dixiblog

• “Hate Crimes” is an utterly stupid term. As opposed to what–all those warm and fuzzy “Love Crimes?” A crime committed because the victim is a member of a given population may be a non-PC crime. What difference does it make? While despicable, it’s not more despicable than any other comparable crime committed for any other comparably stupid reason.
• People that never say, “I don’t know” are either liars or morons. Maybe both. Both are dangerous and an all-around pain in the ass.
• New-agey people who loudly proclaim to be walking, magical bundles of light and love can be some of the most self-righteous, judgemental bastards ever. “Bless you” my ass. That’s the exact equivalent of a religious person telling you you’re going to Hell, followed up with “I’ll be praying for you.” Both translate the same–”I’m better than you are, so fuck you.”
• A mouse that autoscrolls your pages every 30 seconds and randomly goes back pages while you’re trying to work can make you homicidal in about 3 minutes, tops. Trust me on this one.

I’m a big fan of Thanksgiving. I mean, c’mon.  Food, family, and a laid-back day. Unless you’re one of those poor sops that work in the mental health field or something, you pretty much always have the day off. (One of the myriad of reason’s I’m not anymore.) It also probably helps that I almost never spend Holidays with people I don’t enjoy, too. I know some aren’t so lucky. (Ya could say I’m thankful about it. Har!)

But the big deal isn’t the origin to me, or the perks of a day of planned indulgence. It’s the whole “being thankful” gig. I try to incorporate that concept into my daily existance because it leaves me a happier person.  It’s a simple calculation, really.

Thinking about the stuff I don’t dig makes me sad.

Thinking about the stuff I do dig makes me happy. I can chose to focus on either. Which would you recommend?

MST3K

My Thanksgiving started with some coffee, and then I put turkey in and got our dinner started. Kicking around the house, and later watching some MysteryScienceTheater 3000 DVDs. Among them, we’ll have to watch Mitchell. That’s one of our Thanksgiving traditions, too.

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all!

I’m back from the store. My kid is helping me put away the groceries.

“Eyeww!” she groans.

“What?” I think she’s spilled something or doesn’t like some food I bought.

Contraceptives = Happy Fun Time

“That.” She points gingerly towards the box, making sure she doesn’t get close enough to touch it. Contraceptives.

“OHHHHH! That?! Heck, that’s not gross. That’s nine times of Happy-Funtime!”

“Happy Funtime? Mom, I can’t believe you said that.” She shakes her head with an slight smile that she doesn’t try very hard to hide. She’s used to my rambling.

“Birth control is great! Birth control rocks! What’s icky is the idea of a little brother or sister for you!”

“Good point.”

“I like buying contraceptives. It’s fun! I think next time we go to the store, I’m going to buy a whole bunch! Ten boxes. A cartful. The next time you come with me.”

“OH NO you aren’t! You’re not going to buy a cartful of those things while I”m with you!!”

“Aww, why not? It would be more fun that way.” The thought made me giggle.

“More fun? So you’re saying it would still be fun even if you weren’t just trying to embarrass me?”

“Well, yeah.  Sure. A little. It would still be a little fun. But not nearly as much as if you were there. That would be waaaaayyyyyy more fun! Way more fun!!”

“You’re insane,” she says.

You’d be suprised at how many of our conversations seem to end that way. I also notice she doesn’t go to the grocery store with me much anymore. Like ever. But I think that’s just a coincidence.

 
photo credit: irina slutsky

SA

I’ve rescinded my boycott of Salvation Army/ For now. My giving to the Salvation Army–or not– has changed a lot over the years.

When I was a kid, we did NOT give money to other religious organizations. We were witnesses, and you didn’t contribute to other churches, period.

I grew up, I would give to them sometimes. Other times, I’d want nothing to do with an organization that smelled of any flavor of organized religion.

Or I’d give my kids money to donate, to help teach them about helpign others. Or maybe I’d think the idea of forcing recipients of assistance to listen to religous beliefs was wrong at that point. I was kinda sensitive on the issue of making your own decisions, as that right had cost me a lot in my own life. It just changed a lot.

