Amezri's other journal space

So, during today's SOPA blackouts of various sites Twitter was buzzing with a ton of school children freaking out because they couldn't get to the site to use the information for their papers. Going through @herpderpedia, you'll see some facepalming comments like the government has shut down Wikipedia, that it's an Obama conspiracy, and that Wikipedia is now dead.

Yeah. What this post is, is a conversation I had on Twitter with someone who thinks I'm being a jerk because I have no sympathy for those idiot children. Well, I say conversation, but...

What I said was this:

All these kids whining about Wikipedia being down hurts me. A) It's one day. B) It's important. C) Go to the effing library. #

( and then a ridiculous 'discussion' ensued )

I stand by my remarks. I'm sorry if the community doesn't have a library. The school should have some reference books, if not, yes, you can still research on the Internet - the ENTIRE WORLD WIDE WEB wasn't down FFS. Google was still working. Frankly, I think it speaks VERY poorly of our education system if the only thing the kids know is how to find information on Wikipedia. I stopped being able to use an encyclopedia as an actual reference in junior high school and there was NO WAY a University professor would even be vaguely amused if I used Wikipedia as a citation. NONE. That was like.. insta-FAIL. I'm even more disappointed that this educator sees nothing wrong with letting students use Wikipedia as a credible source OR that not everyone has a library, but of course everyone can get on the internet! Ugh.

So. Tonight I had my very first car collision. I was on my way to meet queenmaab at Colonie Center to see Black Swan. I was pretty much on time, so I got to the Colonie parking lot and headed to my usual parking area by the Christmas Tree shop. Well, as I'm driving, I notice a car in the far right lane stopped with its turn signal on. I thought that was kind of weird since that was not a turn lane, but they are stopped, so okay...? I keep driving (several cars have passed this person already) and as I'm approaching, she decides she is going to make her turn!! ACROSS A TURN LANE!! WTF?!

I hit my brakes, but because the roads are still slippery from the melted snow, I didn't want to slam them, so I'm slowing down as much as I can and turning to the left to try and at least get along side her and not hit her head on. That sort of worked, I guess? I definitely hear a crunch on impact and I've hit her driver's side door pretty directly. We're totally blocking traffic, but I roll down my passenger side window and get over to that side and ask if she is okay. I've totally shattered her window and there is glass everywhere. She seems shaken, but is on the phone. I call my mother, but she's not answering, but after staring at my phone for a second, I dial 911. I tell the operator that I'm involved in a small car accident in the mall and he connects me to the Colonie Police. I walk to someone there and give them our location and he said he'd be dispatching an officer.

While I'm waiting, I call queenmaab and let her know what happened and that she probably shouldn't head over to meet me. A mall security guy shows up and tells us we need to move out vehicles as we are blocking the road. The thought did occur to me that I should take pictures of the scene before we move our vehicles, but then I kind of forgot? I wish I had done it, though. Once the cars were moved into the parking area, I did take pictures of the damage to my car, her car, and her license plate.

The police officer showed up and talked to me first. I told him what had happened and he got my information. He also said that he could call AAA for me to have my car towed to Colonie Garage. He then went to talk to the other girl while I called my garage to let them know I'd be having the car towed there. I honestly can't remember what happened next, but I do know that at one point, I heard the officer telling her that there was no way I was behind her and just kept driving when she turned, that from the damage to her car, I would have had to been driving in the oncoming traffic lane. If I was behind her, I would have rear ended her. I'm glad the officer agreed with me and yeah, there was no way there was glass all over the double yellow if I had been in the on coming lane in order to hit her in the side.

Look, I made an animated gif!



So, in the above graphic, you can see there is one on-coming lane and then two other traffic lanes. The first one is a turn lane - I was in that because I was going to make a turn about 30 feet up. I'm the blue box, she's the red box. You can see how what she did was an EFFING PROBLEM.

Anyway. So I also took pictures of the damage to both cars:




You can see the damage to my Jeep is.. not minimal, but not tragic. The lower part of the bumper is bent inwards and my wheel wasn't really able to turn right. Her car got a lot more damage - the door is crushed in, the window's broken, and the side view mirror is also broken. I don't think she was actually able to open the door.

