I saw this American Apparel ad on a website and I just had to share:
Not only is the idea of a company selling unitards and high-waisted shorts hilariously silly, they’ve gone and spelled “waisted” wrong, so it appears that the shorts are in an altered state of mind. “You know, those shorts. They’re high and wasted.”
Hee.
Never have I been so happy to be with Site5 for hosting. Apparently, DreamHost ran some kind of script recently to nudge delinquent customers into paying their overdue bills. As it turns out, what they really did was run the script on 2008 customers instead of 2007, and in some cases it ran twice, causing massive overbilling and chaos.
Several people mentioned they were out $9000! The mildest offense was still over $100. I was sort of surprised to see how many people were overdrafted by this error, but I suppose if you’re only counting on paying $10 per month and that’s what you can afford, a $200 bill is not going to make you very happy.
A few people mentioned their credit being on the line – mortgage payments, credit repayment programs, etc. I hate to think how many people were totally screwed due to this massive mistake.
I should mention that I have not used DreamHost’s services. I’ve had two hosts, the first being Cyberpixels and we all remember how that went down, and now I’m with Site5 and couldn’t be happier. Still, I was surprised to see how many people host business sites with DreamHost – I always assumed them to be sort of… well, the sort that have a spare server in their parent’s basement. I know they host a huge number of sites, but they always seemed too unprofessional for me to even think of using them for a client site. I feel really awful for the people who now have to explain to their clients why all their sites are down (many of the overcharged sites also got suspended, presumably for non-payment).
I’ve read about DreamHost’s screwups before. The last one I heard about was when they had massive downtime and then sent out some ridiculously flippant email about it, like, HEY WE’RE REALLY DUMB HERE’S A RABBIT AND A PANCAKE TO CHEER YOU UP.
Messing with hosting is one thing, but deducting hundreds of thousands of dollars from bank accounts all over the world? No. Grow up. Stop fucking around and own up to what was probably the stupidest mistake in your hosting history. Refund the money, cover the overdraft charges (or work with banks to negate them) and learn to proofread your code.
Today is the special day of the year where the Qbee members talk about the Quilting Bee. I myself joined around this time in 2005, so I’ve been a member for two years now! I’ve had a couple lapses where I didn’t participate in the activities or trade very much, but the community is so welcoming that it’s almost hard not to be involved.
That’s honestly the thing I noticed first about the Qbee – the members are genuinely nice people. The BBS forums are a fantastic, supportive place to be, and I think that’s phenomenal given the nature of the Internet. There are some young members, some single mid-20s members, and there are also married housewives with kids that are members too, and even some guys! I think it’s great that the Qbee is universal enough to appeal to lots of different people.
You don’t even have to be a pixel genius to join. It does help if you have some artistic inclination to begin with, but you’ll find that if you participate in activities and practice, you will definitely improve no matter where you started from. I know I have. The members are willing to give you tips too if you’d like, so you’re not floundering by yourself, wondering how they do it.
The thing I worried about when I started was, “Will I have enough time to do it?” I was afraid I’d get into some high-maintenance group where I’d have to be checking the site constantly to keep up, but that’s totally not the case. You should trade twice a month to continue to be an active bee, but the activities (Christmas ornaments, Trick-or-Treat patches, Valentines, etc.) are totally optional. They’re a lot of fun when you participate, but they aren’t required. This meant a lot to me because I could pick and choose what I wanted to participate in based on my schedule.
All in all, I still really like being a member of the Quilting Bee, even after two years! I’d definitely encourage you to join if you’ve been on the fence about it. Tell ‘em I sent you!
I may have just stumbled across the video equivalent of Cute Overload.
Ready? READY? It is videos of babies laughing on YouTube. Now, I know. Babies make lots of noise and are expensive. BUT! They are also very funny and I dare you to watch these babies laugh and not end up with a smile on your face.
First up: Laughing Baby
Baby laughs so hard at pieces of paper being ripped that he falls over in hysterics. Part of the reason this cracks me up is because the person behind the camera is obviously getting such a kick out of it himself. Eeeking out “Here, have some more…” is perfect.
Next: Baby laughing at the Wii
I mean, really, Wiis are inherently funny, so it’s no surprise that this baby loves it. But that huge belly laugh at 0:26 is just too great for words.
