Art by MeddygonThere is a fine line \ Between genius and madness. \ It is called timing.

OLDER:

I’m older than I’ve ever been.
And now I’m even older.
And now I’m even older.
And now I’m even older.

I’m older than I’ve ever been.
And now I’m even older.
And now I’m older still.

TIME! Is marching on.
And time.. is still marching on.
This day will soon be at an end and now it’s even sooner.
And now it’s even sooner.
And now it’s even sooner.
This day will soon be at an end and now it’s even sooner.
And now it’s even sooner.
And now it’s sooner still.

You’re older than you’ve ever been.
And now you’re even older.
And now you’re even older.
And now you’re even older.

I’m older than I’ve ever been.
And now I’m even older.
And now I’m even older.
And now I’m even older.

I’m older than I’ve ever been.
And now I’m even older.
And now I’m older still.

Fedex attempted to deliver my birthday present today, but a signature was required and no one was home to receive it. My class let out early, so I decided to go to the Fedex shipping center to pick it up. The customer counter closed at 8; I left the campus at 7:15.
On the highway, someone decided to go 45 in the left lane (speed limit 60) until the moment I moved into the right lane to pass them. Then they went 75 (I was going 67 the whole time) and got way ahead of me, then moved into the center lane. I caught up to them again, as they had once again decided to go 45. I passed them in the left lane, then moved all the way to the right to make my exit.

Off the highway, I followed my GPS directions to the proper road to get to Fedex. Once I arrived, I was faced with a temporary “ONE WAY” sign pointing the opposite direction I needed to go. There’s construction down the entire stretch of roadway. The time was 7:50. I had 10 minutes to turn around and follow the detour. Thankfully, the detour only took 7.

Inside the Fedex shipping center, I provide the CSR my tracking number. They inform me that the driver is not in yet, and has not given them an ETA.

I had one more errand, I needed to sign some papers to finish filing my taxes with HR Block. The tax agent spent more time on the phone for a personal call than she did with me, but I can forgive her. She got screwed by a vehicle rental company. They told her previously they’d have a 12 person van delivered to her door before she got home from work. The phone call she received at 8:30 (her shift ended at 9) was to tell her they didn’t actually have a 12 person van at all, and could offer her NOTHING to rectify the situation, not even give her two smaller vans.

The good news for today is that I got someone hooked up with contacts to get them the training they need to keep their clients.

“Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.”

Today we finally spent a Best Buy gift card from my parents. It was originally for a USB turntable, but I could never find a decent deal for one from Best Buy so we bought games and music instead.
Games:
Pikmin for Wii
Spirit Tracks for DS

Music:
White Stripes – Icky Thump
White Stripes – Elephant
Ratatat – Classics
Mika – Life in Cartoon Motion
The Raconteurs – Broken Boy Soldiers
Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster [Deluxe Edition]
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

And now the music we forgot to post from Christmas:
Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You
Cake – Prolonging The Magic
ZZ Top – Rancho Texicano
Muse – The Resistance
The Prodigy – Invaders Must Die
Mika – The Boy Who Knew Too Much

And more music that we got and didn’t post about between today and Christmas:
Weezer – Raditude [Deluxe Edition]
OK Go – Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
OK Go – OK Go

Some day I’m going to post a huge list of all our legally purchased music that we keep mp3s of with links to go buy it yourself. Of course, if you’re a friend, you can always borrow our CDs.

from http://www.layeggistrue.com/

oh look I can still draw

As usual, click the image for the larger version.
I don’t know who this guy is other than he’s a warrior and probably hangs out with the Necromantrix somewhere. The name Ofydd came from a random name generator, and I stuck with Welsh again.

First I run into Pflugerville, now this?

View Larger Map

Before:

After:

From Jonas 6mo+

Let me tell you something about the Something Store. Avid readers (*snerk*) may remember my previous post about the site. After reviewing my Google Checkout history, I’ve ordered 51 Somethings since November of last year. Wowzers! No wonder they were willing to help me with a slight problem regarding our office gift exchange.