The girl's parents showed up and the next think you know, she's whining to them about how the accident was all my fault and that I was apparently behind her and didn't stop when she made the turn. Her mother is giving me a death glare and walks over to have a look at my vehicle. I try to ask her if her daughter is all right and she just mumbles something and says she only speaks French, no English. Awesome. At some points BOTH parents come to look at my Jeep and the mother is now like cursing me out in French while her daughter is all, "It wasn't me!" The mother then angrily asks me if I saw that her daughter was stopped.

At that point, the only thing I could do was explain in very short sentences, while checking she understood each one, that her daughter was stopped with her turn signal on in the outside lane. There are two lanes going in this same direction - I check to make sure she understands - then I tell her that her daughter was on the outside lane - NOT the turn lane - and that I was driving on the inside turn lane because I was going to be making a turn (WOW!). Now, maybe I just made the assumption, but if someone is stopped - never mind they are in COMPLETELY THE WRONG LANE - but if they are stopped, I kind of make the assumption they are looking especially since the two other cars directly in front of me have driven past her. The mother is still pretty pissed, but the father nodded and it seemed like he understood me at least. It was probably helping that I wasn't screaming and hysterical.

The cop finishes up getting all of our information and we each get copies of an exchange of information form. The accident report won't be ready for a couple of day. The girl's father decides not to get a tow and gets in the car to drive it back to Troy. The officer says AAA would be here, but he had no ETA. I ended up calling queenmaab to keep me company and drive me home so I didn't have to stand in the freezing cold all night.

While waiting, I did ask the officer what the report was going to reflect and he said that he'd written down her story and my story and at the end he was just going to note that my story made the most sense from the damage on the scene. HAH! Suck it, you stupid cow.

Uh. Anyway. The tow guy showed up and took my car the 3 miles to Colonie Garage. queenmaab drove me home and then I ended up on the phone for like two hours dealing with my insurance company and the girl's. Liberty Mutual was kind of confusing and not really that helpful, but Allstate was kind of amazingly nice considering I wasn't even their client.

As of now, I have to wait until Friday for either of the insurance companies to evaluated my car for damages before anything can be fixed. I'm hoping my mechanic can at least look at it tomorrow and tell me if it's going to awful to repair. Now that I think of it, I'm not really sure they do body collision repair, but when I called, Mike said that I can bring it in and they would look at it, so I don't know.

In any case, I'm stuck without a car for the next week or two, which is not at all awesome. Buh-bye everything I wanted to be doing!

I'm resolving to write more in my LJ about things. Life things, fannish things, anything. So, let's start with health insurance.

I've been on my mother's COBRA plan for about a year, since they extended the age to 29. Of course, I turned 29 earlier this montha nd I was confused about whether or not my coverage would be continuing until. Didn't think to much about it, really... until my bill came for the next month and I see they've raised the premium to $600. A month. $600. This is for basic medical coverage - exams, simple labs, some hospital coverage, a crazy high co-pay ($25 per office visit), no dental, and no vision.

Having seen that, I start immediately looking at other health insurance options. I don't qualify for Medicaid because I live with my mom and they take into account the total income of the people you are living with, which puts me out of the Medicaid bracket. Then I checked out HealthyNY again and it seems like they've managed to make their premium costs. That, or I'm just so jaded from the $500/month I have been forking over. I wasn't able to apply for HealthNY before because I hadn't worked in so long, but with my recent paycheck from working on a film project, I'd be able to say I had some kind of income.

Called CDPHP to find out about applying for HealthyNY through them and a nice lady told me that my coverage would be ending at the end of the month under the Age 29 extension. No worries, I'd be canceling it anyway. I also got confirmation of the updated premium, which would be $285 instead of $254. That's a much smaller increase than my current plan and also still less than half the current premium cost. The rep then transfered me to another department where I made an appointment to come into the office at noon. Done! Now to cancel my current Young Adult coverage, which, if anyone else needs to know, does actually continue through your 29th year, so it expires the day you turn 30. Of course, I am not looking to fork over $600/month for the next 12 months.

Calling to find out about my cancellation, I called the NYS Civil Service Department, which is supposed to be handling my eligibility. Well, after wading through a ton of automated menus, I was on hold for 15 minutes. Hung up. That was perfectly pointless.