Baby busting a gut laughing
Excuse the awful title – no baby guts are harmed in this video. The baby is laughing at a puppet show involving a rabbit and (possibly) a dragon. The really good laughs start about 25 seconds in, but the whole thing just warms your heart. I am such a sap.
Baby Laugh
This one cracks me up because his whole little body jiggles and then he falls over backwards.
An honorable mention goes to “Hahaha,” but only because I feel like I’ve linked it here before. It still makes me double over laughing. I’m just amazed that the baby can keep it up for that long! My cheeks would cramp!
Okay, wait. One more. Quite possibly the funniest baby I have ever seen in my life. HOW DOES IT MAKE THOSE FACES? I can forsee it becoming a cunning criminal mastermind someday.
What? It’s the weekend. Have some fun. 
I first joined the Quilting Bee the winter of 2005 – December-ish. I was a mere student back then and somehow had loads of free time with which to trade, participate in activities, create new patches, and post on the Bee*Bee*S. I found the Qbee community to be insanely warm and friendly, and I loved having a very positive, helpful message board to contribute to.
Somewhere along the line, life got in the way. I began preparing for graduation and then I was in the midst of graduating and getting a job and then working full-time and then… Well, it’s now October and I haven’t washed my quilt in ten months. I have traded since then, but not nearly as much as I should’ve. *sniff* I have been a bad Bee.
A few months ago, I went through my huge backlog of Qbee-related emails and added the appropriate gifts, awards, and miscellaneous patches. I felt horrible when I realized I had accidentally ignored a trade request for nearly three months. I always respond to trade requests! They are the easiest for me to keep updated! Argh. My apologies to the Bee in question. How embarrassing.
There were still some things to be worked out, but for the most part I felt reasonably well caught up. And then… it has happened again. I got a reminder that I need to trade twice a month to remain in the club. Eeep! I have poked around the new site a bunch and created my profile, and I am really getting a kick out of the less-awkward site.
The current activity is “Cauldrons of Goo” in which you trade pixeled cauldrons (or patches, if you prefer). I have just sent off my official submissions so hopefully I can begin trading those soon. I’m sad that I missed out on the other activities this year like the Eggies or the Golden Honeybear Awards but I am looking forward to this one. If you’re a Qbee member, don’t hesitate to request a trade! I love meeting new Bees and finding out more about the members.
These things bother me and I feel compelled to mention them.
In my admittedly short search, I didn’t come up with any examples but you know the ones. All the icons are not particularly well designed, people forget to remove the image link border, and they are lined up in two rows because there’s 20+ of them. Argh!
09.24.07 – Edited to add: I found one! Many weeks later, of course.
While browsing my student loan website attempting to make a payment, I came across this little gem:
Take a look at that, and then tell me HOW BADLY they want me to navigate back from this page instead of forward. The fact that the “next” button is on the second line may be due to browser differences (maybe they meant it to be in line with the others?) but the fact still remains that they’ve got three different versions of GO AWAY with a subdued “fine, go forward.” They’re attempting to take my money – wouldn’t it make sense to spend some visual effort getting me to continue forward?
HOOKED ON HARRY
I did not visit this website after reading this ad, but I did take a screenshot of it because it made me laugh. Also, what is with their weird capitalization?
JAVA
“By installing Java, you will be able to experience the power of Java.” I saw someone else make fun of this install text, but I couldn’t resist. Seriously? Who in the world wrote that copy? There was another awkward sentence somewhere during the confirmation step but I didn’t save that one.
EMBROIDERY
I’ve finished a few embroidery projects lately that are worthy of mentioning.
First up is a gnome design I made, based off of a product photo of a ceramic figurine:
Second is a Kurt Halsey design from Sublime Stitching:
I also finished an old-school coffee grinder for Daniel to frame and put up at work. They have a huge wall where they’ll post artwork or photos that customers bring in, and one of the other employees has been asking if I’d embroider something to put on the wall. The original pattern had some totally creepy dog next to the grinder with an awful pun about “the daily grind” or something of that nature, but I left all that nonsense off. I’m thinking of putting a border around it or something else to add visual interest, but it’s doing all right at the moment. Will take a photo soon. I also bought the Olde English Sublime Stitching pattern so I can do one that says “MUGG LYFE” because it’s some silly inside joke at the coffee shop.
