Susan all gussied up
She's even doing a darned good job of keeping her room clean these days. Far better than I usually manage to keep my office, too!
This one is her favorite from the shoot
Susan, noir
Monday, February 26, 2007
Susan the Wonder Child
Susan the Wonder Child was always a pretty girl, but she's really getting to be quite dazzling. She was hanging out with a friend the other evening and they did a photo shoot for fun. Here are a few of the pictures; there are another dozen in the Susan set in my Flickr account.
Susan all gussied up
She's even doing a darned good job of keeping her room clean these days. Far better than I usually manage to keep my office, too!
This one is her favorite from the shoot
Susan, noir
Susan all gussied up
She's even doing a darned good job of keeping her room clean these days. Far better than I usually manage to keep my office, too!
This one is her favorite from the shoot
Susan, noir
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Disgusted with Norton Utilities & Symantec
I've spent the last hour and a half trying to solve a problem with Norton Utilities, where the Norton Recycle Bin stopped working on drives other than my C: drive for no apparent reason. Their projected solution (which was not easy to find on their website, I'll tell you!) had me reboot my computer three different times. No, that didn't work.
Now I'm going to have put up with their support center in India to find out exactly what to do. That'll be another hour of my life I'll never get back. Anyone know how I can replace Norton and never have to use this stuff again? McAfee and F-Prot both make decent antivirus software, I use a good software/hardware solution (that I'm not going to talk about here) for firewalling, now I just need replacements for the disk utilities and I'm home free!
P.S. It's some hours later and I decided I'd write them from their website interface and get a reply by email. They post the current wait time for their phone support on the website and it was 15 minutes just on hold. Screw that. On their web-based email form, I put in all my name, address, numbers, email addy, product ID, and other things, then wrote up a description of the problem I was having. I hit send and POOF! Symantec's website gave me a cryptic error, something about not being able to file it in RightNow (I have no idea what RightNow is), and that was that. Well, I have to applaud their consistency: the program gives shitty, cryptic error messages, so why shouldn't the website? Fortunately, I saved the text of my question in a text file and I can try again tomorrow if I feel like it. The text file name, btw, is NortonSUCKS!.txt. The filename was chosen purely at random, so it's really fortunate that it came out so, uh, relevant.
Now I'm going to have put up with their support center in India to find out exactly what to do. That'll be another hour of my life I'll never get back. Anyone know how I can replace Norton and never have to use this stuff again? McAfee and F-Prot both make decent antivirus software, I use a good software/hardware solution (that I'm not going to talk about here) for firewalling, now I just need replacements for the disk utilities and I'm home free!
P.S. It's some hours later and I decided I'd write them from their website interface and get a reply by email. They post the current wait time for their phone support on the website and it was 15 minutes just on hold. Screw that. On their web-based email form, I put in all my name, address, numbers, email addy, product ID, and other things, then wrote up a description of the problem I was having. I hit send and POOF! Symantec's website gave me a cryptic error, something about not being able to file it in RightNow (I have no idea what RightNow is), and that was that. Well, I have to applaud their consistency: the program gives shitty, cryptic error messages, so why shouldn't the website? Fortunately, I saved the text of my question in a text file and I can try again tomorrow if I feel like it. The text file name, btw, is NortonSUCKS!.txt. The filename was chosen purely at random, so it's really fortunate that it came out so, uh, relevant.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
My sister's going to be on national TV
My sister Lorraine, who's a thanatologist, is off to DC to be on a TV show entitled Living with Grief: Before and After the Death. Very cool!
Addendum, March 3: Lorraine had said "national TV" when she was telling me about it, but it's actually a national teleconference. It's still cool, though, and she's selling lots and lots of her books. (Come to think of it, we need to get our little sister Susan to write a book and we'll all three of us be authors.)
Addendum, March 3: Lorraine had said "national TV" when she was telling me about it, but it's actually a national teleconference. It's still cool, though, and she's selling lots and lots of her books. (Come to think of it, we need to get our little sister Susan to write a book and we'll all three of us be authors.)
My blood sugar's better than I thought
I'd been testing my blood sugar in the morning and it was coming out waaaaay too high, around 160. Uh-oh, that is not good. I'd been having some tingling in my legs that show that I really need to do more exercise (which I'm doing), but if my blood sugar's half again as high as it should be, this would mean that I probably need to go on insulin, a step I don't want to have to take.
I went to test it last night right before I leapt on the exercycle. I somehow screwed up the test with the strip and got an error code. It was the last strip in the canister, so I grabbed a new canister of strips. When I went to change the strip code the machine was reading, from 18 to 17, I found that I'd been using strips with a code of 17 and the machine was reading them wrong. (A stupid user error, in other words.) That was promising--maybe I wasn't as bad off as I thought!
I ran a test with the new bottle and showed as 142, which was perfectly decent an hour after having something to eat. I did half an hour on the exercycle and I checked again: 74. Hey, hey, hey!
