It’s the real life trolls that seem to be a problem. I don’t often write here, but when I do it’s usually just some silly diatribe about whatever was on my mind at the time. I write about Doctor Who a fair bit, and recently it’s been about not using shampoo and trying to find a day to change my sleep schedule. There’s a decent amount of writing about my crafting, from knitting to dyeing yarn. All in all it’s a pretty standard personal online weblog. No big deal.

Note: All of the screenshots can be clicked on for full image and they should open in a new window.

But then you get people like this:

My initial reaction was to question who the hell would say something like that about that post. I then realized that the poster was hiding. Hiding behind a fake website address and a fake email address. I was ready and willing to just shrug this off as some random commenter that thinks they know me. Apparently they’re my friend, so it had to be true, right? Wrong. At first I thought this was an old friend, who often stops by to read but rarely comments. There is the occasional comment, but it’s not normally something so negative. It’s okay, she could be pissed at me. It happens. The part that I take the most offense to is the fact that they claim this post is “so full of lies” as though they know intimate details about my life. How does one write a personal blog entry such as this one and it be something that is purely lies? I mean, I could fully understand if I were writing about someone else’s life and got all of the information incorrect. Except that I’m writing about my own high school experiences. I’m writing about what I went through. The post is told in a very quick, short sentence way because that’s how it was back then. Everything was in spurts. I didn’t realize that my experiences could be trivialized and turned into a fact or fiction type situation. I didn’t make any of this up. This is the way I felt when I was younger. No question. Unless there’s something I’m missing here and someone else lived that portion of my life for me. Could be, I suppose. You never know.

Then to turn around and claim that I’m “trolling up sympathy and made up drama.” Um, wow. I wasn’t trolling for sympathy. I was sharing my experience. Which, according to the other two commentors, seem to mirror their own experiences with themselves and family members.

“Get up off your ass and do something with your life. That is the entire problem.” You’re assuming I don’t do anything with my life. You’re assuming that I don’t have anything else to do with my time. I wasn’t speaking about current depression or problems, but it seems that basic reading comprehension levels aren’t needed before posting asshole-y comments on people’s blogs. No big deal. I’ll “get up off my ass” and figure out who the fuck this person is.

Oh, and this definitely gets better.

I have the IP addresses there in the comments. So I followed them back to the website that does my analytics for me. I then looked back and found the most recent comment and IP address from July 10th.

Wow. 6 actions. And you came from a direct link. Interesting. I then clicked on the IP address link you see there and this is what it gave me.

Excellent. I now know that the commenter is from Southern California. Their IP address shows Sherman Oaks, California. I also see they’re running a Mac, and google chrome at a pretty decent screen resolution. Must have a Macbook Pro. Nice. Oh look at all of that activity linked to this person! They seem to read a lot, even if they don’t always comment. Also looks like the other IP address matches the first comment. Funny how that works. Let’s click on that ARIN link up there towards the top and find out who this IP address belongs to.

Hmmm… interesting. Brandissimo Inc. I wonder what a google search would yield for “Brandissimo”. Let’s find out what shows up for me! I imagine if you did your own google search you’d find something similar.

Huh, lookit that! It’s a name I somewhat, if not vaguely recognize. Not who I thought it was at first, but alright. Let’s see what their site shows or says. Maybe there’s someone else who things I should “get off my ass and do something with my life.” Maybe I pissed someone off in the passed. Let’s look. Going to the Brandissimo! website gives you some weird flash thing embedded into the page. I click on the people link to see who all works here.

I cut all of the rest of the junk from the surrounding area and captured this bit. Now, there are 4 other faces you see there. And this company could very well have an army of employees underneath them, one of which is using company time to troll my website and be a complete dickhead. But I don’t know this, nor will I bother to get too far into it. For now I see that the only person who’s name is even remotely familiar is one David Gagne.

Apparently me and David were once really good friends (I hardly knew him at all). We apparently went to high school together (Um, nope) and ran with the same people. It seems we were so close that he knows without a doubt that all of my depression talk was fake (Again… nope) and made up to garner sympathy from the internet masses. All 5 of you who read… when I’ve posted a link to tell you to read.

Let’s see what the truth really is. David Gagne came across as an arrogant computer guy way back in the day when I still worked for Healthcare Recoveries Inc. I truly cannot remember a single personal conversation we ever had, and well, I don’t even remember the professional conversations we may or may not have had. This isn’t really a story about why I stopped working there, but I was let go. I think officially on the paperwork it said “Improper employee conduct” but really they found I was writing on Opendiary, printed out a handful of my entries and fired me for them. Whatever. I hated that job and only stayed for the money. They did me a favor. I haven’t looked back. I had some rough patches in life and still do, but there is something very important that I learned from working there and getting let go… I never EVER wanted to work in the computer industry as a professional. Ever.

