My dad occasionally preaches at the First Universalist Church of New Madison and today was one of those Sundays. There was actually a pretty decent crowd there despite it being the last Sunday and July – and the temperature was VERY reasonable. (Astonishingly so – dad even started out by wearing a jacket!)

Anyhoo, on to the crux of my post. I like UUs cuz they let folks like us in. We’re (the ‘rents and I) rather liberal in the Christian sense – so much so that describing ourselves as “Christian” is something of a misnomer. (More Jesus, less Christ…) My sister is lesbian and Mennonite, but they’re more than happy to have her come for church. They let dad preach about the parables of Jesus (which is his current kick) and come up with wonderful ideas during the “talk back” session. Heck, the fact that they have a “talk back” session is great. Today for the prelude, we listened to the pianist play “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess. And one of my most favorite pieces played during the offertory was “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime.” The fellowship after church is very friendly and welcoming. Very much an Open Table Fellowship. They don’t switch off their brains when they hang up their coats. (I’ve been to some churches where they do that – alas!)

Now, these are not all exclusive to UU churches, but they’re all things that make me feel welcome in a church setting. So though I won’t go every week (it is half an hour away – and the other UU church that dad preaches at from time to time is even further away) I do enjoy the time spent there when I do attend.

TISWAS was a children’s series in Britain from 1974-1982 and was rather madcap and zany. My interest in the show, as you might imagine, stems from the fact that Sylvester McCoy guested in it from time to time (as Sylveste, not Sylvester). If you go to my TISWAS page, you’ll see some images of Sylv from the video release TISWAS: The Best of the Best Bits. The second video, More of the Best Bits, had very little Sylv in it at all. But there was a third video release out there which eluded me for the longest time: TISWAS Comedy Capers. Thanks to ebay, I finally procured it. Thanks to my kitchen renovation, however, my PAL VCR was no longer functioning. (All the power going on and off while we tested for the kitchen power lines caused the machine to die a silent death.)

Well, thanks to my burning desire to have enormous credit card bills this summer (dunno why I have this desire, but I sure have been buying a lot of shit!) I bought a replacement for my dead JVC multistandard VCR. And today, I hooked up the new Toshiba and it works like a charm. So my first task? Watch my new video!

Sylv is only in one sketch in the entire video (though the video, as all of them are, is very entertaining), but it’s a good ‘un. It’s a Party Political Broadcast for the TISWAS Party. And I’ve got, for your amusement, a couple of clips and the audio track. The audio is an MP3 (which includes an image in the encoding, for those of you with MP3 players that can display album art). You can access the audio here.

Here are 3 screen captures from the sketch.

Sylveste promotes the TISWAS Party.

Sylveste is all wet!

Now, I know Sylv once played the Pied Piper, but this is ridiculous… 🙂

What I should do next is do some new captures of the other Sylv sketches from the other TISWAS videos now that I know more about image fixing through products like the wonderful Paint Shop Pro.

(Yes, the LJ icon is not in season, but it’s a picture from TISWAS, so I had to use it!)

It just amazes me that I can be sitting here in my den in Ohio and playing a video game with indefatigable42 in Canada and judiang in Chicago – or even gordon_r_d in Scotland! Amazing! We’re playing Diablo II with the expansion pack. Tonight, I’m playing a Necromancer. (I named him Ned. Why not? My Assassin is named Anne and my Sorceress is Sorry Sally. My paladin is PalanWithAl – a nice pun on a Squirrel Nut Zippers song.)

Ah, the Internet – an amazing thing!

(How’s that for a Judi-sized post?)

Looking at my feedback right now (my ebay username, oddly enough, is trinalin) I’ve noticed that my Feedback Score (59) is exactly half of my total positive feedback (118). No, I don’t go accumulating loads of negative feedback (for shame!) Actually, it’s indicative of how many frickin’ Sylvester McCoy photos I now own. Most of the duplicate positives are from the same seller, who sells Doctor Who photos on occasion. And I’ve bought a fair few number of Sylv pix from this guy.

I have recently successfully purchased two non-Sylv items from ebay. One seller was great at giving feedback. (Like a number of sellers, however, he doesn’t give feedback until given feedback in return – a policy I sort of understand but still don’t like much.) The other seller, with a rating over 12,000, rarely seems to give feedback. (We’ll call him Mr. Stingy for now.) And it’s sellers like him that really annoy me. My own rating would be at least up to 75 by now if it hadn’t been for lame-ass sellers who didn’t give me feedback even after I’d given some to them.

But I did get feedback from Mr. Stingy in this circumstance. He’d sent an e-mail after shipping my product and mentioned how he’d get my feedback up once he did his “update.” And if it had been a week without the feedback arriving, I should send him an e-mail. Well, when the item arrived today, I wrote a very polite e-mail thanking him for the smooth auction and stated that I will be happy to give positive feedback once he did his update. By golly, he had done an update before I got back from work! (I wrote the e-mail while home for lunch.) And I’m one of the few folks who’ve been given positive feedback in his recent sales. Pretty selective update, if you ask me. (judiang got something from this seller too and I’ve given her the same advice that I followed, so hopefully she’ll get some feedback from this guy as well.)

