goddammit. i had this gut feeling about the lens. since it still hasnt arrived i am almost certain that this fuckface screwed me over… i contacted authorities and hope to get back some of my 2 benjamins that way… asshole.
my ml-l3’s came today therefor… 48 bucks for both - on ebay they sell for almost 45 dollars - so i will offset my extra costs that way a little. speaking of offsetting… i signed up for my first accounting class for next year again last night… yuck. it starts the day i come back - grrrrrreat timing. fuck it. and like i don’t have enough financial troubles, x-mas flights are around fucking 1050 euros/1300 bucks. this is a friggin’ joke.
other than that: bug found a girlfriend “lady” at the alimagnet park today. also he started to swim on friday!
the party on saturday was fun, yet stressful. great food and i made plans with mike to jam this week… see picture below…
first off music news: i really really liked the last sahara hotnights album. i had to special order “jennie bomb” from sweden about 2 years, since it seemed to be impossible at the time to get this record any other way. well - now i was pretty excited about seeing the girls on conan the other night with a more punky sound than before. i grabbed their new album “kiss’n'tell” yesterday and can honestly say - they delivered. this is a great record. still quite a bit of the old hotnights rock but with more punk and some emopop influence. great record. very 80s at times.
my favorites so far:
- who do you dance for?
- hot night crash
- stupid tricks
- stay/stay away
- difference between love and hell
- hangin’
get these songs if you have the chance to!
anyways… concerning “the customer is always an asshole”:
yesterday i stopped at best buy to price the cd mentioned above. what caught my eyes at first though was their all newly arranged camera section. much to my surprise, they actually carry my d70 now also - apart from the digital rebel. anyways - i tool the chance and took a few pics with the baby. looking at the kit-lens - the one i just ordered and that should arrive this week - i noticed it takes 67mm filters. aaargh… 3 lenses, 3 different filter sizes. since i was not 100% positive if my 70-300 was a 62 or 67 diameter lens, i was looking for a sales person, to help me out with this info. they did have the lens in a locked display, but the filter size was covered up. so lets see - ah - one whopping kid on staff in the camera section. a guy - in his early 20s i suppose, dark hair, cheesy ear rings, taking care of a soccer mom with her kid, looking at a compact digital for 500 bucks. alright. i can wait. so after having played aroud with the most expensive slr for 1400 bucks for about 2-3 minutes, i step up next to the guy, waiting to finish up his business with the lady. after another 2 minutes he was done and i expected a nice “hello, can i help you?”. bollocks. the guy turned around and took off through another aisle. alright. this seems highly unlukely to me, but maybe he hadn’t seen me, so go ahead, i thought, get after him. at the end of the aisle he stops next to his co-worker who is at the computer. “hey wassup”. i stop right behind the kid - virtually breathing on his neck. there is absolutely no way he didn’t know i was there. another minute passes - his coworker looks at me, looks a the kid, goes on with what he is doing. alrigt dude. i AM getting pissed at this point. so i step around in front of the guy. “hi” - he looks at me - checks me out - “hey”, looks back at the computer screen. “i actually have a question” - wow! finally - he moves his ass in my direction to help me out! the rest of the info he gave me didn’t give me any info i hadn’t known yet, except that he managed to decipher the signs on the lons in the display to confirm that the lens has a 67mm filter size. respect dude. then he tried looking up the availability for the nikon ml-l3 remote for me on the best buy website - which i had done before. during his web-session, he took a phone call, which slowed him down considerably and caused me having to wait another 3 minutes to wait for the confirmation that they don’t have the remote. this confirmation was a shaking head, while still on the phone.
i don’t mind waiting for service, and i even understand that retail personnel needs off-time every now and then. but this was just too much of a joke. especially since it had happened twice before to each me and gan - in the cities as well as in kansas. so i actually went over and had them get me the store manager, who brought in the shift manager and i told my story twice. long story short: they seem to know about the problem and are restructuring the camera dpt. leadership right now. blah blah. still. shitty service - and the cd i didn’t buy there either :-Þ
ps: i hope this friggin lens arrives soon. i don’t wanna keep my fingers crossed that i didn’t get screwed over anymore.
