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pinkleader
25 November 2009 @ 02:43 pm
easier?  
Sometimes you gotta wonder at new technology making our lives "easier." Really, it is just the adaptation to the new piece. The iPhone has made my world a ton easier in many ways since getting it. But moving over to my new laptop has proven a bit of a pain.

Download iTunes, sync phone, can't sync apps as will overwrite the ones on my phone with nothing. Bug Alan. He remembers you have to authorize the new computer to sync with iPhone. Authorize. Still having problem with apps. Ah, apps won't come off phone onto PC, you have to re-download them to the new machine (free of charge, but still!) and then go from there. I couldn't find a quick button that let me go into my purchase history to redownload just those apps. argh!

Okay, I finally get my iPhone working with the new machine okay, so I go to transfer my old files to the new machine. No problem. Go to import bookmarks. Argh! I know I exported those bookmarks, where is that file?!?! Dammit. Give up and eat soup.

Not to mention the insane Windows Update install stall that occurred overnight after purchase that locked it up for what seemed like a day. blech. And I think it was doing another update last night that locked me out showing there was power but nothing loaded to the screen. Windows 7 was supposed to be easier. Need to look into some settings and maybe un-automate some stuff. Wait, was that set to automatically update at 7pm? What a stupid time, I need to change that. sigh.

Easier? Not yet, but hopefully soon.

At least it has been distracting me from embroidering/sewing, which I'm not sure is a good thing anymore... At least the laundry is done.

PS: the Moroccan meatball and squash soup was very good, and we have leftovers. yum! All thanks to Chris, our non-Frances long term guest.

Although Ladybug was very distressed and confused at the prolonged activity in the kitchen. What is he doing and what are those smells?!?
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Mood: aggravated
 
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pinkleader
22 November 2009 @ 11:05 pm
34  

I've decided that Sunday birthdays are the best.

I got to take Friday off work to give myself a three day weekend and indulged myself in; sleeping in, a massage, shoe shopping and new made-in-America kicks for dog walking, a late lunch reading by myself, a nap, and then Indian food for dinner.

Saturday was more sleeping in, a liesurely trip to Holiday Faire for fun visiting, early birthday wishes, and a little shopping. After getting home and walking the pup we settled into the basement to introduce Chris (a high school friend and our second longterm guest while he finds a place to live in the area) to the wonder that is Firefly.

Today was the best for my actual birthday. I slept in very late and Alan brought me breakfast in bed, cold Diet Coke, mango sausages and eggs with Gouda. Then I got to check FB and pet the dog while he cleaned up the kitchen. :) We went out shopping to ultimately get me a new laptop (pink Viao!) look at other fun electronics, get noms for the pup and coffee for himself. I managed a quick nap before we took off to the Snuggery at the Old Brogue to see Iona with Beth Patterson in concert, which was awesome. The bangers and mash were tasty, the Irish Whisky cake with Jameson's ice cream is almost worth the drive alone, but the music was great fun too.

And the evening has been topped off with a visit from the Morgensterns who also brought apple pie and oatmeal cookie dough. Fresh warm pie with ice cream then fresh warm cookies and then fun conversation makes for an evening of win.

And now I think it is time for bed. Must remember to turn back on the alarm for tomorrow.
(I just wish said new laptop would come back from the Windows Update it thinks it is doing. Sigh.)

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

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Current Location: US, Maryland, Anne Arundel, Baltimore Washington Pkwy
 
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pinkleader
01 September 2009 @ 09:54 pm
Site updates  
At [info]attack_laurel 's suggestion on Saturday, I updated my String Arts page with new pages for my Mother-in-Law's panel as well as the Craft Swap pincushions. I also updated my page on my participation in the Jacket Project.

I also updated my calendar since I have to work on the morning of the Lochmere Baronial Birthday event, so might show up for the afternoon, or might head home to crash. We'll see.

Laundry is done, pup is snuggled on her bed, I've got the NatGeo channel on watching The Human Family Tree, and an Ace wrap on my left ankle since it is being a bit weak and achy. I probably stepped on it wrong when we were out chasing bunnies last evening.
 


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pinkleader
23 June 2009 @ 07:18 pm
From iPhone  

Testing posting to lj from my new iPhone. Certainly not for long diatribes or essays, unless I get really good with this keyboard. But I am alive, still at work, and my feet and back are getting sore.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

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pinkleader
21 June 2009 @ 10:56 pm
sweat equity  

Finished Patio! Hooray!
609-patio 012

To complement the picture of Alan operating the BRUTE jackhammer, here he is on the Wacker.
snert tee hee giggle- yes, sometimes I feel like a 10yo boy
609-patio 008

Kirsten on the saw making pink dust
609-patio 005

Kirsten and Susan made amazing progress on the patio this week. They spread the underlay of granite dust and pulled up and cleaned most of the bricks from the old patio to use on the new patio. The ultimate in green renovation, we cleaned off and re-used all of the pavers we could, and only had to purchase ~30 more pavers to finish off the back corner.