KNITTING
I went on a crazy yarn binge. Two weekends ago, a local yarn store was going out of business and had a 40% off sale, so I picked up a few things. Then last weekend I stopped by, and it was 50% off! So I bought more. I am not totally sure what to do with the yarns I bought (you can see them on my Flickr feed) because the only projects I can imagine myself making and actually using are scarfs and mittens. Any ideas? I hate felted things as a general rule, and I am totally not up to knitting socks yet – I’ve decided the only way I could probably knit socks is knitting two socks at once with the Magic loop method. Any other way and I couldn’t guarantee I’d make them the same size or even finish the second one. Anyway, what might you do with the lovely Maisy Day Cacao Nibs from Hello Yarn? I want it desperately and yet I feel I can’t do it justice because I will turn it into a mere scarf.
As far as projects go, I finished one Saartje bootie (pdf) and… I think it could probably fit a three-year-old. But I’m not sure. I’m thinking I’ll just knit the other one and hope they come out the same size, even if it is big, because then it will fit SOMEONE. Stupid gauge.
Do you ever get the feeling that the United States is going to hell in a handbasket? Or is that just me?
I know it’s a product of reading the news, which is always remarkably sensationalist. JK Rowling talked about the Harry Potter books and said she felt compelled to kill off parents to show how truly evil Lord Voldemort is, and the headline was “Rowling says, ‘I wanted to kill parents.’” Seriously? I mean, I suppose it worked because I clicked on it, but couldn’t it have been something else a bit less… punch you in the face?
Then I see things like pharmacists suing over dispensing the morning-after pill or stories of women fleeing to a hospital directly after being raped only to be told that because of the hospital’s religious affiliation, they would not be receiving emergency contraception. To me, this is a blatant disregard for one of the most important duties of a doctor: CARE FOR THE PATIENT. So what if you don’t like the idea of someone preventing a possible pregnancy as a result of a rape? Why punish the woman? It seems as though these doctors (or pharmacists) value the possible life of an unborn child more than the living, breathing, troubled woman. Why else would they refuse to dispense it, even on religious grounds? What they are saying is “We do not care for your future, or how you intend to cope with this traumatic event, or the possible outcome of a baby and what that will mean for you or your life. We just want that possibility of a baby kept alive.” Or, I guess alternatively they are saying “Even though you and your doctor have chosen what is best for you, I think I know better, and I don’t trust you to make your own decisions regarding your future.” Either way it’s infuriating and demeaning. ETA: Proposed new bill in Ohio requires women to get a man’s permission for an abortion. As though we didn’t have enough of a patriarchy to begin with.
A recent study says religious doctors are no more likely to help the poor or underprivileged than non-religious doctors. Interesting, no?
There also seems to be a rash of news stories like “Two children found dead in trash bags under sink” or that awful story about the lady with four (dead) premature fetuses in her house, of varying ages, who was only discovered because she was admitted to the hospital with heavy bleeding presumably after delivering one of them early.
And then this new thing I don’t really understand about Rupert Murdoch and the Dow Jones? And something about the Wall Street Journal? Whatever it is, it sounded bad, like he might be gaining control of another media outlet. If that’s true, I think it’s awfully sad since it’s already so hard to get even moderately unbiased information. Monopolies are rarely helpful to society.
Ohio election records from 2004 have mysteriously disappeared. Which is awesome, you know, because they could have proved the election was stolen. Dick Cheney recently claimed he can ignore executive orders because he is not part of the executive branch, but now he does not like to say he is in one branch or the other. He’s also defending Justice Alberto Gonzales throughout his whole scandal. Seriously guys, does it not end? (ETA: Cheney believes Bush will be remembered fondly on his deathbed. Are they all delusional?)
I know a lot of people abstain from reading the news, and I think that’s commendable. I have to ask though, how the heck do you stay on top of everything? I don’t like being uninformed or ignorant about current issues, but I also don’t like to be bombarded with insane, sensationalist crap all the time. I do generally prefer the BBC news website over MSNBC, just because I feel like they’re more objective since they’re not actually within the US, but where else do you go to get news?
And why are there so many political scandals lately? Is anybody on the level anymore? I am feeling disheartened and rant-y about the US lately.
Just a quick rant to say that I cannot stand it when people say something “peaked their curiosity.” The word you are looking for is “piqued.” PIQUED. Something can pique your curiosity but it cannot “peak” or “peek” it. IRRITATING.
