I woke up sick and miserable on Saturday, so that was pretty much an inactive non-day for me. Sunday I felt better in the morning, but I had to make up for not getting much done lately for being sick in general. (There’s been lots of coughing and snot in the family the past week.)

I had some miniature box bag orders I really needed to finish. Illness and other issues seemed to keep cropping up that kept me from working on them, including literally sanding the tip of my finger until it bled while working on them one day. (I didn’t even feel it. I just saw funny streaks on the sandpaper and wondered where they came from. THEN I saw my finger, and of course, then it hurt.) I finished those up late last night, and I’m really pleased with the end results. They still need to be photographed, but once those pictures are online, I’ll be set to invoice the customers and send them on their ways.

I did take a break from working on the bags to play some Team Fortress 2. I haven’t played regularly in months due to burn out and morning sickness, and I’ve really been missing the game. Well, I didn’t actually play any rounds yesterday. Some folks from my preferred server were messing around working on getting the medic achievements so that’s what we did. It was chaotic and funny at times, but I’m looking forward to playing real matches again.

Dale also talked me into seeing Iron Man at the Alamo Drafthouse, our favorite cinema (chain). I had to alter my usual order (thanks to the gestational diabetes) so no fries for me. I did get the potato skins and shared them with Dale, plus a house salad, then I realized three skins wasn’t going to meet my carb requirement so I made it up with a slice of pecan pie, hah. I ended up missing about 10 plot-turning minutes when I had to check my blood sugar an hour later but Dale quickly and quietly got me caught up. Iron Man is hands down the best movie I’ve seen in a while. I had been so-so about going to see it, figuring we would some time, and at first I said no when Dale asked. I’m so glad that we went. I’d happily see the movie in a theater again, and I am looking forward to the DVD release loaded with extras.

The nice topper to my evening was feeling the baby move for the first time. I’m pretty sure I felt some movement during the movie, and I’m positive I felt it a few times after we got home. That was one of my favorite parts of being pregnant with Olivia, actually getting to feel her move. Feeling movement sure beats morning sickness as a way for baby to say, “hey, I’m still here! Don’t forget about me!”

Overall, I had a very good day, something I haven’t gotten to say much lately.

I signed up a long time ago, but I’ve finally decided to actively give Twitter a try. My URL is www.twitter.com/monkeyjunkie. Let me know if you have a Twitter account too.

Olivia is playing Animal Crossing on the DS right now. She just said, “all the dinosaurs are gone.” I looked, and she was wandering through the empty museum. Oh. I didn’t know she ever visited the museum.

I told her, yes, the dinosaurs are all gone and asked if she’d like me to get them back. She does. Then she moved to another room and said, “all the butterflies are gone.” A minute later, “all the pictures are gone.”

I guess I’m not the only one who’s sad that Klaatu is gone.

For a little while now, Olivia’s been playing with our Nintendo DS. Her first game was Magnetica. Sometimes she’d actually clear a level. Then I showed her Animal Crossing Wild Word and we made her her own character. (I even played through the intro stuff for her so she’d be free to play how she wanted.) Then we bought her Nintendogs, and now she has a Golden Retriever puppy named Daisy.

Having the DS active again has also renewed our interest in it. It had been unused for probably more than a year. Dale even weeded my AC town for me while on a flight to California. I started playing it again as well, determined to pay off the final upgrade to my house.

Once in a while when I logged on after Livi, I’d find a few things missing around the house, usually the Garden Gnome in my main Mushroom Forest-themed room. So I’d have to switch over and put back all the stuff she’d picked up. I finally learned to just log in her character for the housework, then switch to mine for the bell-making. Today when I got ahold of the game, I noticed about 1/4 of the contents of each room was missing. The Garden Gnome was gone again, so was the Mushroom bed, the Mushroom side table, and even the Mushroom TV. The “outdoor” room was missing its hammock and picnic table. The Robot room lost its TV, bed, and the awesome toy train table.

When I checked Livi’s character, all I found was a bunch of flowers and the Robot TV and bed. I put those back in place, then wandered around the town. I figured she’d done a swap/drop during her flower and fruit foraging (apparently her favorite activity, after looting the house). I didn’t find a single item anywhere in town. I even checked the Lost and Found and the Recycle Bin. No luck. I tried to ask Livi what she’d done with the items, and she said, “I’ll find them all for you, Mama.” I gave the DS back to her.

