Reconstruction of my website will be underway soon, I hope. Registering with a new host has inspired me to pick up where I left off. I have more content and many more samples of new work to post, so stay tuned.

Leon Quenneville continues to promise payment, but no check has materialized.

My part-time job is working out as I expected -- most of my coworkers are of a fairly sour demeanor. That's probably due to the combination of odd or excessive hours for very, very low pay. I am relieved that it's only a part-time job, because I doubt that I could stand their company for more than my currect schedule prescribes. I said that most of them are sour, but some are not. In fact, a handful of them are somewhat pleasant, but that may be because they are among the slightly higher-paid members of the group. It may also be because they have long since taken leave of their senses, but I'd prefer to think otherwise. My job uses about five percent of my ability, and it pays just about five percent of what I am accustomed to getting paid, so I can't really complain, unless they ask me to turn up the magic.

Most of my site is now migrated to my new server space. At last attempt, I was unable to update my Blogger blog, so this is a test post.

Hostsave wasted no time, at all in cancelling my account. If only they were so adamant about fixing all of the problems that I had with them, I would not have cancelled the account! It was a little close, as the nameservers are just now adjusting and picking up calls to my domain name, but I am sure that everything will be better than ever in just a bit.

I wasn't going to do this, but I have no choice but to comment on the fact that a producer who contracted with me on a freelance job has not lived up to his promise to pay. A couple of weeks ago, Leon Quenneville, of On-Q Productions, a video production company based in Scottsdale, Arizona contacted me to shoot a project for him. It was a last-minute deal, and I didn't want to slow down his project with a lot of paperwork and credit verification. Well, it may have cost me the value of the tapes and the time spent shooting and shipping the tapes to him. He had promised to pay up on the following week. When I contacted him to check on the hold-up, he suggested that the funds were on hold, but that payment would be sent via priority mail. Enough time has passed for payment to have arrived, so I can only suspect the worst, and warn others about working for him. When and if payment arrives, I will update this commentary to reflect that payment has arrived, but this cautionary note will remain in place. Sorry, Leon, but it was all up to you to take care of this matter. The fact that you have not paid up means that you pose a liability to those whom you would have work with you.

For the last four days, my hosting service (Hostsave.com) has been under a Denial of Service attack (DOS), resulting in the unavailability of this blog and my entire website. At less than eight dollars a month, Hostsave was a pretty good deal, until I factored in the downtime from technical issues, such as the DOS attack. That, coupled with their sad excuse for tech support and customer service, led me to seek out hosting elsewhere. So, in the next few days, my site will be migrated over to another host, and we'll see what comes of it.

We're going to check out the latest Jim Carrey movie today. I normally don't waste time with his brand of humor, but I am up for a laugh, and one reviewer (Joel Siegel - GMA) promised a few laughs over the silliness that the film offers. If nothing else, it's 100 minutes of air conditioning for nine bucks.

I'd like to spend a little time pouring over my thoughts regarding my part-time job, but out of reluctance to expose my employer and my desperation for a regular pay check, I probably won't say much, at all. I can only bring myself to say that I work some odd hours for very low pay, no benefits, alongside some pretty smug illiterates. Ahhh. That felt good! I think that it was Norman Maillor (sp?) who said that the very worst writers in the world work for the local newspapers. I have seen that first-hand. I would also add that the same can be said for the quality of writing for local television. Of course, one must give consideration to the pay rates that are available for such jobs. If a company wants writers who have a command of the English language and a penchant for manipulating grammar in such a manner as to portray the news of local events in an interesting and insightful way, but will only pay slave wages, it's like putting out garbage on your doorstep, in the hope of attracting a champion show dog. It's just not going to happen! I don't suppose that it's the fault of the writers that their drivel finds its way to television sets -- it's the fault of the broadcast company that won't pay for real talent. Yes -- I think that's it. I'll simply pity the poor writer and damn the slave driver who draws his blood to ink the pages that make for better catbox lining than for reading material. Damn, that felt good!

Okay, on to the pictures we go.

I am nearly over my first ailment of the year -- a sort of respiratory infection that may have something to do with my chronic tonsilitis and the fact that I started a part-time job earlier this month. I fell ill within a week of taking the job, so I think that there must be a connection there. What's sad about it all is that now my gf is coming down with something akin to the sickness that befell me. So, as I write this, I have some tea steeping for her, in the hope that we can circumvent the worst of it. The recent weather has been a bit of a shock to our systems, as well. It's been surprisingly damp and cool for the last few days, after being somewhat excessively hot and humid early on in the month. This week I would like to find another part-time job -- one that might take the place of the one that I currently have. The current hours are somewhat taxing, and the pay is unbelievably low. I realize that the economy stinks like never before in my lifetime, and that I am lucky to have landed the one little job that I've found to help me through the slow part of the year, but I'd be short-changing myself if I didn't continue the search. A last-minute video project from out-of-state promises to come through with some much-needed supplemental pay, making me ponder whether or not to get more involved in a search for such jobs, or to keep up the pursuit of more two-dimensional art jobs, such as the photography, graphic design, and most recently, digital painting/illustration that are closer to my heart. It's a tough call. Digital studio work has a lot going for it, but the video is such a challenge. That is not to say that I cannot find a challenge, otherwise. I just feel like I should or could do more field work now, while I am still young enough to handle it, and save the sedentary work for the next decade of my life.

Here's a try at a genuine posting -- nah, forget it. I just don't have enough time! I've been fighting with a number of computer issues. In brief, they involve a Mac OS 9.1 - 9.2.2 upgrade so that I could run the latest version of Painter from corel (let's see if that reads as a link). As always, the Suitcase font mangler from Extensis aggravates everything, so I am running without it, for the time being. That, and a few other trials awaited me, following the upgrade, but I am pleased to say that the G4 is running smoothly, for now. Or, so it seems, or so I would like for it to seem, so that I can breathe easily enough to spend a few moments writing something other than computer code! Time's up -- gotta design something now...

'Getting a little frustrated with this publishing method -- it's already lost one post. Let's see if it loses this one...

I have decided to give the Blogger.com product a try. It seems like it will help me post updates from wherever I am, since my desk is not always the most convenient place to recall things. Lately, especially, I have been compelled to do actual work while at my desk. I'll explain in another posting. Right now, I want to see how this thing works...