New Art / Photography Project

I'm finally realizing the benefits of having one of these "smart phone" contraptions. I always resisted buying one because for how little I use a cell phone I couldn't justify paying not only the cost of the phone but also the obscene rates that the phone carriers charge each month. I've been on a "pay-as-you-go" type plan for ages now but even that was starting to look like I wasn't getting my money's-worth as I was still over paying for not using it. I was with AT&T at the time, which by the way SUCKS.

I was roaming around one day when I suddenly discovered that Virgin Mobile actually has a presence in this country. DOH! Yes I know, late to the party and all that. Anyway, one carrier switch and smart phone later I'm all tech-ed up.

The beauty of this is that I can now (like the rest of the world) roam around taking random photo's and videos on the spur of the moment. Because of this I've decided to create an ongoing photography project for myself called "LIFE: Ruled by Signs, Logos & Words". The premise is that I can only take photo's of my daily life if they include signs, logos or words, since these are the things that constant but often taken for granted or overlooked. Initially they can be seen in their own Picasa album and on their Google+ photo page until I can best figure out how / where to display them in the way I want them to be seen.


Some day's there might be LOTS and other day there might be none, it just all depends on what inspires me and say "this is part of who I am". I hope you enjoy it as much as I do and here's my current favourite photo of the past couple of days...

Two Things

First - I fucking HATE Walmart. It's full of stupid wankers that have no clue about ANYTHING. I generally avoid the place like the plague but whenever I find that I have to go there I always imagine an number of different ways to kill the stupid people I come across.

Secondly - I'm sick of choices. What happened to ordering a "line item" off a small breakfast menu in a greasy-spoon and having it plopped in front of you 10 minutes later. Oh that's right, I moved to the US where you ask for breakfast and then spend the next twenty minutes answering questions like what type of bread you want as the server prattles of 100 different types, or how you want your eggs cooked (who knew there were so many different ways), what colour you'd like your plate to be, and whether you'd like to have metal or plastic cutlery. COME ON, seriously. Do we honestly need that many choices, it's ridiculous.

Friendly Favours

I just LOVE doing favours for people 'cos not only do they wait until the last minute to ask you, they get really picky about what you put together for them. What a ball-ache. Or tittie-ache, whichever applies.

Spreading My Wings

WOW, I didn't realize it's been so long since I last posted!

Mostly things have been crazy, specifically at work where I'm basically doing two peoples' jobs. Our company is top-heavy with five "bosses" and not enough of us minions to go around. I have people needing things from all directions and all I can do is make a shifting-priority list to line things up to get done. Even that's not good enough, all of them expect everything to be done immediately regardless of how important they are in the grand scheme of things. Its annoying and frustrating to say the least and its actually making me contemplate going back to freelance design, building up a client list then working from home permanently.

I've put some feelers out anyway, see if I can't get some outside work and make a go of it. I'm starting to gather my unimpressive body of work I've done for these guys into a portfolio, although I'm not sure I even like most of it. I wish I had the forethought before leaving England all those years ago to make my portfolio easily accessible, I'd have SO MUCH more to showcase right now.

We live and learn I suppose.

UPS are CRAP

So, the company I work for has an account with UPS, we don't use it very often but today we've needed it.

Due to some technical issues on this end I can't receive emails from the ups.com domain, which means I can't retrieve the lost password. This obviously means I can't log on to use the online shipping options unless I create a new account log-in blah, blah, blah.

I was headed out for lunch anyway so I figured I'd just go to the UPS Store and give them the account number and have them create the shipment. "Sorry, we can't do that because we have no way of verifying that the account belongs to you". The guy then proceeded to tell me how I had to go to the closest drop-box to get one of the forms to hand-write, which I could also put our account number on.

How can the UPS STORE not be able to verify the account number but I can just randomly hand-write the account on a shipping document and throw it in the dropbox? That's fucking retarded!

Drowning

There are days when I feel like I'm drowning. That the mundane of every day has taken over and that its suffocating me. Coincidentally this tends to happen every February but it happens none-the-less. I miss not having my days to myself, being able to pick and choose at will what I feel like doing that day. I know, we all go through it, we all want our days to ourselves to do as we will. I guess I just need Spring to poke its head through the door to say "hi!"

A Small Rant...

So, I haven't really had much to rant about of late so I'm long overdue. Here goes....

Don't call me and the first words out of your mouth be "I just got a call from this number". Erm, yeah, that's great. I'm thrilled for you. This is an office of 30 people, any one of which could have called you and I would be none the wiser. Who the hell are you, what do you do and maybe, just MAYBE I'll try and help you find the person who called you. Don't get frustrated with ME because I don't magically know who it was that called you. Especially if you don't start out politely by greeting me, telling me your name and then saying you were called from this number.

Even better, listen to your friggin' voicemail before calling as the person that just called you probably left you a sodding message!

/endrant

Best Show EVARH

I have to honestly say that VH1 ROCKS! First there was Brett Michael's and and his porn bus, and now there's You're Cut Off

Overwhelmed

I find that with the onset of summer I am incredibly busy.

There's been A LOT of scribal work to do both at a Kingdom and Baronial level, not to mention the odd few commission pieces that I have happily agreed to do. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving being so helpful and involved with these things but I do need to clear my plate so to speak. Things should ease up once the Runnymede invitations are complete.

The of course Pennsic is quickly approaching. There's so much happening between now and then, I still have a few final of pieces of garb to make for us! I've also been busily highlighting all the classes I'd like to attend, I have good intentions but whether or not I can drag my lazy arse to that many  is yet to be determined. Not to mention I'm VERY easily distracted by fencing!

Vinland raids this past weekend was a blast, albeit exhausting. With an almost 5 hour drive time we couldn't go on Friday night since we would be setting up in the dark, which at a boy scout camp would be pitch black. So 4 am Saturday morning we headed off on our merry way. Once there set-up was easy then it was a case of fighting all day! Court was entertaining, and I even had a scroll handed out (details to follow tomorrow or the day after).

Some photo's from Vinland Raids, taken by others...

Why, Oh Why?

I swear people just love to complain. Every person that has walked into this office in the past couple of days has spent at least 5 minutes telling me how hot and aweful it is outside. These are the very same people that spend all winter complaining about the cold and how they can't wait for spring / summer to come around, or that pay thousands of dollars to go somewhere warm on holiday each year. Whats the difference between 90 degrees here in Upstate NY and 90 degrees in the Caribbean?

I hate to break it to people, but it really doesn't get that unbearable here in Upstate NY.

If people got out from inside their refrigerated boxes more often then they wouldn't have this complete intolerance for anything above 65 degrees. Why is there this need to move from one air-conditioned space to the next, what happened to driving with the windows down for the cool breeze in your hair, or opening up the house to let in the sweet smell of spring / summer.

Open your windows and let Khaos run wild.