Happy Birthday to the April Fools: judiang & shebit! I know Judi’s gonna have a great birthday, I’m gonna be there to make sure it happens. Hope you have a great birthday, too, Shebit! 🙂

Judi’s kept elsaf & I very busy these past two days. So busy I’ve not had much of a chance to write. But I’m gonna try to rectify that now.

Tuesday night, I drove up to Elsa’s place and got to sleep on her new sofabed. Her living room is wonderful! She did a great job on the refurbishment. And the carpet is really nice. I made up an amaretto sour & watched Pitch Black halfheartedly and eventually fell asleep.

Wednesday morning, we both got up bright & bushy tailed. And when we got on the road, I started keeping track of things.
9:10am Leave Elsa’s
10:01am Done w/ errands (and McDonald’s breakfast) and on the road again!
10:29am Pulled over for going same speed as the rest of the traffic (he CLAIMS we were going 80mph, but I seriously suspect he made that bit up…)
10:32am On the road again!
10:50am Pitstop
12:00pm Swapped drivers (Trina gets vanilla Coke to drink while driving)
1:15pm Rest stop & swap back
3:10pm Arrived @ Judi’s (320 miles traveled)

We picked Judi & Lance up and then headed over to her new apartment. It’s brilliant! And the same distance away from Jewel (her current grocery) as her old place. We ate at a cafe not far from her place or Jewel. I had a BLT & some cream of broccoli soup. We then picked up some things from Jewel and returned to the apartment. The plan was to be at the old place when the movers brought around the boxes & tape, and then go shopping to Bed, Bath & Beyond for some items that Judi wants for her new place. What ended up happening was that we waited, waited & waited for the boxes and ended up going to Bar Louie for supper. I had four-cheese “pizza.” Well, it wanted to be pizza. It was warm cheese on hard bread with some marinara in between. But the highlight of the Bar Louie experience was the chocolate, chocolate, chocolate cake that we shared. Damn, that thing was HUGE! But we et it all. And it was wonderful.

When we got back to Judi’s place, we set up our airbeds in her living room and put on the new Doctor Who ep. And since the only TV that Judi currently has at the new place is this little 10″ screen TV, I’d brought around an LCD projector from school and we shone it up on the big white wall. That was way cool. (And since I forgot to bring speakers for the laptop, we used Elsa’s FM transmitter to send the audio of the laptop to Judi’s clock radio. Yay for ingenuity and too much technology!) We then hooked her cable box to the projector and watched BBC America. I got to see an episode of Coupling from season 4 – cool! I’ve yet to get the DVD set for season 4.

I moved my airbed to the den/guest bedroom and slept there. Elsa slept in the living room. And Judi was on her airbed in her room. We all slept well.

Perhaps I’ll write about today during my next post. Elsa mentioned it in her post tonight. Judi REALLY put us through our paces today. 🙂

So, I’m sitting on Elsa’s sofa and watching some movie called Pitch Black on Sci Fi. Elsa’s snoozing beside me – she worked (and played) hard today, so that’s understandable.

Tomorrow morning we drive to Chi Town to see Judi. Woohoo!

I’d write about the odd phonecall I had from a tech support guy, but I’m too tired to be coherent. So I’ll write about it at Judi’s.

Calling all geeks! Calling all geeks! I have an interesting problem with my computer right now. I’ve discovered that QCD cannot make MP3s or WAVS or OGG files because it thinks my computer is unable to do digital audio extraction. MusicMatch, OTOH, has no trouble getting my computer to do digital audio extraction. When I go to Control Panel|Multimedia|CD Audio, the place where I can turn on or off digital audio extraction is grayed out. For both CD ROM drives.

The research that I’ve done so far hasn’t really been useful. Winders says I need WDM drivers. But from what I can tell, CD ROM drives don’t use WDM drivers. So I checked with Creative, makers of my sound card. They don’t have WDM drivers for Win98. Gee, thanks. One site said there may be a problem with old BIOS’s. But my BIOS is as up to date as the website says it should be. (OK, so the last update was a couple years ago… So I may be screwed in that case.)

But then, if my PC is unable to do digital audio extraction, why can MusicMatch do it? And if MusicMatch can do it, why can’t I get another program, like QCD, to do it?

Any suggestions from those of you in the know? (Or who know someone in the know?)

I really need to upgrade this summer. Can’t afford it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need it. 🙂

I’m a bit of a music snob. It’s not that I listen to snobby music, but that I’m very particular about what I want in music playback. Back in February I bought my new MP3 CD player for my car audio deck and I’ve been loving it ever since. I mentioned in the post about it that I was then looking for the right MP3 player for my PC. I thought maybe MediaMonkey was the answer, but the one thing I really disliked about it was the database format. Databases crash. And usually when I’m counting on them not to. But it was better than MusicMatch, so I went with it. Unfortunately, I started having troubles ripping my CDs to MP3 format with it, and so still needed to have MusicMatch on board. Hmmm, I needed to do a rethink.

While reading through the extensive MediaMonkey forums, however, I came across a program title that I remembered most fondly. Five years ago, before MP3s were even a glint in my eyes, I used Quintessential CD as my CD player. It was small software, skinnable, and free. Just what I needed for playing my CDs on the PC. Someone on the MediaMonkey forums mentioned QCD and I thought “I wonder if that’s my old program?” Well, since QCD was a CD playing software, I didn’t really need it anymore, so I didn’t think anything of it. Until last night when I read another post mentioning it. And I got to thinking “what if they updated it to play MP3s?” They have! The initials are still QCD, but now the program is Quintessential Media Player!

