Walks on her back two legs and might be in the next Harry Potter movie

a video of her in action

kind of spooky to watch but how amazing is that?

Favorite Color: Prussian Blue
Favorite Flower: irises
Favorite Scent: winter’s fur after she’s been in the sun
Favorite Cocktail: cranberry juice and vodka with lime
Favorite Wine (if any): Santa Fe Blush I guess
Favorite Soda/Drink: Diet Vanilla Coke
Favorite Food: Milo Burgers in Birmingham mmmmmmmmm
Favorite Restaurant: like ever? hmm. there was this completely scary English teahouse in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney with all these little Victorian stuffed birds arranged with flowers…Nah, I’d say that weird Chinese Restaurant off the Campo del Fiore in Rome.
Favorite Treat: Cody’s green chile eggrolls
Favorite Candy: cream soda bottlecaps or those Nerds on a string
Favorite Number: 97
Favorite day of the year: Thanksgiving - we don’t have family obligations we just cook something fun together
Favorite Season: the time when seasons are changing - all of them
Favorite Holiday: Ok, despite my snotty attitude towards Christianity I love December the 25th. To me, it’s about family and presents and being halfway through the long winter.
Favorite Game (video/board): Duh, the sims

Your addictions are:
caffeine, salty snacks, attention, kingdom of loathing, pogo, pets

If you had a whole day to yourself, alone, and you wanted to treat yourself, what would you do?:
get a bunch of snacks and drinks and a book and get in the tub

If you had an extra $200 that you didn’t need to spend on bills or debt, what would you buy with it?: (And no “saving it”, you gotta spend it)
hit Torrid and buy a bunch of stuff.

Call centers are all over Albuquerque and are super easy jobs to get and you get acceptable benefits that kick in almost immediately. Bank of America, Gateway (before they started outsourcing), America Online, Sprint PCS, TMobile, Citibank, John Hancock, Clientlogic (who handles CS for Tivo, Sony, Buycom, Earthlink, Microsoft, among others), Verizon…Between Cody, me, and two other people we’ve worked at them all at one time or another.

Due to the nasty attitude towards employees that prevails in corporate America, call centers in particular, the turnover rate is really high. There’s a sad lack of the long view these days - they want you to come in sick but they don’t consider that if they could just eat the two days’ salary for you to stay home they’d cut down the wave of infection you spread through the office which, in the end, causes far more people to call in sick as time goes on. That’s just one example of the lack of forethought. Why companies treat their employees like kleptomanic, hypochondric, litigious babies then suddenly get hurt when you don’t show loyalty to the company is just one of those modern unsolved mysteries.

The good thing about Albuquerque is that if you get fed up (or in irretrievable trouble) with one company here you can do the call center hop with no problem - and no repeats.

In 2000 I had a really crappy job doing third party phone customer service for an equally crappy online store. Cody was finishing his degree and we needed the health insurance coverage. This was the year of the palm pilot. Everybody wanted their fucking palm pilot and this store was selling them cheap. But here’s the catch about that store - their stuff is almost like never in stock and they totally lie about shipping estimates. It’s not all in-house like Amazon - everything is outsourced to different companies - the warehouses, the moneyhandlers, the customer service, the website management. It’s a mess. So the palm pilots were backordered by about, oh, 10,000 units maybe more and it was getting ugly. People had ordered their palm pilots and the money on their cards had already been earmarked but we had no idea when they would be coming in. No clue. We were just the losers who answered the phones for eight bucks an hour to angry tightwad yankees who wanted their goddamn digital penis before their friends got theirs.

I understand the consumer frenzy and gadget desire as much as anyone but let’s get a sense of perspective here folks, there are much more important things about which to harass your fellow man. But, hey, I was polite. My southern charm and ingrained work-ethic was in high gear I was handling these calls with levels of efficiency and politeness that would make your greatest-generation grandpa jealous but these were the days that tested phone jockeys’ souls.

There’s one call I’ll never forget. He’s lucky I don’t remember his name or where he lives because I would have no qualms about citing it directly right here because this guy made such a moronic example of himself he deserves every second of ridicule he ever gets. And if this is you, sir, I’d like to extend a special ‘fuck you’.

He was just another whining guy wanting to know when his palm pilot was going to ship. I’d been told by my boss to give an estimate of seven days to six weeks so I did. And you know what the little yankee fuck said? “How would you feel if your brain surgeon said that’s how long you had to live?”

I guess I need to point out my personal feeling about the importance of brain surgeons. My husband, a brilliant fucking man who makes every day worth living - but for some reason tells me I’m the one doing it - was kicked in the head by a horse when he was two. If not for the genius of the surgeons at Lovelace I never would have met this man. The only hint that it ever happened is a two inch scar on the right side of his head underneath his scraggly Bob Dylan curly hair.

