Weather concerns …

I was surprised yesterday when I saw the reports on FoxNews that Hurricane Katrina had turned and headed into the Gulf. In doing so, turned it from a Category 1 to a Category 5 hurricane. This morning they are saying that Katrina is well over Cat 5 standards, as 5 is the highest level on the scale.

They’re saying now that it should hit New Orleans head on, and is expected to completely bury the city under water, then continue inland over Mississippi and Alabama. Oh, great.

It seems that we may finally lose our NOLA. :cry:

The mayor was shown this morning ordering a mandatory evacuation, but most of those who could get out already have. Pretty much anyone left there is riding it out, and most plan on partying anyways. One guy being interviewed said “We can’t get out, so we might as well have fun.”

Esper, DaV, Pearl, Sam, and the rest of you swamp rats dear to me: Please be careful and stay safe! Drop me a line later this week letting me know how y’all are doing!!

Jim and I will be preparing work to ride out another line of storms, so unfortunately I probably won’t be online much this week. Stay safe everyone.

ARGH … Today is definitely suckin’ …

First there was the argument with Jim (although we did make up), and work is really straining both of us. I’m ready to choke a couple of the new clients we have in town this week. And the topper so far: Jim’s engine is going out. He took it in to get the A/C fixed and the engine has been making a noise. The mechanic just called and said that it’s “knocking”, which means that the engine is going and he recommended that we get rid of that car “as soon as possible.”

*sigh* I want to just go sit in a dark hole somewhere, have a good cry, and half a dozen vodka-n-coke’s.

New plug

I meant to type this up last night when I implemented it, but I fell asleep. I know, I’m such a goober, hehe.

Anyways, I was thumbing through the WordPress Wiki looking for a search mod and something caught my eye … “Bad Behavior” … the name alone hooked me.

It turns out that Michael Hampton’s Bad Behavior is a comment spam prevention tool. It monitors the traffic to your blog and helps keep evil spammers/spambots from accessing your blog, thereby preventing the deposition of steaming hot piles of crap (aka comment spam) when they visit.

Ooooooh me likie already!

I turned it on last night and left the logging option set to “verbose” just to see what all it would log … within 9 hours, I had a 12mb table full of logs! Man, it logs everything. (heh, which is probably why ‘verbose’ mode is not recommended, LOL)

Needless to say, this one’s a keeper. I fired off a feedback email to the author and added Bad Behavior’s plug link to my Toolbox.

Yay.

If I get a chance later today, I’ll post some log screenshots.   Scratch that, got something better: log snippets.

Am I Wrong?

Ladies, let me ask you something: If your man calls another woman by the same nickname or petname that he calls you, wouldn’t you be upset?

Here’s what happened: This morning Jim called a lady we both work with “Sweetie” … which is the very name he has called me ever since we first met. I have never heard him address any other person (except Jessie a few times) by this name, and I always took that as it was his name for me.

Now, I’m not jealous over this. The lady he called that is a friend of both of ours, and I know he didn’t mean anything by it, he was trying to be nice (and he has been kind of an ass around here to a lot of people lately).

But what pissed me off, and is usually the reason I get mad over “stupid shit” was the fact that when I try to explain WHY I’m upset, he blows it/me off. I felt like I was less special because what I thought was his petname for me he used on someone else, someone who wasn’t family or me. Dammit, that’s the name he has called me for the last 3 friggin’ years!

Maybe I am blowing this thing out of proportion, but I hate it when he minimilizes me and/or my feelings about something. That really pisses me off. I try to always listen to his side of things and take his feelings into consideration, but he’s so quick to dismiss mine if he thinks something’s stupid or insignificant. That makes me feel stupid or insignificant.

Am I wrong?

I’m … what? LOL

Snagged this from several friends on LJ:

I am Dr. Herbert West, from “Reanimator.”
I’m right. You’re wrong.

Which Random Cult Movie Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

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And this one that I got from DocJeff:

“Ceasless Assassination” … Hell yeah! :twisted:

Ok, scratch that idea …

I have not been able to get the LivePress thingy working, so I decided to go another route. Apparently Live Journal allows you to create an account for feeds, so I did.

