Thursday, January 28, 2010

Of finished objects and ideas

So late tuesday night and early wednesday morning I finished the Thinking of You scarf, sewed in the ends and blocked it overnight. I think it turned out splendidly and the recipient was so ecstatic and thanking me. I'm glad that she liked it.






I'm still working on the book, slowly but surely. The project I'm working on right now is slowish.

I think I had a sign from whatever today. Next month would be 2 years with the company I work for, and I have spilled and hurt myself more in the past month then I have in the other about 2 years. I think it's a sign to move on to a different job, what do you think?

Monday, January 25, 2010

Lots of dye and stuff to do

So this is my last week of freedom before I have to go back to school next week. It's going to be a really busy semester for me, 14 units, working, and keeping that all in balance.


This is 6 pounds of undyed yarn, 4 will be dyed by me for a special project I am involved in, I'm not going to say what that is but all I know it's going to be pretty epic. I was going to dye tonight, but alas I don't have enough vinegar. Wednesday will be the day I think, I'll get vinegar and the weather should be better.

Knitting wise the Thinking of You scarf is almost to the chart, I so don't like making scarves at all. But this one is really well deserved by the recipient. The book projects I havent' touched for a while, I need some inspiration for me to get them going again.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Of hospital visits and fraud charges

So yesterday was not a good day. I woke up at around 1:30pm, I have difficulties getting tired and falling asleep. So I had work at 5pm-close, which my Jamba closes at 8 and we have to get out of there by 9pm. So I get there, it's slow, we have new info for us upper level employees, and things are running smoothly until around 7pm. I was filling a large plastic container with hot water (we use the container for our drain baskets) and I put bleach in after. Well the bleach went in the water, and some bounced into my right eye, I wasn't even close to the container. My eye began to burn and turn red. I immediately went to the front, grabbed some paper towels and got the moisture coming out of my eye. Then I had to flush my eye with water for 5 minutes, which was so not enjoyable. Then I thought oh crap I have to fill out paperwork. Being the assistant manager, if an employee gets hurt I fill out their paperwork for workers comp but I had to fill out my own paperwork. So I filled it out, called a hospital, and called the other upper levels to see if they would help out. The 2 that were available couldn't come in, and the manager was in class so I couldn't reach her. So i closed, drove myself to one hospital and they were jam packed. Then i had to go to kaiser hospital, all without a GPS cause my car was fixed and I took it out when they were fixing it. So I had to rely on a map and my own brain to get me there, which I did. They got me situated in the waiting room, took temperature, pulse, blood pressure, and asked a few questions. I was admitted after about 30-45 minutes of waiting. They checked the pH of my eyes, checked for burns, did a vision test, and flushed it out with saline solution. Then I filled out some of their paperwork and then went home.



Then to make things worse, I checked my checking account online and it turns out I'm being charged multiple overdraft charges when I have the money. I called today and they said it was from website I have no idea what it is, I've never heard of it. So another fraud charge, I canceled my card which is my 4th with this credit union. Yippe.

Knitting wise the mitten patterns are in the test knitting stage, so that's always good. The projects for the book are doing well, the one I'm working on is just slow.

Hopefully today will get better.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Car repairs and storms and knitting oh my

Well I had to get up at 8am this morning to bring my car into the repair shop to get the steering rack and pinion replace because mine were leaking. So right now I'm carless and stuck at home because of the weather. It's been very grey, wet, windy, thunder and lightningy here for the past like day or two.

On a health related note, I am always exhausted. When I wake up from a full nights rest I'm exhausted. I am only up because of caffeine, monsters, coffee, etc. I don't know why this is, but I'm hoping it will just fade in a while.

Knitting related news, I'm working on patterns from the book (obviously) I'm just procrastinating because I don't want to figure out how to do some of the shaping. I know that's lazy but it's going to take a bit of thinking to get these right. I'm also working on the Thinking of You scarf for my previous boss. She had to break up with her boyfriend, who she found out was cheating on her, on her birthday this year. So I decided this scarf would be appropriate for her and make her feel better. Otherwise I'm not really knitting too much these days, I'm still coming out of my slump, but this book might help. I just hope I can find someone to publish it. I'll make sure to post pics as I have them.

