wolfwings

Old card is toast now, someone got my card info but I'm honestly not sure where from. Only transactions on my statement (yay for on-line banking) are from QT locations and other businesses I've purchased from in the past, nothing else. All of them were VISA-charges, not PIN-using at least.

Noticed it since I went to check my balance to see if my paycheck cleared yet or not, how much cleared, etc, and was like, "Wait... $30 available after a $10 cash + $390 paycheck?" and looked much closer.

Whoever swiped my card info used it on the 25th to purchase something from The Purple Sphere (MMORPG item/loot reseller), then on the 29th and 30th to open Adult Friend Finder accounts. Purple Sphere was a direct-to-voicemail number for the credit-card charge number. AFF was actually super cool, even calling at 23:00CST they had someone on the line instantly, that immediately noticed the accounts were bogus (random hash of letters and numbers), closed them, and credited the charges back. While I was on the line with him, I called USBank, did the song-and-dance verification of identity, they closed my card entirely and started mailing a new one to me, and dropped a fraud-claim on the Purple Sphere charge since the PS wasn't able to be contacted.

But bleah/yeah, instead of getting a small treat for myself Right Now, I have to wait until all these charges untangle. =-.-=

...finished the Yearly-page-view now, with auto-compacting calendar months. It's got a minor 'hack' in place until I finished the 'truly proper but hard to script' solution, but right now if you resize the page it will re-organize the months to prevent creating a horizontal scrollbar as long as possible.

Need to tackle the monthly-view, daily-view, and tag-view displays still (Suggestions for tag-view? Cloud, or ordered list, or make it an option to have both?), and research a proper CSS method to 'center' the resulting Yearly-view months since right now it left-packs everything because of the trick I'm using. But the LJ Layout is coming together nicely. I'm getting to the point I need a few different background-sets to use for it, anyone out there have any ideas? It can work just as well with a 'fixed' background but solid-color opaque areas overlaying it behind the actual content, and I'd love some examples of that as well before I call it 'finished' really.

Go become a full-time mechanic already, and work for furries no less! Off your arse, full-time work wrenching. Go, do it!

Nintendo is the top dog now.

First, they get Solid Snake, a Sony standby for ages that was originally on the NES back for Brawl.

Now? Sonic!

They win. Full stop. =^.^=

...but a conversation with a friend on IM made me realize... well, made me solidify a realization I had ages back, regarding what the internet is truly accomplishing.

Unlike all the ads claiming it on the radio and what-not, the internet is truly removing the middle-man from artistic endeavors. More than anything else, it's proving that Information wants to be free! is missing one very important seven-letter word. Flowing. Information wants to be free flowing! is vastly more accurate, I believe. Middle-men, steps between final creation and final consumption of a product, are obstacles to that free flow.

Removing those middle-men and allowing for things like hundreds of fans to pay an artist to continue a small work, up to hundreds of thousands of artists getting a studio to continue producing a beloved series, are both examples of what the internet is allowing for today. The free flow of information. Not without cost, but without obstacles of time or distance.

...and start building a custom LJ style for myself.

It's slowly coming together, though right now the 'layout source' is an absolute disaster. Only the 'friends page' and 'main view' works right now, but the resulting HTML you get back is mighty tidy and clean IMHO. It's even fairly readable, almost impossible to 'screw up' from a badly-formatted meme, and I think it makes good use of layered background images.

It obviously doesn't work worth a damn on IE6, and at this point I'm only running Opera so that's all I've been testing it on. I haven't even given it more than a cursory spin on Mozilla browsers, but it seems to work fine there so far. I am kinda proud of the 'outline text' effect I made, so the dates are fairly readable.

Anyways, if you want to see the progress so far, view my friends page for an example. I don't have seperate 'icons' for locked/private posts, they get a different background color instead. And no, there's no seperation between private/locked posts since only your own journal can have 'private' posts and I didn't feel like making a third color-shifted blur of the background image just for that rare occurance.

Background by Joakim Back from vuni.net which is a cached archive of a much older (and long defunct) website that was called misanthropia.net. I ran across it when looking for the original image from an example picture luxari posted to their page asking for help making it the background for their journal, which led me to tinkering... and now I'm building a whole LJ S2 style around the idea of a fixed top-centered background with vague color-shifting blur effects over top that tries to still be readable.

...but if you're a fan of DRM-free 192kbit MP3's and getting the CD shipped to you, and are willing to take my work that this website is trustworthy despite them closing down... well... tommorow, AnywhereCD was a very neat idea I had the chance to try and verify it works today, and wanted to blab about.

You'll have to download a utility they'll link you to, to easilly pull down your entire MP3 set once you make a purchase, but it was all really painless when I tried it out, and getting the actual CD in the mail makes it double-awesome. It's too late to really support the site, but if $7/album most of the time sounds good to you for a physical CD + instant access to the MP3's, go snag a disc or three during these last two days they're open.

It's had some bumps along the road, but if you're an artist (or fan!) looking for somewhere just for R-rated or above anthro/furry artwork that has a quality-control application process so you avoid all the fridge-art factor a lot of the fur-art archives allow, check out YiffIt. If just the name of the site makes you not want to go... well, too bad. =^.^=

Stylish Gryphie by lizkay

Me, done in a Clone Wars Animated Series style. =^.^=

Changed the oil over to Synthetic at ~1250 miles, after discussing it with a tech at a Toyota Dealership. The 'dino oil' the car came with looked like medium-brown pearlescent paint when I was pouring it from the oil-tray to the oil-jug for recycling later this week.

Ran bone-stock aside from the rear sway bar, so I ended up in STS instead of H-Stock. Since Mini Coopers are in H-Stock, I'd have had my arse handed to me regardless, so I didn't bother trying to take off the sway bar on-site.

The course was a two-cone slalom immediately into a sharp right-hand turn, then a big sweeper left, brief straight-away, then the sweeper continued another 180 degrees. Sharp right into a narrow 'cone alley' then another sharp right into WIDE slaloms down the incline of the parking lot, moderate right turn, double-cone slalom on level ground, then a sharp right into the uphill five gate slalom into a quick S-bend to the right for the finish. Those last five cones nailed a lot of people that spun out because it looks like a straight-away but you can't go very fast.

I managed to botch my first run (no surprise) but didn't get a DNF, my times dropped steadilly through my runs and I avoided any cones though I was told I got two wobblers that I clipped with my back tires in that last five-cone slalom stretch.

Best time? 58.2xx, duking it out with some of the heavy powerhouse cars like non-Cobra V8 Mustangs and the like. Largest obstacle? The fact I was leaving four skidmarks behind in every single slalom area says volumes. The fact my OEM tires are the worst-rated in their category on TireRack says volumes too.