It a bagman, in trees.

I was bored, so this is what happened.

Computers and Money - An update to some posts...and some new stuf

New stuff --

 

After month’s and month’s of talking about it, it’s finally done. The HMorgen shop (NSFW by the way) is up and running. I guess it’s more of a place to buy some of her prints. A shop seems more like a place with many different items. That may come in the future, but we’re going to see just how well the prints sell first. This is a blatant, not-so-subtle hint to go buy something from her. The main delay was I had no idea how to set up an online store. Then I got wind of this magic payment processing site called PayPal. They made it too easy. After setting up my account and figuring out the little quirks, I was able to make an add to cart button, add the code to my page, congratulate myself, done. I think that’s a weird sounds and structured sentence. I don’t care, I keeping it. So, go check it out if you’re into creatively done nudes, horror, or just good old erotic photo’s. Plus, she a female photographer, so you know it’s not all gross and creepy.

 

Updates --

 

After the computer meltdown about a month ago, H broke down and let me get her a new computer. She was a bit apprehensive at first, because she didn’t feel she needed one. But I couldn’t stand watching her try and edit, and falling asleep at the desk while she waited for Photoshop to catch up. She also couldn’t play her new The Sims 3 game because our system was not up to speed. Plus, something went wonky when I tried to repair the computer after the crash. As I mentioned, none of the Microsoft items installed. But other little things, like you couldn’t drag n’ drop items anymore. So now we got a beast of a system, compared to our old 6+ year machine. A nice quote from yesterday “Whoa, it deleted them all already?” I was happy at that statement. I was afraid that she would start using the new computer and not notice a difference.

 

Did I tell you we got our $800 back? We haven’t heard anything from the police about it. I guess I could have H contact them, but I don’t see that happening. The bank says that after 90 days they don’t find that it was fraud, they’ll take the money back. I don’t see that happening though. This couldn’t have been any clearer case of fraud in our eyes.

 

Afterthoughts -- 

 

And thanks to @sandentotten for mentioning my blog to me in a tweet. It was just enough of a push to get me back to writing it. I sort have forgotten about it. Mostly because I don’t even find most of what I have to say interesting, so it’s hard to put it our there for others.

 

And here’s something else weird. I hate Blogger.com’s WYSIWYG editor so much that I’m writing this entry, as I do most, in an email at work, to be sent to myself, to be redrafted in GoogleDocs and posted from there later this evening. It’s 2:50p CT right now. Let’s see when I really post this. 6:35p.

A man, a pizza and a bus on the news.

I was coming up from the first floor of my apartment building with some finished laundry and I noticed a guy sitting on the outside steps. He was just sitting there with a pizza box (and I assume a pizza inside) and a 20oz of Hawaiian Punch. Once I made it up to my place I could see him from my window and he was just sitting there, eating away. Then I noticed a bike (a bike, not motorcycle) parked on the street, just like you would a car or whatever. I had nothing better to do so I just watched. Pizza man finishes up, hops on the bike and takes off. Now, I’ve never seen this guy before so my deduction is that he was hungry, needed an address and chose the first building he saw. I guess pizza joints don't deliver if your address is the bike parked on Main St. Weird stuff.


Also, I may have made it on the local morning news. The WCCO morning news is set up much like NBC’s Today show, where there newscasters sit in front of a window and you can see the city happening behind them. There is a ton (yes, 2,000 pounds worth) of road construction going on in Minneapolis so my bus had to detour. It just happen to do it on the street that passes by the news window. My luck they were on a commercial break.

I want my money man!

If you haven't gathered from my Twitter posts, or you just don't follow me, let me explain a bit more in detail for you here in 2,298 characters. Some fuck face stole our money. Over $800 worth.

H just finished shooting a local punk band and was leaving the parking ramp. She was paying with her bank card but the diy machine wasn't working. The shifty clerk said that he could do it for her. She gave her card to fuck face and he ran it through. H and her passenger both noticed he was a bit shocked when she asked for her receipt. He gave it to them and they were on their way.

About 5 o’clock that evening, she got a call from Visa, telling her that there has been some suspicious activity on her card and would like to go over the pas transactions with her. Most of them, we not hers.

