1. Turn on some lights. Ghosts/demons are not comfortable unless it’s dark. Need nightvision or microphones to observe the curious phenomena? Consider saving your money and investing in a hot tub instead. Also, invite me over to enjoy said hot tub.
2. Learn how to do something useful. Only motherfucking idiots see ghosts, so protect yourself by being smart or at least productive.
3. Stop being a woman. I don’t know if it’s the periods, verginias or what, but ghosts are all about attaching to some women so buck up and kick that ghost in the damn face (or facial area if said entity happens to be of the faceless variety).
4. Laugh out loud while watching “Paranormal Activity.” They bought a townhouse without inspecting the attic/crawlspace. Dumbasses (see #2). I know San Diego has good weather year round and all, but insulation is non-negotiable.
5. Ignore it. Ghosts are needy motherfuckers, and if you refuse to acknowledge one’s existence, it will most likely just give up after a few door closings.
6. Get a television that’s not ancient. Ghosts like to turn televisions to static channels, but modern televisions just show a blank or blue screen. Ghosts are totally frustrated because that’s a tried and true method for scaring fucking idiots (again, see #2).

Check out my new site – txts2myx! What’s the last text message you sent to your ex? I want to know. txtit!

They don’t mix well, my friends, and American Express should include a very clear warning to that effect on their gift card labels. The problem? Gas merchants may authorize the card for its maximum amount whenever you swipe it at the pump, regardless of how much gas you may or may not actually buy. Last weekend I swiped my card (which had never been used, and carried a value of $100) and accidentally picked up the diesel nozzle instead of the unleaded nozzle. After about 30 seconds trying to fit the nozzle into my tank (the scary thing is how close I came to just squeezing the handle over the tank hole),  I realized I was holding a diesel nozzle and replaced it on the pump. So now, that transaction that had been initiated by swiping my card was canceled. No big deal, I can just swipe the card again and use the green nozzle, right? Wrong. The card has already been authorized for its entire value, and now reports a $0 balance – even though I didn’t actually purchase anything. At the time, I didn’t know what had happened and I just assumed there was a problem with the card activation or whatever, so I used another card to get a little bit of gas to hold me to the next station. At the next station, I took the card inside (thinking it needed to be activated at an actual register first) but got declined again. Finally I called AMEX to ask why I was getting declined and the customer service rep explained what had happened at the first POS transaction. I was informed that it could take 7 business days for the discrepancy to be resolved.

To quote Charlie Brown, “ARRRHGHGHGHHG!” It’s just so frustrating, because the customer service rep told me that next time I want to use the card to buy gas, I should take it inside the gas station and get them to charge the card at a cash register. OK, WHY COULDN’T YOU PUT THAT ON THE GIFT CARD LABEL? There is a big sticker over the top of the card with some basic info about how to use it. Don’t you think this would be important enough to tell your customers? I do. OBVS.

Now with more Web 2.0! No seriously, it was time for a site revamp. If you visited the site before, you would’ve seen a big Flash interface that was more experiential than informative. It also had quite a bit of old work (some from school) that wasn’t really very relavent to anything I’m doing now. Unfortunately it was also created at a time before I realized the importance of SCALABILITY. Believe me, once I got a real jobby-job I learned quickly just how much I appreciate setting up a site so that it’s easy to update down the road. So what you’ll see here is less experiential and more content-driven. I’m even including a blog…for now.

You’ll also notice a shift in the types of work I’m showing. In the past there were quite a few examples of design, a lot of Flash pieces, and a limited number of web standards sites. Now you’ll see that I’m focusing more on development than design, and I’m also showing more of my web standards and mobile-based projects. Why? Cause I gets bored, that’s why! I like to be flexible at work, and that means being able to take on many different types of projects: AJAX, PHP, MySQL, iPhone optimized, and even email campaigns are all fair game and I couldn’t be happier. So I’m going to be showcasing work from all of these categories here, mostly just as a repository for myself so I can have a reference in the future.

So yeah, this is the obligatory first post on my new site. It had to be done. Now it’s time to get back to work.