I swear, Monday’s at work are just…a disaster. I know, I know, everyone hates Monday’s, but…just once I would like people to remember UPS doesn’t run on the weekends! Every Monday I can count on a slew of phone calls

Customer “Where’s my box?”

Me “It shipped last week on such and such day, let me track it for you.”

*tracking runs*

Me “It’s in your town and currently on a truck for delivery today.”

Customer “Oh…thanks.”

Now, this is not to mention I also email every customer their tracking numbers…if they pay by Pay Pal, I also enter it in to their payment history…if they order on our Yahoo store, they get emailed it in their confirmation…if they order on my main site, they get emailed it in their confirmation…moral of the story is, they get at least 2 emails with the tracking number in it. I’m all for spam filters, but I’m thinking that some people have them set just a wee bit too high.

My absolute favorite spam catcher is the Earthlink one. Person emails me an ebay question…I answer…his spam catcher emails me and asks me to enter a reason why he should accept my email….*blink*….um….you emailed me a question?

I hate Mondays.

Engadget is reporting that a new version of the XBox 360, codenamed ‘Zephyr’, is starting to appear in some pictures. Two big differences are an HDMI output, for high-def video, and possibly a 120gb hard drive. Rumor is this will sell for the price they are currently charging. Sounds good to me.

Then out come the idiots in the comments.

they better come out with a new hdmi adapter- i’m not buying a new xbox 360 with add on’s that should have already been there. this is BS, and what happens when you rush to market.
I am not happy.

they should run a discount where its only like $100 when you trade in your old xbox 360

Okay that is complete BULL_ _ _ _!!!!!!!! So what about us Bill…you know the 7 million folks who bought the first 360. You know the true fans and supporters of your console…You know the ones you told 1080p was irrelevant…Seeing as we can’t get HDMI into our boxes without it being taken apart do we all get new boxes for free? How about a free 120 gb hard drive? Somehow I doubt it.

I usually don’t mind product redesigns as long as the early adopters aren’t left out in the cold…right now I’m shivering! This is great for those who haven’t purchased a 360 yet but I think this will anger the current user base more than it excites them.

You know what folks? When the next year’s car models come out, do you scream foul? Do you talk about how they screwed you? Technology changes, get over it, grow up.

Here’s my (somewhat rhetorical) question…is this just because it’s a video game, or is this yet another example of how childish our country has become about the most trivial of matters?

Yep, you read that right…I did pretty much nothing and it felt good! Heck, I even sat down and just READ for awhile! I haven’t done that in ages!

I am a HUGE fan of the original Halloween by John Carpenter. It really exploded the slasher genre in to it’s own art form, gave the world Jamie Lee Curtis, and made everyone realize if you painted a Captain Kirk mask white, it made a really, really scary image.

For those of you who don’t know the story, as filming was about to begin, they still hadn’t gotten a mask for Michael Myers. Carpenter told the prop man just to run down to a costume shop and pick something and paint it white. He picked out a Captain Kirk from Star Trek mask, painted it white and…the rest is history.

So, yes, it is being remade, and while I normally scream about the evils of remakes, this one sounds interesting. It’s being directed by Rob Zombie who made House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, and is a rocking musician, He has Carpenter’s blessing, which is rare for a remake. And then he post tidbits like this in his blog:

I’ve just seen Wayne Toth’s finished mask for Michael and all I can say is “HOLY FUCK”. It looks perfect. exactly like the original. Not since 1978 has the shape looked so good. Wayne worked this sucker to death and boy did it pay off.

Yes, I left the cursing intact, deal with it. He’s not messing with the mask! Holy mother! He realizes there is no messing with perfection! This has given me a LOT more faith in the project and might make me actually see it!

I’ve gone back and forth on telling everyone about this, but darn it, I’m proud of it!

I have admitted before I watch All My Children, but I have never revealed who my favorite characters are. Well, technically they aren’t on the show any more, though one of them keeps popping back up. They are Bianca Montgomery (played by Eden Riegel) and Maggie Stone (played by Elizabeth Hendrickson), more commonly known as BAM.

For those unfamiliar at all with this, Bianca is the lesbian daughter of the infamous Erica Kane (played by Susan Lucci). In 2001, Frankie Stone, arrived in town to pull a con on Erica by using Bianca, instead she fell for her. Three months later she was killed. Here came the problem, fans loved the actress who played Frankie! So they brought her back as, you guessed it, Frankie’s twin sister, Maggie. Maggie was straight, but there was also tension between her and Bianca over the Frankie connection. As time progressed, more and more glimmers of hope popped up that they might get together and the name BAM was born, short for Bianca and Maggie.

