Modern Day Dilemma

The Geek, being the Fabulous Geek that he is, recently saved me from computerless horror by giving me one of his old desktop computers. My laptop is hardly a year old and it keeps overheating and shutting down. Without warning. It's pretty annoying. And wouldn't you know it, it starts all of this crap just after the year long warranty expires. Classic. It was a replacement for my old laptop which got declared a 'lemon' and replaced for free by a big box store around here that I prefer not to promote. However, we didn't have the ready cash for the service plan that would have fixed my ailing laptop, so it basically becomes junk. Really expensive junk.

It's hard to transition to one place after the carefree roaming of my laptop, but I will manage. Already there is a collection of random things that crinkle, rattle, and are shiny under my chair as the wee squirt entertains herself while I check email. Not to mention teeth marks on the legs of the chair. (I think she's getting another coupla teeth!)

So, like the lower-(techie) class, non-snobbish, she-geeklet that I am, I like Vista. Wail and moan, I know. I still like how it lets me deal with photos, which, lets face it, is my main job around here as I chronicle the raising of THE cutest girl in the universe. So I wrangle around for an install disk since my laptop only came with the 'repair' disk, (cheapskates!) and do the install. The Geek supervises, although I am pretty savvy and can run circles around my parents (and other folks only slightly older than me) in the tech department.

The Geek steps in for the final wrangling of some elusive drivers for my monitor with speakers attached, and he solemnly turns to me and says, "Your computer wasn't meant to run Vista. It's gonna be really slow."
"Crap!", I think, "Cause I need my computer to be fast when dealing with large picture files!" I hop on and give it a whirl and, oddly enough, it doesn't seem that slow. Now granted I haven't tried editing a huge file in photoshop yet, but honestly! How bad can it be? Then I get to thinking.

Slow is relative, really. Isn't it? I mean, when I remember back in '96 when my professors at Uni said they wanted us to look stuff up on the internet, we GROANED! Out loud! It took more than a minute to load each page! It was tedious stuff. And the pages were lovely, no picture, no flash, no ads, plain old boring text for the most part. So the Geek's computer may process stuff at the speed of sound, or light (as it were) but I don't really notice a difference if my computer takes a little bit longer. I usually take that moment to make sure Someone isn't going for the computer chords or trying to eat the cat's tail. I've been known to start a program and then walk away from it for several hours...

Ok... that was weird. Mid sentence, my computer just...

Wait. Don't crash. Please!

Reset screen resolution to huge??? What the...

Reset it to normal... ok. Computer? Are you ok?

Crazy black screen with vertical lines of code from the matrix, but not as cool???!!??

Crap.

The Geek spoke the truth. My hardware can't keep up with my software. (Ain't that always the way?)

Finally! News I can get into...

Found this while reading about Auto-tune. Wouldn't be GREAT if all news was like this? Hee hee!

When in doubt...crochet your candidate!

Just got this in an email from Lionbrand yarn. It's just so wrong I had to post it! The email said...'Hold your own debate! Presidential candidate finger puppets! There are no words for how weird this is.

Obama

McCain

Want one!

No idea what it is, or who makes it, but it's a GREEN BUBBLE CAR! How can one pass this up?

If I only blogged my dreams

If my dreams were all I put up here, some days it would be a helluva read. For example.

Last night, I dreamed I was trying to get a part time job at Burger King, not a real burger king, but the kind that was a storefront, so only one fry basket and a small grill. Apparently a friend of mine from college, whom we called Del Fuego (because her last name was Del Figlio and...well, it was college and we thought we were clever) worked there and she was trying to get me hired. SO I worked a whole day and then no one ever told me to come back, but they gave me a uniform (of sorts) or tried to. There was a room full of second hand jeans and two moms were passing out the size we needed, we just had to tell them. I told them my size but that it had to be maternity. They just stared at me. Then the owner came in and wanted a conduit run so his daughter could get burgers in her bedroom. Still no word about whether I worked there or not. Then, me in my street clothes and untrained was made to stand at the front of the store while the customers piled up. When I went to ask what I should do, they said, "Nothing. You aren't trained yet." A bunch of them were lying on their stomachs in the break room, coloring (with crayons). SO I just stood there and oddly enough so did the patrons. No one got mad, they just stared at me.