You know, if you’re going to be an ebay business, you should follow the ebay custom. Give feedback to your customers. Don’t leave ’em hanging. Yeah, I’m still a bit sore that I’ve been screwed out of positive feedback on a few occasions, but one of the people who recently ordered from Mr. Stingy has 0 feedback so far. Poor buyer! New ebayer buyers probably don’t think to hold feedback for ransom – heck, I certainly didn’t when I began. But they should – they should insist upon getting some feedback.

So for those of you who ebay – if you’re selling, don’t be stingy with the feedback! And if you’re buying, don’t be afraid to insist upon it! Good luck with all of your online auctions and caveat emptor!

It’s summer. I should be, as a teacher, relaxing and taking things easy before school starts in August (less than a month to go now – gah!) Instead, I’m working on computers at the school. But not today! No! Today, I played hooky.

Can’t do this during the school year – I’d have to get stuff ready for the sub (or else the kids end up destroying the room) and that’s more work than it’s worth. But I can do it in the summer.

What did I do? Goofed off, mostly. Currently back to working on THROWING AWAY SHIT from my closets and stuff. My filing cabinet is done (even has the most recent bills filed away by type and date – ah, I love being anal retentive!) Working away in the den and reading room off and on right now, but decided to take a short break to brag about Playing Hooky.

Tomorrow, back to being responsible (probably). But for now, it’s Goof Off Treen! 🙂

I’ve been going through my filing cabinet tonight (ostensibly to clean it out – ha!) and had to start out with my creative writing folders. I am a very nice girl and I’m going to spare you from my early Doctor Who fan fiction. Gah! I can barely read it myself. (I wonder if I’ll feel the same way about my later fan fiction? Well, at least most of the later stuff I actually *finished*!)

When I was going through my poetry folder, however, I was much less embarrassed with my younger self. And I noticed something that I really hadn’t noticed before. Most of the “original” documentation for my poetry were on scraps of paper and previously turned in homework and stuff. I actually used to doodle in poetry… (Yes, it wasn’t all fancy print of the names “Eric Idle” or “Sylvester McCoy,” though there’s a fair bit of that in my doodles.) Haven’t written poetry in a long time, but as with my prose writing, I really haven’t been missing it.

As a kid (well, from 5th grade on) I had every intention of being a professional writer when I grew up. In addition to being a teacher, of course. (Teaching was my profession of choice since I could pronounce “profession” and maybe even before then.) The New Adventures of Doctor Who propagated this childhood desire and helped to encourage my fan fiction writing. I had fun with my fan fiction and my poetry and my other stories. I enjoy rereading a lot of it (well, the later stuff), but I just don’t have the desire to write it anymore. Perhaps it will come again – we’ll see. I guess I can use LiveJournal as a way to keep in with writing, even if it is “nonfiction” writing.

So anyway, on to the Poetry Moment. Under the LJ cut is a poem I wrote during my college years. I hope the formatting works in most browsers – I have a tendency to be very particular how my poetry looks as well as sounds. And the formatting of this one is very particular (even with the original). I wrote an Ode to Jabberwocky once, but I probably couldn’t print it in a web page because the word “Jabberwock” must be written backwards. (I have no trouble handwriting it because I write backwards quite easily. No, I’m not demonic.)

I love computers. Until they don’t work. And in the summer, I get a wonderful mix of computers that work (my FAVORITE computers) and computers that don’t (when Trina swears like a sailor). Amazing how I have the patience of Job when it comes to people (well, usually) but it only takes a few minutes of a computer being a pain in the ass for me to get out the four-letter words.

So today I was working in one of the elementary rooms and installing the wonderful kiddie software. Gah – a stack of CDs as long as my arm… But I only install on one computer and then clone the rest. Of course, already this summer I’ve had the completely dead HD (and replacements will be another 2 weeks away), the too-small HD that won’t boot once it’s cloned, the HD that locks up while you’re cloning it (regardless of whether you’re in regular mode or safe mode), and I’m sure there will be other challenges. Today we discovered two of our new LCD monitors don’t keep the image on for more than a millisecond. And we’ve yet to get in our order of 48 new computers which will need to have master computers made and then lots of cloning. Oh yeah, and I’m still struggling with our newest piece of software, Clean Slate. Most of the computers give me a Blue Screen of Death when I go to shut them down once that software is installed. So a long and detailed e-mail to the Clean Slate folks is in order.

But it’s still a good thing. We’re finally getting rid of computers which aren’t all *that* bad. 400MHz machines with 64MB RAM. Don’t know yet what we’re going to do with them, but it looks like we’ll be storing them under my chemistry lab tables like we usually do with the older machines. (I thought it was about time the English department stored the old computers, but dad just gave me this odd stare when I suggested it to him.)

