((patient waiting mode ON))I'm waiting along with others for the powerbook arrivals. ((patient waiting mode OFF)) It's cold, it's not AS cold, it's nasty. When it's not as cold, it's sloppy. Yeah. Everything still looks pretty nice because it's so cold that the big dumps of snow we got are still around. Last weekend our predicted "dusting to an inch" turned out to be 7 inches of extremely light and fluffy.
On the quilting front, I've gone back to making little pink and green blocks. Guess I should take some new photos for y'all.
I try to do the same number of blocks that end in pink and those that end with green each time I make a batch, because I need an equal number when I'm done. Being essentially a lazy person, I don't like to have to count and recount to see how I'm doing. This way keeps it interesting and I know I will end up with what I need or at least close. Close counts.
I'm off to the grocery store now - meatballs? soup? Something warm and hearty because rumor has it we're in for more wintery weather this weekend!
OK, exciting news on a couple different fronts. First, the first self-nominee for the as-yet-unnamed awards which will be issued from this site. Interestingly, the self-nominee also suggested a possible category. Now this is what I love about the web, people -- total participation and cooperation. So if you want to nominate yourself, feel free to suggest a couple categories as well!
In other news, OK, I can't keep this a secret -- I ordered my new computer today. A lovely 12" powerbook.
As I'm writing this from my 14" G3 powerbook aka Pismo, I feel vaguely like a smitten youth overcome with the balmy and hormone-laden breezes of spring, but there you go. It's served me well since I got it and continues to surprise me with it's pep and responsiveness. Jaguar and the Pismo are great together.
I hear the siren call of the G4 is all. I had the opportunity and the will and the rest as they say is waiting.
Customers who wear clothes also shop for: Clean Underwear from Amazon's Target Store Ladybug Rain Boots from Amazon's Nordstrom Store Pet Socks from Amazon's Urban Outfitters Store Helicopter Sleepwear Sets for Baby from Amazon's Old Navy Store
One can only imagine what the customers who don't wear clothes shop for....(insert rim shot here)
Susan over at BobtheCorgi has a plan. No, wait - it's a real, four part plan. Phase four of the plan is:
Phase IV - and so I am revisiting the idea of awarding The Blorgies again and I recommend that you all do the same thing. Make your own awards and give them out as you see fit. Just lay it right out there in the beginning - look at the statement of intent I made when I gave out the 2002 awards
This seems like a cause worth rallying around. The heck with the big glitzy awards that everyone seems to covet. I've decided I'm going to give out some awards, whether you're wanting them or even if you're prepared for the glory of it all. And that's about all you'll be getting too - a bit of glory to bedeck your resume.
So stay tuned for a new award. In the meantime, may I suggest that you lay in a supply of sparkly things? And if you're interested in being considered (keep it clean folks) please email me.
Written at:
1/23/2003 10:57:00 PM
whoooo hoooo! This post is coming to you LIVE from a 12" powerbook. It's just plain stunning. YES.IT.IS. Eat your hearts out folks. This is probably my next computer. Whooooo hooooo!
Let's get back for a moment to that thing about me being mean. I have to tell you that I had the best time talking with some mall.... uh.... twerps today. Three very young girls (more on this later) came charging into the store. Only, of course, they think of it as their personal internet cafe/arcade. One was miffed that she couldn't use "her" machine because I was using it myself. I allowed that, indeed, we weren't an internet cafe, we were a store and I was using this computer.
OK, so they get on with their real mission which is to talk to each other via AOL Instant Messenger. They're 6 feet away from each other but they're chatting via the net. The one closest to me said she was going to go over to help one of the other ones, but she was going to leave her IM stuff open ok? she'd be right back.
Well, I said, that's not really a good idea because someone, like me, might go over and use your IM account or take it by changing the password. This totally horrified the girl. I wouldn't really do that, would I, she asked? Oh yes. I have and I will (which is true). And I tried to explain how if you wanted to and found someone's account open you could pretend to be them, or change their password or get their profile information. But WHY would I do this, she asked? Well, that would be because I'm mean.
This blew this young girl away. She asked me a bunch of times - are you really mean? Oh yes. Matt walked by, so I asked him - hey matt, am I mean? OOOOoooh yeah, he said.
Eventually the girl didn't quite know what to do about this so she went back to chatting. No doubt they were chatting about this rather authorative older woman who made no bones about being mean!
Awhile later the same girl comes back and wants to ask me a question. Are you really mean? Oh yes, I answered. Definitely. Why? Just because. But are you really mean? Yes, we've established that. I explain again why it's important to log out of your email and IM account when using a public computer. But are you mean? Yes.
