OakMonster’s Den

Of all the day I could be sick, it’s today. And so I missed being on the 34th floor Downtown LA when the Yucaipa earthquake hit at a 5.3.

My coworkers reported in that they felt it big time. Will have more first-hand account tomorrow when I “interviewed” my coworkers.

As for me down here on the 2nd floor apartment in Long Beach, I didn’t feel a damn thing. Then again, I’m not attuned to the earthquakes unless it is super obvious. Brandon called and asked if I felt anything. He said the building was swaying a bit down in Santa Ana.

I HATE earthquakes. Given that I was in Lake Forest, Orange County, when I was jolted awake by the Northridge quake as my “Welcome to California. Here’s your very first earthquake.” That scared and scarred me pretty good.

Thailand Exhibition 2005

Los Angeles Convention Center - June 16-19. And it’s FREE! I don’t really have to go to this since it’s all the stuff from home, but it would be fun to take a few friends along for some Thai education. We’re thinking Sunday.

I know it wouldn’t last when I was put in this small office with a view. After about 4 months of enjoying my own private quarter, reality catches up. In a few weeks, possibly while I’m gone to New Mexico on vacation, I will be moved out to the window-less, everyone-walks-by cubicle.

The corner office, currently being rented by another company, is opening up in a few weeks. So my VP is moving into the corner. And there we start the department shuffle.

VP moves into corner office with his assistant moving to be right outside his door. The tenant in the office next to him shuffles over back to the VP’s office. The Director then scoots over one into the tenant’s old office. My future boss once they hire one will fill the Director’s old office. My office will be emptied, ready for more tenant, as they shuffle me over to the cubicle where the VP’s assistant used to sit.

Now : Me. VP - Assistant outside. Director - Celeste. Tenant. Corner Office - Their Assistant.
Soon: Empty. Tenant - Me. Future Director - Celeste. Director. VP - Assistant.

A quick flashback to my corner in the hallway at the old work place.

Seriously folks, I was sitting in a hallway more or less. A small office with door right through it. Everyone breezes by all day. The only one in the office in a “cubicle” per se. Everyone else either have his/her own room or share one. You could say I did have my own office…that happens to be the corridor to the other parts of the building.

I’m trying to think of an upside to the move. I guess being closer to my coworker Celeste is going to guarantee never a dull moment out there. I’d be closer to the printers…

Gotta enjoy my views while it lasts!

Nerds make better lovers

No shit.

(BTW - Thanks dah Frenchy for the lead on this one.)

I have 2 Pagemaker files in my possession, but we don’t have the program. I was wondering if anyone would volunteer to convert the file to PDF or what have you for me. Or something…

On an unrelated note. We have our domain back and our regular emails are up and running again. I’ll upload the website this weekend and we’re back in full swing. Finally moved out of WinSave to 1and1. Yey.

Another BRILLIANT display of Thai government. I’m sure that in a rush to get their graft from the new Bangkok airport, the Suvanabhumi Airport, they didn’t think twice about the fact that the location of this airport is in the frickin’ bird migration path!

And now they’re making it sound like the birds are the problem that they have to deal with.

No shit, sherlock. You put a frelling airport on a bird sanctuary.

A resounding duh from Thai citizens. I’m sure an international protest will soon follow.

And so the conversation about a group picture for the company newsletter went:

Me: See? All those guys and no one offered to kneel in front. They all let Sister Mary do it.

CoWorker Anonymous: Well, you know, she’s used to being on her knees and stuff.

Me: Um…

CA: Well…you know, praying.

CA hits me and we are still laughing right now.

WinSave sucks. Don’t use them as your web host. I wouldn’t recommend them.

*UPDATE* I did talk with them. They argued with me a little bit on the fact that they misinterpret my message and jumped to cancel my account. But we’re getting our account reinstated today, and it will be canceled for sure on June 18.

We shouldn’t have any problem transferring everything to a new host. But between now and June 18, if things get funky for BorenConsulting.com or images disappearing from here, you now know what’s going on.

We are moving to 1and1 for super basic hosting. If you have objections to that, let us know. Quickly. We have a limited time of money-back guarantee.

For those who still want to know what the heck happened, read on.

Please bare with me if you’re encountering the following issues:

1. Can’t get to BorenConsulting.com
2. Your email to me/Brandon on our personal account bounced like a squirrel on meth.
3. Can’t see some pictures on this site. Probably including the headline graphics.

*Here’s the elaboration of our problems with WinSave*

What was the final straw that lead us to switch is our 4th email outage in a year. On Thursday, apparently the IP address of our mail host was again banned by almost every email server, suddenly emails from our account got filtered into JUNK, or worse yet, the email appeared to have gone out but it never arrived anywhere.

So I emailed to them with the problem. Over the weekend, we were able to resume normal activity at one point, so I sent out what their tech people asked for. And then I returned later on to find out we’re having the same problem AGAIN. And apparently my email back to their tech is lost in cyberspace. The accounts were doing that on-off thing through out the weekend.

We had it with them.

So I downloaded everything off the site, and filed for cancellation.

An email arrived yesterday morning to let me know that they’d take our site down on the 18th, the end of billing cycle, and will refund accordingly. To our relief, we could have some time to tell everyone that everything is going byebye, and give us time to proceed with domain transfer. And then at the end of the day yesterday, another email came to say that they had turned everything off and will refund us as if it was turned off on the 4th, the day we made cancellation request.

WHAT THE FUCK??? I did NOT ask them to turn it off right away, but they went and did it anyway??

I lost a number of emails yesterday, and of course at this point our site is down and emails are bouncing. Fuck WinSave…and probably the parent company Affinity too. Go with other hosts, folks.

Siamese Pixie Store is back in action.

The once for fun and profit operation is now fully NON PROFIT. That’s right. Any money made here from Siamese Pixie products will be donated to the Thai Red Cross Society to help the people of Thailand.

I will be adding more products to the Store as time permits as well. So you have to keep coming back to see what’s new.

Shop for Charity. There is just no better cause!

Downtown LA people. Come down to Hope Street for a fun afternoon tomorrow for LAFRA Block Party to raise funds for families of fallen and disabled LA firefighters.

Not to mention that my high school choir “little sister” is running the damn event!

So, bring your dollars, ladies and fellas. Especially if you work in Downtown, don’t you want to know YOUR rescuers will be well taken care of? Show some love for the men and women who’d bravely run into burning buildings to save our sorry asses. And they don’t even know you.