I have spent the entire evening sorting through six or more years of zip disks. I have found duplicates and triplicates of fonts. I have found memos from the bad years at Jackson, and that dates back ten years. I have found the shards and crockery of my career as a graphic designer in a burial mound of out-dated media.

I have also found my (unfinished) novel, which, upon review, is better than I remembered.

I have found photos I thought were lost, and some of them are, since no current application can read them.

I have found about two square feet of floor space in my studio. Whether or not the usuable space was worth the pain of the exercise is another question, entirely.

And a big thankew to Larry Cafiero, candidate for Insurance Commission, State of California, Green Party, for pointing this out to me.

Bow before my most excellent code warrior skills, mere readers.

I have fixed the errant code. I have reclaimed my blog.

I have added another Pandemonium podcast.

But now? I have to empty the dishwasher, feed the dogs, take a shower and get my ass to the office.

For some reason, oh, just a wild-ass guess here, but possibly because I updated a page or two in GoLive, this site has reset itself to March and it won't let go.

I've rebuilt. I've researched the code. I've rebuilt. I've rewritten the code. I've rebuilt.

And still? I get a default back to March.

It's late. I have a headache from trying to figure this out. I quit until tomorrow.

Which of these statements is irrefutably true?

Mike Furir is a pedophile who hunts for children on the internet.

Mike Furir has a nasty sexually transmitted disease, which he leaves untreated.

Mike Furir is the world's biggest asshole, as demonstrated by his spam-bot army, which has delivered more than 120 spam comments and trackbacks today alone on my poor blog, and apparently has been doing this to others for some time in an effort to become famous on Google.

The only one I can prove is the last one. But I hope he enjoys his google hits from my site.

I promised myself that I'd learn how to podcast.

Did I succeed?
Well. Yes. Yes, I did. I just submitted the first episode of the Pandemonium Midnight Uploading to i-tunes. I subscribed, and it found the podcast, populated all the fields correctly (i.e.: the author, the description, the artwork) and opened and played.

Sigh.

I am soooo the Geek Goddess. Sometimes I scare myself. I ate cold pizza for breakfast and sat down in front of the Powerbook and corrected code. I am so hott.

Anyway.

The Pandemonium Midnight Uploading could also have been called Pandemonium Reigns Again. Back in the 80s and up to the mid 90s, the Pandemonium Midnight Uprising was a comedy show that aired on WLRN, Miami's National Public Radio affiliate.

Those were heady days, people. We (RJ was a Pande, too) were just a bunch of people (too old, really, to still be called kids) who got together once a week to record a radio show. Sometimes we went on live, and it was a blast. Other times we did improv, and there were moments of comedic genius. At still other times, there were moments that sank like lead-weighted rocks.

We had no monetary support from anyone. We wrote most every skit ourselves. We did our own production, and post-production.

Sometimes we appeared live. Sometimes the various sub-groups would perform folk music, or musical satire, or comedy or do a stand-up routine.

We had a wonderful time, and true to this day, amused ourselves greatly. But all wonderful times end, eventually. One and then another of us moved away, dropped out, divorced. Gary died. The tapes were lost.

Not too long ago, I found my personal collection of cassettes of shows that I'd taped off the radio. MJ ported them all to CDs, and I've converted them to mp3s and mp4s, and as of an hour ago, launched the Pandemonium Midnight Uploading, a podcast on i-tunes.

That I could write that code, and do the editing required to get these shows broken apart and put back into little bites, would have gotten Gary very hot.

These are for you, Mr. Willson.

I'm working on an enhancement to Girlyshoes. Specifically, I'm adding a podcast. Or I would be if I could figure out where the error is in my code that seems to be preventing i-tunes from being able to find the file.

Anyway, I came home from an hour at the gym with Nic Cage, had my emergency back-up martini from the freezer and went to work on the code.

At some point, I decided that it would be a Good Idea to delete what appeared to be a duplicate folder off my server.

That would have been this blog and most of the freaking web site.

I gave the remainder of the martini to the RLA and spent the rest of the night reconstructing this site.

Please forgive the missing photos in back entries, because I haven't found them on any of my hard drives yet, to replace them on the server.

