kmkat and her kneedles

When all else fails, whine.

I have a shameful admission.

I may be a bit of a computer geek, but I am a lazy computer geek. One who would rather whine and beg for help than figure it out myself.

(Cookie, are you giggling yet?)

In the comments to my post yesterday, Lisa directed me to the Apple Help topic on how to move the iPhoto library to a different location. Duh. Why didn't I do a little internet research myself?

Lazy.

Upon further reflection, however, I decided that my whining had more to do with my confidence in my own abilities (or lack thereof) and fear of failure (mainly the latter). The same thing happened last year when I whined about how my Apple Magic Mouse was so unreliable. Erika pointed me toward a site that described how to use folded bits of aluminum foil and paper to make the battery connections more solid. 

Now, in my own defense, I have no problem googling and YouTube-ing for help on a knitting problem*. I guess I have more confidence in my knitting abilities than my computer abilities. It helps that one can actually see one's knitting; computers are virtual -- everything happens behind the curtain.

Okay. Not lazy. Scared.

Will I use this new-found knowledge of myself to my advantage? Will I do a little research on my own next time?

Stay tuned...

* See, Cookie, I'm not that bad!

Muttering through Mother's Day.

1. 537 :: is more than 400
2. Horizon :: line.
3. Episode :: seizure.
4. Character :: -driven.
5. Crossed :: town bus.
6. Shipping :: charges.
7. Jump :: Whoopee Goldberg.
8. Bowling :: Lebowski.
9. Grumpy :: Old Men.
10. Them :: Us.

 

I celebrated my own Mother's Day yesterday -- spent pretty much the entire day in my recliner reading, watching Netflix, drinking coffee/soda/wine (as the day progressed), and knitting. This is Smokey's weekend to work (always with the night shifts) so when he is home he is tucked up in his bed with two dogs and a cat and a box fan for white noise. Today I might be productive. Hard to say, really. 

 

Reading: 
A few weeks ago I read a piece in The Nation by Deborah Kopaken Kagan about her experiences as a woman author and how she was demeaned by the publishing industry. I was so inspired/enraged by her experience I clicked over to bn.com and bought all four of her books to read on my iPad. (I also clicked over to her website and sent her an email telling her what I did; she emailed back that it made her cry.) Anyhow, I want to recommend her books. She came from an ordinary middle-class background, graduated from Harvard, moved to Paris, worked as a photojournalist covering a lot of gritty stuff (ex., she went into Afghanistan alone during the Soviet-Afghan war), eventually married, had three kids, started to write. The woman has lived more in her 40-odd years than a dozen other other people put together. I highly recommend her books, especially Shutterbabe (memoir) and The Red Book (fiction). Her collection of essays, Hell Is Other Parents, is pretty damned good, too.

Yesterday's book was Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich. I had read the first 60+ pages in fits and starts and was not particularly engaged by it, but yesterday I decided to give it a chance to pull me in. Which it did, in spades. Protagonist is a quant who specializes in the odds of disasters; the 3-person consulting firm he works for makes him rich. Then a real mega-disaster hits New York City -- essentially Hurricane Sandy plus Katrina -- and his life changes. Some of the scenes were lifted straight out of the news stories of Katrina. Good book, four out of five stars.

Last night I startd NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. Creepy as hell, that one. I follow the author on Twitter. He is currently on tour for the book and every day posts photos of readers attempting to kill him in various ways.

 

Knitting:
I am enjoying having several projects to hand at all times. A hat, a pair of socks, the top-down set-in sleeve sweater, a scarf of the same yarn as the hat. They are strewn about my chair in various stages of doneness. When I sit down there is the delicious feeling of What shall I pick up this time? Project monogamy, begone!

Stuff:
Remember the humungous external hard drive? I have moved most of my data files over to it and gone into my most-often used programs to direct them to that drive for files. Two programs have me stumped, though: Excel and iPhoto. I can deal with the former, but iPhoto is being a bugger. I have searched through all its menus and preferences and cannot find a place to tell it where to store its files. My internal 160GB hard drive has 76GB of photos. It would be nice to get them all moved and backed up. All suggestions welcome. (I started to email Younger Son yesterday to ask him but got distracted, had to reboot, lost the email, yada yada. So I'm asking y'all.) 

No photos popped into my head to illustrate today's post. Here, in honor of Mother's Day, is a gratuitous one from 1984 of me being a mom to Elder Son.

Mutterings, knitting, cars, computers. And stuff.

1. Interests :: varied.
2. Bloom :: Harold.
3. Ceiling :: sky.
4. Tears :: roses.
5. Jerk :: chicken.
6. Weight :: free.
7. Friends :: many.
8. Camera :: lens.
9. Chicken :: jerk.
10. Hose :: garden.

* * * * *

Other items OTN.

