unbound @ seema.org

FB Meme

"Meme" might not be the right word for it, but there is a trend on Facebook right now where people take a particular status posting and replicate it as theirs. This usually take the form of "I appreciate my mother/daughter/father/son/goldfish/car and if you do too, post this in your status." Lately, they've become more militant with some adding, "93 percent of people won't dare to post this; will you be brave enough?" And I say, BS.

First of all, the number is arbitrary. Was there a market study done to prove that 93 percent of people truly had issues with whatever the status had to the point they didn't want to replicate it in their status? Or is it more the case that people like me aren't interested in regurgitating canned Hallmark-esque statuses? Second, the inherent dare is kind of silly; a copy and pasting into Facebook status isnt' a singular act of courage in anyway and most of these meme-thingies are inane and sacchrine enough that you're actually going to offend anyone at all (though some people are, admittedly, easily offended).

I find these types of status updates annoying because they are redundant, ineffective, and useless. Of course, you could say the same about most status updates (and I'm not excluding my own either), but these are especially conversation stoppers. There's really no response required, other than perhaps imitation, and even if there is a response, how many times can you possibly read and respond to the same status? I imagine the motivation behind such redundant statuses has everything to do with accumulating a certain level of support, but to what end? And wouldn't it be more meaningful to write your own words of appreciation rather than copying something? I'm guessing 98 percent of you aren't brave enough to answer.

Labels: blogging, technology

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Moving tips

Here's a post on migrating to WordPress from blogger, which is what I'm leaning towards right now. Just as an FYI, there might be an "intermediate" step before the final URL change. A lot going on in RL right now so unfortunately, this hasn't been a priority and I'm feeling curiously unmotivated to figure out how to actually do all of the things I need to do to migrate the blog prior to May 1. So my current plan is just to back-up this one and then maybe use a different service for a couple of months until I figure out what the final solution is going to be. I just need time to think!

Labels: blogging, LotD, me, technology

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Update

Still running around like a crazy person. I haven't had a chance to decide what to do with this blog come May 1, which is the date blogger ftp ends. I'm probably going to go with a temporary solution and then tackle Wordpress at a later date. Watch this space for the new URL.

Labels: blogging, geek, me, technology

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Weird

The infomercial on right now is for a software program called Dragon (getdragon.com -- purposely not linking). It's pretty funny, actually, as you have to actually speak your punctuation and "new line" or "new paragraph". I'm just trying to imagine that oh so famous Walt Whitman poem would work. To wit, as dictated into Dragon;

Oh captain exclamation point my Captain exclamation point our fearful trip is done semicolon next line
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won semicolon next line
The port is near, the bells I hear comma the people all exulting comma next line
While follow eyes the steady keel comma the vessel grim and daring colon next line
But O heart exclamation point heart exclamation point heart exclamation point next line
O the bleeding drops of red comma next line
Where on the deck my Captain lies comma next line
Fallen cold and dead period next line

I don't know how Dragon would handle all the spelling variations (O instead of Oh), but I would think that for writing purposes, rhythm and mood could be lost when you're inserting the punctuation while speaking. I guess if I used dictation software I'd have to speak first and then go back and figure out what the punctuation and line spacing would be. But I tend to 'think' through my fingers and a lot of time stories/prose takes form while I type; I think it would be a tough change to dictate versus actually typing. Dunno. Still, I'm kind of amused by the 'comma next line exclamation point' bit of Dragon. It definitely gives a new read to Whitman.

Labels: me, technology, writing

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Quester

So I downloaded King's Quest 1 from yesterday's post, and have been playing for a while now. So far, I've obtained 89 out of 158 points, but have hit a dead end. The game is pretty true to the original and I think all of the riddles are the same as the original as well. Unfortunately my memory isn't as good as it used to be so I'm spending a lot of time just wandering around looking for clues. I've gotten now to the point where I'm slightly bit frustrated, especially when I was just reminded that there are two other King's Quest to go after this one. Ah well. The point of this post was to say that yes, I have tried the download from yesterday, it works, and the game is pretty true to the original. So all you adventurer, nostalgia type gamers, this might be a good one to try, especially if you're thinking about testing your patience.

Labels: geek, me, technology

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Lotd the Second

People of a certain age will remember the King's Quest games from the mid to late 80s. I loved those games and thanks to google, I found free downloads here of all three games. I haven't tried them myself so I can't vouch for them. But when I get my new computer...

Labels: fun, geek, technology

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Not in my Facebook yard

I defriended a "friend" on Facebook today, the first time I've done that. And to be clear, this person was someone I went to school with and got along with, but was never close to; I think we might have gone for burritos once or twice, but that was the extent of the relationship. But I'd always thought of this person as a fairly intelligent, nice person. Well, they posted some remarks to their Facebook page that I found insulting and derogatory towards Indians (which I happen to be). My first knee-jerk reaction was to respond and point out the error of their ways. But then I thought, what's the point? He posted such a comment knowing that I was his friend and he probably has other Indians as friends and it didn't seem to bother him or filter his remarks. So I defriended him without a word.

I know ignorant people are plentiful in this world, especially online where they are not aware of the impact of their words; I learned that through the fanfic world. However, as much as one expects and to an extent, tolerates, such comments from relatively anonymous, non-flesh, non-RL contact people, it's hard to take from someone you considered a friend or acquaintance. In fact, I was so startled that I read his comments several times before I realized he was serious and not joking at all. I figure he can continue to share his ignorant opinions on Facebook; I'm just not going to read them myself. And at least, now I know where he stands so I can effectively write him off for the future.

Labels: fanfiction, friends, me, technology

Monday, October 19, 2009

Update

After a battle o' passwords with google, I'm back. I have this weird situation with my gmail account where someone is using the account and so I get all sorts of whacky work-related email, friend requests, plane tickets, law school missives, etc. It's annoying, to say the least. What's crazy is that this person doesn't seem to realize that they have appropriated my email. Incidentally, this person recently opened a Facebook account using my email address and I promptly cancelled it; hopefully they've figured out what's going on.

But just in case they haven't noticed the missing email or the cancellation of their Facebook account, I keep changing my email password to increasingly hard and incomprehensible nonsensical words. Which is fine except for the part where I forget what crazy jumble of letters made up the password and inadvertantly get locked out of this account. So I'm back now and hopefully won't forget my password again. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Labels: blogging, geek, me, technology

Monday, October 05, 2009

LotD

You know that effect in black and white pictures when one element, such as a rose, is the only thing in color? In the example I suggest, it would be a black and white picture with a red rose in it. I've been wondering how to do that effect for years in Photoshop (I have version 7.0) and had tried a couple of different tutorials to no effect. And then I found this one, and it's super easy. Try it if you have the software (not sure if it works in stripped down versions of Photoshop) for really cool effects.

Labels: LotD, tech, technology

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Oh yeah

Big missing from the job searching spreadsheet I've been mentioning -- a separate tab for sites, username and password. Every single site -- whether it's a job board, a company career site, a search engine, etc -- requires some kind of login. And some of those passwords are just as secure, if not, more, than what would be needed for a bank account. One site, I can't remember which, doesn't allow you to have a password that resembles anything like the previous 20. All of that is fine if you're only using/logging in to one or two sites total. But when you're up to 30 or 40, it gets confusing, not to mention annoying to keep clicking on the "forgot password" link. So as of today, I've added a new tab to the ever expanding job search spreadsheet -- Passwords. My headers are: Site (URL), Username and Password. I guess security hint might be a good one too, but you don't generally need them if you know your password.

Labels: job, me, technology

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Socialite

What I like about Facebook is that in certain applications, it bears no resemblance to real life. Everyone talks about the status updates and the whole reconnecting with people from high school and middle school, but WHAT ABOUT THE GAMES? Only on Facebook can I have a dog (I strongly dislike dogs), a farm (I like the concept of gardening, but dirt on my hands makes me a little crazy), a restaurant (just awesome), and I can also spend time as a fashionista (which I'm not in RL).

