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You’re kidding me… right?

Wednesday, September 11th, 2013

So a few days ago we noticed a sign posted up by the front mail-boxes that a little boy named “Macey” has gone missing. Clipped ear, crazy yellow eyes, completely Grey coloring. Knowing full-well that this is the lil one we’ve been caring for, we felt it was only fair to actually tell the owner where he’s been hanging out.

Of course by the time we got anywhere near the house we found out why he’s never there. The “owner” of this lil boy is the same owner that allows her dogs to run free at night and pretty much cause nothing but trouble where-ever and whenever they please. They’re horrible animals that are a direct reflection of the owner.

Karen was already in the driveway by the time we really realized what we’d gotten ourselves into. She told the lady that he’s been hanging out at our house, she went on to say “Oh, that’s too funny, he does whatever he wants. His sister has been going nuts looking for him, we just wanted to know where he is. Usually he’ll wonder off but he’ll at least check in… he hasn’t in a while, we were worried.” So Karen let them know what house we were at and the lady said that she’d take a walk down there later on to see him.

About a half hour later she waddled down with her daughter, saw him eating on the porch and went right for him, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with either one of them, Bella was (oddly enough) more interested in their presence than LilBoy was.

So we got to talking while he was finishing his lunch, and grooming himself. She noted that she’d adopted him and his sister when they were about 8-10 weeks old, and they’ve been living outside ever since and I then had to so something that is SUPER PAINFUL for me – BITE MY TONGUE. (If you know me, you know this ain’t happenin easily!)

LilBoyHOW THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO CONSCIOUSLY STAND THERE AND TELL ME THAT YOU ADOPTED INNOCENT KITTENS TO TURN THEM INTO STRAY CATS?! THE POINT OF ADOPTING AN ANIMAL IS TO PROVIDE IT WITH A GOOD HOME, NOT A FUCKING FEEDING STATION TO FIGHT WITH THE REST OF THE STRAYS OVER THEIR MEALS!

I kept it to myself, It hurt but I did it. He headed down to the driveway while we were talking and the little girl picked him up noting that he got heavy and is a lot softer. Who would have thought that FEEDING an animal and giving him a bath would actually work to HIS benefit? :: head desk ::

He was then picked up by the lady, and walked back down to her house because she wanted to introduce him back to his sister so she stops going stir-crazy looking for him. Not like she couldn’t have wondered down here herself, lord knows she’s floating around on the road too.

So about an hour later I heard a tapping sound on the deck, guess who left that house with the quickness and came back down here? Yep, lil boy – been here since.

So please tell me, how you can look at this cute little face and think that it’s perfectly OK to know that you took the time to adopt him in order to give him AND his sister a good home but turned around and said “Let ’em live outside”.

Am I wrong for just wanting to bring him in the house and say “Nope, haven’t seen him” if she comes around? Am I wrong for wanting to report her to the DE ASPCA for animal cruelty? And to top that, report her to CPS because she can’t figure out how to properly raise her child either? Considering it’s one of the known drug houses in the complex? I’m so fucking annoyed with this goddamn family. Where’s he going this Winter? Lord knows he was hopping around in the snow earlier this year, I saw him and his sister numerous times leaving tracks everywhere. Did they even have a warm place to sleep that wasn’t underneath someone’s shed?

I can’t fucking stand this lady, I want to fucking run her ass over.

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This is just killin’ me…

Thursday, September 5th, 2013

I unfortunately needed to put the Little Boy back outside. While he is generally a really good cat, he’s also an animal that’s spent the last two years on the street and wouldn’t adjust very well to permanent indoor life.  A certain time of night he would be itching to go outside, and then he wound up lashing out by attacking Bella and Meow-Meow.  Typically I wouldn’t care about the playful aspect of his personality, but when it goes from playing to claws, and his eyes completely change. We all decided it would be best to keep him as an outdoor animal to ensure that he’s getting the frisky side of him taken care of in his usual environment, and then also making sure he has a proper place to relax.

So the bench outside has a nice warm blanket on it, and he’s got a little feeding station.  He doesn’t stray far from the house, and it’s kind of funny to watch him follow Bella and I whenever I take her out for a walk.  Usually he’ll get to a certain point where he stops following, but this morning he completely went around two blocks with me and her, and even used the bathroom when he needed to.  Not many people can say that they can walk their cat and dog at the same time, so it’s nice to be unique once in a while lol.

Work has been hectic, I’m working on 6 different sites at once and of course they’re all due at the same freaking time.  There are projects that I’ve had to leave pending because I just don’t have the time to transfer over to them and no matter how many times I post something on Twitter/Facebook/Freelancer I can’t freaking find anyone who knows what they’re doing in order to help me out.

I need someone who understands proper HTML5/CSS3 compliance, who also has some type of a jQuery backend. Even if they don’t write it themselves, they need to know how to work with existing scripts (which I can actually provide to them anyway).  From there, that same person would need to know how to code for WordPress.  Anyone can turn any theme into a WordPress theme, but I need someone who understands that you need to have EVERYTHING inside of WordPress as clients are not to touch the actual .php files themselves.  So the use of Widgets and Advanced Custom Fields (primarily the repeater fields) are required as well.

Now, while that may not seem like very much – you’d be surprised at how hard it is for me to find someone capable of handling the load.  It’s driving me absolutely crazy.  I don’t understand how there seems to be NO ONE around who can do it.

Help? 🙁

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It’s been freaking crazy!

Monday, August 26th, 2013

The past few weeks have been nothing but eventful around here, and of course that means I haven’t had any downtime to blog.  Going back to my last post, I’ve had a follow-up visit with Bella, she’s got a clean bill of health. I’ve got all of the paperwork together to send back to Del Monte and I’ve made it a point to photo copy freaking EVERYTHING so they can’t claim they never received everything I sent to them.

Our friend Colin came down last week, we were able to get a few nights of fishing in and a night of mini-golf but unfortunately Sean and I were overbooked so that was kind of limiting to any real fun.  It isn’t too bad though, we got to see our best friend for an entire week and while he was here we were introduced to a new member of the family.

smokeyLast week a little Grey cat showed up out of absolutely no where, and me being a push-over when it comes to something with four-legs I instantly said “Go get some food for him”, he ate, came on on the porch and rubbed up against my leg and from there he stayed. Knowing full well that I didn’t want to deal with another flea problem, we kept him outside, I treated him with Frontline (which doesn’t work BTW) and then was utilizing the Vets Best Flea & Tick Spray to help cut down on his itching. Note: That stuff works fucking beautifully when it’s used as a Mosquito repellant too! I’ve been using it instead of “OFF!”, it smells so much better. I just ordered the 32oz replacement bottle of it cause I can’t get over how well it works.  So thankfully with this spray (that my mom introduced to me when we brought the last lil girl into the house) it’s kept the fleas at bay.  I do believe that the stuff that the exterminator put down a few months ago helped quite a bit but thankfully we’re good to go.

