Chepooka.com

For the love of Christ I win the idiot of the day award.

I’ve been paying for AOL for eight. years. 

Since the invention of broadband many moons ago, I haven’t used it to access the internet.  But, I had billions of things tied to my longstanding email account so that was the main reason I just turned a blind eye to that recurring bill each month. 

A couple of years ago I began the process of pointing everything important to my business/permanent email account, and to train people (who to this DAY still email me on that old account despite repeated warnings) to email me at one of my active addresses.

Anyway.  Skip to AOL announcing that you can keep your email FO’ FREE (yeah I know, that was eons ago) and I was all about putting ‘cancel AOL’ on my to-do list.  Where it remained.  It slipped, and slipped, and slipped down to the bottom of every day’s to-do list. 

You see, also?  I heard and read about all these HORROR STORIES about people having a hell of a time freeing themselves from the clutches of the evil empire.  Supposedly it took one guy like 5 hours, FIVE.  I am not good with the phone for five minutes.  And then the “seventeen steps to canceling AOL” or something.  Reading the manual to my cell phone never happened, I can barely figure out how to make an outgoing call.  Think I’m going to read STEPS for THAT? 

A cursory investigation suggested that it probably WAS going to be a big huge pain in the ass, I couldn’t find phone numbers or contact information (hint, keyword: cancel ... HELLO?!!!)

And so it stayed. 

On my to-do list.

Until today. 

I felt the need to break out my RED PEN OF ACCOMPLISHMENT and strike something off my list.  I called AOL.  It took approximately five minutes to not only cancel my account, but to find out that I can still use AOL for absolutely positively everything that I was using it for all these years. 

YEARS.

For. 

FREE.

I counted up exactly how much my idiocracy cost me, lets just say those shoes I’m always telling myself I can’t afford?  Or that designer purse?  Or that weekend in Seattle? 

I am blogging this not to convince you that I’m a moron, you already know that.  But so that somebody can climb the ranks of google and skip over the stupid, stupid lies about needing to cash in a sick day to deal with AOL to get them to cancel an account.  Just not true. 

They were courteous, efficient, not too pushy, and it wasn’t painful in the slightest. 

Oh and if I hadn’t made it clear?  I KNOW, realize, am aware ... that I am an idiot.

A couple of years ago I bought a really nice Dell to replace the one I bought 5 or so years ago.  Unfortunately, it had some weird conflict with Adobe CS2, which, for all intents and purposes, rendered said computer virtually useless to me—I live and work in photoshop and illustrator.  Bottom line, I tried everything known to man to fix the conflict, including hiring 4 different techs to try to figure it out to no avail.  Dell blamed Adobe, Adobe blamed Dell, so forget warranty. 

I’ve not used it much since, which frustrates the hell out of me.  I’ve had to wait to buy a new one because in the meantime, I had to eat, live, buy a home, such things. 

It’s time, though, for me to upgrade.  For years I’ve wanted to convert to Mac but could never afford it.  It’s more than the cost of the system after all—it’s all the “stuff”.  I figured after the last fiasco, I can’t really afford not to buy a top-of-the-line system either.  And if I’m ever going to do it, now is the time.  I trotted down to the Mac store to ask a whole boatload of questions about what would happen to me if I convert my business from PC to mac. 

There was some serious drooling going on, I won’t lie.  These machines are sleek; very, very sexy.  The 24” monitor was in a word, beautiful.  I didn’t even finish my introduction to the sales clerk before I made a beeline to it.  I asked about fonts, he couldn’t answer.  I have a lot of $$$ invested in these types of things.  In fonts, icons, stock imagery, stuff I’ve collected over the years.  I can’t lose that.  The software is the other thing.  Adobe CS3 is like $1,800. 

I really wanted to find a way to buy a Mac.  I tried.  But if I were to get exactly what I wanted, in my dreamworld, I calculated that it would cost me about $8,000.  I can’t afford that.  I could finance it I suppose, and I didn’t end the conversation there, but then the kicker—if something were to happen to my shiny new mac, even under warranty, I would have had to take it in to their shop for repair.  “It’s only a 7-day turnaround!” the Mac guy says.  I can’t be without my business for 7 days, this IS my business. 

At least when something happens on my PC, I have backup computers AND, any Tom, Dick or Harry in town can fix a PC, there are options. 

I took the spec sheet home with me, felt a little sad that it probably wasn’t going to happen.  I would never be one of those cool, hip mac people. 

I went to the Dell site and put together my “dream computer”—which included a 30” monitor.  All total, it will cost me about $5,000 less than my mac dream computer.  I’m thinking this is not a bad consolation prize.  I will need to buy a bigger desk for this, though. 

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I saw a show (my fav show, How clean is your House?) where this woman had 11 or something parakeets. She didn’t keep them in cages. And had never cleaned her house.