Look, I know I have a problem with internet surfing in that I do way, way, way too much of it. I follow random link to random link all over the information superhighway, and usually end up on some one-lane dirt road to nowhere because I took an off ramp after seeing an interesting billboard...

Very often I bookmark those lost little dead ends. Sometimes I link to them. Sometimes they go to the mental graveyard that such detritus deserves.

And then, once in a while, I find something truly wonderful. And that is why I need your help, dear readers. Because I found a truly wonderful site and didn't bookmark it. Although I have a shoe addiction, when it comes to purses, I tend to schlep the same one ratty leather bag around until even I realize that it is a disgrace. And the site I stumbled over was a purse designer.

More acurately, it was a pair of purse designers. I think they were English. I think that they both had names that started with an H and that their company and thus their site was both of their names. They had reasonably priced goods that were stylish and trendy. There was a hobo bag in particular that made my shriveled little heart go pitterpat. I think it was in a metallic burgundy leather.

Now, I can write a search string like nobody, and I found a 1983 article on AIDS from Rolling Stone and a source for a copy and the author's name and another article citing the first one, all within five minutes of my boss requesting it thus: "Sometime in the early 80s there was a story about AIDS in Rolling Stone. It may have been a cover story. I think they used the phrase gay plague."

Yet, no matter how I search, no matter what string I put together, I cannot find this website again. I have searched for photos of metallic leather hobo purses. I have ransacked the lists of British designers. I have gone through Google like Sherman through Georgia. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Goose eggs.

I'm asking for help* here. Please?

* I erase my histories and caches with obsessive regularity, so don't suggest that. Plus, I stumbled across this a month ago or more. I've checked all the links on Manolo's Shoe Blog, and the purse blogs. I'm just stumped.

I fought the urge as long as I could but finally had to cave in to the baser longings of my heart. I bought a new Powerbook. This should be the last entry using the Sony Vaio.
When the hospital took away my Mac, I felt like a converso during the Spanish Inquisition. Yes, you could make me denounce my religion in order to stay alive, but you could never make me love the new one, or even practice it with the fullness of my heart.

Now that I've been liberated from the toxic waste dump of county employment, I decided to take the paltry remains of my severence package (most of which has gone to paying the COBRA bills) and buy myself a new laptop.

It arrived yesterday, and today I'm loading up software and cooing over it like the newborn it is.

In other news, Miss Frances Langford died. She was the local celebrity in my home town, and many are the dinners my family had at the old Outrigger.



I once got Susan Hayward's autograph there. She smiled and asked me if my father had told me to ask for it, because I was way too young to know who she was. But she was beautiful and gracious, and I still have the autograph, on the back of the blue valet parking stub. Unlike the celebrities of today, you could read her signature, too.

Yeah, baby. There is nothing I like better than taking part in a random survey. This one is being run by MIT's Media Lab, and any time I can be part of their science, I am one happy puppy.

My sistergirl sent me an article about Mars being closer to Earth this August than any time since the Neanderthals looked up, but it turns out it was one of those web things that circulates and circulates and circulates. The actual time of the Mars event was two summers ago. Still and all, I suppose that looking up is a good thing to do anyway.

And if you're looking up and out in mid to late August, you'll be seeing the Perseid Meteor Showers. So how bad could it be, if you get to see a few shooting stars?

This is a day off for me, and it started out lamely enough with me waking up with a headache. Like, the kind of headache that feels like someone with a fifty-pound thumb is trying to press out your eye, from behind the eyeball.
Ignoring that, I went off to work out with Nic Cage (aka The Marquis de Steve). There was no parking at the gym within a three-block radius. I circled three times. I would have gone into a four-block radius, but the fourth block is Dixie Highway or residential areas and they frown on parking in either location.

I had to valet park. At the gym. Which is so against my religion. That religion being if you're going to work out, anything that makes it easier (i.e.: parking next to the door, valet parking) is prohibited. You're there to sweat, not take it easy. And yet, due to the fact that there was absolutely no place to put Zelda Bleu, I had to valet. Which I still would not have done, had all this circling around like a shark hunting blood not made me very late.

