Month: February 2009

Thinks

I’m nearly caught up with grading again. Always amazing how it seems to run away from me. But I stayed at work until after 5 yesterday grading tests that were beginning to smell they were so old. And I got a few other things graded today which had been molding. The trick is to now stay on top of things. (I think I should stop assigning round things since it’s harder to stay on top of round things than flat things…)

My latest DVD watching has been Into the Labyrinth. I loved this show as a kid and became a Ron Moody fan because of it. I always enjoyed the various “characters” he played in the series. It was a number of years later that I discovered that there was more than one season of the show. Thanks to the DVD set, I have begun watching season 2. Amazing to think that the visuals were even worse in season 2, but Ron still gets to dress in cool costumes, so I figure I’ll enjoy season 2. Season 3 doesn’t have him, but at least it still has Phil Church (one of the kids who help Moody’s character – and the cute one that I had a crush on as a kid). Oh, and Pamela Salem (Belor) will also be there to chew the scenery, so I’ll probably have fun with season 3.

One thing that I’ve decided is that it’s fun to watch early 80s British children’s television programming on a widescreen high def TV. Heh heh. (Almost seems a waste of all that high tech-ness, but I love the irony.)

I’ve been helping dad with some YouTube videos for Westar. So far I’ve edited two short excerpts and uploaded them, though I may have to work on the second one. The sound on it didn’t come out too well. Feel free to check out the clips. The first is of Elaine Pagels talking about the origin of Satan and the second (with the crappy sound) is Karen Armstrong talking about “what is religion?”

My superintendent had seen a neat animated clock on one of the other schools’ websites and asked if we’d be able to put a clock and/or weather thingy on our website. So I looked into finding standards compliant, handicapped accessible, ad-free (or non-obvious) solutions. And I think I got it. The clock is basically a live clock of your own PC rather than a world-time clock (those were all ad-laden that I could find). I found that Weather Underground had the least-obvious advertising weather stickie, so included that as well. (Their own page, like so many other weather pages, is chock-full o’ ads. If only the National Weather Service had widgets like that – they’re ad free.)

I’ve been busy and I hope to spend some quality time tomorrow working on college stuff. My task for tomorrow? Write about astrology and how it’s not a science. Should be fun. As per the assignment, I’m going to suggest feng shui as another example of a pseudo-science. (I love the Penn & Teller: BS episode on Feng Shui and bottled water.)

Even with the weather…

So, like, if you’re sick you say “I’m feeling under the weather.” But if you’re getting better, are you “even with the weather”? And when you’re well, are you “over the weather”? Curious trinas want to know.

At any rate, I feel like I’m getting even with the weather. Sunday night (after a fun time shopping at Crafts 2000 with my Aunt Becky and then supper at the Chinese Buffet) I suddenly got every cold symptom within a 15 minute period. Wound up going to bed on NyquilClone at 7:30pm. My day off on Monday was fairly wasted just battling the cold and avoiding real work. (I got a lot of videos watched which had been languishing*.)

Tuesday, I had a meeting at the Miami County ESC, so I had a sub already. After the meeting, I went to Meijer for more NyquilClone and then in bed by 7:30pm. One of the girls was impressed that I knew in advance that I was going to be sick (since I’d told ’em they’d have a sub Tuesday) – I hated to disappoint her by telling her I’d been to a meeting, but disappoint her I did. 🙂 Last night was another “bust” night of nothing useful accomplished. But I figured I could spent tonight grading tests and stuff – which I did.

Thankfully, tomorrow is Friday. If I have truly kicked this cold, I should have a more productive weekend than I wound up having last weekend.

*On Saturday, the parentals & I celebrated Valentine’s Day by eating out for lunch (Applebee’s) and then shopping at Best Buy and Kroger (the good one in Englewood). I bought a Philips DVP5990/37 DVD player which upconverts to 1080p (though my TV maxes at 1080i) and plays USB flash drives. I also bought an HDMI cable, which cost half the cost of the DVD player (and turned out to be too short – the DVD player is currently WAY back). No matter, I bought two 6-ft HDMI cables from Amazon.com for $.99 each – they’ll probably arrive soon. Anyhoo, thanks to the USB port, I can now watch my downloaded videos from a USB drive rather than saving to CD or DVD. Sweet. And it works. AND it’s easy to make region-free. The DVD player was $65 – and I’ve heard of it going for even cheaper in some places. 1080i is sweet. I love my TV even more than before (if you can believe that even possible).

Triskaidekaphobia – NOT!

Never understood the fear of Friday the 13th. Monday the 13th, I can understand. But Friday the 13th comes on a Friday – and already you’re in the good cuz it’s nearly the weekend.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day – hope everyone has a nice day, coupled or not. I gave mom a few carnations today (the FCCLA was selling them at the end of the day for $1 each, so I picked out three pretty white ones for mama.) I shall probably have chocolate at some point tomorrow. (I have chocolate pudding in the fridge – if I can find some Reddi Whip, I’m all on it… Maybe I’ll finally watch King Lear, too.)

I’m currently writing this because I have an assignment due tonight and I haven’t started it yet (as such – I’ve read some of the background info already). So let’s hear it for procrastination!