Next, I called Empire and was able to wade through to an actual person. They've listed me as having two health insurance programs - one where I am a dependent and the other where I'm an individual enrollee. In both cases, I can't make any changes. My mother would have to contact them and deal with it. I still can't get an exact answer to when the Age 29 thing expires because the rep at Empire didn't seem to have any clue and just said that there was a different expiration date on file for my policy, but she also couldn't tell me any details about it.

So... now it was time to get to my appointment with CDPHP. I got there at noon and waited in the lobby for 15 minutes before I met with the enrollment person... whose name I've forgotten. Anyway, once I was in the office, she was very nice and helped my finalize my application and seemed to think my application would be approved. All I needed was the cancellation letter from my current insurance saying i was in good standing and had no pre-existing conditions. Fab. In and out in under 10 minutes.

I took a detour to the mall after that and did some "Good Job, Me" spending, which is always bad. Bought a 4-pack of True Blood and colored hair clip-ins from Hot Topic (they had me at 15% discount and bonus $5 off). Also snagged a Kat Von D Memento Mori palette that was on sale at Sephora for $24, which is $10 off their normal price. Interestingly, the JC Penny Sephora was having quite a sale while the actual Sephora store in the mall didn't seem to be having one. Weird. Anyway, also got a couple Color Club (Wild Orchid & Red Velvet [China Glaze Lubu Heels dupe]) polishes and one of the new OPI Swiss collection (Ski Teal We Drop).

Once I was home, I tried calling my current provider again. I was on the phone for - no lie - 40 minutes waiting for someone to pick up. The office closes at 3:00pm and it was already past that time, but I stayed on the phone. Finally someone picked up and all he told me to do was fax a letter to them stating that I was canceling my Young Adult coverage. Seriously. After 40 minutes, I get told that? I quickly wrote up the letter and faxed it over, so I hope that will take care of that and I will be on a comparatively more affordable crap insurance plan. If so, I'm thinking maybe I should get tested for hypoglycemia finally. (Though that's scary because the test for that includes not eating for 48-72 hours which is... not good for me.)

Speaking of... I need something to eat. All I've eaten since I woke up was a fruit bar.

This afternoon a boy came to our door asking about cleaning our lawn again this year. Because he always did our yard in the spring.

Thing is, I'd never seen him before. I told him as much and that we had someone else who did our lawn. Someone who I know well because I'm always the one who hands him the money because I'm the only one who's home. And awake.

No, he insisted. He remembered this house - and the lady who lived here, Mrs. Yan. He asked if she was around. I looked at him, trying to figure out if I heard that correctly. Nope, no one here by the name Yan.

"Are you sure? Did they move away recently?"

Listen, kid, I've lived here for 25 years. There is no one by the name of Yan in this house. "Uh. Nope. I think you have the wrong house."

After a couple more back and forth questions, where he insisted he'd done the yardwork here before, I gave up and asked him how much he charged and if he had a card or a number or something. He said he'd rather talk with my mother ("Mrs. Yan," he was probably still thinking) about it. Fine, fine. Whatever. GO AWAY. I told him she wouldn't be back until after 5pm tomorrow.

Look, I know we all look the same to you, but seriously, gve it up. Go away, kid, you bother me.

Hello LJ land. Is anyone still even reading this?

I've been neglecting the livejournal something awful and seem to have replaced it with Twitter. I do feel kind of bad about that since I'm also losing the ability to think in strings longer than 140 characters. Haven't been up to much lately, but seems like I've been doing a lot of film work... kind of.

Columbia Pictures was shooting some car scenes for The Other Guys in Albany at the end of September. I'm told the reason is that you can't drive a car more than 30mph in NYC and it takes decidedly more than that to get a Chevelle through a double-decker tour bus. I was on set for 4 days as an extra and just stood on the street and walked around how they told me. Nothing too terribly exciting and I was far more interested in the equipment they were using than anything else that was going on. On my third day, the 2nd 2nd AD directed me to one of the cars stopped in front of where the bus should be and I was basically put in front of a camera for a reaction shot. So, maybe where the movie comes out, you'll see me step out of a car and gape at the car wreck.