Then my friend came in like she had the best news in the world, bouncing! I got the job and I start right now and my shifts would be 12 hours. I mentioned I was pregnant and she was shocked. (you saw the pics right? There doesn't seem to be much question left as to my state) She said she didn't know! I asked what she thought this big belly was and she blushed and said she thought I'd just put on weight since college. (Sigh)

My first job was to transport used uniforms to be cleaned. However, when I opened the bag, there were two bandannas, one orange and one green which had money in them and a note for me saying I should keep my mouth shut and here was a little bribe money, and oddly enough some jewelry components in an envelope for me if I didn't say anything. The bandannas were color coded to the GANG they belonged to and I was supposed to be their mule for the stuff. Before I could transport it or even decide if I wanted to be a mule, a knock at the door came. Two thugs were there and one had a gun in his hand. They politely asked me to open the door. I refused and before shooting could break out, I heard a beep. Then another, then several...then I opened my eyes to my sweet Geek's drooling face about 6 inches from my own and his alarm (which only ever wakes ME up) going off.

Some days I wish I could record these dreams because, unlike the one above, some are like MOVIES! When the Geek and I first got married I had to catch up on all the Stargate episodes so we could watch them with friends and I wouldn't be lost or have to have things explained to me during the current episodes. Three per night and I was dreaming more at night! I coulda been a great writer for that show.

Oh...that's not right...

Yes, I'm escaping. Don't judge me!

Since this blog is about the Musician (me) and the Geek (my hubs) and the analogy of our married life given is the Mac vs. PC commercials...how we are so opposite, I found it very funny that there are PC vs. Mac commercials. All of them can be found here. I'll add one here, just for a taste. It's a little too close to home with my Geek out earning me on a scale of...oh...let's not talk about it, shall we? It's too depressing. But damn it! I'm artsy!

Don't die Honey, but if you do (later...much later!) I'll turn you into a diamond

The Geek long ago made it known that he wanted to be cremated a long time from now when he dies. I thought this weird, since who will be in the grave spot next to me if he's in an urn, but in an effort to respect his wishes, I've been trying to accept this. Then today on a news site, I spied this article. It turns out that there is a company that will take your beloveds ashes and turn them into a diamond (created in a lab of course).

While this may seem morbid, I would much rather have my hubby as a sparkling reminder close to my heart than as a dust collector on the fireplace mantle.

For the not so dead, there is also the option to take some of your hair and have one made. Think about it. I have 6 siblings and if we each gave some hair to make a stone for our Mama, how COOL would that be?! Just a thought.

Quite possibly the ugliest fashion brought to you by the most tasteless purveyor of clothing

Yes folks, this is, in fact, a dress. The not so recent wake of clothing purveyors who use sex to sell clothes has produced my least favorite, which I will not even name because you might in fact, cruise on over to their website and thereby unknowingly contribute to their empire built on pushing teen (or at least what is made to appear to be) 'soft porn' on the masses. I have noticed that since the viewer of said advertisements is often too accosted by exposed flesh or by distracting poses that would best be showcased around a pole in some seedy smoke-filled back room, they often fail to pick up on the fact that these clothes are, in fact, a hideous collection of uncomfortable crap, usually colored in shades more often found in my old 80's wonder palette of eyeshadow than on humans. But they go to far with this. It is equal parts hideous and comical and I dare say I would have a hard time not bursting out laughing if I saw them on a human girl out and about town. Aptly named 'figure skater', but I have to say the last time a figure skater wore this ugly an outfit had to be at least...what...1972? To make the best outfit ever, you must pair it with their other offering...Because no outfit is complete unless every single inch of you shines like the top of the Chrysler building. Seriously.

electric skin

Everything is irritating me today, even the clothes I have on! I suppose this is just another one of those mysterious side effects of being pregnant, but I do not like it! It makes everything green (this is the color I've always associated with prickly feelings on my skin - like when I'd wake up in the night with a dead hand from sleeping on it.)

Ummm...I gotta go practice.

Yuto Miyazawa - 8-Year Old Japanese Guitar Phenom! from Metal Edge TV on Vimeo.

Brave New World

My Papa (Dad) has a facebook page! What?!

I just thought someone was stomping around!

I woke up at about 4:44 last night and the room was shaking. I thought it was the Geek, stomping around downstairs and a sign that our house did really have some structural issues. Nope. It was an earthquake. In Nashville. I didn't know that could happen!

According to this little blurb in the Tennessean, here's the skinny"

"9:40 a.m.

