Want that classic ring from that CTU desk? Get it here.

Mr Man put me on the patrol for it, and I delivered. Now when someone from work calls, national security is at risk!

 I told him he might want to warn his second in command though, becasue with the magic ring tone he just might end up dead.

Minneapolis has a vampire's buffet running under thier feet. Pity no one told the sewer workers before hand.

Blood from testing lab sprays Out of Sewer, On City Worker (with VIDEO! YAY!)

Hide the fonts folder from her.

I actually got into spring cleaning and decided to takle my hideously oversized and largely useless drop box folder and in organizing I moved it inadvertantly into another folder.

After the heart palpatations began I managed to think straight enough to set Spotlight on it and tracked down the errant folder. To say I was relived was an understatement.

Did I mention I was working across the network from the laptop so when you "send to trash" another machine's files it's REALLY gone. Like yesterday gone. Yeah. Honest, blood curdling panic is good for you. I was also half asleep at the time, so after that it took a while to calm back down. I mean, my font folder is like 1 gig or something. It's a career's worth of hoarding there. It's like my baby.

Before anyone yells at me - Yes, I have it backed up on DVD. (I actualy have a copy in the laptop so I dont have to store those files there) I still wasn't 100% sure it was a new enough backup to cover any more recent additions I might have made, and besides - I thought I was smarter than that. Guess not. 

But, in all that looking around I realized what awful shape my files are right now, just a load of crap I haven't organized that well as of late, so I need to spend an entire day really smashing it into shape. I don't have trouble finding stuff, but seeing it now makes me nuts to think about. I've always been such a stickler for file organization and I got lazy.

Anyway, I need to go lay back down… whew. 

Not kidding, really, please comment to this post. I'm trying to finely hone the spam checkers and I can't do that if I don't have comments coming in!

So, roll call time again - who da hell are ya, and what's your dread secret? 

::mumbles::: Frakin' slackers… 

1. Typical spring week in Ohio… sunny 70, sunny 85, rainy 50, sunny70. Yup, spring is here alright.

2. I am loving my new shampoo. I have been using Aussie stuff for years, especially 3-Minute Miracle, the Hair Insurance leave in conditioner spray, and the Moist sham/cond. Years I'm telling ya, over 8 at least. Since before P&G the bastards kings bought them a few back anyway. Haven't noticed too much of a difference thankfully. Anyway, they just came out with Shampoo and conditioner under the Hair Insurance name and I'm freaking in love. Works great on my curly self, it's soft as hell and let me tell ya thats the holy grail for curly hair, but also just smells frickin' wonderful, like I should be running down an alpine mountain in a billowy sundress… uh… Sorry, girly moment there. Won't let it happen again. Just wanted to let the ladies know it kicks unholy ass. Uh, Yeah.
3. My other blog Ohikea is all new on wordpress too! (The building has begun!!!)

If you aren’t caught up, you might not want to watch, but most of it is funny junk not lines… Either that when you see the spoiler warning cover your eyes and go LALALALALA for 30 seconds.

Okay folks, so I’m still adding some handy plugins (scripts) so I’ll need your help to kick all the tires and junk since many have lots of default settings I’m not sure about.

Plugins added:

Use Smilies in your comments. hock: :twisted: :evil: :eek: :cry: :wink: :mad: I hope to add more to the list but can’t seem to figure that out yet. (and I have to find some Duran Duran smilies, just because)

If anything fouls up let me know it, my email is on the contact tab or the about block on the right.

Also, I could use someone with wordpress experience to lend me an IM/ear about moving something around. I’m not sure what part/s of the theloop.php I need to touch to move the comments link to below the posts… looks like there is more than one type of page effected and I’m not too sue footed in there yet. I think it makes more sense to be after since you will see it after you read the post. (What say you guys?)

No I don’t know why the page scrolls sideways yet, I’m working on it. i’m also not sure how much of the above will live full time on the new vbb, but it’s fun to play with.

