After 100% feedback, and 224 sales, I’m shut down. I  can’t even have an account now, even to buy. They are turning me off on Tuesday completely and I am now grabbing all my customer data off.

Reason?  Good Question. They cited “user complaints”, but won’t elaborate further. Since I can’t use the forums or Storque so I’m not sure what they can find to complain about me with, other than I work for Artfire and exist.

I cant say I’m surprised. I’ve been expecting this since September when I joined on at Artfire and announced it here on my blog, so this is just the other shoe dropping. I’ve more or less stayed on out of pure spite.

You can of course find me on Artfire for all your pincushiony needs.

• Sharing is Caring:
• Share it
• Tweet it
• Sub it
• Send it

© jen for Very Big Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments

Add to del.icio.us

Search blogs linking this post with Technorati

Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Bitch Session, Jeneral.

Dear National Amusements,

Right now as I’m writing this I’m trying to decide what to eat for dinner after “eating dinner” at your theatre. See I’m trying to decide what would be willing to puke up later should the food poisoning I fear I might have gotten from your food should hit.

See, we decided to splurge today and try the local Cinema de lux in Springdale, Ohio and see Wolverine on opening night in one of your “directors halls”.

It cost a little more than going to the Rave (our usual fave) but the prospect of ordering food from our seats was nice since we were starving and we hoped it would be a better behaved and more adult crowd (wasn’t, still had a chatty housewife and a screaming baby).

It had taken me a while to even find out more about your Director’s Hall Theatres. There is precious little info on your site, and certainly not connected to the page for my theatre where I’d of course want to be able to access it. I had to google it and read a newspaper article in Connecticut about it to get what it was. So there is a head up for you, fix your site. It’s cumbersome as hell.

So anyway, back to the show:

We ordered moments before the opening credits. Finally.

Our food didn’t come until well after the movie started. Like 30 min into it. We had ordered two burger combos (burger, fries, drink) but came on ONE paper tray piled so high it as impossible to deal alone with as there was no place to put it. We sat it on the floor and started eating in the dark. They hadn’t brought any ketchup packets, the burgers, while large, were dressed poorly (barely any ketchup, NO mayo or NO cheese as ordered)

The fries were cold, and limp, largely inedible. The burgers were all but lukewarm… well raw.

Not rare, RAW. There was a cooked outer shell, After a few bites I noticed that meat seemed well… mushy. Soft even. I stuck my finger into the meat, in the dark mind you, and felt the patty. Wet, cool and it pulled away and molded easily in my fingers. My stomach tuned. My husband was so hungry he had devoured his without too much thought other than it was food, and he is a man that likes everything charred to a cinder. I sat mine aside.

After the movie I got a look at it. Not only was my burger raw it wasn’t bloody. Meaning it was barely cooked. Ground beef only gets blood after it gets hot as the fibers break down releasing the juices, this did not even get hot enough to do this, so it was beyond rare. It was raw.

All in all it was a confusing experience, once we’re not sure we’ll repeat, we’ll stick with the Rave. At least they won’t try to kill me.

Jen Segrest

• Sharing is Caring:
• Share it
• Tweet it
• Sub it
• Send it

© jen for Very Big Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments

Add to del.icio.us

Search blogs linking this post with Technorati

Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Bitch Session, Jeneral.

His new album is Bat out of Hell III. 3??? How about thinking up a new name you uncreative tank of lard?

And now that he has a new album *I* have to endure him coming on everything from the Today Show to the Tonight Show hacking up old hairballs like Paradise By The Dashboard Light on camera with his hottie singer dujour (who normally wouldn’t talk to him) hanging all over him like a vestal virgin hopped up on Ecstasy.

I’m convinced Meatloaf sold his soul to the devil for the attention he gets.

• Sharing is Caring:
• Share it
• Tweet it
• Sub it
• Send it

© jen for Very Big Blog, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments

Add to del.icio.us

Search blogs linking this post with Technorati

Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Bitch Session.

I don’t think Obama can get the crossover/moderate voters like McCain could, and I doubt he can carry the south.

I think McCain could win against any democrat if he gets the nod, but any other republican will have a fight on their hands. McCain is more likeable by the left and independants, of the republicans that is.

And can I say for the record that the democrats shunning the Michigan Primaries to me seems to be petty considering Michigan was one of the few democratic states they had in the last election, certainly one o the only ones in the Midwest. Way to go Dems. It’s called rolling with the punches, look it up.

• Sharing is Caring:
• Share it
• Tweet it
• Sub it
• Send it

© jen for Very Big Blog, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments

Add to del.icio.us

Search blogs linking this post with Technorati

Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Bitch Session.

I have given this affliction a name: "Jpeggery".

That's right. I just made jpeg into in a verb.

Go me. 

• Sharing is Caring:
• Share it
• Tweet it
• Sub it
• Send it

© jen for Very Big Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments

Add to del.icio.us

Search blogs linking this post with Technorati

Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Bitch Session.

Two days pass, and they don't come. So I call when the were officially 30 minutes late to verify they had me scheduled.

I get the same chic I'd booked with, she says "Oh yeah they been tryin' to call you all day".

