Now, there are ups and downs to being on a small host – the upside is that this rarely happens, because you have to know the place exists in order to hack it. And you have to care enough. So this doesn’t happen frequently by any means. HOWEVER…

…when it DOES HAPPEN it’s a PAIN. Because it’s a small company. No one’s there to answer the phone, no one can answer any questions, and the problem is never solved quickly or easily. I mean, they got it done in about 48 hours from what I can tell, but that wasn’t quite fast enough for us, as we had a networking meet last night we had to skip, because that’s…a lot of first impressions to blow if people look up the sites right there and then, as current tech allows people to do.

So while I DO love VividHosting (seriously, they’re awesome – unlimited emails, additional domains, it’s kickass) it’s kinda a pain when something goes wrong to not have the kind of coverage/protection the big boys provide.

On the other hand, we have one account and, like, seven sites, all hosted neatly and cleanly under their own domains and accessible from one central place. So I should stop complaining :p

We can scrounge up the money, there are lots of options, since we’re only trying go to get through one month – but she’s…

I may kill her.

Apparently, while this is something she needs to do (which we all agree when she explained it – we support her entirely) – she does not do well not making money. I wonder if she realizes this. But she’s been in one SHITTY mood since she made the decision.

Half of it might be that she’s scared. But a good portion of it is just old-fashioned bitchiness.

This is going to be a very long three weeks.

I need money.

See? Simple. Straightforward. But see, most people, they’d go get a job. I can do that! I’m very hireable. But see, that’s where you and I differ, because, as Amy says in Dr. Who – here’s where it gets complicated.

If I go get a job, I won’t have time to write Better Papers Mean Better Grades, a book in a series that are planning to put out. If I don’t write the book, we don’t put the series out. And then not only am I out money, I’ve let down a company.

Also, if I go get a job, I am locked into a paycheck and can’t start building a career in Ghostwriting, which is what I want to do. Getting a job means stalling my career even farther, and if I don’t START that career until I’m thirty, I’ll lose quite a bit of credibility with potential clients.

Likewise, if I get a job, I won’t be here in the house, to support my mother, who needs it, quite desperately.

But I’m broke as shit. I have $30. I’m in deep trouble.

FUCK.

On April 16th, 2010, he went into the hospital. And came out a week later. Then back in. Then out. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. May 29th, we were told he had stage 4 cancer.

He’d had it since November – when they diagnosed him with pancreatitis. And sent him home with a diet. He hadn’t had pacreatitis. He had cancer. And no one ever bothered to test him for it. No one did any scans. And every doctor was shocked that no one else had done that – and then didn’t do it themselves.

May 29th, he was given six to twelve months to live. He asked my mother how he was going to live that long if he couldn’t EAT. He said he’d be dead in a month.

On June 28th, at around 10am (I’d been up all night so I’m hazy about the time) he passed away.

I really hated it when he was right. He was always right. And I always hated it.

At the memorial service, his brother-by-love, who he met in pre-school, and who was his closest friend to the very end, said he was always asking “Is it enough?”. When he was on stage, “Was that enough? Loud enough? Hard enough? Soft enough? Energetic enough?” “Did I study hard enough for that test?” “I got all A’s – think that’s enough?” My uncle, at the service, said “Yes, Tom…it was enough.”

No. It was not. That’s BULLSHIT. It was not enough. It wasn’t enough yelling, or pounding, or fit-throwing. It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t have been a bigger asshole. But it was NOT ENOUGH. It’s a year later, and I would give anything for him to scream at me to turn off the fucking air conditioner, to demand where the FUCK HIS SUNGLASSES are, to ask what the HELL I’m doing up so late, or why I can’t fucking keep it down while he’s trying to sleep. To come into my office, sigh at me, and sit down, and start eating the food he brought home for only him, no one else – because he was lonely in the livingroom.

To call at fucking three AM on his way home from a gig, to ask if there’s ice in the house. And then to demand that I wake my mother up, who’ll yell at me, because how DARE I come between them, he wants to talk to his WIFE.

To demand at two AM that I get up and play cards with him because I WILL REGRET not doing so some day! (FYI – THAT I do NOT regret. I had a midterm the next morning. I would have flunked. I played with him the night before and the night after.)