A couple summers ago I bought some worsted weight sock yarn when we were on the North Shore. 

The person at the yarn store told me that one skein was not quite enough for a pair of socks, but that I could get two pairs out of three skeins. Hence, my choices.

During tax season I had decided that, when I had free time again, I was going to focus on knitting down my stash. Lots of good yarn there; time to use it. My priority would be to knit up the yarn that didn't fit into my Rubbermaid bins. Although I had planned exactly what I was going to knit first -- and it was not this sock yarn -- when the day actually came to pick up my pointy sticks, this is what I chose.

Sock The First:

It may not be apparent, but this sock is like armor. I knitted the foot and ankle on a US#2 and the leg on a US#3. Result: very dense fabric. The sock is also a little big on me; I am hoping a hot bath will correct that.

Heather, before you ask, here is the inside:

* * * * *

In other news, Younger Son was here yesterday to work on his car with Smokey. Did I ever show you the car they found for him to replace the 14-yo Chevy Metro he had been driving?

Someone had donated it to a tech school in St Paul, which sold it for very, very cheap, like <$2k cheap. YS is thrilled with it -- sunroof, turbo, heated seats, power everything, plus it all works (except for the speedometer, they are still working on that; he uses the GPS in his phone to gauge his speed).

Anyway, while he was here he installed a new external hard drive for me. My Mac Mini has a 160GB hard drive that is nearly full -- it has been nagging me for several months to delete stuff. I had done that, but it was a stopgap measure at best.

This external drive was one that had been sitting around where he works for a couple years; since his firm went to network storage they had no need for individual backup drives. It may not look impressive, but there are two 1TB hard drives in there. He set it up so that one mirrors the other -- automatic backup!

The copying/migration process, which kinda scared me, but to him was just click click, all in a day's work:

* * * * *

The official ice-out day on our lake was yesterday, May 5, the latest anyone can remember. Transiting geese and ducks and loons and maybe even some swans have been sighted and heard. The trees are still completely bare except that I saw that the swamp maple opposite our kitchen window was blooming. Maybe spring/summer really will come.

* * * * *

Well, there you have it:  the minutiae of my recent life. Knitting has been on my mind constantly -- well, except for when I was fretting about the surgery -- and I hope to have more projects to show soon.

Ramblings.

My hip replacement surgery is scheduled for Monday, January 7. There may be a slight tremor in The Force that day, but fear not, my friends. Tis only the mightiness of my new hip.

I may have neglected to mention that this was on the horizon. Back in May when I saw the ortho PA and she recommended, among other things, going gluten-free, the x-ray showed my hip was bone on bone. No wonder it hurt. My surgery had to wait until Smokey was recovered from his back surgery, then until after the October 15 tax season, then for a new x-ray and a CAT scan, then for surgeon to get it scheduled.

I am looking forward to this big-time. Surgery does not scare me at all, even though it probably should; this will be my ninth (2 C-sections, 2 polinidal cysts, twice for the broken ankle, a few other things) so I know much of what to expect. The aftermath may be painful but the eventual ability to walk easily should be worth it.

* * * * *

That massive blizzard that hit the Midwest yesterday mostly missed us. We got less than 1/4" of snow but lots of wind and cold. Temp this morning was 6˚F; 18˚ now.

We are not plowed out yet from the last snow dump that occurred almost two weeks ago. Smokey managed to make one plowing pass from the house to the road before Da Yeep broke. And broke again. And possibly again. We can drive from the road to the garage and pole barn that are 75 feet uphill from the house but must walk the rest of the way. Yep, these northern winters do make one hardy. 

Elder Son is supposed to be driving home from Ann Arbor yesterday and today. We have not heard anything from him. I hope he checked the weather before he left and waited a day. (He may be brillliant, but sometimes his common sense falters. Also, his phone appears to be off.) When he does get here I hope he does not attempt to drive down to the house. The two cars blocking the driveway may be enough of a hint.

* * * * *

I was reading blogs in my Google Reader this morning and saw this over at sneezingcow.com, Michael Perry's website:

Al is married to my good friend Colleen. That quote sounds just like him. Al, a retired English teacher, is also notable for having taught Neil Gaiman's son, Mike, at Menominie HS.

* * * * *

Our geothermal heat system has been giving us fits for several years. The major problem was that the installer's crew(s) knew not what they were doing back in the early aughts, not to mention that the unit we got seems to have been a lemon. After spending thousands (and thou$and$) of dollars having it fixed and replaced and fixed and fixed yet again, we hired a different contractor to replace it. He seems to have somehow missed that fact during the preliminary talks and bid that, while his unit needs 14 gallons/minute to work most efficiently and effectively, our well only produces 6 gallons/minute. So we will perhaps be relying on (expensive!) electric heat to supplement the geothermal. Rats.

