Blog About Nothing

Hello BAN,

You are so lonely and desolate; my own little internet ghost town. Due to the low population numbers and relative isolation, this blog would be perfect for a chemical experiment that turns everyone into zombies. Also I could rave on about my work issues and hope that no one ever finds this. Ever.

Client sends me document version 1 to make two type changes. After sending the revised proof back to them, I was informed that document version 1 was actually six months out of date. Could I please update document version 1 to include content from document version 2?

Why yes, that would be easy, just provide me with the InDesign file for document version 2.

No? Oh.

For reasons that are completely lost on me, I instead got a scan of a highlighted photocopy of a fax of a print out of an InDesign file for document version 2. “Please update document version 1 to look like document version 2… with the two type changes we requested originally.” A thirty second text change turned into an hour and half long transcription job to create document that already existed somewhere on someone’s hard drive.

Imagine if you were a car mechanic and someone walked up to you with an oil pan and said “I took this off my engine and now my engine is leaking oil”. That would be retarded. When something is working perfectly fine, why would you take it apart? YOU BROKE IT SHOWING ME THE THING THAT WORKED. YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE.

I am irritated when people make plans and then break them. Worse yet, I hate when people make plans and then do not call when they say they will. Leaving me sitting at home, having said no to others who have requested my company for the evening (and who, incidently, are now irrationally angry at me, considering I told them previously that I had tentative plans for the evening and could only do something if said plans fell through). So now I have no plans, an angry friend, and my previous sense of general happiness and well-being has given way to one of annoyance and anti-social tendencies. What a glorious way to start off the week.

Why is it that so many people call me when I’m ill?  (And how is it that I am still constantly amazed by the amount of phlegm that my head is capable of producing?  It’s the same every time.)  No, I don’t want to go out for supper.  No, I really don’t want to come over for rhubarb pie (and I love rhubarb pie!).  All I want to do is try to forget about work, and recover from my cold….. by drinking more gingerale, listening to Metronomy and playing Spider solitaire.  But I might go out later.  Heck, it is a Saturday night.

Work.  Our executive director just resigned, right out of the fucking blue.  In an library that employs only twelve people (at the central branch), it’s a pretty big deal.  With all the drama that ensued prior to her resignation (and during the two weeks until she was officially resigned), it’s an even bigger fucking deal.  She’s not a bad person, but she certainly mucked things up.  There was no goodbye party.

Wow, I sure sound angry today, which could be due to work and illness, but is even more likely due to the fact that I have not seen sunshine in two or three days.  I’m in desperate need of a sunny spring day.

(Ok, Genie, I’m here.  Happy?)

I am in a shit mood. To alleviate my foul temper, I tend to get in the car and drive aimlessly. And while I think it’s better than drinking myself into a numb stupor, I feel that my actions are selfish. If I was a drunk, I’d only really be hurting myself (and the cat, and a few close bystanders). But because I can only solve my deeply boring emotional issues through the burning of fossil fuels, I kind of depress myself further by thinking of my contribution to the downfall of the whole damn planet.

Thankfully my mind negates all this self-deprecating mastubatory garbage somewhere on the Lougheed Highway after the third or fourth repeat of Toronto’s “Your Daddy Don’t Know”.

There are a few things I listen to to cheer myself up, but lately it’s been Tom Gabel’s “Anna is a Stool Pigeon”. Based on a true story, it makes me glad that the gub’mint didn’t entrap me and send me to jail for 19 years. That’s another thing I do: I like to compare my life to those who have made terrible public errors. Comair Flight 191 happened a few days after I nearly got fired for playing Scrabble at work. I may not have my shit together when it comes to workplace ethics, but at least I didn’t violated sterile cockpit rules.

Now I am watching NTSB animations about derailments. “Let’s look at the effects of crosstie abrasion in more detail.”

Anyways. Q&A time. What songs and/or random things cheer you up?

Do you ever just have a week where people’s rudeness is just so much more noticable than others? I swear, I have never been walked into, pushed aside and treated so callously more than I have this week. People are just so fucking rude, and mean. It is like “sure, just walk right into me and push me aside while you are walking towards me, as though I am a fucking ghost and then proceed to give me a dirty look because you had to bump into me” You know what? From now on when that happens or it looks like it is going to happen, i am just going to stand firm instead of trying to get out of the way. If people want to do that, they will have to accept that doing so will entail an “accidental” elbow to the ribs, “oops!”. And then there was tons of “Yes, just congregate in the middle of the already overcrowded sidewalk and make me walk out into the street with the traffic to get around you and your retarded friends.” From now on, I am just going to walk right in the middle of people who choose to do that and shout “EXCUSE ME!” as I do it. And then today at the grocey store this fucking idiot chick was pushing her cart and it was impossible to get around her, and then she just stops and blocks the way while me and a bunch of other people are trying to pass by. What a fucking moron! I seriously believe, 100%, that there are more and more people that truly believe the world revolves around them. This behaviour has just been so prominent this week, it is like everyone swallowed the ignorant pill and turned into an asshole. I swear if one more person bumps into me…look out!

I hate how my parents have decided to embrace computers and want myspace and facebook profiles and all that shit. i hate how they phone me for help on the simplest shit like uploading photos. FIGURE IT OUT! It isn’t important and I don’t have the time or patience for it. Who do you think taught me how to use a computer? Absolutely no one.

I have to write this here because these people read my blog.

Just over a year ago I left my good paying full time job to strike out on my own. I could not see a future where I was so didn’t see any point in sticking around. I had produced one - rather gorgeous, if I do say so myself - Directory for them, and learned whatever I could that I didn’t already know about publishing.

