FRUSTRATIONS.

So, I forgot to renew my domain name, because I got rid of the email address it would have used to tell me it was expiring. Why didn't I change my email address with them? Because the domain registrar's website is so piss-poor that it takes nearly a minute for any page to load, including their index page. how they're not out of business I don't know. I didn't buy my domain from them: they bought the company I bought my domain from.
( headache #1 )

And my second frustration of the morning:

( Thermostat. It's supposed to regulate heat. )

Sigh. All is suck. All is one giant bunch of suck, and I am TIRED of it.

I have many things to do today, as well, and should not be wasting time with any of this, but for the moment, must.

update on domain

Well.
I got a tech support answer. Two, in fact, from the two separate places I applied for help.

The first one told me there was nothing to be done but wait five days ("should be 5 days", he said, which doesn't mean will be, which means absolutely nothing) and re-register when it is made available. Which means my site is down for five days and I have no precedence over domain squatters who may grab it for its good Google ranking.

The second one placidly pasted in the FAQ and told me to try logging in again.

Annoyed, desperate, i logged in again. And there was my account! There was my domain! There was the link to renew it!
Holy crap. Wasn't there last night or this morning. Was there now. Either he did something, or their system is hella flaky.

Turns out it's the latter, either way. I clicked "renew", put in my credit card info, hit 'submit', waited about two minutes.....

I got a hugely screwy error page.
They've confused the permissions for one of their important directories.
The credit card processing program cannot run.

Yeah. These people are MORONS. Fucktards, in fact. Holy shit.

So I took a screenshot of the error page and replied to the second tech support guy, and said "Uh. What does this page mean? Why won't you take my money? Why doesn't your site work? How do you face yourself in the mirror in the mornings? How are you not OUT OF BUSINESS?" Except I didn't write those last two sentences. Well, i did, but I deleted them.

Never, never, never, never, never give money to "PersonalNames". Never. Just don't. They have no idea what is their ass and what is a hole in the ground. Holy cow, I think I could put together a better domain name registrar if I coded the site by hand, and I don't know the first thing about PHP--- except that it is SUPPOSED TO WORK. They seem not to have read that part of the manual.

Jesus Christ, the world is full of IDIOTS.



So, to sum up, none of my pictures or links will work for a while until I find these people and WRING SOME SENSE INTO THEIR NECKS.

Losing It

At this point am getting rather emotionally fragile.

Went to DMV to turn in plates and hopefully get my registration $$ refunded. Most of the $100-something I gave them wasn't refundable, I know, but I'd hoped to get some money back, and then a number so I could cancel my insurance and thus not pay them $500 for coverage on a car I don't have.

Standing in line, I looked around at all the exceedingly cheesy little USA decorations, including the big flag with "WE WILL NEVER FORGET", 9/11/01, and an eagle head all in among the 50 stars. Unaccountably, the very tackiness of this moved me-- possibly affected by reading leopard_lady's entry from this morning about the brutal shock of unwittingly getting off at the WTC stop of the PATH train and being confronted with her first view of the site of the attacks. I found myself near tears at how cheesy but sincere it all was. Yes, there I was in the DMV, actually moved by a cheesy decoration.

Handed in my plates. "Do you have the window sticker?" the DMV lady asked. (She was, coincidentally, the same lady who sold me the registration in the first place.)
"It's on the car," I said.
"Oh," she said a little sadly. "I can refund one year of the two-year registration, then, but I need the unused window sticker to give you both years back."
"Oh," I said, also a little sadly.
"But," she said kindly, "you do have the plates. So at least you can cancel the insurance."
Cheered a little, I nodded-- it was only twenty-some dollars, and it's not the end of the world. (Note to self for future reference: Don't put the window sticker on until the car has passed inspection.)
"Ok," she said, "that'll be a dollar."
"Ok," I said brightly, and put my hand into the pocket of my jacket. Cellphone and keys. Other pocket: to-do list and cold-weather headband to keep ears warm. Hm. Put my hand into my shoulder bag. Flashlight. Notepad. Spare key to the door. Folder of papers. Removed folder of papers. Bag was empty.
"Crap," I said, and put my head against the partition, not quite banging it, utterly defeated. "I forgot my wallet."
The woman looked horrified and sympathetic. "Oh dear," she said. "I can't process it without the dollar."
Naturally, I burst into tears, not being the most composed person in the world under the best of circumstances. "I'm sorry," I said, gathering my stuff and putting it back into my bag, and taking back the license plates. "So many things have gone wrong today. I can't believe I forgot my wallet." Thinking: I have to do this today. I told my insurance company I'd do this today. Dave needs his car by 12:30. I can't get home and back here by then. He'll be gone all day tomorrow. This is too far to walk. I can't believe I came all this way and FORGOT MY WALLET. I had it IN MY HAND. Where did I put it? What was I thinking? Am I crazy? What is this? Am I the least competent human ever to exist?
"Wait," the woman behind me in line said. "Do you just need a dollar?"
The woman behind the counter nodded, and the woman behind me produced a dollar. "Here," she said, her face creased in sympathy.
I looked at her, and looked at the woman behind the counter, and took the dollar from her with a sense of surreality, handed it to the woman behind the counter, and gave her my license plates. She finished the transaction and gave me my receipt, pointing to the part I needed to give my insurance company. "You're all set," she said kindly.
I turned to the woman behind me. "What's your address?" I said. "I'll mail you a dollar."
"No, no," she said, smiling. "It's not important."
I gave her a hug instead, and left the DMV still crying.

so that's the heart-warming portion of the story. The rest is just sad.
( quit while you're ahead )

Yes, I am totally unable to cope with life. Congratulations to me!

doing something about it

I decided that sitting around the house would only lead to brooding, so after taking a short, unintentional nap huddled in a little ball on my bed (if one is going to weep pitifully, one should do so in a comfortable position), I got up and decided to Take Care Of Stuff.
So i got my absentee ballot appication sorted out (didn't miss the deadline yet, yay! but spent an hour looking for where the envelopes got unpacked to, boo!). I unearthed and paid the gas bill. (Two days late. Shoot me.) And I took care of cancelling my car's insurance, so that's sorted.

I also found the nearest branch of the Buffalo / Erie Co. Public Library, found a map of where it was, and walked to it.
It took a little under a half an hour each way, and I looked at all the silly Halloween decorations in the quaint little town along the way. Lots of really tacky stuff. Tonawanda/Kenmore is tacky that way. Some nice houses-- I'd say much of the neighborhood near the library was built in the 30s, with a lot of postwar filling-in of gaps. My neighborhood is almost entirely postwar, though my house is exceptionally early in the postwar period. Not very interesting, architecturally. But Kenmore's nice. And there were a lot of children playing, and the Kenmore West football team (I think JV or even freshmen-- many of their voices hadn't even broken yet) was doing sprints right toward the fence where I was walking, and I couldn't help but laugh at their earnestness. Such cute little boys. Wouldn't think so if they were making all that noise right outside my front door (as the St. Joe's team does, bleah), but it was cute in someone else's neighborhood.

I got myself a library card, though not without convincing the librarian I was a total idiot. "I need a library card. Can I do that here?" The woman looked down at the stack of library card applications right in front of me, looked back up at me, and said, "Er, how old are you?"
"Twenty-five," I said with a laugh, "though one would hope an adult were smarter than this."

So I borrowed six books, all different kinds of novels. I'm sort of stalled in writing my novel, and I thought perhaps reading some published ones might put me back into touch with the structure of a novel. It's been a while since I did any reading.

With that in mind, I borrowed from a variety of genres. One mystery, one historical fiction, one really crappy-looking pulp romance, one historical-fiction-mystery, one pseudo-historical fantasy, and one outright fantasy. Only two of the books are actually very interesting to me-- one by Hillerman, whose Navajo mysteries I have loved since I was about eleven, and one (of course) by O'Brien. I also got one by Neil Gaiman, though i'd never heard of the book before.

Me, I don't read much, which is why I concentrated on writing instead of literature in college. I prefer to write. I prefer to write without anyone else's influence, which is why I tend not to read.

Also, i read like an alcoholic drinks. I cannot put a book down, and once i have begun reading I tend to want more. I will re-read a book several times if no more are available. I get sneaky, especially with series like the Aubrey/Maturin ones or, worse, whassname's Sharpe series-- staying up late and stealing the one Dad's currently reading off his desk so I can read it overnight and slip it back onto the desk before he wakes up in the morning, so I can skip ahead of him in the series. Things like that. I am a shameless stealer of books that way. And I sometimes read so fast, just to find out what happens next, that I miss things. And I cannot put the bottle away while there's some left in it. ...

Anyhow. Indulging an addiction like this is probably harmless once in a while. i'll run through all of these, if they're any good at all (it takes a lot to get me to not finish a book), and then I'll start requesting titles, because that little branch library has almost nothing in it. Bah.

Now, the question: Should I start with one I really want to read, or should I make myself read the shitty, lavender-colored romance paperback about the girl who wants to teach her arranged-marriage-of-convenience, dark-brooding-nobleman husband-wth-a-past to love again?


Meh, it was a shitty day. I'm cracking open the O'Brien. See you all in six hours.