I spent Saturday sitting in the sand pulling up the remaining bricks and cleaning the concrete off those that needed it. (It looks like one previous owner tried to use dry concrete mix instead of sand so there were at least two buckets full of chipped off concrete chunks.) My right hand and shoulder were very sore at the end of the day, but it seemed to be a task I was reasonably good at, and kept me out of the way of Kirsten and Alan tamping, screeding, and laying the rest of the patio. Today I spent many many hours behind a broom slowly sweeping sand into the cracks and crevices prior to final tamping, etc. Kirsten spent her time making cuts for the final bricks, while Alan was marking and setting them. I'm a little sore, especially my right arm, as to be expected of a desk jockey pulling the weekend warrior tasks.

The rest of the time this weekend was spent playing with setting up my palm contacts etc. into a syncronizible format for use with my new iPhone. I did finally get it working late Saturday night, but we ran into problems trying to activate it as my phone, so that is a task for tomorrow. I'm already enjoying the portability, facebookiness, camera, and such. Suggestions for useful non-game related apps are cheerfully accepted.

Now, I must go to bed.

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Mood: accomplished
 
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pinkleader
26 February 2009 @ 09:43 pm
distracted...  
I have been wasting far too much time on Facebook since I joined. I'm trying to stay away from the little virtual gifts or flair or whatever, but did create a dogbook for Ladybug, 'cause I'm a sucker. I have found a few friends from High School and College, which has been fun. AoD, one of my HS friends now works in adult brain injury counseling, which made me think of you and your work.
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pinkleader
19 February 2009 @ 03:58 pm
Another Plimoth Blog  
I've been checking in on this one and thought there might be more than a few folks interested in another Plimoth Plantation blog called
My So-Called Pilgrim Life: http://www.plimoth.org/blogs/village/
There seems to a heavy leaning towards the foodways, with recipes, etc. (Pippin Tart, Hasty Pudden, and a 13 pound turnip) but there is also the occasional tidbit about heights over time, pirates and a timeline of the colony. The writing is pretty good, and I've found it  entertaining and interesting.

Just throwing it out there, mainly for the foodies and 16th cent junkies.

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Mood: impressed
 
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pinkleader
09 February 2009 @ 02:12 pm
Perspective  
Awesome video of an interview Conan O'Brien had with Louis CK, where Louis tries to put advancing technology in perspective.
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Mood: amused
 
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pinkleader
09 January 2009 @ 10:58 pm
stupid printer...  
Alan is cursed when it comes to buying printers. We don't print often, but by golly I like it to work when we do need to print. And we haven't had a reliable printer in our time together. Currently our HP Color LaserJet 2600n is giving me a paper jam error in tray 2. There is no jam. We buy the special custom HP paper that it thinks it likes. But you can't load too much, nor too little into the tray or apparently it thinks it is jammed. Stupid stupid printer. This is why I sometimes abuse the state and print at work. grumble...

And fighting with the printer is cutting into my embroidery time, or my packing time, or even my sleeping time.

At least one thing came out well. I has successful cheese tart for our little sideboard tomorrow. It's good warm or cold. And I was seduced to the side of using fresh herbs since I forgot to buy thyme and it was easier to cut it out of Theo's garden, with some fresh marjoram leaves, than go back to the store. Luckily I have plenty of fresh rosemary in my backyard. So the only dried spices were the savory and pepper. It smells good, and I'm just waiting for it to cool before I can toss it in the fridge until tomorrow.

I was gonna make gingerbread cookies, but I spent too much time chatting with Roland and Theo in the process of picking up thyme, and inspecting their house project, and checking out the new shop, and picking up Alan's old old (circa 1984) helmet, and fighting with the damn printer, to get to cookies.

sigh.
See folks tomorrow.

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Mood: aggravated
 
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pinkleader
08 January 2009 @ 10:34 am
Two things...  
First: I don't care how good you think you are, no one should be looking down at their phone while driving. Most folks are bad enough simply talking on the phone while driving, add into that equation looking down at a text on your phone or an email on your Blackberry and the roads are screwed. I passed three "drivers" on my way into work who were weaving in their lane, driving significantly lower than the flow of traffic (not to mention the speed limit), and in general being a danger on the road. Three in less than 20 minutes. Put the phone aside, only use it at stop lights, or pull over if it is that important. Seriously! No wonder they won't give us flying cars, we're dangerous enough in two dimensions!