On Facebook, I also can own a house with a windmill in the front yard and I have a job in Yoville, but I'm not quite sure what it is I do there (I seem to dance and laugh and joke with various friends -- if only I could turn that into a paying gig in RL!). At various points, I get to travel abroad in something called Kidnapped! and there's also a Mafia War going on. For a while, I was deeply embroiled in a Parking War. I also have a kingdom of my own and apparently my vassals are restless for my return; I don't know what is they expect me to do.

Right now the restaurant game is my favorite. It runs slowly and it's rather high maintenance (actually, all of the virtual life games are high maintenance); not quite feasible for someone who check the site every few days or so. It's like I go and plant crops on my farm, but by the time I return to harvest them, they're all dead. So the only solution is to keep coming back and that, my friends, is the ingenuity of Facebook. After all, you'd feel guilty too if your virtual dog was pawing at you for attention because you happened to have an attack of RL along the way. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think have a war or three to fight.

Labels: deep thoughts, geek, me, technology

LotD

It's not so much that my computer is slow, but my ISP is super slow. So much for high speed internet. I tested my connection here. I had thought about dropping down to SBC's $15 plan at lower speeds, but kept the $25 because I thought it would be too slow to stream video etc. Well, apparently according to speedtest.net, a turtle could outrun my connection. My upload speed is 0.31 mb/s and my download speed is 0.94 mb/s. Average for my ISP is 3.25 mb/s and for my region, 5.73 mb/s. Still faster than dial-up, but what's the point of high speed if it's just a smidgen faster? I'd better compare those numbers to what SBC says I'm getting for the money.

Cable is not an option as my current location only provides for DSL. But I'll be moving in a few months, so perhaps there will be another option then.

Labels: geek, LotD, technology

Thursday, July 16, 2009

LotD

I had a severe headache and vomiting on Tuesday. I knew it was most probably a migraine brought on by heat and stress, but I just wanted to double check. So I turned to Dr. Google and found this site --- FreeMD(r). Basically, you can be seen by a "virtual doctor". It's an interesting concept. The virtual program interviews you, and then after getting enough information, gives you a possible diagnosis, tells you if and how quickly you should see a doctor, and presents it all in an easy to print out form just in case you need it as a reference. I checked my headache (I was right -- migraine) and also just for fun, my lower back pain.

My lower back pain, incidentally, was caused from poor posture in an abs class some time ago and can be relieved with a good yoga class. So I was pretty sure the issue is a tight back muscle, given that yoga pretty much fixes the problem. So after the migraine diagnosis, I ran the lower back. And lo and behold, it diagnosed me with "acute back strain or sprain."

Anyway, I thought it was a neat tool. What I like about it is that they give you an idea of how serious your problem is. For instance, for the lower back pain, they recommended seeing a doctor within the next two weeks; for the migraine headache, they recommended I see a doctor within 8 hours. Luckily my headache was gone in that time!

Labels: health care, LotD, tech, technology

Friday, May 15, 2009

Where do I know you from again?

I admit it: I Facebook for the word games.

When I first joined Facebook, it was a novelty -- all these people I hadn't seen or talked or thought of in years were at my fingertips. I was going through lists of people thinking, "I know you, what have you been up to?" The emails started going fast and furious. It was amazing to find out that some people were married, had a baby or two or three, and then to find out where they live. I don't know what I was thinking -- that as my life progressed, was everyone else right where I left them? It's disconcerting to say the least.

I've stopped actively looking for people to friend on Facebook. Part of it is because I've found everyone that I do want to be in touch with. Some of them are people I'm regularly in touch already (Hi Liz!), but others we haven't had any contact -- not even a Christmas card -- in years. In two cases, I knew I knew the person, but couldn't remember from where: high school? college? camp? Somewhere else entirely? It was mystifying to me. It then occurred to me that I have three groups of friends on Facebook.

The first group are the people I actively keep in touch with and even see in person regularly. The second group are people I don't keep in as close of touch anymore, maybe a Christmas card here and there, or an IM chat/email exchange every now and then, but we haven't seen each other in years. However, with this second group, there's still an active fondness and a definite desire to hang out if ever we're in the same geographic region again. And finally, the third group - people I have met/spent time with during the high school/college years, but never developed close enough relationships with to keep in touch later. Most of the people in this group are from high school.

