Ægrus Somnium

has anyone caught the show “haunted collector” on syfy yet, damn this guy has a great racket going. if you have yet to see the show this john zaffis and his team of paranormal investigators help families who have hauntings by going into their houses and investigating to find the cause of the haunting, his theory is that the haunting is because a spirit or entity is attached to an object. now here’s where things get fishy, the first thing he generally asks about is antiques and heirlooms, ok, kinda makes sense, they’d have been around and collected lots of memories and such, now if your good, and I was hitting 100% you can tell at this point in the show what his going to swindle out of the poor person, generally just look for one of the more expensive antiques, and yeah, he’ll make sure he gets it. so they do a whole “investigation” and in one episode, I think it was the new episode from last night he went to this guys home and instantly locked onto a cane gun, and of course the emf chirps on it, but barely, and when they remove it from the wall which may have wiring in it nothing happens from the emf detectors, yet at the end of the show he says he doesn’t think the cane gun has anything to do with the haunting, yet still brings it to a gun dealer to get looked at, you see a little of it but you know he’s getting the fucker appraised, because he brings every other item to antique dealers and the like as well, he finds out it was made in france in 1870, then holy shit research turns up AFTER the appraisal that there was a shooting in 1870 with a cane gun in brooklyn and there was only a handful of cane guns in the area at the time of the shooting, and it just happens the owner picked the cane gun up at a swap meet in brooklyn, a lot of time has passed since 1870 buddy, you think that “handful” are the only ones around in brooklyn anymore?, but he wants it out of the house and gives it to john to put in his museum, in a quick search I snagged this snippet from a website:

“Gun canes are one of the most popular gadgets an antique collector can have in his or her cane collection.
Not only is the gun cane popular, but at a recent cane auction, a Remington gun cane from 1875 sold for more than $10,000!”

in another instance there was an antique heirloom musical jewelry box that had been passed down to this young woman and she was hearing bumps in the night, of course knowing anything about antiques he zeroed in on this because it had wood inlays and it was old making it $$$, so when he came back with an EVP from her mother just saying “purple flowers” he gave her this talk about just having this music box was opening doors to allow other entities in, what a con artist, it’s not like she’s dabbling with ouija boards, or occult shit here the god damned thing is just sitting there, she’s just hanging on to a family heirloom, so after the talk of opening the door and letting bad things in of course she hands it over for his museum, this guy is making bank and has all the people on film telling him to take their valuable items

it was pointed out that I should make it so people can comment without registering, and I did just that, then shortly afterwards I also made it so you can comment without a name or email being necessary so feel free to comment away, the captcha and spam filters are still in place

It’s wedding season and those of us that have to go or be in one are slitting our throats but there are some of you who are excitedly creating this hell for the rest of us.

So you are getting married, or maybe thinking of getting married…or maybe you are one of those obsessive cat ladies that creep out potential suitors with your compulsive wedding banter because your biological clock is taking over where you psychological balance has ceased to exist.  Whatever the sitch, it’s on your mind and with the economy going to shit faster than the religious credibility of thousands of bankrupt Rapture defeatists, financing your wedding will definitely be your main focus.  It will be, even though your main focus should be the happiness and new life you are creating with your partner…but you can’t bullshit a bullshitter.

In planning my wedding I learned some very helpful and solid ways to cope with wedding budgeting that you may not find on normal blogs, magazines, or from the mouths of all those middle-aged wedding harpies who will badger you with advice and tell you what you SHOULD do and NEED to have at your wedding to make it more like their now defunct marriage celebration 800 years ago so that when you ultimately stray from their advice they can get so pissed off about it they actually contemplate not going to your wedding, declare it a disaster, but do go for the free food and cake.

1. Don’t give a shit. Seriously! Why freak out over every little thing that goes wrong or doesn’t go your way? Yes there are some things that will go wrong and need attention but nothing is worth the Bridezilla melodrama because you know what that proves? You are an intolerable spoiled asshole, everyone feels sorry for your soon-to-be husband or wonders how he can be so stupid, and they all secretly hope something really goes wrong to teach you a lesson or take squares on when your marriage will inevitably fail.  That’s how people roll. Relax and enjoy the planning and let things roll off, always have a plan z because no one feels bad for you.

2. Think outside your wedding box! Having what you want doesn’t have to be black and white and it doesn’t have to cost a lot, especially when it comes to favors. When you are looking for types of boxes, ribbons, etc. think about it not as a bride but as a normal person.  For example, I wanted Chinese take out boxes for my Asian themed wedding.  At wedding and favor stores and sites they wanted 1.50-3.00 per box. Fuck that! I needed 150 boxes!  So I thought about it not as a bride but as if I were in need of supplies for my Chinese food restaurant, where do they get their boxes from? They surely don’t pay that much per box or they wouldn’t make you take the free pint of rice no one ever wants. I ordered them from a site called Paper Mart and paid less than $25 for the entire order! Things that are made explicitly for weddings are marked up dramatically because they are bending over the bride and that’s not fair to the groom. So be creative, because your reception will inevitably take up at least 50% of your total budget so save where you can.

