Domestic Geek

I just can't seem to get well. Maybe by spring I'll finally lick this crap that just lingers and keeps getting passed around at work. I really have stuff and I want/need/have to do and right now I'm absolutely freezing and get a little dizzy when I stand up. So not cool.

I'm using the time today to catch up on a little Internet reading and found a cute little quiz thingy at my friend Julie's blog -->:

Pft, I'm only an 8. Stupid 1 point letters.

In other news, I'm almost done with the design for my template here, so I expect to have Domesticgeek.com live by the end of the month. I'm also doing some work on my other sites (since I had to move them all from Dreamhost), so eventually I'll link them up, too.

That reminds me that I never wrote about why I had to get all of my stuff off of Dreamhost's servers. Oh, back on Jan. 15th, I got this neat little email from Dreamhost saying they had autobilled my debit card $119.40. Um, my hosting wasn't set to renew until March and I didn't have that much money in my checking account. I immediately sent a response off to support that they were in error. See, I had no intention of renewing for another year. They've sucked. Many times I've gone to work on templates or to make posts only to have their servers lagging or down. I fretted all day long about that charge and finally got an email from someone later that day:

Hi LaDonna!

Ack. Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we've accidentally attempted to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY (it was all due to a fat finger)!

I'm really really realllly embarassed about this, but you have nothing to worry about. Please ignore any confusing billing messages you may have received recently; I've already removed all those bum future charges on your account (#292017) and already refunded the $119.4 charge on your credit card.

You should get the money back on almost immediately, within a day or two max, and there's no need to contact your credit card company or bank for the refund.

Again, I feel terrible about this whole thing.. there will be a blog post soon at blog.dreamhost.com fully explaining how this bug was even allowed to happen..

Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. we PROMISE this won't happen again. There's no need to reply to this message unless of course you have any other questions at all!

Sorry again,
Josh!

So, everything is cool, I think. I go home and read the promised post on the blog: Um, Whoops. I was a little miffed at the tone of the post, but I was willing to let it slip because mistakes happen and the guy was probably dealing with his stupidity the only way he knew how.

I kept checking both their blog and my bank (to see if a charge ever posted) and since I saw nothing, I figured all was good. Well, after I get home from dinner Friday night, I see a friend of mine from a message board complaining on Twitter that she actually got charged by Dreamhost. I go and check, and damned if I didn't get charged also. The resulting charge also got me two overdraft charges. I was soooooo pissed.

Turns out they only "thought" they had refunded the money. They really hadn't and the original charges went through. Well, this was MLK weekend and the banks were going to be closed on Monday. Maybe you'll see a refund by Tuesday, they said. Well, it was late in the day Tuesday before they finally posted a refund. In the mean time, the comments on their blog got downright ugly and the Dreamhost team all but disappeared. I never did get any emails back from support in response to my inquiry as to what they were going to do about my overdrafts. To make matters worse for them in my eyes, a bunch of their servers went down on the 23rd. Time to leave now.

Another thing about this whole thing that ticked me off was my bank. I called them on Monday (it was a holiday, but they promise 24-hour telephone banking) and the woman I spoke to said it would be no problem for them to reverse the overdrafts when Dreamhost sent the refund through. When I called back Wednesday, that woman tried telling me it wasn't the bank's problem and they shouldn't have to reverse them. I was ticked and she eventually did reverse them. This is not the first time I have gotten the runaround from them. I'm seriously going to try to find a better bank.

Anywho, once I got my cash back, I transfered the one domain I had registered through them to my normal registrar, moved all my data to my home server and closed my account. Marcus found me a free DNS at a place called EveryDNS.net. It seems to be working pretty well. I'm going to have to send those guys a donation.

I've got one more story about the frustrating experience I had with the IRS, but this post is getting a bit long, so perhaps that one will wait for another day.

I'm off to knit for a bit.

I know what part of my problem is with trying to get by day to day...I am on the totally wrong schedule. I had something I had to take care of last week (more about that tomorrow perhaps), so I slept in and got into work around 11:30 am. The whole day I was alert, less grumpy, didn't need as much caffeine to get through the day. I also didn't have to deal with rush hour traffic on the drive either to or from work. I wish I could get on a later schedule permanently. I mentioned it to my boss, but he's so focused on other stuff right now, I don't think it registered.

