something sparkly this way comes… » technology

Twelve reasons

bipolarbear — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 23:49:47 +0000

apart from the ones I have, why geeks are better than regular men. I have to say that every single item on Ahmed Bilal’s list is the honest truth. Plus, penguins are so cute! This isn’t to say that geeks don’t have any drawbacks; they are men. They snore, fart, and belch, and get just as caught up in their own kind of sport as non-geeks do (although I haven’t seen any body-painting during a NeverWinter Nights game). I think for the most part that they are more solitary creatures, which suits me ﬁne; I like nothing better than spending a quiet night home with my love and my knitting watching something the MythTV has gotten for us after a home-cooked meal. You see, there’s science in cooking, and my geek is all about that. There are even books about it, like this one:What Einstein Told His Cook. It’s on his shelves somewhere. There’s a sequel to it, I’ll have to check it out. He’s into the why and how of things, and if that seems aggravating, it is sometimes, until he gets to the bottom of whatever it happens to be. Then it’s a joy watching him explain the intricacies of whatever he’s just gotten his brain around.

All in all, if I had to choose my husband all over again, I’d do it in a trice, without any hesitation. Sure, we have our ups and downs, all couples do, but life is so much more interesting with him than with any other man I’ve ever known. Love you more, sweetheart.

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On this day: I am so cold 2007

What a difference a mouse makes!

bipolarbear — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:36:36 +0000

For as long back as I can remember, I owned a Kensington Turbo Mouse for my Mac. They were pricey (at around $100) but oh so comfortable. The giant trackball meant I never had to move my mouse around the desk, was very easy to clean, and took up less space, with no mousepad to boot. Add in precision mousing and you’ve got yourself one fantastic mouse. But in 2000, I opened my store and had to come up with something with a smaller footprint. The enormous Turbo just wouldn’t ﬁt on the shelf I’d allotted for the mouse next to the register. Enter the Logitech Trackball. A perfectly serviceable mouse, much narrower in size, but fully functional (if only a two-button mouse). I used this mouse in the store for ﬁve years, and after closing down the business, took it home to use with my iMac DV G3, then when I bought the spiffy Macintosh G5, it was still good, so I ﬁgured, why buy a new one when the old one still works? But after seven years, it just isn’t what it used to be, and it was skipping a lot, acting wonky all over the place, especially in iPhoto, closing windows that I needed to remain open, all sorts of nonsense. Time to start looking for a new mouse. I was loath to order a mouse online without trying it in person, but I also hate going to computer stores, and the local Circuit City is a dump. I checked out Amazon, and found a nice update to the Logitech, a new, four-button mouse that otherwise looked almost exactly like my old one. Then G suggested the Kensington Orbit, which looks like something out of Star Wars. On the page for the Orbit was a link to the Kensington Expert Mouse, a new version of my beloved Turbo. It still kind of looks science ﬁction-y, but the features it has! Four buttons that can be mapped to do pretty much anything I want. I’m sticking with the defaults because, well, they’re ﬁne by me. Here’s the Post-It with the map I drew to help me remember what buttons are for what function:

Pretty technical, right? Then there’s the scroll ring that sits around the trackball. Instead of a scroll wheel that lies on the front of the mouse, it’s a whole ring that you can use to scroll up and down windows. So cool! The prices have come down from what they used to be (price after rebate on Amazon: $71.24), but even still, it seemed like a lot. After reading the reviews (some of which disparaged the scroll ring), I decided that I’d get it and if I really hated it, I could just return it. I paid the $3.99 for one-day shipping (ah, Amazon Prime!) and got it pronto. I set it up with the enclosed wrist rest (the incline is a little steep) and once I “broke in” the trackball (about an hour), I wondered why I hesitated. All in all, it’s a great mouse, a super alternative to the traditional mouse, but you’ll most likely have to ﬁnd one online; both my local Best Buy and Ofﬁce Max only carry them online, not in the stores (I visited both in person, hoping to save the shipping fee).

Fingers crossed

bipolarbear — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 05:40:17 +0000

At 8 pm tonight at the Danbury Fair Mall, I had a job interview. With Apple. Well, with one of their representatives, anyway. They’re hiring for a new position: Personal Shopping Specialist. Basically, I’d get paid to do what I do best, convince people that they reeeally need what I’m selling. With aplomb. They’re trying to hire people that look like their buying public more, that resemble their customers. Someone like, me, say, instead of an 18-year-old boy-thing. I said that I probably never thought of Apple as a place to work since the ﬁeld was mostly dominated by men. They’re trying to change that image. I hope it starts with me. I’ve been a proponent of all things Apple since the tender age of twelve, when we were the ﬁrst people on the block with a computer, the Apple II+ in 1979 (yes, that makes me VERY OLD INDEED). I’ve long considered an Apple logo tattoo, and if I get this job, I just may do it. I certainly don’t need Anil Gupta to do it, but just maybe I will, make it all shiny-like. Or with knitting needles crossed behind it, to show off my loves. Even though I knit with circular needles. But I digress.

To digress even further: our email was down for about ﬁve hours earlier, from three to eight pm; if you sent me something during that time, please send it again (everything bounced).