Otherwise no spinning is going on, but I do have a big dyeing project coming up. The yarn is on it's way and I am just waiting to get it, dye it, and get the project going.

But the car is back, I don't have to worry about the leak anymore, now it just needs new front tires, and an alignment.

Anyone there?

Thursday, January 14, 2010

I'm back and with the ZOMBIE MAC!!!

Ok I'm going to have to explain that one, about a year and a half ago I bought a new computer for college, a MacBook Pro 15" running I believe leopard. It ran very well for a while and a couple of months ago I noticed a weird buzzing noise under the keyboard and that it was getting extremely hot. I ignored it and thought it was normal till my mom commented on it and I checked a dashboard application I had and it said my fans were running at almost 6,000rpm and the internal temperature was at 180-190 degrees f. I looked around and couldn't find anything that told me what was wrong with it, then about a month ago once I turned on my computer it would boot up with the fans running at 4,000 then 5,000rpm. I took it in and they were a little baffled. They booted it up from an external drive and it ran normally, they ran DiskWarrior and it errored out on every test and warned to back up all data asap in case of a predicted hard drive failure. They replaced the hard drive, migrated my data, updated the operating system and replaced the left fan and that did it. My hard drive was failing indeed, the left fan was making the noise and the temperature and fans were due to the hard drive with a corrupted operating system. I'm typing on it and let me tell you I missed this thing so much! If anyone else has the same issues I had I hope this helps.

Knitting, what am I knitting? I am working on a project for the book, inspired by a fellow raveler, he made a pair and I wanted to make my own, but with modifications to the pattern. No he doesn't have a patter, and is going to write one up for his pair, mine will be different, and I'll see if I can make up new ways to construct it.

The book list is as follows (it's a mens knitting book):
3 hats, 3 scarves, 4 sweaters, 3 mittens/gloves, 4 miscellaneous, and 3 vests all of varying difficulty. What are you your thoughts on this? Does this seem like too many projects? Not varied enough?

Monday, January 11, 2010

I'm not dead, life just threw a crappy year at me....

Wow things in life really do need to settle. It's been such a long time since I posted anything on the blog. Lets see if I can update everything.

Knitting wise I made the Cobblestone sweater,a pair of mittens, fingerless gloves, and socks on my sock knitting machine. It wasn't a very productive year for me, I had a lot of slumps. The sock machine is good, runs like a charm and has a brother, literally, I purchases a Brother KH-910 Computerized Knitting Machine and it's so much fun!

I haven't updated my etsy for a long time because I just haven't had time to make anything to sell, but hopefully soon.

THings that are broken still/broke last year were including my computer, my car, my phone service, my heart, and lots of other things (no nothing broken cause of fights or anything just cause I have bad luck). Which reminds me, if anyone can help me get out of my Verizon contract early without termination fees let me know, I've had the worst of luck with my cell phone. I had to send a letter into the local paper's Action line and there was no action, if you're interested this is what happened.