Then there's the fourth group: people on whom I once spent time with but don't have any desire to renew any kind of acquaintance with them for whatever reason. I always feel bad when I ignore those requests/emails, but my thoughts have been lately, "What happens if I renew my friendship/acquaintance with this person?" Would it add to my life? Would I be happy that this person is back? Clearly there was a reason why I made a choice to minimize contact, so why would I start up again, knowing that no good could come out of it?

To me, that's the ultimate dilemma. I like using Facebook to send quick messages to my RL friends and planning meet-ups etc., and I like looking at the pictures and news from people who are in the second group. The third group is moderately amusing and nostalgic. The fourth group just plain out stresses me out because my instinct to do right and be polite is mitigated by the fact that sometimes people are oil and water and no good can come out of an attempt to stir the pot and come up with something new and equally unappetizing. Or something.

Facebook for the word games is a whole lot less complicated and less fraught with emotional social issues.

Labels: friends, geek, me, technology

Monday, May 11, 2009

Tech note

I didn't want to enable comment moderation, but the first comment spam showed up in the previous post. I'm still not requiring login, but I am requiring the letter code picture thingy to deter further spammage. I apologize for the inconvenience. The offending comment has been removed from this blog.

Labels: blogging, geek, tech, technology

Friday, April 10, 2009

My A-ha! moment

So I'm working some freelance webdesigns and I can't believe, in nearly 12 to 13 years worth of doing this, I never figured this out -- have two index.html pages, one labeled index and the other index2, and work off the index2, and use that as the browser preview/experimental pages. See, in the past I've always just worked off the index page and then I'd find something nutty, would change it, save it in order to preview, and then realize, dang it, I can't undo. By doing it this way, I was actually able to preview, see if I liked it, and then if it worked, save it over the other index file, without losing hours worth of work.

I'm sure this has been obvious to everyone for years, but man...

Labels: geek, me, technology

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Software recommendations

My computer has been plodding along lately. It's probably tired -- it's about 7 1/2 years old, which is something like 100 years old in computer years. But it works fine for my limited usage -- mainly surfing the internet, writing the occasional story/letter, and playing word games. So it's in my best interests to keep it running and this week, I took a stab at trying to reduce the recent sluggishness. The good news is, as far as I can tell, no virus infection. I ran several different programs and I do have some difference in performance, so that's good. The best part is that all the programs I ran are free for home use. So here's a list of free software that can make your life (and that of your computer's) easier.

Lavasoft's Ad-Aware - this program is pretty darn good for searching out malware and again, it's free for home use. One word of caution -- I had a heck of a time with the Anniversary Edition of Ad-Aware; it installed but then wouldn't run. It turns out to be an issue with the registry. If you've had a previous installation of Ad-Aware, it leaves behind some "junk" that the AE edition can't handle. Which leads me to my next piece of recommended software.
CCleaner -- Jerie recommended this to me years ago, but I admit to not being great about using it. When I ran into the aforementioned problem with the Ad-Aware AE, I remembered this program. It's basically a registry-cleaner. It goes in and finds orphan commands, files, etc., and cleans them out for you. In my case, most of the issues had to do with remnants of programs I had previously installed/uninstalled, such as an earlier edition of Ad-Aware. It's worth running. It was amazing just how much "stuff" the uninstallers leave behind to clutter up your system.
Avast -- I replaced McAfee with this free anti-virus software and I'm much, much happier with it than McAfee. I guess I believe its real-time protection more than I did with McAfee because Avast is pretty shrill when something happens -- either online or downloading email -- that it doesn't approve of. Its GUI is pretty easy to deal with and did I mention it was free? Note, you still have to register the software with Avast within 60 days of installing it on your computer.

I'm also running ZoneAlarm firewall on my computer instead of the built-in Windows firewall, however, I find ZoneAlarm to be kind of a pain. It is constantly nagging at me to update software (no more than 15 days apart each time) and with every update, you have to "retrain" the software to remember all the programs permitted to access the Internet. I guess this is how ZoneLabs gets people to upgrade to the paid version of their software. For free software, it's not bad if you're looking for a firewall. Just be ready to need to update every two weeks or so.