* * * * *

On the (very slightly) bright side, the Christmas mittens for our teenage helper are turning out quite nicely. So nicely, in fact, that I am tempted to make a pair for myself in different colors. 

I'd really like to to show how they look, but a few days ago my computer/iPhoto announced that it could not find my iPhoto library of several thousand photographs. I have searched the hard drive myself to no avail. My Mac Mini had been acting unreliably this fall, so about six weeks ago I hooked up a backup drive and turned on Time Machine to back up my hard drive. Great, I thought, I'll just do a restore. So far repeated Restores have not helped, nor have they actually restored anything. Neither the Apple site nor Google have been particularly helpful so far, either; their tips on fixing iPhoto don't work for my problem.

So you won't be seeing any photos here for awhile...

* * * * *

Have I bummed you out sufficiently with all my (admittedly minor) complaints? Good, my work here is done.

Oh, the cleverness of me.

 

So. I was getting tired of the wallpaper on my computer. It was a lovely closeup of a autumn leaves on the ground that I stole borrowed from Baxterknits, (with her permission), but it was weeks old and it's winter now. folks!

Let me tell you the cleverness of me.

I put all my photos of winter scenes into one folder and had my computer use that folder for the wallpaper, changing every minute.

This was fine for an hour or two, then I noticed that I was seeing the same damned photos over and over and over. Booorrrr-iiinnnngggg.

Okay, here comes the cleverness.

I went to photopin.com, a site for free CreativeCommons photos and searched for various winter-themed photos. Downloaded some I liked and put them into the folder. Rinse and repeat until I had enough photos there that I won't get bored.

 

 

 

 

   

 

Note: when I downloaded the photos I was not thinking about doing a post, so I didn't copy the attributions that are required when using the photos online. My bad, but I'm not going back to search for the exact photos and get the attributions. Sorry, internets...

Fighting with technology. It's not a pretty sight.

So yesterday I went to sync my iPod with my computer -- take off the audio books I have listened to, add new ones, sync my calendar and address book, yada yada. I have done this many, many times over the last five years or so. This time a message comes up saying that there is a new version of iTunes, do I want to update, I click Yes without really thinking about it.

Error message 2003 (which, incidentally, is NOT on the list of error messages I found on the Apple site), something in some software is hosed, cannot update, yada yada.

I fiddle with it and end up wiping the iPod and restoring it to its factory default settings, which I have also done several times in the past. Except that this time it never really restores, just hangs up about a third of the way through. 

So I unplug it, reboot it, close and reopen iTunes, and try again.

Twice, same result.

Grrr.

I started to draft an email to my tech consultant -- that would be Matthew -- when it occurs to me that I could instead send this same summary to Apple tech support and ask for help. On the way to doing that I googled "iPod error code 2003" and eventually found out how to fix the problem.

I told you all that to tell you this, in particular the part in bold face.

The fix:

1. Be sure the iPod cable is plugged directly in the computer. Do not use a hub. Check.
2. Turn off the iPod. Check.
3. Hold down the Home button, then keep holding it down while plugging the cable into the iPod and keep holding it until the iPod shows the iTunes symbol with a cable under it.
4. When iTunes says, "iPod found in restore mode", click on Restore or set up a new iPod.
   

 

Exactly how long would it have taken me to figure that out on my own? Roughly forever, I think...

Which is about how long it takes an iPod to copy everything back onto itself.

 

photo credit: guccio@文房具社 via photopin cc

"Remember when..."

"...you had to plug a computer into the wall just to get a blazing fast 56kbps connection? Look what my phone did today. Technology, huh?" (email from Younger son)

He rooted his phone, a Samsung, I think.

Drive-by bullets.

• Smokey continues to improve. Very, very slowly. 
   
• He googled "L5 fusion recovery" and found a site/BBS with posts from people with his same surgey and with recoveries that lasted weeks or months and who suffered from pain that he doesn't have.
   
• He now reminds himself how much worse it could be.
   
• Still, it will be a long, slow recovery.
   
• Boring.
   
• It has been ungodly hot and humid here.
   
• 88˚ in the house.
   
• Blech.
   
• Those of you who live where hot and humid summers are the norm and are thinking "Wimp!", imagine that you had 4 - 6 weeks in the winter where the warmest it got was -10˚F. 
   
• That is a rough equivalent of what this summer has been for us Northern types.
   
• Happily, the bedroom is air-conditioned.
   
• Sadly, the drain holes on the window air conditioner were plugged.
   
• I have used a handheld wet vac on the floor next to Smokey's bed twice. 
   
• Unplugged the drain holes yesterday.
   
• Set up two fans to dry out the carpet.
   
• Keeping fingers crossed.
   
• A miracle occurred sometime while I was sleeping last night.
   
