my long beach tech support heroes...

ok so about a week ago, mysteriousness was afoot on my laptop. i'm not sure what the eff happened with my norton antivirus, but all of a sudden it started freaking out and repeatedly asking me to activate my account (which i've had for at least 2 years). so i got online with norton tech support and through the wonders of remote desktop magic or voodoo or something they were able to uninstall and reinstall my copy of norton antivirus.

so it seemed like things were awesome. and then my laptop decided it wanted an immediate divorce from the internet. no trial separation, just straight get the fuck out my house. as someone who does quite a lot of freelancing over the internets, it was like putting me in stephen king's misery house and hobbling the shit outta my operation... the process became do work on my computer that has all my files, save the stuff to show the clients onto a usb flash drive, take that to the huzz's computer, email the files that way, and if a client sent something to me reverse the process.

basically i was about to jump outta the window. or worse have my wallet raped by the best buy geek squad.

so today i did some searching on craigslist trying to see if there was someone that looked reputable enough to trust the goods with. and while i did see a couple of ads that could possibly be legit people that don't wanna steal from me... i still couldn't get behind the idea of handing my laptop over to a stranger for at least a day, expecting to get it back with no hassles (if i could get it back at all!)

i decided that for once i should have some standards, look for ratings, reviews, whatever. and that is how i found quickfix. they were the only guys i saw on google maps that had 11 ratings that all seemed pretty positive, so i gave em a call. (while crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.)

and without bringing my computer in or charging me, they tried a bunch of things with me over the phone to try and get this thing to work. and when none of that did and we had thoroughly discussed how my computer got to the point, they said ok i think you're gonna need to bring it in.

and as i drove to 3397 east 19th street in signal hill, i racked my brain as to how long i could possibly work without my computer. and what dollar amount was i willing to spend to get this issue fixed?

turns out neither of those extremes happened. i walked in, they were super helpful, fixed it on the spot in the span of about 15 minutes, and charged me 25 bucks. TWENTYFIVE BUCKS. and they also threw in some pointers about things i could do to make my computer run a little better, AND installed avira virus protection freeware after making sure all the little nasty bits of norton antivirus that had kinda put me in this position were gone.

long story short, I HEART QUICKFIX. and i wholeheartedly recommend em, and if my computer effs up again that's where i'll go. the end!

notes from work: halloween costume contest

omg guys, i love halloween!

y'all know i'm working full time at hearts and laserbeams now; i was so excited to hear that they have a halloween costume contest! hearts and laserbeams really knows how to treat its employees well, and 1st prize in their yearly contest wins a bottle of wine and a nap on company time. these are both things i feel very strongly about, so i knew my costume had to be tops.

a couple of weeks ago i was looking through a thrift store, and i found it. the winner. perfection. as soon as i saw this polyester blue dress, everything in my field of vision went to soft focus and i heard a heavenly voice say "these have always brought me luck".



it was that moment i knew i absolutely had to be liz taylor circa the white diamonds commercial for halloween.



so this morning, i got to work bright and early and started checking emails. i brought a bunch of rhinestones to spread around my desk for effect, and was feeling very, very sure of myself that this contest was in the bag.


that is, until our receptionist came by my desk to drop off the latest issue of craft magazine.


i couldn't believe it - our new receptionist, steph, had THE EXACT SAME COSTUME AS ME.


"what the hell is this?" i asked her.
"i don't know what your problem is," she replied, "white diamonds liz taylor is huge this year."


"like have you seen steph the janitor?" she asked, "she's liz taylor, too."


"and so is steph in I.T., and our accountant steph," she continued.


well this just sucks! turns out our jerky bosslady's got a penchant for ol' lizzy, too. effing wonderful.


"what the hell you want?" my boss asked "you know i'm tryin to watch people's court."
when i reminded her we were supposed to be having the contest first thing in the morning, she told me to get everyone together so she could judge it real quick during the commercials.


"hmmmm.... this is pretty tough," she says, "you guys all look so... lame."


she continued, saying "yeah i can hardly even tell who you're supposed to be."


she whips out her bottle of white diamonds and yells "obviously my attention to detail means i win, suckas!"


"and lemme just say, i wanna thank all the little people... i couldn't have won this prestigous award without you all looking like crap and i really appreciate that."


with that, she drank the whole bottle of wine and passed out for the rest of the work day.

as soon as she was unconscious, we all stole from her wallet and went home for the day so i guess in the end, everybody wins!

happy halloween everyone!

love, exciting and new...

so our brand new printer was delivered today...



within 10 seconds of setting up the canon mp960, the copying function was broken in properly:



you know one of these nights, after a few too many drinks, butts are going on that thing. hooray!!!

seriously, i feel like such a geek being this excited about a scanner/printer/copier. can i tell you i printed out one of our honeymoon pics and hot damn this thing prints so much nicer than my old printer. it's like butta!

i used to be really anti multi-function printers because for a long time they were crap. but i did a bunch of research before getting this thing, and all the reviews were stellar and i'm just really excited to have a new supernice piece of equipment to work with!

what does this mean to you? i got to say butts twice in one post, and i'm a dork. the end!

help your fellow crafter!

i had told ya about jenny from felt club being slapped with some heinous fines for well-meaning people putting felt club posters up where they shouldn't have in downtown l.a. - she got another fine in the mail the other day, bringing the grand total to something like 600 bucks. ay yi yi, no me gusta!!!

so she and some friends put together three crafty smorgasborgs for you to bid on to help alleviate the costs - they include handmade items from all sorts of arts&crafters, including me. i've got a postcard set in each basket, and a little skull painting in basket number 3, so get over there and get to bidding!

in other news, josh and i have been making dummies swear for the past hour. i apologize in advance for the multitude of profane emails you may have received on these dummies behalf. 3 cheers to jenn and trav for alerting us to this marvel of modern technology!

aaaaaaannnnnd i'm very excited - after 7ish years with my current printer, it's started to not print nearly as nice as it could be, and a new one's on the horizon... but what printer it is, i'm not sure yet - still deciding. what's your printer of chioce?