28 year old
Pagan female who lives in Florida with her guy and two cats,
loves Disney, reads fanatically, tinkers in photography and
believes growing up is overrated.
There are people on the net that have nothing better to do
with their time
then be nasty to other people online. They post rude comments, spend hours
a day talking about sites they hate so much, that they well, spend hours a
day talking about them. (lame) They mock the owners and posters for their
opinions and their right to free speech. They expect everyone to fit into
their narrow-minded little world view or else they throw a temper tantrum.
To these people I say grow up.
Here's a bit of info people...the web is
a HUGE place. If you don't like what I say here, or who I am, or what I
do, or talk about, or what I look like, or the color of my hair, or
whatever asinine thing you dwell on, go somewhere else. It's
really, really easy. Honest. You just click the little "x" in
the corner of your browser and *poof* the offending, big, mean and nasty
site has disappeared.
I pay for this site. It's mine. That
means I can use it for whatever the hell I want to. Don't like it if I'm
bitching about something in my life? Oh fucking well. Go somewhere else.
Think I'm stupid for expressing my thoughts? Too fucking bad, don't read
them. Somewhere along the line, someone forgot this simple fact: Live
and let live Don't like me, cool, fine, whatever, I don't care.
This journal is NOT for you. It's for me. I'm not in it for popularity or
fame or anything stupid like that. I write it because I need to write and
express myself and get things out of my head sometimes. So read or don't,
it doesn't matter, but don't waste my time (or yours) bitching about it.
*gets off soapbox*
Tooth
Drive:
I need to
raise over $850 for critically needed dental
work. I'll be listing my hand made
jewelry, bracelets,
earrings, necklaces and horns
for sale to try to raise the desperately needed funds.
Every order helps. I can accept paypal payments at
webmaster@giveneyestosee.com
or check/money orders at:
M. Turner
PO Box 1484, Elfers, FL 34684
Thank you for your help and support.
I've also set
up a
tooth fund for anyone
wanted to donate without purchase.
Need a
good webhost?
Try
DreamHost. Use
my linkI'll get a
referal credit which goes straight into the Tooth Fund
as well.
Week of Migraine Hell Ugh. It's been such a week. Migraines three days this week. Last night, it got so bad, I broke into my Imitrex stash. See, I had eight pills. And I won't be getting any more any time soon. At about $200 a package of ten, it's simply not possible. But I couldn't take it anymore. And I remembered how much I hate those things. Yeah, 100mg gets rid of the migraine, but it leaves me totally and horrifically uncomfortable inside my own skin. My heart gets fluttery, random parts of my body alternate between numb and tingly, I get feverish and cold at the same time - just a mass of odd and really unsettling sensations. On top of it, it's hard to sleep. Oh and it makes my throat sore. (Dunno.)
So I hit the bed after literally being unable to stop crying about how much my head hurt (again) about 11:30 last night. Woke up today and it started in, so I basically woke up and took some excedrin. It's been lurking in the background all day. My neck is pure hell right now too and despite Love rubbing it for me yesterday and today, it's not a smidge better. It won't pop; it's stiff; it aches and it's just agony. What I need is regular massage on a theraputic level. My neck itself is actually permently screwed up and there's nothing that can be done about it except try to keep it from getting so bad. Unfortuntatly, I can't afford treatments to keep it from getting so bad, and I end up stuck in this hellish migraine cycle; vicious and horribly painful cycle.
Anyway, it's been a miserable week. I've still be trying to work on the PhoenixFire Designs site but I'm not done yet. I've got to finish the earrings section and do the entire bracelet section and then I'll be done. It's been a HELL of a lot of work though. (Which I think I've mentioned before, but ya know, it has been.) Good news is that there will be a LOT of new things up when I'm done. Which is good. I need some sales. Heh.
Alright, I'm heading to bed. My head's getting on the worse side of bad again and I'm sick of dealing with it. Being unconscious sounds preferable right now.
Yo ho, yo ho! A Pirate's Life For Me! So last night I saw Episode III. But before you get all to thinking I broke down and went to the theater, nothing could be further then the truth. A friend from Love's work got his hands on a full copy of the movie and burnt it on dvd for us. Yup. The whole thing. And not some crappy camcorder copy either. This was 16x9, 5.1 sound and all made from a finished digital print. It still had the time code on it, but that was easily ignorable.
Viva la interet!
See, George isn't going to refund my money for the first two anytime soon. So I feel no qualms about seeing this one for free. It's the least he can do. (And before you ask, no, I'm not going to share it online and no I'm not going to be giving away copies. Besides the fact that I don't even own a dvd burner, Love took the disk back to his friend today so I don't even have it anymore.)
I'm glad though I didn't pay to see it. It certainly wasn't as bad as the first two. It was the best of the new triology. But that isn't saying much. It was mostly pretty to look at but that felt about it to me. It just seemed to be...missing something. Like it was all shallow and surface with no depth. Padame was wallpaper, the fights were graphically pretty but soulless and the story was hollow. I don't know. When it was over I didn't feel like it was finished. I felt like you do when you see or read something that never quite finds it's grove and so you are left with a kind of lacking feeling from it.
Anakin was annoying in the beginning. The entire "DUH!" factor that Palpatine was so glaringly, obviously, over-the-top, movie villian evil and yet Anakin with his supposed amazing Force powers and insight didn't catch on was aggravating. It was like, "Come on already, get a clue; buy a vowel - something!" Then, his actual turning to the Dark Side felt weak. Like there wasn't enough there. Just, oh, sure, I'll go murder kids for love, no problemo boss! which didn't feel real enough to me.