Fuck face (or his fuck associates) did this:
Shoe store $350+
Gas station $100.00
Another gas station $100.00
Back to the shoe store $250+

Fuck face (or his fuck associates) also went to McDonalds and a grocery store, but by that time the card had been shut down. And we can only assume that the $100.00 from the gas stations are phone cards, something of that sort. Or the fucker drives a Hummer.

So what I thought was going to be a nice lazy, video game Sunday, quickly changed to a fix this problem Sunday. We went to the bank, and told them about the situation. They were quite helpful and really knew what they were doing. That unfortunately means this happens all to often to other folks. They closed our account, and opened up a new one for us. Their fraud investigations team is also looking into this so they can return that $800+ back to us. In the meantime, my mother gave us $300 to repay some bills that were scheduled to be paid online on Monday. So far, every other company that we had to deal with has been pretty willing to help. Waving late fees and stuff like that.

Yesterday H filed a police report. Police person said that because she filed, the bank almost has to waive all fees, and pay us back the missing $800+. At least, that's what I hope I heard. If the police can find this guy, she is most defiantly going to press charges. She's going to get all Michael Douglas on this fuck face.

Today is better. Our new account seems to be fully active now, so bills can start getting paid again.

Computer woes Sunday

So yesterday something just less than drastic happened. From what I can tell, the Windows boot file was somehow corrupted beyond repair. That is, if I could have repaired it. Since the boot file was corrupt, I couldn't even get into Window. The computer would just keep restarting during the boot screen. It did that for about 40 minutes; that's when I decided that I needed to do something, and it wasn't going to be pretty.

I researched as much as I could, and all signs pointed to a reinstallition of Windows. Crud. I didn't really mind this option at the time, because last time it just reinstalled Windows. All the other stuff was saved. My Doc, installed programs and settings. All the good stuff. This time, it reformatted the whole drive. Super fuck. There was only a couple of things I would have wanted to save. The entire HMorgen.net website was on that drive, the settings for the templates we use to build the site and the photo gallery part of it and the many Photoshop settings she uses for her work. Many of witch would have been really hard to reproduce. You know once you get used to something, you tend to stay with it, and forget how you got it. By some miracle, each one was backup or recoverable in one way or another. This was a big bonus. H was in tears when she thought we have lost everything.

But as I type, she is over on her reformatted computer editing photos from this past weekend. As I can tell, it's back to normal. Well, almost. It seems sort of slow. And none of the Microsoft items installed. The Office 2003 trial, MSN, Outlook...things like that. Doesn't bother us too much though. Other than Windows, we don't really use any other Microsoft products.

Imaging Weekend - 1

I'm starting something new for myself, and anybody else out there who cares to watch. It's what I call Imaging Weekend. I'm going to produce a new piece each weekend and post it here, and on Facebook. I'm not expecting much of a reaction, but it's something fun for me to do. I also hope it's going to push me to learn some new techniques.

First up is: The Lonely Devil.

Let's start out with my inspiration. You'll find this theme in much of my work, because there was none. I was creating this sitting on my couch, so I didn't have my mouse with me. I kept things simple. I realize this looks like a South Park character, but I can assure you that it was not my intention. Just happened.

The entire collection

Facebook Dance

Yeah, go head and tell me a better song that Safety Dance from Men with Hats. You can't! It's an impossible challenge. Well, this might do it.

This week in supertoyz history: I joined Facebook. Well, let's be real here. I joined sometime last year; but just to view somebody else's profile. Logging a total of 15 minutes prior to this weeks revival of my account. I didn't know that almost everybody on my fathers side also has a Facebook account. Guess I was late to the party. I'm still having a time trying to manage what info I want to send via Twitter, and what I should send via Facebook. I guess that's only for me to figure out.

Later today...later as in right after I post this. I'm going to teach my brother how to use Google Reader. I'm always asking him about this comic we both enjoy but he response is always the same. Oh, I forgot to check it. He then tells me that he has about seven other comics he reads but they all update at different time so he's always missing them. Is this not a call for help? Reader to the rescue! His excuse so far is that he doesn't know how to work all that stuff. I think I have about 70 or so feeds in my reader, so I think I'm qualified to show him.

I think that's all I have for today. Cookies for breakfast. Good day.