Internet Orders Gone Wrong

I ordered some Audi swag from a certain dealership in Fairfield CT back on July 2nd. Here it is almost one month later and I have yet to see my order. When I placed the order it showed both items as available on the website, so why have I not received anything? After multiple failed attempts to reach someone via both phone and email I finally got a reply back on the 20th letting me know that there was a problem with my order, one of the items had been discontinued long ago. WTF! Why do you still have it available on your website then? And why has it taken so long to tell me this? If I had never said a word about it, would you have just kept my money and quietly forgotten about where it came from? In the email I finally got they asked if I would like to pick a replacement item of the same price, so I did and emailed them back. That was over a week ago and guess what? Nadda, nothing, zip! No reply back, no merchandise... I might as well just take money from the ATM and light it on fire. I just sent another email requesting that my order either be shipped or my money returned. I have a feeling that I will receive neither though, not without a fight of some sorts.

What A Month

This month has been a month of grief for so many people I know. I've lost my Great Grandmother and several friends have lost Grandparents and Fathers and Mothers. This morning my sister told me her husband was rushed to the emergency room last night with a severe asthma attack and almost died because both his lungs had closed up. We spent time at the hospital with them after lunch and he's doing better. Then not even an hour ago we got a phone call from my Grandmother, my cousin was just killed in a car accident. She wasn't much older than me... maybe 33 or 34. Sigh... *moment of silence*

Blah

For those few who follow my blog, I'm sorry there hasn't been any new content lately. I'm not sure if it's the heat here or what but I've just been BLAH. There's just not much going on and what little that has happened I just can't seem to get the motivation to post anything about it. Keep checking back though, eventually I'll get out of my slump. Dani

Ouch....

Today I did something painfully brilliant *sarcasm*... I was attempting to pry the basket out of the pool skimmer (the handle is broken off)with a somewhat rusty screwdriver when it slipped, stabbed into my thumb and sliced it wide open. It didn't really hurt, but it was a nasty jagged slice, and I hadn't had a tetanus shot in... errr.... uhmmm... well lets just say it's been well over 10 years. After much washing and sanitizing with wound wash, alcohol and peroxide I went to the Dr's office and waited around 5 minutes to get jabbed with a needle and shot up with tetanus booster. Thirty-nine bucks and a sore arm later I am now free to stab myself with rusty objects for another 10 years. Now to go get that skimmer basket out! Where did I put that screwdriver?

;)

ZOMG! Topless Sandals!

So, my sister brought these over cause they were just so damned funny and we got this bright idea that someone should actually try them. Naturally I volunteered, not only that, but I thought it would be a laughing riot if I modeled them and put them online for everyone else's amusement! What you are looking at are basically flipflops with no straps... they have a sticky stuff on them and that's what keeps them on your feet. We've been practically rolling on the floor cause they just look so damned hilarious. Ok I'm going to go take these things off, I hope everyone got a good laugh. ;)

Adopt A Pet

Meet Isis, my virtual kitten. I don't know what it is about playing around with these, but they seem to be great stress relievers; kinda like real pets but without all the food and vet bills and shedding. Want your own virtual pet? just follow the link. Bunnyhero labs has several different virtual animals to choose from.

A Get Well Soon Wish

I just want to take the time to send best wishes and a big get well soon to one of my best best friends, Brandi. She's been through a lot these past few months and tomorrow morning is having emergency surgery. Heres to a fast recovery! *Hugs*

One Of My Favorite Blogs

Everyday I stop by Gary Fong's blog. Gary is a wedding photographer, entrepreneur, inventor, and just an all around fun and crazy guy. You don't have to be a photographer to enjoy his blog; which covers everything from the misadventures of him and his friends to real estate to random thoughts and odd things he finds funny. That is why I like it so much, you never know what you will find! Be sure to check out his video from the 4th of July fireworks celebration. It's a hoot.

What's Up With The Picasa Link?

You are probably wondering why a lot of my blog entries are starting to have this little button, that links to Picasa, at the end. Well there is a perfectly good explanation for that; I'm blogging direct from Picasa! If you don't know what Picasa is, it's Google's photo organizer.

For years I've shunned any type of organizational program after trying one (that shall remain unnamed) that came as part of another program. It was unbelievably slow, kept crashing, and it would 'adjust' the levels and contrast of the photo thumbnails and views automatically (which could not be turned off) so what I looked at was never representative of what I'd saved. For over three years now I've been using nothing more than window's explorer and 'my pictures'. I thought my folder layouts worked great..... yeah. Well things were way out of control, as they naturally would when you have over 4000 images. I had duplicate folders, images that should have gone in a different folder, images that weren't filed in any specific folder, unprocessed images hidden deep in the folder hierarchy, and I could never find a specific image I wanted unless I'd just recently taken it. I was about to start screaming and pulling my hair out. So I decided to try something different... I pulled all my images into one place and deleted all my folders. Then I re-organized by year and month. Cleaner yes, but now I had no clue where anything was. Cue screaming and hair pulling again. Enter Picasa.

