Mmm... Neglect.

Yeah, I know I've been leaving you people hangin'. Thought I'd take the time to explain things though.

See, my dad managed to cripple my PC. Restoring it should have been a simple matter, except that the last image taken was rather old, and somehow corrupt or something as Ghost keeps crashing while restoring my drive. Adding to that, I picked up a Treo to replace my cell phone, and I've yet to get things working on it properly. I *could* blog from the web interface, but that's silly and bandwidth intensive, and I haven't been able to load many applications to my phone 'cuz I need a PC to help out.

So there ya go. Rest assured though, I'll be getting the PC happy dappy again soonish, then I'll get my phone happy, then I'll be mobile blogging again.

In the meantime, I can only post blog pictures. Of friends. With their hands down their pants. Playing with their junk. Blaming it on the cold.

...hehehehe...

...Art

Holy mood swings...

So I've gone from going to a funeral, to spending several days up north with my chick over the last week. Funeral: bummer. Cottage: r0x0r.

A little bit about Tony, who passed away on Sunday the 6th. I wrote up a whole blog about this on Tuesday, the day I found out he passed away, but because of a blogger.com glitch that post was lost. Stupid technology. Anyway, he was sort of my family's first helping hand this side of the ocean.

He owned a meat shop on Toronto where my mom got her first job. Clearly my kind of man. The one thing that I'll always associate with him is uh... sausage. See, he was always making home made sausages and such, and every time we dropped by for a visit you could count on there being a couple of varieties of fresh sausage to chow down on.

He also "taught" my mom how to drive. In a Pontiac GTO. "You know what you're doing."

...she didn't.

He wasn't having any of that.

It's amazing that no one died. I mean, the GTO was quite the rocket, and putting a total noob behind the wheel with no training at all... My mom still occasionally tells the story of her early driving career, in a car that apparently wasn't made to go slow, one in which a touch on the gas pedal prompted the car to try and rip itself out from under you.

So, our gratitude for his help in getting my family established here in Canada. I'll always remember the sausages, harmonica, and violin... A more helpful and generous man does not exist.

And, bonus, his second wife was several decades younger than he was. Makes me feel pretty good about this whole Iza thing, and our petty nine years.

He'll be sorely missed.

In contrast to all that, Iza and I spent a couple days up north, which went a long way to fixing my mood right up. Always seems to.

Further, as of Monday, I'm employed again. Work's not great, but frankly at this point I'll take whatever helps trickle some bling into the bank account.

Things are looking a bit brighter.

Will it last? Who's getting pimp-slapped? And for heaven's sake, where's the whole wheat bread? Tune in next time for more bits of shit you don't care about from Art's life!

...Art

...

Yeah, seems everywhere I turn last little while something else is crumbling.

I'm fed up and pukey feeling.

...Art

Mobile Photos

Well, my mobile picture banner's been added. I'm still dinking around with the size of it though, different resolutions like a different number of pictures. Seems like 8-10 is about right for my two most commonly reported resolutions. If the picture banner looks really bad, please let me know. Also, lemme know what resolution you're running.

So there it is, enjoy. Hovering your mouse over the picture should provide a brief caption for the picture, and clicking it should direct you over to Buzznet where a more detailed explanation will be found. I've dumped 10 previously-taken pictures up for the banner to give you guys something to click through for now while I wait for life to give me new shit to pop up.

Posting a picture from THIS cell phone seems to only allow me to add larger comments, and leaves the hover-over-picture feature disabled, so I'll be manually adding those brief descriptions at a later time. Oh well. Maybe some day I'll be able to purchase a phone that doesn't blow. But hey, it's posting pictures in real time, it's all good. Hope you enjoy. ...and remember to do stupid shit around me so I have things to take pictures of to post.

Anyway, one concerning thing is that for two days now the Java application I downloaded onto my cell phone isn't allowing me to blog-by-phone. I've gained the ability to post pictures, and lost the ability to post text. I kind of hoped it was a temporary network issue, but it hasn't gone away. I don't know who to ask for help; the mobile internet HAS been rather slow and produced many errors as of late. Maybe it's related. Or maybe support for that application's been dropped... I just don't know yet.

Oh well.

Hope a few of you notice and appreciate the improvements. ...shit, I hope they're improvements! Drop me a note with any bug reports, please and thank ya.

Enjoy.

...Art
Let me show you the world in my eyes.

