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