Kenno mentioned Ricin poison on the Austin UT campus in a recent comment … to which my brain went “huh?” It’s proof that I have not had a chance to read any news in days, because it’s actually all over the news here in Austin and it’s starting to get mentioned in news sources elsewhere as well.

Sad fact when someone half a world away knows more about something happening in your backyard than you do!

If you are a Star Trek fan, and you haven’t heard The Picard song by DarkMateria, go now and have a listen. It’s been out for a few years, but I only ran across it a few days ago.

Even better than the free mp3 is the video for The Picard song at Google Video. If you aren’t especially a Star Trek fan, it’s worth watching anyway. I guarantee, it’ll make you laugh.

Yesterday I received an invoice for next month’s service with Netbunch. I immediately went and appended my still open support ticket on canceling my service with them and told them … once again … that I was ending my relationship with them, and they better not charge me for another month.

This morning, the first thing I do is check my email to see if they have responded. Sure enough they thought it was important enough to answer. I’m amazed!

SOrry for the delay on your request. To process your cancellation, please tell us why you would like to terminate your account, thank you.

P.S. Pelase disregard the new invoice.

Billing

Do you really think they should have asked me why? And no, I will not “pelase” disregard anything. I am going to be watching the bank balance like a hawk. I have been forewarned that they do not willingly cancel someone’s account with them. It seems they like to drag it out as long as possible, I guess in the hopes that you’ll change your mind … sort of like AOL does with their hard sell tactics when people try to jump ship. There is nothing at all they can say or do to make me continue using their hosting services. I have already moved on to a host that ROCKS. I have also been forewarned that they will continue to bill people after canceling accounts … sometimes not for months after the fact and then someone will notice they have been billed again. Getting a refund is apparently also almost impossible. I can also look forward to getting spam from them for the rest of my life asking me to buy hosting from them. The internet is a wonderful thing. It allows anyone to find out exactly how current and ex-customers feel about a company. I am not the only person who think they suck.

I can’t wait to see how this plays out. I’m in no rush to get back to them about it. I figure they took two days to get back to me, and then only after I poked at them about it. I don’t anticipate feeling like dealing with it until at least Monday. My weekends are sacrosanct.

Or maybe I should just do a screen capture of the Atlas server status page, which is all orange and red at the moment … as it has been all week (when the server wasn’t entirely down) … and send that to them as my explanation for not wanting to give them my time or money anymore.

Meh.

It’s SciFi Friday, and I can’t stay interested in my usual TV line-up. It’s not that they shows are boring. I’m just mentally tired and can’t stay focused on the storyline. Lin fell asleep right after we watched Star Trek and ate dinner (pizza, finally).

I had an interesting trip to the store. I didn’t get the car out of the driveway until after 4 pm, and on a Friday, that’s insane. The traffic was already backed up for blocks. Interestingly, that meant the store was completely empty. While I think shopping on a late Friday afternoon is probably crazy … I saw two wrecks on my half mile drive home … it was nice not having to fight crowds of people to get to a check-out line. In fact, I walked right up to an available cashier. That almost never happens at that store.

Of course the whole paying for the groceries was painful. It just doesn’t matter how very little I put into the basket, the final tally just keeps getting higher. I bought so few groceries today I felt embarrassed using a large basket to push them out to the car. Even I could have carried them, had it not been for the unwieldy and heavy kitty litter.

One frozen pizza, two small cheap steaks, a pack of beer brats, 3 liters of Dr Pepper, one can of beans, a bag of lettuce, a box of cherry tomatoes, four small white potatoes, two avocados, a carton of mushrooms, eye drops, hair dye (with coupon only $3 for two boxes — the bargain of the day), coffee, two bags of $1 cookie, two boxes of cheap crackers, canned biscuits, canned cinnamon rolls, kitty litter and about four days worth of cat food … that’s it. It’s just about nothing. It cost almost $70. Prices have been going up lately like a rocket. It sucks. I see now why people eat so much fast food. For the same amount of money, Lin and I could eat fast food for a week, maybe more … for every meal. What I bought to day, added to the things I still had in the house will be doing good to get us through Monday, and we don’t generally eat three meals a day.

But hey … on the upside, there was an in store coupon and I got to buy hair dye for super cheap. I guess that means I’ll be dying my hair again soon. I was going to wash my hair tonight so I could do it tomorrow, but I don’t have the will power to stand in the shower and then deal with all that wet hair. What color, you ask? I couldn’t remember which color it was I did it last time, but I think it was plain Dark Brown. At any rate, whether that was it or not, that’s what it’s going to be this time. I wasn’t sure if it was Dark Brown or Brown Black, so I chose the lighter of the two colors … not that either of them could be considered “light”.

