Jun 07 2010

Miscellaneous Happenings

By the above picture, you can probably guess what happened there. That was Saturday. I was headed out to crash Trey’s bachelor party and I decided, “What the hell? It’s a week before the wedding, I’ll just throw my phone on the concrete steps in front of the house and see what happens!” (Not really. It fell out of my purse.)

Surprisingly, I did not cry. This is a big deal for me.

I drove to a Verizon dealer near the house. They were closed. So, then I had to use the very broken phone to find an alternate Verizon location. That was exciting! Shards in the fingers are not so good . . .

So, it definitely still works, but is incredibly difficult to deal with. My replacement should be arriving on Tuesday (aka tomorrow)

In other, more better news! Continue reading

May 29 2010

Wedding Brain Dump

Peacock Feathers

Two weeks and counting now till the big day. Finalized some details with the party rentals yesterday morning. Made my hair appointment for the day of. Fiance and I traveled down to Calvert for the marriage license then headed to the caterer for the tasting of the final menu. Very long and exhausting day.

I am officially at the point where I am worried I’m forgetting something important and I have no idea what it could be. I’m also paranoid that people aren’t going to have fun and it’ll be my fault. Fun! Boo. 🙁 Have to keep telling myself it’ll be fine and if something is missing, it’s not likely anyone will notice. It will be plenty fun.

The mantra: If, at the end of the day, you’re married to the person you love most of all, the day is a success.

The alternate mantra: Something will go wrong. And that’s okay.

Obviously, I prefer mantra number one.

Next on the list of things that need done are:

  • table assignments
  • sprucing up the wedding favors
  • making the table assignment board
  • figuring out how we’re going to label the tables
  • hoping what I’m wearing under my dress fits as I’m on my third option, here
  • attendant gifts
  • and paying people

Believe me, that list is a lot shorter than it used to be.

May 26 2010

Spam Day

Canned Unicorn Meat from Think GeekI’ve decided to update the Weird Spam page once a week. It has been updated. And there were some weird ones this week.

Frightening, really.

May 20 2010

Little Big Planet 2 Announced

Best news I’ve had in a few days! Little Big Planet 2 is scheduled for release in Q4 of 2010! Details here (IGN) and here (Official Site). Amazon has it for pre-order here!

I originally wanted a PS3 for two reasons.

  1. Blue ray Player
  2. Little Big Planet

That’s it.

Little Big Planet is made entirely out of joy, unbridled creativity, and whimsy. It is in my top 3 of favorite games, ever. It beats out World of Warcraft. Yes. I just said that. If I have a bad day or feel sick or am just unnecessarily moody LBP makes it all go away and there is nothing but giggles and joy.

All this enhanced by the fact that you can hold the left and right rear triggers and both joysticks to make your sackperson raise its arms and wiggle with delight. Seriously. It is the best thing ever. I’m grinning from ear to ear just thinking about it. Can’t wait!!!

May 17 2010

Weird Spam

I swear, I get some of the weirdest spam comments on the site. I’ve considered copying and pasting them to a “Funny Spam” Page. . . I think I just may do that. Whee! I keep deleting the comments, though, so I’ll have to start the page when I get more funny comment spam. Hooray! A plan, I has one!

May 16 2010

Veni Vidi Crafti

I came. I saw. I crafted. . . I also totally just made that up. People who know Latin can and will correct me, later, I know it. For now, that’s what I’m going with.

I like to think I am somewhat skilled. I have relearned how to crochet and knit using the Internets. I know my way around Photoshop, Eclipse, PHP, HTML, and CSS enough to be not only dangerous but also useful. So, why not make my own bouquets, boutonnieres, and hair fascinator for the wedding? And that’s precisely what I did.

Yesterday, my goal was to get the boutonnieres done and wrap the handle of the last bridesmaid bouquet. Little did I realize that I’d get those done, but with time to spare to work on the moms corsages (two moms, two grandmothers, and two step-moms get to wear pretty flowers!) and follow the wild hair I got to make the feather fascinator! Continue reading

May 11 2010

Comcast Update – FIXT!

Gnome Hooray

As anyone knows, when you have a problem with your cable, phone, or Internet and it’s a really weird, erratic, hard-to-pinpoint problem, when a tech comes by to fix it, the problem is no longer there. This was my problem. My voip modem would just stop working of its own volition. I have called Comcast 3 times to fix this mystery problem.

The first call, the tech told me there was a short in my phone line and that was probably causing the modem to short out and that’s why it was being a bastard. He was only half right. There was a short in the phone line and he did fix that, but that wasn’t what was disconnecting me.

The second call went not quite as well. Got on a call with a really super excellent tech chick who was so empathetic and awesome, but she couldn’t get me an appointment earlier than nearly a week later. She tried transferring me to a different area to possibly get me more expedited service and an earlier time. That guy was a dick. Total douchebag dickweed. Those Comcast commercials where they say “If the customer’s not happy, Comcast isn’t happy”? Yeah, he didn’t get that memo. I understand that they contract out their service calls and there’s always service calls, but there needs to be a better system to help customers who aren’t receiving service. It is not cool to have to wait 4 days for my problem to be resolved. Fix it the next day. So, I scheduled the service call for a day I wasn’t going to be home and let them dangle in the wind. It was petty, but it made me feel better.

