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Thursday, March 30

Bug Reporting

As most of you have become aware in recent days, HPFF is undergoing a wee bit of a recoding at the moment. Actually, it's a big recoding. Actually, it's a total fucking gutting. Our wonderful coder, Marie, will have, when it's done, completely stripped the majority of the archive coding (efiction v1.1) and replaced it with something we're calling, quite simply "God Send."

For those of you that are familliar with the front end of eFiction when it comes stock - it's somewhat of a total bitch. First of all, the person who wrote it was clearly smoking crack that day because the code is seriously some of the messiest stuff I've ever seen. Once upon a time, I took a PHP/PERL class and got the bright idea to open eFiction up and take a look at it. B.A.D.I.D.E.A. Maybe he wrote it after taking the same class I took. *boggles*

Anyway, after a few days of hard coding, Marie felt ready to press it out to public beta. My stomach leapt into my throat and my fingers began flying across the keys to get something written - something, anything! I needed a "How To File A Bug Report" and I needed it now before my e-mail was flooded with "i wuz redin a stori nd it wnt awy" and I put a gun to my head in the second most melo-dramatic suicide ever. I managed to write one and, let me tell you, it was painful.

First, I tried to think of all of the things that one puts into a bug report...Then I had to explain them. Then I had to re-read it and think of all the things I hadn't thought of yet - like reminding our international users to include their timezones next to their posts, lest we get 20 bug reports about the same issue within 15 minutes but reported as happening over the span of 24 hours. What i'm getting to, in the end, is this, the most horrible thing ever:

"As most of you know, HPFF has been undergoing some major coding changes over the course of the last few days. In an effort to make our final return to function smoother we will, for a limited time, be offering access to some of the new features to allow a test en masse. Please be aware, however, that these features are in their juvenile stages and will contain bugs. A bug is a piece of coding that does not work properly. (i.e., clicking on an authors penname and having it take you to the review page, etc...)"

Yes, that's right, pokey, they made me define what a bug is.

I...

Oi...

Though, this morning someone did ask me what "Young Adult Literature" meant so I can't say I blame them.

Monday, March 27

The Plot Thickens

For those of you who know me well, you’ve probably been made long aware of the fact that the plot always thickens.

At this point, I’m swimming in molasses.

As most people who know me and all people who read my blog routinely know, my grandmother went in to the ER two weeks ago with chest pains. As it turned out, she was having a major heart attack and what we’ve elected to call “the beginning” of a stroke. Things have turned out OK so far. Two bypasses, three arteries removed and cleared of all blockages and a NASA o-ring plugging up the hole in her mitral valve and she’s good as new.

Well, okay, not quite. During the surgery on her carotid artery, they either bumped or sliced a bundle of nerves - the bundle of nerves that controls the muscles in your throat that handle swallowing. Not such a big deal when you’re on IV nutrition – unless, of course, you’re draining saliva into your lungs Then things get just a little bit messier than we might have hoped. Still, if a few weeks of swallowing exercises are the worst outcome of an otherwise successful surgery, I say go for it. Hey, at least she doesn’t have to eat the hospital food.

Alas, if that were the only plot twist in this weeks episode. I’ve had the great pleasure of being met this week not only with a 63 year old woman who can’t swallow and thus has to cough saliva out of her lungs in what seems to have been one of the more horrific experiences of her life, but I’m also met with yet another patient of sorts – or at least someone who is turning themselves into one.

My mother was rushed to the ER yesterday morning with chest pains, shortness of breath and an implacable heaviness in her arms. For those of you that haven’t spent the last two weeks of your life in a cardiac wing, those are text book symptoms of a myocardial infarction. Naturally, the doctors couldn’t find the disrythmia on an EKG, but they slapped on a nitro paste patch, prescribed 325 mg of aspirin and sent her home to schedule a stress test.

Since then, she’s been wound like a mouse trap and self-inducing chest pains on and off. I can’t say I blame her entirely, nothing says chest pains like trying to find a preferred provider over the phone with your insurance company but it was nevertheless infuriating to watch her make her situation worse.