On top of being so tired and wanting to work on my web site but realizing there is no way my brain will engage on it … I mean, I can’t even concentrate on watching a TV program, for heaven’s sake … I think I may have caught a cold. Yesterday I was sneezing all the time, which I didn’t think anything of. I have days when I just sneeze all the time due to pollen or mold. It’s been really damp outside lately, so I chalked it up to allergies. Today I woke up with a slight cough, and it worked itself up to a nasty cough and tons of congestion. It could still be allergies, but I started taking my zinc cold tablets anyway just in case. Won’t hurt and might help.

I think I am going to go ahead and crawl into bed. It will take me no time at all to fall asleep, and I am afraid if I go sit on the couch and watch TV, that’s where I’ll fall asleep and regret it. My neck is already not happy with me for spending too many hours in a row sitting at the computer the last two days. I don’t want to make it worse by sleeping in some funky position on the couch.

I think I’ll go buy paints and canvas tomorrow. There’s this painting in my head that really wants out.

What do you get when you combine two cell phones, a stereo, an egg and an egg cup? Why … a cooked egg, of course! What will people think of next?!

The thing this little experiment makes me think is … do I really want to hold a cell phone to my head ever again?

Gov. Rod Blagojevich wasn’t in on the joke. Blagojevich says he didn’t realize “The Daily Show” was a comedy spoof of the news when he sat down for an interview that ended up poking fun at the sometimes- puzzled Democratic governor.

There have been several interviews on the Daily Show and Colbert Report where I was pretty certain the elected official being interviewed had NO idea what was going on. That’s one of the things that makes it funny. I always wondered though who agrees to give interviews for a TV show in front of TV cameras without knowing at least the tiniest bit about the show they are going to appear on … like maybe it’s a spoof news show that does comedy. Well, Gov. Blogojevich is apparently one of those people.

I just want to say that all my registered users should currently start throwing rose petals at my feet … candy too, if you have any.

Yesterday, I noticed that M made a comment when she thought she was logged in, but it still said “anonymous”. At the time, I thought it was a fluke, or she hadn’t been logged in. Well, no, that wasn’t it at all. In fact, I have no idea HOW it happened, but all the user meta data … as in what name to display with comments, got wiped out of the database. I fear it happened when I changed the user levels, but really I have no clue.

At any rate, as soon as the crisis was brought to my attention, I made it my top priority … even over my grocery shopping … and ended up having to manually change the data on everyone’s profile and in the database. I think I have fixed it for now. Not going to change any user levels for a while anyway, but someday I will have to test that … and then maybe fix everything all over again. Ugh.

Only three members have to re-register, because apparently there is also now a problem with hyphens and umlauts in user names. No idea what that’s about either. I emailed them to let them know the sad news. Double ugh.

So yeah … love on me. It took me forever to do it, and all I really would have had to do was delete the entire set of users and push the work off on you … forcing you all to re-register. Aren’t I wonderful?!

Anyway, I really have to get on with my non-internet life. I haven’t even had lunch yet … or read a single news story … and the day is wasting away. Then, of course, there’s all that damn housework.

If for some strange reason you are having problems logging in our commenting, my email is on the sidebar … drop me a line. Also, everyone may want to log in and fill out their profiles, if you are so inclined. At some point I will be linking to them on the web site. No rush, and you don’t have to if you don’t want to. Just telling you that you can.

So … have I gotten the laundry done? Washed last night’s dishes? Made the grocery list? Actually gone and gotten the groceries? Have I successfully accomplished all my household tasks for the day?

Hell no! I haven’t even read the news yet. I had to get my clickable smilies back!!!

Life is all about priorities. Never forget that.

Wish I had something interesting to say. Instead, I’ll just have to bore you with more site news. Sorry.

As you can see, things are looking a little more normal around here. The quickest thing to do in order to get rid of the default template was to fix the few things that weren’t working in WP 2.01. At least now I don’t cringe quite so badly when I look at my web site.

You may notice that the log in/register link is back at the top of every page. Registered users will probably have to log in. I don’t think the cookies are going to carry over from the other site/version. Anyway, if you have problems logging in and you KNOW you are registered, do let me know in the comments, and I’ll look into it.

In fact, if anything is acting strangely on the site or just not working, let me know in the comments, and I’ll look into it.

Also a quick word or so about user levels:
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You have to know I am sometimes a big fat liar-head … like when I say I am going to go to sleep and not work on any web site at all any more for today. I couldn’t help myself. What’s worse is that it isn’t Just Orb I was fiddling around with. I couldn’t very well leave OrbiZart with just a really horrid grey and black “coming soon” page, could I? Most certainly not!

I really am going to bed now. Really. I absolutely have to.