The proof of the pudding was this morning: waking blood sugar was 115, just where it should be.
I still need to do more excercising so my legs don't give me ghost feelings, but I'm really pleased that it's not as bad as I thought it was.
I went to test it last night right before I leapt on the exercycle. I somehow screwed up the test with the strip and got an error code. It was the last strip in the canister, so I grabbed a new canister of strips. When I went to change the strip code the machine was reading, from 18 to 17, I found that I'd been using strips with a code of 17 and the machine was reading them wrong. (A stupid user error, in other words.) That was promising--maybe I wasn't as bad off as I thought!
I ran a test with the new bottle and showed as 142, which was perfectly decent an hour after having something to eat. I did half an hour on the exercycle and I checked again: 74. Hey, hey, hey!
The proof of the pudding was this morning: waking blood sugar was 115, just where it should be.
I still need to do more excercising so my legs don't give me ghost feelings, but I'm really pleased that it's not as bad as I thought it was.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Quitting smoking
Today is February 12th. A not-so-signficant day that's two days before Valentine's Day, but this particular Feb 12th is worthy of being noted.
30 years ago today, I stopped smoking.
It was something I needed to work up to. I certainly needed to get rid of the collection of pipes, which were pretty darned cool (I was into meerschaum). But the big thing was just to stop smoking.
Every junkie knows his drug. Tobacco is my drug.
Every junkie can tell you everything there is to know about his drug: how it felt, which varieties they liked, what it was like the first time that day, times when it had felt really good, and so forth and so on. Me, too.
Every junkie can tell you how hard it was to give it up. Me, too.
And every junkie will tell you that they didn't give it up because they wanted to; they gave it up because they knew they had to... but if they had their druthers and it wasn't going to kill them, they'd all still be doing their drug regularly.
Oh, yeah, me, too.
I made the mistake of lighting someone's cigarette five years after I'd quit. The smoke curled around in my mouth. I didn't inhale (I'd probably have coughed my head off), but nicotine soaked in through my mucus membranes. I was jonesing for a cigarette for a week thereafter. I ain't done that since.
I have dreams periodically, usually in August for some reason, where I'm at a party and someone is saying to me, "Oh, it's safe now! You can smoke all you like and it's no big deal." And someone's hand holds a pack out to me and I take one of these newfangled cigarettes.
I had a dream last night, on the eve of this anniversary, about smoking. I smoke a lot in my dreams. It feels great.
God, I miss smoking. But I know better than to start again.
30 years ago today, I stopped smoking.
It was something I needed to work up to. I certainly needed to get rid of the collection of pipes, which were pretty darned cool (I was into meerschaum). But the big thing was just to stop smoking.
Every junkie knows his drug. Tobacco is my drug.
Every junkie can tell you everything there is to know about his drug: how it felt, which varieties they liked, what it was like the first time that day, times when it had felt really good, and so forth and so on. Me, too.
Every junkie can tell you how hard it was to give it up. Me, too.
And every junkie will tell you that they didn't give it up because they wanted to; they gave it up because they knew they had to... but if they had their druthers and it wasn't going to kill them, they'd all still be doing their drug regularly.
Oh, yeah, me, too.
I made the mistake of lighting someone's cigarette five years after I'd quit. The smoke curled around in my mouth. I didn't inhale (I'd probably have coughed my head off), but nicotine soaked in through my mucus membranes. I was jonesing for a cigarette for a week thereafter. I ain't done that since.
I have dreams periodically, usually in August for some reason, where I'm at a party and someone is saying to me, "Oh, it's safe now! You can smoke all you like and it's no big deal." And someone's hand holds a pack out to me and I take one of these newfangled cigarettes.
I had a dream last night, on the eve of this anniversary, about smoking. I smoke a lot in my dreams. It feels great.
God, I miss smoking. But I know better than to start again.
Friday, February 09, 2007
What sports car are you?
I'm a Chevrolet Corvette!
You're a classic - powerful, athletic, and competitive. You're all about winning the race and getting the job done. While you have a practical everyday side, you get wild when anyone pushes your pedal. You hate to lose, but you hardly ever do.
Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Weirdness
Susan the Wonder Child has been making her quota of weirdness today. First, she shared with me the following YouTube video about Charlie the Unicorn that's twisted and really funny. It's a bit on the noisy side, but it's definitely office-safe.
The other thing is that she phoned me up to tell me that Anna Nicole Smith had died suddenly of unknown causes. While all the news services are going to be playing "Rush to Judgement," I'm sad. I did like her, even if she was dumber than a jar of Miracle Whip.
The other thing is that she phoned me up to tell me that Anna Nicole Smith had died suddenly of unknown causes. While all the news services are going to be playing "Rush to Judgement," I'm sad. I did like her, even if she was dumber than a jar of Miracle Whip.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Which tarot card are you?
You are The Sun
Happiness, Content, Joy.
The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.
Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way.