"I recently started a new 2-year contract with Verizon Wireless in February of 2009. My service was functional until it hit June, that's when all of this trouble started. My service cut out for around 6 hours where my messaging wouldn't work at all, I had very low bars, and phone calls weren't working all that well. After that I have been calling Verizon Tech Support every month, maybe even everyweek. All of the problems I have been having were odd, since I had wonderful service when I was on my Mother's Family Plan. I went into a store first and they told me that it was my phone, that the internal antenna was broken and that it would need replacing. I promptly did this and I got a phone which the touch screen on it (my model was the LG Voyager VX1000) did not work at all. I took the phone in the next day and I talked to a representative, he asked if I calibrated it and I told him that I did multiple times. Then he called over the LG representative that was there that day and he took a look at it. He asked me the same thing and I explained to him that I just got the phone the day before and that I already calibrated it. He finally said (in his exact words), "Yeah it's broken." I had already told them this and they proceeded to send me a "new" voyager. In the meantime I asked for my old EnV to be activated until I got the replacement (I used this phone on my Mother's account previously). That phone also had the same issues that the other two voyagers had and so I went back into Verizon. They told me that it was my phone because it was so old, however I had already called Tech Support and updated my software. I finally negotiated a new phone, the EnV Touch as a replacement and for the trouble I was experiencing. My service was working alright after that, but a mere week later my service was acting up yet again. I had maybe 2 calls dropped my whole time with Verizon, I do not get a reliable signal anywhere, calling quality on all of my phones were terrible, I loose service randomly, when I send a text message sometimes it never sends, delays them for up to an hour, I get "send failed would you like to retry?" on a daily basis, and I also get "Cannot send, no signal. Would you like to resend in digital?" I have called probably 50 times since June, with everyone having me update my roaming, my phone software, or saying that they have no idea. Finally I got a trouble ticket opened for the signal and it came back as "the towers are perfect in your area, so it's not that." I was told by representatives in store that it's my service and I agree, for how can 4 phones (1 that worked perfectly on another account) all not work, all in succession. Then I opened one for the texting problems, they traced the text saying that once it got to the other provider that they couldn't track it anymore. However it does this with Verizon customers too and my picture messaging doesn't always work either. Finally I talked to a friend of mine and he took me to a different store, talked to the Manager at the store I was going to and has been helping me along the way. The store that I currently go to opened a 3rd trouble ticket, which was escalated to a high level. I got a call much like the first one a few days after calling in the trouble ticket, saying that they don't know yet and that they would get back to me. I called a week later and the phone representative told me she had no info on it, wanted me to try to update my roaming and told me it was my phone. I called two days later to give them more information about it and they were just dumfounded just like all of the calls I made so far. One solution that was recommended by the new store representative was to wipe my account clean and get rid of my number and give me a new number. They said that someone with the same problem came in and they did that and her service was fine. I really don't want to do this because my number is associated at a myriad of places, my job and all other locations have my number, my bank, all of my friends, my school, etc. I also had a problem with the EnV touch turning itself off randomly, when I close it from the open position, resetting settings, not wanting to turn on, etc. They sent me a "like new certified replacement" and I backed up my contacts with back up assistant. I activated the "new" phone myself and then got back up assistant on it and then proceeded to download my contacts. My online myverizon said I had none and when I tried to even access my empty contact list on the new phone it wouldn't let me, I had the wrong password and when I asked for the right one that one was incorrect as well. I turned on the old device and tried back up assistant again and it was back up assistant is not working right now. I just left the old phone powered on, about 10 minutes later it went off with multiple text messages, that were delayed 30 minutes. The "new" device should have gotten them, but never did. I activated it just like it told me to in the instructions that were sent to me. Finally on 12-1-09 I got a phone call from Verizon, I couldn't answer because I was working. I recorded the message on my digital voice recorder. They said that they checked my service area and that it's perfect and that it's my device and have a store update it's software. I did this already which did nothing.

I have been paying my bill every month since I started and for a full time student who works at Jamba Juice it can be hard sometimes. I have gotten nothing out of them besides a phone that barely works and $5 in credit once. My plan is $59.99 without taxes or surcharges. Everytime I talk to someone on the phone at Tech Support or in store I'm not treated fairly, when my older friend came with me they started to treat me better. I do not feel like a valued customer, I am treated like the unwanted jelly beans you get in the variety pack. I'm past my point of patience with them, I would like to cancel with no fees and get reimbursement for the months I paid and the service wasn't working, not full, but at least half. I want to switch over to at and t, everytime I go into a store (sometimes with another at and t customer) they treat me the exact opposite of Verizon, even though they know I have a different provider."

Anything new you should expect from me? More posts of course haha!

And I'm in the works of writting a knitting book!!!!! I'll keep everyone updated (all like 1 people who read this).