward

Facebook was inevitable: a.k.a., Gene Roddenberry really did know the future.

March 11th, 2010, posted in nerdery, pop culture junkie

Normally, I’d toss up a YouTube to illustrate my point, but Paramount seems to have that on lockdown, so if you’d like to check it out, the cheapest version seems to be on iTunes here:
Star Trek (2009)

There was a discussion during President’s Day Weekend about the awesomeness of the new Star Trek movie. Because let’s face it – J.J. totally lived up to my assertion that based on the opening sequence in the pilot of Lost & the car crash at the end of Season 4 of Alias, nobody shoots realistic chaos & mayhem like J.J. Abrams, and I love him for that!

Afterwards, however, I borrowed Polgara’s copy of the movie & settled in for a review. As I was doing so, I realized something – Gene Roddenberry? Totally anticipated Facebook. And podcasting. And Twitter. And every little bit of narcissistically-applied technology that we use to log & document our lives today.

How do I know this? Two words, people: Captain’s Log.

Okay yes – the Captain’s log is a long-held tradition in any military application, but the principle of it has been applied to our entire lives, and I find it amusing that this expression is projected to continue even when we finally get our hovercrafts. (Seriously, we live in the damn future – where is my freakin’ hovercraft, man? Shouldn’t we have that by now?)

Example: Kirk – kicked off a spaceship, on a damn ice planet.
(because really, is it a sci-fi space epic if there’s not at least one sequence on an ice planet? No, really it’s not, thank you George Lucas. By the way, George, I’m still a little bitter about the prequels… wait, where were we? Oh. Right. Ice planet. Carry on.)

So yes – Kirk on an ice planet after being kicked off a spaceship. And rather than be, ya know, afraid or bothered about the immediate problem of being stranded on a planet made of ice & snow, what is James Tiberius Kirk doing? He has booted up his recorder & is complaining about the fact that Spock’s kind of a douche. He is, in essence… podcasting. Podcasting about crappy transportation customer service on a scale initiated by Kevin Smith v. Southwest Airlines. (Way to go Kev, your public humiliation is our sociological future.)

And they all do this – Spock has an entire ship to run after seeing the destruction of his birth planet, and what does he do? He stops to have an Edward Cullen and verbalize how awesomely stoic he is. Now, I’ll admit that I’ve never been in the middle of a huge interplanetary crisis, but I’m going to go on a limb & guess that if I were, I doubt I’d have time to stop & Lord Byron out some emo navel-gazing. Did Kennedy pause for Deep Thoughts during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Me no thinkey so.

Clearly, no matter what kind of thing the universe threw at them – be it death, destruction, or Eric Bana with a shaved head & a decided need for Prozac-fueled group hug therapy – Spock & Kirk were destined to be friends. If nothing else, their shared obsession with narcissistic ramblings made it inevitable*.
*Don’t worry – my next blog will be titled, “Pot, meet kettle”. Look for it on a bandwidth near you!

The point? All of this just goes to show that no matter how far we advance as a species, or how much technology improves our lives, one thing will never change – the fact that we’re going to be willing to make passive-aggressive status updates to let our friends know when someone’s being a douche.

Moment of truth: let’s be honest – even with a hovercraft, I’d still end up running about 15 minutes late. But I’d be 15 minutes late and arriving in a hovercraft.

Music: You Don’t Know Me – Ray Charles

baby steps finished off by a man on a horse

February 18th, 2010, posted in nerdery, work

Oh, Hulu, I so less-than-three you…
- it’s worth catching up on The Daily Show just to see the ep where John Oliver actually says the words “wikkid re-tah-ded”. The part of me that lived in New Hampshire possibly had a very loud comedic reaction. (sorry neighbors)
—————————————–
Dear Firefox:
Why won’t you open now that I’ve re-started my laptop? Momma misses you!
—————————————–
Is this week “Crappy Customer Service Week” and no one told me?
(or, it would seem, Kevin Smith – his? way worse than mine.)

Round 1
At the beginning of Feb, I faxed over a form to my student loan co. that I had been told would extend my payment suspension since I am indeed, still on the dole.

