Someone tell me what to do

Once again, this year’s figure skating season ends June 30th. I wrote about my dilemma involving changing clubs last year, and ended up renewing with the same club because I thought I’d continue doing club ice. (I didn’t.)

I like our club members, for the most part, but I dislike the way the club is run, and I dislike the rink the club is aligned with. (Duh.) The club is rapidly losing members to the competing club, thanks to a better ice rink and a greater amount of professionalism.

I’ve been contemplating joining with our competing club, but honestly, I don’t really like them either! Their rink doesn’t give me the sense of friendliness that I want; most skaters there are extremely suspicious of newcomers, and the coaches eye your every movement. UNCOMFORTABLE.

There’s a new ice rink opening up about thirty minutes northeast of me, which is going to house a CHL pro-hockey team, along with public skating and possibly figure skating (??). I’ll have to weigh my options and decide where I want to skate, but the rink I choose does not equal joining their skating club.

All I really want is a figure skating club I can happily and proudly represent. I think what I’m going to end up doing is joining an out-of-state club. I’m flying up to Maine next week, and while I’m there, I’m planning to check out two. The first I’ve never skated with, but I used some of the second’s club ice last summer and was very happy with the experience. A few other options are around the Washington DC area, and a few more in the New England area.

I wish there was a master list of every club and the qualities each possessed!!

6 Comments

Katie, June 19th 2009 | Posted in rambling, skating

Watch what you get yourself into

I’m so incredibly appalled. Stressed. Annoyed. DISGUSTED.

Awhile ago, I mentioned the rink owner agreed to letting me redesign the website, since malware had taken it over.

I began the project yesterday, and spent SEVEN HOURS on it. They were using Gate Hosting, which let me suggest you NEVER use (it’s REALLY SLOW and tries to manipulate you into paying more money) so after much deliberation about how I wanted to go about removing the virus, I erased everything. All the files, images, etc. And I started over.

I faced another issue, as their account with Gate wasn’t up till July 2nd (plus, I didn’t have a credit card to make a Bluehost account.) Lightbulb moment, hook it up to my Bluehost account, since god knows I have the space. I did that, added on the domain, and waited for the DNS servers to catch up. I then installed the Concrete5 plugin and went from there.

I should have taken screenshots of what it looked like while I was in the process of redesigning. If you knew what the old site looked like, you’d know this looked fucking amazing. And I’m not just saying that because I designed it; IT REALLY LOOKED GOOD. Duh, I still had like ten pages to put up, more calendars and information, in addition to the header image and slideshows. But for just starting it, hell yeah!

And guess what? I EVEN MANAGED TO GET GOOGLE TO REINDEX IT AS A SAFE SITE. No more being flagged as suspicious, as having malware, of being dangerous. The virus is gone. THANKS TO ME! Because guess what? In the month the site had the virus, NO ONE removed it. Or attempted to remove it! NO ONE!

I don’t know if this is a joke to this family, or what. I see that we have competitors. I see that customers judge businesses on the quality of their websites. To me, if I fucking VOLUNTEER to redesign your fucking website, I’m going to do it right. I already go to school full-time! I already have a part-time job! I already am battling with a puppy! I already am in the process of getting adjusted to a new city! I already figure skate! I already have a LIFE! You think I’d offer my services to you FOR FREE for FUN!? People do web-design as a FULL-TIME JOB!! You think I’d offer to redesign the website if I didn’t know how to do it?!??!? I fucking kid you not, I was asked if I knew “what the hell” I was doing by one of their sons.

I received a voicemail this morning from the owner- this is where things started spiraling out of control. The voicemail she left me? I’ve met some rude, mean people in my life, but I have NEVER met anyone THIS HORRIBLE who would say things like that to me when ALL I WAS DOING WAS TRYING TO HELP. I have the clip of her voicemail if anyone is interested (I know a lot of you have already heard it), and she places these wild accusations on me that she can’t even back up! AND SHE’S SUPPOSED TO BE A FUCKING LAWYER!

I called her back furious but attempting to keep my emotions in check. Hillary was right next to me when I returned her call, and while I didn’t scream at the owner, I wasn’t the nicest person in the world. Basically, this woman wants to blame everyone but herself. Website? Not her problem. Zamboni? Someone will get it done. She’s supposed to not only be the rink owner, but also the rink MANAGER and she’s NEVER FUCKING AROUND. And when she is? “Oh yeah… oops, I forgot to schedule someone to open Saturday!” No joke. This is supposed to be a BUSINESS, not a shithole laughingstock.

Anyway, she called me to inform me she wanted everything transferred back. I honestly wish I was kidding. Apparently, little M has gotten jealous that oh, hello, SOMEONE ELSE IS BETTER THAN ME AT MAINTAINING A WEBSITE! and he spread lies to Mommy so he could put up his template. This kid doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He’s been the webmaster for a year now, and things would disappear from the website, or never get put up in the first place. Not to mention his grammar and spelling are terrible! He now thinks he’s uploaded his files to the FTP server, but he clearly hasn’t… since I CHANGED THE PASSWORD YESTERDAY and didn’t tell anyone the new one. I really have no clue what he’s putting where, but it sure isn’t a template on the FTP server! Plus, let’s not forget the fact that he’s been out of school for what, three, four weeks now, and has had all this time to figure out how to get the virus off? All this time to fix the site? And did he? NO.

It’s not my problem I’m more motivated and driven than these people, but I do feel sorry for the customers who no longer have a website and probably won’t for awhile, until (IF) little M can figure everything out.