During the course of the week a lady showed up at the house wanting to know what animal we were feeding and told us that he bounces from house to house, just about everyone in the complex feeds him so he’s – by no means – malnuroushed. BUT the alleged owner of the cat isn’t this lady, it’s someone else.  I then got a nasty look when she was informed that the cat was treated for fleas and ticks, she claimed that the owner actually treated him – considering the amount on him I’ll just go ahead and call BULL SHIT on that one.  Out of respect, I said if I was going to actually keep the cat I knew I needed to speak with the ‘owner’. So today I went looking for the alleged “owner” and found here with no problems (everyone knew who she was), the lady claimed he actually wasn’t hers and said take ’em, she doesn’t care and if anyone sees him in your window you just say “Too freakin bad, he was on the street long enough to be picked up and that’s that”. Someone else said that she was full of shit about not knowing who he belongs to but whatever, I wasn’t going to argue, I already knew he was gonna be mine anyway. I was only standing there out of respect, I didn’t care if I was told “No” when asking to take him off the street, clearly the ‘owner’ couldn’t do it – why should I continue to allow him out there?

So I went and contacted my vet, they gave me Capstar which works within a half hour and lasts for 24 for complete flea removal.  I was able to get that into his mouth (with a can of Tuna as a chaser of course) and then not even 10 minutes later I brought him to the vet because they scheduled the appointment ‘immediately’ (for some unknown freaking reason) and they did a complete work up on him, he was perfectly clean (minus the fleas), his bloodwork came back normal and he had no medical issues at all. He got his nails clipped and a much needed bath (he’s so much softer now!), and we were informed that he’s actually about 2 years old, he’s not the Kitten we thought he was. So…he was brought home and now he’s a member of the family.

I kept him in the bathroom initially, he does still have a few fleas coming off of him but thankfully they’ve been medicated with the Capstar so of course it’ll clear him right up. The bath at the vets office certainly helped quite a bit, I’m confident I would have seen many, many more floating around in the bathroom if they didn’t bathe him for me.

Karen and I (after getting him situated in the bathroom) left for Walmart to pick up the necessary supplies. We needed a second litter box, and food, and the usual “I’ve got a new cat” shopping spree. Two hours later I returned home with a crap load of stuff and after getting everything situated we decided it was time to introduce him to the rest of the house. Knowing that Bella was OK with him we knew it was just the little girl (Meow-Meow) that was going to be the problem.  She didn’t like him AT ALL, and normally for me that means OK, we’ll keep him in the bedroom and then slowly re-introduce them to each other.  The problem now is Sean is having a horrible allergy attack and putting the cat in our bedroom is counter productive to get his allergies to calm down. I’ll be throwing a Zyrtec down his throat later this evening when it’s bedtime for him.

Right now, however, the little one is in the bedroom with Karen (where she usually sleeps anyway), and then the little guy is hanging out in my recliner while Bella snores away behind me. Sean is down the hall sneezing away (poor guy).

We’ve named him Smokey, supposedly he was “Macey” to whoever actually found him first, but he doesn’t look like a “macey” and since he’s mine I can change it whatever freaking name I want.  More than likely I’ll wind up continuing to call him “fat boy” anyway lol. Who knows what’ll happen…

I do know that I haven’t had anything to eat today AND I’ve only had one cup of coffee, so if I’m gonna put in about 8 hours of work tonight (somehow) I’m gonna have to start brewing that cup right away or I’ll never be able to meet my deadlines.

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Down with Del Monte!

Saturday, August 3rd, 2013

I’m going to warn all readers in advance, this is a very graphic post and if you can not handle canine bodily fluids – this is not the post for you to read.

I’ve been flustered for so much of the past week that I honestly didn’t even notice it was Saturday until I looked at my phone this afternoon. I’ve been stuck in the world of “WOW, What the hell am I going to do now?”.

Last Saturday (7/27) I noticed Bella had a little hint if diarrhea after vomiting. Since this only happened in a small amount, and it’s not uncommon for her to have the occasional diarrhea, I honestly didn’t think anything of it. Within a few hours she appeared to be feeling just fine and was jumping and playing all over the house.  She was playing and enjoying life on Sunday and even Monday too. You can imagine my surprise when on Tuesday she went downhill, and fast.  The poor thing was dealing with excessive vomiting, and by excessive I mean she was throwing up every 10 to 15 minutes for a solid 3 hours before I could actually get her into the vets office.  By then, she was so weak that she didn’t even care where she was.  Normally, at the vet she’s very quick to want to jump off of the exam table and run out the door.  She couldn’t even hold her little body up to do that.

After telling the tech what had been going on, and providing her with a list of everything she eaten in the past 72 hours they brought her into the back room to run blood work.  After that, the vet came back in and asked if anything like this had every happened to her before, I confirmed that it hadn’t because, for the most part, she’s a healthy dog.  She requested that we do an X-Ray on her to be sure that she doesn’t have anything stuck in her system that could be causing this. I did note that the first instance of vomiting included a non-digested piece of a new treat that we were trying out. She noted that the food consumed over the past 72 hours wasn’t really cause for concern, but then noted that the addition of new treats (MILO’S KITCHEN – GRILLED STEAK) to her diet have her worried.  She wound up having to do a third X-Ray on Bella as her blood work came back and something just didn’t seem right.

She came back into the room, said that they see no blockage but Bella would need to stay overnight based on what they found with blood work and X-Rays. Her liver was three times larger than it was supposed to be. Size wise it was the equivalent of what they would see on a 250-pound Mastiff, not a 20-pound Lhasa Apso.  Her blood work showed that her Enzyme levels were dangerously high as well. She believed this to be due to the excessive vomiting.  She also noticed that her intestines were two times larger than they were supposed to be. There was a lot of liquid in her intestines with gas pockets. It was not a healthy-looking situation.

I told them to do whatever they needed to do to keep her alive, and I shit you not I was 100% convinced I would never be seeing my dog again based on how horribly ill she was at that point. She’d thrown up a few times during the exam, and the final ‘vomit’ smelled like Bile. It wasn’t the stomach-acid type of throw up, it literally seemed as though she was pooping out of her mouth.  She was rushed into the back room so she could be placed on an IV, she was dehydrating fast and they wanted to make sure there were enough fluids in her for the chance that she could make it through the night.

The doctor came back in the room and noted that she’d seen something like this recently. When we’d mentioned “Milo’s Kitchen” to her, she knew things would need to be rushed moving forward. She’d had a dog in that past weekend who was unfortunately in full renal failure and did not survive the night. The only thing that stuck out in the very healthy dogs diet was the “Milo’s Kitchen”.  The vet knew of a previous recall on the Chicken Jerky, but this dog consumed one of the “Sausage” treats that actually lead to the death of the animal.

Since there was nothing that I could physically do, I left Bella in their hands.  I called the office around 11pm, they’re a 24-hour facility so I knew someone would be there, and I – at that point – was a complete and total worry wort. This is my baby after-all.  The overnight vet noted that she is now dealing with excessive amounts of diarrhea and they’ve increased the fluids to keep her hydrated.  She was also given quite a few ‘butt baths’ so she wasn’t sitting in her own fecal matter.  She messed the cage a few times, and was taken outside quite a few times as well. The vet repeated, that this is a very, very sick dog.