Even my Alan is somewhat guilty of this. If we are both in the vehicle and he takes a call, even with the bluetooth headset, he should pull over and let me drive. I don't care how good you think you are, you are NOT as good as you think you are.

Second: Ladies, keep your cold appendages to yourself. Your significant other usually believes that you are cold when you say you are cold. There is no need to stick your cold appendages on a piece of their warm anatomy to prove so. (I'm looking at you [info]blondemuse ) Turn up the heat, put on some socks, grab an extra blanket, take responsibility for your own personal environment. Only if you are taunted for your behavior should you resort to proving the temperature of your hands.

Alan has taught me this and now I try to use convection instead of conduction to draw heat into my cold feet. They will warm up near him without me having to touch him with their iciness. Or I put on fluffy warm socks. If he didn't want to see me in fluffy socks, he'd turn up the heat. Besides, it is going to be cold in the winter as we all try to save on our heating bills. Socks and gloves are your friends.
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Mood: aggravated
 
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pinkleader
19 November 2008 @ 09:00 pm
SDO and HMI-AIA-EVE  
acronyms aplenty, I must have been near a government facility.

[info]theodorad  was kind enough to host us at the SDO Friends and Family event this evening at Goddard. It was so much fun, and very educational. We got to see SDO in the clean room, and they even had the back panel open so we could see the propulsion system, and some of the other important bits like the little adjuster wheels (every action produces and equal and opposite reaction, blah blah), the AIA telescopes off the top and one of the high gain antennae. We also got to visit the cage of poor Triana, sitting and waiting for some unknown fate. She showed us the Thermal Vac Chamber (the outside of it obviously, since inside was the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter being tested), as well as the acoustic test chamber with the insanely thick and yet not thick enough walls. We also were able to meet some of her co-workers and attend a talk by one of the scientists talking about the plans for SDO, the instruments that it will host, the data they will receive and what they hope to do with the data. The three instruments are EVE (Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment- measuring extreme ultraviolet irradiance [it must be screaming UV]), AIA (Atmospheric Imaging Assembly- getting HD images of various layers within the sun) and HMI (Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager- to study and understand the magnetic activity of the sun.) This should advance and build on the knowledge gathered from SOHO.

Okay, so it was very sciency, and Shequey was in space-geek heaven, and I retained at least 10% of the information spewed at me (I hope) and just basked in the shared glow of Theo's accomplishment. It was a pretty darn awesome evening.

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Mood: geeky
 
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pinkleader
22 October 2008 @ 02:25 pm
quick, look busy!  
Darnnit! I've got the "Hero of Canton" song stuck in my head. sigh.

My fabric for my Halloween costume arrived yesterday. So stoked, need to wash it (and the rest of the laundry) tonight.
After Alan's "wow" response to the fabric, I asked him what he thought my costume would be.
His response? Something to tweak [info]thornbury ?
Not in the original plan, but you know it can serve two purposes.

I had a good time attending practice last night, since I'm finally feeling okay and motivated to the leave the house for more than just work. I played with my embroidery, talked over options for variations to the pattern, got a peek at [info]attack_laurel 's sketches of patterns and animals and designs from period resources for possible upcoming patterns. I really want a panel piece of all her cute little animal drawings. They make me happy and are totally squeee worthy. I managed to accomplish a few more little bits to the small panel for my MIL, so baby-steps. I also stayed up too late once we got home because I HAD to do this one area that I couldn't remember the stitch instructions for, dammit.

We also finally delivered [info]brian_murray 's uber-extension cord back to him, as well as delivered a pile of Coke Points to the Bob. Got to chat with friends, see Katie out fighting and having fun, and enjoy a good dinner with fine company. I liked the Peruvian Chicken at Friday's. We even were able to have a discussion about politics, seeing the other side, not seeing the other side, what the heck some of our crazy whackadoodle friends think, that woman, and child-raising techniques.

Tonight I've got laundry to do, more embroidery, I'd like to make a quick Costco run, need to run by the post office to mail some belated things out, and we've got a final measurement for our kitchen re-do tonight as well. Hmm... not enough hours.

I've also recently reorganized by Costumes page (my closet vs. not my closet), and my String Arts page (alphabetical order, what a concept), as well as adding a little page on my embroidered pin cushion. wheee...

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Mood: accomplished
 
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pinkleader
16 October 2008 @ 08:32 pm
page updates  
I've added a few new pages to my webpage.

One for the stockings, including pictures of Alan's legs in them, which the stockings fit much better.

Another page for Vair and Ermine to host Theo's handout for 20 Feet Up! and to also host the "Pumpkin" lantern instructions. Eventually I hope that Theo will write up something on the Herb Garden, as well as I can do a basic write up on the benches, tables and perhaps Thjora's version of our Glastonbury chairs.