Got home and logged on to the i-tunes music store, because there were some things I wanted to download. I shopped until I had a cart full of obscurities, then went to download and check out. No can do. Need to update to i-tunes 4.8. Not a problem. Except, it was a problem. For some reason, I can't update because, although I'm an administrator on my own computer, the stupid Wintel device thinks I need to talk to a system administrator. I even tried creating a new account that was strictly admin with no customization at all. Still won't let me update. Fatal error.

Yeah, I'll say. The fatal error being it's a piece of shit Wintel computer that I had to buy because the hospital took away my Mac and wouldn't let me use one anymore, and then gave me such a load of work that I had to get a Windows machine on my own dime so I could work at/from home, too. Then the asshats laid me off and here I am with a stupid Windows machine that I'd never in a million years have bought of my own volition.

Except. Now I don't have to use a Wintel machine, do I? And if I wanted that sweet, sweet, sweet 15" PowerBook, I could get it. And you know what that means, don't you? This Windows machine would be a doorstop faster than than you could say reboot.

Due to stupidity on my part, comments have been turned off for a couple of weeks. I have now turned them back on. Feel free to leave one.

True phone call:

"I want to get wireless service. Who supplies it?"

"Anyone who provides internet service."

"Can't you recommend anyone?"

"Who are you getting service from now? They don't beam it into your home, you know. You still need a cable and a base station."

"What about when I'm in my truck?"
Call number two:

"Are you familiar with the i-pod?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, I tried to load a CD on it last night and after a couple of hours, it still wasn't showing up on my i-pod."

"OK. Uh, did you digitize the music into your library first?"

"?????Digitize? Library?"

So my boss told me I can blog about work, as long as I don't name names or precise locations. Whoo-fucking-hoo. I've been sitting on this entry for a week out of fear. But now, I can blog it.
Last week we had a special event at the store, to premier a new product. We closed at five, and reopened at six. People, there was a LINE waiting to get in at six that stretched down the mall to the coffee shop.

Those folks in line didn't know whether to shit or go blind, because they had to decide: line up for the new product, or line up for tickets to Star Wars. Because, yeah, it's pretty much the same group of sox and sandal wearing, go to Star Trek conventions to practice conversational Klingon, home beer brewing nerds. Uber nerds. My people.

Really. I can't make fun of them too much, because, after all, I am their goddess: The Geek Goddess. I can identify the original Star Trek episodes in the 30 second teaser before the credits. I can talk tech talk: routers, bit rates, code. I know all the urban legends and where to go to on the internets to debunk them. Click here.

Since I'm too old to care about such things as appearances, I got to work the line wearing a pair of fuzzy animal ears that symbolized our new product. One of the managers made me lose the tail, which was a pity, 'cause sisters, I was working it.

Later in the evening, the mall rats came out to prowl. Where are these girls' mothers? The fat bellies hanging out over the low-rider mini-skirts, the black bra straps peeking out from under white tank tops, the dirty feet in sloppy flipflops. Skanks. We had a number of prizes at the event, but you had to be eighteen or older to win. Nevertheless, the mallskanks all wanted to play. Why? I kept asking them. You can't win even if you win. You have to be eighteen or older. A pair of them came back with "Together our age is over eighteen!" And I replied that divided by four, my age was almost 18, too. That scared them into leaving.

Then there was the U of Miami kid who tried to convince me that he needed a bigger discount, because he was a poor student. I told him that I was a minimally employed old lady, and he wasn't getting pity from me.

The managers were very happy with how I handled the door. I'm so proud.

For the last time, spam-bots, I don't give a flying rat's ass about texis hold em, fffentamine,animated porn, stories of suspect nature concerning unnatural acts between species or family members, low-interest mortgages, c1alis or any other drug promising life-endangering hards-on.
Or would that be life-endangering hard-ons. One of my friends and I have been arguing the correct plural of hard on for years. She's a Military Brat and leans toward hards-on, likening it to courts martial. I say, even in the plural, there is only one per customer, so the plural occurs at the end, hard ons. We wrote to William Saffire but he didn't think it was a serious question, we suppose, since he never responded.

Anyway. I have no interest in any of the above listed topics, and I suspect that my readers don't either, so if you would just remove me from the list, I'd appreciate it.

Not that this plea will help. But I feel better for it.