"Uh I've been here all day, and no one be callin' me. Did they-"

"Hold on a minute honey" and they come back 5 minutes later. "Yeah they been trying to call you, it wasn't working."

"Uh, did they dial 513 first? I'm in Middletown, Cincinnati folks have to dial 513 or it won't go through."

(Ignoring me) "We don't go up that far they said."

"What? I sat in a 90 degree house for two days for nothing? Why didn't you tell me this when I booked the appointment? I could have had someone in here by now! I work out of the house, damn it."

(disinterested) "Yeah, we don't go up that far."

I just hung up. If it had been 90 degrees today I would have driven down there to bitch slap her since I would have been able to get AC in the car to the car to do it.

I instead turned around and called a similarly named local-er place down the road — one that I realized I had meant to call anyway since they had been here before but had gotten the names mixed up when I googled. When I called the the first place I asked "I think I've had you guys over before, right?" the woman lied to me "oh yeah yeah." Freaking liar and incompetent.

Today at least was rainy and 70, instead of more of the stifling heat we've had all summer. 

The second place, the one I'd meant to call from the beginning is coming in the morning. About damn time.

Thompson Heating and Cooling you SUCK! 

• Sharing is Caring:
• Share it
• Tweet it
• Sub it
• Send it

© jen for Very Big Blog, 2007. | Permalink | No comment

Add to del.icio.us

Search blogs linking this post with Technorati

Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Bitch Session.

6 years ago today we regretfully woke up to a new world one short day after the incomprehensible act of violence that made the world so much smaller, and yet so dauntingly huge and alien at the same time. It wasn't an easy morning, we didn't rise with the bleary carelessness we had the day before, instead we staggered out of bed after a rough night of attempted sleep. 

6 years ago we were great nation. We were peaceful, and the world largely respected us for acts of our past. We had ethics and values and tried to uphold civil rights, we freed and liberated those held under by more calloused hands. When the attack happened they mourned our loss with us, many holding vigils in their capitols and town squares burning candles for a place most had only seen on tv. They held our hand, and held the other up vowing to help us avenge the despicable crime. We were comforted in knowing we were not alone, that our years of aiding the world might bring them to aid to us. 

And we waited for those many long months that turned into years, waiting for our leaders to avenge our loss. A collective breath turned into many, and we waited some more. Two years pass, and much of the rage with it. We thought they were being careful by not rushing to strike back. Oh how foolish we were.

6 years later we have nothing to show for any of it. We've betrayed those who were killed that day with a war that was aimed at the wrong target for reasons that we may never truly know. We've seen four times as many more of our people die in their name, and killed twenty times more of theirs, with nothing to show at the end of the day. We've let down all the peoples of the world. Those who had once looked up to us in our hour of grief with respect now looked on in horror as when we turned our mourning and wishes for a just retribution into a grasping, desperate act of blind revenge for someone's wrong reason. The guilty still walk unpunished, the venerated dead still lie unavenged. Our leaders flounder desperately, caught in their own web of lies. Most of us are still having trouble facing ourselves in the mirror.

6 years ago the United States I knew died. It didn't sleep, it didn't wander off into the desert to find itself after a bad breakup. It died without so much as a sigh after putting the noose around it's own neck.

The country I see now is not the country I grew up in, the country whose ideals my hippy parents pressed on me. My country did not torture like those we foughagainst, we were above the ways of tyrants and fiends. We did not lie, cheat or steal, we did not plunder, and we did not capitalize on the suffering of others, or our own – and yet my country, and it's leaders, have done all of these in the past few years and much more.

In 6 years we have undone what took over 200 to make. Sometimes I wonder if the rest of the world misses our old selves more than we do. I doubt we'll earn back what we've truly lost in my lifetime.  That's the saddest part of all this. We did far more damage to ourselves than any terrorist ever did.

• Sharing is Caring:
• Share it
• Tweet it
• Sub it
• Send it

© jen for Very Big Blog, 2007. | Permalink | One comment

Add to del.icio.us

Search blogs linking this post with Technorati

Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Bitch Session.

First: AGAIN??? What a freakin' loser. He left on the tail of their biggest fame back in 1985, and now after the amazing success of the reunion tour he does it again? I thought he was a stinking weasel then, and that goes double now. Go to hell you sodding mangy rat.

Second: no one freaking told me after this many months??? I can't believe it. I found it in a totally unrelated google search. I used to be up on all the news but obviously I'm hideously old now and out of touch. Whimper.

• Sharing is Caring:
• Share it
• Tweet it
• Sub it
• Send it

© jen for Very Big Blog, 2007. | Permalink | One comment

Add to del.icio.us

Search blogs linking this post with Technorati

Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Bitch Session.

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.

• Sharing is Caring:
• Share it
• Tweet it
• Sub it
• Send it

© jen for Very Big Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 5 comments

Add to del.icio.us

Search blogs linking this post with Technorati

Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Bitch Session, Design.

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.

• Sharing is Caring:
• Share it
• Tweet it
• Sub it
• Send it

© jen for Very Big Blog, 2007. | Permalink | One comment

Add to del.icio.us

Search blogs linking this post with Technorati

Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Bitch Session.