State transportation officials are checking bridges across Tennessee for possible damage from the 5.4-magnitude earthquake that shook the area overnight.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation has crews out in West Tennessee doing visual inspections, in particular focusing on crossings over the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers, says Julie Oaks, spokeswoman for the state highways agency.

In Middle Tennessee, crews are making visual checks in the northern counties as far east as Cumberland County.

Oaks said the department doesn't expect to find any damage. "But as a precaution, we are checking."

- JENNY UPCHURCH"

Other links here and here

UPDATE! - as I was posting this @ 10:16 am, I felt another little tiny aftershock. Weird!!

umm...

Sometimes I forget things like zombies...and then....

Dun Dun DUUUUUUUN.

This made the geek and I crack up tonight. Especially the shambling. Never forget the shambling!!

True Geek Love! (Tripod)

I'll just let you listen...(shakes head and sighs)

You've come a long way Ronan

From this:

on BAYWATCH: HAWAII!! lol
to this:

Oooooo....me like!

What? Flash drives that look like Legos? Yes please!

RSS?

If you are like me, you are totally baffled by the sheer amount of ways one can subscribe to a blog. I mean really! Every single website, including Yahoo, Google, and Live have their own version of it. But wait...! It not only slices and dices, it makes your eyes crossed!! I have been trying to sort this out in my spare time as each friend has a different feed service. 'Addthis', 'feedburner'. And HOW you get that info can be any one of (so far as I can tell, I have an inkling that there are more) three ways.
One, a reader.
Two, an email.
Three, on your homepage as a little widget (doo-dad).
After I had removed large clumps of hair from my head trying to sort this out, I boiled it down to this. Here is the semi-technical information and here is my version:
1. Someone somewhere writes something interesting that I'd like to read.
2. I go to their site and like what I read. I want to go there again, but hey, it's a crazy world, a crazy life. I need reminders!
3. I click on any number of random looking things that might remotely mention subscribing, but if this is there...well I know I'm on the right track. Those little icons let me choose where I want that cool little blurb on that groovy person's website to go.
4. There are 30+ ways to get that information to me including bloglines, yahoo, google, reddit, technorati, and many, many...many more. Even myspace and facebook let you have feeds on your page! I have found the easiest is to add them as a little doo-dad to my google home page when I log in to check my gmail. My neighbor has a reader and sends me fun things which I never check in my own reader because, lets face it, I have enough things to read in a day. I like to keep it simple.
5. Enter in the name of the website that I want to get my 'feed' from (if it's not automatically added from that site).
6. Click 'done'.
7. Read on my home page all the little snippets of fun that make my day a little brighter.

I know there are plenty of geeks out there rolling their eyes at my little explanation, but for the rest of us who are overwhelmed by the choices...give us a break!

Snow - you are such a tease

Happy Valentines Day to all of you and for those of you who think Valentines Day sucks and one should be miserable and ignore the manufactured Greeting Card conspiracy to make everyone celebrate in the sappiest way possible, I'm sorry. Happy Day anyway. It takes a lot to be that miserable. I should know. I used to be in your camp. It gave me heartburn to be that full of angst, so I couldn't stay there. I tried. The whole bitter, angst-y artist thing doesn't work for me. My mama said it best..."Girl, you are a red rubber ball! Nothing keeps you down for long."

But I digress. This post is about snow...or lack there of in Nashvegas. I was office bound while all the lovely swirl was happening outside so didn't get any photos. The photos above are from a couple of people who managed to get pictures yesterday on Flickr. Just so you can see the pitifulness of it after a few hours. The dusting we got was beautiful and made a white world outside my window, but didn't hang around. I know, for those of you in the north who say "snow is the WORST! I can't wait for it to go away, all the sludge, wet, and mess...", let me just say this: I grew up in Texas. 'Nuf said. I am never, ever, ever, going to get sick of it. I'll always think it's beautiful, even if I AM cold and I wish it had stayed. So there.

My...wasn't that petulant.

I need cool gum

I'm sure this is SOOO old news, but I ran across this web page today. Stride Gum send this guy all over the world to dance in a video, poorly I might add. And not a fancy video, one shot with his digital camera. Man! Wouldn't this be the BEST gig EVAAAR!!??! I so need a cool gum to sponsor me to do something fun.

Speaking of sponsor...coming soon. A way to 'Save the Music' on a more personal level. Are you excited? I am!