Strangely, Reno is almost on the same latitude as Chicago. And strangely, yet again we've got problems with the Chicago office. I wish we could just shut that whole operation down, but as we say in the business, "its just too damn profitable."

Call or come by or whatever. Thank you so much to those of you who were encouraging and wished me luck! I appreciate it so very much. It means a lot to me, and it obviously worked. I've had so many people be so very kind to me, and I appreciate that with all of my being. Any of you who want to come visit me in Reno, are completely welcome anytime. Its only 3ish hours from San Francisco, that's a shorter drive than Atlanta to Savannah! The excitement is totally overflowing, and I will be doing exactly what I love with people who are supremely cool, this is really one of the best things to happen to me. I will miss Atlanta very much, but I'm going to save the sniffling and crying post for the time of departure. For now, come see me, hang out and take my stuff!

Also, the first person to buy me this car wins! Think how cool I would look driving that car. VERY cool! And, it would match the blue hair. [Recent entries are below]

I have a client that has chosen not to pay for the work I did for her. Her name is Suzanne Taylor and the website is called "TheConversation.org". I did work for her and billed her, she agreed to pay after I gave line-by-line explanations of her invoice on the phone. The deadline by which she agreed to pay for the services rendered came and went - I called her and she then informed me by phone that she would not pay. [My guesses as to why she chose not to pay for the work I did are below] Her website is about crop circles, she also has another site called MightyCompanions.org which appears to be about... nothing. I googled her and I found a story called Tempus Fucks It and another story which contains the lovely quote "We lovingly fuck, and after it is finished, she walks to the chair across the back of which is slung the jacket..." and the byline is "Suzanne Taylor"! Funny - dirty old lady. She also has a thing on her site where she talks about how she likes to get naked and give speeches to groups of people. She's 68 for crying out loud. Feel free to discuss that on her elist. She also has a convenient form you can fill out to email her directly. No reply-to headers!

Dealing with her was nightmare. I feel like she totally took advantage of both my professionalism and my work ethic. Over 283 emails were exchanged in a 3 month period. That's a lot of email - even for me to deal with. She called me at midnight, she called me constantly really. She would call me on sunday mornings and leave insane rambling messages about emergencies and threatening that she was going to call the FBI. She was convinced that I had some how hacked her site and prevented only her computer from accessing her site - despite the fact that she had several friends check it and get to it just fine. I am so leet. Sigh.

I should have been ware when she mentioned all the previous web designers she's gone through in the past. It sounds to me like she has a basic MO and does this often. As soon as she got my bill she acquired another web guy - I can only assume this was so she wouldn't have to pay me and he could download all of the work I did and move it. His name is Allen Branson. He is a scary clown in leather pants. He's funny - seriously, check it out. After SUXANNE decided not to pay me, she sent this monkey after me to send me threatening html-formatted emails about how I violated the GPL. I violated the GPL? HA! I don't really even know what he was supposed to be threatening me with as I never even took any punitive action toward her. Despite the fact that her bill is now 15 days past due. I just today took down her account at the hosting company, but the leather pants monkey has already downloaded it and changed the DNS. I trusted her with net 30 credit terms too. Which means I did the work in good faith accepting that she would pay her bill like most honest people would.

Anyway, its just not cool to have an independent IT contractor do work for you and then not pay for it. Some people just make me lose faith in the world.

People like me - old money intellectual, or OMI - sort of smile and nod at these new money types and wait for them to spend themselves into oblivion so that we can go back to our lunches and tennis games free of their lower class, frivolous, annoying behavior. Sigh.

Dear AT&T,

I realize that you are a huge, foolish, union company, with bad hiring practices, bad business practice, no sense of customer service and a sick desire to make me miserable. I know this because I used to work for you.

I am writing to tell you that you should fire Dale immediately. He's way too super nice and competent to be in your legion of evil. He will ruin your dastardly plan of terrible service, crying customers, and denial of hyperglobalmeganet connections.

He came and fixed my broken cable today. A feat which all other AT&T Cable technicians before him could not perform! I could see he was attempting to fall to the darkside as I closely watched his every move [cause staring down the cable guy makes it work better!], however, a bright shining light fell upon him and he did persevere.

Regards,

Sherrod

However, when I'm feeling lonely or neglected or confused... that's when the trouble starts. I can often keep it out of my mind, but as the PSB say "left to my own devices, I probably would." And sometimes I do. I need to eradicate this behaviour as soon as possible. Its so close to being gone, I just have to put the final nail in the self-destructive-incredibly-unhealthy-big-badly-designed coffin. I just don't know how to do it. Sure there are thousands of underlying factors as to why it happens - triggers, how it makes me feel before, during and after, guilt, anger, obsession, repression... repression... repress... repress... repress... repression - that can and probably should be explored, but I really don't care. I just need to stop and know that I will never do it again.