The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon's Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
Take the Test to Find Out.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Monday, January 08, 2007
A couple thoughts about the music business
For no particular reason, I wanted to add a couple of fun thoughts about the music business:
Q: What separates sound engineers from the scum of the earth?
A: A big sheet of plate glass.
And, from the late Hunter S. Thompson:
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Hanging Saddam
I'm actually not sure how I feel about hanging Saddam. Oh, I have no doubt that he deserves to be hanged for what they convicted him of and a lot of other things they didn't even try him for, but I'm not entirely convinced we should do it. Like everything else about our involvement over there, this is feeling... hasty. I'd be really curious to find out what the possible ramifications are going to be before we do this. If there's just one thing this administration doesn't grasp--and God knows they don't grasp anything--it's forethought.
The other thing I keep thinking is this: Saddam Hussein was convicted of basically invading part of Iran unlawfully with a cheap excuse, killing people because it suited him, overthrowing the existing government, letting loose his army to terrorize the region, and generally ignoring everyone else's opinion of proper behavior. For which it looks like he's going to be hanged in fairly short order.
Well, gee, thank goodness no-one thinks that our President's done that! Otherwise, we'd have to convict him and hang him for crimes against humanity, too. Quickly.
Really nasty song (mwahahahahaaaaa!)
Note: If you're easily offended, skip this post. If you're not easily offended, read on!
I actually wrote this song over a year ago, but I've debated putting it on the blog. Recent events and seeing still more of the damage fundamentalists are doing to the world has prompted me to post this. Mockery's an exceptional political tool and it works all the better with people who have no sense of humor... which'd be these folks.
The backstory is this: This song was actually inspired by an abortive attempt to have a constructive discussion with a self-anointed Christian columnist named Mel who every week attempts to be profound (generally without any success, though I did see one or two columns that bordered on "cogent") in a wee, tiny little newspaper in Minnesota. I've seen his mailing list—he's not very ept with computers and didn't seem to grasp the idea of blind mailing lists—and he's got a very small fan club, but like most of his brand of twerp, he's enormously self-important.
I really wanted to find out how he got from the Bible to the nasty, judgmental, small-minded positions he took in his rather sloppily-written columns. It seemed like such a wild leap, and finding fundamentalists who are actually willing to talk about things to anyone who's not already assimilated into the mindset is very difficult. Unfortunately, having promised that he wanted to talk to me about what he was writing, he then proceeded to spout his peasant version of politics and then refused to talk to me after I started asking him a lot of questions. It was the usual line of drivel, sadly; I'd hoped for something new. (Shoot, I'd have settled for conversation that demonstrated self-awareness and not something generated by an "Eliza"-like program set up to run in "Christian drivel" mode, but no luck even there.)
He even lied to me about getting back to me in a week; I dropped him a couple emails reminding him of this promise about 2 years later, but he didn't even acknowledge them. Pity he doesn't have the courage of his supposed convictions… but I do have to thank him for one thing: he inspired a wonderful song!
The backstory is this: This song was actually inspired by an abortive attempt to have a constructive discussion with a self-anointed Christian columnist named Mel who every week attempts to be profound (generally without any success, though I did see one or two columns that bordered on "cogent") in a wee, tiny little newspaper in Minnesota. I've seen his mailing list—he's not very ept with computers and didn't seem to grasp the idea of blind mailing lists—and he's got a very small fan club, but like most of his brand of twerp, he's enormously self-important.
I really wanted to find out how he got from the Bible to the nasty, judgmental, small-minded positions he took in his rather sloppily-written columns. It seemed like such a wild leap, and finding fundamentalists who are actually willing to talk about things to anyone who's not already assimilated into the mindset is very difficult. Unfortunately, having promised that he wanted to talk to me about what he was writing, he then proceeded to spout his peasant version of politics and then refused to talk to me after I started asking him a lot of questions. It was the usual line of drivel, sadly; I'd hoped for something new. (Shoot, I'd have settled for conversation that demonstrated self-awareness and not something generated by an "Eliza"-like program set up to run in "Christian drivel" mode, but no luck even there.)
He even lied to me about getting back to me in a week; I dropped him a couple emails reminding him of this promise about 2 years later, but he didn't even acknowledge them. Pity he doesn't have the courage of his supposed convictions… but I do have to thank him for one thing: he inspired a wonderful song!
The song is entitled "You Can Tell a Christian..." and it's really kind of a natural. You're welcome to spread it around in its current form (the link will download a PDF file).
Remember that there really are good Christians out there who are to be known and praised--I've known a couple myself and they're great people!--but far, far too many of them in this country are loudmouthed, ignorant little peasants who have no reason for continued existence on a planet that's discovered penicillin. They're the ones I wrote this song about.
(BTW, if you're a fan of this sort of thing, you might also enjoy the classic music video, "Keep Your Jesus Off My Penis" by Eric Schwartz, who coined the lovely term "hypo-Christianity.")
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