Not no news

Nov. 3rd, 2008 12:48 am
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Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.

  • Just got back from the Emergeny Veterinary Clinic in Moraine. I had hit Speck full-force in the eye with his latest favorite toy, a Kong tennis-ball dumbbell. He likes daddy to throw it and bounce it off the wall at the top of the stairs so it goes bouncing all the way downstairs. So i threw it hard, but he’d gotten a head start and i popped him right in the eye. No permanent damage, just blunt trauma to the eye - mainly just discomfort. He seems fine now, but we’re out $164 - which digs into our rent, unfortunately. I feel like such an asshole right now.
  • I’ve just started playing Anarchy Online. It’s pretty cool, and you can play the non-expanded version for free. I’m a froobie.
  • I’ve STILL got that damn cough. It’s just not going away. It’s a little better now, though. And when i take my antibiotics, which i’ve been on for a couple of weeks now, i get nauseated and sleepy. I hate this.
  • And i’ve been depressed as hell lately about my life. I’m trying so hard, but i’m going nowhere. I’ve applied at so many places in the last few months that it’s not even funny. I rarely ever seem to get any response. I’ve had a single interview in the last couple of months. It went well, but it looks as if that employer is going to be extending an offer to an earlier candidate.
  • My voter registration has FINALLY been processed. I’m all set to help Obama get elected to the Presidency of the United States.

And, if you haven’t seen it already, check out the Sarah Palin prank call:

Robbed!

Oct. 16th, 2008 02:39 am
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Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.

Well, it finally happened. We have been robbed. Our nice Samsung flat-panel LCD television set is now sitting in the parlour of one who never deserved it. Along with the remote. I wanna murder a mothafucka. 

Somewhere out there is a scruffy hillbilly prick basking in the warm blue glow of my bad-ass Samsung. I can’t drive around to find them, because without the car here, they’ll just waltz right back in. I know it’s somewhere in this very neighborhood, but i daren’t take my eyes off of those items which they curiously left behind, for they will surely be back for them.

They took nothing else - which actually kind of sucks, because we just know their swift but short-sighted Possession Relocation Services are going to be rendered again. Everything was in plain sight! Guitars, keyboards and recording equipment, media devices, laptops, desktops, a camera, mp3 player, tons of DVDs and CDs and games - all right there. No more. I am putting them all away, since i apparently don’t deserve to have them any more.

Incidentally, this is the second time my life-space has been robbed. Several years ago I had all my CDs and my TV set taken from me. You work your life away - blood, sweat & tears and all that - and then some rotten, moronic asshat thinks they deserve it and you don’t so they just come in and take it. I partly blame this stupid gimme-gimme society we have so proudly built for ourselves.

We need: 

  • a fucking big man-eating dog with built-in violent aggression towards intruders, 
  • a shotgun (god damn i hate that i need a gun), 
  • someplace to stash our remaining valuables, 
  • moving-away cash - fast!, and 
  • a different, less crappy goddamned city. FUCK YOU, Dayton, Ohio.

I have a real bad feeling about my short-term future.

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Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.

I have never been so busy in all my life - I’m currently writing code for (in no particular order) 1) myself, 2) a client, and 3) a prospective employer, and 4) may be starting with a new client soon. Of course, i’ve put everything else off this past week for projects i was doing for the prospective employer. So why am i completely, utterly broke? At least i know i’ll get a week’s pay for the two projects i did for the P.E. That won’t go far, since i have so much debt right now.

Unfortunately, one of the projects i did for the P.E. didn’t get finished on time, so i (more or less) owe them my time for free. It’s a Drupal theme. It’s terribly difficult to make a Drupal theme in one week, especially when that’s only one of two projects they assigned to me! So now i have to finish that - even though i will probably not be hired now because i wasn’t able to complete it on time.

The upshot of this is that i learned a lot about Drupal in a short time, and reacquainted myself with Flash (actually Swish) and actionscripting.