I had a lot of trouble falling asleep, all I wanted to do was rush over there and hold her but based on how ill she was I knew that wasn’t a possibility.  I wanted her to just get better, she separation anxiety would have to be on hold for another day. The office called around 12:30PM, they noted that she’s doing much better and said that if I could bring in some light food for her, that I could bring her home so she had the ability to heal the rest of the way.  I wasn’t comfortable with this statement, not after the day before.

I did head over to the office a little later that afternoon with boiled chicken and rice in a bowl for her to try to get her to eat. Prior to going in there I did speak with the vet, she noted that that mornings X-Ray showed that her intestines had gone down to normal size, and that her liver had also gone down in size as well. We weren’t in the clear, her liver was still very enlarged.  The doctor and I agreed that she was to have a cat-scan prior to my even attempting to bring her home just to confirm that there were no stones or anything blocking her digestive track that could have been causing this. We were both 100% on the fact that it was related to “Milo’s Kitchen” but wanted to make sure either way.

I went into the back room, she was super excited to see me and crying excessively.  She was on her second IV bag of the day to keep her hydrated and she had absolutely no interest in any of the food I was trying to give her, she wanted out more than anything. After trying for about 10 minutes the vet said that the two bites of food should be enough for us to know if something is going to come back up and from there they whisked her away to the cat-scan. That scan confirmed there was nothing blocking any of her digestive track that could have caused this, it also confirmed that the treats were 100% of the cause being as her normal-diet could NOT have had this effect on her.

I agreed to take her home based on their findings, and was also provided with more medications than I had ever seen before in my life. Hell, when Karen was on Chemo she didn’t need this many pills. Anti-Diarrheal, Anti-Nausea, Anti-Biotic, Pain Killer and ear drops. The drops are there because, on top of everything, Bella also now had an ear infection.

As soon as we got home she peed like she hadn’t gone in months and went right to sleep. She was still woozy from all of the medications she’d received that day, and had absolutely no interest in eating ANYTHING. Her diet now consists of boiled chicken and ground beef. I can use either rice or potatoes to pair up with it.

I began reading through the ingredients on the packaging for her treats.  I don’t keep a ‘stock’ of them, she goes through one bag at a time. Usually she’s on Beggin’ Strips, but since she’s shown no interest in them I figured it was time to change it up – this is why she was switched to “Milo’s Kitchen” because it looked semi-natural and claimed it was made in America.  I picked up the Grilled Steak and the Sausage w/ Rice treats for her from the supermarket. These are the “items” that were in her system prior to it almost completely shutting down.

I’m 100% taking Bella off of any store-bought pet foot (wet & dry) as well as treats.  She’ll be eating only homemade dog food AND treats for the rest of her life. Why? Because every single dog treat on the shelves contains one (or both) of these ingredients.

#1 – Propylene Glycol – Commonly found on the ingredients list as a way to preserve moisture content in dog foods (hard and soft) as well as treats. It’s actual use? It’s the key component in newer automotive ANTIFREEZE.

#2 – Glycerin – Commonly found in dry food, wet food and dog treats. Until recently it was a byproduct of soap making. Today, however, it’s a byproduct of biofuels.

These two ingredients were found in her system on the blood test, to further confirm that it was the treats that did it for her.  The food she was eating prior to any of this starting was (for the most part) people food. If I can’t pronounce what’s on the packaging, why would I feed it to her? This dog has survived the past 9 years on pasta, chicken, beef, rice, potatoes and veggies. If all of these ingredients are supposedly IN her dog food, why shouldn’t I give her exactly what the packaging claims it will be?

The chemical mark-up for dog treats is disgusting, point blank.  These items are not found in cat treats/food because the FDA smartened up and regulated it after so many cats had passed away after consuming it.  At this point, however, no regulation is being made on the dog food. With this, Bella will never be eating dog food OR treats again. Anything by the parent company of “Del Monte” is the first thing to go. There have been so many recalls for every single one of their brands (including “Milo’s Kitchen”) that I wish I would have known something about it sooner.

So how do I fix this? Well, being as her time at the vet completely wiped out my checking account for over $1,200 it’s a little hard to bring money together right now to make proper dog food for her but I am utilizing what I have in my freezer to insure that she’s only eating food that humans eat. Why? Because if I’m not getting sick off of it – I know she won’t either.  When I get paid on Monday, however, I’ll be taking some money and purchasing a food dehydrator. From now on I’ll be making my own dog treats and there will be absolutely no way in hell that she will ever be touching one of the ‘fancy’ ones that you see in the supermarkets.

How should you fix this? Avoid the same things that I am, this should insure that your dog is living a much happier life.

Avoid anything manufactured by “Del Monte” foods. They clearly do not care about the health of your animal, why continue to fill their pockets with money?

Avoid anything treats that were made in China, Brazil, Chile, South-America in general. This includes Raw Hide!

If you’re keen on raw-hide, make sure you’re also avoiding that “Made in China” label. It’s posted on 100% of the bones you find in your local super market. As long as you see that notice, it’s time to put down the treat and walk away.

The company I’m 100% supporting right now is Wholesome Hide, they’re made in a America, they actually look like a proper raw-hide, and they do not contain the bits of random animal shavings in the middle. It’s a solid roll of hide and 100% natural. There’s no funky food coloring, there’s no rope-like material holding it together. Wholesome Hide is a company you know that you can trust, there have also been 0 (yes ZERO) recalls on their products.  What does that tell you about how much they care about your animal? Lord knows Del Monte doesn’t, look at their track record!

Del Monte Foods –  These are a list of what to completely avoid.

  • Kibbles & Bits
  • Milkbone
  • Pup-Peroni
  • Meaty Bone
  • Milo’s Kitchen
  • Gravy Train
  • Canine Carry Outs
  • Jerky Treats
  • Snausages
  • Nature’s Recipe

And, by default of course, I will no longer be eating ANYTHING they make. Not that their ‘human’ food was any better, but I’m officially boycotting the entire fucking company.

So yea, that’s been my week.

All I can say to sum it up, make sure you’re reading every single label for your dog the same way that you do for yourself. If you can not pronounce the chemical in the food, you’re better off not allowing them to have any access to it either. It’s better for their health in the long run. Yes, there may be brands out there that are 100% safe for your dog to consume (food wise), but make sure you’ve done your research too. Even Beneful, a “trusted brand” for pet-health has had numerous recalls and pet-deaths attached to their names.

Be careful.

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Took ya long enough!

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally got a new theme up on k.nu. The previous one was nice and all but I needed a change. I was waiting on inspiration, and oddly enough I got it from a damn game on my Tablet.  There’s a game called “Fashion Story” that I’m absolutely sick of playing but the color scheme for the game itself inspired me. When I showed it to Adam he said “OOH SUPER CUTE” and I told him to build something for me. He sent me a PSD with a base template, I added to it and went crazy with little tweaks and mods here and there and BOOM = New Template!

I mirrors templates that I’d done in the past. Everyone now, sticking with HTML5/CSS is going for the centered layouts with muted, but bold, colors. I wanted something completely different. There was a theme I created when I was on dork.com (over 10 years ago) that really reminded me of the theme that Adam started for me. Back then my coding skills were no where near what they are now, I think I tried to figure out what DIV tags were for that template because I’d previously used Tables and multiple frames to get everything to load. God, do you remember coding with FRAMES, that had to be the absolute WORST way to build a damn website – but no one knew any better, they just wanted to get as much information as possible onto a single page and that was the only way to do it.

