Merry Christmas!

I’ve done it … I have lived through this holiday without killing any of my family members or loved ones. *lol*

I think this has been the most stressful Christmas ever — due mainly to hectic work schedules, hectic family schedules, arguments over which family invitations to accept and which to decline, financial worries, and last but not least: PMS. LOL. But at least it’s now over!

Work has been mega busy. I’ve been backed up for months and am *finally* starting to catch up a little bit … until a client decided that he wanted his whole site re-done from scratch again for the 4th bloody time! Oh well, it’s a job … and it pays the bills enough to justify putting up with that crap until I find a better one.

The family is doing well. We were a bit hurried because we had to go all over Alabama to see both mine and Jim’s relatives. We spent Christmas Eve night at my aunt’s house for my Dad’s family Christmas. Jessie had an absolute ball … everyone there adores her and she entertained and “cute’d” her way around each and every one of my relatives. LOL

The funniest thing to me was her reaction to my uncles trophies in the living room. See, my uncle is an avid hunter. He has all sorts of stuffed/mounted ‘critters’ in his den — deer, ducks, birds, turkeys, squirrels, foxes, … you name it, he’s killed, eaten, and/or stuffed it. Jessie was absolutely fascinated with all of them and wanted to touch everything within reach! (Me, I was terrified of them at her age … especially the mounted deer!)

We spent part of today with Jim’s mother. Ate a ton of food. We had to drop Jessie off with her mom. Jim and I then went to visit my parents, ate even more food … and received a ton of clothes from my parents. I swear, I think my mother must’ve brought home half the Galleria!

I was up until 2am this morning wrapping “Santa’s” gifts to Jessie, so my back is killing me and I’m a little tired. (and she had me up at 6! oh, to be young again)

I think I’m going to chill out with the Raiders and Chiefs game. (Go KC!)

Merry Christmas, Merry Yule, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Holidays, … or whatever it is you celebrate — I hope it’s a good one.

BellSloth strikes again!

I said it once and I’ll say it again, I hate Bellsouth — better known as BellSloth down here, because their Tech Support moves slower than molasses in January.

It all started a couple of weeks ago. I was making updates to this and a couple other of my sites from home … I was unable to hit them, or my webhost consistently. After about two hours of pulling out my hair, I was finally able to get through and emailed my webhost. I also fired off an email to Bellsouth’s Tech Support asking if there were any network problems in my area … because let’s face it, their network status page is a joke.

On a hunch, I also decided to hit up MegaProxy to see if the problem was on their end or mine … it was on mine, oh joy. Bellsouth responded saying nothing was going on and to clear out my cache (typical BS response). However, Lunarpages was a lot more help, passing along a DSLReports link letting me know that Bellsouth had been having DNS issues since the 1st of the month … oh great. And what’s worse, it’s almost the end of December and it is STILL not fixed! 3 emails later, still no response from BellSloth … what tech support?

Anyways, I was able to get a semi-fix by installing a freeware DNS program called TreeWalk. I’m able to surf pretty well for the most part … for now.

I also fired off a very heated email to BellSloth’s DNS Support address I found on the Florida BS DNS thread — which I doubt will do any good considering that BellSloth has had DNS issues off and on ever since they started offering DSL … that, and they rarely respond to my emails unless it’s with a generic “it’s not our fault” answer.

Cable is starting to look better … upload speed or not …

The only thing is, I hate Charter more than I hate Bellsouth.

Finally!

Ok, I’ve fixed the blog template to match the main page, sucessfully imported and formatted all of my old Blogger account entries, and am now making a post in the new software. (YAY!)

Now to re-write the rest of my site. (UGH!) That’s ok … I just got 5 cases of Mountain Dew from my folks, and a pizza from PizzaHut … I’m putting on The Fellowship of the Ring for background noise and am gonna sit in my chair and code. (YEAH!)