Battle Royale: Internet: 4 Me: 1

  I've been trying to transfer my friend's website for about two or three weeks now. Originally, the domain was purchased through Blogger/Google and hosted through a partnership with Enom. It was an easy process, REALLY affordable, and it offered easy design options with the Blogger templates. Then, we wanted to redesign, but Blogger is pretty limited to the templates unless you are an HTML and CSS whiz.
    The first redesign I had little to do with, but this recent one has been a nightmare, mainly because of how difficult it is to transfer a domain from one host to another if you're not a professional IT person. I know my way around pretty well--set up my site and a subdomain on my own. But this new one was just problem after problem.
    On the bright side, it's finally transferred, and we're hoping to wrap up the design within the next day or two. At least now we know about how the process is supposed to go, but it really sucked learning the hard way on this one. Like I said, nightmare.
    It has been a busy week, dealing with problem after problem with the domain setup and design. In addition, I had two interviews, two prove-yourself tests (social media plan and paragraph revision) for two different positions (both of which I have been offered), plus, I still haven't finished my current book and Nano is only 5 days away.
    I am really getting nervous about Nano this year. With all this other stuff I have going on, and barely having time to write my book as it is, cranking out 50k words next month is starting to look really scary. I still think I can do it, but I am going to have to drop the blogging quite a bit, and the social media (between Twitter, Triberr and Goodreads, I'm amazed I get as much done as I do!).
    Anyway, looking forward to checking out a local minor league hockey game for the first time this year and getting a break from all the hubbub!

When it rains, it pours.

Resume Building Is Hard Work!

  I just updated (but still only 80% complete) my LinkedIn profile to include some more skills, past work experience, and a summary, among other things, and I think I've been at it for two or more hours! I'm not looking for another job at the moment, but as volatile as the internet business is, I think it's better to be on the safe side and be 80% prepared in case anything should happen that would put me out of work.
    Needless to say, I was pretty thorough in the parts of it that I completed. I wrote what I think is a rather clever summary (Translation: it may contain too many attempts at humor and not enough actual job experience/information), and I pretty much copy/pasted my coworker's specialties and inserted a few of my own that fit better with my job description. It's probably a damn good thing I didn't start writing this blog until I was employed or 2010 would have been a hell of a depressing year with me talking about the USA Arcade on USANetwork.com, and how unfortunate it was that nobody would give me a chance. Not many people know what the hell to think of some kid who spent four (though technically I finished in 3.5) years in college studying philosophy, let alone people who actually know what you'd study if you studied philosophy.
    I am incredibly content to be employed, though I don't quite make enough to satisfy any apartment landlords application requirements without a cosigner. I get to do interesting things at work, I work with amazing people, and every now and again I get to write or edit or come up with some creative tweak to some design or plan we're working on. I'm not even going to complain about my job, although I could--I always can find something to complain about.
    But back to the resume thing. I do find it rather entertaining that LinkedIn makes completing your profile like a game, where you have to get 100% or you can't win. I suppose job searching and networking is like a game. You have to say these words, and not those ones, have these skills, and be clever or lucky enough to get to the end of it all unscathed. (I couldn't decide between a card game metaphor or a board game metaphor, so I dodged both.)
    So, with my profile 4/5 complete, I think I'll move on to slightly more interesting endeavors this evening for the remaining hour or so that I get to stay up. Some online movies, or Stephen King? Decisions, decisions.

Decision made: No King before bed--King=nightmares!

Seeing Double

I think I'm going to switch up the format a bit today. Have a chill. Or a laugh. Whichever comes first.

Annie lay in bed, reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and listening to some Nirvana. She didn't like bright lights, and as it was eleven o'clock at night, she only had the bedside table lamp on to read by. The plot thickened seemingly with every page, and even though she became more and more tired, she couldn't bring herself to put the book down. Her eyelids got heavier, and heavier, but the story was so good, she forced her self to push forward through the exhaustion and keep turning pages.
    She didn't know what time she had finally drifted off. But the book was still in her hands, the lamp was still on, and the radio still playing, when she awoke again. Her husband was already lying in bed next to her. She hadn't woken up, even though he had to climb over her to get to his side of the bed. Their bedroom was so small, one side of the bed had to be pushed up against a wall if they were to have any floor space whatsoever. She was used to him climbing over her in the middle of the night, and he had gotten pretty good about not waking her up when he did so. She noticed that he had already fallen asleep, jaw slack and snoring slightly, sprawled on what was more than his share of their bed.
    She shook her head, and was about to sit up to close her book, turn the radio off and put out the light, when she saw her husband coming to climb over her to get into bed. She froze, terribly confused. He was already in bed, asleep, right next to her. She'd seen him. How could he be on the other side of her, climbing into bed over her again? She cringed, shrinking away from the impostor. She thought if he touched her, she might scream. Or she might be tainted with the alienness of this impostor. The impostor stayed quite close, climbing over her body rather than just her feet, and her eyes darted back and forth from her husband beside her to her impostor husband climbing over her, and she had a horrifying premonition of what might happen should they meet.
    Perhaps it would be like in time travel stories when one kills the other one, or maybe it would turn out that the impostor was really a ghost or a spirit of some kind who would possess him and turn him into a completely different person. Or perhaps, somehow, his soul had somehow been torn away from his body and was trying to reincorporate itself now.
    It slithered, she thought, as it climbed over her. And she felt like shrinking into the bed itself if she could have, to distance herself from this thing that so resembled her husband, but wasn't.
    It gave her a grin as it finally made it to the other side of the bed--a hollow, joyless grin that seemed to be the grin of something dead, before slipping into? behind? disappearing altogether? the body of her sleeping husband. She gasped, and her breath caught in her chest, like an air bubble that refused to burst or escape. She was shaking, trembling fiercely, and now sobbing, so much that he finally woke up.
    'Annie? Jesus, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost.'
    Her shocked frozen breath now released, and destabilized into hyperventilation.
    'I thought I had,' she panted.

Creepy enough for you? Or just silly? Talk amongst yourselves.