This past week, I was once again in Port Henry working on Star Trek: Phase 2. This time around we were finishing up Enemy: Starfleet. I was 1st AC on this one, which was a good time and I learned a lot more things. Hopefully I can retain that information. The smaller crew was much better this time around, I think - less riff raff, though there were still a couple people I wouldn't have minded doing some violence to. Vic Mignogna came in to direct on Monday (did a good job) and his friend Todd Haberkorn came to be our 1st AD. I have to say, the set ran a lot smoother with Todd there, so I'm hoping he will be back in that capacity next time around. No shoot is complete without a debacle and this time we got two. The first was some ridiculousness where G&E and camera were on stand-by for 7 hours waiting for costumes to be finished and the second.. uh, well, best not to speak of that as it did work out in the end. I think. But still, dramarama, people. Dramarama.

A group of us - me, Alex, Romel, Matt, Chris, and Mark - were able to get out of Port Henry for a few hours to see Zombieland. When I say "get out," I mean we fled that place, speeding like maniacs, to get to Plattsburgh in time to make the film. I think we got there about 5 minutes late, missing the opening. But still - it was an awesome car adventure and a great movie. (Also, really good to get out of PH and away from Trek for a while).

Okay, sure, Zombieland isn't going to be the next classic, but it was highly entertaining. The lines were pretty clever and it was pretty gory without being too bloody, I thought. Not sure how that could be, but I remember smiling gleefully at the gore, but not thinking that the blood splatter was over the top. I kind of hate fast zombies, which these were, and I was nearly shouting at Tallahassee when he kept dropping his weapon every time he killed a zombie. Hold on to those weapons, man! Also, bonus Bill Murray.

This weekend, I'll be going to the Big Apple Con with smashedrecords then NEFE in November with queenmaab, Liz & Pano. My mother also has arranged a family trip to Hawaii at the end of November, so that should be... interesting. I'm always up for traveling, but sunny beaches and water are not really my kind of destination. Oh well. Once I'm back from that, I'll be heading down to DC to work on another film; a science fiction pilot which I don't have any details on.

And that concludes my sweeping life update. Hope someone found it interesting.

I've been wearing a certain greenstone fishhook since I got it when I was in New Zealand in 2003. Since the first day, I've worn it on a waxed cord, replaced once a couple years ago. You'll probably see it on me in a lot of my costuming photos. Last month I decided it would be nice if it were on a bail and I could actually take the necklace off without as much fuss as the cord is.

My mother found a jeweler in the area that she'd used a few times to turn some earrings into pendants and stuff like that. I decided it couldn't hurt. So two weeks ago, I go to the jeweler and have a talk about what sort of bail I want put on -- that I wear the pendant every day and I want it to be something small, but sturdy. He shows me a bail in a catalog and it's exactly what I'm looking for. He says he can solder the back so it definitely won't come apart. I'm happy.

Not one peep after a week; they are called and asked what the deal is. He says the part isn't in yet. Fine, no big deal. I can wait for a part. A few days later, we get a call saying it's done. Last night my mother picks it up. They charged her $25 for the bail work and the snake chain I told her I didn't need anymore. At the original consultation, he said if I wanted a chain, we could take a measurement and he'd custom cut the length. Instead, he foisted a 16", badly soldered snake chain on my mom, who'd gone to pick it up.

The funny thing is, she knew as soon as she saw it that I wouldn't like it, but she paid for it anyway. If I were there, I'd have demanded he remove it immediately and not have paid him at all.

( pictures )

This morning I called to A) correct an error on a ticket for my mom's new order and B) chew him out for the error. He answered the phone and after I calmly had him correct the info on the ticket (the phone number and name were all wrong... wtf), there was a pretty quick burn to angry. I told him that what he ended up doing wasn't what I wanted at all and that he should have called me before he did it because it wasn't what I agreed to and in fact, I could have just done a wire bail myself. He tells me that the bail I wanted had been discontinued, to which I responded that he should have called to tell me that instead of just putting something else on there. He then says that if I wanted it, he could fabricate it in his shop -- WHY DIDN'T YOU DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

I tell him that were it up to me, I wouldn't have do the wire bail and now I'm stuck with something I don't want and it's not like I can get a refund (as is stated on his sales receipt). He says, "Why not?" I pause and then ask if he's saying he would refund the bail. He says, "So, basically you want me to do the work for free."

Yeah. Read that again. I totally lost it at that point. I told him that he did work that I didn't agree to, which is why I'm mad and want a refund, so yeah. I'm not keeping the bail and he should have asked me before he went ahead and did it. So finally he says he'll refund it, minus sales tax. Well, fine. Then he says if I wanted to bring it in, he could take it off. Yeah, No. I tell him I can take it off myself, thanks and I will have the crap wire bail and necklace brought in and he can put the credit towards my mother's new order or whatever.