• When I came out of the bedroom this morning, the house was comfortable.
   
• A mere 80˚.
   
• I opened the window in the bedroom and pulled back the curtains.
   
• Smokey said the sunlight and fresh air were a boost to his spirits.
   
• He generally prefers our bedroom to be more of a cave -- dark and cool.
   
• Even dark and cool can get boring.
   
• Bald eagle just flew over the yard.
   
• Life could be a lot worse.

Blogger note: I wrote this yesterday afternoon but just as I tried to preview and publish it, my mouse stopped working. For the umpteenth -- well, third -- time in as many days. Did you know that without a mouse you cannot do ANYTHING? I tried to publish it from my iPad, but hitting "Publish" there did nothing. (Why not, Typepad? When are you going to put out a mobile blogging app, huh?) My googling for solutions came to naught. Then I mentioned my problem in a comment on Erika's blog, and BINGO! she sent me a link to a troubleshooting page, from whence I fixed the problem! Her google-fu is clearly superior to mine. Thanks again, Erika!)

Techie help needed.

I would like to add Google Analytics to this blog because I am a geek and a nerd and I like statistics. And because someone else whose blog I read -- sorry, no longer remember who it was -- mentioned that she uses Google Analytics and I want to be cool like her.

So I signed up and found the instructions and copied the code that has to be added to the blog... and got totally stumped. The TypePad Knowledge Base says to copy the UA number of my Google Analytics account onto my Blog Settings > Stats page, but I cannot find a Stats page. I copied it into the appropriately labeled box on the Settings > Add-Ons page, but that hasn't produced any stats.

Do any of youse guys with a TypePad blog use Google Analytics? Can you tell me in non-technical words of one syllable how to add it to mine?

TIA.

The saga of the broken washer.

You know your washer is A Lemon when there is a song and video about what goes wrong with it.

From this site:

"This song is dedicated to all of the Maytag Neptune Front Loaders and explains a common failure on these machines and offers a solution. The failure is the door latch wax motor, part # 12002535, which will fail on all Neptunes that shipped with them. Once you have this failure your Neptune will not enter the high speed spin and your clothes will be soaking wet after wash cycle completes. For more Maytag Neptune information see http://www.neptunehelp.com."

From what Smokey and I can figure, the wax motor is the thing that locks the door on the washer when it goes into its high-speed spin cycle. If it does not function properly to lock the door, the washer will not spin. We think that the wax melts, allowing the door to lock; when the spin cycle is done, the wax cools, rehardens, and unlocks the door. Whoever designed this li'l hummer had clearly never heard of the KISS principle. ("Keep It Simple, Stupid!")

I would like to say here that every one of those photos of the inner workings of the washer look veeerrrry familiar to me. Whenever Smokey had to remove and/or replace a part, I had to hold the door or the control panel or something. He could look at those photos right now and name every single wire, switch, and microswitch.

The washer was free to us (had belonged to my mother-in-law, who washed no more than one or two loads a week in it for four years), so disregard that $900 price tag. To date we have spent perhaps $50 on repair kits/parts and about that at the laundromat. Still a lot cheaper than a new washer :)

For the record, no, the washer is not fully functional yet in spite of any number of attempts to make it so. We still have high hopes, though -- there are lots of helpful instructions and remedies out there on the internet, plus one guy even emailed Smokey a long list of trouble-shooting steps. Eventually we will get the right combination and part and the phase of the moon will be right and the incantations will finally take effect and Voila! My washer will work again!

Until then you can find me at the laundromat...

New toy.

The scroll wheel on my wireless mouse stopped working months ago. Eventually I decided it was time to replace the mouse, but right about then Apple announced its new trackpad, and I decided to try one of those instead. My plan was to buy one in Minneapolis when we went there to pick up Andrew at the airport. I'd see if I liked it, and if not, I could return it.

So we stopped at Best Buy on the way to the airport.

Out of stock.

The clerk told me they had received two.

Think about that. Two.

He also said he thought that the Apple store in the Mall of America -- which I had hoped to avoid because it would take far more time to get in and out of the megamall -- was even less likely to have them in stock. Apparently BB has more pull with Apple because they sell more stuff.

Think about that, too.

So I gave up and ordered one directly from Apple.

 

The verdict: I like it just fine, maybe not quite as much as a really good mouse with eleventy-seven buttons, but just fine. It cost about the same as a mouse like that and takes up slightly less space on the desk than the mouse pad (and it matches my keyboard, although it is not comfortable to line them up with each other like the Apple ads show them) so I'll keep it.

And that's the news from Chez Kat™ today.

Better safe than sorry.

Yesterday I got vaccinated against H1N1.

This morning I had my annual mammogram.

I just signed up for online data backup for my computer (already have a external hard drive that backs up automatically every hour or so).

