concert fun and internetty news!

ok so last week josh and i went to see the killers play at the hollywood bowl, and it uberrocked!!!

i didn't realize until like a day before the show that the psychedelic furs were opening for them, and i was like uhhh that's cool. because it makes me wanna rummage through thrift store racks for pink things to shove in jenn's face while singing (badly) "PRETTYYYYY IN PIIIIIINNNNNNNK". i didn't realize at the time how amazing this one-two punch of musicness was gonna be!!

so we pretty much had the perfect concert experience - we drove up to hollywood early afternoon, got there before rush hour traffic had even begun. checked into the best western that's like 2 blocks from the bowl, and moseyed down to the hollywood/highland complex. it really kinda cracks me up how this place is billed as so hip and trendy and the oscars are held there, but really... it's just a fancy mall.

i'm not exaggerating. it's a mall. there's a hot topic. steps away from where they hold the oscar. it just cracks me up.

we were lucky! we were there the same day hot topic was having a q&a about that new jennifer's body movie, and i guess panic at the disco was gonna play. i didn't so much care about that, we were just there to gawk at celebs. so we hung out directly behind the sound booth, listening to them talk shit about everybody was awesome. and on the second level you could see celebs getting their pics snapped and doing interviews. saw adam brody from the oc, megan fox and diablo cody.

i don't know about you but i wanna party with diablo cody. she reminds me of my girl liz. i bet she rocks the karaoke stage!

anyhow, i found out after the fact that my old pal ed killmond from scad was there and thought he recognized me, and that is super awesome even though we didn't get a chance to say hi. hi, ed!

after we hung out there a bit, walked back to the hotel and packed up our snacks for the concert. i LOVE that you can bring your own snacks to the h-wood bowl. we brought enough for 20 people, but it was just me and josh... we may have overpacked. for certain shows you can't bring your own booze, and i declare shenanigans!

the show was AWESOME. every song psychedelic furs played i was all "i know this song! i know this song!" it was like sitting and listening to a john hughes movie soundtrack. and then they didn't play pretty in pink. and their set was over. and i was like "WHAT THE HELL!!!"

josh and i started figuring maybe they were one of those bands that was so sick of that song, maybe they refuse to play it these days. but then the killers started, and their sound is SO psychedelic furs, i started thinking. omg that's gonna be the encore. they're gonna do pretty in pink with the furs.

and they did.

and it was AMAZING.

seriously, the killers rock my socks off and almost every song has this nostalgic quality about it, every song is so awesome. i heart them hooray!

once the show was over, instead of having to deal with crappy parking lot traffic we just had a short 2 block walk to the hotel and that was it. bliss.

the hotel thing, it made all the difference. a while back i saw the police at dodger stadium with my sis danielle and some friends, and we were in the parking lot for like an hour and a half after the show.

so that's my recap - in other news, hearts and laserbeams was offline for a couple of days due to hacky shenanigans. it's back online and all fixed now, so thank goodness for that! i have to seriously thank raina from the queen's men for getting rid of all the hacker shenanigans, and bluehost for helping me get my hosting account unsuspended. y'all are the best!

coding frustrations number 842

ok so in my quest to get my work out there in front of more eyes, i'm trying to get website bookmarking going on my site.

addthis looks fabulous because it pretty much covers all possible bookmarking sites, but the blogger code they give only works if you're using layouts.

i was all set to switch over to the layouts, but blogger said no, no no because my blog isn't hosted on their webspace.

so i've got a support message in with addthis hopin they'll help me figure out what code i can use.

in the meantime i wanna know why web fixes are never ever cut and dried and easy for me!?!?

and also, last but not least, tomorrow is josh and i's second anniversary, and that is superrad!

website fixes wish list - do you know a coder?

i'll level with ya, i'm an artist and not a coder. i've gotten my site off the ground, and am looking for help getting some issues knocked out that i can't seem to wrap my head around. please take a look at the following list and let me know how much it would cost for you to fix all of these for me, along with a time frame on how soon you can get it finished.

thanks so much, i look forward to hearing from anyone who can be of service!

steph calvert

*************

1) the home page link, category links, and top header banner have an extra "/" at the end of the link.

2) blog issues - need someone who is familiar with blogger.

a) the archiving is wonky. clicking on one of the archives pulls up a separate page instead of being pulled up on that blog page. i also need each post to have a permalink so people can share the link and or bookmark it.
b) images from cell phone posts aren't showing up; there's a path that's always incorrect on those posts. once i fix the path the image shows up ok.
c) the time posted for blog post is a link but goes to an error page

3) would like to have easier paths on the address bar throughout the site and don't know how to change that - for example:

i have: https://www.heartsandlaserbeams.com//index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=76_83&products_id=290

Ideal would be: https://www.heartsandlaserbeams.com/accessories/1_inch_buttons

(NOTE: for this one, if it's an easy fix you don't have to go through every page to update the paths, you can tell me how you did the first one and i can fix the rest. this will be a neccessity since i'll be adding new pages and products in the future)

4) ssl issues: on every single page i'm getting a popup saying how "some items on the page are unsecure would i still like to view". i don't think that's supposed to constantly be showing up. i may not have set up my ssl properly, currently the https prefix is on every page and someone told me that may affect search engine results.

5) want the middle of the page (currently light grey) where the products show up to be white instead of light grey.

a serious cry for programming help

ok guys i seriously need programming help and i know there's someone out there that can help me - it's not anything super duper major, but it's beyond my scope of programming expertise (which is, in technical terms, slim to bupkiss). i'm not looin for a free ride here - take a look at my website's blog, and if you can help fix the following four problems i will send you 2 free prints of your choice in the mail!