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pinkleader
01 October 2008 @ 11:43 pm
technology  
Best use of an iPhone in the past 8 hours:
The chimney sweep taking pictures on the roof of the newly installed chimney cap/screen to keep out birds, the terrible cracks in the concrete chimney top, and the resealing of the flashing that is needed to show me why the quote for more work is necessary work. That was useful and awesome. I should have had him email them to me... Though we aren't going up on the roof, so I should just go ahead and discuss the repairs quoted and schedule the next appointment.

Worst use of an iPhone in the past 8 hours:
Someone was on his for work only half an hour after being home until 20 minutes ago. Theo asked me if I get to speak to my sweetie, to which my response was, "I get a kiss in the morning, a kiss after work and one at night before bed." Hopefully this is just a short term thing as his boss's wife had her baby over the weekend thus taking out one more person on the on-call list, and another co-worker requires "maintenance," and they are understaffed to begin with. sigh.

The laundry is done, must fold the last load and then off to bed.

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Mood: blah
 
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pinkleader
18 September 2008 @ 10:16 pm
New stuff!  
I've added a new page to my String Page on work done on the Plimoth Jacket Project. I like seeing the comparison between what we've done and the original, including the aging of the gilt silk twist.

I've also splurged on some new bras. Hooray for Figleaves.com and the ability to search by size. I've become a big fan of the Fantasie brand, the best fitting and most comfortable bras I've worn, like, ever. The return policy is also made of awesome. They've also got a 30% off sale going on, which means some of the ones I just got just dropped in price, urgh, oh well.

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pinkleader
18 September 2008 @ 04:53 pm
photo meme  
The Photo meme that some others have done:
1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.


Hair in ponytail- check
Scarf for cold office- check
Happy words on metal filing cabinet for spontaneous poetry- check
wry grin- check

Time to go home?- check

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Mood: tired
 
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pinkleader
14 July 2008 @ 08:40 pm
Food and friends  
Wow, what a weekend. Some have already mentioned portions of our weekend, but it was food and friends heavy, and both were enjoyed.



And here I sit, finishing the laundry, watching the Discovery channel, and playing on the computer. Good, but tiring weekend, that's for sure.
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Mood: lethargic
 
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pinkleader
17 April 2008 @ 11:52 pm
testing again  


Simply because it took me a while to figure it out (pasting directly into HTML view or even using imbed media from HTML view didn't work, but putting the Voki in a table cell and imbedding there seems to make it take. Oh, and I had to choose "other" code, not the livejournal code...) I decided to channel the "Morning Star".
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Mood: amused
 
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pinkleader
17 April 2008 @ 04:38 pm
testing Voki...  
Testing Voki again...

Testing Voki again...

LJ seems to be stripping out the script tags, leaving behind just the link...


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pinkleader
28 March 2008 @ 02:38 pm
voice-over  
I rarely write about work here, mainly because I can't imagine what would be interesting enough to share to those outside of the distance education verse.

But last Friday I got asked to come assist with some video testing in the morning, without being given a specific job. So, when I walked in, I asked them what they wanted me to do. I help set-up the backdrop, and they ask if I'd mind being on camera to test the set-up, teleprompter, lighting, etc. I agreed, but no, I won't give you a link to the video. It was just reading information off of a teleprompter about network layers, etc. The end product was only 3 minutes, but took two hours of set-up, testing, tweaking the lights, the text in the prompter, the prompter speed, etc. Also, it must be the lights, but the top of my head pre-hair dye looks very gray. yeesh. The end result of the project is that I ended up volunteering with importing and setting up the scripts into the teleprompter for our actual content experts, as well as draw up a document for teleprompter tips. I guess it is not that surprising I got cast as the voice since my accent is fairly generic, and my other project team members are from Brazil, China, and the lady spending all the time behind the camera. eh.

So, cut to today when I got asked if I'd perform a narration for a set of Captivate slides for a project. Luckily this would be over other video, not of me, just my voice. I guess with the two main coworkers on that being from India and Brazil, I could see them wanting my generic voice again.

But then I got asked by different coworker if I'd be willing to do another narration for a project of hers. She'd be using the TV Studio folks for a more professional audio capture. I do hope that is voice only too.

And now we've scheduled a time next Friday to do more video testing since we have hopefully figured out the bugs and can work on some of the other aspects. I should probably bring in or wear a little make-up to help define my eyes and lips at the least.

Apparently, though I'm not a fan of my recorded voice, my coworkers are and now I'm getting tasks left and right that just require my diction. Odd.
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Mood: amused
 
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