...and if I ever knit lace I will use a life line. That is all.

* * * * *

I lied. That is not all.

Last night I had the delightful experience of joining four other local fiber crafters (3 knitters, 1 crocheter) for a couple hours of fibery fun, chatting, and a scrumptious chocolate dessert. I may have [finally] found my knitting group :) Thanks, Julie, for the invite!

* * * * *

I found this in the readme.txt file that came with the online backup software.

"Mozy may protect you from a zombie invasion in a post-apocalyptic environment."

Good to know...

Thanks, Cookie!

My most grateful gratitude to Cookie, who pointed out what was killing my blog layout. Thanks, Cookie, you absolutely rock!

Random Sunday.

Matthew wants you to admire his no-longer-new shoes...

...and his new cell phone.

This 19-yo has the same PDA/phone that my accounting firm furnishes to the partners, while his father and I stumble along with our prepaid Tracfones. Huh.

* * * * *

My Mac keyboard went wacky on me last week. It was working fine when I used it in the morning; when I came home that evening a wide swath of keys from the "m" over to the arrow keys and up to the 9 and 0 keys had stopped working. Futz. We dug around here and found an old Dell keyboard; it had sticky keys that needed to be struck HARD to make them work, but it was functional. When Matthew came up for the weekend he sold me his own Mac keyboard for half price. It is tres sweet.

What's so special about that? you ask. Looks just like a keyboard, you say.

Check this out:

Like I said. Tres sweet.

* * * * *

I took Matthew out for lunch yesterday. We went to one of my favorite places, a restaurant overlooking the mill pond in a nearby village.

The Thirsty Otter, it is called; recent new ownership changed the name from The Fox Den. By any name it is really just a small-town bar that added a kitchen and much later added an outdoor deck and even later an outdoor bar. The food is nothing special -- decent burgers, etc. -- but I love that we can eat outside without reservations nor waiting in line nor paying a premium price for the food.

This group was just finishing when we arrived.

The Red Hat Society is alive and well in Polk County. The chapter that meets a bit farther north styles itself the Rowdy Red Hat Mamas.

I am not sure exactly how rowdy they get...

...what with the canes and the need for a strong arm to lean on and all, but I am absolutely sure they have a lot of fun.

* * * * *

A package came in the mail on Friday. From #1 son via Amazon. For my birthday.

He had told me that not everyone might consider it a gift, but that he did and he was pretty sure that I would. (I think the Amazon personnel  left something out of the gift card message -- it does not quite, uh, you know.)

It was a book. By Thomas Pynchon. I tried to read one of his books 35 years ago and it was tooooooo hard.

I am touched by his faith in my intellect.

* * * * *

Matthew has a complaint about his Blackberry keypad.

The characters on the lower half of each key are the one that type without any extra effort; in order to type the character on the upper half of the key you have to hit shift or some other key first. So it would make sense to put the more commonly used characters on the lower half of the keys, right? Please direct your attention to the keys in the right half of the third row. Who uses the dollar sign more than the comma or period? Matthew's theory is that the Blackberry is the phone of choice for drug dealers.

* * * * *

Smokey's best friend from high school is visiting for two weeks. Here they are chuckling over their h.s. yearbook.

John (Yick-Chung) is way smart, a Ph.D. in physics who worked on the Star Wars program. Now he is retired. Last week the two of them went camping north of Grand Marais on the North Shore of Lake Superior. They cooked on the Coleman stove and ate pizza at Sven & Ole's and sat quietly looking at the harbor. We are giving John lessons in how to enjoy life. We are really, really good at that.

Spring, part the third.

For all the glory that is spring in the north woods, there are some less than delightful bits.

I think this guy must have spent his winter burrowed deep into the duff on the floor of the woods. Now he is on our deck railing getting a tan. I let him be; no critter, no matter how capable of giving me a nasty ouch, deserves to be swatted after surviving the winter. Unless it is a mosquito; then all bets are off.

Other less than savory aspects of spring are the wood and deer ticks.

Lower left, something called a star tick, which we do not have here. Middle, an adult female deer tick -- those are the ones that transmit Lyme disease. Upper right, adult wood tick, aka dog tick. I found this photo online and stole it because I couldn't find the ones I took last spring of the eight wood ticks I pulled off Hannibal The Fearless Who Fancies Himself To Be An Outdoor Cat.

Like many things in nature, the tick population varies from year to year. Last year we were inundated with ticks. Boo! Hiss! This year, they are almost non-existent. Yay! I think I have found fewer than half a dozen so far this year, which is, I think, a record low for this date.

Despite that, for the past couple days I have felt them crawling on me everywhere. I have not found a single one for over a week, however, so I attribute this annoyance to an over-active tactile sense.

There are the ubiquitous mosquitoes, vector of the West Nile virus:

Don't worry, we shooed that one away before it bit my boy.

