Domestic Geek

Sorry I haven't posted much in the last couple of weeks. I have had a lot going on. For starters, I did my taxes a couple of weekends ago. I would've done them sooner, but the losers at the old pizza place didn't send my W2 right away. I called to inquire about it and was lied to about it being sent already. Funny...when I got it , the postmark was the day AFTER I called. I'm so glad to be away from that toxic environment. It ends up I have to pay about $550 for Federal! All because I didn't go to school this year and because my old owner screwed up my paychecks too many times. I knew I was going to have to pay this year, just not that much! ARGH! I guess I'm going to have to start selling stuff on eBay.

Marcus had me make the following graphic for a little stunt that he captured on his phone while he and some coworkers were on lunch break at work. You should head over to his site and watch the little video he made. It's a little weird because he was on a swing set at the time. I laughed so hard, I almost peed. He wanted to put this design on a t-shirt for one of the guys in the video. Since my Epson printer was broken (clogged nozzles) and my HP CP1700 needs printheads and ink (really expensive), Marcus bought me a new Epson Stylus Photo R340. I agonized at CompUsa as to which printer to get. I was torn between three different models. I needed a photo printer so I can get cracking on my scrapbooking again. I hope I made the right choice.


I went to the Denver Media Group meeting this month last Wednesday (2/15). It was about Illustrator CS2. I went with two of my coworkers. I got to see a couple of old teachers from Platt and my old coworker/art director from the screenprinters. I had a really good time. I am finally feeling like a professional. I knew what the presenter was talking about, I participated in discussions, I asked intelligent questions...it felt so good! The door prize was a copy of Adobe CS2. One of my coworkers won it. I was so danged jealous! The next meeting is in April. I hope the topic is a good one.

My boss hired Marcus to install an Xserve at my place of employment. We spent last Saturday doing that. It's a little overkill for the size of our office now, but my boss has big dreams for his company and is trying to lay the groundwork now. I've become the tech support person in our office. I'm actually putting some of my tech knowledge to work. My CollegeAmerica degree was still a waste of money, but at least I learned a little there. This will be a big plus when it comes time for my six-month review.

I'm really wanting to get my freelance business going. I'm not going to let myself get too comfortable in a job again. I also need more money coming in and getting a part-time retail job is just not sitting right with me. I'd make more money freelancing, have more scheduling freedom and I'm developing more confidence with my design skills, so I should be able to do this now. I need a new computer, in for my HP and new software, so I need more income. I didn't realize how much of a dog my poor old dual 450MHz G4 was until I started working on a 2GHz iMac G5 at work. LOL I also didn't realize how much better for your eyes LCD screens are than CRTs. I have no eye strain after 8 hours at work, but a couple of hours at home and my head hurts. Marcus bought himself an Apple 20-inch Cinema Display. I'm so jealous. It's purdy.

I've been working on cleaning out my fridge. I can't remember the last time I did that. Something in there smelled bad and I couldn't find it. I package of swiss cheese had gotten under the crisper and it was almost black! Ewwwww.

That cold weather we had this last week kicked my ass. I hate being cold. Last Friday I burned lots of stuff in our fireplace to get warm. I also made a pot of chili. It was sooooo good.

A coworker of mine gave me some gumbo. His mom was visiting and made him tons of food. I was a little afraid to try it because I thought it would be spicy hot. It wasn't. It was so good. There seemed to be every kind of meat in there. I didn't have any rice to put it over, but I used spaghetti instead. Tasty.

I've been playing The Sims 2 ALOT lately. I had a pretty good neighborhood going until I installed a house I downloaded that wasn't compatible with my game (it needed an expansion pack) and totally screwed everything up. It kept freezing my game. I couldn't figure out where it had installed it and I lost a couple of the houses I built trying to find out. I ended up having to reinstall the game. Oh, well. Live and learn.

I've been a bit of a couch potato the last few weeks. The Olympics have been screwing up my routine. The whole TV schedule is out of whack. Starting Over on Monday was replaced by Ellen. Even Gilmore Girls wasn't on this week (they were playing Final Destination 2 instead). *sigh* I miss The Office and Medium. I hope there is some new stuff on next week.

Marcus won't admit it, but he's been sick the last few days. He had an infected gland in his neck and he had a fever. One guy at work has been sick all week, as well. I've been popping vitamin C and hoping I don't catch anything. I've got too much to do in the next couple of weeks!