I feel like kind of a bitch and normally I'd never do that to any sort of artist, but seriously, wtf? He had the piece for two weeks, knew the bail I wanted and agreed to was discontinued, then threw on a shit wire bail. I could have done that or I could have found (and did find) for a lot cheaper and nicer looking on etsy.com

This morning, I did place an order for bails and oval jump rings. I should have just done it myself in the first place. And people wonder why I have control issues.

So there it is, my bitch moment of the week. Actually, this whole week has been about me not finding what I'm looking for and running around like a crazy person and blowing most of my tax refund money without really meaning to, so this whole debacle is right in line with that.

After three days without power, we finally got ours back yesterday evening. I wasn't at home -- I'd bailed on the house after taking the longest hot shower ever. Headed to smashedrecords' to hang out for awhile and soak up the heat and electricity.

I can say this whole experience totally sucked :P I think I could deal without power for a few days if the weather were warmer, but the freezing temperatures made it unbearable. seijitataki coped by sleeping all day and my mom had places to go. Yeah, we had hot water, but what difference does that really make when the house is 40 degrees? It's not like the fire really helped either. We didn't have enough wood and the DuraFlame logs didn't really do much -- though we did have light at night, so I guess that isn't nothing. Thankfully, my UPS still had power so I could at least charge my phone and my Nintendo DS and use both of those.

In conclusion: power outages suck, but not as much as freezing in your own house.

Have some more Christmas shopping to do, so off I go. Just ordered some stuff online so I can skip the Sephora stop at least. Got a ton more stuff that way rather than three things at Sephora for the same price :P

Playing catch up on the social networks. LJ I'm never going to catch up on -_-;;

While I was away, it seems that the spoiler a large group of us hoped wouldn't be true, is true and that makes me pretty sad. SAD. Yeah, yeah, I know there are people who didn't like him, but I love him, so hush! D:

On twitter I complained about no one having told me about the Obama roast at the Alfred E. Smith dinner and xpashax points out that he did. My bad. I've been really awful on the LJ lately. I really need to start reading again.

Working on Tom photos and show report. Up soonish. If not tonight then.. erm.. well, probably Saturday. Tomorrow I'll be at queenmaab's for Halloween!

I swear, I would forget my own head if it weren't screwed on. Not that I forgot really, because that would be dumb, but I had meant to make a post earlier and then I didn't and I'm a dolt. Anyway. I am so awful, awful, awful at remembering birthdays and having thoughtful things to say when I do remember. However...

crushw_eyeliner, my birthday twin, I love you lots! I am so glad to have met you and it's so awesome that we share, among many other loves and interests, a birthday. It was a long time ago that we met... I remember seeing some of your artwork in the Buffy fandom and then randomly e-mailing you about something or other. Honestly, it's so long ago, I can't remember a time when we didn't know each other! Funny how memory is, huh?

Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic birthday and that our non-internet selves will cross paths again soon.

Have done: laundry, various packing, not much else....

Coming back from errands, I picked up the mail... and found a letter notifying me of an overdraft charge. What. The. Frak. I have never had an overdraft on my account in the 10+ years I've had it and there's no way it's possible with me keeping such a high balance in it.

So I got back in my car and drove -- fuming -- to the bank. I get there and the useless teller who I went to to make my large deposit previously was there, looking as vacant as ever. I meet with one of their account managers who didn't understand that my issue is not with the hold on the large deposit (I mean, yes, obviously you have to wait for the check to clear), but that suddenly after this deposit my account, according to this letter, is showing a balance of -$3,000. WHAT. THE. HELL. So a $40 charge at the grocery earned me a $34 overdraft fee. It took her 15 minutes of poking at her computer to finally call over the bank manager.

Bank manager comes over, looks at it, and says clearly this is dumb and wrong and directs the first woman to refund me the overdraft charge. \o/

And it's in my account already. HUZZAH.

Srsly. If I had to explain it again, I would have had a nervous breakdown. I was trying really hard not to be that screaming, pissed off customer. Now that I look on my online account again, it does show the overdraft charge, but at no point does it show my balance in the negative! *keyboardsmash*