Also,

[Your cat] Max wants to eat fluffy. I’m just sayin’. It would be like me having a mexican restaurant hanging in my livingroom, like in a cage. Because, that could happen. So I’m smellin’ the tacos and burritos and enchiladas, but I can’t reach it. It really frustrates me because in my natural habitat, I can drive right up to tacos and eat them freely. Then sometimes the burrito flies around the room, swoops down on me, but people are looking at me and I know they would punish me if I scooped it out of the air and swallowed it down. And so I don’t.

I stumbled upon an old blog entry this morning, as far as I can tell it was the first ever blog entry I ever wrote, it dates back to May 28, 2002. 

Of course back then I did everything in Dreamweaver, I remember trying to figure out Blogger and then not really understanding the point.  lol So I updated this little site, probably a dozen entries or so tops, no commenting system.  I was just puttin’ it out there, I guess I needed to write.  But I wrote a lot about really random stupid stuff, nonsense.  Maybe that’s why I decided on Chepooka.com as my domain, it’s Russian for “nonsense”, which I know because it’s used in one of my favorite books/movies, A Clockwork Orange.  (Now you know, the secret’s out!  lol)

This blog really didn’t plant roots until 2004, when a pal of mine (her blog is no longer active so don’t bother clicking) and I left a graphic design forum because it was getting too politically-charged, lots of arguing about with the whole WMD thing and things got ugly.  We took the conversation to our blogs. 

I figured out Blogger and used that for a few weeks, but then quickly decided to install Movable Type because all the cool kids had that (I remember it took me the better part of a Saturday morning to get it up and running).  I began discovering other blogs, people with the same passions.  (I was delighted to learn, upon my return to blogging, that a few of them are still around.  Hi!  *waves*)

My interest in web design was sparked as well.  At the time I had only a passing familiarity with CSS and XHTML what?!  Thank God for blogging or who knows how long it would have taken me to graduate from WYSIWYG web design and to learn a thing or two about web standards. 

It was exciting to me to experience design on such a personal level (rather than commercial, where it’s all about branding and communicating to customers).  Blog design was about expressing individuality, it was more playful and fun.  It’s how I connected with some of the world’s best blog designers, some of whom I consider friends to this day.  I still love seeing a really well-done blog design, and I still love designing blogs more than anything (although I don’t get much chance to do personal sites anymore now that the corporate world has caught on to this new-fangled technology). 

I blogged a lot about the election and politics.  Then, I was disappointed.  Then, I didn’t want to indulge in expressing my emotions, beliefs and passions so much anymore.  And so for the most part, I stopped. 

Blogging has since changed a lot (note to self: don’t go on hiatus or the world will pass you by).  Social networking, oy.  Have you hoiyd of theese?

There are now a virtual TON of blogs out there that address the “strategy of blogging”—how to do it, how to make money at it, how to write better posts, how often to post, how to drive traffic, how to blog while you’re sleeping or from your car when all that’s available to you is a zippo lighter and some dental floss. 

I’m guilty of reading those blogs and writing such articles myself.  But the core of the blogging world is still about unfiltered, raw, passionate, honest, personal expression.  I love finding new blogs that fit into this category.

Anyway, here I am again.  Maybe I’m back to where I started - it’s just about nonsense that goes on in my head and my life.  Can that be a mission statement for a blog?  Heck yeah it can, IT’S MY BLOG.  It’s even ok if nobody reads this (thank you for reading this). 

I have always journaled.  I used to write letters back when I was young and had less control over my emotions.  Most of them I wouldn’t send, but looking back, I feel sorry for the recipients for those I did.  20-pages worth of angst and frustration and emotion that I didn’t know what to do with.  I haven’t written one of those in awhile. 

As for the journals I’ve written, I’ve never kept them.  I always felt that it was best to leave the past behind, that the pages were just to get things out, not to bring back in.  But we never leave the past behind anyway, we just learn to recall things differently as time passes.  Maybe it would have been better if I were able to go back and see how far I’ve come, how much I’ve grown, how much I’ve survived, and even hey—remember that it really wasn’t all that bad, in fact, it’s been quite good.

I know I’ve lost archives for Chepooka but I may go back at some point and see what I can recover.  I think it would be a good exercise for me.  Anyway.  Enough waxing nostalgic, here’s the post that started it all. 

Since I’ve been following the Volumetrics eating plan, I’ve dropped 2 inches from my waist.  *cue confetti* I just measured this morning because m’pants were beginning to fall down on me a little bit.  I can’t tell you how much I love this plan, I won’t bore you with the details unless you’re interested. 

But can I just say that I feel this humongous sense of relief that I’ve found a plan that works for me and one that I can stick to.  I know that I can stop dieting now, I can just LIVE and eat well and lose weight too.  Yay.