So, that's about it for what I've been up to. I hope it doesn't take another two weeks to update again. I really need to change the look of this place and my web coding skills are getting rusty. But, that will have to wait for another day because it's late and I need to get to bed.

Marcus sent me the following ecard to me at work today for Valentine's Day:



If you don't know what it says, copy the following, go to http://nickciske.com/tools/binary.php and put it in the binary box to decode it.

01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101

Isn't he a sweetie?

There was quite a swing of good news and bad news as I drove in to work this morning. I heard on the radio that a FedEx driver had been killed south of Larkspur when a Toyota hit it and forced it to roll over close to the Greenland exit on SB I-25. Since the KOA chopper was in the area for the crash, they were close enough to witness a dog that had fallen through the ice in a Perry Park lake. That is the subdivision where my boss lives. I passed the Larkspur firefighters leaving the scene on my way to work. I watched the first video below when I got to work and even though I knew that they had rescued the dog, I was bawling. That makes two days in a row of crying like a baby. Yesterday, I was watching Super Bowl commercials while I ate lunch and the one with the Budweiser Clydesdale foal (Clydesdale American Dream) had me turning on the waterworks.

Here's videos of the dog rescue from KCNC:
Complete Dog Rescue Near Perry Park Country Club (really long!)
Firefighters Rescue Dog From Icy Waters
Saved Dog and Owners Thank Larkspur Firefighters

I think I have mentioned that Blingo is the bomb! I won a 2nd iTunes gift certificate this morning. That makes three prizes in all. Now, if only I could win a shuffle or an iPod on there, they would totally rule.

I need a script (either prewritten or done by me) to process InDesign files into PDFs. That would so help our file workflow here. Certainly something like that exists already that can be tweaked a little. I keep trying to research that today, but I keep getting interrupted. Oh, well. It will give me something to do some other day.

I don't feel like pretending to work today. It's Friday and even though I like my job, I want to go home and play hookey. I've been just practicing Photoshop stuff—doing tutorials and stuff. It would be nice if people would help me out and send me some stuff for their ads so I would have something to do!!!!

I've been playing Sims 2 too much. Last night I dreamt that one of my sims had horrible heartburn and even though I gave it all sorts of remedies, the heartburn wouldn't go away. I woke up and realized it was I that had heartburn! Too funny.

Well, I just finished lunch, so I'd better get back to the Internet and see if I can learn anything before somebody calls my name.

My ladonnasworld.com domain expired last month. I didn't realize it until I went to make a post from work today and I couldn't reach the server! I had signed up with my old Lycos mail account, but since that has become nothing but spam, I hardly check it anymore. I almost couldn't renew the domain because I had to provide the three digit code on the back of my debit card and it is practically illegible. Fortunatley, Namesecure didn't lock me out after trying several possible combinations.

I had thought about letting it go since I'm going to try and get a new domain for my blog in the near future. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this one then. I decided that I want to keep it for sentimental reasons. Marcus bought me this domain originally for a Christmas gift. Maybe for my portfolio or something. I suppose I'll think of something to do with it when that time comes.

I've had a horrible sinus headache for a couple of days that finally let loose today. Work is going really slow. The ad deadline is the 2nd week of March and it seems everybody procrastinates almost as bad as I do. Early March will be super busy, but now.....(crickets chirping).

Speaking of procrastination (of which I am Queen), I finally got some kind of confirmation from the place at which I applied for student loan consolidation that they are actually consolidating some of the loans. I sent that damned application in at the end of June (needed to be received before July 1). It takes seven (7!) months to do paperwork? I know they had a flood of applications then, but would've it been so hard to send a card saying we've received the application and you'll hear something back from us when hell freezes over? By the end of December, I had given up on hearing from them and was starting to look into applying with someone else. I hope this takes some of the financial stress off of me caused by taking an entry-level job. I have another loan payment slated to start in either March or April. I was thinking I was going to have to find a part-time job somewhere else, but now maybe I can just get by on doing some freelance work here and there.

I installed this cool Firefox extension on my PC that allows search engines in the search bar to be deleted. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on the Mac. I need to remember to research how to do it manually.

Ugh, my headache seems to be returning. I'm going to go be a bum and watch TV from the couch all evening.