Venting

A little quiet this week, been busy at work. But right now, I'm not venting about work. Lesson learned today: It's a good thing I religiously check my credit card account balances every week.

This morning, I looked just to see exactly how much damage I did over the weekend at Home Depot. I'm scanning through the list of recent charges and see a charge of $435.27 to Amazon.com and go, "hmmm, what did I buy for $435.27?" I left it alone because I thought maybe the amazon.com was a place holder name for something to be determined since it was my amazon.com credit card. I checked again tonight because it still nagged at me and no. Okay, so, I spent money on a new tv...but that was on a different credit card. I spent money at Home Depot and Ikea, but each of those charges were for < $100. I can't say the same for the total, but I did make a lot of trips to Home Depot. So, gee, it's not like me to not remember what I spent $400 on, especially when it looks like I bought it a couple of days ago! I called up the credit card company and they said, "No, we don't use amazon.com as a placeholder. It really is a charge to amazon.com. You'll need to talk to them." So, I called them and found out that someone ordered a Sony Handycam. Just the words "SONY HANDYCAM" told me that I definitely did not order it. You can all read my incoherent post on photographs and I can tell you it applies even more so to video capture. I personally see no point in video capture because you are pretty much wasting moments of your life reliving other moments of your life. Time that you can spend doing something else productive. And you end up with more crap to lug around. So thankfully, amazon was able to track this order and saw that it was going to Springfield, VA but was undeliverable and is on its way back to the warehouse. I've told the cc company to change my account...and man...well...I had beady things to do tonight but I may just go to sleep now.

Unauthorized use of your credit card. Yes, it happens. Be warned. Check your accounts often.

There are some days....

There are some days when I feel like SUCH a moron! I've been going nuts for the last couple of days thinking that the checks to the credit card company had been lost in the mail! My credit card balance wasn't getting any lower and neither was the amount of money in my bank account. I was paranoid that it was lost! At least my bank account hadn't decreased cuz then I would've really been worried about stolen checks and such. It had gotten so that I even called up the credit card company to ask what was up with it! Well, as I shuffled stuff around on my desk, what do I find, but the unmailed envelope to the credit card company! Ya...I feel like a moron. I wonder what else is buried under here that I thought I had mailed!

graphics and templates and lack of sleep

I'm really quite tired but I'm up playing with websites. Another step in getting my computer up and running involved downloading ftp software and getting connected back to beadedflowersdb.com and Judy Yiu Designs. Something for you all to learn about me. You've seen the beautiful works that I can create and you'd think I'd have some artistic talent. Well, it works great in 3D but when I have to go 2D, I really suck. Don't believe me? Take a look at both of those websites. I think they can both use an overhaul, the Judy Yiu Designs site especially.

Okay, so by day, I am a software developer working in the likes of html and asp and sql. But you know what? I'm just arranging text and form fields on a page, though these days, it's more of a project management role and making sure people get their work done and done correctly. There's nothing involving graphics there. I don't do 2 dimensional graphics. I don't do layouts and designs.

These days, I've been thinking about either paying for and working with a web template or just hiring a graphics person to provide a general template design that I can then maintain. Of course, I can always take it one step at a time and do it slowly. But you've got to remember that staring at this stuff for 8 hours a day, I don't really want to do it any more when I get home!

So, I'm here, soliciting opinions for either how I should present either of the pages mentioned above, or your opinion on getting someone who specializes in graphics. I know the websites need to come up to snuff since I am trying to turn this all into a self supporting hobby. I can't deal with website editors. I am a software developer, therefore I deal in code. I would prefer to open the html page in Notepad and edit the straight text than to open it in a WYSIWYG editor and go nuts because I can't specify things to my preference. So...HELP!

Ups and downs

And sometimes, life's annoyances intrude into your crafty escape.

