Month: March 2007

An Intimate Visit

This is a post for just my closest female friends – basically Steph, Elsa, Judi, and Amy Lou (and Rachel should she so desire). I’ll probably show it to mom when I get back too.

Anyhoo, thanks to Steph going to visit Intimacy in her town and getting fitted properly for a bra, Judi decided she’d take Elsa and me there when we next visited Chicago. So our afternoon was all about boobs and the things that hold them.

We arrived around 3pm, but the soonest they’d be able to work with us was 4:30pm, so we shopped some. We arrived back at Intimacy around 4:45 (they said they’d call us on cells when they were ready, but hadn’t yet called) and they were nearly ready for it. Judi got her fitter first. Then I got Tanya. Finally Elsa got her fitter.

They don’t actually measure you at Intimacy, they just look at you, go get a bra, try it, get another, etc. Tanya, it turned out, had her work cut out for her. I remember looking at my watch during one bra hunt of hers and it was 5:28pm. When we were in the cab going back to Judi’s, it ws 6:32. So I was in there for over an hour while first Tanya tried to find the right fit, then the store manager (whose name I’ve forgotten) tried to find the right fit.

It turns out I have a lot of upper breast material, which makes things hard. When we’d get the right diameter, the cup wouldn’t be big enough. When they’d get a bigger cup, the underwire would either attack my armpits or poke out in front or (most often) both. These were the reasons I stopped using underwires years ago.

The manager decided to start at the beginning again and we tried a few more bras. By this time, both of the girls (E&J, not the bouncing ones before me) were done with their fittings and coming up with theories about why I was still there. Elsa’s theory was that they had failed to fit me and were now disposing of the body so there’d be no evidence of their failure. In actuality, the manager was getting closer to the desired result.

In the end, she found a 40H that was (a) comfortable and (b) looked just fine under a shirt. Success! My current bras are 44F’s. Most of the bras they’d tried were 42s and looking good there, that I was surprised when the 40 came to the rescue. So I plonked down $60 and got meself a bra that fits. Will I buy more? Well, I’ll see how it goes with #1 here.

Sleepy in the Windy City

I guess it’s better than being windy in the sleepy city…

For me, it’s after 2am. But here in Chicago, it’s just passing 1am. Funny, that.

I flew in after work today and managed to completely miss supper during the travel. judiang met me in the baggage claim @ O’Hare shortly after I arrived & got my luggage. Then we waited for our chauffeur from Detroit to arrive. Judi and I both agreed that only someone insane would drive to O’Hare, so we’re thinking of sending elsaf off for testing. Still, Elsa arrived and we headed on to Judi’s apartment.

We unloaded the ingredients for Elsa’s latest culinary excursion (for Judi’s b-day) and started up the grocery list for things left behind or unavailable at the time. Then, shortly after 10pm, we finally headed off for supper for Trina.

We wound up going to Judi’s old neighborhood (which isn’t far from her current one) to Hackney’s. I had fish & chips, a nice light supper for the post 10pm hour. Yummy! And Judi insisted I have an amaretto sour, so who am I to argue? The girls got gumbo since they’d both already had supper. Neither of ’em could finish it. But I finished my fish & most of my chips.

On our way back, we stopped at Jewel for the groceries we needed. Since Judi had Elsa’s car available, she loaded about a month’s worth of groceries in addition to what we needed for the weekend. Then we returned home to set up Judi’s new wireless router. Thanks to sneakernet, we got the very complex WEP key to all of our laptops. Go us!

Anyhoo, I’m zonked, so will be heading off to bed as soon as I finish this post. Should be a fun weekend with me friends!

The Waiting Game

I heard back from University at Buffalo and they have my application, transcripts, and copy of teaching license. Now it goes to the reviewing committee or whatever it is. The lady at graduate admissions who e-mailed me said that they hope to know by the end of April. So now I get to wait… And wait… And, well, you get the picture. Here’s hoping they want me! 🙂

Happy Vernal Equinox!

Yay, it’s Spring! And to celebrate, I have OPEN WINDOWS! (No, I don’t mean of the Microsoft variety, though that is true as well…) The kitties are happy, they love Open Windows. So do I. 🙂

I Am the Master – well, maybe someday…

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve sent my application in to the University of Buffalo in hopes that they let me enter their Ed.M. program, Science and the Public. Wish me luck!

I’ve been teaching 14 years on my Bachelor’s degree (B.S. in Ed.) and have hemmed & hawed on a Masters program for, like, ever. But my mom got a brochure from the Center for Inquiry on this Masters degree and sent it my way. And I think I’ll like it. The one drawback is that it’s all online and, well, I don’t have the world’s greatest willpower. Still, every online class I’ve taken (without dropping…) I’ve done OK on. And I love chatting with my classmates in the forums. (It’s great to talk with adults about science for a change!)

Hmmm, I’ve now got butterflies in my stomach. I haven’t done an application like this in a long time – it’s almost a welcome feeling. Welcome back butterflies!

And more Geek Stuff

Heh – two things I forgot to mention in my last Ultra Geeky Post: I’m using VNC to remotely run my new MusicServer now that I’ve got all of the major work done on it. And I’m going to try and embed my Last.FM radio station in this post.

So, what’s VNC? Virtual Network Computing. I use it at work a lot (it’s how I can monitor student machines while they’re working on computers. Embarrassed my cousin Chris one time by projecting his screen on the board during physics one day. Heh heh, yes, I am evil.) It basically lets you run another machine as if you were on it rather than on your own. It’s a little sluggish in running, but for running playlists or double checking a certain service is running, it’s wonderful. I use TightVNC as my program of choice. It’s the program I picked at work to be the server program, however, I view multiple screens with VNCon.