…but mostly…I would give anything to get up at eight AM, go into the kitchen, and find a chocolate-frosted donut bar, thick and heavy, waiting for me, because he went through DK’s on his way home and brought me a donut for breakfast because he hadn’t gotten to see me in days.

And I’d absolutely kill for him to come into my room at 3am, kneel next to my bed, put his head on my tummy, and just fall asleep there, because he missed me.

It. Was. NOT. ENOUGH.

That being said…sometimes, guys, an orange is just an orange. And sometimes, a joke is JUST A JOKE.

RE: A JOKE – http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/8/11/

That. Is. A. JOKE. It’s a funny as hell World Of Warcraft reference, to a real quest that you have to do as a Worgen, one of the new species, and it was posted during the beta of Cataclysm.

To take it more seriously than that is ridiculous. If nothing else, their archives show a flippant sarcastic attitude towards pretty much everything, so one would assume that if you read their strip, you have a sense of humor and know how to take a joke.

Yeah, apparently not so much.

Now, the person keeping track is just keeping track. I mean him no ill will…but I am linking there so you can SEE how ridiculous this whole damned thing is:

http://debacle.tumblr.com/

Guys, really? REALLY?! Do you KNOW how stupid this looks? How long has the stick BEEN up your asses? It was a COMIC about a GAME in which it made sideways references to NON-EXISTENT CREATURES doing something offensive. It made SEVERAL.

Where the hell is Tosh.0 in this? Does anyone watch his show? If we’re all so damned up in arms about a COMIC STRIP, why aren’t we hearing left and right about his constant rape jokes?

Know why?

No, really, guess.

I’ll give you a few minutes.

Oh, you got it? Yeah, figured you would. It’s because there are exactly two kinds of people in this world – the kind that can laugh at themselves, and the kind that can’t …and apparently, from what I’ve seen, the kind that can’t have some kind of vendetta against Penny Arcade. They’ve had more legal issues during their reign online than ANY OTHER SITE.

And most of it is JUST THIS FUCKIN’ STUPID.

People, y’all need to give it a rest. If you don’t like the strip – and yes, granted, it’s not for everyone – don’t. Read. It. I mean, it’s not even like a TV show you have to flip past and catch a few minutes of. It’s a WEBSITE. It’s not exactly hard to avoid. You DON’T GO THERE.

Or maybe that’s too logical for these people?

Where the hell is the up in arms about http://www.menarebetterthanwomen.com/ ??

Hey, check this out: http://www.womenarebetterthanmen.com/

YES! It’s a redirect back to the first site! They BOUGHT THEIR OPPOSING URL to avoid letting women have a rival site!!!

Yet, I don’t see almost anything on them. What I see on a google search are articles from their site, titles such as: “Women would vote for Hitler” and “Every Woman is a Cheating Whore”.

But a COMIC strip. That’s what we’re in arms about?

Priorities, people. You fail to have them.

Technology these days is starting to piss me off.

OK, now I shall explain.

I love email – email’s great. You can communicate with someone, and it’s not unreasonable that if you don’t feel like doing it, you don’t have to answer someone. It’s email. I got your message. Thanks. I didn’t have anything to say to it, so I didn’t. That works. Awesome. I don’t even really have an issue with instant messages, though people tend to be pushy about getting responses from you on them. I can just let that go – if nothing else, there are blocking settings on almost every client, so if you don’t feel like talking to someone, you can just appear offline to them. Works out great.

You know, like how you just DON’T answer the PHONE. Yeah, I screen. I screened when you had to have a little machine with a cassette tape in it, too. You wanna make something of it?

Here’s where I get pissed – someone texts me. I do not have the time or interest to reply to them. I’m not in the headspace to answer their question, and I actually don’t have an answer anyway. I close the text and go back to work, because…yeah. I work. It’s that funny thing you do most of your day so you can pay for stuff.

And now, you see, we come to the problem: I. Do not. Have time. To stop every time you text me to answer you. Nor, by the way, do you have the right to demand it of me. If you do, you are one of two people – my mother or my fiance. And hey, guess what? If you’re one of those people, you won’t demand it!