There are other less-than-wonderful aspects of warmer weather. Follow the link if you want to see an over-40 woman wearing a too-young-for-her, way-too-short garment while doing her exercise walk. She was doing laps around the block Saturday while we were stuck for a couple hours with what turned out to be a broken timing belt on the Aveo. I probably shouldn't be snarky; she was, after all, very trim and was doing a good thing. She had just made an unfortunate wardrobe choice.

To remove that last image from your eyeballs, here is a sign on the wall of the diner where we had a very tasty brunch that day, right before we discovered that the car wouldn't start.

I had to pay for my coffee, darn. No gossip to trade.

* * * * *

Thanks to everyone who chimed in with advice on yesterday's post about the Summer Chevron sweater. There is a l-o-n-g thread over in Ravelry (special thanks to those of you who told me to check there) that details all the trials and tribulations of that pattern. Apparently it has a wacky row gauge that no one can achieve, and the deep V neck tends to become a wide V when worn. I am still undecided about whether to attempt it with my bamboo yarn, but now I know where to go for more help. Thanks, guys! You are the best!

* * * * *

As much as I love having #1 son home for a couple months, it has been driving me absolutely NUTS that his computer seems to hog our DSL connection. I have forbade him from using BitTorrent -- or downloading anything -- between the hours of 8 am and 1 pm, which is my preferred internet time. But even though he has been completely cooperative about our agreement, sometimes my connection gets so slow it is impossible to do anything. Every single page gets the "Cannot find www.xyz.com. Please check your spelling..." message.

Today I got so frustrated that while he was out for his daily run and clearly not using his computer, I went downstairs to his bedroom to see what was open on his Mac Pro. I discovered that the problem seems to be that Skype, even when just sitting there with a chat window open but not being used, continues to hog our internet connection. I closed Skype, came back upstairs, and walla! my internet connection was fine. Hurrah! Too bad we didn't figure this out a month ago; he leaves to go back to NY a week from Sunday, and I had been counting the days.

All the acronyms you'll ever need. And a contest.

From a weekly Circuits e-mail from David Pogue, technology columnist of the New York Times:

* GI -- Google it

* MOP -- Mac or PC?

* FCAO -- five conversations at once

* IIOYT -- is it on YouTube?

* DYFH -- did you Facebook him/her?

* BIOI -- buy it on iTunes

* CMOS -- call me on Skype

* GGNUDP -- gotta go, no unlimited data plan

* WLF -- with the lady friend

* JUOC -- jacked up on caffeine

* 12OF -- twelve-o'clock flasher (refers to someone less than competent with technology, to the extent that every appliance in the house flashes "12:00")

* SML -- send me the link

* RHB -- read his/her blog

* MBLO -- much better-looking online

* KYST -- knew you'd say that

* NBL -- no battery left

* CTTC -- can't talk, teacher's coming

* TWD -- typing while driving

* CMT (CMF, CMM, CMB) -- check my Twitter (Facebook, Myspace, blog)

* CYE (CYF, CYM, CYB)--check your email (Facebook, Myspace, blog)

And a few just for iPhone owners:

* SPLETS -- send pics later; Edge too slow

* CSVUI -- can't send video, using iPhone

* BPWMI -- boss playing with my iPhone

* SIK -- sorry, iPhone keyboard

* OOM -- out of messages (for iPhone users who haven't upgraded their AT&T "200 messages a month" plan)

Finally, it occurred to me: Why should the convenience of online shorthand be the province of teenagers and twentysomethings? There ought to be a list that we, their parents and employers, can use, too. And now there is:

* WIWYA -- when I was your age

* YKT – you kids today

* CRRE -- conversation required; remove earbuds

* WDO? -- what are you doing online?

* NIWYM -- no idea what you mean

* NCK -- not a chance, kid

* B2W -- back to work

* AYD? -- are you drunk?

* LODH -- log off, do homework

* DYMK? -- does your mother know?

* IGAT -- I've got abbreviations, too

© New York Times Company, 2007

* * * * *

Becky is having a contest. Go tell her what she could make from her stash of Rowanspun 4-ply and have a chance to win 1600 yds of that yarn in the color Sludge.

Before and after.

Before:

After:

Can't tell the difference? Here's a hint:

I upgraded the memory in my Mac Mini from 256MB to 1GB. Now I can listen to iTunes while prepping a blog post in Firefox and uploading the photos to iPhoto and editing them in ImageWell. I could do it before, but I spent an inordinate amount of time gazing at the little spinning rainbow hamsters-are-pedaling-as-fast-as-they-can icon. The upgrade to Firefox 2 seems to have been the straw that broke the hamsters' backs.

If anyone wants a used but perfectly functional 184-pin DIMM thingy, let me know. I'd be happy to mail it to you gratis.