So did I say all that to this stupid, stupid caller? Of course not. I just said “Sir, I’m sorry but I think there’s a huge difference between the importance of brain surgery and you getting your palm pilot,” and got off the phone as quickly as I could. Asshole.

Working for a recently privatized insurance company during tax season was less stressful than that awful summer of the great palm pilot backorder.

Folks, I know those queue times are long and the person you get may not sound very helpful when you call but really consider exactly how responsible they are for your problems, what they can really do to help you, and for the gods’ sakes, at least think about what you’re going to say or you, too, will become an asshole caller story on a silly weblog named after a huffy poky little mammal.

You are Schroeder!

Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The upgrade went well now I’m just tweaking skinning cababilities and comment stuff. Still no friggin idea what’s causing that javascript error in IE but I’ll root it out eventually. I think it’s google’s fault.

Have I praised the beauties of Bullet Proof FTP lately? Wonderful little program there and well worth registering too. That handy interface for uploading files in ASCII or binary was really useful with this upgrade.

As did this nifty article for updating the comments to correspond with the new features.

I’ve decided to keep the comments in a popup window and not require Typekey registration to post unmoderated comments at this time. I know I’m reluctant to post on sites that require it (because I can never remember my login stuff) and I don’t think my site’s visitors need this kind of supervision. MT Blacklist takes care of the spammers for the most part.

I’m also trying to figure out how to set a cookie on your end to remember your preferred skin and use it in the comments but this is something I’ve been futzing around with for ages. I’m excited to have the archives skinned and sidebar-ed though.

So rather than a post with actual content I’m going to attempt to bribe you with good upgrade music. Hopefully this is a fun variety of songs that will distract you into doing the butt chair dance and not notice the mess I’m making here.

update 9/20 - files have been removed now
(more…)

1.Your name spelled backwards: elleon
2.Where were your parents born? Dad was born in Memphis, TN and Mom was born in Corinth, MS
3.What is the last thing you downloaded onto your computer? a sound byte of Bush saying “Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.” just to be sure the little fucker actually said it
4.What’s your favorite restaurant? Pars Mediterranean Cuisine mmmm
5.Last time you swam in a pool? this morning 6.Have you ever been in a school play? Yeah I’ve blocked them out though. Ok one of them was Guys and Dolls
7.How many kids do you want? no idea probably none
8.Type of music you dislike most? I really dislike anti-woman racist rap songs. And Jimmy Buffet.
9.Are you registered to vote? Bien sur.
10.Do you have cable? Yes - cable for the computer. Satellite for the television.
11.Have you ever ridden on a moped? Don’t think so.
12.Ever prank call anybody? when I was young and stupid.
13.Ever get a parking ticket? Downtown Santa Fe but those rarely count.
14.Would you go bungee jumping or sky diving? hell no.
15.Furthest place you ever traveled? Perth, Western Australia was the furthest from home I think.
16.Do you have a garden? of tumbleweeds. It’s mighty cute and so easy to care for.
17.What’s your favorite comic strip? Um what’s that comic strip Cody likes…user friendly. That’s funny.
18.Do you really know all the words to your national anthem? I do indeed.
19.Bath or Shower, morning or night? I take showers in the morning after swimming.
20.Best movie you’ve seen in the past month? hmm I just saw “Love, Actually” I liked it a lot.
21.Favorite pizza topping? Pepperoni.
22.Chips or popcorn? oh man that’s just evil. I refuse to hurt either one’s feelings.
23.What color lipstick do you usually wear? I have a fun tinted Burt’s Bees lipbalm does that count?
24.Have you ever smoked peanut shells? No but I have smoked pretzels.
25.Have you ever been in a beauty pageant? only with my Star Wars Galaxies character.
26.Orange Juice or apple? Depends.
27.Who was the last person you went out to dinner with and where did you dine? Cody and I went out to Pars last Saturday.
28.Favorite type chocolate bar? a plain Hershey’s bar.
29.When was the last time you voted at the polls? 2000
30.Last time you ate a homegrown tomato? At my in-laws house last year.
31.Have you ever won a trophy? Yeah a few when I played baseball / softball
32.Are you a good cook? When I feel like cooking, yes.
33.Do you know how to pump your own gas? Yup. I had to teach my mom years ago too.
34.Ever order an article from an infomercial? Yup.
35.Sprite or 7-up? I honestly don’t remember which one I prefer. Fresca?
36.Have you ever had to wear a uniform to work? No
37.Last thing you bought at a pharmacy? Shampoo I think.
38.Ever throw up in public? All the time when I was young.
39.Would you prefer being a millionaire or find true love? I have true love gimmie the money.
40.Do you believe in love at first sight? Only a little.
41.Ever call a 1-900 number? Nope
42.Can exs be friends? Not mine.
43.Who was the last person you visited in a hospital? My husband’s grandfather.
44.Did you have a lot of hair when you were a baby? it stuck straight up.
45.What message is on your answering machine? The canned voicemail message with me saying our last name plugged in.
46.What’s your all time favorite Saturday Night Live Character? Opera man? Land Shark? James Brown (Eddie Murphy) in his Hot Tub show? Dennis Miller before he became a fascist fuck-pig? The old school Al Franken jokes on the 70s news. Ok, it’s Chris Walken - it’s always Chris Walken but especially in the cowbell skit.
47.What was the name of your first pet? Buster Boy the black and tan Dachsund
48.What is in your purse? just some splenda bags, lip balm, and pads. All my other crap is in the gym bag.
49.Favorite thing to do before bedtime? find a movie to lull me to sleep, arrange all the pillows, and cuddle up with the dog.
50.What is one thing you are grateful for today? Mr Man. Every day.

There was much rejoicing and giggling over the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s report that Albuquerque had the most coffee shops per capita. But this must’ve upset some major coffee bean muckety mucks. Only some serious java muscle would cause a group with such unparalleled influence and standards to retract their previous statement declaring Albuquerque the heavyweight caffeine champion of the world citing vague data errors and no plans to recalculate the results. November elections be damned here are the real issues ladies and gentlemen! We must find alternative human fuel resources!

Yeah ok I’ve had a weird day. I’ll post all about it later.

Dogs in cars

There’s a pretty good review of Sims 2 on Gamespot. I haven’t really been very excited about it because I guess I have too much invested in the first one. I’ve been playing the original Sims game since its release in 1999 and have been collecting downloads of player-made objects since they first became available.

In fact, Cody was among the creators before Transmogrifier, when creating became much easier and it became possible to add animations. He created the original indoor grill from the stove and the ‘pot of shrooms’ from the cheap tv which you can still get at the sims resource just look for Syniq.

So I’ve spent five years - just slightly less time than the length of my marriage - downloading stuff for my game. I have just under ten gigabytes of downloads and I don’t want to think about what I spent on memberships and donations to get my greedy hedgehog cursor on some of those files. There has been some incredible creativity out there and I’m pretty attatched to my objects.

Also, this sequel seems to be much more about actually playing the game. Oddly enough in all my years of playing the Sims and all its expansions I’ve logged very little actual playing time. My fun is the building and decorating. I don’t usually care who owns the lot or what they do or look like - I just use cheat codes to make them rich enough to build really cool houses. The only interesting thing I’ve heard about this sequel is that there might be the ability to build a third floor now.

So I’m not really that enthusiastic about this release but I know a lot of Sims fans are. I never played the Sims Online either because, again, it was about actually playing. I do understand why people would get excited about the genetic thing. Reminds me of the fun with breeding in that old Creatures game. All the pre-release downloads that I’ve seen from user sites have pertained to skins and genetics so it could appeal to people who are really interested in that.

A - Age: 32
B - Band listening to right now: Rick James, bitch: Mary Jane
C - Career future: pet mom, instigator, and general ne’er do well
D - Dad’s name: Bert
E - Easiest person to talk to: the puppy. oh person? Cody the husband.
F - Favorite song: today? Gold Dust Woman sung by Waylon Jennings
G - Gummy Bears or Gummy Worms: ew. gimmie french fries
H - Hometown: Birmingham, Alabama
I - Instruments: played the piano for something like six years, clarinet for two
J - Job: stay at home pet mom
K - Kids: no, thank you
L - Longest car ride ever: from B’ham to Corinth to Tupelo to New Orleans to Shreveport to Dallas to Clovis to Santa Fe.
M - Mom’s name: DeLana
N - Number of people you slept with: More than ten less than twenty
O - Oops there’s no question here
P - Phobia[s]: heights, small closed spaces, people, driving, public humiliation, creepy bugs, snakes
Q - Quote: “Life is serious but Art is fun.”
R - Reason to smile: baby animals
S - Song you sang last: Beastie Boys: No Sleep till Brooklyn
T - Time you wake up: depends on when I go to sleep
U - Unknown fact about me: to whom? ok, most people don’t know that I have perfectly round 1/4 inch sized birthmark on my left butt cheek.
V - Vegetable you hate: zuccini. It’s a family thing.
W - Worst habit: jesus they’re all pretty bad
X - X-rays you’ve had: sinuses, left wrist, probably my kidneys, ankles, teeth
Y - Yummy food: I’d really like some pork fried rice about now.
Z - Zodiac sign: Cancer and I’m NOT crabby goddammit. heh