The third call almost went the same way as the second, but I was channeling something oddly zen that day. The earliest available appointment was great if the tech came at the back half of the service window. I asked if there could be a note telling the tech to do that. And there must be some sort of asshole clause, because the dude I talked to got cold as ice as soon as I made mention of that stating that was not possible because it is a window and they show up within that window. Achtung, Herr Scheiße Burger. Slow your fucking roll. So, I said fuck it, that won’t work for me, gimme the following Monday. A week+ from the time of the phone call. Fiance was confused. He was pretty convinced I was going to give them hell. Honestly? Not worth it. The problem was inconvenient as hell, but manageable overall.

Dude-guy who did my original install was who came by on Monday. He was all set to head into the basement where he’d originally put it. I told him, “Yeah, I moved it. That wasn’t really working for me.” So, he did all the usual things plugging in his meters and yadda yadda yadda. And then it happened. The most wonderful thing that could ever happen on a service call. The impossible to predict and reproduce random problem happened. That little bit of vindication, “See! I’m not crazy! It does do what I said!!!”

Water + Cable things = Bad News. Apparently. Dude-guy replaced the stuff on the outside of my house, came back in, tested it and not only was it working, the signal was better! Kick. Ass!

Only one downside, tho. I was this > < close to getting a new modem out of the deal. No trouble found with the modem = no new modem 🙁

Apr 30 2010

Comcast Causes Earth-Shattering Kaboom

 

So, I’m a nerd girl — In the country — (It is the name of the blog, after all) and as such a nerd country girl, I work from home. My needs are simple when working from home:

  • Solid, fast Internet connection
  • A comfortable work area
  • Land line telephone with speaker phone and mute functions
  • Electricity

These are not complex or intricate demands. Yet, at several points in the day, today I lacked 50% of those things. As amusing it would have been had my chair just up and collapsed from under me and as tragic as having no electricity would have been, those two requirements to remain steadfast and true today.

Thanks to dear old Comcast, my phone and Internet went on walkabout for several hours this afternoon. Not only did they take their post-lunchtime sabbatical, they decided it would be a fine time to do so during a conference call.

When my work laptop loses lan connection as ungracefully as the modem deciding it is tired and wants to take a nap, I get one of these:

So, it came as no surprise to me that when I lost connection, it took me an hour of cajoling my work laptop into shutting down gracefully before having to give up the ghost and holding down the power button and start from a fresh reboot.

Needless to say, I got kinda angry.

Hopefully the weekend will prove to have better things in store.

Apr 23 2010

BioShock 2: Art Deco Zombie Atlantis

The Sisters from Bioshock 2

In April of 2008, I bought BioShock for PC while out and about on a week-long training trip for work. I needed something to do with my evenings in my hotel room because the Internet connection was AWFUL and playing WoW was limited to Fishing because the latency was untenable. BioShock was my entertainment for a few days. The game itself is very fast, having ~10 hours of play in it. But those 10 hours are creeeeepy. It is a very immersive game (and submersive, considering the underwater setting of Rapture (see title of post)). I only have fond memories of the awesome of the game and my single lamentation was it was too short.

Continue reading

Apr 15 2010

Squirrel Tales: An Introduction

Nuts About Snacks Dish

Soooo, yeah. How to start explaining this one? Well, I’m already outed as a big nerd in the fact that I am over 30 and have an entire room in my house dedicated to my and HTB’s comic book collection and the fact that I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for 4 1/2 years. How can this admission possibly be nerdier?

I also used to LARP. That stands for Live Action Role Playing. Whenever questioned in public as a group what we were up to, we’d say “Impromptu Theater” which was technically true. It is all improvised and vaguely theatrical when people aren’t being dumbasses. I shouldn’t dig on it too bad. It’s how I made all my friends and significant others. Who I all adore. But it’s still somewhat embarrassing.

What does any of this have to do with squirrels? In one game I played a kind of magical creature who was part animal. That animal? Squirrel. No fur suits were worn. Ever. Ew. Not that kind of squirrel “roleplay”. Really it was an excuse to be loud, obnoxious, immature, and occasionally adorable. So. . . . I was myself with a character sheet 😛 basically. I wasn’t ever a very good LARPer. I do find squirrels incredibly cute.

Yes, I know they are vermin. Yes, I know they are a nuisance. And yes, I recently discovered, they are really aggressive in my neighborhood. So, squirrels subject to the natural selection of neighborhood Volkswagons is a blessing not a sadness. I still think squirrels are awesome.

One day, while browsing around Modcloth a few months failing to find a dress to wear to my rehearsal dinner, I started looking at the house stuff section of the website. That is when I came upon the glory of the Nuts About Snacks Dish.

But it was OUT OF STOCK! NOOO!!! So, I did what any reasonable person would do. I put in my informations in the little box that begged, pathetically, for them to tell me when this epitome of squirrelly glory would be available again. And then I promptly forgot about it. How often does something out of stock come back in stock again? Really?

Oh, me of little faith. For shame. I got the e-mail yesterday that my beloved (and utterly forgotten about) squirrel candy dish was back in stock waiting for me to purchase hims. And purchase hims I did. He has shipped and soon will be here for me to store snackable noms within and serve to guests and woodland creatures.

Thank you, Modcloth. You are <3