I’m actually very happy that I was able to get this up and running. I know it’s not an extravagant WOW type of template, but I’m happy with it and that’s what matters.  I’ve been so busy working on numerous other things that having the downtime to get it done is really what mattered to me.  I started putzing around with it about a month ago, and was able to put the final touches on it for the last few days. I’d finished up a site that I was working on with Adam (for Kimberly J. Brown – remember her from Halloweentown?).  The site itself is ready to go in a Development folder we’re just waiting on the GreenLight to go live with it. It’s a fantastic change from the design she was previously using. It’s more hip, modern, and not located on blogger. This chick has been fully upgraded to WordPress and I’m hoping she’s super happy with the site.

My issue now is I’m at a ‘low point’ with work. So this means I’ll be working on random odd-and-end jobs to help Sean out, but I don’t have anything to personally handle on my own.  I know I’m helping him out with a site tomorrow, but then I’m jumping onto the total revamp of AGn Designs, it’s in desperate need of a facelift and I have quite a few sites to add to the portfolio.  It really sucks that I have so many NDA’s with clients, there were numerous sites that I’ve worked on that I’ve been so proud of but don’t have the ability to list them in my portfolio. One day I’ll get those kinds of sites for my own doing so I can joyfully display them, but for now I’ll just keep chugging away.

I do know that my usual boss has about 6 sites to send to me, but he’s been so damn busy with everything going on that they’re delayed at the moment.  I just hope that all of the sites he claims are coming to me aren’t going to show up mid-month in August. Our friend Colin is coming down to visit for 5 days and I really don’t want to be working the whole time he’s here. It wouldn’t be fair to him, and I already have a lot of stuff planned for us. Working would completely cut into that.

The upside to today, other than completing this, is I was able to get outside for a little while and do some much needed lawn maintenance. It’s been so long since I weed-wacked that I couldn’t even see where the bushes began and the grass ended. The grass grew straight up and over all of the trim/separators we have outside. I wacked that down straight to the dirt so I know I’ll have a few more weeks before I need to get out there again. Grass grows so damn quickly this time of year, I hate it. I wish I had a gravel yard … less maintenance.

The second upside – I found a site that makes all kinds of custom stuff for your business. It’s not vista-print – I effin’ hate them. It’s a newer site called BuildASign.com. I ordered a custom license plate, because Delaware is one of those states where you only need to have one plate on the car, so I’m utilizing the real estate that my car actually has (meaning lack of outside decoration) and I got myself a plate with AGn Designs logo printed on it. I did have to partially cancel my order with them because I chose the wrong size window decals – they were way too small for the amount of information that I actually put onto it. That was completely my fault, I know I was paying attention when I was setting everything up but I honestly didn’t even think about it being too small until my Mom had mentioned “Really, 3×5?”.  So now I’m working on getting everything larger so it’s easier to read.  The license plate should be here by the 15th. Hopefully today I’ll be ordering the larger sized decals and have them around the 15th/16th as well.

Anyone interested in a free AGn Designs window decal? I can offer free advertising to anyone interested in pasting it onto their car to aid me in a little free advertising as well.  Shoot me an email through the Contact page if you’re interested.

In any event, it’s knocking on 6am and I have an inbox to clear out so I can get some shut-eye.

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I hate wires!

Sunday, July 14th, 2013

I wish I could understand why, even living in a wireless world, I can’t fricken escape them! I just spent the last two hours pretty much ripping every single wire out of the walls/surge protectors so I could properly reorganize.  With the addition of the new computer (had to purchase a Windows machine, clients were complaining about cross-browser/cross-platform crap) I was really crunched for space on my desk, and this is something I desperately need so I’m not stuck with the overflow of paperwork I seem to accumulate for some reason.  I wound up moving the tower to the shelf next to me but that then required the printer being moved to the shelf above me, and then anything that I had on that top shelf needed to move to one behind me (that Sean put up on the wall last night), and then I needed to drag wires from underneath the house so I could move the cable box. Thank god there was extra slack.  But for now, everything WIRE related is pretty much set on where it’s going.  The only issue is having to get all of the daily essentials reorganized since everything else was shifted around.

Even with an excessive amount of shelving I feel like I don’t have enough room to properly organize this room.  I’ll wholeheartedly admit that the bed is just way too damn big for the room, but when you factor in that Sean is in a completely different room for the entire day (his private office space) there’s really no reason why I can’t make things work in here.  The only thing he’s got in here is clothes for crying out loud.  Meanwhile I’m always sitting here looking at wires and crap that just needs to be put away and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out where it all freaking needs to go.

I really need a cup of coffee, that’s got to be why my brain isn’t working right now.  I haven’t even looked at my emails today, it’s Sunday I need a damn break. Tomorrow is a completely different story, I know that I’m already completely overloaded and I also know there’s more stuff coming in.

On the upside… I’m about 50% done with the new template for Krissy.nu, took me a few years but I’ll finally have something new up.  I wish I could go back to a time when there was a new theme every month and the main income was just from sponsored posting.  Can’t do that anymore, there’s just no damn time and sitting at a computer for any longer than I already do would drive me crazy and completely kill my back.

I think it’s time for that cup of coffee.

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Busy…busy bee…

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

Life hasn’t stopped in the past few weeks, I’m honestly surprised I have an ounce of downtime to even sit here and blog but I’m doing it, and the only way to get through it will be numbers…

#1 – A new pet…
While outside for my usual 4am smoke break I couldn’t help but hear excessive meowing coming from the lawn across the street. I believed it to be either a cat in heat, or one about to give birth. So, of course, you could imagine my surprise when there was all of a sudden a little face coming out from under my car begging for attention. Me, being an animal lover by default (one of my weaknesses), I figured she’s super tiny, more than likely a kitten and very thin so she’s got to be hungry. So I threw some of Bella’s food at her – she scoffed it and kind of went away but was lingering because she was clearly feeling us out (Sean and I were both outside at this point).  She lingered so much to the point that she wound up walking around on the deck while we were sitting there.  For an animal this social there was no way in hell she was a ferral cat because if they aren’t socialized within the first 2 months of birth they typically will never like people. Obviously someone was caring for this little thing in the past but lord knows where that owner is now (it’s been 3 weeks, and to date there’s been no one looking for her).  After she hopped up in my lap I instantly knew that this had to be someones cat, even if they were only feeding her outside, she absolutely had to be someones cat.  So all of us (Karen, Sean and myself) continued to check on her during the course of the next few days. She was easy to find, she never left the porch.  Karen and I brought her to the vet where she was treated with frontline and given a distemper. The vet confirmed my thought of her being between 6 and 12 months old, she’s way too tiny to not be a kitten – no matter how malnourished she potentially was.  We kept her, regardless of the fact that Sean’s allergic to her and she was scared shitless of Bella (bull in china shop that dog is, I swear).  We got her all setup in Karen’s room, she’s been overloaded with toys and the luxury of sleeping in a super fluffy King bed with Karen (who has a feather topper on it so it’s extra damn fluffy, like sleeping on a cloud).  There’s no way in hell this cat’s going anywhere, she’s too comfortable… even though none of us are…

Why?