Tuesday night, I get home to a letter titled “Final Notice” demanding the balance of that loan in full.

Sorry… what?

Called them yesterday, & was informed that yes, they got the form, but I didn’t need to send that one, I needed the other one, which to me begged the question, “So… why didn’t you just let me know I’d sent the wrong one in?”
For the record, such odd logic as mine seemed to stump them, so they’re just going to send me another form. Hopefully this time, it will be the correct one.

Round 2
Since I was already in fine form, I then dialed my credit card company. Since I got the card, I’ve been paying for the “Life Incident” insurance – i.e., if something happens (injury, unemployment, random monkey attack, whatevs) they pick up your minimum payment from date of incident until 18 mos afterwards. When I first got laid off, I’d forgotten about it, & then in October made fun of myself for being a goober & filed the paperwork.

Turns out the reason it covers up to 18 mos is that filing the paperwork with Bank of America is also a full-time job, so you can’t look for a new one while you’re repeatedly faxing over stuff you’d already sent in. I called up, & hey guess what – I’d been selected for a customer survey following my phone call, so please stay on the line!

Luckily, the woman I spoke to (yes, spoke, not bitched, yelled or was snippy with – I’d used that energy for the student loan people previous) put me on hold, and then came back doing the one thing you rarely hear nowadays – she apologized. Seems that when they sent me the latest info notice of what my file was “missing”, they hadn’t gone back far enough to see that hey – already there. She processed my file while I was on the phone & I should have that credit rolling into my account soon.

Good for her that I had that survey, because she got a 10 out of 10 for the call I’d had that day. Bank of America, on the other hand, got a 1 out of 10 for services provided & customer satisfaction with them overall. :thumbs down:
Suck me, BoA — as soon as I can manage it, I’m headed to US Bank, who got my business account once I found out theirs was free of fees, whereas BoA wants $30/mo just to exist.

Happy new of all this? I only have the one credit card. I grew up poor, & watched a lot of my friends that were 5 – 7 years older have $10k or more in credit card debt by the time they were 30, so I only got the one secured card a while back for $500.
(Secured card: I walked in, I put $500 down as a deposit, and after a year when I hadn’t defaulted on the card, they released my deposit back to me & upped my credit line to $1k)

I basically only got it for large purchases – computers, plane tickets, in case ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE with my car somehow. However, over the years it’s slowly built up, & I let it carry a balance. So 18 mos worth of “minimum payments” — yeah, that just might clear out the whole balance of the card. Can’t wait to see how much things drop – rather scarily giddy about it, even.

The result?
Bad news – my credit score still sucks because I don’t carry any major credit other than my car, which will be paid off next year.

Good news – Other than my car and my student loans, I have no debt outside my basic living expenses, so once I’ve paid off Zoom-Zoom next June, that money can go into savings, and I might actually have savings. Woot!
Note: I actually was able to drop a little bit into ye olde ING acct. this month, which was kind of comforting, as it’s gotten quite thin, and while this is L.A., anybody that’s seen my hips knows I don’t believe in anorexia.

Not quite whistling while I do it, but possibly just bobbing my head a bit more than usual
I know I’d made the resolution to start with Utah!Co this month, but I find myself clearing out my old projects for the last two weeks, so I think the Mormons will begin on Monday. So far I’ve managed to finish & invoice Jr. Crew Team & Lutheran school. I’m this close on Bali!Hotel! client, & inches from finishing Holistic!Client. If I can get those two done this week, it’ll be a good accomplishment.

Yesterday was a particularly good day productivity-wise – I cleared out about half of my (immediate) to-do list, & am hoping to do the same over the next two days. As much as I need the immediate cash that Dolls provides, not having it in the back of my mind that I have a party each night is helping me to settle in & get work done, which is nice. Between this & rowing, I would cautiously venture I might actually be getting back in my groove.

in the meantime, I offer you this gem of advertising:
Old Spice – I’m on a horse

Music: Those Sweet Words – Norah Jones

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Honey lately, I been weighed down, load on my mind…

February 8th, 2010, posted in nerdery, work

Yay cartoon-watching!
So I have this client that I’ve been working with, & we just couldn’t find something that worked for their site. It’s a financial thing, a compare & lower your bills sort of functionality, so it needed to have a LOT of stuff, but not look cluttered, and still be appealing. The basic layout was established, but the skin has been… problematic. To give you an idea, I normally do 3 designs with 3 revisions to each – yesterday I turned in version twenty-three.