Suddenly she asks "How old do you think we are?" Now I'd been puzzling over this. These were very short girls, and no real frame or physical development. They were wearing the uniform of much older mall rats - low slung jeans with skimpy tops. I really thought they might be 9. I hedged my bets. FIrst I asked how old she thought I was. She thought maybe in my thirties. I told her I thought that was very nice. Then I said - I think you're all probably 11.
well! I had seriously dissed them. what!??? How can you say that???? we're THIRTEEN! Of course I was laughing about this. I don't believe they were thirteen at all. One of the other girls came over the and got in my face asking how I could believe they were anything but 13. My reply -- well I believe you're about to be out of this store if you don't get out of my face! LOL
We did a couple more rounds of "are you really mean?" and then the game ended and they went off to play with someone else.
So let's be clear here folks - I'm mean. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. A few minutes later I went to lunch and I really hoped to meet them in the food court. I was going to go over and tell them that they were going to buy my lunch or at least a soda. I imagined their howls of protest. And my reply would be - of course you're buying my lunch. Because I'm mean!
The first time I saw this ad for H&R Block I couldn't believe it. The next time, I marched myself down to the computer, poked around in H&R Block's web site til I found some suitable email addresses and winged off the following. If you've seen the ad, feel free to send your own email. I'll let you know if I hear anything back from these corporate types.
It was with great dismay and disbelief that I watched your current TV ad showing what first seems to be very small pieces of paper blowing through a city, out windows. Not sure what this was supposed to be, I kept watching while the small pieces became a cloud thick enough to darken the sky. People looked up from the street with a look of fear.
Hello.
Does September 11th and the cloud of small pieces of paper blown from the World Trade Center ring any bells?
Tacky. Tacky. Tacky.
PS Yes I did watch the whole ad: The small pieces of paper are apparently supposed to be the large sums of money that people overpay the government. Whatever. The ad was too full of painful images. Whatever were you thinking?
Written at:
1/19/2003 10:51:00 PM
Minor tweaks here and there on this page. All while waiting for the beef soup (from scratch folks, from scratch!) to be done simmering. Added a new link too - Gotta encourage newcomers to the blog-thing. Us bloggers will prevail (insert evil laugh here).
Did I mention that Blogger passed one million users? uh huh! I heard some rumour about Ev buying us all a drink but I lost the scrap of paper I'd written it down on. Goes to show ya - if it's important put it into your blog. For the rest of you - leave a comment!
want soup of your own? Check out the soup lady and encourage her with new soup recipes and comments too. Chat it up folks!
Gotta love that Walter Mossberg at the WSJ. First thing I see in today's paper is an article by him giving a thumbs up review of iPhoto vs the other windows attempts. Then I follow a link to this great article about the new 12 inch powerbook. Thanks Walt, I was already drooling. Want to read more Walter?
In case you're wondering - yes I am a quilter. I'm starting a new quilt and still working on another. Don't worry - fabric shots soon!
Now a message from our sponsor...
Remember the old saw about "give someone a fish and feed them for a day, teach them how to fish, feed them for life?" I hope you'll all remember that spirit next time someone asks you about a problem they have on their computer. It's one thing to reach over and hit some keys or say - that's easy, here. It's another thing to empower the person -- this is what it's called, this is where to find it, this is where to find more information about doing these things.
Why am I bringing this up? Because I got seriously dissed while trying to help a woman (yeah it was a woman, poor helpless woman, oh woe is me, woman). She had no idea how seriously she was dissing me. She kept asking for the person she'd dealt with previously even though I was trying very hard to find a solution for her. When she showed up in person she kept right on, in the same way that she had on the phone, through the whole demonstration of how easy it would be install the bit of software blah blah blah.
Finally, when she sort of complained that one of the selling points of the computer was that everything was loaded in it and set up, I put my foot down. Better get over that, I said. Wha wha wha? Yeah. It's NICE that the software is loaded and that the dock has things in it, but you better start preparing yourself for needing to load new things or fixing things that get lost. It's no big deal and you WILL have to do it.
yeah, I'm the mean one. Here, have a dose of reality with that, will ya?
Sometimes the ebay spirits smile and the results are good. Yesterday I snagged a copy of Joy of Cooking, 1964. The superiority of this edition was brought to my attention by Bob the Corgi, but given my cookbook collection, it didn't take much arm twisting to launch my search.