Well, I downloaded the program, virus checked it, and installed it. I’m currently playing with it now, checking out the features. And I think this is gonna be The One! It’s doing, so far, everything that I want in an MP3 player.

• small skin footprint possible (song title/artist showing)
• stays in system tray while playing
• works with .m3u files
• works with subfolders in playlist folder
• rips & encodes (so far, only see .ogg encoding – will look for MP3 plugin)
• free

There are still some things I need to do to see how it works. I haven’t tried ripping a CD with it yet. If it can do that, and as MP3s (to be compatible with the rest of the MP3 players I own), then I’ve finally found my MP3 player software. And it’s an old favorite of mine anyhoo! Yay!

In other news, today is gregmce‘s birthday! And in an odd case of serendipity, it’s also marathongreg‘s birthday! Who’da thunk it?! Heh heh!

Happy Birthday, Greg! Hope you have a blast!

In other, other news, today is the premier of the new Doctor Who. WOOHOO! (Or should that be Woo Who?) For those of you in the UK, ENJOY! For the rest of us – hopefully we’ll get to enjoy soon enough!

It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya… First off, judiang manages to keep me playing City of Heroes from 7pm until 4am last night. (Well, I did wanna do an all nighter, but I was shocked when I looked at my watch and saw 4am!) And then Leo works on getting me up at 6:30am. And then he sits on my alarm clock and manages to change the hour. Did I notice this at the time? No. So when I looked at my clock and saw it was 11:30am, I rocketed out of bed and got ready. (I’m having lunch with papa at the Chinese Buffet and didn’t want to miss out on that.) It wasn’t until I sat at my computer to read my e-mail that I saw it wasn’t even 9am yet!!! Damn cat!

So, I worked on my coursework for this week’s part of my 4 week online class. I’m doing 3 of these online classes in order to get enough contact hours to move my teaching certificate into licensure. I needed 20.5contact hours more (20 contact hours = 1 semester hour). Each of these 4 week classes is 12 contact hours. Since they were a set of 3, I decided to sign up for all of ’em. ($45 for the first course, $20 for the other two. Pretty cheap if you ask me.) The course is over physical science teaching and the Ohio physical science standards. I’d say over 60% of the students in this class are special education teachers, because thanks to No Vendor Left Behind No Child Left Behind, all of the special education teachers in the state of Ohio (OK, so maybe not ALL) are not “Highly Qualified Teachers.” What the??? People are creating new jobs so that teachers can jump through more hoops, you know. Bah!

Still, the class hasn’t been all that bad, and I’m realizing that maybe, just maybe, I do have enough discipline to do an online class. I have one more week of this class to go, and I’ll probably do all the coursework before I go to Chicago. (If not, I can easily do it while on vacation! I love online stuff!) If it’s true that I do have the discipline for it, I might look into some online university classes – maybe even a Masters degree program.

Leo’s excited to have me home (and up) today. He’s showing his affection by sitting on my class book while I’m doing my online homework and playing with my (dwindling numbers of) paper clips and all sorts of fun “Yay! Trina’s home!” things. 🙂 I love my damn cat. 🙂

As of 3:30pm EST today, I am on Spring Break! Woohoo! First, I’m off to BW3s for an amaretto sour & some eats. Then back home to play City of Heroes with judiang for as long as I can stand it. And then, who knows? No other real plans until Tuesday night when I drive up to elsaf‘s. We’ll then drive off to see Judi on Wednesday. Woohoo! And we’ll be getting together with miz_em too, I believe! It’s good to see my friends. Yay!

Today’s the first full day of spring! We’re in the early spring weather too. Cold mornings, chilly days. And rain. But that’s just a precursor to the lovely spring days with cool breezes, flowering trees, (bad sinus headaches – bleh), and lots & lots of green stuff. (Of course, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, it’s autumn. Since I love autumn just slightly more than spring, I say “wehey! Autumn!” to you!)

Doh! I’ve forgotten to use my Sylv as Leprechaun icon in the build up to St. Patrick’s Day! So I shall use it now and wish all of you, whether you’re Irish, Scottish, German, or whatever a Happy St. Pat’s! (I’m Scottish & German but still wore green today. Why? Cuz if I dressed up in my tartan and killed all the Celts, I’d probably get fired. And also, since I work in a building where kindergarteners are, I’d best have green on today!)

Well, Mapserver and I weren’t seeing eye to eye just now, but when that happens, I can turn around and view the front of my Hero. So, since Icy Hot Man finally got a new costume, I decided to take pictures of it. When I first created IHM, I didn’t know how to separate out colors in a costume design – I wanted both blue & orange to symbolize cold & hot. I got to change that, finally, with my costume upgrade.

Icy Hot Man’s New Costume

Once you’ve checked the new costume out, check out my LiveJournal Pix Gallery of City of Heroes captures. I have one of each of Magyss’s (judiang‘s) costumes. I think she’s in it for the costumes. 😉

Not much of the day left for her, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY the_ladylark! Hope you had a lovely day and that you have many more happy birthdays!

And to get a jump on tomorrow, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to redstarrobot! Beware the Ides of March, unless it brings presents!