Care to go on a virtual jaunt to Patagonia? Love a good tango? Go here for a treat! Although I'm not usually a fancier of musical web pages, this just hit the spot with me. There's a link at the bottom of the page so you can turn it off, if it's not to your taste. Very thoughtful.
Link courtesy of the newly bloomed Traveling in Style, with your host "Suzette" -- check them both out.
On a totally different virtual travelling note, I was checking out Rick Steve's Europe Through the Backdoor Tours (as seen originally on PBS and in hardcover I believe). Now you can pay Rick and his hearties to guide you around Europe and Scandinavia and see the "best of" the countries of your choice. Probably not my choice of travelling styles, but if your dream is to make comments like
"I can't imagine cramming anymore into any day. So I think that our time was used at optimum efficiency."
or
"appreciated the attention given to bathroom breaks. Very thoughtful!"
Pushing 800 spams since the third of August 2003. Not bad, not bad at all.
Go give them your $19.95 and get your email back. I am stunned at the small quantity of mail that my Eudora filters are dealing with. My trash folder is surprisingly empty, where before the filters dumped all the weird spam, virus-laden email etc etc into it. My dedicated spam folder is empty except for the occasional mailing list mail with "FREE" in the subject line. Holy cow. Thanks knowspam.
And for the record, no one has complained about needing to prove that they're human. My mother knew to let me know that she was having someone less experienced at such things send me an email so I could watch for it. It's all good.
Written at:
8/29/2003 04:49:00 PM
Alternative blog posts
1. The huge influx of comments to this site has taken down poor YACCS, rendering commenting impossible.
2. The heck with you anyway, now you can't make comments.
3. PS -- For those of you loyal readers who do make regular comments, please forgive my little tantrum here. I love you all.
Is this thing on? Am I scaring you with too many posts in one day? Is the content too wide ranging and scary? Is my quilt horrific beyond words? Or are you just too lazy to leave a comment? Makes me wonder why I even bother sometimes. yes it does. And don't think I don't know that you've been here because my counter has been whirring away today. yes it has. Helllllllloooooooooooo. Leave a comment already.
Written at:
8/28/2003 11:35:00 PM
The center of the pink and green quilt is quilted. whew. And it's cooler so I want to get a lot more done tonight.
Came out of my meeting tonight and turned homeward and there it was. At first, it was the only thing visible in an sky slightly skimmed with clouds. So you knew it was bright, since no other stars were visible. As I got closer to home the sky cleared and the stars shone, but pale in comparison to our neighbor -- Mars! What a view. Even to the naked eye, its red color was plain.
Go outside now!
Written at:
8/27/2003 10:04:00 PM
It's not often I comment on current events of the CNN-sort, but this is pretty scary stuff, even discounting for the notable inaccuracy of most media. I mean, really.
It was a statue people. A statue put up in the wrong place by a man who should know better, no matter what his personal religious beliefs are. A bad idea at best.
Another organizer, Christian Defense Coalition director Pat Mahoney, said supporters were "disappointed, but not discouraged." "We don't view this as a defeat at all," Mahoney said. "We're still calling people to come to Montgomery to take a look at where the Ten Commandments once stood."
It was a freaking statue, probably created by some tombstone-making company. Not the slabs given down to Moses.
Written at:
8/27/2003 01:28:00 PM
Look up grasshopper!
Tonight's the night and if it's not cloudy, no excuses. Go outside and look up and see something worth seeing! Want more info?
Written at:
8/27/2003 11:28:00 AM
On one front:KnowSpam has blocked about 600 emails for me in about 3 weeks. I think the overall amount of spam has dropped, which isn't a bad thing at all. I am still checking the list of held mail from time to time but it's basically running on automatic.
On another front: I've started quilting the pink and green quilt. I know that the pre-quilting procrastination thing is pretty predictable but it really was ok to start this. I'm glad I took the time to try out some threads. I am going to try hard to resist the hand-dyed threads in the future. They're probably great for embroidery etc but for quilting they seem too heavy, making it too hard to find a good tension. Luckily I didn't have to wait long for plan B to arrive and now I've got about half the center quilted.
Errands: Given that my week of vacation is underway, I think I should have a dedicated servant to run errands and get my car inspected. It would be nice if the same person would also heat up my dinner for me. Tomorrow night dinner is out. The night after that - pasta with bolognese sauce. OK, back to quilting. Will take photos later.
In honor of the ending of the Julie/Julia Project, I cooked myself the all-American summer dinner: Big hamburger with sauteed onions, fresh tomato wedges with a garnish of black pepper and hellman's, BaTampte half-sour pickle and fresh corn on the cob.
Remember the great quote from by Garrison Keillor: "People have tried and tried, but sex is not better than sweet corn." I need say no more.
Popped up a quick shot of the last journal quilt. These have been very educational for me, although I think they won't be more than glossed over by viewers. Oh well. Guess one night I'll have to finish all the edges of the last few so they'll be ready to go to Houston.
Written at:
8/23/2003 04:41:00 PM
Must have had some whopper of a storm yesterday afternoon. the last webcam image is just before three and it doesn't look dark and threatening, but it is the last. Big branch got moved into our driveway and our cable modem is apparently toast. Not clear if Ron's G4 tower is toast too. Meanwhile, I am on dial up. whooo hoo. At least it's 44-46K not the 200000 bytes of the cell phone. So yes, slower, but not horrific.