So I'm sitting in a lecture at OCAD. I don't know why, really. I never liked school when it was a subject I enjoyed, what in holy hell am I doing in a History of Graphic Design lecture? That broad I'm dating and sitting next to HAD BETTER APPRECIATE THIS. God my ass hurts. At least us electronics students had nice lecture halls with plush theatre seating. My back is starting to hurt now too. I'm going to need medical attention soon. Stupid love... stupid people doing stupid things for love. My ass hurts and my back's a mess, but she'll know I care. At least she'd better. I'll kill her otherwise.

...Art

-Update- I was just handed a Post-It note. Iza was reading this as I typed. It reads as follows:

"... you PUSSY."

...*sigh*

Well bugger you too.

I've been getting a bunch of phone calls the last couple of months from some very random places in North America. Some of them have come in via my cell phone's toll-free number, which kind of blows goats 'cuz not only do I get to talk to some wonderfully rude Americans, but I get the bill for it too.

Today I received one such call from (646)312-0840. I won't know until next month's toll-free bill if they called me directly, or if I have the honour of paying for this call, but whatever. I pick up the phone, say hello, and listen to some noise for a bit. Something that sounds like a buzzer, shuffling of things, lots of conversation. I repeat my hello.

The person on the other end of the line sounds like that chubby black lady on that TV commercial for some telephone reconnection service whose name eludes me at the moment. You might have seen the ad; this lady had her phone line cut for non-payment or some such nonsense... "It's mah cuzzin's fawlt." Ring a bell? Anyway, this lady who sounded like that black lady who's cousin ran up their phone bill and got it disconnected finally realizes that she's on a telephone and apparently calling someone. "Who... IS this?"

"Uh, you're the one who called me, how about telling me who YOU are?"

An annoyed grunt, and she slammed the phone down.

Needless to say I did a reverse number search, and it's some bitch in New York somewhere. I thought I'd call her back, ask who SHE was, ask her if she thinks it's kind of rude to call people, ask who they are, and hang up on them with a grunt and attitude. Unfortunately, seems as though the number was temporarily disconnected, at least that's what the automated voice said. Really. Disconnected. I just spoke to them. I tried a collect call. No dice. I routed my phone call directly from my phone. Same message. Through a relay in the states, same message.

Hrm.

Listen, (646)312-0840 bitch, if I ever run into you in the afterlife, I'll kick you in yo' box. And I'll collect the 3.5 cents your call cost me if you called me toll-free, with several decades worth of interest. I'll use that money to buy a nice pink boa, and a baseball bat. I'll wrap the boa around the bat to make it all pink and pretty, and clobber you with it. Any money left over will be used to purchase some manure. Just because.

In keeping with my stupid Americans on telephones theme, I called USR yet again today to bicker about my US Robotics routers. Basically, I want money back for them, as I've had them since April and they suck ass. Tech support finally gave up trying to support them, and claimed that they submitted a request to the corporate office for a refund. Fantastic. This was like... a month ago. No one ever seems to call me back. So, I called corporate. Was transferred to voicemail. Never heard back from them.

Finally, today I called up tech support and asked for a specific contact at corporate. Lynn Havertin. Called corporate back, and after checking several lists and waiting for 10 minutes, well, she kinda doesn't work there anymore.

No fucking wonder I can't get results.

Meh.

...Art
Feeling pretty smashy.

Some changes

As you might have noticed if you'd bothered to pay attention, things look a little different around here.

I've been messing around with my blog and hosting it off of blogspot.com for a while now as sort of a test run. The new look is phase one, which will undergo some minor tweaking in the next couple of weeks.

Also, hopefully in the next day or so, I'll move a banner over from my test blog to this one. The banner contains a few pictures across the top of my blog. Over the last couple of weeks I've been putting up some test photos, and have been able to successfully post photos to the test blog banner directly from my cellphone. So, shortly my blog will offer an indifferent audience access to my thoughts, and also show them the world through my eyes.

Yay, progress.

Once the tweaking's complete, the final step will be to get off of blogspot.com entirely. The test blog's been running nicely in its new home, and this one'll make its way there within the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned as you'll have a new location to direct your indifference to!

If you see anything missing or broken, please feel free to call my attention to it. Thanks a bunch!

Take care all, hope you like the changes.

...Art

February, eh?

So I woke up this morning, and looked at my watch. February 1st, it announced, much to my dismay. January's dead and done with, and I've got shit-all to show for it.

Another disappointing month on the books.

Meh.

...Art