Oh and be sure to try the slider, aka “rolling archives”, over the top post. I liked it so much I removed the actual archive list as the roller seems so much faster. Click and Drag the slider, baby - or just use the older/newer links. :grin:

And those on LJ remember the VBB LJ feed and my SCA LJ blog since not many over here understand or like to hear me whine how unfair the the fake Middle Ages are.

We don’t get the local paper and get most of our news off the internet (I am an odd in American that I prefer international news) but tonight when Mr Man and I were on our way to a way swanky dinner at Jeff Ruby Steak house (courtesy of a ginormous gift card gift from one of his vendors) we heard this story on the radio that someone in the area skinned and boiled a dog alive in oil.
(If that link doens’t work, go to bugmenot.com for a pass, but warning it’s a rough story to read.)

Mr Man and I were both on the edge of tears. We are huge animal softies so to hear that just a few miles from our house, with our menagerie of dogs and cats, that someone did something this horrific… Sickened isn’t the word. Trenton is just behind our platt, I mean this is CLOSE to us. I just wanted to go home and hug my dogs all night.

I’ve stated before that Ohio’s animal cruelty laws are so antiquated. They barely give you a slap on the wrist, and something of this magnitude would bring a whopping six months in jail max.

I hate to say it but if this is what it takes to finally wake Ohio’s (now thankfully mostly Democrat) legislators up then perhaps this dog died for something.

If you want donate money to help find this monster please do. If there is a desire I can set up a paypal and hand deliver the funds since I am in the area. But more than anything, if you live in Ohio (or even if you don’t), please please please contact your state representative and demand that Ohio catch up with the modern age and bring in animal cruelty laws that will make offenders wish they weren’t born. They might not stop them from committing the first one, but if we catch the bastards it will damn well stop them from committing a second, or as our Sheriff said stop them from moving on to people.

The Softie Award finalists are out. I didn’t even place for a finalist in the Pincushions category.

I mean look at that pic! I would have thought that one would have at least placed. Bah. I entered a few too!

Bastards grumble grumble… damn it’s hard being a competitive leo sometimes.

(BTW, I mainly put this up to test the Flickr Photo Gallery plugin for Wordpress - sweet. Doesn’t seem to link sets, so that might be a bug, but it does pics good and you can tag search.)

I know change is hard. I know many readers liked, and miss, the old look. A few have even whined at me. But let me explain… As I said in a earlier post, I wasn’t planning on changing systems as fast as I did but after deleting the 600th spam comment of the night (which was happening more and more often) I was finally so pissed off over the issue I just went and DID it to make it finally stop. Call it a “rage induced moment of clarity”. It worked for me.

The hardest part of being a web designer is trying to sell the client on drastic changes to what they might have grown comfortable with. In a blogs case you have two clients. The blogger and the reader. The readers associate the blog with the look, they get comfortable with the decor. I’ll admit I did makeover for me.

The classic VBB design integrated it into my new professional site over five years ago. In the terms of design and the net, that’s damn near geriatric. Everytime I entertained a change more people would arrive to rave over it (Seems I’m ahead of my time for being retro). So I would say “six more months”. Well that turned into a few more years. For someone in my profession it’s downright unforgivable.

I’ve always said ART is permanent, design is not. That’s why I hate the term “graphic artist”. Art is expression and emotion, it’s only purpose it to be looked at. Pondered. Examined and extrapolated. Art is timeless. Design’s purpose is to sell. To whore an idea, a look, a product. Design is fleeting and mercenary. Evolutionary and extraneous. Design has a shelf life. Both art and design are powerful things, they can even cross pollinate, just don’t confuse them. They are what they are. Design that doesn’t change doesn’t make it art, it just makes it stale.

VBB/VBD was stale.

