Yes, I know.  I’m almost 30 years old, but I just can’t help myself. 

I’m in love with Webkinz.

If you’ve never heard of Webkinz, let me give you the abbreviated 411.  You go to the local gift shop and buy a Webkinz stuffed animal.  You open the tag which is tied to the foot.  You log onto www.Webkinz.com and adopt your pet online.  Then you spend countless hours, days even, playing games, feeding your pet, buying it furniture and dressing it up like a cowgirl.

If you’re lucky enough like me to have two neices playing on Webkinz, you can send them presents and letters and visit their pal’s homes when you’re both online.  At least I have a partial excuse for spending hours upon hours collecting Kinzcash and concocting secret recipes in my virtual sandwich maker.  It’s all about spoiling my neices with virtual presents….  Yeah!  That’s it!

Webkinz.com: It’s cute, it’s fun, it’s easy… It’s absolutely addicting!

I know it doesn’t seem like it, but that’s the best part…  I’ve been working on some behind-the-scenes updates recently (thanks to Andrew, of course).  WordPress and Gallery versions have both been updated, and the site has changed to a Dreamhost one-click install of WordPress. 

I’ve removed the Weather section from the sidebar panel to help speed up the load times.  It wasn’t as interesting as I originally thought it might be.  I’m also considering ousting the calendar entries too, because of all the trouble the Google calendar RSS feed has been giving us.

Hopefully I’ll have some time to create new festive header backgrounds pretty soon.  We’re fast approaching my favorite holiday: St. Patrick’s Day! 

It’s not easy being Green, you know…

Mike Tyson got arrested again last night in Scottsdale. This time on top of the DUI, he got drug charges as well. I guess it’s one way to get a lot of publicity! Mike, Mike Mike…. You might want to try a less jail-bound approach next time. Maybe you should try approaching VH1 for a B-list spot on one of their reality shows? The next time I’m hitting the clubs in Scottsdale, I’ll offer you some cab fare to get home safely. STOP DRIVING WHILE INTOXICATED! YOU’RE GOING TO KILL SOMEONE!

Courtesy of Photoshop Creative ( Issue 8 ) and PhotoshopBrushes.com ( Grunge Kit 1 ), I’ve created my third tutorial-driven image. In this tutorial, we take a standard home-town feel photograph of an antique shop and make it look really old.

I’m happy with the way the texturing, the layering and the paper crinkling came out. I’m not so happy with the edging though – it’s something I definitely need to work on. I spent so much of my time trying to restore old photos, it’s a stretch when someone comes along and shows you how to make it old instead!

You can flip back to see my first two creations of an abstract and a stained glass pond by clicking here. Enjoy!

So I get this postcard in the mail. It says:

Your recent www.livenation.com concert ticket purchase included a 1 year (57 issues) subscription to Entertainment Weekly Magazine (a $15 value). You will not be billed for this subscription. If you wish to opt-out of this incredible deal, simply go to www.ew.com/customerservice to cancel your subscription.

If you do not wish to receive the subscription to Entertainment Weekly, you can obtain a $15.00 refund by attaching proof of payment for your www.livenation.com concert ticket purchase to a 3″ x 5″ card marked with the word “REBATE”, your name, street address, city, state and zip code and mailing in an envelop to: Live Nation Rebate, Entertainment Weekly, P.O. Box 60001, Tampa, FL 33660-0001. Rebate requests must be postmarked within 90 days of your concert ticket purchase in order to be processed. Your rebate will be processed within 8 weeks of receipt of your request. Rebate available only through Entertainment Weekly magazine.

First of all, SCREW YOU LIVENATION for signing me up for your damn magazine affiliate without any notification. Best Buy did this to me a few months ago, to the same damn magazine. I’m sick and tired of being automatically subscribed to shit all the time, and having to spend countless hours trying to unsubscribe from it all. YOUR BUSINESSES ARE RUN BY ASSHOLES.

Secondly, even if I DID want this magazine, I have no way of knowing which “LiveNation.com concert ticket purchase” this came from. I’ve bought 6 sets of tickets from them in the last month or so. How on earth could I even figure that out if I wanted to? None of these had any extra check-boxes, pulldowns, “click here” links or anything during check-out. I am very careful about that shit because I see it all the time now. Unless there was something hidden way down in an off-link somewhere that described what implications might possibly come from buying whatever damn ticket that was, I sure as hell didn’t see it.

Thirdly, get a load of this tiny section of LiveNation.com’s privacy policy:

Providing Merchants with Contact Information. In addition to selling event tickets on the Site, Ticketmaster may sell other goods or services, allow you to make reservations, or allow you to participate in (or register for) contests, sweepstakes or other offers or programs (such as discount or rewards programs, magazine subscriptions, hotel bookings or cruises) on the Site. Typically, these goods, services, contests, sweepstakes or other offers or programs (“Special Offers”) for which you make purchases, orders or reservations, or for which you participate in or register, are provided by third parties (“Merchants”). Consequently, if you elect to engage in a Merchant’s Special Offer, Ticketmaster may provide that Merchant with your contact information – in fact, when you elect to engage in a Merchant’s Special Offer you consent for us to provide your email address and other information to that Merchant. Because Merchants are not part of Ticketmaster, Merchants are not subject to this privacy policy and may use your contact information to communicate with you by sending emails or through other means, and may share your contact information with others. If you want to learn about a particular Merchant’s privacy policies, or you do not want to receive communications from a particular Merchant, or you have other questions, instructions or concerns to which you would like a Merchant to respond, then you must contact that Merchant directly.

Here, let me just BEND OVER for you jerks! I can’t even buy a damn concert ticket without having my privacy ripped off and megaphoned to the entire world!

One other thing I’ll mention… Sadly, I’ve started receiving upwards of 70 spam emails to my personal account every day. My personal account is not used by ANYONE except my family and friends. Sometimes, those of my family and friends who just don’t f’ing GET IT decide to put my email address into services like JCPenney, MySpace, Hallmark and more. Then it gets proliferated throughout the f’ing universe, and then it gets sold and sold again, until I can’t even deal with it anymore. I’d shut down my email accounts but apparently…

I’D STILL GET MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS NONETHELESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh yeah, by the way, in order to unsubscribe from the magazine, a valid email address is required.

Warner Brothers has released a 10-second sneak peek at Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

There go those chills running down my spine!

DNS is equal to paint when you are sitting, impatiently, waiting for it to propogate. This is equivalent to watching paint dry.

I thought computers were FAST these days? I don’t think I like this whole “wait for it to propogate around the world” thing very much. I want nothing less than instant satisfaction! INSTANT, MAN!

Andrew and I saw Flushed Away tonight at Harkins Superstition Springs. It’s quite a cute movie! There are nonstop references to pop culture, history, other movies and actors. This is definitely a multiple-view kind of movie, where you could probably see it a dozen times and still catch something new. If you enjoy reference-type movies, you’re sure to love this one. I’d recommend it for all ages. Good job, Dreamworks!

The website for Flushed Away is really cute too, so take a look if you have a few minutes:

http://www.flushedaway.com

Thanks in large part to Andrew, a few updates have been made to this site. You may have noticed the header is now fall-oriented, and my images have been set up to rotate as well. If you reload the site, you may see a new look for each image.

In addition, Andrew fixed my Google Calendar feed to cache the day’s events, allowing it to load much faster than before.

I’ve created a few new sections under the Pages link to the left. You’ll now see a list of Concerts I’ve attended, as well as my Netflix 5′s (my favorite movies). I’ll be adding more as time permits.

Enjoy!