These days, anyone can make a website, including my friend John. His masterpiece, Frozen Burritos is oddly addictive.

One of the things I feel passionately about is rescue dogs. I'm constantly sending money or doing anything I can to help abandoned or unwanted dogs find their way to a place where they are wanted. Occasionally, I drive 2.5 hours from home to Fresno to pick up dogs and take them up I-5, where another volunteer is waiting to take them.

I came forward to help 2 dogs headed to Washington a few weeks ago. I signed up for a long part of the route because I don't mind driving. Imagine my surprise when I didn't hear from the coordinator at all, then I got an email that wanted to make sure I could keep these dogs for 2 nights. What??? I can't keep anoy dogs because Alice is the queen of the universe and doesn't share well.

Volunteering can be really cool but it can also suck ass. No matter how much I do, there's always someone who wants more from me.

I've realized that you can't always make people happy. Sometimes I'm just going to say stuff that not everyone likes and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Nothing I say is meant to be malicious, while I may think of malicious things to say, I rarely say (or write) them. It's not worth pissing people off.

But I'm not going to censor myself any more than I do before I speak here. This blog is my own selfish indulgence and I'm wasting my efforts if I don't speak my mind here.

The death penalty has always bugged me and here goes my buddy George Bush, executing Betty Lou Beets today. I'm not suggesting for one second that killing not one but two of your husbands is a good idea or excusable. But that doesn't give the state the right to kill another person. It's way less expensive to keep someone in jail their whole lives than to spend the money on appeal after appeal the way our current system does.

In other news, the new design I was working on has finally been settled, I can start writing content (which is what my title alludes to my responsilbities being) soon.

test

So, I gave in to my greatest desires and bought my own domain. Purely a vanity move, but I'm pretty happy about it. Blogger can't get there yet so hopfully I'll have it up and running smoothly by the end of the week.

Everyone I know has told me about the Amazon.com: Books / Books / PEN-Amazon.com Short Story Award. I guess that means I should enter.

Like anyone, I don't welcome defeat, that's why I've resisted entering many writing contests. No matter how good my stuff is, there's always someone better. I don't like being reminded of that.

Last September, I wrote a novel in 3 days for the Anvil Press contest. What do you know, I didn't win. Don't know if I'll do it again this year. I had to miss my anniversary (once again) and Bugorama to do it and of course I didn't win.

MP3s have changed my life. Napster lets me snag just about anything and my desk remains free of the stacks of CDs that have dominated it for so long. My playlist includes the Beatles, Fat Boy Slim, South Park tunes and the Price is Right theme. Just because I can. Of course the POS machine they gave me while I'm waiting for a real one to come in keeps crashing while I'm using it but that should be fixed soon.

One nice thing about working somewhere that does web based video stuff is that you get a lovely camera and pencil mike that reminds me of Bob Barker. I have a Bob Barker clip (or whatever bullshit term they're calling it today) at Clip2 but because they laid my ass off, I'm not maintaining it. I want to move it to a more reputable link sharing place.

Send me email if it suits your fancy.

I spent all of last week turning a non-HTML graphic designer's idea of what our new site should look like into some easy-to-use templates and was feeling pretty darn proud of myself. Then my boss brought in another designer who took one look at the fruits of my labor and said 'can I have the originals from the designer' Stupidly, I asked 'do you want my template?' No.

So all of my hard work is going to be cast aside. At least my lovely placeholder text might get used. But that's what working is all about, right? Working hard then sucking it up when someone else has a better way of doing it.

I got caller ID at home today. Some guy called no less than 5 times this morning. His English seemed pretty limited but I think he was trying to send a fax (this a guess because he kept calling back and I'd hear a beep). I told him that whoever he needed, they weren't at my house, but it was to no avail. When I get home, I'll have the power to block him from calling.

When I was in college, I always had wacky answering machine messages. It really messes people up. Right now Alice is answering the phone for us, I was tired of the grown up 'we're not home right now' message that I had to put on while I was looking for a job.

Looks like Clip2 has been bested again. While they keep waiting and waiting to launch, Blink keeps kicking their ass, and shamelessly ripping them off. But there's a certain satisfaction in watching a place that laid me off (or whatever they're calling it) continually get bested by the competition.

My weekend was stellar. Tried to buy my keyboard at Fry's. That was a laugh. Not only did the salesguy not speak English (which I have no problem with, except when your job requires you to converse with English speaking customers like myself) he naturally had no idea what I was talking about. So I'll have to buy it from one of these cheesy ergo places that only do orders over the phone. Blech.

In my former life, I worked for an unidentified mall based athletic shoe and apparel reseller. It was sort of fun but also the most draining time in my life. I would work anywhere from 50-80 hours a week, with 95% of those hours on my feet. The long standing helped me keep my weight down but the vericose veins sure didn't help me get any dates. But I digess. It was the most politic-ridden place I've ever worked (even Beyond was better than this place. And yet I stuck with it, not trusting that I was smart enough to do anything else. Towards the end, I knew that I would be leaving (at the time I thought I was moving to Ohio) so I wasn't as concerned about my longevity there and I was desperate for money. I won't go into the details, but I did some things that while not illegal, were questionable on a moral level. The extra money that I got from my shady show dealings was just barely enough to cover my moving costs so I'm still glad that it worked out. But a lot of people got fired because of the things I was doing (and inspired others to do) so I don't have a lot of fans from that life.

One of the guys who lost his job was 50, he'd been working retail for his whole life. I don't think he went to college, it just didn't occur to him. He'd been with this multi-national conglomerate for 13 years and it seemed to be the only thing he knew. Being around him made it clear to me that I needed to do more with my life than retail. When he lost his job, his first reaction was to sue the evil district manager. Feeling the guilt that my Catholic upbringing gave me so well, I told him I'd help in the lawsuit. But then I started thinking about it and realized that it would be a bad idea. So I apologized profusely but told him I couldn't help.

That was over 3 years ago and yet he won't leave me alone. Yes, I feel horrible that this man and others lost their jobs. But he knew what I was doing and didn't stop it. I've gone on to a 'real' job, earning four times what I did then. There's no reason he couldn't do the same. I've asked him to leave me alone, apologized in person, via email and over the phone but that's not enough. The man is driven to see the Evil District Manager fry. Karmically, he did fry. He got fired and his wife left him. That's enough for me, but not for the other guy.

I thought I'd blocked him from every method of communication with me but I'd left out one option. This morning I came in to see an instant message from him that said 'thanks liz, I appreciate your help.' I guess he lost his case. Duh, we did stuff that was wrong and got caught. How can you turn that into a settlement? I just want this guy to leave me alone. It scares me that he was so driven by this, that he couldn't leave it behind and move on.