Now mind you, this isn’t about starting a shitstorm, although I imagine the link backs might do that. Also putting up all of the screen captures and what not. This isn’t about Brandissimo, which I know absolutely nothing about. Let’s face it, I don’t even know anything about David himself. I hardly knew anything about him back then, so why would I care to know anything about him now. Here’s the thing, between the various social networks, there’s a whole lot of stuff I really don’t give a shit about. I don’t care about the dumb games people play on Facebook, so when I see someone post something on their wall, I block the app. I don’t care about the quizzes, so I block those too. I don’t, however, go to the people’s FB pages and tell them that they’re lying and saying stuff (taking quizzes, playing games) to garner sympathy. I just ignore it.

So here’s my plea to you, David. Go away. Leave me alone. Follow the golden rule we were all taught when we were little kids and just keep your comments to yourself. We were never friends. You knew me some 9 years ago back when I was interested in doing database administration work and the employer we both shared was willing to give me a shot. I got in trouble for blogging stuff on the internet and lost my job. Who cares. Is your only measure of success to have a lucrative career in the IT world? Cause it’s not for me. I’m not interested and I don’t care. My life took a huge turn in a different direction the day I walked out of those doors. I never looked back, and maybe you should do the same. I can’t even fathom what your interest in my life is, and why you feel the need to comment so harshly about things you know nothing about. You have no idea who I am today or in the past. We were never friends. Do you understand this? I don’t know what planet you’ve been living on or why you believe we were ever friends, but outside of your blog I know nothing about you, and truthfully, don’t care.

So stop reading. It’ll spare you the need to write nasty little snide remarks about the validity of my personal experiences, and it will keep me from having to spend a couple hours of my life sharing how I figured out who it was with the world.

See, I was this way with crochet too. I made one simple thing to get the gist of understanding patterns and then I jumped right into making my own stuff and hard things like making amigurumi dolls and the like. I like the challenge. I like forcing myself to learn things that I didn’t otherwise know. It’s good for me and good for my craft.

This sweater, however, is testing my patience. The different between this pattern and the Girasole pattern was simply a matter of knowledge. I didn’t know a lot of the terminology so it was lost on me. The pattern was clear and once I learned my lesson, it all came together quite nicely (there is still not a photo of this item on the net. Mostly because I’m lazy and can’t be bothered with that camera nonsense… or I’m just lazy).

I’m having issues with the sweater pattern. There are decreases with no explanation on how to do lace decreases. Hell, there’s no explanation to the fact that the repeat lace part, each time you do decrease, your starting stitch moves one. And you lose that permanently. So when you do the lace pattern, it’s now altered. Each time. Over and over again. Oh no, you have to learn this the hard way, because knitter’s are all born with this knowledge innately, and since I’m technically a crocheter, I didn’t get this mental memo.

So then, though I’ve worked with doing lace on the increase, to make decreases I was lost. And the Girasole was carefully graphed and made perfect sense. Don’t get me wrong. This sweater is absolutely beautiful. I know that when it’s done I will love it and wear it with much pride. But the process can be kind of hell. To spare myself a whole lot of other grief, I’ve also decided to work it in the round rather than two halves. This is my fault, sure.

I have still had to frog the thing multiple times. 3 times in the last week to be exact. I’ve finally made some progress and it’s all correct and good. I am, however, going to make it longer than the pattern calls. Mostly because I know how traditional clothes fit on my body and I’d rather have a sweater that actually comes to my hips, rather than a boob cover that cost me a lot of money (and time). I’m hoping to snag a photo of the new progress on the sweater, since I’ve been so tired of starting over that I’ve powerhoused through the majority of the beginning. I’m actually passed the furthest point I’ve ever gotten to.

I’m thinking, as much as I love the feel and weight of sock weight yarn, I might reconsider making another sweater outta this stuff. This is just too much work.

It’s a buzz all over twitter with a hashtag all it’s very own.

For those who don’t want to be bothered doing google searches and clicking around all over the place… here’s the gist of what went down.

Author Mark Probst noticed that he no longer had a ranking in the amazing system, meaning that his books would nto be found were an amazon search performed on it. Upon investigation, it seemed as though other GLBTO titles were being removed from the ranking list… again, making it harder to find via search.

Amazon’s response said something to the effect of “adult content” blah blah blah. But you can still search for very adult material despite their excuse.

Meta Writer has been keeping tabs on what is being censored and what is not. While not overtly horrible, it seems just 10 steps too far over the “not doing the right thing.”

While it’s not enough to keep me from using Amazon’s resources (not yet at least) it’s enough to wonder who got a hair up their ass to even think that something like this would go unnoticed.

Far too often the internet and social networks have shows the awesome powers they have to get information out there and quickly. I mean, it’s to the point that Neil Gaiman’s posting about it as well. Among others. Friends have tweeted and plurked about it. I’m pretty sure I saw Wil Wheaton tweet an #amazonfail somewhere.