My other summer task, apart from getting all of the computers running for another year and setting up the new ones, is to get the school website up and running. Back in February, I talked about how Metadot Portal was going to be the basis of our website. However, the more I’ve fiddled with the program, the less I’ve liked it. (Or rather, the more difficult it seemed this was going to be for ME.) So I waffled for a bit. Did I want Metadot? Build one from scratch? If so, do I use ASP or PHP? Well, I liked the concept of PHP more – less cumbersome code, lots of Open Source support. But when I checked with the school’s DA site (basically, our ISP) they only supported ASP. No matter, I just ordered some books on ASP (Sams Teach Yourself ASP 3.0 in 21 Days and ASP Web Development with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004). I’ve just finished Day 1 in the Sams book and will probably get the Dreamweaver book in another couple of days.

So it feels good that I’ve finally made a decision of some sort. Figuring out how I want the page to look – well, I have a basic idea. And since I’ll be doing my own coding, I should be able to get that design to fruition. I’ll probably let you folks be my guinea pigs as development continues. Will the site be ready by the start of school? Heh – I seriously doubt it. But I should at least have SOMETHING going by then.

Tomorrow it’s back to installing student software and cloning computers. And I wonder if I’ll make progress tomorrow or if I find myself even more behind than when I left work today. That’s the fun and excitement in the world of school computers. 🙂

One of my friends calls those times when music is flowing through your head (through no effort of your own) your Jungian Radio. Well, I’ve been pondering the music that tends to be in my head first thing in the morning, this week. It’s been an interesting assortment.

Thursday morning, I had “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival” by Ray Stevens going through my brain. Very catchy tune – no surprise it was playing. Friday morning had “Lonely Phobia” by the Rutles. One of my favorite of the “new” Rutles tunes. Yesterday there was some song by Clannad, whose title I’ve never known and that I’m not particularly fond of. It’s always a bit annoying when you get a song stuck in your head that you’re not overly fond of. And then I get annoyed when I don’t know the title of it. And this morning, my song was “Dedicated to the One I Love” by the Mamas and the Papas.

Now Thurs and Fri both were good days for me. Yesterday I was in a slightly foul mood (TMI if I said more). So was the music foretelling how the day was going to go? When my Jungian Radio is playing music that I like, do I end up having a good day? When it plays music I’m not fond of, am I going to have a bad day? I should see about keeping track of my morning tune and then how the day goes. Of course, as a scientist I know that won’t be a very controlled experiment. If I have an expectation of having a bad day because a song isn’t a favorite, I might end up having a bad day due to the expectation of it. And it could be the bad tune gets me off on a bad foot in the morning – so it’s a cause rather than a premonition. (Of course, I don’t believe in premonitions anyhoo, so that will skew the data as well.)

You know, I think too much first thing when I get up. Almost as much as I do when I’m trying to fall asleep at night.

So, as you’re reading this, what song is currently playing in your Jungian Radio? Tell me in a comment – I’m curious to know.

PS: Made a new icon last night. Thought I should let Sylv share the limelight for a bit. 🙂

Well, I should join Packrats Anonymous, except that I’m admitting publically that I’m a packrat, and where’s the anonymity in that?

Do you know how HARD it is to throw away papers from your high school years? I’ve kept these things for more than 15 years and today I finally threw most of the stuff out. (Yes, I still kept some of the stuff.) What’s more is that I know there’s a bunch of things in my filing cabinet that I should also throw away. Perhaps I shall do that a bit later today. Or next year. Or sometime before I die. *sigh*

I admire people who aren’t packrats. I mean, I *know* that I’ll probably never need my notes from high school physics again. But to throw them away???? I must be strong, however. I must throw things away. Well, not everything, of course. But most of it – yes!

I suppose I should go back into the Reading Room and work on another box. And then go through my bookshelves and get rid of the science books that I no longer need. (A trip to the used bookstore is in the cards.) Wish me luck! Hell, wish me strength!

*grumble* *grumble*

It was a lovely, lazy day today. I only worked 3 hours and then came home to goof off. Leo and I spent some time outdoors enjoying the warm breeze and bugs (well, he enjoyed the bugs). And later I took a nap. To be awakened later by an ice cream van going down my street. And then back up again. It had this very annoying song, one which I didn’t recognize.

But after it passed on, I heard another ice cream van tune. This one was recognizable. “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” At first I thought the van had switched tunes, but then I realized I could still sort of hear the other one. Ah, so there were two ice cream vans.

I lay there listening – and heard “Down Upon the Suwannee River” and then another van playing “Musicbox Dancer.” Sheesh! A town as small as mine does NOT need 4 ice cream vans. (My town is 1/4 mile by 1/4 mile – you do the math.)

Funny thing is, had I had some cash at the time, I might well have gone after one of those ice cream vans. They were very rare when I was a kid, but there was one item they sold that I loved. It was a “Mickey Mouse” ice cream bar. Chocolate and vanilla ice cream, basically. Yummy.

I decided to be bad another way, however, and ordered a Pizza Hut pan pizza – pineapples on top. And let’s hear it for leftovers! Yay!

Anyhoo, back to playing Diablo II with judiang and indefatigable42.