And then back to Ad-Aware. I ended up uninstalling Ad-Aware AE and re-gressing back to an earlier version of Ad-Aware (I still happened to have the *.exe file). That worked just fine. If I'm feeling really bold this weekend, I might try again with the Ad-Aware AE. Right now, due to the issues I had with the installation of Ad-Aware AE, I can't recommend it and would suggest, if possible, to keep your current, working version of the software, or find a *clean* site that will allow you to download an earlier version.

Labels: frugal, geek, technology

Monday, March 16, 2009

LotD

I've been re-learning the art of web design and what makes a good site, and uh, what makes a site suck. So I've been hanging out at the site where I first learned, years, and years ago, Webpages that Suck and stumbled across the worst websites of 2008. Oh. Gosh. Anyway, it's worth a look if you, like me, are looking at redoing your website or just want to tidy your site up a bit.

Labels: LotD, technology

Friday, February 27, 2009

Hulu

So I'm liking hulu.com more and more. I've watched several different shows, including Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days", which I've always been interested in, and Battlestar Galactica. I also found episodes of "Remington Steele" and "The Facts of Life" on there, but haven't had a chance to watch them.

You do have to register to use Hulu, but it's free, and it's actually got a neat perk -- you can "subscribe" to shows and they automatically load into your account when the latest episode becomes available. Of course, I logged in today for the first time in more than a week and was just overwhelmed by how many episodes were in the account (anything more than 2 shows seems like a lot to me; I'm kind of one show/one night kind of gal. Actually, more of a 1 1/2 show, if you count the first 12 or so minutes of the Daily Show).

They have movies on there as well, most of them fairly old, and lots of documentaries. But what I like is that I have access for the first time to some shows on cable that I'd heard about but was never able to see. Now if I could just get "What Not To Wear" online*, then that would be just awesome and I'd have everything I'd ever want in my couch potato life.

*I'm looking for legal, free episodes only

Labels: geek, technology, television

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Money, money, money

I got my piece of the stimulus package today -- the $40 coupon for the converter box for the switch from analog to digital. Actually, I don't know if the recent arrival was part of the extended funding for the switch (and was tucked in the stimulus bill) or if someone's coupon expired and I got another one. Either way, I finally -- after several months on the waiting list -- got my coupon. And perfect timing too. My free service, provided by the apartment complex, ended last week and now I'm back on local only. So getting the coupon this week so I can make the transition to rabbit ears was really good timing.

Incidentally, hulu.com is pretty decent when it comes to providing television shows. I recommend "Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog" -- very cute 3-parter from Joss Whedon and singing! Good singing! Good lyrics. So yeah, I don't actually miss cable because I can get Battlestar on scifi.com or hulu.com the day after, and the Daily Show is now on hulu.com so I don't have to deal with Comedy Central's funky player. All in all, not a bad deal. Definitely a good option if, in these tough times, you're looking to cut costs -- you can still get most of your favorite shows online for free with minimal commercial interruption.

Labels: frugal, me, technology, television

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Twelve step program?

Yes, I'm on Facebook, but thankfully, I didn't say yes to any of the questions in this article about How to Identify Facebook Addiction.

Labels: culture, LotD, technology

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Whoozers

Seriously, nothing more painful than downloaded 6,345 pieces of email, spanning more than five years, and many of them really ill with viruses. On the upside of this, I think I've finally figured out where all of my email has been disappearing to. On the downside, I'm seeing emails/addresses that I really didn't want to see again. But that's another story entirely.

Labels: me, technology, testing

PSA

I just realized that the Top Sekrit (tm) email account is malfunctioning. I'm not receiving email there. I didn't realize that the credit card on the account had expired -- the last emails I received were on January 30 -- but I'm still getting a moderate amount of spam and my website is up and running, so clearly it hasn't been completely turned off. I've paid the hosting charges for this month, but just be advised -- if you sent an email to the Top Sekrit (tm) account recently, I may not have received it.

Labels: me, technology, testing

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Grrr...