Now to figure out how to link everything together … *emails a note to herself to google Michael’s and Ryan’s sites to see how they did theirs, LOL*

Cool thingies to play with …

I ran across a little gem the other day when I was looking for a file comparison program to replace the (much outdated) UltraEdit that I had been previously using. I hit up Google and one of the first results was for CSDiff.

Whoa, how could I have lived without this!?!?

It takes the existing version of the file (and/or folders!) and will markup all changes/differences. And it’s FREE!

YAY! :mrgreen:

I’ve also taken a cue from Michael‘s LiveJournal feeds and am playing with a copy of LivePress and will (hopefully) soon be posting to my LiveJournal account as well as here. (yay!)

Add a dash of melancholy …

I got home last night and had just enough time for a quick bite to eat and a quick verbal volley with Ben before heading to Jasper for Uncle Bill’s wake. It’s an hour’s drive on mostly backroads and county highways. MapQuest estimated the drive to be an hour and 3 minutes … I made it in 30 minutes flat. (yay me)

It wasn’t so much that I like to drive fast (‘cuz I do), but I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. I hate wakes. I hate funerals even more.

I saw my aunt, and my grandmother, spoke to my parents for a bit. Argued with my dad over the route I took to get there. (cripes already!)

The wake was closed casket. From what mom and my aunt had been telling me over the last few months, Uncle Bill had lost a lot of weight and was looking really frail. Cancer will do that to ya.

I only stayed about 30 minutes. I was feeling down due to other things circulating around in my head, and being there wasn’t helping. I was doing good to hold in my own sadness and lament, and being the emotional sponge that I am, I really didn’t feel strong enough to shield myself from everyone else.

Driving home, I decided to take a detour through Mt. Olive, near where I grew up. Much to my chagrin, I see Drummond’s company digging up everything in sight — mining. Acres upon acres of some of the most beautiful land I’ve ever seen were ruined. One particular set of hills (part of the tail end of the Rocky mountains, actually), I remember seeing a wolf and cub late one night on the way home. I can remember owls swooping down over the road in front of me at night, chasing after some prey. Crows, magpies, hawks, and a colorful assortment of songbirds flying about by day. Deer were always plentiful, and if you looked closely you could see them a short distance away.

And I wonder … where are they now?

Moving right along — I got a letter from BCBS. They filled the position, so that made me feel oh so MUCH better. Yep, welcome to my pity party. Here’s your invitation.

I’ve had a long week already and it’s only Tuesday. Who’s up for drinks?

God, I’m so freakin’ tired …

Yesterday felt like 3 days compacted into one. I got up early to hit Walmart to get a few extra goodies for Jessie’s surprise party. Or rather … I tried. I spent 45 minutes looking for the car keys that were in Jim’s pants pocket. (ARGH!!)

I make it to Wally World and pick up the supplies I needed. The cashier was kind enough to help me wrestle the balloons I had bought into a couple of large bags so that I could hide them from Jessie — which I was later glad I had because she was up when I got back and was doing the “Where ya been? What’d ya get me?” dance when I came through the door. LOL

She and I went by Shoney’s for an early breakfast just after sunup. She loves it there, and hey, it’s cheap. Heh, she was telling anyone that would listen to her that she was celebrating her birthday and that she just turned 8. LOL. She got a kick out of it when the staff came around and sang to her, and presented a balloon and birthday sundae. Hehehe, I loved that stuff when I was a kid too; and besides, I knew that once she got to Chuck E. Cheese’s, she’d be all about the games and wouldn’t eat anything … so I encouraged her to eat all she wanted at breakfast.