Picasa is free from Google. You just download it and install it and it searches your computer for images and organizes them by year. It's surprisingly fast with jpegs and tifs, large RAW files slow it down a bit. You can specify what image file types you want it to find though, I deselected RAW, and you can specify what folders you want it to search. I told it to search just 'my pictures' but not the folder of unprocessed images. It displays things beautifully, it's quick and easy to scroll through folders, and it has a lot of really nice features. One of those is labels.

If you have a lot of images that are different, labeling is a bit time consuming, but it's worth it in the end. A label is like a tag or keyword and it organizes the images by label, within a separate section of Picasa. The labels are searchable and you can assign multiple labels to pics. Say I do a search for 'waterfalls', Picasa will bring up all the waterfall images, in the menu bar to the left they are organized by year and label, and also by year and folder on disk So if I want waterfalls taken in Canada, I just click on the Canada label to the left and there it is. Alternately I can enter waterfalls + candada in the search bar.

You can also do some minor editing to your images such as cropping, red eye, levels, contrast and special effects such as sepia and B&W. It does not change the original image on your hard drive, but if you like the changes you can export them and save it as a new image. My favorite is the filtered B&W, where you can do a B&W conversion based on different color channels. Red, blue or green channel will always give you a different B&W tonality, and for each photo one may look much better than the others. Picasa makes it easy to observe these differences to find the one that works best.

One of my favorite features though , has to be the 'blog this' button. If you use Google's Blogger for your blog, just select an image and click the button and it opens up a posting window, image already inserted. Type out your blog and hit publish and there you go. There are also buttons for printing and emailing, and ones that makes collages, slideshows and burn gift CDs. Other things I love about Picasa? I can send images directly to photoshop, or if I need to go from an image in Picasa to it's exact location on the hard drive, I just hit ctrl-enter and Picasa opens up window's explorer and takes me directly to my image. You'll also find images you completely forgot about. I had a friend download it last night and he did a search by file name and found he had two images by that name, the one he was looking for that was taken recently, and another taken three years ago!

Ok I apologize for the long rambling. If you are still using windows explorer in an attempt to organize a large amount of photos, give Picasa or any photo organization program a try, there are several out there. You'll have fewer headaches, I know I sure do!

Cioccolato

Cioccolato; it's Italian for chocolate, and right now I have gone to chocolate heaven. After reading several articles touting it as the 'world's best chocolate' I absolutely had to try some of Amedei of Tuscany's chocolates. So I ordered a sampling of limited edition napolitains: award winning Porcelana and Chuao, their signature Toscano Black, I Cru sampler and a small bar each of Toscano Blond and Toscano Red. Just like coffee or tea, each cocoa type or region has distinct and unique flavors; plum and red fruits for the Chuao, delicate toasted almond for the Porcelana, a slight and creamy toasted hazelnut for Madagascar Cru. Pricey maybe, but this isn't a Hershey's bar, and it is ALOT of chocolate. I think for something purchased just once in a lifetime or even once every year or two, it's worth the indulgence for such a delicacy. Now I need to find some place cool to store them so I can stretch the goodness over a few months, otherwise I'll be in a permanent chocolate coma. :)

Corndog

People aren't the only ones to enjoy a good 4th of July BBQ celebration. Chinese Crested hairless, Shane, enjoys one of his most favorite foods, corn on the cob. He knows how to eat by pulling the kernels off in perfect little rows; most dogs can't figure it out and just gnaw at the cob. Incidentally, Shane is also a master of eating off of spoons and forks.

A Perfect Night

It turns out we weren't doomed after all, because the skies cleared and the fireworks mostly went off without a hitch. Another great show this year all things considered. I went to my usual secret spot, not even three blocks from the show, and enjoyed being the only one there. I hope everyone else enjoyed their fireworks as much as I did.

DOOMED!!

This is not looking good for the fireworks display. I was hoping to set up in my favorite spot and get some great pictures like I did last year, but the weather just is not cooperating. Maybe it will clear up by tonight, otherwise I think fireworks will be a no go! :(

Happy 4th Of July!

Heres wishing everyone a fun and safe July 4th celebration!!

A Bit Of Summer Fun

Some dogs just love water, as is the case with these two. Nothing would keep them from the pool! The Aussie is completely obsessed with tennis balls (or any ball for that matter) and would not give up swimming after the ball. If no one threw the ball for her.. she'd whine and bark until someone did, and if that didn't work she'd drop it in the water herself. The pup is still a bit shy about swimming but she's starting to get the hang of it. Thankfully the pool is fenced off, so no worries about unsupervised swimming. I foresee a dog hair filled pool most of the summer!