3. Trunk Shows and Mailing Lists Rock! Creepy or cunning, most girls fall in love with their potential wedding dress well before they are even engaged and in many cases the dress is haute couture, unavailable because they haven’t made it since you were 16 years old, or very overpriced and we end up settling for what looks good or what can be affordable. Why not still be in love with a dress?  If you have a favorite dress then stalk it like you did your soon-to-be husband! Sign up for the mailing lists of the designers you love because most of them have trunk shows that travel to authorized dealers seasonally. These trunk shows usually have the entire collection available to try on and if you put a percentage down on your dream dress during the trunk show, you will get a HUGE discount on your dress! I saved over $400 on my dream dress and didn’t have to settle for shit.  Also, don’t be afraid to look for dresses in unconventional places. Many designers make prom and quinceanera collections and sometimes those are more extravagant and fun than boring white wedding dresses.

4. Make your wedding reflect who you are as a couple. Don’t cave in to the harpies! Unless your dream wedding is a perfectly traditional and lame affair then have fun boring the shit out of your guests, they will forget about it eventually. However, if you are looking to be a little more memorable, try adding touches of who you and your partner are. Things from your home like pictures, favorite keepsakes, etc. make perfect editions to weddings and they are free! Even though I had an Asian themed wedding my husband added his flair to our sweetheart table by draping our Jolly Roger Pirate Flag in the front and my happy Buddhas sat on the top of the table. Everyone loved the decor, it was free because we owned them and it added warmth to the reception. So if you are a Redneck, embrace it with beer can pyramids and a few hundred of your closest sister wives! If you are into the Jersey fad well then kudos, you have already done everything as cheaply as possible!

5. Don’t be lazy, if you want it done right do it yourself! Centerpieces, favors, invitations, even the bouquets and other small trinkets can be handmade or produced mostly on your own at very little expense.  Invitations that are professionally printed not only cost A LOT but also waste a LOT of paper, they are very environmentally costly because of all the stupid little envelopes and metallic trim that make them impossible to recycle.  Printing your own is one way to not only save money but you can control the type of card stock used and its environmental impact.  We used recycled card stock with a very pretty cherry blossom print. As luck would have it, the pattern was on clearance so with the ink for our printer and stamps the total cost for our invitations was about $30. Because of the environmental focus, not caring to keep track of more paper, and not wanting to spend more on stamps, we did not do return envelopes for replies.  We saved money by giving our guests two ways to reply:  By phone and via a special email address that we had set up just for RSVPs. People loved the email and preferred this method to calling or sending back reply cards because much of our combined family are anti-social telephobes and confessed their inevitable irresponsibility because they were sure they would have lost the reply cards which would have resulted in last minute RSVPs, wasted money on postage and more dead trees = shitty karma.

6. Put those bitches to work! Nothing says cheap labor like a bridesmaid.  Everything you plan to do yourself can be accomplished with the blood, sweat, and tears of your bridal party, it’s in their job description and they work for food and cheap wine! Bang the drum and make them earn that ugly dress (we all know you did it on purpose you catty bitch)!

7. Call in Favors! Finally, don’t be afraid to call in those favors! If you know a DJ, remind him that he is banging your sister and a great present would be to do your wedding for free. Know someone that works for lawyers? That means that they are chummy with judges and justices too that can marry you on the DL for cheap if you aren’t into the Church thing. Related to someone with gorgeous, spacious property? Hit them up for a ceremony/reception in their yard then splurge on catering and Dior!

The hardest part about all of this is not really about the money but letting go of the fact that you are not sponsored by a broadcast company nor marrying into money so your dream wedding will not materialize into much more than a drool encrusted fantasy.  Keeping elements of that dream and making them the focal point of your wedding will however tie it all together and keep it memorable. No one wants to walk out of a wedding feeling like they wasted 5 hours of their lives, although we all do more than we care to admit. Thank Buddha for open bar!

You want to get the word out about your wedding early, so people can plan accordingly. There are many great companies that offer promotional products that you can give to everyone invited and these wont cost an arm and a leg.

has anyone else read the books or seen the movies on this trilogy? the trilogy being called the Millennium Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest), now I personally haven’t read the books and have went straight to the film adaptation due to being in a long book series currently and a long line following, before I get on with the purpose of this rant I did find this interesting about the author and his books,

