Slight headache is turning into one of greater magnitude. Grr. Some guy left me negative feedback on eBay because he didn’t receive his dvd. This frustrates me a lot because a) I sent it (as well as all the other items sold on that day) the day after I received the payment and b) because he only paid 99 cents for it. ~_~ There’s nothing I can do about it getting lost in the mail! It’s not like my handwriting is illegible or anything; in fact, it’s very neat, so I really have no explanation for it. sigh I really really wish Jules were around right now because he’s the only person I want to talk to. He understands me in a way that no one else ever can, and I know he’d have me feeling better in a matter of minutes. But I’m sure he’s asleep right now so I must endure this annoyance on my own. ~_~

There are also a few other things that are irritating me at the moment. Namely, I feel that some people are taking advantage of Jon and taking his free services for granted. Since he’s moved his servers from his parents’ house to his apartment, he’s had some issues with user accounts and email and such since he’s been moving stuff from one machine to another. Most people have been pretty understanding and patient about that, which is good because it’s stressful enough for him as it is. Many of the people with user accounts on his server are regulars on his IRC channel so they have been keeping up with the changes and have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.

However, some of them are not regulars anymore and seem to only pop in when something isn’t going right with their account. Jon, smartly, has not been fixing broken accounts until those people have approached him about it. What really bothers me is that some of them have been rather impatient about it. I mean, yes, it’s very frustrating when you want to upload things and you can’t access your account. I freely admit that I go into somewhat of a panic if something of mine is out of whack. However, being rude or getting angry about it is just unacceptable to me. The main reason I say this is because Jon offers these people his services for free simply because he’s a kind-hearted soul and he truly enjoys what he does. I believe there may be a few people who pay him a few dollars here or there but in general, people simply do not offer any sort of compensation for his web services. He pays a hefty sum every month for his net access, and has repeatedly said he wishes people would contribute at least something. A lot of the people using his server, admittedly, do not have much money. In fact, most of them don’t have jobs.

Much of my frustration is on Jon’s behalf, I mean, this doesn’t concern me directly. Jon is, though, one of my best friends, and I don’t like seeing people I care about taken advantage of, even if it’s minor. This frustration is justifiable too, considering that I am his only “paying customer.” I have donated several hundreds of dollars towards his servers (to be specific, he’s owed me money and I’ve told him to not worry about paying me back.) One main difference between me and a lot of these other people is that I do have a job and I can afford to pay him something. My website also gets a decent amount of traffic so I take up a bit more bandwidth than most people. So I think it’s fair that I pay him. After all, if any other company were hosting my site, I’d have to pay them. But I just don’t think it’s right for people to pop in, complain about their stuff not working, have him fix it up while he’s busy with other stuff, then disappear again once it’s kosher. I’ve brought this annoyance up a few times and people have snapped at me and taken it very personally, either because they really felt I was unjustified in saying that or they already felt some degree of guilt over it. Whatever the case is, I just wish people would settle down a bit and stop taking things for granted. Jon has enough to worry about right now, what with his whole family moving away from him and trying to get everything in order, as well as the outside consulting he does in addition to his day job. I don’t think people realize just how involved he is in other things, and that he can’t just bend himself over backwards at any given moment. He may wish to, and he may even try to, but I really think people need to be more patient with him, because sometimes he’s just too busy.

sigh

Headache is letting up a bit now, and I feel a bit less angsty, which is a good thing. The injury on my leg is almost completely scabbed over now, which is a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because it’s not as sensitive and painful, but it’s bad because it’s such a large area that it pulls funny when the skin stretches (such as when i cross my legs) so it’s like having a giant piece of duct tape on my leg. It doesn’t really hurt, it just feels really strange and uncomfortable. I really do heal remarkably fast…I must have inherited that from my dad.

Seems like we’ll be heading up to Green Bay sometime tomorrow for a little get together with Peter and Melissa. That will be nice since we haven’t done that since Will left for Seattle. We pretty much slipped out of contact since then…over time, I basically stopped organizing events since people seemed really apathetic towards it and it was difficult to get anyone to be decisive and it just seemed to be a lot more trouble than it’s worth. I mean, yes, I absolutely love hanging out with these people, but I’ve had a lot of things going on recently (moving, etc) so that hasn’t been the first thought on my mind. I really don’t want to fall out of contact with Peter because I consider him a close friend, but it’s difficult to maintain any sort of relationship if no one takes initiative. He’s talked about possibly setting up a friends/movie/gaming night once a month to avoid that sort of thing, which I think is a fantastic idea. So I’m really glad he’s organized a thingie this weekend because it’ll give us all a chance to catch up.

In other news, I’ve won some pieces of a Thule roof rack off eBay this week for a really good price so hopefully I’ll have the whole thing pieced together within the next few weeks. I’m also waiting for my security deposit check to come back from my landlord…I wonder how much he took out of it. He was all set to screw us over normal wear and tear of people living in an apartment. ~_~ I don’t expect to see much of that money ever again. sigh Oh well, such is life.