Note: Apparently dA inserts this giant empty space in my journal if you get here from your message center. Just refresh and it'll load properly. Not sure what causes that. . .
Hi, everybody! I hope you are all doing well - please do tell me how you're doing. Is there anything new in your world? I swear, this time my absence has been because of the move! On 6/20, Chris and I got the keys to our new apartment and we officially moved out of our old apartment on 7/10. Then we had an awful time living without internet for two weeks ("The Struggle"). Just basic channels on TV that we catch with our wall-tenna. 70s game shows and the news. . . it was exhausting. Not to mention I had JUST reformatted my PC before the move so I literally had no games, etc. on it.
I danced this delicate dance with the Landlord(s) and AT&T, which was very annoying. It took AT&T 2 days to stop telling me my address doesn't exist even though they're the only company that services this apartment complex. Then we discovered that the previous tenant hadn't disconnected her internet (we couldn't steal it because DSL requires authentication). The Landlord called the tenant who then yelled to stop badgering her - that she's on her game, and that she disconnected/moved EVERYTHING! Yeah, sure, forget that I'm still returning your mail to the office, haha.
I'm going to save you from [the long version of] my rant about AT&T. Suffice to say, apparently they let you place orders on their site even when service is already connected at the address you're trying to order for. No phone agent in that company knows what they're doing and their website is so slow, unintuitive, and glitchy, that it's a nightmare to do anything on it. Finally, AT&T figures out what I want and we place an order. Whew, now we just have to wait 5 days for them to turn on the internet, for some reason.
Then the internet gets activated but I don't get my modem in the mail? Or the next day?? Chat support doesn't have any other template other than "please call Customer Service at _____". I've literally never had Chat resolve my issue, ever, though it would have been nice considering customer service is only open M-F 8-5, but I digress. It takes a 25 minutes phone call for Customer Service to tell me "well it usually takes 1-2 business days to get the package. If it's not there today, it should be there tomorrow". Barring the fact that I placed the order 5 days ago (meaning it should have been here forever ago), she couldn't give me a tracking number or even tell me what courier would be delivering the package ("Maybe USPS")? Holy crap.
We borrow a spare router that the Landlord had laying around in the apartment office and Chris calls AT&T's tech support to help get it activated. TECH SUPPORT tells Chris that UPS delivered our router SOMEWHERE the day before. He sends us a replacement (two of them, for some reason?).
Finally, we have internet. Now I just have to make sure I wasn't charged for 3 routers. All that trouble to finally get wonderful access to 6Mbps down / 512Kbps up.
tl;dr, I had the worst customer service experience with AT&T that I've ever had with any company in my life and I didn't even get a discount out of it. But now I have internet. I hope to be doing the drawls soon (especially considering I just finished a commission for my coworker, which is one thing off my plate that I wouldn't be streaming) and I hope to be posting and streaming! Then, we can finally finish Farscape (John, nooooooo. . .).
I was tagged and/or mentioned in a lot of memes while I was gone?! You know, I actually like memes so I plan on filling them out but I'll do one per journal entry. Today I'm doing one that I was mentioned in by Nobody and Nobody
BASICS
dA Username: Shinerai
Name: Liz
Nicknames and/or Preferred NameS: Shin
Gender and Pronouns: Female / she, her
Age: 25
Country: United States
Zodiac Sign: Pisces
YOUR DA
Number of Past Accounts: 0
Number of Past Usernames: 0
First Username: Shinerai
Original Join Date: 6/26/2004
Premium Member? Yep
Watchers: 31,158
Deviations: 487
Favorites: 2,820
FAVORITES
Favorite Digital Art Program: Photoshop
Favorite Traditional Art Medium: Mechanical pencil
Favorite dA Artists: Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody,
Favorite Movies: (I actually have a horrible but accurate reputation of not having seen any movies. On top of that, my memory is horrid.) Lord of the Rings trilogy, Hobbit trilogy, Lego Movie, Alien, Aliens, the Fifth Element, Serenity, you get the idea. . .
Favorite TV Shows: (I don’t have television. . .) Star Trek (Voyager), Farscape, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica (the new one), the Walking Dead (yep, got on that bandwagon)
Favorite Music Artists/Bands: Neil Davidge, Carbon Based Lifeforms, Ramin Djawadi, Hans Zimmer, Paul Taylor (nervous_testpilot), Ben Prunty, Danny Baranowsky
Fandoms You're Stuck In: None that I know of at the moment.
PERSONAL
Pets: 3 leopard geckos (Zephyr, Sprinkles, and Eogain)
Number of Family Members in Household: 0 - just me and QTY 1 boyfriend
Scars? Only significant one is about 3½ inches long below the knee on my left leg. Was looking for my bike in the carport but, instead, my leg found some nail in a trash bag I crawled by.
Tattoos? None
Piercings? 1 in each ear, standard type
Alcohol? Occasional Bailey’s (straight)
Drugs? None
Height: 5’7½”
Weight: ~160 lb
PREFERENCES
Digital or Traditional? Traditional for sketching/lines, Digital for coloring
Beach or Mountains? I don’t have either in north Texas
Dolphins or Sharks? Sharks
Would you rather fight 100 third graders one at a time? One at a time. The question is worded incorrectly, but I know which question it’s supposed to be.
On sunny days, you: Sit on my computer inside. Less likely to look outside.
On rainy days, you: Sit on my computer inside. More likely to open the blinds.
On hot days, you: Sit on my computer inside. Try not to think about what my electric bill is going to be like.
On cold days, you: Sit on my computer inside. More likely to eat a skinny pair with chili from Potbelly.
TEN FACTS ABOUT YOURSELF
1. My boss calls me “Spock” for a reason and I intimidate all of the new people, every time
2. I have strabismus esotropia
3. I have trypanophobia
4. I often lay my palms flat on the bed when I sleep to try and avoid carpal tunnel
5. I work at Microsoft
6. It’s very difficult to offend me
7. I don’t like pizza
8. I can’t make collages because everything needs to be a right angle
9. I check work email obsessively (sometimes on my phone even though I’m sitting at my desk, or sometimes I have two+ instances of Outlook open), but I only check regular mail and personal email once every few weeks.
10. I don’t like shopping
YOUR CHARACTERS
How many OCs do you have? At least a hundred
What fandom do most of them belong to? None
Which one is your favorite? Ryu
Which one do you draw the most? Ryu and Di
Do you commission work of them? I don’t commission often but when I do, it's usually Nobody
Do you request work of them? I never request art
Do you ship them with other people's characters, or your own? Uuhhh, just mine so far?
Do you roleplay with them? Very selectively. Only with Nobody recently
How do you keep track of them? Very carefully
Are there any that you would make real if you had the chance? I feel like it’d be a bad thing to wish anyone go through what Ryu does but if I had to choose anyone to make real, it’d be him ._.