And let me say that Sherlock, another piece of apple software superiority, made it easy to ferret out the goods and to track them and to win. Easy. Even easier than ebay itself makes it. While doodling over things in ebay, I idly typed in "hogan bolas" and voila - a nifty little pin appeared in view. Before I could believe it, it was mine! It's all good.
Written at:
1/12/2003 03:09:00 PM
Doesn't this sound good? Puttanesca sauce is more than flavorful when well made. I may need to lay in a supply of olives and capers!
First - a note to say this is coming to you live from Safari, the new Apple web browser. Fast, sleek and impressive. Eat your hearts out, windows users! Free yourself from the chains of IE!
More snow, another weekend. Will probably end up doing more snow shovelling later, but I spent part of this morning shovelling out the bathroom (no not snow!). Today I am bound and determined to sew. It's been way too long and I am longing for it.
Every once in awhile you need a break, and the holidays are a good time for that usually, but now it's time to get back on track and start and finish projects.
Today, in contrast to yesterday, was anything but calm. We watched the keynote mentioned yesterday and as a good keynote should, it kept us on the edge of our seats until the bitter end. Great new products in both hardware and software. Now I'm lusting after a little 12" powerbook. whooohoooo I'm in love. And do check out the new Apple ads. Too funny! It was all good. Surprisingly I had scored big in predictions and had actually told people about what I would like to see. So people were there to say - you were right! That's always good.
It was interesting that we had a small crowd of total mac-heads (what I call mac fans) and while they were glued to our large theatre screen, people would wander in from the mall, wondering what the applause and yelling was about or just because today was the day they decided to go in and ask about getting a mac. In the case of one man, it was the day he bought one. During.the.keynote.
In weather news - cold cold cold and snow. the trees are still beautiful because the snow is superglued onto the braches with a good coating of ice. The big talk in the weather department is where the heck anyone will put any future snow that comes, and more is supposed to be coming!
What a calm calm Monday it was. It started off exciting enough - finding that the front end of my car had been caught up in wash from the avalanche from the roof. But I made it out alive. Things were slow at work. Tomorrow is the big key note address from MacWorld Expo/SanFran. So all of mac-dom is out there speculating on what announcements the fearless leader will make.
Myself, I'm more interested in what sort of good food I can come up with to eat. So far in the past few days: spaghetti sauce and meatballs. baked chicken breast (some of which will become chicken parm), kasha which is now kasha varnishkas, and some good nibbleys. I think that's just the time of year - rage against the cold and snow by eating well. Assure your survival and be ready and fit to meet the spring. Be bold and ready to meet whatever the mac expo announcement brings!
Walking in a winter wonderland? Yup. I didn't stay out too long today - it was darn cold. But I did take a few photos. The sun tried to pop out and the sky was very interesting.
The paper says that **so far** this year's winter is the winteriest since 1970-71. I remember that period, especially since I would travel from Rensselaer to Albany via city busline to get to school only to have them close it once I got there. Then I'd have to start the trek home again, this time of course under even worse conditions. I'm not bitter!
Be that as it may, we're on our second significant snowfall of the 02-03 winter and it's another snowfest out there. We got, I'd estimate, at least 15 inches. The roads around here are pretty clear. It's part of the pleasure of living in the country - you can count on cleared roads. When you get to the "city" the roads become less and less cleared and forget about the side streets. Of course people don't want to park somewhere else so the plows can clear both sides. Much harder to plow in narrow city streets to begin with.
Out here the huge county and state plows come along regularly and hurl that snow 4-5 feet past the edge of the road, more if they're going faster. All we're hoping for now is that they come through again with the "wings" down to push the tops of the snow banks back so you can see to pull out of roads and driveways.
Next up - second big snow storm of the season. Whew. I drove in to town today to pick up paper to feed our new laser printer. There's nothing worse than being snowed in with a new printer and no paper.
Then I stopped at my folks to do some important stuff. Meanwhile it was snowing to beat the band. Had a nice visit.
Then it was home again home again. Having a pretty new car means that I have new tires as well and that means I can really and truly go faster than 20 mph on the road, even when it's snowing like crazy. Come on folks. Yes, slower is safer to a point and then it's just silly. If you don't have traction on a plowed road at 30 mph, may I respectfully suggest new tires. You'd be surprised.
Oh, and to finish my total rant - you , the man who left his cart in the middle of the roadway at Hannaford in East Greenbush. You know who you are. Let's be clear - you're just not that special. Put it away next time or face the shopping card police's wrath.
**deep breath** ok - so I'm home with groceries and paper for me and everything a well-spoiled cat could want on a snowed-in weekend. Hope you're as well provisioned!