See, I've always been a night owl. My mother used to say that I'd come alive and wanted to play at 10 pm. Given the chance (summer breaks, period of unemployment), my body always retreats to its natural rhythm. I like to sleep during the day and stay awake most of the night. I'm starting to wake up right now, as a matter of fact. That's why I think I stayed in pizza delivery so long. It fit my normal schedule. I also get the most creative at this time. Just a bit ago, I was actually working on my new blog design. What sucks is I have to stop because I really should've been in bed over an hour ago.

Once things "normalize" at work in March or so, I'm definitely going to bring it up again. I would definitely like to be on 2nd shift.

It is so not fair to have a dream that you're going on a vacation trip to Hawaii. You dream you're packing, you dream of your last day at work before you leave, you dream you're driving to the airport and WHAM! Alarm goes off, it's MONDAY morning and you have to get up to go to work. *grumble*

As I haven't been much of a Potter follower since my disappointment with book 7 (except to watch Order of the Phoenix), I haven't been making my daily visits to J.K. Rowling's site. Thankfully Fond of Snape made mention that today is Severus Snape's birthday, or I would've totally missed it this year. Happy Birthday, Severus!


* He's a Capricorn (as is Marcus) — the perfect match for a Virgo such as I.

Hey everybody! Hope you're having a wonderful 2008 so far and getting back into the swing of things post holidays.

I've been in a really crappy mood, so I haven't been going anywhere near this blog. I've been sick since two days before Christmas (Marcus was also sick a few days before I and he's still not totally well). It's finally starting to clear out, but the cough is lingering. I coughed so bad the other day I popped a blood vessel in my eye ball and it's all red and yucky looking. Fortunately, it doesn't hurt and isn't affecting my vision, it just looks nasty as all get out.

Our POS landlords gave us a wonderful holiday gift - they raised our lot rent by $45. As if we weren't being shafted enough to live in this dump, we now get the privilege of paying even more. Marcus and I have vowed that by this time next year, we will not be living here. I'm sick of throwing money down the drain to these people every freaking month. I also want a dog and I promised myself that I would wait until we're out of here before I got another one. Having no dog to give gifts to on Christmas morning sucked in a major way.

Work has slowed down in the new year (as expected). I'll be lucky to get my 40 hours a week the next few weeks. There is a chance I can get some extra hours working in the bindery, if I can ever get well. The bindery is a dirty, hot place and I'm not subjecting my ill body to those conditions, y'know? I was contemplating going back to pizza, but I'd have to get a beater car because I swore I would never deliver pizzas in my Baja. I really don't want to deal with having another car, though. I'm going to have to start doing some design work on the side, probably, even though I hate working with clients. I will get my embroidery business going this year, thanks to the gift of a Brother PE-700 embroidery machine that the awesome Marcus got me for Christmas. A coworker is letting me have her old PE-Design software and card writer to help me get going. I'm so excited!

I got some really neat gifts this year. In addition to the embroidery machine, I got a USB turntable to convert my old vinyl albums to digital, the 2nd season of The Muppet Show, A Muppet Christmas Carol, a couple of iTunes gift cards, the CD and DVD of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tom Petty & The Heartbreaker's Greatest hits CD, A Night at the Museum DVD, some cool cannisters for my counter and a Harry Potter Hallmark ornament. Our workplace gave us all fleece jackets and an LED flashlight, too.

I've only set one resolution for this new year: get healthy. I was not pleased with what I saw in holiday photos this year, plus my weight went back up over the 300lb mark last week. The 4th was the 11 year anniversary of my mother's death and I was thinking about how she was only 51 (I think) when she passed. I'm only 10 years from that age and I don't want to die that early. I'm also tired of being tired all the time. I'm fed up with not sleeping well.

I need to take a look at my 101 in 1001 list and see what goals I had set and get busy.

Stupid Google mail started blocking emails originating from my IP, so I had no idea I was getting comments here for over a month. I just had to clear out a ton of spam comments that made their way into my posts. Grrrrrr! If I blew off a comment you made, I'm sorry. I'm trying to figure out where I have to change the email address for comment notifications to be directed elsewhere.

So there, that's what I've been up to while I've been away from the blog. I'm sure as soon as I get better, posting will become more frequent here. I've also made the decision that I will no longer do any paid blogging here (not that there is anything available to do anymore, anyway). I'm hoping to have this blog moved to its own domain by the end of the month with a new design and everything. We'll see how that goes.