I ordered 19 somethings for the 19 participants of the gift exchange this year. We each drew names of the others, and the plan was to pick a something to give to drawn person. I thought it’d be a little more interesting than handing $10 gift cards to each other. Another coworker and I peeked at each of the gifts to separate the girl gifts, boy gifts, and gender-neutral ones. We soon found out that we had more girl gifts than we had girls participating.

I immediately emailed the Something Store, and within twenty minutes I had a response: They were sending me three new somethings, free of charge.

Above and beyond customer service, all the time. I love shopping the Something Store.

From Jonas 6mo+

(oh and he’s starting to crawl.)

One of my classmates for this online physics class from CSU sent out an email to all other online students that she thought the midterm exam was unfair because it focused on equations. “Especially Joules” she commented. 16 questions on the test. She brought in five pages of notes. The email from the professor said that there would be 16 questions, that they would be based on the homework, and a calculator would be useful. The homework was mostly equations. I was under the impression that physics is mostly equations. I don’t know where she got the idea that she needed notes on history ore the examples given in the book.

Along with the city of Soddy Daisy, TN, your name makes me giggle.

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I have a feeling that if service providers of any service hired better programmers, their automated systems wouldn’t screw up as much and they wouldn’t have to hire customer service reps to repair the problems caused by the automated systems dropping the ball.

A script checked off a few things on our healthcare and decided to reject all the claims for Jonas because he had a different insurance for his first visit to the pediatrician. A phone call corrected the issue without any hassle.

An online request form automatically approved us for a budget payment plan of $100 for our electric bill. I called their customer service today to inquire why my bill was more than that, and, according to the CSR, it shouldn’t even have allowed me to sign up due to us using NOPEC.

Maybe a throng of CSRs is cheaper than a skilled programmer on retainer.

the detail (what little there is) is lost in the smaller version
oh well

Yup. A blue seahorse. To go with the purple octopus and orange fish.

Last Saturday, my son woke up around eight at night with some goobers in his eyes. Turns out he had pinkeye. Got some eye drops for him and it cleared up. I warned my coworker who had come over that day with her daughter to watch out for it in case her kid got it.

Last Monday, I went to the doctor because my back was killing me. For my lower back, he cracked it and all was good. For my upper back, he wanted me to start taking my muscle relaxants again. I stopped taking them due to breastfeeding, so now I just get to live with the pain and hope Tylenol will work.

Last Tuesday, I woke up feeling as if I’d swallowed barbed wire. I called off work and slept in. Eventually this great glob of blood and mucus came out of my nose, ( gross) straight from my sinuses. It came out while I was breathing normally, no coughing or blowing. I felt better for a while.

Last Wednesday, I went to work feeling one hundred percent better than I had on Monday. I had to leave early, though, because my son had a fever.

Last Thursday, the guy who sits next to me at work called off. I started having coughing fits. My husband stayed home with our son since he couldn’t go to day care.

Last Friday, I was having coughing fits pretty regularly. I felt fine, except for the coughing.

Yesterday, I couldn’t sleep through the night due to the coughing. I waited until my husband got up and slept fitfully during the morning.

Today, I’m up again for the same reasons, except now I have pinkeye.

Woke up.
Backache+
Pills, back brace.
Backache-
Headache+
Drove to work. Bright lights at work.
Headache++
Removed back brace.
Headache+
Backache+
Tired+
Ingested pills.
Headache+
Backache+
Tired+
Consumed caffeinated beverage.
Headache+
Backache+
Tired-
Hyper+.

I am currently hyper with a photosensitive migraine and upper back pain.

ARGLE BLARGLE.

Bus (SB, Schoolbus), started as a Dwarf Hunter character in World of Warcraft. Lame, I know, but that’s where she started. She spent her adventuring days hanging around with Underground (UG, Yuji), a man twice her height. Her adventuring days came to a permanent end when the account for Underground was hijacked and banned. My husband and I no longer play WoW.
In WoW, Bus had a flying snake named Aeroplane. She used to have a cat named Shortbus, but a GM determined that Shortbus was an insult and her name was changed to Littlebus. (I had another character’s pet renamed when they failed to recognize the greatness of Bagpuss.)