A lot of people give me crap over my fondness for BAM thinking I’m only in it for the lesbian angle, well, nothing could be further from the truth. I’m in to BAM because it is an amazing story performed by two wonderfully talented actresses. The tension was always something else, and on February 24th, 2005, they left Pine Valley together, bound for Paris, and a possible relationship. Bianca has been back a few times due to being Erica’s daughter, but never a sight of poor Maggie. Sure, we’re gotten mentions, and last Christmas we were told they were a couple finally.

That was until Bianca came home again in October 2006. Stupid writers! It seems Maggie cheated on Bianca with a girl named Cecelia. And when all hope was lost, and it seemed like we would never get on-screen BAM time, word came out that due to a letter writing campaign by fans, Maggie was returning for 3 weeks beginning January 15th. Not only that, she would be portrayed by Elizabeth again.

Now comes where my time has disappeared to…not only am I a BAM fan….I was kind of involved in the campaign to bring her back (not a major player mind you, just one of the nameless foot soldiers). Late in the original run, I joined the message board for BAM Fans, and honestly, it is the most welcoming, warm, and family like communtiy I have ever found on the web. They are amazing, and they fight for what they want with a passion I have never seen the likes of. And no, they aren’t all lesbians. They are married women, single heterosexual women, the wife of a minister, lesbians and, yes, me, one of only 3 – 4 men (I guess at that one, they rarely show up) out of the nearly 3000 members.

So, I love this community, and with us having won the battle to bring Maggie back, we decided we had to promote this to people to boost viewers. Enter Nik (hi Nik!) who got the idea to make a list of key scenes to the story of BAM that were on YouTube. We would then post that list on message boards to bring in new viewers. I said I would make it in to a simple web page and then we could just post a link. It was ok, but not exciting. There was my mistake.

Next I got the idea to install WordPress and make it pretty…

then I thought it needed info pages…

then I decided it needed a checklist of EVERY BAM scene, not just key ones…

then I decided each day from BAM history would get an entry just like it was a blog so people could easily look things up by date or key happenings by using the search….

It grew out of control, but we are now close to having a nearly complete catalog of the entire BAM story on this website I named BAMForBeginners.com. So every night after work I’ve been coming home, showering, eating dinner, and getting to work on BFB. I’ve been putting in close to 8 hour nights on it, so it’s been almost like a second job for a little while now, but that will be winding down now as we only need to add the Frankie info and fill in some gaps in the overall story. And believe me, there are some gaps we’re skipping such as chunks of the year long “baby swap”…parts of the Michael Cambias murder…as little Lena (Bianca’s girlfriend for awhile) as possible…it is a soap after all, some really silly, silly things do happen.

I know this will all sound incredibly silly to people outside of the soap fandom, but over the years I have come to learn you really shouldn’t pick on anyone’s passions. Sports fans tend to pick on say Star Wars fans for camping outside theaters for tickets, but yet they forget they have done the same for “the big game”. And geeky people pick on sports fans for knowing every stat of every player on their favorite team, but yet they can tell you how fast each space ship is from their favorite series. What is one’s hobby/past time is another persons joke fodder. So yes, I am a soap fan…an AMC fan…and a BAMmer through and through.

Oh, and remember in the 100 things list I said I had written a fan fiction I was proud of, but don’t tell people? Yeaaaaah, you guessed it.

This just arrived in the mail for me

I realize this is just your typical promo item, but…5 blades on one side? I kinda like the idea of the precision blade on the back for those annoying areas under your nose, but….5 blades?!?

I can not believe how much work has sucked lately, and it just seems to be getting worse! Today was….yeah. I am amazed by the recent upswing in “hacked” ebay accounts that place mystery bids….*cough* Do I look like I was born yesterday?

Well, so glad you asked! At midnight I was sitting in front of my computer at work, cursing it’s very existence because it had run CHKDSK for some odd reason. I swear, at some point this year I am dropping every PC I have over a cliff. I am so tired of fighting with them, getting blue screens of death for random reasons and just general BS!

Luis! Roy! Shari! Tell me how much better it is in Mac world again! Please? Tell me it’s a happier place…even if you have to lie!