I got sick of looking at such an old design, and got tired of MT. I had a domain that I wasn’t “using” other than in redirect. Verybigdesign.com’s redesign is on the list for “Things wot need doin’ this year” since BADLY NEEDS updating and a major makover. So, the look of the blog would be changing regardless. And if it’s going to change and move out on it’s own it seemed stupid to update to MT 3.3 on a domain I didn’t want to keep the blog on requiring it to be installed somewhere else as well later. VBB’s install I had was so olde skool it was never converted it to mysql, so it was all cgi-bin run so that’s another huge PITA and slooooow since there was over 3100 entries. It took an hour to rebuild! It was a mess.

Will this look “retro super highway” look stay? Dunno. But I felt it at least needed “Jenifying” until I know what it is I want to do with it for sure. I’m still poking at WP so if you visit and it’s gone all wonky, you know I’m playing right that instant. I hope you like it in the mean time (bonus points if you get the right image…

Also, I have to admit I just wanted to try wordpress. Everyone keeps raving about it, and I like to learn new apps liek that. I have to say I like how easy it is to add things and it’s simliar enough to other apps I’ve customized that I’m not feeling terribly lost.

Anyway, thems the reasons. I hope you stay, I hope you get used to the look if I don’t change it right away, but I promise to not let it get stale again.

Saw 300 today. Sure it’s only passingly truthful about the actual battle, but it has to be the best gay action movie ever!
Ladies, there is so many pretty half naked men with rippling abs and leather undies that it almost qualifies as porn. Hoo baby. And it is visually stunning, of course. If they don’t give an Oscar for best Fitness trainer, they should! This movie had a uber buff Faramir with a 299 body doubles, Gollum, and giant elephants, ugly fighting machines… it was only lacking some homoerotic mischievous Hobbits.

On the way out I was joking to Mr Man that I heard we should wait till the end for an alternate ending tacked on in the credits where the Spartans all go out for ice cream. A woman walking by looked at me confused till se realized we were joking.

I was rather disappointed with how Leonides died though. In the actual battle he died before the end and then there was a fight to protect his body from the Persians, which the Persian captain saw as a pretty dangerous thing since they were fighting for their KING not because they were told to. The way the movie did it was okay though, I just think it would have been more moving to have the Spartans dying to protect their dead King. But then I dress up like a viking on weekends and have a medieval name I answer to better than my own.

I did like what Leonidas says to the traitor Quasimodo standing admist the enemy. He wished him something on the line of a long life. I imagine that to a Spartan thats like wishing a Klingon to a peaceful death in his comfortable bed. Ouch, that had to hurt.

If you are seeing this you are seeing the first post from Wordpress. I had it with getting spam bombed out of my mind. I had it with spending hours on a Saturday with a head cold with them coming in faster than I could delete them. It was so bad that my host (trying to calm the storm) shut the comments off for five days and I didn’t know! (and all but one of you lazy bastid’s didn’t either!)

So anyway, welcome to the new VBB! I was originally hoping to do this all in advance and then just shock you guys with a all new site already all pimped to perfection. But I was just fed up, so I did it out of the optimum order. I think you all know my well enough to know that I’ll get it all worked out soon . One day you’ll wake up and you’ll see it all done after one of my famous all niters.

Anyway - It’s late I think I’m done for tonight. Head hurt.

So I saw an icon like this on Livejournal and went in search of a t-shirt for it. Finding none, I got busy in illustrator and slapped it up on cafepress so I could make myself one, and decided to see who else wanted one. I see myself giving one to my hair stylist next time I go in.

Click to see!

I’m really happy with the skull, it came out friendly and not scary.

—

The pincushions book I’m gonna be in is available for pre-order on amazon! I have about 6 or 7 projects in it. Here’s the preliminary listing from the main publisher. I can’t wait to see it in November!

And then in December I might be in Threads Magazine doing pincushions again. I don’t know how I go to be a name in this, but Flickr helped as that is where I foudn other peopel doing it and where the book people found me. Worth the $25 pro account totally!