Last no-Salvation-Army-donations binge I had, was a direct result of two things: my working in the social services field, and my personal experience of someone who frequented SA (and similar services). more…

pay attention to your domain contact info

I did something this week I can never remember doing in my business, for the full 8 years of operation. I told a client I believed their web designer/host was behaving unethically.

And that was weird for me. I go out of my way NOT to trash other service providers. Besides the concept of professional courtesy, I just don’t think badmouthing the competition is the way to do business. I am not trying to talk clients out of other service providers. I am presenting the case for me…this is a very different approach, and one that I am infinitely more comfortable with.

Not to say it’s not challenging sometimes, too–web design has a very low entry bar in general. A lot of people get themselves a copy of FrontPage, spend a few hours “learning their craft,” such that it is, and think they’d like to quit their day job for the freedom and glamour and easy money of working for themselves.

I try not to laugh too hard. Because I wasn’t that clued in myself at first. more…

odd day

i had an odd day today.

twice today i had to specifically decide whether or not to take on someone else’s problems. wildly different situations, but that’s what they boiled down to.

both times, i opted out. both required some energy and stimulated some emotion, but neither was gut-wrenching. and, in both cases, i think my decision to pass was a good one for me.

and that made for an odd day. i’m okay. happy, really. because i can manage my own happiness. I just can’t manage anybody elses.

photo credit: DonnaGrayson

The plant I adopted from the dumpster and my morning LC coffee.

Jewels and Poupon

Jewels is almost recovered from her accident. Her ears, while quite possibly still a little tender, are pretty much healed up. She still has a small tuft of fur at the end of her tail that looks like it’s going to come off (her “lion tail,” we call it), but the fur she lost on the rest of her tail grew back!

I was really glad her tail fur is growing back. And she seems to feel fine. She hasn’t been back to the vet (and I probably won’t take her unless I see some need for additional help).

I’m so glad!

Wanna know what I did today? Well, today, I worked some more on organizing my email, did some errands, did some laundry, cooked dinner, did a little work, and and tried to decide if I want to turn my business into an LLC. (There’s a deal going in a couple of weeks where you can do it for only filing fees, i.e. get free filing assisantance.)

See, this is why, when people ask me what’s going on, I say, “Nothing!” I don’t want to be responsible for anybody getting knocked into a boredom coma.

email headaches

My email is a mess. Seriously.

I know you may not care. Probably not. But I do. This actually impacts my life. I have about 25 email addresses, plus another 75 or so that get directed at me as the “postmaster” of my web server, although those don’t get much action. I get work email, personal email, spam (yuck), and a stack of webserver updates each day–all day, every day. My Outlook email file got corrupted, and some of the email addresses weren’t set up right, and some had multiple inboxes I couldn’t delete: it was an out and out mess.

So I’ve been working on it, for a few hours. Yep, hours. I set up a new mail profile in Outlook. I streamlined my email addresses, using forwards wherever possible to cut down on the number of individual emails getting checked. And I set them all to filter through gmail first, to use that as the “base” and add extra spam filters to the mix.

Currently, I’m trying to import the Calendar and contact info and inbox from the old profile to the new, cleaner, gmail profile. It’s taking FOR-EV-ER. I have no idea how all the settings are going to play together and “flow,” I guess it is. This is geekier than I care to get most of the time. I just want to be able to work and play without thinking about it. But sometimes, that means before you start, you have to think about it.

My Happy Butterfly Pic

You know, it’s funny how much you take this stuff for granted, that it will go easy, smooth, until you have to fix it and figure it all out again. I guess this is another incident of necessity kicking my butt to do what I needed to do anyway. (I can’t be the only one, can I?) My email organization system worked fine for a long time, but I’ve outgrown it. The result is tha stuff gets lost and buried in the avalance I get. and that isn’t exactly good for business.

This is after spending this morning restoring my beloved iPhone, which had crashed for reasons unknown, and therefore required a restore and re-jailbreak. Can’t have an unliberated iPhone, damnit. Then I couldn’t put my pretty butterfly pic in the background and stuff.

Sheesh. Making things easy can be a lot of trouble sometimes.