54 degrees on august 10th… wtf? you must be fucking kidding me.
ps: the customer is always an asshole.
well - i think it is funny what people tend to get upset about. after posting my js-version of the lj-image displayer, i didn’t think that much response would result from that. 100 comments later i am smarter - and convinced again, that many people don’t have much of a clue about intl (c) laws and netiquette.
fuck pc - but at least have decent views…
anyways… bug got to go to the dog park every day last week - saturday we went to the fest there. the whole event was much better organized than exected and bugster scored a ton of freebies. sunday we took a day off then, yet got to baby-sit jinx for mercedes. she is growing up so fast - and making bugs life a living hell at the moment. he just does not seem to appreciate it much, that jinx considers his tail the most exciting toy at the moment and bites and pulls it. funny dogs.
i didn’t get my lip done at cactus on saturday after all. the main reason for that was the lack of sleep and overwhelming tiredness after a big mock duck and potatos eat out at kimson for lunch. we decided to not drive to mankato after all, since it would’ve taken an hour either way.
in the evening we went to mike, evil, kyle, tito and bryces house for a little party. i had a nice chat with bean and mike, but some of the kids around there were kinda annoying. mike told us about the west coast tour and the others there made it clear that they finally are declared DM groupies. mike also gave me a copy of their new cd which i finally have to take a listen at.
another word about the people at the party: it really made me realize HOW mainstream body mod is by now. everybody had to show off their net tattoos and put lotion on THERE to make sure everybody notices them. along with watching the 1st episode of a&e’s “inked” last night, it really made me less than excited about getting poked in a few months - especially the amount of nautical stars that i got to see was astonishing. and many of them looked pretty cheesy. another reason to get to know karl and megan at cactustattoo.
anyways. mike wants me to drum on his solo release - i just hope that he can wait till x-mas, since he basically wanted to record it this fall - but knowing how long this can take at times, i think there still is a slight hope. i miss the studio and the stage. mike and i will get together this week to jam a little. can’t wait.
as for today: we’ll do some shopping and take the bugaroo to the park then for a little - although it is quite a bit cooler than last week and only 70 degrees so far. but hey - he’ll still have fun.
i just wrote a little tool that will count the words of your LJ entries and give you a neat little table, displaying the stats. you can try it here: http://www.emolife.net/articles?id=6
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another new goodie from emolife.net. i hope everyone’ll enjoy this sucker…
i wrote a little script, allowing everyone to add the latest added LiveJournal images to their website, LJ, etc.
see the demo here: http://www.emolife.net/articles?id=4#code
ps: is there a way to post a [script] html-tag on LJ w/o having it filtered out?
we took bugster to the vet for his rabies shots today and after that we went to a local dog park. he loved it. they had a pond there and all kinds of trails, etc… he played with a bunch of other dogs and thought the water there was awesome. we also met a nice girl there who we might go to the park with tomorrow again.
other than that i ran a few errands and still am having trouble with the bank and paypal. dammit. i finally got toms shirts sent out btw. i also should check with fuckin comicxposure who still havent sent my d@17’s.
watching their tour diary online, i cant believe how big the darkness became… i remember having to order the album online cos noone carried it. well - they DO rock.