I reduced my schedule to part time in February that year, and began searching new opportunities in earnest. The week before my last day I had a meeting with a wildlife biologist (the guy with the live streaming eagle nest cams) about their website design and other potential services I could do for them.

Until this past spring I was doing a bunch of work for them. But nothing I ever did for pay involved my camera. I was invited along to film various work projects of theirs (ie: putting in the underwater salmon cam at the Chehalis Fish Hatchery). I made it plain that I would provide clips for him to use on his website, but would also be putting them on my own.

I wasn’t funded by them at all in this capacity; my camera, my time (unpaid), my travel expenses (very little), . . . at most he paid for lunch for all of us. After a few times of this happy exchange, he suddenly decided that I had no right to put any footage taken at these kinds of excursions on my own website (or YouTube), that anything Hancock-related was to be posted on my media page of the Hancock site and nowhere else. I just laughed him off and said, “Well, if you want sole proprietary you’re going to have to pay me David. And I will be charging a significant amount.”

He glossed over this, changed the subject to something absolutely banal, then before we got out of the truck returned to it as a sort of reminder to me, “Be sure not to post anything from today on your website”. I just ignored him. I was already in the armpit of Harrison for bloody hell, the last thing I needed then was to be dumped out on the side of the road by some asshole with $3000 worth of camera equipment and no way to get back to civilization.

Of course I posted whatever I wanted, edited as I wanted, wherever I wanted. I shared it with him, and even did a special edit at his request. All unpaid of course. I get credit, which is all I wanted in the first place.

This July they had their annual “Fledge Fest” (a tour of eagles’ nest in the Victoria area to watch the new eagle babies fly for their first time). Everyone pays their own way, including lunch, and arranges their own transportation. I filmed some eagles nests but our timing was off, not as excellent as last year. And I filmed the little ceremony and few speeches but it wasn’t very good (unruly people walking in front of the camera, carrying on conversations close by, the biologist was distracted and a bit weepy for various reasons one of which being his 91 year old mother had died literally three days before).

I put the eagle footage on my YouTube but it’s crap and has had very few views. I never used the speeches and such for anything because it’s pretty bad. So now I just got an emails (’happy belated birthday’ yeah thanks fuck you), please do one tiny change to the website even though we don’t want to pay you any more for this and can’t find anyone else with the skill to do it for free and, and . . . oh by the way . ..

“I’m still hoping that you’ll post your pictures from FledgeFest on the forum.  Most of us don’t go over to YouTube unless there’s a link to something specific there.  I know that David requested you to be his guest at FF so that you would film it for us.  We have lots of .jpgs that people have posted, but there is absolutely no video of the event.  We really do need to have all the pics and videos for HWF gatherings/functions on our HWF site.  If you or others choose to post on YouTube in addition, that’s fine too.”

His “guest”?? WTF? I love the last line, granting me permission to use MY OWN WORK from MY OWN CAMERA that I OWN and bought with MY OWN MONEY on my own website. Fuckers.

Anyways whatever I will handle it, but not today as I am likely to tell her exactly where she can fucken shove it (considering the mood I am in right now and that I seem to have contracted a particularly unpleasant stomach virus).

-Keta

KetaDesign

So I was on the bus today and holy shit was the driver terrible! I mean, have you ever been on the bus that was so horribly driven that you actually notice and make a point of blogging about it? You don’t really appreciated good bus driving until you notice the shitty driving. This dude had a lead foot on the fucking brake! Every stop and every red light people had to hold on for dear life to avoid being thrown through the windshield or breaking the poor nose of the person they land on. Dude, you’re driving a 500 ton double bus, not a mini cooper. Don’t try to get through that yellow if you don’t know you can make it. The tread on my shoes will thank you.

Oh, I should take this moment since I see it on my screen to notify the site administrator that “WordPress 2.6.2 is available!”, as per the computer screen’s instructions. No, I am not easily advertised to at all…

So I was biking over the weekend, and holy shit, we really need like an international get-your-car-off-the-fucking-road day. We reeeeally do. I was biking in residential, allegedly ”traffic calmed” areas for leisure, and the traffic that was driving through them was unbelievable! Many of them at grossly illegal speeds, even for inner city driving! You’d think that every quiet neighbourhood street was the freeway. And the following day I wanted to bike over the bridge to North Van by taking Adanac, which is the designated bike route for cyclists commuting to downtown from east van, and the amount of traffic was insane! Get off the fucking bike route and onto the designated traffic-heavy roadways, douchebags. Now, I realize that the shoe has slipped onto the other foot since I used to be a driver that hated cyclists, but I am not one of those die hard, hardcore, arrogant cyclists that wear those ridiculous and dorky looking biking suits that are probably issued by the underground cycling cult of this city that consider themselves both pedestrians and traffic, I am merely embarking on a casual bike ride on a sunny fall Saturday and Sunday afternoon on my shitty old 10 speed with a basket on the front purposely avoiding the major roadways to make the most of my leisure activity.

You know what is shitty? The fact that if you want to sign up for any kind of class, be it educational, exercise or well-being oriented, etc., you have to pay like a fucking 200 bucks a month to do it. I cannot believe the kind of money these businesses think everyone has. I suppose it is just as well, the people who can are old enough to be my grandparents and I sure don’t want to hang out with people like that. Maybe I graduated too early…

why, o why must you log me out?

log in, enter password, click

“you must be logged in to do that”

buh?

log in, enter password, click

. . .

once more.

Safari is not your friend, Wordpress

Firefox is not much better.

A story to tell, some words to say, a photo or two

I cannot share.

A curse, a pox on the coding.

Or perhaps it’s just the style sheet Genie has chosen?

Google it.

Can I come and live with you?

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK