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things I won't be doing
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Jun. 25th, 2008 @ 03:05 pm
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Things I was going to do with some money we'd managed to save:
* Donate more to the Barack Obama campaign
* Get myself a new keyboard, maybe a graphics card.
* Save the money to pay taxes -- both house and income (I'm on a contracted 1099 basis right now).
Things I will actually get to do with the money we'd managed to save:
* Finance some banker's next Lamborghini
* Ensure a starving executive has prosciutto ham and Beluga caviar for the next week
* Withdraw half the money we have, bring it home and flush it down the toilet.
My stupid brain had other plans. Last week, see, my paycheck was delayed by about 6 days, making money tighter than usual. We have some cash in a fireproof box at home; just in case, you know, and it's easier to get at than if we stuffed it under the mattress. Late last week I got a call from Gina asking me to put some of this cash into the bank. I don't recall her specifying an amount, although she says she did.
"I'll save some money here in the lockbox," I cleverly thought. "I won't put it all in the bank."
Turns out I should have put it all in there. I just paid like $43.50 for soda and chips at the convenience store. That's 3.50 to the store, and $40 to the bank for their overdraft fee.
Forty. Three. Dollars.
Who's gonna pay $48 for a fast food meal? Noone I know, that's for sure. But that's what I did: $8 meal, $40 fee because I didn't have the money there in the first place.
What makes banks think that if you try to use money you don't have, they ought to take even more money you don't have?
Stupid brain. Stupid, stupid brain. And things were going so well.
I know Gina didn't bring it up to send me into this tailspin. This is something that I'm doing to myself, I know, and I'll get over it soon enough. Just ... damn. Two steps forward, three back. What is that about?
** later **
All of a sudden my problems seem so small.
It's still difficult to get it off my mind, though.
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again, my work
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Jun. 11th, 2008 @ 09:26 pm
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How many of you have experience with medical billing?
How many of you have experience with well-kept medical charts?
This is not my job. The former is; not the latter.
My job is to search for needles in haystacks. The needles are 5 digit codes; the haystacks are the most wretched execrable excuses for medical record-keeping. It's like a giant game of Where's Waldo? only much less colorful.
These charts are starting to make my brain hurt. One would expect that a doctor's office would keep decent records. Not this one! In every chart there's something misplaced or misfiled. In nearly every chart there are days just ... missing. Gone. Not there. There was activity on that day; I can tell from the Medicaid report. But the chart I check against, to make sure that every procedure actually done was actually paid for just isn't there.
In my world, things make sense. They make sense to me because I organize them (or not) in a fashion that is logical to me, in a fashion that I hope is logical and understandable to other people. I can appreciate the beauty in logic and organization that others impose on things. Were I office manager here, this never would have happened.
I understand why the records are the way they are. The period of time I'm looking at is from June 2006 to August '07, when the clinic closed. After Katrina in summer '05, it was difficult to keep good people working in New Orleans, as they headed for other areas.
It's making me tired. It's making my bran hurt. It's giving me cognitive fatigue -- think about how your body feels after you've been doing physical labor or working out. That's what's happening to me, only my brain is what's getting tired.
This is easily one of the more demanding jobs I've had. Low stress, high demands. But hey, I wanted a challenge. That's what I got.Tunes: Kula Shaker - Great Hosannah |
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weekend update and such
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Jun. 9th, 2008 @ 01:11 pm
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Not using Twitter to post this -- I'm sure you're all very happy about that :) Still, I feel stupid, somehow, making a longer entry.
Weekend was good. Started playing a new-to-me tabletop roleplaying game on Saturday. It's called Champions, in the HERO System, for those interested; superhero stuff. Gina has been playing this game for a year and a half; I have not been able to attend because of work scheduling as well as ... a certain someone I didn't get along with (no, you probably don't know her). The group went to dinner after that, with addition: One of Ariann's best friends, who spent the night.
Sunday saw one of Saturday's friends coming down for us all to go see Prince Caspian, the new Chronicles of Narnia movie. It was pretty good, but ... No, crossbows really don't reload that fast. I've tried. There was a large array of other plot holes for one's viewing enjoyment. And it was rather derivative of the Lord of the Rings series. They're in the same genre of film, yes. but about the only thing that this film had that LoTR didn't was ... talking animals.
It was decent, though. 7.5 out of ten. I'm picking it apart after the fact; it had me crying in parts, when it was in front of me.
Back to work!
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finally, an update
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May. 3rd, 2008 @ 06:57 pm
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Well, apparently some of you are curious about my job. And in this first-real-entry-in-a-while, I'll tell you about it.
It's a small office, set up in an apartment. There's three people there, plus one part timer. I'm doing stuff I've never done before -- namely working with medical records. This doctor moved here from Louisiana, after Katrina hit. He had a lot of records, a lot of equipment; he was the head of one of those practices called "Fixy McFixalot, MD & Associates."
Not only did Katrina put a crimp in his practice, but in the last year or two he was in business, he outsourced his billing to a company that did a terrible job. They missed at least one claim in three. If the claim was never submitted, then it was never paid by Medicare or Medicaid or whatever insurance company the patient might have had. So the doctor has tens of thousands of dollars that live in a few thousand feet of shelved patient files.
One of the things I'm doing is helping him audit these records -- going through them and cross referencing the work that was done on a patient versus the work that was actually paid for. It's different; I've never really had a head for columns of figures or dense tables, much less poor photocopies of charts and cryptic handwritten notes. But it's kind of fun at the same time. It's kind of like a treasure hunt, only without the pretty jewelry at the end.
The other thing I'm doing is high-level conceptual work. The doctor has lots of great ideas, one of which is somehow making this business of data mining viable and extensible to others. In other words, this billing company screwed up on him, so it stands to reason that other practices also have money languishing in similar files. I'm trying to help make this happen for him. He's got most of the tools in place, like computers, a good database program, and a high speed scanner. He said that he's willing to purchase the other necessary tools\, like Adobe Acrobat Professional (he's been turning scanned files into Portable Document Format, but we need something better than the free Reader) and some optical character recognition software (to turn the PDF images into searchable text). He also wants to know at a glance what procedures were done on which patients, and the database is the ticket to doing that.
So it's all new territory for me. I've never worked with medical records, and I haven't worked with databases since college. They seem to like me, they seem to trust me, and I hope I can do right by them.
I'm happy to say that for once, I was at the right place at the right time. I've needed a job like this for some time -- challenging, low stress, not working for The Man in some way. It's all 1099 work, meaning I have to pay my own taxes, but beggahs canna be choosahs, right?
All in all, it's a good gig, and I'm happy I have it. The doctor is a smart man, crazy with ideas, and a lot like me. The person who I'm assisting is a sweetheart, too.Tunes: the world going by while outside |
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What's been going on the last few weeks
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Mar. 11th, 2008 @ 06:34 pm
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Some time around three weeks ago, the excrement hit the rotary device. Quite hard. This is why I haven't been posting or talking much; it's been all I could do to keep up with normal friends-friends-list-reading.
Thing the first: Some Friday, a quarter of one of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rhianwyn's back teeth cracked off, leaving her in some pretty severe pain over the weekend. It had been bugging her for a while, but was tolerable; we were going to have it taken care of when I got my tax refund. That Monday she saw a dentist (President's Day, I think) and he told her a) it was abscessed and had been for a while, and b) he couldn't extract it. This is one of those teeth that is thre-rooted; in most people, they are tightly together. In Gina they were splayed out too much. Small surprise there, as she has had other similar problems with her upper teeth, like one root being hooked and another going up into her sinus cavity.
So we had to wait a day or two so she could go to an oral surgeon, who at least was very nice and made us feel good about dropping so much money (it's very tight right now). Thank the gods for people willing to help.
Thing the second: On Thursday following the extraction, rhianwyn found out that her mom was having a possible heart attack. She quickly drove down to San Antonio to be with her, and to take care of her grandmother who is about 90, in a wheelchair and can't do much for herself. This turned everything on its ear for the two and a half weeks she was down there, as I was doing everything around the house. I don't mind the normal sharing the duties with Gina, but all of a sudden I was doing it all.
Lots of other people do it with more style and grace than I did, so I'm not bitching -- it was just different, and there was no preparation. Let's just say that I am not now, nor have I ever been a morning person. And I couldn't work at all, being that I was Ariann's sole child care, and we can't afford after school care (it's exporbitantly expensive for the day to day basis that she'd have been on, and only slightly less so if you buy a month in advance).
Gina's mother went to the hospital for severe pain in her back. It turned out that three of the coronary arteries on the back of her heart were blocked. They fixed one of them with an angioplasty, but the other two were hooked too much and will have to be treated with medication. The pain she was in was so severe, they put her on morphine, which leads to sub-thing the first: a pill lodged in her esophagus, dissolved there, and ulcerated the tissue, causing her to bleed profusely on the inside.
Gina noticed this afterher mother was released from the hospital. She was quickly taken back, where transfusions ensued and the ER doctor said "if you'd waited even half an hour more, your mother would likely be dead."
Five pints of blood, an upper GI and two weeks later, Gina's mother is back home and doing much much better, although she still gets weak very quickly.
Thing the third: The Friday after Gina's tooth extraction (and after she left for San Antonio), her boss tried to fire her for 'all the time missed.' Is that including the days that she drug her sick ass to work, and you sent her home anyway? Is that including the vacation that was approved the year before, and that you had three months to disallow? Gina looked at her time sheets recently, and she's missed three days in the last four months, as compared to her boss' three or four weeks. She's had a ski vacation here, a wakeboarding contest there, and over there was a week's camping trip for her birthday. How's that for a double standard?
Three hours after she fired Gina, her boss realized what a mistake she'd made, and called back to cry a lot and unfire Gina. Turns out that bosslady is under a lot of stress too, for other reasons, but that still doesn't give her the right to make Gina the punching bag of the week.
This past Friday, Gina came home (finally!) and she went back to work yesterday (her birthday). Gina's boss was there; she was scared to talk to Gina as she knows how bad she screwed up. Gina came in loaded for bear, ready to evbiscerate her boss should the opportunity arise. It all worked out, I think, but Gina will be looking for a new job soon. She loves what she does, just not who she does it for.
In other news, a portion of my back fence has fallen due to recent high winds (and rotten wood), my car's oil light has been coming on a lot, the dogs are in the house all the time, and so on. But my tax refund should be here soon, I'm starting on a new course of self discovery which I'll write more about later, and things are starting to look normal again around here. Even better, almost.Tunes: Lady Besery's Garden - Andy Warhol (David Bowie) |
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the front lines are in my heart
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Mar. 1st, 2008 @ 07:53 pm
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I don't feel very well tonight, so I'm not going to Obama HQ tonight, despite the big push over the weekend. This coming Tuesday which is Primary Voting Day or whatever they call it; this weekend is very important.
But I remember the procedures for what I was doing last night, and I'm connecting to their network via the magic of THA INTARTOOBS. I'm able to process voters from home, and make whatever small difference I can.
So I'm volunteering from home. It's got all the fun drudge work, and none of the cool social aspects! Yay me.
But it feels good.
In other news, tangentially related, we didn't find the glasses despite a long search of the sand pit. I took daughter Ariann to the park on this Very Nice Day, where she made fast friends with a gaggle of children. One of said children lost his glasses, and after thinking about it a while, I got up and helped look until the sun went down.
I'm such a groupie, because thinking about this made me realize that Obama is helping me be a better person. He's getting me to think about all the good people can do when they are united behind a common cause. It doesn't matter who the people are, or what they look like. The people that I helped were of a very different background than myself; under other circumstances I might have just written them off like most people would do. But "working together for positive change" is a major tenet of his campaign, and I applied it to my own life.
*facepalm* Change the country? *I* might be changing, too.
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idol on tightwires
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Feb. 18th, 2008 @ 02:48 pm
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The Flying Wallendas are circus daredevils -- tightropes, human pyramids, and other death-defying acts often done without a safety net, that sort of thing. I recently saw a taping of the death of Karl Wallenda, who was 73 when he plummeted to his death while trying to cross between two tall buildings in Puerto Rico.
The neurotransmitters in my head always have me walking that tightrope. In gusty winds. And sometimes I fall, like Grandpa Karl.
It's like I said to someone on one of my Traumatic Brain Injury lists, by way of support for his depression: Some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue. When you're the statue, you just gotta keep your chin up and try to remember what it's like to be that pigeon, to cross that tightrope successfully.
The only thing that I can think of that caused this was LJ Idol -- I'm out of the competition. At least the vote was close. Very close. Despite my early confidence-inspiring lead, unsold_capacity pulled out 109 votes to my 108. (and now that I check the vote count to verify my memory, it's 109 to 109. wtf?)
At least I went out on a strong entry, and at least the voting would have made a great football game.
I don't know if I'll be "playing the home game," as I tend to work better when there's some sort of externally imposed deadline (that I can take seriously). On my own, I'm fairly unmotivated. But we'll see.Tunes: HIM - The Heartless |
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marking the day
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Feb. 14th, 2008 @ 10:03 pm
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I suppose I should mark the passing of St Valentine's Day in some fashion -- and this is it.
I hope you had a good one, and were not sick like I am.
Yes -- last night after getting home from wal-mart (gasp, choke) at which we spent like three hours, I started feeling deathly ill. Small surprise there -- daughter Ariann had been sick first, then Gina, then someone decided to not leave me out.
Well, yay. Next time I'll forfeit my position on the team so as to not get sick. (I was always left out from such picks when I was a kid. Apologies if my joke isn't making much sense.)
It turned out okay, though, despite waking up every couple of hours. When she discovered I was up, Ariann brought me a cupful of grapefruit juice and two cards she's made herself. Then dad called, was very grateful that I called him back, was surprised I got sick (duh dad, duh). Gina, being very Mohammed-like, unexpectedly brought dinner home from Romano's (a chain Italian restaurant). She said that if I couldn't go to dinner, then dinner would come to me.
Uh. And that's about it. I'm nearly out of spoons; I'm actually kind of surprised I was able to type this whole thing out.Tunes: Shampoo - House Of Love (East 17) |
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something to tell you
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Jan. 19th, 2008 @ 10:27 pm
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There's a little something that I forgot to tell you all:
- My sister is getting married! (well, half-sister, but I never had a sister so I don't really care what it technically is.)
- In San Diego.
- Next weekend.
- I'm poor.
- My mom -- birthmom -- is flying us out to California to participate!
Yeah, my jaw dropped too. I was going to content myself with making a nice card -- yes, we're that poor -- but Mom insisted on flying us out. I told her not to, but it's her money, and this is her only daughter, so ... I wasn't going to say no, right?
Imagine my surprise when we got an email from Southwest Airlines! We'll be flying out this coming Wednesday (the 23d) and returning a week later. Or so.
As far as LJ Idol is concerned, I might need to take a bye for topic 11 because of that.
And that's all, really. I've got some post ideas knocking around my head; we'll see what comes of that.Tunes: Pat Benatar - Love Is a Battlefield |
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dark and dreary
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Jan. 8th, 2008 @ 05:57 pm
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It was a dark and dreary weekend -- one devoid of light and sound and motion.
It was a weekend ... without Internet.
Horror of horrors! I actually had to get out and do things instead of parking my fat ass in front of a monitor all day.
And hey, what's that big bright ball in the sky? It hurts my eyes!
See, the bank wouldn't let me use the 37.5 weasels as collateral ... no, really. They lost my deposit, and the cable company forgot to send me a bill *cough* so when the latter cut me off, there was nothing to do but wait for the former to find said deposit.
It's all taken care of, though.
In other news, daughter Ariann is back in school, I finally got a new cel phone, what has a camera! (see userpicture for this entry). The holidays are officially over, my temporary pixelpushing job is over, and now that I'm not driving a lightyear to get paid $ZOMG, I should be able to return to a more normal LJ reading and writing schedule.
In the meantime, if I've missed any particularly momentous entries of yours, won't you please let me know (and shoot me a linky)? Thanks!Tunes: Boards of Canada - Roygbiv |
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Well, I got one of my Yule wishes ...
I start doing graphic design work at a student loan corporation ... tomorrow. Friday. The Friday before the major observed Yule holiday.
Not just any work. Graphic design work.
Eep!
It's far north of here. It's over 20 miles away, on the north side of town. I'm on the south side. I don't have a radio in my car -- thank god I at least have an iPod. I'm not keen on driving through traffic. Use of the toll roads might make things easier. But looking at the map, that route takes me quite a bit out of my way.
And it pays ... oh, it pays a lot. I've had just one job that paid me more, and that was only a dollar an hour more than this.
So yeah ... equal parts of squeee! and yeeeep!
The contract is supposed to last three weeks to a month. So if you wonder where I am -- that's where.
Dec. 20th, 2007 @ 08:30 pm
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| » Part time shenanigans |
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Last night I started a part time job. Longtime readers will know that this has been difficult for me.
Now, though, I am being a casino dealer! So far I'm only doing one game -- blackjack -- and last night was the first time I'd ever done it. It was actually lots of fun -- more than I realized it would be.
I've got the motions and mechanics down pretty well. The hard part for me is remembering what total each of the players have. As you probably already know about blackjack, a player can have up to five or six cards, and I just haven't internalized all the math combinations yet. I can add in my head, it just takes me a little while. The night before last I didn't sleep well for some reason, so I went there tired. Not really good, but the other dealers were helpful, and the energy drink was a boon as well.
I had my first party at the Barton Creek Country Club -- eep! It's in far west Austin; very rich and ritzy area. It was a corporate holiday party I was working, and easily half of the employees were Indians. A number of them -- even some of the men -- were in traditional dress. I had a couple of self-professed blackjack newbies at my table, and they stayed there pretty much the entire night, except when they had dinner.
Speaking of dinner -- OMG! My employers had told me to not expect to be fed, so I had a chopped barbeque sandwich on the way out there. As it happened, they invited us to dig in too. Man, that was some good food! There were hors-d'oeuvres that I did not partake of. (We're allowed to accept tips and food, but we're not allowed to solicit them.) Anyway, on the buffet tables there was salad with some tasty-yet-unfamiliar dressing not unlike Thousand Island, but definitely not There was some kind of fruit, which I think was cold cut and brandied plums. There was something that looked like potato salad, but turned out to be a very tasty apple salad -- three different kinds of apples in some most excellent sauce. There were roasted winter vegetables, which weren't all that good -- sort of tasteless.
Following that was mostaccoli casserole -- that's a pasta like ziti -- and a rice pilaf with lots of wild rice. For the main course there was stuffed chicken medallions in a roast chestnut sauce -- very good -- and salmon that I didn't try. They also had two soups, a lobster bisque and a wild mushroom soup. I didn't try those either.
I'm almost sorry I ate beforehand, but man, that chopped barbeque sandwich was really good too. And I had to take care of myself! Waiting too long to eat makes Anam a very unhappy lad.
Oh, and they had dessert, too. Man! I had a slice of a dense chocolate mousse pie and a raspberry Linzer torte. They also offered pumpkin pie, dutch apple pie, and I think one other thing that I'm not remembering. The coffee wasn't that good, as it was too weak for my taste, but the wassail was wonderful.
Overall the evening went very well. I made new friends, and I can tell that I'm going to groove to this dealing thing, once I get it down totally. I was sweating remembering the cards, though :)
Tonight I am off to do the same thing, in another hour or two.
I think one of the reasons I like this so much is that I get to make people happy. If I screw up -- as I did a fair amount last night -- all I have to do is toss my players a chip or two, and they're happy. I couldn't do that in Vegas, but in Vegas I would ahve gone through three weeks of blackjack training, not three hours.
Dec. 1st, 2007 @ 06:49 pm
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| » slight update |
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If you've been wondering what I've been doing -- I've been participating in brain injury chats, feeling not quite so alone, reading about what happened to me, and generally feeling better. I'm happy to provide a list of these resources I'm involved in, if anyone wants.
Two nights ago I went to the Austin Poetry Slam in its new venue, where I felt like a total alien and came home quickly -- after discovering I locked the keys in the Jeep. That was fun climbing through the back and retrieving them. I'm just glad I had the presence of mind to remember I could do that!
Anyway, I did some interesting & good writing at the slam -- if a bit depressed -- and I'll see if I can turn that into a real entry soon.
Oh, and the day is off to a great start -- I've been up two hours and already had two crying jags. Slept like crap last night. rhianwyn's Restless Leg Syndrome kept me up longer than I wanted, her alarm woke me up (which usually doesn't happen), phone kept ringing, etc. Plus which I kept waking myself up out of dreams for some reason. So -- if things don't get any better after I do what I gotta, then I might take a nap.
Nov. 16th, 2007 @ 01:37 pm
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| » oh yeah ... |
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Oh -- a few days ago I found out, but forgot to mention it here. Remember that NeverWinter Nights (NWN) module I was working on for that month? That I poured heart and soul into, for that contest, to get a job as a level designer for a very cool computer role playing game company?
Well, I didn't get that one either. I found the list of ten winners, and I was not one of them.
Oh well. I learned that I like that sort of thing, and would love to do it again, especially for pay ... but I am not enough of a fan-boy for any one game to go and learn the building interface and work my way up to being Really Damn Good with it. Plus which, I lack the motivation to work on any new projects for a game system that already has a completely new revision (NeverWinter Nights 2). What's the point, I figure? It's exceedingly hard for me to get going on something that has nebulous benefits, at best.
I don't get fan-boys, anyway. Not that there's anything wrong with them ... I just don't get them. But that's the subject of another post.
Nov. 4th, 2007 @ 02:49 am
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| » LJ idol et al |
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Sure, sign me up. I'll do it; I'm in for more good times, good reading and hopefully some good writing on my part.
In other words, I'm signing up for season 4 of LJ Idol.
And yay! Much hilarity and congratulations ensued.
In other news, I have recently gotten a lot of nibbles for jobs. No interviews yet, but I've had people expressing their interest in me. Nice! There were two last week, one of which I have yet to hear from despite repeated messages, and one this week.
Oct. 22nd, 2007 @ 09:55 pm
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| » personal information management |
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Okay, I gotta say that Personal Information Management is a colossal pain in the ass. And while it is fun and rewarding in its own way, it is showing me just how disorganized I've been. Which is a lot.
That's what I've been doing a lot of over the past few days -- working on my wiki. I've got lots of nifty stuff in there. I've got some of the fonts I have on my computer, interesting snippets I found, LJ memes, poems I wrote, books/CDs/software I want to investigate, and so on and so on, all in a crazy tumble of stuff that I find, in some way, to be nifty. And the extra-nifty part of this is that it is accessible from anywhere ... well, anywhere with a net connection, yes, but ... you get the idea.
It is frustrating, yes, but it also gives me a mad satisfaction to do this. And to see it done. I will share the link shortly, as I'd love for you to see it. You'll need to create an account if you want to help me edit, though. I'd also love to hear if you have some suggestions on how to organize this thing.
Oh! And I actually managed to clear one of my inboxes today! Took me an hour or two to do it, as it was jammed full of stuff I'd been collecting, but I did it!
Well, that's all fine and good, I can hear you saying. But what are some of the other things you've been doing?
Oh, the usual. Job searching. Studying CSS. Helping with homework. Being grateful for unexpected communications. Having daughter Ariann's birthday celebration(s). The real one was on Wednesday this week, see, and we had the big party at Blazer Lazer Tag earlier today. I got to sweat my ass off while lugging around a vest, merrily shooting people in the back.
And the link to my wiki: http://wiki.anamacha.net
Oct. 14th, 2007 @ 11:26 pm
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| » Tiw's Day |
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Today is the first day in a long time that I woke up so bone-crushingly depressed thqt I could barely get out of bed. As it was, gina woke me up, and I got out a while later, as wetting my half of the bed would have done nothing to improve my mood. Then I went back to bed. I had to intentionally make myself uncomfortable so that I didn't go back to sleep. As it was, I woke up around 1.30p and didn't actually get out of bed until 3.10 or so.
Oh, and I've got one of those headaches where it hurts worse when I move. So yeah. that's bad.
Here I am trying to make the best of it. Curling up into a ball is not an option. Not only do I have Ariann depending on me, but the size of my gut won't allow it. So I am attempting to proceed as normal. Only the fates seem to be conspiring against me. I wasn't connected here, then saw someone on in a different part of the store. I moved, got connected, and now it's gone away again. I'm writing this off-line because now it's just gone. And not coming back. So I'm posting this from home, where I know my networks work. Thank you, Time Warner Cable.
In other news, I set up my new router at home last night. I now have wireless service there, too. For the geekier among us, I named the network something enticing like "free credit cards here" but I filtered the network so the only device that can get on is my laptop (MAC address limiting; I forget the term they use). The short of it is that people will see "freewifi" but not be able to connect to it. And no, they won't be able to tell where its coming from. It'll be my little joke.
Sep. 18th, 2007 @ 08:19 pm
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| » I did it! |
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I signed up for web hosting.
Finally.
I decided on Surpass, based on kylakae's recommendation. Of the three I was looking at, that was the only one with whom anyone had any personal experience. And she was pretty happy with it. So.
Now I need to wait for the order to be complete, then I'll point the name servers where they need to go, and then I'll get something up there. It'll be a portfolio at first -- that's the first thing going up. It'll help me get graphic design gigs. There'll be more stuff on there later.
So. *deep breath* There.
Sep. 9th, 2007 @ 10:19 pm
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| » last few days |
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Okay, I have the money. I'm ready to go. But choosing a web host is proving to be a colossal pain in my ass.
I found a number of web hosting review sites, like WebHostingJury, WebHostingStuff, and WebHostingTopList. I was hoping to be able to check all of these and cross-reference any providers that were on all the lists. Problem is, they all provide wildly disparate results.
I was looking at IX Web Hosting, until I called them to ask a question or two. After being on hold for half an hour, I talked to a person who really turned me off to the service. He answered my questions okay, but was just ... flat. Didn't care. Then I found one review site in which the reviews of IX were universally bad. So scratch that one.
I want a provider that will give me Unix/Linux hosting with storage and bandwidth in the Gigabyte range. It also needs to cost less than 8 bucks a month, or no more than $100 per year. Anyone know of something like this?
Oh, and I've ruled out the ones that offer "$700 of free software!" because I don't need that. I need hosting space, not software. I figure if they're trying to spruce up their offering with software, then that would allow them to slack on the good-hosting part.
What I've narrowed it down to, and In no particular order:
1. UCwebhost seems pretty good.
PRO: They're based in Dallas Texas. They're inexpensive ($47.40/year). They seem to have all the features I want. What few reviews I've read have been positive.
CON: I had some cons last night, but for the life of me I can't remember what they are. Um ... They're not widely reviewed, for one thing. There's just not much out there on them. They don't seem to have a community.
2. Surpass web hosting, as suggested by the lovely kylakae
PRO: I like their website. It's relatively cheap and they offer a discount ($60/year). They have an active forum and community in which to ask web development questions.
CON: They don't seem to have phone support. No number on their website. They're based in Orlando Florida -- I'm concerned about my site going down when the next hurricane blows through.
3. bluehost.com also seems good.
PRO: The CEO runs a blog. The ideas he talks about bases his company around are largely in line with my own: Green hosting, he loves Macintoshes, he takes personal responsibility, doesn't care for Micro$oft, and so on. They have a community as well. I get a pretty good feeling from these guys.
CON: They automatically renew the hosting fee -- autodraft and all. I don't know whether they notify you or just do it. A little high-priced -- 7.95/month, or 95.40 for a year's service.
I was also looking at inmotion hosting, but I can't remember why, now. Looking back at their site, I feel no connection with them.
The above list doesn't include the rest of the 20-30 hosts I've looked at that either cost too much, had a confusing website, or that just turned me off for some reason. There was one site that had a woman's face on it -- normal enough, but she had unnaturally blue eyes, and she looked like she just got the goose of her life! So that one was right out.
Anyone have any suggestions or thoughts? Anything? Bueller? McFly?
Sep. 7th, 2007 @ 09:18 pm
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The call came as a relief.
I spent a not insignificant portion of the last three days been wondering how I was going to get along with my new boss so as to continue in the job. As I mentioned before, he was not very easy to get along with. I'm not either, simply because of my strong personality, but I at least like to think I am aware; I make allowances and try to fit in.
So yeah. Personality clash, again. It happens, with me.
Work itself was fine yesterday and today. Yesterday I got a computer to work with for the latter half of the day. I didn't have a corporate mail or nearly anything else, but I had a computer to use. I finished testing one game for the latter half of yesterday and the beginning of today, and I started testing a new game this afternoon.
Today my boss left before I did. I finished writing up the bugs I had found, and went to the bathroom before I left. There was one security-enabled door between my station and the bathroom -- so when my card didn't work on the way back, I figured something was up. I managed to find someone to let me back in, I gathered up my stuff and left. All my stuff. I didn't know if I'd be coming back, and I'd rather be careful.
When I got home and there was a message on my machine telling me that I didn't need to come in tomorrow -- well, it was a relief, really.
I am pretty happy when I'm working and doing things I like. I don't think my boss was happy. He was not pleasant, not very nice, sort of abrasive, rarely smiled when not talking about things that he loved. He was a very large man. Not that there's anything wrong with that; I am not a small man myself. But I think he stuffed his feelings within him, packing them down with morsel after morsel of food. I don't eat constantly; I don't have food all over my desk. I don't eat lunches that span three containers -- today I saw a bag, a regular to-go container, and a small pizza box.
Again, not that there's anything wrong with that, but my erstwhile manager already had one very happy person in his group. I guess he didn't need two. All throughout the day, the impromptu meeting I attended with him, the questions I asked, the teamwork I displayed ... all for naught.
I wonder what thin premise he'll hang this on. Of course, Texas is a right-to-work state, meaning that either the employer or the employee can terminate one's job at any time, with or without reason. So the most I'll likely ever hear is "it wasn't a good fit," which in essence is true. I wonder if he's counted against me the times I was doing other things while waiting for a job-related process to complete? Or the time I may have scared him -- I stood by his desk while he had headphones on and his back to me. I was trying to be respectful and let you finish what you were doing! I'll likely never know, since he never took the time to talk to me.
Tomorrow I'm going in to the temporary agency and telling them "I'm glad you took me off the contract. I was going to finish out the week, and contact you then. I didn't know if I could get along with my manager there, so you really did me a service. Now, where else can I work?"
I will miss the friends I made there -- all the other people in the office, really. And manager is going to be rather sorry he let me go tomorrow, when he discovers that I submitted about eleven bugs, all on my own, after he left. And these were only the ones I'd found today. I started finding them my first day there.
Next please!
Aug. 30th, 2007 @ 10:37 pm
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