We shopped for a little bit and went back by the house to get Jim. From there, to Chuck E. Cheese, Jessie’s bouncing in her seat. She just *knew* we were going to her “most favorite place on Earth” … and she was right, LOL. Up until that point, she hadn’t seen her gifts or the balloons I had bought, so those were brought out when we got there. Jim’s mom had picked out the cake we picked out, a Spiderman cake … to match my Spiderman gift wrapping, bags, and balloons. LOL

OK, several tiring hours later, Jim leaves to go play golf, so Jessie, Jim’s mom, and I head to Fultondale for their “Founder’s Day” festival. It’s not too far from Jim’s mom’s house and I hear they always have a decent set of festivities for kids.

God, it was HOT! I was reading this morning that at 5pm yesterday, the heat index was still over 110 F.

Oh the joy of summer in the South.

We stayed there and played all sorts of games, gathered free water and various goodies, rode a few rides, etc. until around 9. I let Jessie stay up until 10:30 to play her XBox — after all, we *were* celebrating her birthday, and she rarely gets to stay up.

So needless to say, I’m exhausted. I slept in until around noon. I got a call from my mom a few minutes ago, telling me that my Uncle Bill just passed away. He’s had cancer and has been sick for a very long time.

His wake is tomorrow night, and funeral Tuesday. The only problem is that this week is our National Meeting at work, plus we are having 9 new clients in town for training this week! *9*!! We normally have 3 or 4, 5 max!

Needless to say, I’ll be lucky to be able to leave on time … leaving early for the wake will most likely not happen. I’m not happy about this, but when I try to explain it to my mother she gets upset with me.

I know my parents aren’t happy with the way my life turned out. And yes, it sucks that my work is an hour each way from my house. And the fact that Jim and I work together sometimes makes leaving early impossible when someone needs to be there. I’m a little pissed off because I know that if I can’t get off to attend Uncle Bill’s wake and/or funeral, I’m going to get a LOT of shit about it. I can’t help that. If this had been any week EXCEPT THIS ONE, it wouldn’t have been a problem.

*sigh*

Hi, welcome to my place. To your left is a rock, and that over there on the right is a hard place.

Just enough time to breathe …

OK, where’d I leave off?

Monday I got an email from a recruiter near B’ham. I had originally scheduled to go meet with him Tuesday, but had to cancel because the servers went down at work that morning (actually they had been down since the early morning hours but no one bothered to call us *bashes head in screen*), and I knew we wouldn’t be done in time enough for me to leave. However, I was able to reschedule for Thursday.

Jessie’s birthday was Tuesday, but we are celebrating it tomorrow. Jim and I are throwing her a surprise party.

Also, Neal Boortz was in town Tuesday night promoting his new book, so we got to see him. (a VERY nice man!! I’m listening to him right now in fact.) I also saw Richard Dixon and spoke with him for a little bit. (Uncle Monster, I half-expected to see YOU there!!)

Wednesday was pretty uneventful comparatively. Yesterday I had my interview with the recruiter. He seemed pretty nice, and I got the impression that they definitely wanted to fit me into a position for one (or more?) of their clients, so maybe something good will come out of that. New job = gooooooooooood. LOL

I’m a little aggravated because I need a hair cut and fresh dye job. Now, getting these things done usually make me feel good (with the exception of the cost, oy vé!) … but I have been going to the same person to have my hair done for nearly 15 years. She’s recently moved into a new shop, and her receptionist never answers the phone. I hate voicemail. Plus, my stylist is only working two or three days a week now, tops!! She opens long after I leave for work, and closes long before I’m home for work, and isn’t open on at all on weekends. Getting by there now just isn’t plausible.

So now I have to look for a new place/person to get my hair done. Plus, I have been calling said stylist for a couple of weeks leaving messages for her … I want to know what brand/color I normally have done. Oh well, sucks to be me. Her prices have gone up again recently, so maybe going elsewhere might be a little cheaper … which would be good because I’m going to be broke until after Christmas, LOL!

Here at work, we have a bunch of new clients coming in next week. Plus, the company’s national meeting is next weekend. So needless to say, everyone’s cleaning like mad and panicking over every little thing. I’m just trying to survive until 1, then we can leave. If I can make it until then without choking anyone, it’ll be a good day for me. hehehehe

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