#2 – FUCKING FLEAS
This cats infested with fleas, well – was.  Her time spent on the deck was enough for a few of them to jump off of her and go under the house and then I’ve been playing exterminator for the past three weeks.  My legs are bitten to crap from mosquitos because I was out on the deck every single day scrubbing it down with borax, bleach, dawn (which supposedly kills them) and ammonia.  Thank goodness I was outside considering I was technically making mustard gas just to get rid of the damn bugs.  Nothing I was doing was working and we couldn’t get the exterminator to the house thanks to the absolutely dreadful weather we’ve been having.  Thankfully I did start to get things under control, and damn do we have the cleanest deck in the complex.  Mother Nature, instead of working against us (in numerous different ways) decided to work in our favor this past week and on Friday the exterminator came in and sprayed down the whole exterior of the house. For two days I didn’t see a single damn bug, and they had plenty of opportunity to pop back up. THANK GOD FOR EXTERMINATORS!  The inside of the house was treated a week and a half prior to them treating the outside. The first guy showed up on a day when it was pouring and there was a moat around the house, but he got through it and got us started on killing everything off inside of the house.  It didn’t 100% do the trick because there was still the massive infestation outside. So thankfully with the second coat on the carpet, and the coat put on the exterior of the house and the whole perimeter of the property – we’re good to go… just a bit itchy from all of the bites but at least I know they’re gone!

#3 – WORK SUCKS
I’ve been non-fucking-stop with the tight deadlines. My eyes are burning from staring at the screen all day and each deadline is getting tighter than the last. The thing that kills me, and never ceases to amaze me… Clients will take 3-4 days to get back to you and then decide they want something done in 24-hours or they won’t pay for it. Listen up dickwads… your lack of ability to read your email instead of sexting with your wife/girlfriend would probably make ME less bitchy when you do ask for something… just saying.

#4 – Travel, Travel, Travel
I feel like for the past year I’ve spent more time in my car than I have anywhere else.  While this might not seem odd, for someone who works from-home… it kind of us. Either I’m up in Baltimore, or just over the MD border on Delmarva or up on Long Island… I feel like it just doesn’t stop and I should always be prepared for a long ass car ride. The most recent one was yesterday, Sean and I are up in NY for my father and sister’s birthdays this week.  We’re rushing back on the 30th so I can get Bella to the groomer on the 2nd, and hopefully have enough time to completely clean up the house for the 4th when our friend Colin is coming down to stay with us until the 9th. And yes, there are days in between but this isn’t like driving an hour out east to visit family like we used to do. It’s a 4.5 hour car ride and when you’re dealing with traffic that number has the ability to be doubled at any given time.  Case and point – driving up here yesterday took us over 6 hours. Why? We had a nice storm following us up and major construction on the NJ Turnpike so of course getting to Long Island in a timely manor was completely thrown out the window. To make matters worse, the poor dog is in desperate need of a grooming and it was a super muggy day so it took forever for the car to properly cool off so she could be comfortable.  I felt so bad for the poor thing, she must have had a full 20 oz. bottle of water just for the ride up – she never drinks that much but could not stop panting, and even though we’re in a relatively cool house now (being maintained at 68*) she’s still panting.  I can’t wait to get her shaved.

#5 – Heat Wave…
The official first major heat-wave of the NY season (to my knowledge) is starting tomorrow. Of course I’m extremely grateful that Colin helped me to recharge the AC in the car tonight because the amount of time it takes for the damn car to cool off was pissing me off to no end.  It should not take an hour before I’m comfortable in the car when the AC is running at full blast.  It does eventually get cold, 6 hours in the car yesterday my toes were turning purple because we were absolutely frozen trying to get the dog to cool off. So you could imagine my surprise when I went into the car just after he finished with the booster and it was already cold. THANK GOD FOR COLIN!  I could not have managed getting around while I was up here without that AC being taken care of.  NO WAY IN HELL.

#6 – The week ahead..
I know off the bat that there’s two major deadlines to complete, and to top that off I’ve tacked 3 deadlines onto it that are a little more on the tricky side but at least I’ve got help.  The two major ones are under NDA with the usual boss so I can’t discuss those, but the 3 smaller ones are two personal deadlines and one kind of big deal for me.  The personal ones are knu and agndesigns. I know I talk about that all the time but I’ve finally been getting off of my ass and doing something about it.  Adam, my bestie from the Westie, has created a base theme for me utilizing a few colors that I threw at him and I finally got around to coding it so that should be up on k.nu within the next week or so.  He also created a theme for AGnDesigns for me as well based off of a few themes I fell in love with but couldn’t quite figure out how to place the sections on the page without it looking completely off balance. He took care of both of them for me and I can’t help but thank him for it.

He’s part of my “Help”, we’ve partnered up and he handles the Photoshop stuff and I code everything.  Case and point would be his domain, rockchild.net, he came up with the concept – I made it work. jQuery is in every nook and cranny of that site but it made it flashy and that’s what he was going for.  He throws a few projects my way whenever they require coding – I would love to throw him design based stuff because he can get it done so much faster but when you’re under contract it’s hard to pass things off to someone else when you know you’re the one who’s supposed to be logging the hours and need to have the ability to answer every single question on the fly at any point of the day.

The other help, which is connected to the last project, is actually my Mom.  I’ll be building the Fire Dept. website over the next few days and she’s comfortable enough playing around with just about anything you throw at her so she’s in the process of getting her bearings on WordPress as she’ll be responsible for all of the content that goes up on the site.  I’ve been able to come up with a fairly awesome template for them, jQuery up the ass, all kinds of galleries, custom post types, advanced custom fields, and fancy templates for the mailing lists that will be built into the site.  A lot of people don’t realize how advanced you can get with WordPress. It’s not just a blog, or standard CMS anymore – the possibilities really are endless.  Case and point would more than likely be Dover Downs, that site is 100% powered by WordPress.  Not many people believe me when I say it… but take a look at the source code – you’d be surprised.

In any event, it’s knocking on 1am which (oddly enough) is about two hours past my bedtime. My schedule has completely switched by 12 hours. Usually I was going to bed at 10am but now I’m ready to pass out by 10pm. I’m up by 8am (at the latest) and working all day. The plus side is I’ll be able to get myself to the beach more often this summer, I only live 2 freaking miles from it after all… and my pale ass is in desperate need of a tan.  My arms are nice and dark, but my legs (no matter what I do) are still pale as hell.  I always say that my legs are Irish and my arms are Italian, I’m typically burnt on the bottom and as dark as one of those Jersey Shore fuckers (without the Orange tint, obviously).

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Yea… so I renewed….

Sunday, April 14th, 2013

Every year I get a notification that krissy.nu will be no-more sometime in May and every year I pay my $30 to make sure I keep it mine. Why? I honestly don’t know. Even though I really have nothing to do with the ‘blogging’ world anymore, I still feel that this is a big part of my own history and can’t personally stop myself from renewing it.  There have been numerous times where I’ve just wanted to let it go and walk away, but that’s primarily because I don’t get to ENJOY the Internet the way I used to. Everything is work related, or Facebook (not gonna lie) and by the time I get down to wanting to work on something personal, my brain is completely blocked and I have no inspiration to come up with ANYTHING.

