The Romaines – photos by john cornicello, treatment by hybrid elephant
Monthly Archives: November 2016
hipy papy
my blog’s birthday is today: it was on this day nine years ago that i left LiveJournal for good. i finally learned at least part of the lesson taught by Bacchus, in Bacchus’ First Rule of the Internet, which is, “Anything worth doing on internet, is worth doing on a server you own, and over which you have control.”
ॐ ༀ ๛
milestones
RIP Smerdyakov Karamazov
one of the greatest clowns in modern history died yesterday.
FOLLOWUP: West Seattle-bound C Line driver dies after heart attack on Viaduct
back to the grind
i got a big order the other day, and it wasn’t aparajita. somebody ordered about half of my remaining kala loban, and, in the process of discovering whether or not i had enough, i also discovered that the erstwhile re-designer of the web site didn’t do as good a job of transferring the old web site to the new one as i had initially suspected, which meant that, while i did have enough kala loban to satisfy this particular customer’s bizarre needs, there were many products that were listed as “In Stock” but they didn’t have correct quantity information… and there were also products listed as “In Stock” that didn’t have any quantity information at all… which meant that, theoretically, someone could order more incense than i have available to sell them…
and i HATE IT when that happens…
because i have to email the customer, apologise, explain the situation, etc., etc., et cetera… WAY more actual contact with the actual customers than i am comfortable having, especially when it would appear that it is because of my screw-up.
so, i’m taking inventory again.
one of the things that i realised, is that, this time, i can actually use the back end of the web site to help me keep track of inventory, so that, when i go to the FSM (for example), i won’t have to “wing it”. the new web site also means that i can, actually accept credit cards at the FSM, which is definitely an added benefit.
i’ll be glad when it’s over, though… it’s really a hassle keeping track of everything and trying to move around when you’re surrounded by stacks of boxes.
M&Ms
i’m not particularly concerned about whether or not my food contains GMOs… i’d rather that they not, but it doesn’t concern me an awful lot if they do, it’s just one of those things…
so, i was intrigued when i saw, on the back of the costco-sized package of peanut M&Ms that i bought recently, when i saw a notice on the back of the package that said “PARTIALLY PRODUCED WITH GENETIC ENGINEERING”…
so, i called the customer inquiry line that they posted on the back of the package, and this is the story i got:
they are required, by law, to label potentially GMO products. however, suppliers of some of the ingredients — i.e. NOT associated with the M&M/Mars factory — may OR MAY NOT use genetically modified organisms to produce the raw material that gets sold to M&M/Mars, AND…
get this…
THEY DON’T HAVE TO TELL M&M/Mars whether they do or not.
because of the fact that M&M/Mars DOESN’T KNOW whether or not their suppliers use GMOs, they HAVE TO label their products, whether they contain GMOs or not.
in other words, by law, M&M HAS TO notify us, even though they DON’T KNOW THEMSELVES!
THIS IS WHY I AM VERY SUSPICIOUS OF FOOD LABELING! 😡
it gets worse and worse…
drumpf has appointed ben carson — otherwise known as dr. stabby — to the department of education: great, a guy who believes the world was created in six literal days, and has compared evolution to satan will now be in charge of what our nation’s kids will learn.
not only that, but he has appointed sarah palin secretary of the interior… no more worries about fracking and DAPL. forget alternative energy, drill, baby, drill. 🙁
and, he has appointed white supremacist stephen bannon to be his chief of staff and bridgegate governor chris cristie as attorney general.
he’s notified 3 million “illegal” aliens to be ready for deportation… 😡
i’m a white man, and i’m worried about the future of the world. 😐
😲
every four years i post about how i voted for the guy that didn’t win, and, for the most part, i’ve been disappointed more than not.
this year, the worst of all possible people got elected: donald drumpf… worse than nixon, worse than reagan, worse than george bush, worse than george bush jr., even worse than hillary clinton. and less than half as smart as any of ’em.
seriously, if we don’t have a revolution soon, we’re going to end up EXACTLY like germany in the mid-1930s.
we’ve gone WAAAY beyond the very big stupid, this time… 😠
still very odd…
so i contacted a guy who was willing to help me with my web site. $200 later, i’ve got everything fixed that needed to be fixed, and had an hour’s worth of training on how to actually use it… which turns out to be WAY simpler than i imagined, although there are multiple, duplicate functionalities that, basically, i can’t remove despite the fact that i don’t use them, because they’re simply a part of the core functionality of the web site. if it were my own code, i would find some way to remove them so that they couldn’t be co-opted by evil crackers, and, if i were persistent, i could probably do it anyway, but i’m not.
i was only not able to resolve, immediately, one issue, which is figuring international shipping, and that is only because of the fact that it would cost me an extra $100 for a plugin that i don’t want to spend.
i still don’t know what offended the previous designer to the point that she didn’t want to do business with me any longer, but she’s been a good sport and “allowed” me to take her link off of my site (which i probably would have found a way to do, eventually, anyway), and i will, probably, never know how i offended her so deeply… which is too bad, because i might have been inclined to see if there was some way i could make it up to her…
the upshot of the whole miasma, apart from being $200 poorer, is that i’ve got a relatively modern version of skype on my tablet, so if you’ve got skype and can convince me that you’re someone i should talk to, now’s your chance… 😉
odd… very odd…
i finally reached the point where i have a modern version of skype that works installed on my tablet, and have enough money in my bank account to afford a consultation with the web designer who redesigned my web site back in july. so i hit up her calendly and made an appointment, which was immediately cancelled, because, and i quote:
I’m sorry, but we can not take on work from this account. We do not approve of talking down to anyone doing work on any site, especially women, in the manner which has been done.
um…
W. T. F.?!?!?!?!?
i wrote back to her and got essentially the same response… 😕
i still don’t know what kind of insect got into her bonnet, but pretty much regardless of what i say, at this point, she’s not going to listen, and i would be wasting my time trying to figure it out.
it’s pretty discouraging, though, because i still don’t know how to do basic things like create a new product page, and i’ve got a plugin that won’t update correctly… and there are some things on the back end that need to be changed, and i’m not 100% sure how to change them, and i’ve still got 4 sliders installed and none of them seem to work, and i only really need one… and this lady who very nicely redesigned my site for me, and received payment from me, now, no longer wants to work with me, and won’t even offer an explanations why…
i’ve contacted another designer, who might work out, but i haven’t heard back from him, either, despite the fact that he said he was going to send an estimate “right over”, when i talked to him six hours ago…