26 Dec 2008 Angst, Family, Fan Sites, Friends, Internet, Offline, Online

2008-loss-love

Note: This is a reflective entry of 2008 but of the crappy parts of it. I’m dividing the good & bad into two entries because I write so much lol It talks about suicide so if that is triggering for you please skip this entry. This entry isn’t a pitty party so please kindly fuck off if that’s your opinion. Otherwise on with the entry.

2008: Loss & Love

Edit: (Part 2: 2008: Happiness on a stick - and in a can)

I don’t normally post private entries here, they’re almost always reserved for my LJ, but I’m really in need of some extra ears of support or input with a few things.

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  • AMBER

19 Dec 2008 Fan Sites, Meme, Study, Work

Ahoy! I’m still alive. I’ve been busy with work and when I wasn’t there I was sleeping-that industry (Hospitality) fucking sucks balls.

Which brings me onto my news: This Sunday is my last day where I work and also, Hospitality. I went into it to get away from retail (did it for 10 years) but it didn’t turn out to be what I want and the trading hours fucking suck. The girls in this industry are also MUCH bitchier than in retail-something I never thought possible 0_o

Things I won’t miss from Hospitality (I worked in Bistro & Bar):
- Split Shifts (12-2pm / 6-9pm)
- Cleaning cuttlery
- Pretending I give a fuck when whiny arse customers complain about their meal
- Being exhausted all of the time (no regular sleep pattern).

I will miss a few things, though:
- As much free Raspberry (fizzy drink/soda) as I want. I’m addicted to it.
- Knock off drinks

In the new year I will go into Admin work and take up some study.

Can you believe christmas is just around the corner?! Fuck me. I’m gonna finish my shopping on Monday.

I’ve finally got my scanner/printer back from the repairers *hugs it* The scanner is awesome and I have SO many magazines to scan. Angie is on a few covers atm and I also need to sort and scan my Mariska stuff. *squee*

I’m about to work on my ‘2008 Favourites’ meme that is going around. I do always love a good pic spam *nods* You should all do one as well! :D

EDIT: A new layout is up, as well. Nice and summery. In Aussie land it’s nice and sunny on xmas day. *loves summer*

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15 Nov 2008 Current Affairs, Fan Sites, Lesbian

internet-censorship-in-australia

Oh shit… this is not good. Not good at all. Now that a trial is going ahead I have begun to pack my dacks and fear for our civil rights.

To summarise (No to Internet Censorship in Australia):

The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers [ISPs] to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access.

Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is determined to force this filter into your home.

$44million has been budgeted for this so far… We do not know how ‘illegal’ material is defined… What about sex education sites? How do you remove those from the black lists? This will make Australia’s internet speed even SLOWER 0_o

But my real problem with this (aside from not being able to watch porn - or even access sites to fucking order it! lol) is what about gay communities and gay education sites?

From Melbourne Community Voice:

“If they put in a dynamic filtering scheme, these [gay sites] are the sites that would be over blocked the most, because the software is not good enough to reliably distinguish between sexuality and pornography, the technology just isn’t there yet. Sites with sexual health or other issues of sexuality could certainly be blocked.”

Senator Ludlam has similar fears, and places gay websites in the top three category of sites that would be targeted under a massive mandatory internet filtering system.

“Our concern is it would take a blacklist with 800 or 900 sites on it at the moment and create a vast grey list of tens of millions of web pages, which will inadvertently block out material you’re supposed to get such as gay and lesbian health-related information or breast cancer,” he says.

“There are people out there who believe homosexuality should be outlawed and [gay websites] are exactly the kind of material they’re going to try to get taken offline,” Ludlam continues.

“The Christian/Family lobby are the only people that are active in the media pushing for this scheme to go ahead,” he says. {Surprise-fucking-surprise!}

“Gay marriage is the most interesting example because it’s unlawful in Australia, regrettably at the moment, so that’s the kind of material they’re going to be trying to take offline because it’s illegal,” he says.

I’m all for preventing kids from seeing unsuitable media but this system can’t prevent sites that shouldn’t be blocked from being so-it shouldn’t go ahead. Going into it all gung-ho with $44million in your pocket with a system that has so many holes isn’t going to solve anything.

I’ve always been so proud being an Australian meant you had such a freedom of speech and access to the media -especially after Proposition 8- and now this… This is fucking scary. It’s 2008 and we could soon be blocked from tens of thousands of sources of valuable information :/

Also, ‘illegal content’, I wonder if fansites will be included in this..? From what I am reading the focus seems to be on pornography but still… What’s to stop them from illegal uploads etc?

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21 Oct 2008 Angst, Fan Sites, Friends

Ahoy!