As it stands now, she’s carrying around a bottle of baby aspirin and I’m taking her hospital shift (11 to ??) until so she can hang out with my father some and try to relax. All in all, I think I’d really just like to give her a valium, an anti-depressant and put her in a Yoga class.

I don’t suppose this is at all uncharacteristic for my life pattern. After all, one thing is complicated enough, but nothing says “martini” like adding in another roll of the dice.

Saturday, March 25

Good News

After a lot of nausea, a little sleep, and more stress than I care to consider, my grandmother is a-ok :)

Well, right now anyway.

She's made it through two bypasses, one artery clear-out, a repair to her mitral valve and had two blockages removed from her carotid artery. She's speaking, sitting up and in a hell of a lot of pain but for a woman who just had her chest cracked, i'm thinking that's still pretty good :)

My time around will still be on and off - she's not in the clear yet. She'll be moved to the recovery wing out of the ICU in a few days but, for now, at least the stress can take a vacation.

The ten or so half finished posts that I never got around to, however, still reside on my harddrive and will probably never be finished as each and every one of them ended at a disjointed point, mid-sentance, when I put the computer down and left the room before I killed one or more of the members of my family.

Thursday, March 16

Relevant FYI

Appologies, to my real friends, if this is excessively patronizing.

The short story is this - my grandmother is severely ill and will be hosptialized for several weeks. As of right now, I'm there 13-15 hours a day, on the road for another two and trying desperately to sleep for the rest. Somewhere in there, I have to find a way to fit "shower" and "eat." :P

As i'm at the hospital so often and they are completely without public wi-fi (or, that I can find thus far) I don't have access to any of the things I normally do on the internet. Thus, the list:

What Will Still Happen
Once a day, and usually in the neighborhood of between midnight and 2am, I check my PM's and E-mails. I don't answer them, generally, but the pressing ones get forwarded to someone else who can deal with them and the ones that aren't that important can wait until this pans out or the person decides to pester someone else :)

Upload Approvals on the Cheeky Resources Gallery. If you upload, I will come and approve them as it takes about four seconds. I won't be adding anything new on my own though.

Modding up on the CR Gallery. If you want to be modded, PM or e-mail me your already registered CR name and i'll mod you up and you can start doing GOF and Unknown Model/Celeb uploads whenever you like.

Checking of urgent posts in the corrosponding staff rooms. FicCentral Archive Admin duties, HPFF forum admin duties and Dark Arts changes that require me to handle them will still be dealt with as time permits.

What Won't Happen
Crit. Feel free to keep posting requests - they'll be handled in order when I get back to a normal PC life.

Gallery Updates. There were a efw things added earlier in the week but there won't be anything new.

Deviant Art updates. Cuz, duh.

Chapter Updates - anywhere. Soul Fragments blog updates, Bad Author updates, Extempore...nothing. Even if I am inspired to write something, the odds that i'll trust myself enough to post it are pretty slim.

General PM responses. Here are some general questions and answers

Hosting
If you have 9.99 a month, I reccomend Dreamhost My Crazy Domain Insane is a great plan with everything you could possibly need to do anything from run a site like mine to running a small business. If you do decide to register with them, please enter either my name (bitterepiphany) or my domain (www.bitterepiphany.com) in the referals box as it helps with the hosting costs of all of my resources that I know everyone loves so much.

What Software Do You Run Your Site On?
There is a ton of info about the site here and here. Including what I use to run everything and what not.

Can I Use...?
The short answer is - probably.
Brushes: Yes
Templates: Yes
Textures: Yes
Avatars: Yes
Skins: Yes
Desktop Backgrounds: Yes
Signatures/Blinkies, etc...: Yes
Banners: For now, no. The UFG's will come available again when I have time to edit titles again and that time is not now.
Vectors: For now, no. I can't think of what you'd use them for so until I know what it is and have time to deal with the Q&A - no. (This applies to Cell Shading too)
Tutorials I Wrote: Don't remove the crediting and don't even bother trying to hotlink it as an image. You can link to the page in my gallery (like they are linked on The Dark Arts) but do not try to link the image directly. You can't.
Sorry for such a long and informational but impersonal and uninteresting post, but it has to be done lest my e-mails overflow.