1: there's something about the twitter code that's pushing the page out too wide, and i need to fix it but am not sure how. take a look at other pages on the website, none of the rest require scrolling left and right to see everything.

2: is there something i can do to put some kind of dividing line between the blog posts?

3: is there a way to format the text that you know of? like i'd like the titles to be bigger and easier to read if that's possible... OR if i could just publish my blog to this page instead of using CaRP that would be super rad, too. that's what i did with my old website and for some reason that wasn't jiving with this new site...

4: BIGGEST ISSUE: i really want my comments back because i heart comments.

now here's the technical mumbo jumbo that may help you solve this crap: i built my website using zencart, and i'm using CaRP to publish my blogspot blog through an rss feed. i know there's a wordpress module for blogging with zencart, but i'd rather not change over to wordpress since i've been writing on this same blog for 6 years.

if anyone can help i'd super appreciate it - i have a support ticket in with CaRP that never got answered (i submitted it like 3 months ago). and remember! if you can help me with all four issues you get 2 free prints of your choice from my online shop!

thanks in advance!

jail paris and other tidbits

so after talkin it over with the boy, it has been decided that since i'm wantin' to focus more on gettin my artstuffs out there and make some money at it here and there, that i'd move the shop to be the first thing that pops up when you go to heartsandlaserbeams.com instead of the bloggy blog...

and there's new stuff in the shop again! tonight's selections include new and improved crocheted cupcakes - new and improved because i actually know how to crochet now so they all turn out really good instead of kinda okay!

but possibly more fun than the crocheted cupcakes is the jail/free paris tees. i wasn't gonna do anything paris related because that means having to actually spend time on something like that, but after 3 different people mentioned that i should do it in the span of 24 hours i figure what the hey. to make it fun, i'll keep a running tally on the paris shirt pages so you know who's voting for what. we'll probably present the results in a well-worded report to the governor or something like that to aid in his decision to pardon or not pardon the classy young hotel heiress, so you know this whole thing is totally worthwhile.

AND! i painted our guest bathroom kelly green this weekend and i love it. pics to come as soon as i'm done touching it up and rehanging johnny castle in his proper place above the throne.

ALSO! 21 and over shows stink - i was planning on going to see my friend kyle's band bodies of water with my sister danielle and our friend lauren tonight, but found out just hours beforehand that it was 21 and up which stinks on so many levels and left me feeling like an ass for not checking that before i asked em to go.

so it's been a while!!!

sit back and get ready for a nice long update because it's been effing FOREVER since i've been on here and lots has happened!

mostly lately i've been working on the shop section of the website, gettin' all the goods i've got that were available on the old site into the new site. and that is officially sort of done! on to making new stuff! i bought a slathering of paint and et cetera yesterday because i realized i was sort of out of a lot of things...

ok so last week josh and i had the opportunity to go to a hollywood movie premiere! his mom's friends thais and jimmy had passes that they shared with us because they rock! so last tuesday we saw what love is. it was kind of a smaller movie, like it'll be one of those arty ones that's only shown in a few theaters instead of everywhere, you know? so the opening wasn't this humongous red carpet craziness - also meaning there were like no celebs we recognized in the lobby beforehand. i took some pics just in case someone was famous that i didn't recognize...

we got in the theater with our group just a few minutes before the movie started, so they ended up splitting us all up amongst the two theaters they were seating people in. josh and i were told to sit in this row where there were strangely like 5 empty seats... and as we were sitting down we saw a paper on one chair that said cuba, and one that said matthew. josh and i are freaking out, like ARE THEY SITTING NEXT TO US!!! but it turned out that usher had put us there not knowing they were cuba's and matthew's seats, meaning we were booted outta our seats for them, which was fine by us because there were like right there as we were standing in the aisle waiting for the ushers to find us other seats.

and our other seats ended up being just 4 seats away from mutual fundin' ERIK ESTRADA!!! here is a photo of the back of his head, he's the dude on the right:



as for the movie itself, it was good and i liked it a lot! it was lots and lots of monologues, very funny stuff, and that is that! when it comes out you should probably go see it, especially if you heart matthew lillard or mars callahan.

AND!!! i forgot to mention, as we were driving from the theater to the afterparty, (how very ra-sha-sha hollywood of us) we passed the much-bigger premiere of the hills have eyes 2 and saw phillip seymore hoffman on the red carpet!
what else has been going on...

started going to stitch and bitch and lemme tell you it is AWESOME actually planning 2.5 hours each week to sit down and work on this sweater i'm making! in the biggest small world story since jenn and i met in wisconsin, i found out one of the girls in the group is actually my neighbor in this building! we'd never seen each other around home but then like two days after we met at stitch and bitch we ran into each other in the parking garage! craziness!

i'm having a lot of problems staying consistent with the gym; i'll go for like 3 weeks and stop for like 3 weeks and eat lots of junk food at the same time. what the eff is up with that? i can't help it if happy meals taste like god!

i can't remember what else has been going on over the past couple of weeks... but i've gotten really bad about blogging. how can i make it up to you? can i offer you some muffins?



also, jimmy i think might be hitting that special time in a puppy's life when he starts becoming a dog, and by that i mean he may be hitting puberty and by that i mean he's been a total a-hole for the past couple of days! he tried to bolt outta the house twice yesterday and once today and even told me he wished he was never born! that ingrateful beeeeeeast! fortunately he'll be 2 in a few months, i think that's when they're supposed to start calming down again.

aaaaaaaaand did i tell you i was knitting a sweater! it's like 2/3 the way done! and it doesn't look like cacadoody!

comments from the peanut gallery?

i dunno if i like the mailing list box on the about page, take a gander... i think i want to do something way more simple - should that be on the sidebar of every page, do you think?

also, you should probably read the about page. pics will be added when i get to it...