There I was, working on it again, and just totally blocked, and I thought, “god, this just isn’t fun.” and it occurred to me that that was the problem. After all, what is the appeal of the internet if not that it makes crap we hate doing fun?

Right then… so what’s inherently fun? Cartoons.

I took the cartoon approach – brightened the colors, puffed things out to look 3-d-ish, and just kind of made everything a bit more whimsical.

They approved the design within two hours, thank god. There are some revisions (there always are), but yes. Freakin’ finally

Plugging along…
meantime, it looks like I should be wrapping up Hotel!Client‘s site this week. So yes, making progress, just v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

I just.. need to do more. I need to work more. I get home, & all I want to do is nap. Even today, I rowed, then went grocery shopping with KB, then fell asleep, got up, set up a bunch of my food for the week and probably only did about an hour of paying work for the whole day. And that’s just not good enough. there are things that need to be done, and for some reason I can’t seem to make myself work faster or enough to keep caught up. The universe is providing me with the work, and I can’t find the energy to care enough to do it, which of course is simply not acceptable. :sigh:

Which means that tomorrow will be another day ensconced at Starbucks to keep myself out of my apartment & get things done. I hate that it has to be that way, because I’d like to be able to work from my place, but doing so just isn’t working out.

On a brighter note (literally) – all the new light fixtures are switched in for my apartment. it’s kind of odd because I’d gotten in the habit of not using those switches, and now I have to keep reminding myself that they’re good again — plus I’m not used to this much light after all this time, so I feel a little blind. :blink:blink:

Music: Lately – David Gray

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Suppose I said I am on my best behavior…

January 30th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', cosmic muffin, nerdery, rowing, screw you cosmic muffin

there are times…I lose my worried mind…

oh, cosmic muffin – now you’re just makin’ sh*t up.
My goal for the weekend was simple – finish Hotel!Client‘s site and get things uploaded to a test server so that I could upload to their server early in the week.
Unfortunately, the universe had a different idea, as my laptop decided it no longer wanted to recognize my passport that I use as an external hard drive. Granted, this is completely my own fault — the part where you should “safely remove” a device when you take it out of your computer? In the migrant style of work that I have, I am admittedly rather pants at taking the time to do that instead of just pulling the cord & moving on to my next destination. This is doubly sad because as a former IT drudge, I know that the reason you’re not supposed to do that is that it sends a small electrical shock through the device each time, & eventually, it stops working. (As I said to ZenMistressE today, “Really, can you blame it? I mean, if I kept electrocuting you two or three times a day, you’d probably decide to stop working for me too.” :shrug:)

So yesterday & today was spent backing up the files on that over to my WD Book that I use as my backup. However, in the philosophy of trying to roll with what the universe gives me, I can’t help but think that this was a preventative measure on the cosmic muffin’s part, since when I went to Target today to find 4BG flash drive for a ridiculously low price. Considering that I remember when a 1 GB drive was fantastically huge file capacity & we thought it a great deal at $30, I’m totally willing to cop to having had a “uphill in the snow both ways” moment in technology when buying the 4GB.

However, the files are transferred, so there’s work to be doing when I get home from tonight’s Doll gig. After all, sleep is for the weak, right? *snerk*

Whistle while you do it, damn you!
Doll work is ramping up again as people start to poke their heads out from the party hangover of the holidays. Tonight’s my 3rd gig in four nights, & I just got another notice for one tomorrow afternoon, which sadly meant I had to cancel on seeing Avatar with RocketScienceGuy. I tried to reschedule for Monday night, but haven’t heard back from him, so we’ll see if it’s off to the ArcLight for a 3-D in IMAX I go.