It’s nice cuz I have a 3-day weekend this weekend. And Tuesday I’m off to the Miami County ESC for all day meetings – I’ll wear jeans. Hope the sub doesn’t blow up my room! 🙂

(*snerk* I guess the song that’s currently playing is pertinent to tomorrow’s holiday. Go get ’em, Julie!)

Oh, OK… I’ll get to work. Sheesh, slave drivers…

Weekend Geeking

College work is exhausting – just ask the two sleeping kitties on my lap. We did college stuff before supper, and they slept on my lap the whole time. Then after supper, they’ve been sleeping again while I worked on college stuff. Just takes it out of ’em, I tell ya.

Been doing heavy-duty geeking of late. I managed to clear out 50GB of crap from my main PC yesterday. I’m trying to get my photos more organized in preparation for the Plustek 7200 that dad & I are buying. I’m going to scan all my old slides into my PC and need to get things more organized before I double (or triple) the quantity of photos. I’ve installed Picasa (for now) to see if the tagging feature is what I’m needing to help with organization. Not sure if this is the program I’ll want, though. I certainly don’t want/need the online features. If I want to put photos online, I have Coppermine Galleries for that. I was disappointed to find that their “name tag” feature is only available with their online portion.

So, photo folks – what do you use for photo organization on your PCs? Is Picasa the one? Or is there something else out there? I do have Jasc’s Media Center Plus available to me, which has “keywords” rather than “tags.” (Well, it’s pretty ancient as far as software goes, but it’s already paid for as part of Paint Shop Pro 7.5.)

Another geeky thing I did was upgrade phpbb from 3.03 to 3.04. It’s the software that my family cookbook uses. And I broke my cookbook. 3 times, in fact. I got better at uploading the backup with each upgrade attempt. But I finally got it upgraded properly. Heh.

With my 50GB extra free space on my PC, I did my third major geeky thing – I installed Virtual Box and Winders 7. I must say, I like Virtual Box a lot better than VMWare. And Winders 7 installed just fine (albeit SLOWLY) as a virtual machine. It’s shiny like Vista. And the taskbar looks more like Linux than it has a right to. Heh. (Probably looks different with Aero fully implemented, but I haven’t given it enough graphics power for Aero.) I hope Micro$oft doesn’t bloat it up before release. It might be the OS to upgrade to (unless I finally discover that I can do everything I want with Linux). I might create another Virtual Box for an Ubuntu install, too. 🙂

I couldn’t resist… it was purple!

OK, so I finally clicked on Get Your Own! link on someone’s dragon egg link. And they had purple eggs. I couldn’t let the poor egg die, so I picked one up and now I’d be happy if any of you folks would give it a click. (But don’t feel like you have to get your own egg. Remember, they’re not REAL and aren’t really going to die. However, purple is my favorite color and… OK, I’ll shush now. Go click my dragon egg, if you can. Thanks!)

Adopt one today!

Dallas, Texas, er… Dollars, Taxes

Whee! Wooster finally got their W2 to me (they always wait ’til the last minute) so I finished my federal taxes today. Thanks to the Hope Lifetime Learning college credit, I’m getting a substantial amount back from the feds. Yay! Best of all, using H&R Block’s online basic filing and a 20% discount from one of my credit card companies, it only cost $11.12 to file my taxes. (I looked at doing their completely free filing, but I think you have to be using the old 1040EZ form – I itemize deductions and thus went basic.)

Once I finished the federal, I filed Ohio and my school district taxes. Those are completely free through Ohio’s tax.ohio.gov website. iFile is your friend! Getting a little back from them (heh, $7 from the school district).

Most of the refunds will go into savings, but I have been eying a few things I think I’ll buy as soon as the refund arrives. I’ll probably talk more about those later. One thing I’m 99% sure I’ll be getting is an Acer Aspire One netbook w/ Linux and a 6-cell battery. I’ve toyed with the keyboard and know I like it a lot better than the Asus EeePC’s keyboard. And I think it’s about time I got a Linux box, even if it is a nonstandard version of Linux.

Oh, in case you were curious, the Lobster party was a success. A good time was had by all, I think. I know a good time was had by me. 🙂 I did the smart thing and got my lobster, ate it while it was still warm, and then went back and got the other foodstuff that people had brought (all of which was yummy, too). Mom baked her “Better than Sex” bars (well, we didn’t name ’em that – I can’t imagine anything that doesn’t have chocolate in it can be better than sex…) We also brought some Wholly Guacamole (sold at Kroger in the salad section) which proved to be a hit with the guacamole fans.

In kitty news, on Sunday, Linus managed to zip out the front door when I was getting my shovel from the front porch in order to dig my way out the back. So I put my boots on and got him out of the mud (why did he run right to the mud?) and dragged his muddy little butt to the bathroom sink. I rinsed all 4 of his paws off and his tail, much to his dismay. Then I chased him around the house with a towel, trying to dry him off. Poor baby – but it was his own fault.

So now I’m sitting in my library with the kitties on my lap (my favorite part about college). Time to see what folks are saying in the discussion boards.