Downs - I run the Beaded Flowers Database. I had started this because I got sick of flipping through various books, looking at bad pictures or no pictures of flower patterns. Some of the old books don't have pictures for each pattern. Studio Baboo had a listing in document format but that still required hunting and digging through books and you can get a paper cut in the process. Since I'm a software developer and stuff like sql and php and html and javascript don't scare me, this database was the result. This database has been in existence for a few years. I run it and don't ask for donatations because somewhere deepd own inside, I do believe in open source and the sharing of knowledge and information because in the end, that's how we can advance. So it bothers me that there is at least one person out there who has to go and ruin it for the others.

A couple of days ago, there was a post to the beaded flowers yahoo group about an ebay auction with pictures that were taken directly from my site. The person who sent this email is the person who made those flowers and donated them to the website. The ebay seller did not have permission to use those pictures. She has already alerted eBay to unauthorized use of her picture but is still justifiably upset by it. Some other (opinionated) members of the group have spoken up about this issue and basically dragged me into this. As the person who runs the site, yes, I'm hosting them and using the with her permission. I even give her credit for the flowers and the photographs. Beyond contacting eBay and pointing that out, I'm not sure how else I figure into it since I don't hold copyright over those pictures.

As a designer of flower patterns, I know I have to pay attention to others infringing on my copyright. Yeah, I'd be mighty pissed off as well if someone made use of my photographs of something I had done without my permission. But relatively speaking, it's not as mightily pissed off and threatening lawsuit as I would be if someone had taken a pattern of mine and tried to pass it off as their own. I guess this is where this blog comes in handy because you can see things I've done and it's documented for when I did it. So, I kind of have mixed feelings about this. But also, I don't exactly want to be pissing off my target audience for my designs.

I did email ebay tonight to point out where the pictures came from and how they were altered. Because ya, well, if those were my pictures, I'd be mighty pissed off.

Ups - Someone I don't know bought my stitch markers from etsy. And even more exciting, someone I don't know hearts me! That's exciting :)

Computer problems

I usually try not to blog from work, but since this is the only place where I have a usable computer...

I think I managed to wipe out my harddrive last night...as I was using my computer. One of the guys I work with is trying to help me extract the data out of it now. If the words "unmountable boot drive" means anything to you, yeah, I got that message on a blue screen. It was a "happy" moment when I realized what that message meant. Last backup of the harddrive...probably a year ago. So, blog posts will be few until I have that working again or get a new harddrive while I wait to see if I can find someone who can extract the data off of this one. I still have a flicker of hope I can still get to the contents. It's just a flicker, a very dim flicker. This flicker stems from the fact that I can get to the blue screen and I have the option to boot to safe mode or command prompt. Unfortunately, the computer does die before it is actually able to boot. To sum it up, the harddrive is in something like a persistent vegetative state.

This happened when I was trying to post and even include some pictures! So, I was very upset this morning. It's like loosing your best friend. Yes, I can vacation without a computer, but when I'm at home, it needs to be on and always accessible!

Answers to yesterday's little quiz

• orange


• the sun


• Canada


• 4


• false - this was the one I got wrong


• 200

The dumbing down of America

I know I don't often come on and rant here because I try to stay away from that here...but...

Fox has a show called "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?". It's set up just like "Millionaire", except you are answering questions from grade school, and win money for it. A selection of questions:

• 1st grade art: If you mixed equal amounts of red paint and yellow paint, what color do you get?


• 1st grade astronomy: What is the closest star to the Earth?


• 2nd grade geography: Which country has the longest border with the US?


• 4th grade math: How many sides are there on a trapezoid?


• 3rd grade reading: True or False. Fiction books are not assigned numbers in the Dewey Decimal System.


• 3rd grade measurements: How many decades are in 2 millenia?

I can't tell if this show is a complete joke or if they are for real. I'm really hoping that it's a complete joke because if it is not...I am left speechless. I am in shock of this show and yet I can't stop watching. I think they'd reject me from this show cuz I know too much... I did get one of those questions wrong. Answers to come tomorrow.

Urg! Urg!

You know what I hate? I hate that I can't find the cabochons I bought at the last Gem and Jewelry show. I also hate that I can't find my bluetooth headset and I need it this weekend cuz I'm going up to NY, state where you can't talk on a cell phone unless you're using a headset. I'm sure after I buy more cabs and another headset, I'll find them all again and kick myself.