So I haven't been able to blog because I'm getting old (I did get older recently) and cannot remember my password for blogger. I can't remember my password, because it's the same as one of my email accounts, which I recently changed the password for, because someone -- SOMEONE OUT THERE -- is using my email address for their own. Which is so bizarre to me because clearly they are looking for a job and are getting responses to their job search IN MY EMAIL ACCOUNT. Not to mention, they're getting invited to all the cool parties, and they're also traveling a lot, mostly from Detroit to other parts of the country, and usually on Northwest. I know this because they keep sending their boarding pass to my email account. They also have an interest in law school because someone I started getting missives on study groups and LSAT preps; when I emailed back to get off the list, the response from the law school was that I had requested to be put on the list, and they sent me my email as proof.

This is not a recent phenomena, but one that has been going on since fall. At first I just thought it was a typo, but no, someone out there really is using my email account. They're not doing it intentionally; I think they honestly think that my email address is their email address. And the crazy thing is, they can't read their email, they're not getting their email. You'd think when they didn't get the information about law school or their boarding pass, they'd catch on that they didn't have the right email address. But I'm starting to think the user of my email address is a couple of crayons short of a full box or simply doesn't care.

Anyway, it's getting annoying but there's nothing I can do about it. I've RSVP'd back to a couple of parties saying, "Thanks, but you have the wrong email address." This must have paid off though. Recently, Crayon Box has been trying to reset the password to my account. I know this because I keep getting the "Reset password" emails in one of my other email boxes. So clearly they keep trying to get in but can't. I got me some strong passwords.

Anyway, all this to say that I couldn't remember my password to blog because I've got to keep a step ahead of Crayon Box... but if I could blogged, I would have let out a big hip hip hooray on January 20! I'm keeping my hopes high for Obama, but understand that no matter what some might think, he doesn't walk on water, and he's inherited a mess of gigantic proportions. I don't envy him. Not one minute. I bet he's wishing he'd read the job description more closely, don't you?

Labels: blogging, election 2008, me, politics, technology

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Life in the slow lane

The problem with having a computer circa 2001 is that it doesn't play well with newer technology. So this whole thing about uploading pictures from my India trip is taking way longer than it should, and then in the middle of the whole thing, my computer got tired, and rebooted itself. Everytime I plug in my digital camera, Windows gives me the helpful hint that upgrading my USB ports will allow the camera (and my iPod) to work faster. It's tempting, but it's also tempting to buy a new computer.

Here's the thing though -- other than the USB applications (ie camera and iPod), my computer works great for my daily activities which are nothing more complicated than email and writing and web surfing. Every now and then I'll use PhotoShop or Dreamweaver to update a page on my site, but MS Word is about as complicated as I get on a regular basis. This is why it doesn't make sense to buy a new computer and I'm not sure whether buying a new computer will make uploading pictures that much easier; I suspect part of the problem can be chalked up to "user error."

Labels: geek, me, technology

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Sarah!

The new Sarah Brightman CD is out. On iTunes, it says it was released in July 1998, which makes me a little nervous, but I'm pretty sure it's "Symphony." This is the first time I'll be buying an album completely electronically which makes me a little nervous, but brave new world and all that, plus it's cheaper and easier to get into my iPod and I can burn a CD to play in my car. Still, there is something nice about liner notes and the pretty CD designs.

Note -- the electronic version (MP3) is cheaper on Amazon than it is on iTunes by a sizable difference -- $3. That's a cup of coffee at Starbucks! Or half a cup anyway...

Labels: music, technology

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

LotD

Stupid security questions.

Labels: LotD, technology

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Not just lunch meat

One of my email accounts is just completely overrun with spam right now and the ratio is something like 300 spams to one legitimate email. The emails literally come at a rate of 1 per minute. Other emails have spam as well, but I don't know why this one aggravates me so much. Maybe it's because I have to downloaded all the spam or on the web-based application, have to sort through it, and on the other email accounts, I don't have to. Anyway, I'm contemplating seeing if I can change the email address to something less spammy since it's making me absolutely crazy. If I see one more email from VIGARA 80% JANUARY SALE, I seriously will scream.