“Larsson, who died of a heart attack just before the trilogy was published, was disgusted by sexual violence, having witnessed the gang rape of a young girl when he was 15. According to a friend of his, the author never forgave himself for failing to help the girl, whose name was Lisbeth — just like the young heroine of the trilogy, who is also a rape survivor.”¹

ok, back on topic, the movie adaptation of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” came out in 2009 with a swedish audio track and american subtitles, but if your not getting it from a rental company and actually spent the few bucks you can have the english audio dub track as well, it seem’s for some people this just isn’t good enough and we need to shit on that here in america, because guess what, a new version is being made in america slated for a december release, really? why, it’s already out and 2 years is way to short a time for a fucking remake, WTF! if your fucking illiterate and won’t buy the movie and will only redbox, or netflix instant a gimped copy, you won’t fucking understand it anyways, and I’m sure this new version is going to fuck up everything anyways, I saw more sex in the trailer then I saw in the original movie, stupid shit

so as many many many people (would you say a plethora) of people found out yesterday, my page was suspended, I’ve been running essentially the same site with a name change now and then for about 9 years or more with a few people viewing it, no big deal. yesterday I struck gold, one of my posts hit front page of digg and reddit and it wasn’t specifically catered to do such and what did my host do when I started getting lots of views, suspended my account, so my page is now back to being hosted by the lovely lunarpages whom I have never once had a problem with, and I offer a big FUCK YOU to iPage, lets go over iPage’s hosting and the incident that occurred yesterday shall we?

so my site got hits and they suspended the account for 4 fucking hours, 4!!!, causing any chance of those front page hits to benefit me in any way, several calls and many wasted cell minutes I got my “support ticket” bumped to the highest of priorities, that was within the first 20 mins of downtime, apparently high priority doesn’t mean shit to them, I was frustrated, pissed and tired so I took a nap figuring it would be up when I got up, nope, now 4 hours in I called and talked to a supervisor, or as the hip cool customer service rep referred to him a “suit”, after explaining how thoroughly they fucked me and how I needed access to my files for a hosting transfer he had my site up with one button press, wow, convenient, now lets look at some detailed stuff, here’s the issue that caused it all, yes I took screenshots of the support tickets, I would have snagged the emails as well, but they never sent one, well they did send one which pissed me off but I’ll mention that last:

oh, I see, my scripts are causing a heavy load, oh wait, I see some images in there, lets see, “justiceforkelsey.jpg” let me check that one out quick, 8,239 bytes, yeah that could make sense, that’s a pretty hefty image, oooo, my sig image, that’s gotta be a biggie “hsig.png”, 6,380 bytes yup, another huge one, I gotta start shrinking my image files, what else “wpfooter-trans.png” weighing in at, 3,127 bytes, and the rest is my layout, I suppose iPage’s is best suited for ancient tables, even though they offer wordpress right in the control panel hmmmmm….

ok, so I must have somehow gone over my unlimited bandwidth allowance, and this is what caused me to snag these shots, the supervisor said he wasn’t sure why they shot me down from looking at my bandwidth usage, again, screenshots:

well, definitely not using up my unlimited space or bandwidth, wait, why is there even a meter if it’s unlimited? oh well, lets click the details button

monthly limit on unlimited? WTF? well at least at my current rate I won’t exceed it so, again, why was I shut down? just for having heavy traffic one day?

ok, let’s look at what their hosting plan offer’s to see why I went with them, and remember I needed a host in one night and was low on bank which is why I chose them, should have known better, so here goes:

see, that doesn’t look so bad, free free free, unlimited, all green energy, lets click that view full features button shall we

whats with the question marks and the links for unlimited? well, my main concern is transfer and bandwidth so I’ll click that:

“Transfer refers to the amount of data you can transfer to and from your server. In the web hosting industry, the word "bandwidth" is also used to describe transfer. "Transfer," short for "data transfer," is measured anytime a file is uploaded/downloaded to/from your account.

Every time that file is downloaded/uploaded, the equivalent of the space it takes is subtracted from your remaining transfer. If a file downloaded from your website is 100MB in size, then 100MB of transfer will be deducted from your monthly allowance.”

monthly allowance of unlimited? that sounds a bit fishy, ok, lets check the bandwidth:

“There are no set limits on the disk space or data transfer (bandwidth) that we provide in plans marked "unlimited". We want you to have the resources you need to build a great online presence.

Still, we do need to be sure that we’re providing all of our customers with optimum service. As such, we do require all customers to be fully compliant with our Terms of Service and utilize disk space and bandwidth related to the normal operation of a personal or small business website.

While it is rare, we may need to put constraints on accounts that are adversely affecting other customers or otherwise utilizing or abusing resources beyond what would be expected of a personal or small business website.”

O…K….. so we’re going by your definition of unlimited, see in the world I live in, the really real world unlimited means:

–adjective
1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.

moral of the story, FUCK iPage’s, and be very careful in where you go for hosting, check the wording, I actually did and figured it’s a blog I should have enough bandwidth even if I get bombed since they said they can handle small business sites, seems they can’t, so avoid them and the limited unlimited accounts, enjoy your day

addendum: I apologize, I did forget to mention, the only email I received after my four hour downtime was a coupon for $25 off if I bring a friend of family member over to iPage, but today I just received the reason for my outage which as tech support stated yesterday was supposed to have arrived right when my page when down