Please note this particularly amusing blog post. My favorite bit: “Alternate usage: “My girlfriend wanted to preserve her virginity, and I was happy to respect that, then she amazon ranked and decided anal sex was okay.””

Chalk up another epic fail on the part of the internet moguls. They’ll learn eventually… right… right??

Yeah, I prayed and HOPED that Dreamhost could fix my epic failure attempt at upgrading.

So as I look and see this pink line across the top of my screen I want to flip it off and yell “FUCK YOU SQUIRREL!” to the Upgrade message. I’m terrified to do it again. TERRIFIED. Can I stress this a little bit more… I mean, unbelivably, unequivacably scared out of my fuckin’ mind of losing my blog… again. It’s not that I have all these great entries. Or that I have the most amazing layout known to man. But it’s mine and I want it.

So I’m SUPER happy that Dreamhost was able to fix it. And I’m super happy that I was so busy for the last couple of week that I hadn’t updated, there were no new comments or anything of the sort, because it gave that poor guy who got my email a chance to pull up a working back up and fix what the wordpress upgrade screwed up.

Wanna know what’s funny? I went to WP, to see if other people had issues. I wasn’t the only one. It may not have gone the same, but people were losing the ability to login with their admin passwords, and things just weren’t right. Fuck that stupid pink bar, I’ll leave it there until the next one comes out.

BTW, my favorite class is EDS 151 – American Sign Language 1. My least favorite class is everything else.

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I’m only 13 yearz old. (Really?? I totally forgot that ‘z’ comes after everything!) I love the Jonas Bros more than you no. (What’s really sad is that a lot of girls must think ‘no’ = ‘know’) Its is (uh, double reiteration for effect??) soe (Technically soe = Sony Online Entertainment, but that’s the gamer in me speaking) unfare (uhhh… right) that you gotta be 14 to meet them at Nfest (It’s ENDfest, ENDfest).Rulez (z again huh?) are stupider (didn’t they emphasize this in elementary school that it’s ‘more stupid’‘) than anything cuz everybody nos that jonas bros fans arent old people but w e are kids who respect and luv (*sigh*) what they bring to the world. All dees (I’m losing momentum… it hurts my eyes) girls are having there (apparently Mary didn’t bother to pay attention to English lessons, ever!) dads and other people who are old make vidseos (I’ll give her this typo) but its not fare cuz they arent (Is it too much to hope for punctuation??) the fans I am and my friends we are. (Huh??) You should change the contest rulez (*gouges eyesballs out*) because I deserve to meet them as more than anybody else. My mom sais (Please tell me you’re talking about the city in Egypt?!?) that I should start a petiton (petiton…) and get peeeple (This is what gets me, she spells this correctly once, and screws up the second time? WTH!) to sign for me and all the other REEL (Your friends are rolls of film?) fans of the Jonas brso. Whats 1079 fraid of? (It just keeps getting better.) Are 13 year olds dangerous more than 14 year olds? (I’m sorry, again in English pleeeze) I donʼt t think so. Isnot like I gonna murder nick or joe. Let me goe backstage and meet them Do a survey and youll see that me bein t13 isnot a problem to anyone more than it is a problem for the peeps of 1079. Nfest is wear my dreams will come true if you donʼt make me a problem by causing me to not win cuz I am to young whatever. All my friends agreed me with me says Jodi that I am the biggest fan so you see? I should win. Change the rules. 13 year olds me and others like me demand it before its way too late to make no difference to fans who want some backstage passes to win with the Jonas bros from our favorite station 1079 the Nd.  PS tell Doug Lazy and Kris K to give shoutouts to the Jonas bros cuz I listen 247/7. (247/7! Get it, if I add an extra 7, it totally makes my statement mean something more!)

I simply couldn’t read anymore. It was making my brain die. I mean, literally they were imploding. Maybe actually eating each other, just to stop the insanity and the atrocity that this email was filled with.

This is where the internet has failed. I remember when geocities was a long LONG address, but it was a free website. I remember not seeing ads everywhere. I remember having 5 different pages and each of them had some strange gif/jpg for a background. I remember being in chat rooms where people TYPED out their words. I remember when “lol” and “rofl” started. I rememer before blogs existed. So I know that in terms of information that exists on the net, and the ease of finding that information, the internet has made leaps and BOUNDS towards becoming a better place.

But this email is the perfect example of the failure of the internet. It became okay to type like this regularly, that grammar and punctuation were thrown out the window. It actually hurts, literally, to try to read this in some sense of coherence. I make typos too, we all do. But at least I can formulate a sentence that somewhat resembles coherency. This is… sad.

What’s more is that the parents never noticed that she writes papers like this? This is apparently the best she could muster? I mean really?

If at some point in my life, I get to do any hiring… I hope I never see Mary’s resume.

Plz 2 B getting jobz heer. KTHXBAI!