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On this day: Finished Priscille’s Poncho 2006

Can’t ﬁnd Jack

bipolarbear — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 04:40:35 +0000

Jack is our GPS, a Garmin Nuvi 660 little box o’ wonder that I have found myself loath to live without. And he is missing. I love his little voice (or big voice, when he’s plugged in to the stereo) that tell me that I’m still going the right way. He comforts me. Reassures me. And now he’s gone missing. With me driving to Danbury Thursday night after work. I need to get there in the 44 minutes that Google predicts, or I’m busted. I could just make the appointment for 8:15 pm, just in case, but that sounds idiotic. I was asked to provide times for which I was available, and I gave 8 pm as one of those times. I better hie my ass out to the ninth-floor parking lot and hope for no trafﬁc or accidents. I’d also better call ahead and ask about the best place to park. I’m not familiar with the Danbury Fair Mall, have been there on more than one occasion, but not in recent times. I could always do a dry run tomorrow night or Wednesday, but that’d mean getting home really late. As Charlie Brown was wont to say, “Good grief!” I’ll set G to looking for him (Jack, not Charlie Brown), since G was the last one to use him.

A clean house is a happy house

bipolarbear — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 22:24:04 +0000

Our neighbor down the street very generously gave me the phone number for her cleaning people, Marlene and Veronica. They both speak English fairly well, meaning that they appear to understand what I’m saying and that I have only a little trouble understanding them. I keep getting them mixed up, and it isn’t because they look alike, because they don’t, but the one who does the talking when they’re here is Veronica and the one who I’ve spoken to on the phone is Marlene. So I keep getting them mixed up. I’ll get it, eventually. Anyway, my floors are now clean enough for even me to feel comfortable walking about barefoot. And the surfaces! They shine!

On the ﬁrst of my two trips to Stop and Shop today (the second was for more tinned chicken and Texas Pete Hot Sauce), I noticed in the window a huge sign welcoming everyone to the Midnight Madness Harry Potter Sale that began at 12:01 am and ended 59 minutes later. So instead of waiting until the 24th for my library edition to arrive (Amazon had trouble processing my card, and neglected to email me until it was too late to get here for today), I picked up a regular hardback ﬁrst edition of Deathly Hallows. So as soon as I make my way through the last 3/4 of Phoenix and wade through Half-Blood Prince again, it’ll be ready and waiting for me.

I made a pair of silver heart and Swarovski crystal earrings for Jenn for her birthday, I think she’ll like them. I need to wrap them and the book and blow out my hair to be ready by the time we have to leave. Jack says it’ll take just over an hour to get to Hoboken barring all trafﬁc. And no, we did not pay $857.13 for him, we got him on Amazon.

More planting…here are pictures of Samson and Delilah, the Snow Fountain Cherry and Kwanzan Cherry that we had the landscapers plant for us. Samson is in the front yard, and Delilah is in the back. What I don’t like is that there is now a multitude o f yellow leaves on each tree. Shit.

Tell me that this isn’t the freakiest picture you’ve seen today: Click here for more. Thanks to Hula for the link to the Pravda site!

Transformers (Robots In Disguise!)

bipolarbear — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:00:05 +0000

We went to see Transformers Saturday night at the UA Cortlandt Stadium 11 in Mohegan Lake. What a fun movie! I was skeptical about it, but quickly amended my position once the screen lit up. My favorite Autobot is Bumblebee (of course!). Kam Williams of EurWeb writes: “Gets this critic’s seal of approval as another overblown Michael Bay extravaganza, for it succeeds in bringing a cornucopia of beloved robots to life for a concatenation of epic battles worthy of a bombastic summer blockbuster.” Love the SAT words there, Kam. However, he ruins his otherwise lovely review by further going on to say, “But best to check your I.Q. and political correctness at the refreshment counter to enjoy this mindless macho exercise in misogyny which promotes ‘Bros before hos!’ ” It may be a “mindless macho exercise,” but it certainly isn’t misogynistic by any stretch of the imagination. A female analyst is the one who realizes they’re being hacked, and a female is the one who saves Bumblebee. The guy who so callously shouts, “Bros before hos!” gets left in the dust, literally. Another reviewer, Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News writes, “There is so much action packed into every second of Transformers that by the time it’s over, you may be tempted to go outside and give the box office another 10 bucks.” I tend to agree. Go see it, if only for 2 1/2 hours of escapist fantasy.

I ordered the Olympus WS-300M 256 MB Digital Voice Recorder and Music Player from Amazon. It’s slated to arrive tomorrow, for only $3.99 for overnight shipping. I love Amazon Prime! For something like $80 a year, you get free two-day shipping and $3.99 overnight shipping on anything Amazon themselves (not their afﬁliates) sells. That means that the glider loveseat and table we bought incurred only $3.99 each for overnight shipping (they had to ship separately). The teak armchairs we got had free shipping. We buy so much on Amazon that the membership cost is totally worth it.

Hello world!

bipolarbear — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 03:09:35 +0000

This is going to be my new blog. G’s fixing it so that the URL will be “blog.knit-n-spin.com.” I’m going to export all my LJ posts too. The only thing I don’t like so far is that it isn’t as easy to import pictures I think.

Pye is sitting in the box o’ﬁber next to my desk. Dear Pye.

I have an appointment with Dr. B. tomorrow at 1:30 and I’m not done with the fucking 12-page questionnaire he set me.

K. and I went to lunch at Cheesecake Factory, (Pasta da Vinci – yum!) and afterward I spent $$ on beads at the new Beadworks in White Plains across from The Container Store. Holy baby jeebus, they’ve got some pretty things. Hello new earrings and stitch markers!