I don't know. And why was Obi-Wan so cruel as to leave him all flaming and burning? Why not do the merciful thing and nudge him a smidge with the Force fully into the lava so at least he'd die quicker? Seemed awfully mean to just, you know, leave him there. Sure he expected him to die from the wounds, but why make him suffer? Seems rather un-Jedi to me.
So it was an "Eh" to me. It wasn't the abomination of the first two and it did "feel" a bit more Star Wars, but it still missed the mark for me. I just kept waiting for something more to it so when the credits came up, I was left wanting.
In non-Star Wars news, I've been working on the overhaul for PhoenixFire Designs. I've gone ahead with the idea almost like the mock-up, complete with thumbnails. It's looking really good, but DAMN, it's slow-going. It's a HELL of a lot of work. So far, I've gotten my Artist page, About page, Shipping page, Contact page, Links page, Necklace thumbnails page and the necklace individual pages. Next is Memory Wire thumbnail page, all the individual memory wire pages, bracelets thumbnails page, bracelet individual pages, earrings thumbnail page, earring individual pages and the splash/main page. So, while it sounds like I've done a lot (and I kinda have), it doesn't seem like it and there's a LOT more to do. Just thought I'd take a small break from thumbnails and item descriptions. Heh.
Alright, well, back to the grind. I didn't get much done yesterday because I had a head-splitting migraine all day and all night. In fact, it was 4am and I was still laying there in agony trying to fall asleep. Right now, all I want to do is lay down and take a nap but I fear if I do, the migraine will return, so I'm trying to just get some work done but not push it too hard. Which is pretty much an oxymoron.
Oh well. Anyway, wish me luck. This is slow-going work. I just hope it pays off in the end.
Need Some Opinions! I've been trying to come up with a simple overhaul for my jewelry site, PhoenixFire Designs. It grew very chaotically and haphazardly and right now, it's hard to navigate and just not what I want it to be.
So, I'm debating on some basic presentation styles. Like, right now, I list several products on a page complete with information and photos. But it takes several pages to see it all because I'm trying to find a happy medium for page load. But it's become hard to find all the pages and it's just not as smooth of a shopping experience as I'd like.
So, in this mock-up page, I've tinkered with the idea of using thumbnails for all products of a catagory on one page. Then you can click to see the item larger, on it's own page. But the question is, does it do the items enough justice? Are people not going to be interested in clicking the small thumbnails because they don't look as good as the larger images? Or it is easier because you can glance and click what you want?
The mock-up page has both necklaces and bracelets, but the real page would only have one catagory. I just added a bunch of photos in to get an idea of what the page would look like.
Also, the mock-up page has hurrdily compressed thumbnails. I can get them to look a little better then that if I actually do it that way, but it still won't be like a larger photo. But there will be the standard larger photo(s) to fully see the item if you were to click it. I'd make each item it's own page.
So, in sum, the questions are as follows:
1. Do you prefer to have several pages with full-sized images and all information but have to click several pages to see all items?
- or -
1a. Do you prefer one page of thumbnails to see everything and then click each thumbnail to bring up a page dedicated to that one item?
2. Are the thumbnails less appealing then the larger images? Do they have less impact or are you curious enough to click them to see a larger version of the image?
3. Should thumbnails show a small version of the entire necklace (or bracelet) but sacrifice detail or should the thumbnail show a close-up of the feature portion of the necklace but require you to click it larger to get the entire view?
Am I making sense in what I'm asking here? *chuckles* I think I'm confusing myself. Any input is really appreciated. I need to do something and I guess I just need to find out if I should redo it the way it is (full images over several pages) or like the mock-up (one page per catagory of thumbnails that require you to click the thumbnail to see the full piece)?
Botanical Garden Photos So, Saturday was free museum day. About six different museums in downtown St. Petersburg were free admission all day. Sounded like it was worth a drive to us! We had wanted to hit several, but it turns out everything closed at like 4:30pm or 5pm. (How lame is that?) So we only ended up hitting two places. The first was Sunken Gardens, a botanical garden that's over a hundred years old and purchased by the city of St. Pete in 1999 to save it. Lovely. The second is The Museum of Fine Arts. Unfortunately, we only had about 20 minutes to hurridly breeze through since we didn't know everything was closing so early. We had wanted to hit the Dali Museum as well but ran out of time.
Anyway, I did manage at the very least to get a lot of lovely photos of Sunken Gardens. I took over a hundred in fact. Many of them simply don't look all that impressive when resized and compressed like mad to make them web friendly. Which is a shame since most of them came out amazingly beautiful and are vividly detailed. I did take 24 images of the group and put them together across a few pages. So take a look and enjoy. They're quite lovely if I do say so myself.
As always, the photo page lists all the various photo galleries I've taken over the years if you wanted to look at some other images.
Beyond that, not much of note going on. There wasn't anything at the movies worth seeing (and no, the last entry was not me looking for reasons to see Episode II. I am not in any way, shape or form paying to see that movie. So stop trying to talk me into it!) and since we're on the broke side (hence the free museum day and the remander of a gift card that prompted thoughts of maybe seeing a flick), it limits your options. In the end, we played some more Norath on PS2. We're trying to up Rand's character a bit so we can try the second one on the medium level. It's slow going. He plays the wizard and it seems that I (High Cleric) and Love (Shadow Knight) just do more damage and thus get more experience faster. I'm halfway to level 27, Love's just at 26 and poor Rand's at 24 I think. Oy. We're working on it though. I like the game, but we've already beat it and bought the sequal (Return to Arms) probably going on two months ago. But his character was too low to play it on the medium setting and the lowest setting was stupidly low.
So...... yeah. Ok, I think I'm going to go get a snack (haven't eaten yet today) and switch out the load of laundry. It's laundry day around here and since a ton needs to be done, I should probably stop putzing around and do it. Heh.