I’m still plugging my way through my backlog of work – one site put to bed & ready to be billed this weekend, hopefully soon the Hotel!Client to follow.

I keep putting off starting work for Utah!Co because I feel like I don’t have time while I have all of these other projects, and I need to get in the groove of doing work for them – if nothing else, my one year on unemployment is March 20th, & while the fact that I’ve been partially working for the last year means I should be able to get another extension without any problem, I really just don’t want to have to do that. And to accomplish that, I need to create a steady stream of work to supplement the fact that most of my clients work on a project basis & thus are not chronologically dependable income. However, on the note of trying to set manageable goals for myself, this upcoming week’s benchmark is to complete their tutorials and just complete one or two simple jobs from their task board to use as test cases of their system & billing procedures. Here goes nothin’.

Discovered last night why Fitness!Client hasn’t answered my emails in regards to them not paying their bill — seems that someone else has taken over the company. Not quite sure what happened there, but have sent the new manager (who I’ve met a couple times) an email asking for a meeting to bring them up to date on the site. Even if all I do is hand over files & get paid the balance of the account, that works for me. I’d rather finish their site & launch it, ’cause it’s a good site, but eh :shrug: sometimes you take what you can get.

Let there be light
One thing that’s going forward is fixing things in my apartment. Over the last few months, the lights have slowly been failing – it’s an old building, and I think the ceiling fans might be only slightly younger than… me. My landlord will reimburse me off my rent of course, but he’s a bit cheap, so I can’t just go out & arbitrarily buy whatever, else he’ll insist on fixtures of his choosing, which would just be… bad. So I’ve been shopping for fixtures the way I’d shop if I owned the place – stuff that’s on sale & doesn’t suck. IKEA won the battle for ceiling lights & a wall sconce, but failed for ceiling fans on an epic scale.
After looking at Home Depot, Osh, & a bunch of other hardware places & deciding I didn’t like any of them, I found fans that I liked which weren’t going to cost my firsborn… in the hardware store across the street from my apartment. (Next time, need to look there first. Go team me.) Finally having the cash, I ordered them on Thursday & was lucky enough that they came in on Friday. As a bonus, when I picked them up this morning, I discovered they were actually $10 cheaper than the price listed in the catalog, which should make my landlord happy as well.

The upshot of this being that next Saturday I shall take the day off Dollwork to stay home while an electrician comes in & changes out all of the lights in my apartment. I’m also hoping that we’ll be able to get a plasterer in – last fall’s rain revealed a leak in the apartment above me, so I have two walls that need to be fixed due to water damage. I’m borrowing ZenMistressE‘s steam cleaner, since I figure at that point I’m going to have to move my bed & the couches so the guys can work, so I might as well just kill a crapload of birds in unison & also steam clean my mattress & couches at the same time. (I have hardwood floors with no rugs, so that’s one less thing.)

Good timing on all that as well, since there are a small cadre of Bronzers coming to town President’s Day Weekend. For me, having Bronzers about is the internet equivalent of a high school reunion, and since Polgara & I are pretty much the designated places to crash, much like any high school reunion I can’t help but want my apartment to look decent as part of showing that the years haven’t touched me a bit.

Holy schneikes, where did you all come from?
Somehow, over the last few weeks, I’ve turned around to discover I have a crapload of rowers on my team. They just bloody well fell out of the sky, it would appear. Crew Classic is fast approaching, and thankfully it’s beginning to look like I won’t have to double up races – I mean, just because I can do two 2k races in one day that Sunday doesn’t mean I want to. I called a meeting with my coaches for tomorrow since it’s all happened rather fast & I think right now I’m the only one that actually knows what’s going on — as I said to the others, “I think that the knowledge should be somewhere other than in my head, since let’s face it – my head doesn’t always work!”

Okies. Time to go meander my way up Laurel Canyon for a bit. 20 cars with a shuttle, a TC & 3 valets — in Dollspeak, that means “Small party with unavoidably messed up semantics”… oy. Hopefully, they tip well.

Music: Not Myself – John Mayer