And lighter - sadly not weight wise lol I am working on it, though. *nods*

Well, life has been a huge roller coaster for me the past few months. I will start with this week. This hasn’t sunk in yet, I am still in shock, but a few days ago I parted ways with my best friend of 4 years, Riikka.

Why am I making this post public? Because I am hurt, angry and most importantly, I was betrayed. I am not out to ruin her -believe me, you would know it if I were- I am just venting my hurt and anger and believe I have every fucking right to.

She began an attempt to deceitfully fuck me over and in turned betrayed my trust and faith in her. She owned up (I had suspected nothing) when her conscious caught up with her.

I make fan sites to give myself a place away from all of the madness in my offline life - an escapsim as well as a hobby that I enjoy. I adore and look up to Angelina Jolie a lot and she knows this. My Angelina site (essenceofangelina.com) brings me so much joy and she knows this. She also knows I go through periods of lack of motivation for my sites as my offline life becomes too much to give my hobbies any real attention - but she also knows that when I am able to update, that it brings me a happiness that nothing else can.

Two months ago I wasn’t able to get online very much for about one-month and I made her aware of this. At the time a friend of hers became aware of a friends celebrity site that sold for $6,000 and she and this friend wanted to make a huge profit site of their own. Riikka came up with the idea of an Angelina and Brad site.

–Before I carry on, let me make it known that I hinted plenty of times that I wanted her help at eoa as I was struggling on my own and I trusted her as a webmaster. She would always change the subject.–

She took the Angie/Brad site to this friend who then took the idea to another friend and before you know it, the two un-named people want to instead make this a serious, proper fan site. Riikka realises this has gone further than she wanted & pulled out -ie she realised that I may be able to trace the idea back to her and her conscious caught up with her.

She randomly told me these 2 friends ‘may’ be making a site on Angie and I was so upset and angry as I knew that they both have better media access and web designing skills than myself and I also felt a little betrayed, if you will, by one of these people as I know her well enough for her to know what eoa and Angelina means to me. Not to mention that this girl is just in a ‘fan girl’ stage over Angelina.

She was still playing completely innocent and said she felt really fucking horrible for giving me this news and asked if she did the right thing by telling me. I said yes, that I would have been pissed had the site opened and I not been warned. I’m assuiming that after seeing my reaction it must have made her realise she was in deep shit. After this I did not say anything for a long while so she said she was going and to let me know if I needed to talk.

I signed off of msn as ‘offline’ and did some site work and saw her log back on about half an hour later. I did not say hello as I wasn’t in a talkative mood. Eventually I smiled at her and she said she had something she needed to tell me, that she was writing an email to me, and asked if I’d had enough upset for the day. I said I assumed it was our friendship she was talking about and I said give it to me.

I could never had predicted what she then told me. Which brings us back to the present. I immediately blocked her on msn and then sent a few very abusive, colourful emails to her. I tore shreds off of her, told her exactly what I thought of her and nailed her to the fucking ground. In short, that she is nothing but a money hungry, selfish bitch.

She tried fobbing it off saying that I need to keep in mind that she didn’t ‘go through’ with the site, that she never would have gone through with the site without my approval but I was never online and how could I end a friendship over a website.

I bursted all of her bullshit excuses by poiting out the truth: she may not have gone through with it but not only did she think of this idea which she knew would be going behind my back, but she vocalised it which put the wheels of the ‘business fan site’ in motion. That an extra person jumped on board and fucked up her plans is not my problem. I pointed out that she has my number, my email address and that I made her aware that I wasn’t online very much for a while during that period and I said in very colourful language that this isn’t over a site-it was about her betraying my trust and that if I needed to explain that then I didn’t know what to say.

She called defeat and apologised but I seriously doubt she has any idea what she has done. She has fucked over someone else before-April. When April HANDED OVER rwitherspoon.com to Riikka a few years back Riikka sold the domain and got roughly $3,000 for it. For the years of hard work April received 1/10th of this. April put years (more than Riikka had put into it by this stage) of hard work and TONS of money (magazines etc) into this site and handed it over to Riikka without asking for a cent because she thought she could trust her friend to take good care of it. How wrong she was. I found this out a few months ago but did my best not to judge Riikka over it. Perhaps I should have.

What about these two un-named people whose identities you may be able to work out? It’s shitty that they may get dragged into this but that was something Riikka should have thought about when she nominated Angie and Brad to her and then, the 2nd person to the other person. She brought them into this right at that moment so she can explain to them, not me.

Riikka needs to pay less attention to her profit sites and more to the people and things that mean something in her life. Yes there is a lot of money to be made in the fan sites world, but you know what? There is even more you can loose.

Word out.

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