—

There’s been a HUGE recall on cheap canned “chunk and gravy style” cat and dog food. Mostly store brands but some premuim brands like Nutro and Iams are also affected. No cause given, but animal illness and possible death are risks. Here’s the site for the recall.

I went with a pal to see Amazing grace today, head cold and all, and just in time. Starting Friday it goes to one 10pm showing a day, and it’s gone next Friday. If you can go see it, it was really wonderful. It’s interesting to see how history collides.

But then I’m a history junkie.

I want to see 300, Mr Man is balking, unimpressed by “cool grpahics for coolness sake” and it’s questionable historical accuracy and the costuming etc… I’d like to mentioned to the court that when *I* say this stuff about other movies he tells me to “get over it”. So this is a bit of a confusing double standard here.

Grillboy sent me this review, and I just sent it to Mr Man to read at work…

… “My final analysis is 300 the most ass-ruling movie I’ve seen this year, and will probably be the King of 2007 unless someone makes a movie where a pair of sentient boobs fights a werewolf.”

That will seal the deal!

Menu and Icons

Awesomeeeee!

And speaking of… you know those guys you read about as a kid who would write the new testment on a grain of rice? Litterally small time. This guy carves ships on crystals of sugar.

Be sure to scroll down to see them all, I like the Henry and his six wives in the eye of the needle myself…

(hat tip to Gamera Spinning for the link above!)

I blame my childhood spent in the offices and halls of WYSO, a public radio station near my hometown where my mom was/is on the air.

Complete with the classic NPR announcer voice, I just woke up from this dream about driving in a car listening to a NPR radio story in a car (or something) and the culminated in these words (and I came stright to the computer to type this up, but I’m still losing large parts as i type……

“The handpuppets used in this investigative story are the property of Artist Jerry Joe Jeff Jones and were not harmed-”

Then I woke up with that disgusted grump I always get after *actually* listening to NPR… ugh. I even woke up angry that I had to stomach that crap and had no way to turn the channel, muttering “only NPR would do a *radio* story about puppets!” as if the story were real.

My dreams are really exciting, eh? They even bore the crap out of me.

Not with work, but housework, so it’s work work. meh.

Since we are going to paint and revinyl the kitchen it means we have to move the appliances and pantry cabinets OUT of the kitchen, which means cleaning the storage room of doom!

NOT an easy feat. So if I’m not around on AIM today much, you know why. Hell i’m not sure how many folks even read this tripe anymore.

Found it! I’m glad I looked again. It ONLY one view before I found it… WOO you guys get the scoop!

Mad TV was on fire. Just amazingly brilliant.

They had a skit of Steve Jobs introducing the newest iProduct, the iRack. I’m telling you it was fabulous. Politically motivated (say “irack” to yourself) brilliance. I dont want to spoil it since I’m attempting to pull it off dvd, I actually tivo’d the show, and recorded the segement to the new dvd burner and am trying to pull it off. New skill for Jenny! Woot! I’ll post a link to youtube or something if I get it to work and get it up…

The current hate list:
The new “anything you can do” Gap ad.
Mario Cantone.
Justin Timberlake’s “exy Back”.
That they are going to make a TV series about the Geico Cavemen.

Mr Man has decided it’s time to tackle the kitchen. We’re going cheap a couple gallons of paint and some new vinyl. I MIGHT be able to talk him into a metal splash like from those old style ceiling tiles or what they have an a roll for such uses. We don’t have much to cover so it won’t be a huge job, but here are the colors I’m looking at. They are a little more contrasty and a hair darker… the flooring is actually a bit more subtle, but hte gold on it is brighter…

Went to the Cincinnati Home & Garden Show today. Came home with many cool swag things, including a new yard stick (a must for those of us who sew) and a crap load of magnets (most shaped like houses). Was hoping for more kitchen booths for ideas, but it seemed to be a bath year. Was still fun despite the teeming hordes of people.

Have i mention I hate crowds?