I just saw that on a popular marketing community website, written by someone who is apparently an associate editor of the publication.
Probably the most horrible and yet somehow the funniest prediction regarding Harry Potter that I have seen as of yet:
This is how the 7th book and movie will ( or should ) end: There is a huge fire at the Dursley’s House ( the “muggles” that hate magic ), and, when the firemen hear a noise from under the stairs, they break through and find Harry, at 21 years old, talking to himself, and because he says stuff about magic and wizards, etc. he gets sent to a mental institute, IE, the whole story, all 7 books/movies turn out to be Harry’s imagination while going batty locked under the stairs, his scar being from brain damage.
Dave Morganton, North Carolina (Sent Friday, June 01, 2007 1:24 AM)
From Harry Potter Predictions.
I can’t get over how many people think a) Dumbledore is not dead, and b) Harry is a Horcrux. Personally, I think both ideas are rubbish but I suppose we will have to wait and see. Also, just for the record, I still think R.A.B. is Regulus Black.
In order to understand my book collection, you have to understand how I purchase books; rarely do I buy anything I haven’t already read. This may seem strange to some, because why get it once you’ve already read it? With me, I buy books generally because I read it and loved it so much I had to own it. I’m very, very big on re-reading books.
Without further ado, here are some books I’ve read recently and would like to recommend:
A Handmaid’s Tale
I’d only heard about this book, but never talked to anyone who had read it and hadn’t ever had it recommended to me. The subject matter seemed interesting and I’d heard it was somewhat of a classic, so I got it.
If you have any interest in books about future societies (e.g. George Orwell’s 1984), women’s rights, or just well-written books, you should totally read this. I think it’s especially appropriate given our administration at the moment.
The Leap
This is by Jonathan Stroud, the same guy that wrote the Bartimaeus Trilogy that I liked a lot. The story follows a girl who is recovering from nearly dying trying to save her best friend. Nobody believes her story that he’s not dead, and her family constantly tries to take her mind off of the situation. Then she starts having weird dreams where she gets hurt and wakes up with real wounds. She just knows her friend is still alive, and she’s determined to save him. It’s a young-adult book, but very, very good.
The Notebook
I rented the movie The Notebook on a whim because 1) I heard it was good, and 2) I heard people kiss in the rain. Really, how could you go wrong? I ended up loving the movie and when I found the book at a thrift store, I picked it up. It’s very short, but it’s absolutely beautiful. Both the book and the movie make me cry – in a good way – because you can just feel the love that these people have for each other. Sappy but true. It’s a wonderful book.
Blink
This talks about your gut reactions to people, places or things and how they can actually be beneficial to you. Malcom Gladwell, the author, contests that your instincts are not often wrong, and this book talks about the times they do go wrong and what you can do to avoid that. It’s thought-provoking and interesting.
Edited to add:
Eats, shoots & leaves
A must for anyone who likes grammar and spelling. I bought this on a whim because I heard good things about it, and it’s seriously so great. If you see signs like, “All patient’s welcome” and cringe because you know they’ve misused an apostrophe, this book is for you. I love it.
Just saw this on a forum while trying to figure out why I keep getting PHP warnings from a plugin for WordPress:
damn
can`t belive i tryed remove at end empy lines in configuration.php and is started workin
I suppose it comes as no surprise that his username was “HigH.”
I stumbled across a site recently that I’d like to mention here because I feel like a lot of people could get some use out of it. IconBuffet provides both free and non-free stock icons along with a kind of community whereby the free icons are obtained by trading with other members.
There are many different styles of icons involving many different subjects. I’m especially fond of the Marseilles sets, but there are tons to choose from and they have all sorts of different uses. Lately, I’ve been using mine for my gTalk icons, but they’d be wonderful for websites, programs, avatars… One person said they use theirs to spice up their kids’ homeschool assignments. They come in many versions – PNG, GIF, bitmap, Windows Icons, etc. Super useful.
Apparently on the old version of IconBuffet, users were able to obtain all the free icon sets (over 60!) within a couple of days and then they wouldn’t return to the website. With this system, there is incentive to keep coming back, and the people there are very friendly and genuinely want to help you get the icons you want/need.
You get 10 tokens to use per month, and each icon set is worth a certain number of tokens. I managed to collect six sets with my 10 tokens – I chose to try to get the sets I really wanted first and then start moving on to ones I desired less – but in theory you could start with the “Bronze” level (1 token each) sets and collect those first. Of course, I ran out of tokens within two days and don’t get them refilled until April 20th, but that’s how it goes, I guess.