The upside? The few games that I play on my Tablet have given me a small amount of inspiration – completely referencing color schemes.  I do know that the next template on k.nu will be a little darker, but bright at the same time (if that makes any sense). I handed the color pallet over to Adam to see if there was anything that he could come up with because I was fresh out of ideas but wanted to do something with pink/black/white (in a different manor than I’d ever done before) and he’ll be playing in Photoshop to come up with something for me.

Hopefully there will be some time this summer where I can actually sit down and get something done that isn’t work related.  Thankfully the Internet is being slow-as-sin which is causing me to have to let the FTP programs run in the background while I find something else to do (ie: the reason I’m blogging).  I should be working on my old laptop to wipe Windows 7 out of it so I can hand it off to my sister, but that’s the reason the Network is so slow right now because I’m transferring 20 Gigs of files from the old laptop to my Macbook this way I at least have a back-up of all of the important stuff. (Files and Photoshop crap primarily). I could personally care less about making a list of “Important Programs” considering if it was important enough to be part of my every day life than it’s already on this thing anyway.

The only annoying thing is the internet is going to remain slow for about 5 hours.  I really do wish that I had some kind of a flash drive up here with me, or even a USB-to-USB chord so I could just drag and drop instead of heavily depending on the Wireless in the house to get the job done.

I think it’s about time I start digging through my old laptop bag to see if I even have a drive like that.  I’d rather wait 20 minutes than 5 hours.

At least I’m on a mission now.

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I really should be working…

Monday, March 11th, 2013

I’m not really sure why, but I’m having a lot of trouble concentrating today.  I’ve actually been having trouble concentrating for almost a week now. The last thing I want to do is open up Photoshop and actually get some work done.  I think it’s based on the fact that I’m just stuck in a rut that I can’t seem to wiggle my way out of.  I always want to find something completely different and unimportant.  All of the laundry is done, the kitchens clean, I’ve cooked dinner every night and even did some shopping with Karen this past weekend. As far as actually sitting down in Adobe and physically getting some work done – my brain just can’t seem to grasp it.

Even now I’m holding off on things and I have like six sites to work on and haven’t started a single one.  All I can do is think about how I need to put tonights dinner away and get myself set to watch the Monday night shows on CBS. Since those are on in 8 minutes I have the feeling they’re going to take the priority yet again.  I’m not really sure what’s wrong with me, but I can tell you that it’s completely unlike me and really not going to work in my favor.  There are numerous bills to pay, emails to answer and sites to start and my brain is just all “Nope, bedtime right?”.  Coffee doesn’t even work anymore and I’m up to over a pot a day just to hold me over and it’s still not working.

To top off everything else, I’m still looking to build a new template for here because this one is officially driving me crazy. I’m tempted to just change it over to a basic default one just so I can get by. I also know that won’t work for long because I can’t stand anything ‘Default’ that comes with a script, no matter how much customization is available its still not enough to keep me happy. I wind up spending more time on changing the temporary template than I do designing a new one.

I’m sure I’ll figure something out at some point, for now I’m going to sidetrack myself with TV until I can finally hunker down and get something done.

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Really nice weekend…

Monday, March 4th, 2013

Being 4 hours away from everything I’ve ever known has started to take it’s toll on me.  I miss my family, I miss my friends, and I’m always reminded of the friends I’ve lost over the years, especially in March being as this is when I lost two of the most important ones.  I’ll mope around quite a bit and it’s just a funk that I can’t seem to get myself out of.  But then, there’s that ray of light when you realize that you have one of the best of friends that anyone could ever ask for.

Colin and I met in middle school and maintained a friendship for 15 years, there were times when we didn’t speak to each other for years at a time but that bond has always been there.  That bond grew much stronger after Lucy passed away a few years ago, and since that point we’ve been a regular part of each others lives.  To make things even better, he and Sean are pretty much BFFs.  It’s to the point with them that I consider it more of a bromance than good friends, but either way the three of us are always happy spending time together and you can imagine my surprise when Colin says “I’m coming to DE for a few days”.  He did that this past weekend and I have to say, it’s gotten me out of my funk.

See, Colin is one of those guys that can be counted on no matter what the situation.  He’s always just a phone call away and will do just about any and everything for you.  Him coming down here for us proves that no only is he missing the crap out of us the way we miss him, but that he’s ideally one of the best friends you could ask for.

He got here on Friday night, we had a nice meal/trivia night over at Buffalo Wild Wings. He and Sean were on their XBOXs the rest of the night because it was pushing after Midnight by the time we got back to the house so of course it was a little too late to really venture out into the town being as we knew there was a pending tattoo appointment the following day for him.  Saturday was spent at Applebee’s, two tattoo shops, the arcade (with a super hyper cashier that was all over Colin) and Dover Downs because it was time to teach the guy how to use a slot machine lol.  He was enjoying himself until the Casino had taken the money he walked in there with but it’s the luck of the draw.  Sean did well, he managed to leave with the same amount of money he walked in with and that’s good enough for him.  I lost $100, but I can’t argue because I enjoyed my time there and that’s what counts.  We also hadn’t been up to a Casino in almost a year so the itch was there and all it took was telling Sean he could walk around Best Buy as the stipulation to even stepping foot in the Casino.

Sunday afternoon was spent with a quick lunch at home (He’s a sucker for my Mac & Cheese) and some video game play for the two guys.  I, for some reason, completely passed out after he left around 3:30 and then saw that it was after Midnight on the clock – my system has pretty much been messed up since.  I did get another couple of hours between 4am and 8am (tossing and turning, but I’m sure there was a substantial sleep in there somewhere), so at least I’m back on the normal schedule.  I’ve managed to completely flip mine, I’m no longer waking up at 5pm and completely wasting the day by only working at night. It also helps to be up early considering Bella’s going in for a grooming tomorrow morning and she needs to be dropped off by 9am.

So yea, while we didn’t really do a lot while he was down here we still all got to spend some quality time together that’s given me a boost of energy to get me out of my funk.

You really can’t ask for a better friend, and I honestly think this is the first time I’ve ever referred to him as a “Friend”, to us he’s more “Family” than anything.

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My gut instinct was right…

Thursday, February 21st, 2013


iceblastSo I just got off the phone with my service manager, he said that there have been some issues with two of the servers overheating and he wound up having to pull out the new dry ice machine in order to get things back up and running. I actually had a good two hour long conversation about how this is beneficial to the longevity of the server and all that jazz. Basically, the newbie in the building had no idea on what he was doing and let a few of the servers go untouched for awhile and since they weren’t properly being maintained, I personally almost had $5,000 worth of clients with no websites because of hardware failure from overheating. Yes, everything is backed up but even the back-up was looking a little grimy so John decided it was time to let the lil weenie go. Peace out weenie!