From what I can tell on the net, the same memory modules are used with Mac Mini G4 / 1.25 / 1.42 / 1.5 GHz processors, plus others. Modules like this one go for 99¢ to $9.99 US on eBay, so it's not like I giving away anything really valuable.

* * * * *

Today's Funny Foto.

"Mmmmm! This disguise is so good they'll never guess who ate that steak that was defrosting on the counter."

Cheap yarny goodness and visual funnsies

One of the posts at the Yahoo Dulaan group mentioned that www.smileysyarns.com was having a sale, so I surfed on over and scored myself some yarn.

All told, a little over $100 and I'm set for some charity knitting. On the outside of the box:

At left, 2 balls of Lion Brand Watercolors, an ack-wool blend destined for a fluffy-but-warm Dulaan scarf or two.

On top, 12 skeins of Bernat Lana worsted, 100% merino wool. I've already made 2 Dulaan hats from this. Although the label says merino, it doesn't feel as soft as merino, more like ordinary wool.  I've been wanting to have a whack of worsted-weight wool for when I feel like knocking out a hat or attempting some mittens. Now I'm set for a while.

At the right, 3 50-gram skeins of Filatura Lanarota Puno, 100% alpaca, worsted weight, destined for the Red Scarf Project.

Inside the box, from left:

6 balls of Cervinia Londra, a wool/alpaca/ acrylic chunky weight. I'm hoping to get one Dulaan hat from each 86-yd. ball; if not, I'll have to combine some of them. The colors all look good together so that shouldn't be difficult.

8 skeins of Lite-Lopi worsted; 5 blue, 2 natural, 1 gray, for a Dulaan sweater, pattern TBD.

8 skeins of Panda Woolbale (yeah, I'd never heard of it either) 100% Australian wool worsted. I bought it intending to make Dulaan socks of it, but after seeing the pictures of the barefoot children in Ryan's blog I'm thinking felted clogs instead. I bought the Fiber Trends pattern to make a Christmas present, knowing that I would probably use that pattern again and again.

* * * * *

My sweetie recently bought me a delightful new/used camera, a Fuji FinePix S5100.

(I can't show a picture of my actual camera because obviously I would have to take it with the old cheapo Kodak, whose batteries are, as always, dead. That thing ate batteries like there was no tomorrow. So here a couple pictures from the web.)

I'm loving this camera. It has all the usual digital camera bells and whistles, plus a 10X optical zoom (take that, Kodak! I spit on your 3X optical zoom!), what seems to me to be a very good "recovery time" between shots, and makes the most endearing electronically amplified click when I snap the shutter. It's totally autofocus if I want that, which I do, but also allows for several other methods that I haven't explored yet. Plus it has a macro setting, ditto. And videos with sound, ditto. And other stuff I don't even know that I don't know.

What I need to do is dedicate some time to learn the features and read the manual and experiment. I've done a little of that but not nearly enough. Time is always in short supply. Anybody got a day stretcher I could borrow?

Besides learning about the new camera, I have been acclimating myself in the Mac world after 20+ years as a PC person. The same sweetie that gave me the camera got me a Mac Mini to replace my 5-year-old Dell because he knew that was what I
really wanted. But the bootleg PhotoShop I was using was obviously for Windows and there was no way I would fork over the hundred$ it would cost for a real Mac version, plus I never used 90% of the features of the program. So I have been learning about iPhoto. I was having trouble shrinking the photo files to a manageable size; unlike PhotoShop, iPhoto -- or at least the version I have -- doesn't have that handy "Save for web" feature that automatically does whatever it needs to in order for the photo file to be around 300k. You may have noticed that the photos I've posted in the past couple weeks download v-e-r-y slowly. Sorry about that. I had downloaded a 30-day trial version of PhotoShop for Mac, but I never found the magic "Save for web" button in it.

Since that 30-day trial version expired, though, I searched the web and found a Mac freeware program called Imagewell that seems to do the trick. It's not as one-click as PhotoShop was, but overall it seems to work quite well. There's an upgrade version for sale, but I am resisting even seeing how much it costs. Freeware = good.

Edited to add: I just checked the Imagewell site to get the URL for the link and discovered the upgrade costs all of $9.95. So I did it. Primo me.

 

In which I rant and generally expose my total ineptitude with computers

Knitting:

I started another Dulaan hat. Big whoop.

Computers.

As little as 10 years ago I was the computer guru around our house. My husband, while a genius at electronics and fixing things in general, had never taken much interest in the inner workings of computers, either hardware or software. If a power supply or a fan needed to be replaced he was the go-to guy around here; if the task were installing a second HD or updating software, I was in charge.