A few minutes later I looked over and she was logged onto my character and putting my inventory into the Recycle Bin. Ack! I quickly retrieved my gear, then asked Livi if that’s where she’d been putting the household items. Yep. Ah, well. I told her that when things get put into the Recycle Bin, they go away forever and we can’t get them back. So, hopefully, she wouldn’t do that any more.

I wasn’t happy, but she’s only 3 and didn’t know any better. Plus, it’s not like it’s the end of the world. That was to happen later.

The next time I checked on Livi, she was eating fruit. I was surprised by this, because after all this time having the game, I didn’t know you could eat the fruit. (Or I’d forgotten you could.) I couldn’t really see her character because she was on the upper screen and the angle was bad. So I left Livi to her fruit-eating. When she was done playing and wanted another game, she handed me the DS. It was then that I noticed she was in the bedroom of the house, where four beds should be, and there was only one. And her character looked different. Moving downstairs, I saw only one small, empty room. When I walked outside, the house was in a different location.

This was not Klaatu.

Hoping and praying, I turned off the DS without saving. Unfortunately, when I turned it back on, the first option was no longer ‘Continue.’ It was now ‘New Game.’ Somehow Livi had gone to the Town Hall, talked to Pelly, and told her to delete the town, even tapping affirmatively through each confirmation screen.

Olivia now has the only character in a new town, PinkCity. I let her pick the name herself. In a bit, I’ll run AC-Olivia through the introductory errands so she can play freely. I’ll probably make myself a new toon too, though I don’t think I’ll have the energy or spirit to rebuilt and refurnish our awesome little house.

What I’ll miss most though, are the love notes that Dale had sent me through his character. But at least Livi can have all the fun she wants now without Mama saying, “eep! Don’t do that!”

I talked to my parents a couple of nights ago, and my Dad mentioned that Livi’s web site had been down for a couple of days. Our sites tend to go down for a few hours here and there, so I wasn’t surprised, except that it had been days. We looked into it and it turned out that our domain registrar had the wrong nameservers listed for her domain, but they hadn’t been changed since July, so why break now? We updated the nameservers and Livi’s site was promptly up again.

Then I noticed that the most recent blog post was back in October. I don’t post frequently to her site, but I was pretty sure I’d made a couple of posts since then. Then I checked her Gallery, and the last photo there was from October 1st! I knew I was severely behind on uploading photos from my camera, but Dale’s been uploading his, so where were those? I checked my computer, and my photo backlog dated to May, so I ended up staying up late last night resizing and uploading my photos. (I made it to August before I had to go to bed.) Today, I got all caught up on photos from my camera. I think I added nearly 290 photos to her Gallery, dating back to May! (whoops)

Talking to Dale, we realized that a lot of photos WERE missing from the gallery. In October we went to California (including Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo), plus there was Halloween. We knew we’d uploaded photos from those events. So Dale called our web host to ask what was up. He was told that they recently upgraded their servers and migrated a bunch of web sites. Unfortunately, they copied over old back ups (from October) and didn’t synchronize the data before severing the link to the old servers! Because of the way the Gallery software runs, we can’t just roll back to the most recent copy on the old server. Instead, one of our web host’s staffers gets to compare the file structures between the older server and new server to get the files that appear on the old server but not on the new. I think they’re supposed to send us those files, then they’ll have to be re-uploaded to her site.

*sigh*

Dale and I have been playing an online computer game called Team Fortress 2. It’s got a very cartoony style, and Livi likes watching it once in a while. Lately, she’s surprised us with some things she’s said.

“Watch out for spies, Daddy!”
(After I announced that there was a spy near me.) “Daddy! Go get the spy! Get him now!”

She’s narrated games too. “You are going inside. You are going outside. You go up the stairs. You go down the stairs. You blowed him up!”

And just a few minutes ago, she came to me holding a small stick like a gun and said, “the fire comes out.”
“Fire? Fire comes out of that?”
“Yes!”
“Are you a pyro?” (Character with a flamethrower.)
“Yes! I firing you, Mama!”
Then she chased me around the house “firing” me.

She had fun one day when I sat her on my lap and helped her with the mouse and she “blowed up” Daddy. I think she’s doomed to be a geek.

Years ago, I began using Registerfly as my domain registrar. I’d always been annoyed by their web site, but they did what I needed for a good price. Until November.

Around Thanksgiving, we got the notice that one of our domains was due for renewal. I took care of it while we were at my parents’ house, then got another notice when we returned home. I tried again to renew, but kept getting errors on their site. I tried again a few days later, and still more errors. I submitted help tickets but didn’t get a response until just before the domain expired. As in, the day of. Then, even though it renewed on time, the site continued to show in their system as expired. And I discovered that they’d charged me repeatedly for the attempted renewals, even though they hadn’t gone through. I had to have about five charges refunded. Then I discovered another charge from the original renewal attempt. This time, instead of refunding me, they renewed the domain for ANOTHER year, then said they couldn’t refund the duplicate charge because it had been applied to a renewal.

It wasn’t until I made an angry phone call to their toll number that they finally refunded the charge. The whole thing took a month to resolve. By then, I had more domains coming up for renewal and decided to find a new registrar. Wanting to get them moved as quickly as possible, I started the process of transferring them to GoDaddy. I’ve heard mixed things about them, but I just wanted to get away from Registerfly without paying an arm and a leg.

The transfer process was simple enough on GoDaddy’s end, but Registerfly made it an ordeal. Some error in their system made me unable to turn off the whois privacy protection for a few of my domains so I couldn’t update my contact info and thus couldn’t confirm the transfer requests. (Registerfly’s system said the domains in question didn’t exist when I tried to update info, but they appeared fine and active elsewhere.) My first trouble ticket got a response of “we’re working on it, try again in a day, or we’ll change it manually for you.” So I waited a day, then several more, and it still didn’t work. And they stopped responding to trouble tickets.

I ended up asking around and got a referral to submit a complaint to ICANN. Unfortunately, they just pass the complaint along and keep a record. They don’t do anything actively, but I figured it was better than nothing. As I was pondering the merits of talking to a lawyer, the next available option, I received a notice that Registerfly had fixed the problem. I was finally able to update my information. By that time, though, the transfer requests had expired with GoDaddy, so I had to restart those, and pay more because I wasn’t able to include them in the previous bulk transfer.

Since I transferred my domains, I still get renewal notices from them, along with their sales pitches. My domains are also still listed in their system as if they’re the registrar of record, and some are even flagged as expired, including the one I renewed in Nov/Dec at the start of this crap. I’ve submitted another trouble ticket, telling them to fix their damn system and stop sending me notices. Of course, I haven’t gotten a response yet.

So, it was with bitter glee that I read this post at King Nomar Dot Com that Registerfly is in danger of losing their ICANN accreditation in 10 days if they don’t get their act together and resolve their internal and customer support issues. Unfortunately, this action comes too late to help many of Registerfly’s 75,000+ victims customers, who’ve already lost their domains or are on the verge of doing so.

And the cause of Registerfly’s woes? According to King Nomar:

A lawsuit filed by RegisterFly’s parent company, Unified Names, blames the meltdown on misuse of company funds by President and CEO Kevin Medina, who was fired by the company’s board. The suit alleges that Medina spent company funds on liposuction surgery and escort services….

…and…

“After his termination, Mr. Medina deleted email accounts, access to support tools, and access for our risk/billing department to issue refunds,” RegisterFly’s Glenn Stansbury said in a statement posted at RegisterFlies, a customer protest site. RegisterFly is also reported to have changed the root password of its web server to prevent sabotage.

Nice.

If you’re a current Registerfly customer, I urge you to find a new registrar as soon as possible. Registerflies, a customer protest site, contains a very helpful FAQ on common issues with Registerfly, how to transfer, and recommendations and some coupons for new registrars. I’m glad I got away when I did and didn’t lose any of my domains.

The CD player in our car had started pausing and skipping randomly, even with new CDs. Since it’s still under warranty, we made an appointment to have it replaced at the dealership. The “less than an hour” procedure took about an hour and a half. Just before leaving the parking lot I tried to reload the CD player, and couldn’t. The ‘load’ button doesn’t respond at all. So I drove back around to the service bay, pointed out the problem, and the guy sighed and said they’d have to order yet another one from Nissan.

So, instead of intermittent skipping, we now have a completely non-functional CD player for an indefinite amount of time.

*sigh*

I took an old laptop with me to Virginia that hadn’t been used in about a year and a half. When I powered it on, it was unable to find my ‘profile settings’ and warned me to contact my network administrator if it persisted. I ignored that, updated Firefox from the v2 preview, and installed Trillian. I chatted with Dale online that night, then turned off the laptop. The next day when I turned it on again, I got the same profile error message. And Trillian was gone. Along with the sites I’d bookmarked before, so I reinstalled everything. This time, I didn’t turn off the laptop, I just closed the lid.

The next time I pulled out the laptop, it had shut down and the same thing had happened. The battery in this laptop won’t last more than 15 minutes, so I had it plugged into the wall continuously, but belatedly I remembered the outlet I used was controlled by the switch on the wall and it had been flipped off. I moved the plug to another outlet, made sure never to shut off the laptop, and it was fine for the rest of the week.

I didn’t just use the laptop to chat and web surf. I pulled the photos off my digital camera and stored them on the laptop because I was filling up the card. I knew the laptop was crap, but it would do until I could get home and transfer the photos to my desktop.

Unfortunately, after we got home I couldn’t boot the laptop at all. Blue screens, error messages, freezing, and not even booting completely. Dale tried reinstalling the OS but couldn’t. At this point, we’re hoping to borrow some equipment from his step-dad that’ll let us hook the laptop hard drive directly to my computer to get the files. After I have the photos, I don’t care if the laptop gets thrown away.

If I can’t get the photos, well, that will really suck. But at least I already resized and uploaded most of the ones with Olivia to her gallery.

No, it has nothing to do with the TV show. “Lost words” are words that were removed from dictionary since they were assumed to be out-dated or unfit for modern English. Take a gander at the list and become more noscible about archaic English flosculations.

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Finding and returning lost property is just a nice thing to do. Finding and keeping lost property that can be traced back to you and still refusing to return it is stupid. Especially when the person seeking the item’s return has pictures and contact info for you along with a small army of ‘net investigators out to utterly humiliate you until you give back the property. Let’s hope these people really do learn How NOT to steal a Sidekick II.

funny Xfire banner

Originally uploaded by monkeyjunkie.

This is the ad currently displaying on my Xfire interface. I’m especially amused because after three weeks of playing DDO, I’m the only female I’ve heard using the in-game voice chat in my groups, even though I’ve been grouped with a number of other ‘female’ characters. As far as I know, I’m also the only female in my guild.

If you’d accepted my bet yesterday, you’d have won, sort of.

UPS just delivered our second shipment of PC parts. Zoë had seen the truck stop and given us a heads-up, so I was waiting at the door, watching through the peephole. This time, the delivery man rang the bell, knocked, AND said, “UPS delivery,” before walking away. I didn’t want him to know I’d been watching, so I waited a moment then rattled the locks before opening the door. He was back at the truck and smiled and waved when I thanked him. Then he scored extra points by seeing me trying to lift one of the PC case boxes and offering to help bring them inside, but I told him I could manage it.

The last shipment should arrive tomorrow. Who wants to go for two out of three?

Wtf is up with delivery men leaving packages on our front step without even ringing the doorbell or otherwise attempting to notify us?

Dale ordered a new $400 computer monitor last week. When he checked the tracking this morning, it said it had been delivered. He opened the front door, and there it was. According to the site, it was delivered at 9:00am. We sure as hell were home at that time and our doorbell works. If the guy had even knocked, Zoe would have barked, and there’s no way to miss that. Instead, a very expensive item with “Dell” printed all over the packaging was left outside where it was raining.

We have about $2000 worth of computer equipment (we’re upgrading both of our PCs) scheduled to arrive later this week. I’m willing to bet money it’ll be left on our front step without any notification.

Manly band-aids

Originally uploaded by monkeyjunkie.

Because those regular “flesh-colored” ones are just too girly.

You’re never too young for video games

Originally uploaded by monkeyjunkie.

Olivia’s kicking my butt at Bust a Move.

…to sign up to get your own free iPod Nano and help me get one too! (More details in this post.)