Saturday, November 22, 2003

Note to self: In the future, when working on highly detailed CG self-portrait into which you have invested at least seven hours of labor, make it a point to save a backup of said portrait into a separate folder at regular 15-minute intervals. And additionally, when scaling down the portrait's size and resolution to check how it would look on a computer monitor, do NOT, I repeat DO NOT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND FOR THE SAKE OF EVERYTHING THAT'S HOLY AND SACRED IN THIS WORLD mistake the Ctrl-S (Save) key for the for Ctrl-Z (Undo) key.

*Sigh*. Today's "portrait incident" strikes me as the final proof that I must've been some sort of Nazi, child-raping axe-murderer in a former life. (I suspected as much the day God sent me to live in a house roughly the size of a CD case with my parents and with The Little Brother from the Seventh Circle of Hell. But now it's a given. I'm evil and I'm being punished.)

What else is new?

Friday, November 21, 2003

Well, I had sat down and was going to FINALLY answer the vast mountain of e-mails I'd been letting stew for the past few weeks when I found the following message floating around in my Mailwasher program (sent to me by someone I had THOUGHT was a fan...):

"To all of my friends, I do not usually forward messages, but this is from my good friend Pearlas Sanborn and she really is an attorney, blah blah blah. Bill Gates, the Pepsi corporation and a bunch of other insanely rich guys are giving away millions, and all you have to do to get your hands on some is to forward this e-mail to everyone you know, blah blah bling bling, so on, etc.
Sincerely,
Ima Idiot,
General Manager Field Operations (name changed to protect the dumb.)"

Are there people who really fall for things like this anymore? I'm hoping the person who had sent me this letter hadn't meant to do so (and I suspect that to be the case, as that person's e-mail appeared alongside mine on the gargantuan list of names this hoax had been mass-mailed to.) I spent several minutes (far too many minutes, in fact) concocting a reply to this letter, which I then sent to everyone on the mass-mailing list. Here it is, in all it's glory:

To whomever sent me this e-mail (or was foolish enough to forward it to the person or persons responsible for hurtling it towards my e-mail in-box.)

Bill Gates is NOT handing out money hand over fist to America's huddled masses, (and even if he were, he would have to choose a different means of doing so as a method for tracking one's e-mail in the manner implied by this fraudulent message does not yet exist.) This is a HOAX people, a sham, a trick. And an extremely old one at that. (The only people, I suspect, who are still fooled by it are people who've spent the last ten years living under rocks, people living in persistent vegetative states, and Adam Sandler movie fans.)

To the people who sent me this message; I hope to God it was unintentional, as I would hate to think that anyone I know personally had suddenly come down with a serious brain injury or with a disease which would have impeded their ability to derive logical conclusions from everyday observations. And if this message WAS intentional....well... if you send anything of this nature to my e-mail in-box again in the future, I shall track you down and punch you in the neck. Hard.

Thank you, Teresa D.

This message probably isn't going to do much good (and because of the time I lavished on it, I no longer have any time to address the stack of e-mails I had hoped to, by now, have made a dent in.) Oh well. At least the act of writing it was somewhat therapeutic. (Although I suspect, not nearly as therapeutic as tracking down the person responsible for originally devising this hoax and hitting them in the genitals with a wiffle bat. OR punching them in the neck. Whichever. Either would work for me...)

Wednesday, November 19, 2003 - 10:32 a.m.

You haven't heard from me in awhile. There are several good reasons for that. One: I didn't feel like writing, (especially when I knew the only thing that would issue forth from my fingertips was the same "Woe is me" claptrap I've been tapping out ever since I lost my job last February.) Two: I've been away. I took a trip down to North Carolina to see some of my friends who live down there and to research the possibility of my moving down to that area to pursue employment (or self-employment)opportunities. I had a great time and got to meet up with some great people. One person I didn't get to meet up with, however, was Webcomic Goddess Gigi who had the misfortune to contract the flu just before my visit. (And that was just the icing on the cake as far as all the hard luck this woman has had to come face-to-face with lately. Poor girl.)Other than that one black spot, I had a nice trip. I may be going back to N.C. soon, although I can't say for certain. I'm still mulling over my final decision (and trying to work out the massive amount of logistics, should said decision be yes.) I'll keep y'all informed...

I haven't got much else to say for now, except that you should go out and see Master and Commander. It kicks a thousand different kinds of ass. It's a thinking man's action movie (if such an animal can be said to exist.) It has terrific battle scenes, scads of sweaty bishounen, and it stars LOTR's Pippin as the helmsman. What more could you want? Oh, and it has some Aussie dude (what was his name again? Something Crowe...) playing the lead. Great movie. Highly recommend it.

Welp. Gotta run. I'm busy these days, what with my trying to hustle money from the people who owe it to me and my trying to straighten out the boxes of belongings I have stored in my parent's basement. (I'm sorting them into two categories: "Crap I need" and "Crap I can sell on ebay to raise some money because the people who owe it to me aren't pony-ing it up". People such as "my little brother Bobby" and "The good people running the AnimeIowa 2003 Art Auction who said they'd send me my money six weeks after the con ended but here it is, November and I have yet to receive anything. Lies! LIES, I TELL YOU!!!!")

*Sigh*