So when you text me during the day and don’t get a reply right away, and your answer to that is to just keep texting? You have now guaranteed that I will never answer you…because now, instead of just texting and realizing that I will get to you when I have time and feel like it, you’re making serious demands of me. You have decided that I have time for you whenever you feel the urge to pick up your phone and type, and if I don’t, then I’m just a bitch.

OH! And when you call, to ask a sibling if I’m mad at you, because I haven’t texted you back in a week? What the HELL is that? I have never, ever, not once, given any indication to you that I am at your beck and call, and that I will answer any message you send me the very damn instant you send it. You have your schedule and I have mine – and I hate to tell you this, but mine does NOT revolve around YOURS. Not only that, but I am not required to answer you at all! No, that doesn’t mean I’m mad at you, it means I didn’t feel like answering. I do not want to have a conversation with you in texts. That’s not an insult…it’s just a fact.

But there’s pressure – society assumes you will text. It assumes you will answer texts when you get them. And therefore, I am rude because YOU made an assumption on MY time that I did not fulfill.

Remember letters? You know, back when you’d sit down, pen and paper in hand, and write something out to someone. You’d then put it in an envelope, stamp and address said envelope, and mail your message.

The other person would get the letter. And if they didn’t reply? OK, it’s annoying. But they had WEEKS to make that decision, and because most people set aside time to ‘catch up on correspondence’, you probably got an answer eventually. You didn’t expect it THAT SECOND, you didn’t assume they had nothing better to do than talk to you about whatever you feel like talking about, or help you with whatever problem you had, whether or not it was relevant to their life. Mail was polite.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, you still don’t have that right, and neither do I. Texting is not an excuse to assume someone else is at your beck and call. And I am not going to treat it that way. I have a life. It does not revolve around random people who happen to have my cell number. You cannot demand that I stop everything I’m doing to text with you, just because you feel like it.

And don’t call my family demanding that I bend to your whim. Because now, I will probably never answer your texts again.

/rant

And yes, I’m about to complain about Trade Chat in World Of Warcraft. :p Hush, you.

I would like to know when wanting to actually discuss a TRADE topic, as in, look for something for to BUY, in TRADE CHAT became the big no-no

And I’d really like to know when, exactly, it became a forum for bitchy teens to complain to each other about how badly they raid.

Now, I know that the answer to these questions is “when the game was created” and “what the hell do you care?”.

I don’t. It’s more that I finally got fed up of asking to buy something eight times and being COMPLETELY ignored in favor of the drivel.

Oh, hey, they noticed, though, when I complained about it! -sighs-

Normally, my posts are a bit more thought out. And more important. And less stupid. I’m aware. This is stupid. VERY stupid, as a matter of fact, since I know I am sitting here ranting about a large group of teenagers, and at age 27 (almost 28, oh god, no…) I really should be more mature than this.

But damnit, my father died three months ago. I’m not doing well. And I just wanted to fuckin’ buy a damned gem!

OK. Done ranting now.

OH! OH! NaNoWriMo is coming up! Get your ideas ready, you only have a month to go! 50k words in 30 days. You can DO IT!!!

My setup’s just a bit different. My sidebar’s on the far left side instead of right, but that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.

I don’t have a taskbar.

I hate the taskbar. Seriously, I do. I hate it’s uniformity, I hate the way the start button looks, I hate everything about it, and I hate that it doesn’t MOVE. So I took it off. Now, other people do this as well; but mostly, people HIDE their taskbar. And then when you hover your mouse at the bottom edge of the screen, it pops back up again!

Mine’s gone.

Instead, I have a program called Object Dock. I paid for this program many years ago, along with WindowBlinds and several other Stardock products, because I’m a customizing freak – but really, the only one I find irreplaceable is Object Dock.

And therein lays the biggest problem people find, sitting down cold at my computer.

There are no icons on my desktop. I like to see the picture. Therefore, I have what’s known as a tabbed drawer docked at the top of my screen, and more shortcuts than god EVER intended to sit on a desktop will fit into it, neatly tucked away, sliding out whenever I hover over it.

This doesn’t solve the issue of the taskbar, but that’s my favorite part. I have a dock, far right of the screen, attached at the top, piling down, of all my open programs. This, in fact, is the major reason I will probably always use Object Dock. Always, always, always: I can reorder the icons so that like programs are together, or stuff I want to get to in a hurry are easier to reach. Do you understand? I can drag and drop the icons into any order I want.