Boy, have things changed. Smokey is a lot more fluent with the hardware now – his desktop computer currently lies open on the floor behind me, awaiting the new motherboard he ordered for it (the old one apparently got fried during an electrical storm, despite the surge protector/odds against it happening/yadda yadda). But the big change, one that everyone with a teenager has probably seen, is that #2 son is now the go-to guy for pretty much everything electronic except the actual electronics, and he’s not exactly behind the curve on those, either.

Should I download the latest version of iTunes? Ask Matthew.

I can’t make this frickin’ [fill in the blank] work! Ask Matthew.

How do I start a blog? Ask Matthew.

So yesterday I was trying to figure out how to use Bloglines when the boy came home from work. (Sound and light guy at a nearby professional theater, natch.) I asked him something about BL and amazingly he didn’t know anything about them. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew, I had downloaded the latest version of Opera and updated to IE 7.0, both of which offer built-in feeds. He also recommended that I ditch IE and switch to using Opera, saying he really likes their latest version.

Now, I had finally gotten Bloglines to work and was well into subscribing to my favorite blogs when he entered the scene. After his advice and downloading both browsers, I stopped messing with Bloglines and started using the automatic feed feature of Opera. Have any of you used it? Because I have some issues.

1. Once I subscribe to a blog, I can’t figure out how to Unsubscribe to it. I had the same problem with Bloglines. Ha! I just figured it out:  Feeds | Manage feeds | (select a feed) | Delete. Boy, that was a tough one, huh?

2. Opera doesn’t seem to be able to handle comments on Blogger. Twice today I have tried to comment on a blog post, and both times – after typing the whole damned comment and clicking either “Preview” or “Submit” – I got a little screen saying Blogger couldn’t find the blog I was looking for. After the second time, I opened said blog in IE, wrote the comment (I had ctrl-A’d and ctrl-C’d my comment so I wouldn’t lose it altogether; aren’t I the clever one?), and previewed/posted it with no problem. I guess I will have to subscribe to Blogger feeds in IE and the rest in Opera. Not exactly zipless, but oh, well. Remind me why this is better than Bloglines, please.

3. In Bloglines, when I begin the process to subscribe to a new blog, it lets me preview the different feeds (RSS1, RSS2, atom, whatever). I like that feature because it seems that some feed formats will show the photos and some will not. This preview feature is not present in Opera, as far as I can tell. Remind me again why this is better than Bloglines, please.

4. Lest you think I am trashing Opera, I am not. I like the feeling of NOT using a Microsoft product. It also has a nifty feature that puts an icon at the far right in the address bar whenever I am viewing a site that offers a feed. Click that icon to start the subscription process. Nifty, like I said.

5. IE 7.0 has a nice clean, streamlined toolbar setup at the top of the screen, but I haven’t used it enough yet to make an informed judgment. (My first impression was that it was so streamlined as to be completely useless, but I may be wrong.) I may never use it enough to make that judgment, though, because the &$%*$ browser insists on telling me EVERY SINGLE TIME I OPEN IT

(that’s the screen it opens with) and ON EVERY FRICKIN’ SCREEN THEREAFTER that “Your current security setting put your computer at risk. Click here to change your security settings.” Dammit, I LIKE MY SECURITY SETTINGS! If I wanted to change them I will do so in my own sweet time. There seems to be absolutely no way to turn off this cursed warning. Could it be that the Microsoft behemoth has decided that the way to correct the security flaws that seem to be inherent in every stinkin’ program they write in certain programs is to hound the user until they are sick up and fed change the security settings to whatever it is that MicroGodKingEmperorOfTheUniverseSoft has decided they should be?

7. The so-called “information bar” that appears between the toolbars and the actual website screen has always annoyed me. In IE 6.0 I got rid of it easily and never missed it. In IE 7.0, they say in the so-called “Help” section, “Can I turn off the Information bar? Yes, you can, but we don't recommend it. If you do want to turn it off, you have to turn it off for each type of message.” Do they tell you how? Only to turn it off for pop-up blocking. Nothing about the security warning thing, so it is always there, annoying me at every screen.

8. And another thing I just discovered. In IE 6.0, Typepad offered the choice of viewing a post in progress either as text with the uploaded images or as html. In Opera all I get is the html version. That may be turn out to be a good thing; it certainly forces me to learn their version of more html. Can anyone tell me how to make the print larger in the final post? There was a drop-down list in the no-longer-available view of the editing screen, but no such animal in the html-only screen. (Or I may have found the answer myself. I wrote the post in Word and saved it there in a .txt file. From what I have now read in the Typepad Knowledge Base, if I had saved it in .rtf format, I would see the editing window I was used to. I'll try that next time. Live and learn.)

/rant

I had originally been planning a post in which I asked for help in getting things onto my sidebar in Typepad, but I seem to have spent all my energy and time in venting. Sheesh.