Thanks for patience, everybody. I knwo I made a lot of promises and I swear I intended to keep them.

Monday, March 13

Sex

I'm somewhat neurotic about always have the TV or the radio on. I seldom watch or listen to it but having it on gives me something to do with the rest of my brain while i'm doing whatever else i'm doing. Today Oprah managed to weasel her way onto my television and something one of her guests said trickled through the many filters and made it into my consciousnes - "Girls are treating their bodies like trash cans and they all need to get up and say 'I'm not going to be a trash can where boys can dump their sperm and their insecurities.'" At this point, incase you were curious, I spit apple juice all over my keyboard and a room full of employable looking 16 year olds erupted into applause for a very different reason.

After almost a year in the HPFF queue, I won't be the one to say that teenage girls aren't having sex for the wrong reasons. I've often posted about some of the disgusting things they think are real. A lot - even, maybe, most - of them are having copious amounts of unprotected, uninformed, meaningless, senseless, and most importantly bad sex, i won't argue that but I have to say come on people?!!?

My mother is somewhat of a crazed bulldyke and as much as "I'm not going to be a trash can where boys can dump their sperm and their insecurities," is something she would completely say (and probably did say to me as a young teenager, I can't even bring myself to imagine what I'd have done if someone had said that to me other than burst into raucous laughter and be forced to leave the room.

Yes, this woman was saying this and Oprah and the Williams sisters were endorsing it for all the right reasons - they're talking to a bunch of insecure girls and those of them that are having sex will even admit that they're doing it for the wrong reasons but at what point did we start victimizing ourselves before we had any reason to become victims. I watched an 8 year old say "I'm an emotional eater" today. She's 8! Christ - can she reach the cupboards yet? I mean, yes, recognize your problems and deal with them because the sooner you do the sooner their over and the less damage they do in the mean time but I have to wonder if she really is an emotional eater or if she's product of the concept that when something bad happens, you should go have a pint of ice cream and a half a bag of Hershey kisses. Does a day go by when you don't see that pumped somewhere? Yes, now we're all about healthy choices and making the right decisions and, in doing so, we're defeating people.

Have a salad. It's good for you. The vegetables are high in vitamins and minerals. Just don't have a salad with an oil or cream based dressing because that's high in fat. Wait - no, don' t have a salad with any kind of dressing because dressing is high in sodium. Put down the regular soda and drink one with a sugar substitute. Wait - don't do that, the sugar substitutes cause memory loss and symptoms that look like MS.

Mike has been eating better lately. Let me say that first before I get a call about defamation of character. In the past, however, he and King could sit down and devour 20 dollars worth of Taco Bell for a midnight snack. Mind they are/were (how does the tense work there?) two of the slimmest men i've ever known, so don't mistake that. What I'm saying is, I don't advocate that diet either. I've griped at Mike since we met whenever a medical problem pops up - the eating healthier solution for it.

I have to manage my diet carefully - not my atkins diet, my food diet - I don't absorb iron correctly or perhaps i'm not eating it enough but I have to be careful to balance my intake of calcium (which i need because of a family history of osteoporosis) with my intake of iron because they work against eachother in your system in spite of the fact that I need them both. I don't like to eat meat because it's often riddled with "funny chunks that shouldn't be consumed by human beings" and I don't like to prepare it because touching it disgusts me, but I have to be careful to do that because protien is important. Vitamin C is important because I bruise easily when i'm not taking enough. What i'm getting at is that you have to have a PhD to eat correctly this day in age. I'm not even eating to live forever - i'm not eating to be skinny. Fuck, i'm pudgy as hell - i can't imagine what it must be like to try to diet at 8 years old because you've heard your mother talking about her therapists advice since you were an infant.

There are some really horrible things in life. I'm not talking even about the epic and cataclysmic public tragedies. Personal tragedies that happen so many times every day. Why are we raising kids with someone to blaim? It's a cult. I swear to god.

Friday, March 10

Sad Day

When I came home tonight to check my hamsters, I was greated with disgusting news. ONe of them died and, in true animal form, the other three ate her.