Last night, in celebration of my coming week, I did my September journal quilt page. I remembered that last year there wasn't a lot of time to do the sleeve etc so I thought I'd get that done.
It came out pretty good actually. As I thought it might be, it's reddish in color to end the string of black, grey and white. A few technical glitches. OK, more than a few, but all fixable and they don't bother me. And the organizer will be glad to hear that I learned several things from the experience and may use it to make another quilt with a similar technique. Photos at 11. Now - COFFEE.
I spent tonight sorting my hand sewing/quilting needles
I had 27 card compartments full of different types/sizes of needles
I wondered if I should get more needles
I thought about getting spare thread color charts and cutting them up and putting them into slots
I am thinking about the next two quilts while doing all this, rather than starting to quilt the pink and green quilt.
I briefly considered getting a deal (travelocity for $352 or CheapTickets for about $300) which would fly me to Columbus Ohio, give me two nights at a holiday inn and put me within driving distance of Quilt National but still in need of a rental car. Briefly considered.
What are you doing with all your extra time now that you aren't getting spam?
"Writing more. Cooking my own meals. Petting the cat. Not a entendre, by the way. Real cat. Going outside. Reading. Planning world domination. Yodda yodda yodda."
I have posted updates to my journal quilt page showing my August quiltlet. It's much cooler than photos would indicate, but it's hard to take photos of all white, small things.
Years from now you can do what I did Thursday, stand there surrounded by way younger people and say things like "you won't remember the last big blackout, but we spent quality time with our Franklin stove." And they'll look at you like you're a loon and say things like "I wasn't born yet" back at ya.
So get the shirt and wear it proudly next time the lights go out.
When the power went out yesterday (bzzt on off on off on off bzzztt zip zip off) we quickly learned, by looking at the laptops that this wasn't just a local problem. Ah the power of the 'net. I was off at 5 so I hit some slow going but having a state trooper car in our pack probably made for more civil driving. Once I got past exit 5 of I-90 it was pretty smooth going. The main problem earlier was jam ups on the off ramps as people waited, having no traffic lights to organize the flow.
When I got home, I organized my recently restocked batteries and made sure I knew where the matches were. I gave the cats their meds before it was too dark to see. I even enjoyed a dinner a fresca albeit with mosquitoes. The power came on for just a few minutes after dark and I ran around turning things off because the noises coming from the frig made it clear it wasn't full power.
I think the power came back around 3 am, although I'll confess I was pretty much asleep. Ron got up and turned some lights off or something.
Since I've been home today it's been pretty much business as usual except for being ready for rolling blackouts as they turn on power to other areas. So far none have happened.
Despite the brutal heat, I finished all but a few tweaks on the quilt of Rachel. I'll probably do a little fine tuning, but it's mostly done. Click above for a full view, and here's a detail.
Link via a post to QuiltArt: Gotta love this new quilt from Ruth McDowell. I don't know how you could mistake her work for anyone else's no matter the topic. Nice!
Written at:
8/04/2003 10:12:00 PM
Update on KnowSpam: First off, I just had an email from them wondering if I was still nervous (see below, which he had read! Yes you read that right -- he read my web site) and did I have any questions etc. Now THAT's service!
The answer from me? Nope - apparently my assessment that it was just an incredibly slow email Sunday was correct. Sunday night mail started picking up and today things are getting towards normal numbers. I noticed some quite old emails arriving, so I'm thinking that there was a slowdown on the bigger 'net somewhere during that time frame.
No one I know has had any problems contacting me and I've added a few people/lists/services as their emails turn up in the held mail category. I like that I get an email every four hours along the lines of: 'you have some new held mail (or new unknown recipients) - here's the sender's email and the subject line in case you need to accept the email.'
Gives me a lot of control in a reasonable way and with a very nice interface. If I go to the held mail page it lists the same info -- date/time/sender/subject -- and I can accept or decline each one or use check boxes and decline the checked emails. How cool and easy is that?
So I fired back an email right away - nope, I'm not nervous anymore. And where do I go to sign up for a year?
Written at:
8/04/2003 09:20:00 PM
OK I'm a little nervous.
I turned on knowspam last night. It is an anti-spam service that seems pretty cool and came recommended. Two week free trial period even. So I set it up. You can enter email lists and individuals as known good senders and email lists. You can also designate domain names as OK. Basically, if an incoming email doesn't fall into one of those categories, knowspam sends them an email saying "please prove that you're a human by clicking the link in this email and answering a question on the resulting page." What they have to do is copy four numbers into a box. Once they've done that they're on your "good sender" list. If it's a bot-generated email, there won't be anyone home to reply so they get deleted.
So, why am I nervous? I don't seem to be getting much mail AND I don't seem to be getting much feedback that there is a lot of spam getting stopped. Hmmmmm. Maybe Sunday isn't the day to start spam fighting measures? We'll see.
What sort of fool spends her day off sweltering and shpritzing in the kitchen in pursuit of baked chicken, remoulade and pasta salad in vast quantities????
Maybe the heat was affecting me before I went into the kitchen. Now we're having a gentle steady rain and it just complements the water running down my neck. Swell. Guess I'll go watch Rocco of The Restaurant fame go sweat over his own problems.
In other kitchen-related news, Julie of The Julie/Julia Project is coming down the homestretch and I'm thinking there's a glass champagne and a celebratory dinner waiting for her at the end.