He got everything all nicely cleaned up so everything is now back up and running and I’m surfing the internet to figure out why exactly this dry ice stuff makes a difference, I always assumed it had something to do with dust buildup, in which case it made sense to have a few areas with air condensers, but this is supposedly the more beneficial solution. Google brought me over to icetechworld.com who has a fairly decent sized site informing everyone of the pros of utilizing ice blasting. I honestly thought it would wind up being too harsh on the system due to excess build up of water but it’s more of a ‘vapor’ effect so I don’t have to worry about something carrying over, and cleans just as effectively as someone going in there with some horrible chemical that will corrode the systems over time. You can view a little more information on them if you click here.

For now, I’m happy that things are back on track and clients don’t have to worry about any downtime. I’m just annoyed that it even got to that point. I’m going to have to think long and hard about allowing newbies anywhere near my systems. I’d lose way too much money every month if I didn’t have the right ducks in a row to keep everything up and running as smoothly as it is.

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What happened?

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

Things slowed down dramatically for a little while, but out of no where things have picked up to the point that I have to remind myself to breath. The few sites that I’ve been working on for the past few months have finally completed, but in their place numerous other ones popped up.  Right now I’ve got three pending and I don’t know how that even happened.  To top that off I added remodeling krissy.nu to the list because there’s been an increase in advertising inquiries and the current format doesn’t really allow for anything extra on my sidebars. I thankfully have a few drafts sitting in folders but I do need to ultimately decide which route I’m looking to take and then going from there.  I want to brighten things up dramatically and really dive into the CSS3 formatting that I’ve been using on other sites. I’m sick of generating all of my borders with Photoshop slicing up the images for me so it will be nice to build a very CSS heavy template that isn’t image heavy at all.  On top of that, Adam was sweet enough to build a template for me on AGn Designs so I’m going to code that one in the near future as well. I need to add him to my list of pending projects as I’ll be coding his new portfolio template for WordPress for him as well.  I also repurchased curvy-chick.net to utilize as a fitness/wellness blog so that’s going to take up some of my time as well.

I think I need to hire a personal assistant who just wants to sit in Photoshop all day while I code things.  Anyone interested?

Needless to say, things are getting fricken crazy.

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Can’t handle it anymore.

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013


Last year I picked up a cheap office chair, well it was expensive but it was cheaply made and it’s caused nothing but problems. I think the only chair that’s ever been super comfortable for me was a discount chair that I picked up from a local store, it only cost me $40 and it lasted 4 years and never leaned. The problem I’m having now is my $200 chair is leaning terribly to the left and it’s completely throwing off my back. I don’t know why considering it was very rarely used after it was purchased. My back was so bad that I wound up working from bed anyway. So figure 2 months of the chair just sitting there really shouldn’t have caused it to lean as badly as it is.

So fast-forward to six months later and it being moved from NY to DE – it’s worse than it was! Maybe the excessive bumps along the NJ Turnpike completely did it in, who knows. I just know that I’ve got myself set up in the kitchen just so I can sit up properly for excessive amounts of time without having to worry about my back killing me from sitting in front of Photoshop & Dreamweaver all day long.

So I decided to take a break and see if I could pick up a new chair somewhere. I don’t want to pay a high price for something that’s just going to break, so of course I’m leaning more towards a discount chair just to save a little money. Low and behold I came across chairhero.com, and of course I found Sean’s old $300 chair for $180 on this site so that got me to look through things a little more and it’s safe to say I’m going to have to continue looking through their site until I can find a new one for myself. Something tells me with the way things have been going I’ll probably be purchasing one by the end of the month anyway. I’m sure there’s quite a few of you having the same problem, we know that when you pick one up from some office retail store there’s always going to be some major design flaw with it, you can see products here to find the one that’s right for you.

They could be 100% on the ball here, after picking up a new chair I might refer to them as Hero’s by default.

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Taking a Crash Course in Advertising

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013


Since business has slowed down, Sean and I have been looking into alternative methods to bring in some money. Obviously the standard business cards don’t always do the trick – no matter how many we wind up handing out over the course of the week when we venture out into the real world. I was thinking of having some type of an 8×10 sheet printed up so I could leave them on the pin boards at local markets in hopes that someone would pull the little tab off looking for help. But in all actuality, who really advertises that way anymore? And actually brings in some kind of a profit from it? I’m talking more for ‘business’ not the local babysitter who can only handle up to two children at a time. I’m talking taking our business into the “now” where we’re out of our own home and into an office environment with multiple people working in the office and not just outsource/contracts floating around the world (as we have now)

So, since I have some pretty big dreams I’ve obviously been with the “Go Big or Go Home” mentality and was thinking forget the business cards and the pull tabs – how about some type of a poster, heck even a billboard? So I googled custom poster printing and came across shortrunposters.com, not only do they do custom poster printing but they have the ability to size and do whatever you please with your own images. So if I were to take the logo off my business cards and then put in all of the proper information I could then take my custom poster and turn it into the posters you see on the windows at bus stops (lord knows people sit there long enough – they’re bound to read something, right?) . I also thought if I come up with something big enough in the future I can have it as a custom decor for the inside of the future AGN office. You can see products here, they range from smaller printing to larger printing.

I think even someone who aren’t in the business world could benefit from their services, based on the fact that a lot of my readers do have children and I know how soccer moms love to one-up each other, so of course having custom poster printing for your kids science project or activity would make everyone else know that you pulled out the big guns for your kids benefit. I think even teachers could benefit if there were a series of rules/regulations they have in their classrooms so that they can design it however they want and just send it off to the printer.

I don’t know, I’ve got quite a few ideas going through my head right now – I just know that it’s a site that is now permanently bookmarked on my end and will be utilized for my design business (and hey, maybe even kids projects – who knows what the future holds for me there). I already sent the link over to my mom ’cause she’s always doing some big flyer work for the many things she’s running throughout the course of the year.

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Valentines Day

Monday, February 11th, 2013

db5391406cb811e28eb922000a1fbc88_7Sean was super sweet this year and bought me a 17″ MacBook Pro.  As much as I absolutely love it, being as it’s everything I’ve ever wanted – I’m also upset.  See, work has blown up and I’m back to working on five different sites at once – trying to pace myself through them instead of rushing through them this way I don’t royally mess something up. With that, I’ve yet to be able to really be able to enjoy this new lil super gadget.  I’m also having one of hell of a time patching some programs, no serial numbers I come across are actually working the way they’re supposed to and it’s driving me nuts to go have to repeat the steps numerous times every time I boot a program.  I even pulled the numbers off of the iMac (which work fine) but can’t have the same result here.  I just wish there was a physical ‘patch’ file the way there is on Windows but I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to get around it in the future.  For now I’ll just deal with it, and usually it only happens when I need to open the programs so just getting past them once and leaving the program open should pretty much do the trick for the time being.