finally getting rid of some shit on ebay. i have too much clutter around here and an extra buck is never a bad idea…
yesterday i had some trouble with paypal and my bank - as well as the fuckin dmv. first off i tried to get my kansas license transferred to mn. first of all they want me to take the written test again - i already took and passed 2, including the austrian one, which is a test that is 1000 pages worth and costs 1500 bucks. that’s not the problem though - the test i would pass. but they need an “american birth certivicate or passport” - hellooo? - or my I20 - which i don’t have yet. this is retarded. well - then ill keep driving with a wrong address on my license if that is so much easier for them… after opening a new bank account, i checked my old one, if it had been closed fine. well - it had not - therefor it was 40 bucks overdrawn. wtf??? that was pissing me off pretty substantially. i tracked back what happened: i emptied the account on thursday, since i still had a second account with that bank. i put all the money in the 2nd checking account and asked them to close it. well - an hour alter a fucking paypal subscription went through for 7.99 - causing the account to neg. nobody notified me of that - to my knowledge the account had been closed and paypal would let me know it this case that they couldn’t get the money. since the bank took its time though the account hadnt been closed yet and the paypal request went through. so now i was negative, got slapped with 30 bucks in penalties and the account couldnt be closed. so i called the bank down in kansas. they couldnt do anything, paypal had to reverse the transaction. calling paypal they said waht i expected: “impossible”. assholes. i have multiple bank accounts on file with them, and they can’t juggle numbers. so again - i called the bank. and now - all of a sudden - another operator considered this to be an unfortunate coincidence and refunded me my penalties. so - after 80 minutes on the phone i had my 30 bucks back. greedy bastards.
that was about the most exciting stuff that went on yesterday.
i recommend bakers square to everyone btw. we went there on sunday and shared a boca and a veggie stir fry pita. yumm. the service was super nice (and pierced) plus they were about the only place still open at 10:15 sunday night. only petpeeve: i wish they’d bring back the gardenburgers!
just listened to ufb’s “before we spark” in the car. man - i miss those guys. i wish eric would’ve written back to my email i send in march, after the good bye show. i recall writing it - and having listened to the record, it brought up thise memories again.
“[...] about the good bye show: all i can say is thank you. it was amazing and my body is still getting an adrenaline rush when i think back. i got to know your guy’s stuff about by my girl from minneapolis and i fell in love with you too. so much for the beginning… during the past year or 2 i saw a video or two pop up on european music channels here and then - usually late at night.
well - we eventually missed your last minneapolis show last year - supposedly you stayed at the place of my ex-bands singer (who let everybody know so for months…) - and we were pised about that… well - funny coincidence: the exchange program placed me at fort hays last fall. and who played the only show i’ve ever seen there? well you know it. and that was definitely one of the top 3 fun evenings we had here the whole year. it meant a ton to my girl that you played “glitter and glue” there. [...]
then i emailed once or twice with eric, before i heard the news that you guys are gonna quit the biz. i heard so about 2 weeks ago and made plans to go out to lawrence to see your last show. im really glad we did. on the way there we listened to laughing week and before we spark. seemed a bit like going to a funeral. i was definitely looking forward a lot but also had this melancholic feeling in my guts.
what can i say… i’ve seen a lot of bands split up within the last 9 years that i have been involved in playing and booking - including quite a few i was in - but none of the goodbye shows was like this… you know how some people say they would like their friends and families to have a party instead of a funeral once theyre gone. well -
i guess ufb showed that this is possible. it was amazing. i wish i had been more a part of the whole thing and been able to support you from back in the days before the “fame”. knowing how hard it is as a little bunch of friends to get together and keep a thing going - and actually making people believe in it and love it, all i can say is that i am really super happy to see how many people you have touched. without wanting to sugercoat you, suck up or whatever: this was definitely the most emotional show i have been at. it was so fun and sad at once. i could tell that a lot of people felt like me. it seemed like i could start tearing up just by seeing everybody celebrating together and giving ufb such a good bye. and no, i dont actually consider myself as an “emo-geek” ;-) the only minor thing that was missing from that last show were “glitter and glue” and “well go dancin” - which i really hoped to finally get to sing along to…
thanks again for that experience. i hope it was all you hoped for too. one thing that i thought was so sweet was stefan descendents guest appearance. both all and descendants have been 2 of the very first bands that got me into hc, etc. over 10 years ago now. so i really really enjoyed this surprise and also got to chat for a minute or two with stefan afterwards.
[...]
also i took a few pictures at that show again - my favourite one i attached - somehow it seems very symbolic for the whole evening.
enough of this moping… take it easy guys. you can be proud of what you created - and i damn sure am happy about having gotten the opportunity to be part of this for a bit.”