But that’s not the best part!! I spent a lot of time IMing, and you know how a window blinks a color at you when you get a new IM on a normal taskbar. It blinks a bit, then stays lit, and there’s this bright color glaring at you…and that I missed after the first four times, since I got used to random programs doing that.

These icons bounce. Why? Because I told ‘em to. They can do any number of things, but it really gets my attention when an icon starts dancing around at the top of my screen, looking for my attention.

And of course, I have a small dock at the bottom of the right edge of my screen, with a start button.

Apparently, this is where I confused my friend. They sat down, stared at the screen, and couldn’t find Start. I clicked it, and eyes got somehow wider. Apparently, it’s completely unnatural, and horribly evil to have a start button in the bottom right corner. I was unaware of this fact.

What this has brought to my attention is that I clearly cannot sell this computer to buy a new one. See, I’d have to write down what every single shortcut in my tabs were, and redo them by hand and just…hope they’re right. There’s no way. So I have to figure out a way to get a new computer before I sell this one. At which point, there’s no much use in selling this one – I can hand it off to my mother, so she can take it to her classes.

OH! Speaking of classes! Head over to Claudia Suzanne’s site, and check out her early bird special for Ghostwriter Certification Training! If you want to make a living as a writer, there’s no better way!

And I promise, when she walks in with a computer, it’ll be a perfectly normal setup. But that’s likely the only normal thing about her – just a warning.

I’m sitting here in the ICU lounge at St. Joseph’s Hospital, just sitting – my father’s in ICU and I don’t want to be at home if something happens. It happened the other night, when we went home to get some sleep, and now I’m afraid to leave.

Thus, I’m sitting here. And because I’m sitting here, I’m looking for stuff to do. They have free wireless, yay! So FaceBook, Twitter, and Google Reader have filled many hours, for which I am grateful. However…I ran out of things to do several hours ago.

Now, many of you know that this is now a WordPress site. It is a WordPress site because I am lazy, and I do not have the time or energy to do constantly current web designs for my own site. Hell, I rarely take web design gigs at all anymore, because it’s SO labor intensive for SO little money. Therefore, I took the lazy way out and put up WordPress to make my life easier and make the site easier on the eyes and more easily changed.

Therein lays my new addiction. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is something like the SEVENTIETH template I’ve had up today. And I’m still playing with them. They’re RIDICULOUSLY easy to upload and activate, to play with, to change and arrange, and it’s like I find one that I like, but there might be one better! And so I keep looking. And installing. And changing. And playing. And oh my god is this addicting!

So, thank you all who sent me good wishes and my father good wishes, and thank you all for not making a huge deal that my site’s changed eighteen thousand times today, because it’s likely to keep changing this week. WHO KNOWS what it’ll look like when I’m done!

OK! Down to business.

First off, thank  you for the people who’ve commented on my blog posts here, and I am quite sorry it took me so long to approve the comments. Believe it or not, this tiny little, backwater, hole-in-the-wall blog seems to attract spammers by the boatload, and I spent a half hour today removing spam before I found the few comments that were gold. So thank you, you’re approved, and I will try VERY hard not to let ANYTHING sit as long as those comments did.

Item two! I need something more visually interesting here on the blog, so I’ll be looking through/working on/screwing around with wordpress themes today after my meeting and tomorrow. If you’ve seen a particularly fascinating one that you think I should consider using, pop me an email at trinitylast [at] gmail.com and I’ll absolutly go look, and probably appreciate it beyond words.

Last but not least! I was apparently featured on Dreaming Of Butterflies and never knew it, and it was a huge compliment as well. Thank you, VERY much Weasel. I was so shocked when I saw the referral that I think my mouth dropped open. You paid me a beautiful compliment and I am blushing from my head to my toes.

NOW! Before you take off and go about your internet lives none-the-wiser, put your headphones on and go over to Limonshire and wish Fizzylimon a belated birthday wish, and watch one of the most entertaining and (sometimes) profound vloggers on the intarwebs today. You’ll thank me later.

Go. Shoo.