I was very surprised to even receive the gift, honestly.  Our goal for the year was to pay down and pay off as much of our credit card debt as possible so that we can start banking something into savings to be used towards a home purchase later on down the road (yea, we’re back at that step in our lives together). So you can imagine my surprise when I dozed off one night and he woke me up by hopping into bed and pulling the super cuteness of “Guess what I just bought you?” Then the “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you since it’s not V-day yet” conversation.  So I got it out of him, which is never hard cause he loves to blab a good secret and knows I’m not big on being surprised.  (I’ve got OCD and I’m anal retentive about doing things a certain way – bad combo if you want to surprise me LOL)  So he told me that he signed up for another credit card and was approved for financing on the Macbook, and there was still more than enough left over for him to be able to order an iPad for himself.  The company has six months deferred payment and I’m not sure on the deferred interest but we anticipate having everything banked to be able to pay it off in July anyway.  So of course I was surprised, and super happy and I’m still super happy because it’s everything I’d ever wanted and more.  They aren’t making them this large anymore and I don’t care what anyone says – no matter what resolution you put things on the overall size of the screen does make a huge difference.  I’m not just putzing around on Facebook on my Macbook to be trendy – I’m utilizing it for everything Adobe – and it will really come in handy for school in the future too considering all the work I’m anticipating for the next semester anyway.  Next on the docket there is all Flash related.  I’m so into jQuery right now that Flash is probably going to completely throw me off my game but at least I’ll be able to recreate some of the funky flash-based headers I’ve been seeing around the net to be used for future clients – the only upside but whatevs.

So the mac got here last Friday and it hasn’t really left my side.  I’ve spent quite a bit of time in bed with it because I’ve got my fancy tray table to keep it sturdy and give me an actual spot for the mouse pad that doesn’t require it sitting on top of the blanket (not sure if you’ve ever tried to draw a straight line in Photoshop while your mouse is on the blanket but it’s NOT easy).  Sean, a few years ago, bought me a tray table for like $20 from Walmart, and it’s been my buddy every single time I’ve been working from bed because of my various back problems.  In this case, however, working in bed is actually causing the back problems because I’m not properly supported and sitting up the way I would be in a regular office chair.  The issue with that is the fact that my office chair is leaning like a bitch and I might have to actually cash in the warranty and pick up a new one anyway.  So for now, I’m setup in the kitchen until I can knock out a substantial amount of work tonight.  Too much needs to get done for me to worry about how often I need to stand up and stretch before I can jump back into something. That’ll throw me off my game and I can’t afford that right now.

The other upside to the month is a long-overdue client finally paid up and I was woken up yesterday to Sean sneaking around the room and opened my eyes to him saying “Are you super comfy sleeping in our bed?” Of course I was until he started talking to me (can’t function without coffee or a cig in the morning – don’t talk to me unless I’ve been outside for at least 10 minutes).  He went on to say that the client paid up and he just paid off the bed.  GE Credit must be super pissed at me because I’ve never paid an ounce of interest on my purchases before. LOL.  So yea, even though we bought it in November for about $1600, it’s completely paid off as of February and there was 6 months deferred interest on it so that wouldn’t have kicked in for a few months anyway. MWAHAHA!!

So yea, in a nutshell it’s been a pretty good year financially so far.  I’m not one of those people who chooses a ‘health kick’ as a new years resolution – I know my lack of a ‘drive’ and stick with the stuff that I know I can control. Since money makes the world go round, of course that would be the one to focus on anyway. So, our goal for this year was to pay off as much as humanly possible and so far we’ve paid off about $2,000 worth of credit cards since Jan 1st.  My only issue is there is still people who owe us a substantial amount of money and if they would get off their butts to pay us back we could continue to pay down our debt, but they’re pussy footing around and that’s just enough to be annoying for us.

It’s our ultimate goal to only have the car, insurance and the cellphone bill going out every month.  Hopefully by August that will be a possibility so we can start pushing all of the usual money that we shell out every month to bills straight into savings. The goal is to have about $25,000 in savings to put down on a house, and of course I’m super picky about how I want the house to look and the features it has because an in-law suite is mandatory for me.  It doesn’t necessarily need to be a separate dwelling, even the option to setup the basement as kind of an apartment for my dad is all that matters to me. I was looking in the general Rehoboth area, but I’ve found a few down in Selbyville and up in Dover that I fell head over heals for and now at least have a starting point.  The requirements are in-law type of a suite/dwelling – a pool (or room for one) – no HOA cause I think they’re assholes and a gourmet kitchen with plenty of room for huge family dinners because that’s what us guineas do.

Now it’s just the matter of coming up with the money for it, so I guess it’s time to get off of blogging and get back into Dreamweaver.

PS: For the last 6 months I’ve wanted to come up with a new them for krissy.nu, I may wind up just converting to the 2012 WP theme and slapping a header image in there – who knows. But one will be coming soon, I promise!

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50 Shades of Fucked Up (My Review)

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

OK, so I finally jumped on the bandwagon and read “50 Shades of Grey” by E.L. James. My only reason for doing it was not for some ‘sexual interest’ it was based solely on the fact that I wanted to know what the hell everyone has been talking about for the past six months.  I took the time to sit down and read all three of the books, each was just as disturbing as the last.   Let me just tell you that in any ‘real world’ situation this guy (Christian Grey) would have been castrated faster than he knew what hit him.  The demanding and overbearing personality wouldn’t fly right with me, and the sheer stupidity of Anna Steele blows my mind. How can someone be so well read, yet so dumb at the same time?

The book is fan-fiction for “Twilight” another fucked up phenomenon where someone in Hollywood decided to take it upon themselves to rip a book out of someones hand and make them watch the movie version instead. (They’re doing this with 50 Shades, by the way).  The characters are pretty much the same between both series of books, the only differences is more or less that the names were changed.  The best review that I’ve read on this series, and the movie, was handled by The Atlantic, you can read the article here: The ’50 Shades of Grey’ Film Will Be Better Than the Book (but Still Bad) – Noah Berlatsky – The Atlantic.

Very well said Noah, very well said.

Now, when you strip everything down it converts into a super kinky romance novel – or at least we’re to believe that’s the intent of the author.  In my humble opinion, anyone who finds nipple clamps and flogging to be even remotely “romantic” needs to suck on the exhaust pipe of a big-rig and not their husband.  Numerous “50 Shade Babies” are popping up all over the world. This is porn for soccer moms, period – point blank.

The rating of the movie is going to be NC-17, obviously the Adult industry has already begun cranking out movie after movie and while everyone is wondering if Mila Kunis is actually going to be standing around with nipple clamps on the set of “50 Shades” you can bet your ass that the actual book itself can only really be seen in the Adult movie store because that is the only industry that’s capable of getting away with horrible acting and writing and the excessive amounts of “kinky fuckery” (as coined by Anna Steele).

For those of you whom are only on the first book.  Let me help you out:

Her boss at the publishing agency hits on her, Christian fires him because he bought the company to protect her anyway. The same character (Hyde) attempts to kill Christian (and his assistant) by messing with the engine of his plane. An old sub shows up and holds Anna at gunpoint, and when Hyde (and Anna’s boss) appear in the 3rd book it’s to kidnap his Sister for the sum of 5 million dollars based solely on the fact that Hyde and Christian were actually together in the same orphanage and the Grey’s chose Christian before they looked at Jack.  Anna and Christian get married, and have a baby – the series finalizes with her being pregnant with baby #2.

So yea – when you strip it down like this – the remaining 700 pages in the series are Anna’s internal dialoge about how much she loves his bare feet, whips and cuffs and has no problem walking around government and business officials while hiding balls in her twat sheerly for his arousal.

UCK!

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