Anyhoo, there ya go.

ETA: Darn LJ and their lack of Flash support… I guess if you want to listen to my Last.FM station, you’ll have to take the link above. 🙂

Musical Geeky Treen

After I did my taxes this year, I decided to research small form PCs to use as a music server. Although I loved the Pandora Mini PCs that Cappuccino PC had on offer, I didn’t want to spend much more than $400 on a PC. And once I kitted one of those puppies up with the RAM and HD space I thought I’d need, I’d get into the $600+ range. I was also debating OS or no OS. If I got it without an OS, it would have been cheaper, but could I get Ubuntu or another Linux flavor to do what I wanted? Well, playing around with my old PC which had Ubuntu on it had convinced me that I don’t have enough Linux experience yet to do everything I wanted to do.

Some more searching around online led me to check out Shuttle PCs. They’re not as small as Mini PCs, but I found one kitted out with the specs I wanted and it was only $425 including shipping. Yay! Not only that, but it came with keyboard, mouse, and what could laughingly be called speakers. (I’ve had Solo Cup Phones with better sound, IMO.) I’d never ordered from Silicon Assets, but they did just as advertised. The PC arrived a few days after I ordered it and it’s so cute!

While rearranging the desk, I finally replaced the wonky fan in my main PC and put some fresh conductive goo on top of the CPU in order to fix my overheating problems. I also moved my old PC out from under the desk and will set it back up as a Win98 machine to give to my Aunt Becky. Two days after my Shuttle arrived, I finally got to turn it on. I didn’t have to uninstall too much crap from it, which is one way that Silicon Assets differs from, say, Dell or HP. And I figured I might as well leave OpenOffice.org on it. 🙂 (I have Star Office on my main PC and my laptop. No MS Office for me at home!)

I moved all of my MP3s onto the new MusicServer (which is what I’ve called it in the network). While doing so, I discovered FINALLY where all of my Christmas 2005 photos were stored on my main PC! I was sure I’d taken pictures that year, but I couldn’t find them at all. I’m not sure how it happened, but they were in my Shared folder (which I never use). I probably pulled ’em from my laptop and put ’em there or something. Finding those pictures, IMO, was worth the new PC. Heh heh.

I downloaded several programs which I figured I could use – MediaMonkey, Quintessential Player, Rhapsody, Last.FM and the Last.FM Proxy. Everything but iTunes, actually. Oh yeah, and Firefox. It turns out that Windows Media Connect is now part of Windows MediaPlayer 11, so they don’t have a standalone download of it. Thankfully, I had Media Connect 2.0 on my main PC so I installed that rather than MP11.

Once I had all of my media software installed and the songs moved over, I checked out my Roku Soundbridge to see if it could see the server. It could, and I can have it access my collection via Media Connect, my Rhapsody radio stations via Rhapsody, or even my Last.FM radio stations via Last.FM proxy. Woot! I can serve up any tunes anywhere! Well, OK, not anywhere, but in my reading room. Which got me thinking… What if I get myself another Roku? One for the living room or my bedroom?

As I started researching the Roku Soundbridge prices (this morning), I found out that the best place to get the M500 (which I have) is from them – refurbished. The M1001 sounds really nice, but the M500 works just peachy keen in my house. So I’ve ordered myself a second one. Of course, the drawback to a Roku is there are no speakers on it. So I decided to research speakers too.

I discovered the Bose Companion 2 in my research. Well, rediscovered was more like it. I’d actually seen them before, at Sam’s Club. And while researching them, I found out Sam’s Club had ’em $30 less than anyone else. Ah ha! A shopping trip was in order! I washed my hair, got dressed, and was ready to head off to Miller Lane for a good lunch and a Sam’s Club trip.

I had the Basil Pesto dish at Nothing But Noodles (without mushrooms, TYVM) for lunch, and then found the back way into Sam’s Club. I bought 2 sets of the speakers (one for the new PC, the other for the future Roku) and some CD-Rs plus some shelled pistachios. (Heh – at least I didn’t get the jumbo vat o’ cheese fondue.) A stop at Krogers for a few groceries and then I was back home.

When I opened the Bose Companion 2 speakers, I discovered they have RCA inputs. This was GREAT news, because that’s the inputs in the Soundbridge. Yay! No odd connections required to get down to 1/8″ stereo plug! (And they give you two cables, one all RCA and the other RCA to 1/8″.) They allow for 2 connections in one pair of speakers, so I could hook both computers up to the speakers. (I may have to play with the speaker setting some, however. I noticed the music sounds are WONDERFUL, but game playback sounds muted somehow. If I sort that out, I’ll just use the Bose for both PCs.)

Anyhoo, I’ve decided to kit this post out with lots of Links, and I’m going to go one step further. I have photographed my new desktop setup and I’ve made an image map of it. Heh – thank you Paint Shop Pro for doing all the difficult bits. (Gah! When did Corel buy Paint Shop Pro from Jasc? I feel betrayed!) If your browser knows how to interpret the “title” tag, you should see little pop ups over the image as you move around. They describe what you’re looking at. And there are links to them too! The one link I left off is for my current desktop wallpaper for the new MusicServer. It’s from the Big Finish audio The Rapture and was designed to look like a music CD cover. I thought that highly appropriate.