2 Comments

Katie, June 11th 2009 | Posted in rants, skating

Because I don’t have enough to do already

I’ve been suspicious of my ice rink’s website ever since Sophos started popping up an infected file warning on my computer every time I visited it. But, I never had proof it was coming from this certain website, as Sophos could only tell me that the virus was latched onto one of my cache files, not where it originated from. I quit trying to visit the website, out of fear that my passwords would be stolen or something, because I’m super paranoid like that. But really, I mean HELLOOOO, MY BLOG WAS JUST HACKED!

I warned a few of my skater friends, who basically looked at me like I was crazy and said the site worked just fine for them. WELL, HA! Guess what was flagged yesterday by Google?

The site’s completely fucked up. My dad pulled a bunch of the Google diagnostics and found the malware coming in from China, Latvia, and Florida. Meaning, the website is going to have to be torn down and rebuilt, because there’s pretty much no way to save it without accidentally leaving a hole in the current system.

I’m hopinghopinghoping the rink management lets me redesign the site. I’ve been wanting to do it way before the malware attack, due to the fact that the old site looked like shit and extremely unprofessional, but I never got around to asking. The owner’s son said today that he’d talk to his mom, so everyone cross your fingers for me!!

2 Comments

Katie, June 2nd 2009 | Posted in rambling, skating

Keep the drama in Canada, fool.

This new Canadian coach, whom I am dubbing CC (acronym explanation publicly coming never, so ask if you want to know), has waltzed into our rink like she’s the fucking best thing since sliced bread just because she may/may not have had a student or two go to Nationals. (American Nationals? Canadian Nationals? WHO KNOWS.)

Why she chose our rink to coach at and not the supercompetitive rink across town IF SHE’S SO GOOD is beyond me. I will be the first to admit that I am always somewhat suspicious of new people, but I generally have a pretty damn good feel for who is good and who is bad. And let me tell you, my radar is going BIZERK with red lights and noise and caution tape.

So she waltzes on in here, right, gets a few students literally handed to her because we have nice coaches who feel bad for her having no students of her own down here. Then she grabs a couple of our good skaters who kinda were looking for new coaches. Our nice coaches notice this, as do the rest of us, but hey, they were kinda in the market for a new coach, so whatever.

THEN, she goes and helps my friend M with one of her jumps. Now, this wouldn’t be a HUGE faux pas at our rink, because generally all the coaches know/like each other. However, I certainly wouldn’t go as far as to say this is a common occurrence. Actually, come to think of it, this almost never happens. Skaters giving other skaters advice, sure… but coaches giving other coaches’ students advice? No. Mistake of CC #1: Giving tips to another coach’s student when no one is quite sure what to make of the coach herself yet. I honestly don’t know what was going through her head. Maybe she’s never heard of morals? Unwritten code of conduct??

THEN, she tells M to not tell anyone. Mistake of CC #2: There are no secrets in an ice rink!!!! Everyone, eventually, will know EVERYTHING. Plus, this request is so unusual that of course M forgets. M’s coach asks her if CC helped her. M says yes. Hockey player who is close to CC asks M if CC helped her. M says yes, again. All coaches suspicious. Hockey player tells CC that M told him how CC helped her.

THEN, CC HAS THE NERVE to go up to M today and question her. “Why did you tell people I helped you?” She tells M that her reputation is now ruined. M obviously now feels like this is her fault. Mistake of CC #3: She makes MY FRIEND M CRY!!!!!!!!

Oh look, three strikes. You’re out.

And all I have to say is this: If you’re idiotic enough to go around helping other coaches’ students when you are still trying to find your place around our rink, then you deserve the consequence of having a bad reputation. And guess what? THAT’S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT.

5 Comments

Katie, May 28th 2009 | Posted in friends, rants, skating

Bits and Pieces

My feelings of anger that my blog was hacked on Thursday have been minimized by the fact that also on Thursday, I finally accomplished something huge (for me) in figure skating. I quit skating last Spring because I could not, for the life of me, get this one jump. I had this mental block; I knew I could do it, but yet I just couldn’t. I’ve been somewhat trying it recently, but on Thursday I FINALLY GOT IT. And I got it CONSISTENTLY! It still needs more height and better rotation, but hell, I couldn’t even get off the ice before. HUGE accomplishment.

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One of my best friends, Erin, came into town randomly Thursday. She decided at noon to get on a 3pm flight from St. Louis to Kansas City, then to leave the next morning. I picked her up from the airport, and we went shopping down on the Plaza and all around had a good time! I can’t waaaait till she moves back this fall!

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My poor Arabella was sick yesterday. =( I gave her one of Jack The Dog’s big food-bone thingys the day before yesterday, because I ran out of her little rawhide bones. She wolfed it down in like ten seconds flat. I’m guessing that’s why she puked everywhere. She seems to be okay now, though!

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All of my Tulsa cousins have arrived and are settling in here with us in Lawrence. My thirteen-year-old cousin Erin made a blog, click here to see! They all go home on Monday, except for Amy who’s staying here a week longer. We’ll probably be hanging around the lake, the rink, the pool, the gymnastics place, etc etc…

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Aaand, I’ve been contemplating legally changing my name. I’ve always gone by Katie, a nickname of my middle name (Katherine) and have never used my given first name. So I might just go legally change my first name to Katherine and stick a version of my first name as my middle name. Make sense?

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P.S. MANY, MANY, MANY!! thanks to Mary for the new custom header!!!

2 Comments

Katie, May 23rd 2009 | Posted in family, friends, pets, photos, rambling, skating