Bus later evolved in my mind, as I never wrote anything about her, into a young woman who left her family behind to go adventuring. Her life was rather droll, having everything she needed come to her whenever she wanted. She felt her life lacked a certain spark.

I wish I had more time to write this out. For now it’ll just be a braindump so I don’t forget it.

The dream started with James and I going to Florida. (I have had two previous dreams wherin we accidently end up in Florida and need to get back home ASAP for work.) We needed a place to stay while we were down there, so we thought it was a good idea to steal the old mobile home I grew up in. (I have had several other dreams involving owning this mobile home or others as secondary housing.)

Upon examining the interrior of the trailer, I found that my parents had not completely emptied it and many of my mother’s old business clothes were there. I held up a dress and said to James, “I should take all these home and wear them to work. I can totally start bringing the 80s back.” (I need new business-casual clothes, getting old stuff might be a good idea). Inside the bedroom, my parents old waterbed was still there, along with some fans.

Citibank refunded the charge on 5/19 (it didn’t show on the online statement until 5/21). Even though this was resolved, I still received a new message from Valve’s support. They asked me for a screenshot of the fee. I obliged and gave also a screenshot of the Citi CSR stating which charges were considered foreign transactions.

Here’s the conversation through Steam’s support:

8 « Message by Thomas on Tue, 19th May 2009 5:11 pm »
Hello Amanda,
We are still working on this issue and have been talking to the bank, can you please confirm the dollar amount of the foreign transaction fee that they are charging?

Read the rest of this entry »

Jacs has a thing for slave traders. A hate thing. A passion to destroy the market of owning people. It may have something to do with her TRAGIC HISTORY of being a slave herself.

Jacs is a privateer sanctioned by several governments to stop the trade of living souls that is legal in the majority of countries in her world. These governments would rather not get involved in direct confrontation with the larger ones, so she doesn’t let on that she’s doing the good work of the small guy. She also wants some profit. So she knocks off the captains of the slave ships, claims the merchandise as her own, and gives them two options: Stay and work on the ship or swim back home. She pays a small wage if they stay, which they can save (to pay Jacs her fee for saving them) or spend (she let’s them buy whatever they want … from her) as they please. Once they’ve paid off the fee, they’re free to go wherever they want. Many end up staying because they’ll make more and be safer on her ship than if they would go back home.

inspired by Valve’s “Meet the Spy” video

EDIT on 05/21/09: see bottom for more details

Update on the foreign transaction fee issue. After waiting a few days for a response to my previous call, I decided it would be better to call them. After explaining the situation to “Hugo,” I was transfered to a supervisor (“Mr. Thomas”). I explained the situation to him, and he stated that the foreign transaction fees are automatic and they do not watch for them. Since it is so common for US businesses to process through Canada (and warn their customers of possible fees) they don’t bother with alerting customers of foreign purchases. He waived the $1.92 and thanked me for being a customer. I’ll be checking my account online at the end of the business day to verify that it’s been taken off.

If Valve had at all stated that they process payments outside of the US (in plain text would have been nice, but they didn’t even have it in legalese), I would have made the purchase in a different manner.
Read the rest of this entry »

I, like many others out there, avidly review my credit card statements. I view the card’s activity online before statements to make sure there aren’t any unauthorized purchases on there. I don’t think I’ve actually found any in the eight years I’ve had this card. When statements come around, I like to know exactly what finance charges are applied. This month, for the first time, I saw “FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE.” Having never made a foreign transaction on this card, I immediately questioned it through their secure messaging system.

Subject: FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE
Date/Time: 05/13/09 07:22:15 PM
You wrote:
I would like more detail on the following as I do not recall making any foreign purchases:
05/12/2009 FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE CHARGE $1.92 Transaction Type: 3 Post Date: 05/12/2009 Reference Number: 00000000 Charge To: Standard Purch