I have decided that, even though i am impressed by Drupal’s extreme versatility, extensibility, and scalability, and really like the Zen theme base, i do not like the theming system much (at least not in 5.x, which is what i had to use for this project - though maybe the problem is a Zen-theme thing). The problem is that the theme code does not appear to be separated by admin and frontend, at least not obviously. So when i change a page, i also change the admin section, too. Obviously, that’s not great, and has been my stumbling block, keeping me from delivering on time. Thankfully, you can easily separate the homepage from the inner pages, but it seems like you have to code for every single inner page if you want to separate it from the admin section. Maybe i’ll figure out a better way around this, as it just doesn’t seem right. Not by a longshot.

Oh, how i wish i could be working with WordPress instead! WordPress has such a better theming system, though perhaps not as robust as Drupal. (Holly actually found me a two-week-old job listing on Craigslist for a job working with WordPress and Joomla!, but i fear i am much too late for that omg perfect gig. I need to keep up with Craigslist more!) 

One thing’s for sure: i am pushing myself way beyond my physical limits. I’m apparently sick now, my throat feeling like phlegmy gravel and a nasty cough wracking my body every so often. In my over-the-counter coma induced earlier this evening i think i overheard Holly talking to someone about the bags under my eyes. I can almost feel my hair turning gray right now.

So, to sum up: i am putting myself through hell. I need less projects and more pay.

(It seems like right now in Dayton, nobody’s hiring, and everyone wants a massive discount on services, if not an outright free pass. What businesses remain here have that leverage, too, since damn near 8% of the city is now unemployed. An unemployed web designer has gotta do what an unemployed web designer’s gotta do.)

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Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.

  1. Our mice have become entirely intolerable. Sometime during the night last night, one (or more) of them have somehow managed to Indiana Jones its way onto the kitchen counter, and ate a big chunk of our bread. Seriously, wtf? This, likely, because we are now even hiding our dog’s food lately, which i’m sure is not a popular decision with our dear little Speck. I have renewed my war with the rodents with vigor and prejudice. Our landlord must rectify this. Conditions are approaching unlivable. Failure: landlord.
  2. Oops, somehow missed a credit card bill. I’m not perfect, but i don’t know how i forgot that one. Failure: mine.
  3. Vectren, our fuel provider, informed us that our incredible $700+ bill was, in fact, incorrect. Due to - ahem - underestimations, it should actually have been more than twice that. Yes - read that again. We owe $1500+ for gas used over the past year, because of underestimations. I should have been suspicious that our water was, in fact, hotter than the surface temperature on Venus, and yet our bill was never unbelievably high. In fact, they had sent out notices a few times over the past several months, requesting an inside read off of the meter, but i, being an online bill-payer, assumed they were paper bills and simply ignored them. Thankfully, we have a year to pay it off in full. Failure: mine, with a little help from Vectren (hey, they had my voice number & e-mail).
  4. Holly’s friend from work called us “idiots.” Holly, apparently for putting up with me; and me for not going out and getting a gas station job months ago (believe me, i’ve been searching, but maybe i set my sites a little too high for this crummy town). Failure: my own. Though her friend’s callousness was a little over-the-top.
  5. Holly’s student loans have come due six months earlier than expected. Failure: apparently the lender, as she was quite clear that they would be due six months after graduation. It’s of course possible there was some nefarious fine print hidden away somewhere in obscure legalese.
  6. Holly is so very exhausted and just completely strung out from all these awful stresses, which of course now also include her newly-diagnosed diabetic neuropathy (her latest round of medical testing is costing around $1200). Failure: again, mine.

Final tally? Don’t even tell me, i already know.

So you can see how i might be feeling a little crappy about myself, and about life in general lately. Things have hit critical mass, so to speak.

Oh, i didn’t mention a few ongoing issues, like the killer mold that is growing in our bedroom, from water leaking in through the windowsill. Those things weren’t specific to today.

On the positive side, i did have [what i think was] a good phone interview for a corporation i’d actually love to work for. I’m really hoping for the best, but you never know in this town. Just in case, though, i’ve also applied for a couple of menial positions. We shall see how things unfold soon enough.

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