That said, you can pay to upgrade to VIP status and get 30 tokens per month instead of just 10, and being a VIP gets you big discounts on their paid icon sets too.
This version of the site is still pretty new, so of course there are some adjustments being made, but I like it a lot. It’s fun to check back to see who has added you as a friend, or who has offered you an icon set, or who you can share an icon set with. If you’d like to join (do it! I’ll add you as a friend), I’ll ask that you use my referral link so I can get some points out of it.
There are a myriad of reasons why I haven’t posted since last week, most of which are really lame excuses. I kept going to start a post, but I would write a couple sentences and realize my writing totally sucked, no one would be interested in what I had to say, and GAH what made me start writing posts in the first place? But I think I’m sort of over it. Sort of.
The most valid of the reasons for not posting is that I’m having a strange sort of experience in which my offline life and my online life are merging and it’s a little weird. Granted, I have always said that more people I know in real life read my blog than otherwise, but now the offline people that read are my co-workers and people from college instead of close friends I’ve known since high school or my boyfriend’s family. Because of this, I’ve been thinking a lot more about what I post here. It’s nothing big – I just don’t want to say something I’ll regret later. I will admit that I considered getting rid of a lot of my archives (well, I’d keep them, but not make them available) because some of the stuff there is wildly embarrassing to me, but I suppose it was my life at the time so they’ll stay.
My Flickr photos have suffered too. (Obviously.) I have a ton of self-portraits to put up, but now I’m oddly self-conscious about them. Also, hi! I don’t go out with friends so all of my pictures are of my embroidery projects because I’m an 80-year-old lady! I don’t know. I guess it’s that I’m still trying to fit in at work and I feel like my website and my flickr photos aren’t helping things. I’m getting over it, but that’s part of the reason why I can’t bring myself to post anything. I don’t even know why I’m that concerned.
In my absence, however, I was not totally useless. I present to you a list of things I could have talked about but didn’t, for whatever reason. Without further ado… (more…)
I can’t get over my glee regarding virb.com. It’s a new social networking website (akin to MySpace) but it is 29284715 times better.
Virb allows you to customize your profile, and not in that awful, hacky way that MySpace requires you to. They allow you access to CSS and basic HTML that you can edit to your heart’s content, and rely on the use of “modules” to place content blocks where you want. The “HTML + modules” feature lets you add your own CSS hooks (IDs, classes, etc.) into the HTML so more visually appealing layouts are possible. You can even give “nicknames” to your content blocks so you can more easily identify them.
Best part of the customization? You can turn off things other people have done to their pages. Don’t like someone’s annoying animated glitter graphic background? Hit “Remove Customization” in the top bar and it will revert the page to the default styles. Also great is the fact that the default style is still pretty.
It can pull in your Flickr photos and eventually will be able to pull in your blog posts as well (if you’re into that kind of thing), in addition to letting you upload up to 150 photos and choose one to be your default.
Virb has “announcements,” which are akin to MySpace’s “bulletins,” except for a very neat, very crucial component: you can restrict announcements to only those you wish to see. If you have that one friend whom you dearly love but all of his bulletins consist of “OMG look at mah pix lv cmnts pls thx” you can set that friend’s announcements to not display on your home page. GENIUS.
Also included on Virb are groups, which have the wonderful addition of tags, so a “folk metal” group (yay Adastra!) can have the tags, “metal, folk metal, music, otyg, finntroll” etc. This helps someone searching for like-minded people actually find them.
Right now it is still in Beta, hence the invite-only registration process which is kind of a pain. I accidentally wasted an invite on Daniel because I automatically typed “gmail.com” for his email instead of “yahoo.com” because he’s, like, the only person ever that hasn’t switched yet and I didn’t hit cancel fast enough. Edited to add: Now in public beta! There’s a daily limit of signups, but it’s not a small number so go! GO AND SIGN UP.
Also due to the Beta, several features are not yet functional. While this is sort of disappointing, based on the current functionality you know the new stuff is going to be good.
I really feel like this is the social networking site that will finally give MySpace a run for its money. It’s cleaner, better-looking, better set-up, and has more features that don’t require extensive, messy hacks to implement.
I, for one, am totally sold.