Labels: technology

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Musiclicious

I'm loading up my brand new iPod with music, mostly songs from my own CD collection. This is exciting because it means I can actually listen to more than 80 minutes of music at a time without having to change a CD. I still remember how exciting it was to discover the world of 90-minute cassette tapes and how revolutionary that seemed compared to the 60-minute tapes. It's amazing to me just how much more the iPod holds yet it's a fraction of the size of my Walkman. Apple says I should be able to get about 240 songs on the thing, and it can play for 12 hours straight. Plus, it's a shuffle, so it means I'll rarely ever know which song is coming up next. Sometimes knowing what song is coming next is awfully boring. Anyway, I'm excited. By tomorrow I should have about 70 songs on my iPod, and that's nearly 4 hours of enjoyment. Priceless.

Link: Interesting article on a goof in the WaPo re ripping owned CDs for use on computers etc

Labels: geek, LotD, music, technology

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Nostalgia

AOL shuts down Netscape. ::sniff:: My very first browser...

Labels: LotD, technology

Monday, October 08, 2007

Woe!

I'm blogging at you from IE because Mozilla crashed this evening and while I was trying to resurrect the browser made out of awesome, I was stunned to learn that the Mozilla suite's last release was in 2006 and ::sniff:: has now been entirely replaced by Thunderbird and Firefox. It's sad because I've been Mozilla-ing forever and I'm wary of these new!improved animals. Maybe in a couple of weeks, I'll switch over. It's not good to run around with old software...

Labels: geek, technology

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Tech post

For the record, I have NO idea why some of my posts' comment boxes says 'archived' instead of 'comment'. Usually, that transition happens at the 30-day mark, not the 30-second-after-publishing mark. I'll look into it, but I doubt it'll bug you guys as much as it bugs me.

Labels: blogging, technology

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Blue jean baby queen

I had a really insightful blog thought today. Sometime during the day, I had a thought and then I thought some more and then I thought, "Wow, I should put that in my blog because that's really important and exciting and interesting." And now, fast forward many hours from when all that thinking was happening and after a long day of meetings at work, after a workout at the gym, and dinner and a couple of household chores and episode of THE BEST SHOW ON TELEVISION (tm), I am drawing a complete blank. I really hate that. How can I possibly be taken seriously as a blogger when I don't even remember what it was I was supposed to blog? ::sigh::

Meantime, I heard a rumor about President Bush admitting that the Iraq policy of the past year has not worked. I say 'rumor' because I refuse -- REFUSE -- to hear that man's voice or see his face in my house. But apparently, he did say it and there's something about 'surge' and 'accelerate' which I really think means 'escalate' and please, does he think we're so stupid that we need a "Wag the Dog" slogan for every piece of strategery he comes up with?

Also, I'm not enjoying IE7. Mozilla died on me today and so I'm surfing with the spawn of Bill Gates and holy Mother of Tom DeLay, if it isn't slow and tedious. I take back my lukewarm review from the other day, because tabs glorious tabs or not, I'm not a big fan of the "click and we'll maybe show you your page 20 minutes later" school of browser.

Labels: blogging, me, politics, technology

Sunday, December 31, 2006

Micro$erf

I'm typing to you from Internet Explorer 7, the latest in browsing technology from Microsoft. I usually use Mozilla, but Mozilla seems to be buggy today and I haven't figured out why and haven't yet decided to go the re-installation process. So I decided to try IE7 which I installed weeks ago when it was first pushed down to my computer.

So far so good. I like the inclusion of tabbed browsing. There's something about tabs: once you've gotten them, you'll never go back. I did have some problems with plugins and IE7 at work, but I have more control over fixing them at home than I do there. So far though, I haven't had any problems and it looks like the plugins I had before are working with this latest version. Even with the tabs though, I don't think I'll use IE much over Mozilla. I am assuming IE, with its 90 percent market share is much more vulnerable to security breaches.

Labels: technology

unbound @ seema.org

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Monday, October 19, 2009

Monday, October 05, 2009

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Friday, May 15, 2009

Monday, May 11, 2009

Friday, April 10, 2009

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Monday, March 16, 2009

Friday, February 27, 2009

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Monday, October 08, 2007

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Sunday, December 31, 2006

The Personal

Subscribe

Other people

archive