About a half hour later, after a compete freakout, I noticed that one of the three was looking a bit peaky and moved her into a seperate cage with some sweets and hoped for the best. She's doing better now but i'm still crossing my fingers. The banana seems to have really done the trick.

Once that cage was sorted, I lifted the lid to the other cage housing my beloved swimming hamster, Princess, to find that she, too, had died.

Being that there's not much I can do about it at this point, if you are feeding your pet Hartz Bonanza food - lot numbers beginning wtih B15 - STOP.

Google

I googled myself today, as I am want to do from time to time. Not my actual name, because that just turns up a lot of tripe from some spazzy humanitarian, but bitterepiphany. Of all of the results returned, most of them were actually me. A few were credits to me for GD resources or for graphics i'd made for them, but it was nevertheless impressive.

The funniest turnouts follow:

Member dwell borrowed one of my avatars for use on the Positive Thoughts forums. Yeah, I thought it was funny too.

I'd love to know why I was referenced on Unwritten but, being that their board is offline, I may never know.

Someone's freewebs site liked my Make-Up skin, apparently.

My aboslute favorite was this one, for which the google description is necessary because i'm still confused. http://narutoxxx.sidespar.com/:

"BitterEpiphany.com. narutoxxx com. Naruto Chaos : Naruto narutoxxxAnime and Manga Downloads. narutoxxx:. All about narutoxxx: nautoxxx - nartoxxx..."

The link, once you get it to load, goes straight to a mass porn referal site but the content on the cached page was:

Your search for narutoxxx is over now! We deliver only the best useful information about narutoxxx. Enter now.... Univicion Com Gunz Online2c Hacks Top Searches Start narutoxxx Using Cgiproxy Narutoxxx Earthgoogle Iranxiran Sudoka Tyra Banxxx ...... read this than the screen is moving too fast or you have a very bad case of A.D.D. You got that from narutoxxx.com right ...... Sam 18 Fév 2006. NarutoXxX. Spectra. Navigation ... narutoxxx ... narutoxxx. narutoxxx. 02-2-2006. narutoxxxnarutoxxxnarutoxxx. 4088733215. Shueisha ...Gallery :: Mamu's Naruto wallpaper collection :: ma_Wallpapers_Naruto_59869narutoxxx<>Narutoxxx Earthgoogle Iranxiran Sudoka Www Earthgoogle ... ... ... Pictures Bollywood Chudai Vip Password Laguna Karrine Stephans Narutoxxx Pic Aunty Ki Malish ... Bollywood Chudai Vip Password Laguna Karrine Stephans Narutoxxx Pic Aunty Ki Malish ...

xXxUzumaki_NarutoxXx's Xanga Site

xXxUzumaki_NarutoxXx. SubscriptionsSites I Read. Posting Calendar ... Naruto! xXxUzumaki_NarutoxXx: reviews - events - subscribe! xanga - join - signin. xXxUzumaki_NarutoxXx. read my profile ...MSN Search Result for - Funny Junck.com BitterEpiphany.com narutoxxx comnarutoxxxAnime and Manga Downloads<

Wednesday, March 8

Oh. My. God.

I have two blissful words for you

NOVA Podcasts.

<---is never leaving the house again.

The Weekly Obama-Cast

Not that anyone but me would, but you can, if you are so inspired, download a podcast from Obama off of iTunes. Yes, that's right, not only does he podcast, but he's syndicated by iTunes. You can also get Meet the Press and all sorts of fun things.

That's right, ladies and gents, I finally found something to do when C-SPAN is in reruns :)

Monday, March 6

Good Movies

I've been on a bit of a movie watching spree - not something I normally do as most movies really really suck, but im takeing some time to watch the best of this years best. No, not the ones that the Oscar's have been hailing - Jake Gyllenhall can't act and, in any case, the concept of gay cowboys just isn't that earthshattering - just another tale of forbidden love. Crash has scenes that, while probably somewhat provacative and real, are of either no interest or at least excessively graphic for me.

This week it's all about GOF, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana and Firewall.

I'd reccomend Good Night and Good Luck. There are some period inconsistencies and the usual myriad of historical errors - but nothing that would be caught by someone who doesn't know insane amounts of the history behind it anyway.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire I, quite obviously, saw in theaters and enjoyed, so there's no need for another review here, but i'll get back to you on the rest as I watch them :)

Saturday, March 4

I Have Beta Invites!

No, seriously, hundreds of them. Okay, not hundreds - but it feels like hundreds.

I've been trying to give these things away for months but it seems that these last 14 are hanging on stubbornly. If you'd like an invite to beta test MSN Messenger 8.0, leave me a comment with your msn hotmail address and i'll send you an invite.

I'll do pretty much anything it takes to get rid of this god forsaken alert.

Pictures

One of the reasons for this reinstall was to make all of my removable media drives reappear. (At some point, I got frustrated with having enough drives to make it halfway through the alphabet and disabled them from the groups menu) Needless to say, when I needed them again, I'd forgotten how I did it in the first place.

So, now that I have it all working again and Photoshop is reinstalled (again) I am happy to say that I have some odd pictures for you :)

First, the only toaster and skillet that need to be refrigerated after opening. It is, by far, not the funniest thing Mike and I have ever encountered in our many trips to the grocery store. Afterall, it isn't whole wheat chocolate chip cookies or skinny water, but it's getting up there, the more appliances they add to the freezer section.

Friday, March 3

On Re-Installing Windows

So, about three weeks ago, I tried to install a piece of software and it ended...badly. That was OK. I found the instructions on how to fix it and patiently awaited the arrival of my very own techno geek to carry them out. (These instructions were the scary kind.) Then, a few days ago, I tried to install another piece of software and had a completely unrelated and different problem. So, all in all, my afor mentioned techno geek reccomended it - the dreaded reinstall.

I labored. I considered. I whined. I begged.

In the end, I couldn't make it not so. Two and a half years of really living well in this poor PC was too much for it to take. It needed to be fresh installed. So, last night, I spent a few hours transfering all of the relevant data from my PC to my secondary hard drive and hoping I got everything.

Tonight. Updates.

Oi, with the poodles. I'm on my third restart from updating Windows and I have only now hit Service Pack 2.

Reinstalling isn't something I would reccomend to the faint of heart but, once in a while, it really needs doing.

Wednesday, March 1

Disgusting

Yup, I'm blogging again. This has been a very verbose few days, and I apologize for that but, for once, I've had a hell of a lot to say.

I am frequently disgusted by our users. Some of them are exceedingly dense - so stupid that you wonder how they managed to get online in the first place. Some of them are completely insane - bombarding my inbox with hate mail and, those that are intelligent enough, coming after my server. Some are insane in other ways - and apparently I've found another one of those today.

I'm not naming names here, because I can't and even if I could, I wouldn't, but this is a review and authors response off of, yes, a story I'm not naming either.

Review: "Is it that rapist again you need more rape scenes!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or sex better yet!"
Authors Response: "You'll see...but I'll try to make sex scenes, and I'll think about the rape...."

Once in a while I'm just floored. Literally stumped, sitting in my desk chair wondering how people get quite so fucked up. No sane individual says "you need more rape scenes." I'm sorry but I defy you to find me a psychological profiler who would tell me that that is a normal human sentiment. Seriously.

The latter part, sure. The kids are forever pestering authors to include more sex in their stories. They're 14 years old and the closest they're going to get to sex for a while is the limited amount that we allow on the archive because it's one of the three websites their parents will allow them to visit. I don't mind that so much. Sure, I would love to put a requirement down on the books that says that you have to actually have had sex to write it, because there would be a heck of a lot less bad semi-smut floating around the ether, but it's not that big of a deal.

This, however, this gets me. I'm more than happy to push the envelope of sexually deviant, but I will never understand the quasi-love affair so many of the 12-year old girls around the entire globe have with being raped. It's a circle that I can't stomach. These authors write stories that start with Draco slamming Hermione against a wall and proceeding to assault her (really pathetically, generally) and end with Draco, Hermione and their blonde-curly-headed child living happily ever after. 6 months down the road, cue an 11-year old sneaking into an R fic on the archive (they're so cute when they realize that they can lie to the JavaScript pop-up) and reading this story that ends quite so blissfully - the next thing you know that's the romance novel of your life. I may be placing too much stock in literature but most of you know that I hold it responsible for my sligthly insane impression of Prince Charming.

Fortunately, I'm not the one who had to read the story, or I probably would have spent the rest of the evening considering several evil and illegal methods of making sure that this person got the message, but if it was anything like some of the things I've run across in the queue - or worse, in life - it couldn't possibly have been good.

Today On C-SPAN

Today on C-SPAN I watched something amusing and, I have to point this out.

So many years ago when the Patriot Act went through the first time, no one - no one - on capitol hill read it before it went through. I'm proud to say that I'm from the state with it's lone voice of reason.

As i've watched the preceedings on putting the bill back through and what shocks me is this - if we had read as much shit then as we are reading now, we wouldn't be having this problem.

As I type this, the afor mentioned voice of reason - Russ Feingold - is reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Now i'm always up for a good reading of the Constitution. I like it, I've read it. Hell, I can probably recite about half of it to you, but what gets me is that we're reading - and reading - and reading - and reading - and reading and we've been doing this for weeks on this, the Mt. Olympus of American Law, and yet we couldn't do this the first time and save ourselves the time?

What really gets me is that he's reading the entire constitution. Not relevant parts of the Constitution. Not relevant parts of the Bill of Rights. Not relevant parts of the Patriot Act itself. Michael Moore in an Ice Cream truck managed to be more pointed (but not significantly more commical.)

Oi.

Plus, dude, not a single misleading chart all day. Stephen Colbert would be disappointed. Another small point of interest. Russ Feingold cannot read aloud.

C-SPAN & Classical Music

Everyone knows that I am somewhat of a C-SPAN junkie so today I toggled it on to watch the mayhem as the Democrats and the Republicans duke on the Patriot Act all over again (the last time they did this - I watched an hour and a half of some obscure Republican senator reading "the ridiculous ammendments that would have been brought forth by the Democrats if they had had the opportunity) and I did not mind.

I watch this, a lot.

I've seen some of Ted Kennedy's best moments watching this but for the first time in a long time did I turn on my live web-feed to hear classical music issuing out of my speakers. Now this isn't a problem because I don't have a whole lot against classical music and neither does anyone else who was around at the time and it didn't blast out at an insane volume but, you know what, it pissed me off.

On days when the Official Truth Squad (no, not kidding) come in and, on other days, when Ted Kennedy has been talking for 45 minutes and no one in the room is listening, it's kind of nice to watch the apes performing just for me and the handful of other people who accidently rolled over on their controllers the night before and haven't realized it's on yet.

Normally, during deadspace, while members of the House or Senate are milling about the room talking to their interns and aids and generally determining our futures, they just let you to your own devices. You listen to the crackles and pops of the mic's, doors closing and opening and the occasional obscenity from Ted's lips as he tries to get a low-carb roast beef sandwich without mustard. They must anticipate an audience today because of the proceedings in question and I don't know that i'm happy or sad.

I'm always glad to know that more people are involved in our political process but the fact of the matter is that I like being an origial geek. I like my quirky photoshop tendancies, my compulsive organization of my PC and my obsession for mocking the US Senate like a Pippy Longstocking movie. There is no greater piece of bad news than that someone knows you better than yourself when you're someone who strives to be unpredictable.

I suppose, for today, that I will just have to resort to the adage that while many others may turn it on in the background today, i'm still one of the few who actually knows what the fuck is going on in there.

Edited to Add: I'm disappointed in Hilary. I am not disappointed in my main men, Russ and Obama.

Celebrities

I've long since been mocked for not being able to tell the difference or which one is which between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Hell, I never used to know the difference between George Clooney and Mel Gibson until Mel Gibson pissed me off - now I know real well.

This morning, I opened my eyes to find a singularly horrific scene - Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer on the same channel at the same time on the same set doing the same show. It was 100 times more unsettling than I ever imagined any moment could be.