anger

Gracie's death has hit me harder than I'd expected. I know I'm
probably hormonal right now, too, so perhaps it's amplifying things.
All I know is that Gracie isn't around any more, and I miss her, and
every time I start feeling bad I think of something my mom said and I
get angry. Then every little thing that's even remotely annoying
becomes something to get angry over, too.

The day after I sent a poem/email to her about Gracie, Mom, knowing
how close Gracie and I were, and that I wrote the poem the same day
she'd died, had the /audacity/ to tell me I sounded depressed and
wondered if I were still seeing a therapist. People say we easily
misunderstand intent in email, but my mother is not a typical
emailing idiot. She's sharp as a whip and very well-versed in proper
written English. If there were any pleasant meaning behind her
words, I fail to see it. Then she confused the issue by offering a
"pooh" hug - her way of making me laugh when I feel down. The
problem I have with those is that they were never designed to comfort
me; they were designed to ease her discomfort over my mood by turning
it into another version of my emotion - laughter, thus smiles. I
always hated her for that and for a long time I turned this onto
myself because on the surface it seemed she was only "trying to
help." Perhaps to her, she /was/ trying to help. But any careful
analysis would probably point to an underlying reason.

And she always told me /I/ was manipulative. Wonder where I learned
THAT from?

You have _no_ idea how badly I wanted to throttle her at that moment
in time. Being an animal lover herself, she knows full well how
devastating it is to lose a pet. To play her old games - which I'd
thought she'd begun growing out of - at a time like this? That was
one of the lowest blows she has ever dealt me. If she were any other
person, I'd never speak to her again. How on earth a mother can talk
to her own daughter that way time and time again is beyond me. I
know she's screwed up but she's known that for a long time. She's
been shoving it down my throat ever since I was old enough to
understand what being screwed up meant. So if she knows this, why
not just grow up and keep her negativity to herself rather than
exacerbating an already difficult moment in my life? I know she has
trouble being happy for people, but please... I'm her /daughter/. If
she can't be happy for me when I'm happy, she could at least refrain
from pushing me towards an insane asylum when I'm not.

She'd probably like it if I were nuts. Then she could control me in
whatever way she desired. Sorry, Mom, but I won't give you that
satisfaction. You go control yourself and leave me out of it. I
know why you want me to move to Maine. I wanted to move to Maine to
get away from you. This is why when you went, I didn't. Hello?
It's not rocket science. And THANK GOD I didn't go. If I had, I'd
never have met Dale. Who, by the way, is also uncomfortable with
negative emotions. Yet he doesn't disparage me by making cruel
remarks. He acts as a normal, loving person would - he holds me and
gives me tissues until I stop crying on my own. Yeah, Mom, we do
pick people that remind us of our parents. He reminds me of what you
would be like if you grew up and loved me rather than judged me all
the time.

I will grieve over Gracie's passing in whatever way I naturally
grieve. Mom and anyone else who dares to oppose me on this can eat
the crappy hard drive that bit the dust last weekend.

And you know something else? I'm glad I gave up my business. It
dawned on me that I spent 14 hours last weekend on my neighbours'
computer, and cannot recall spending any time with Gracie
whatsoever. I didn't know she was so close to death, but if I hadn't
been so preoccupied, I would have at least brought breakfast upstairs
and shared with her as was our routine. It's not that I feel she
died alone or that I cheated her. In fact, she held one of the most
special places in my hearts as far as critters go. I spoiled her
rotten because I knew she'd never actually get spoiled. She was one
of those rare creatures who loved life itself. And I can honestly
say that I cannot imagine any reason why she might have been remotely
distraught over my inattention her last few days. I do not grieve
over what happened. I grieve over the moments I missed out on. I
missed out on sharing two of the last breakfasts I could ever share
with her. It wasn't just for her that I did that. I loved to see
her happy.

Life is too damned short to spend one's free time with their nose in
other people's business.

Anywho, I'm irritable and angry again this morning, although writing
all this seems to have plunged me into a hopeful despair again.
Things weren't too bad yesterday other than a long bout of crying
last night and some overzealous aggravation toward a coworker's
email, but Friday, omg, thank God for two of my talkative, fun-loving
coworkers. I walked into work ready for a battle and was irritated
when they dragged me upstairs to help them with something. But as I
was begrudgingly helping them, the anger slowly melted away.

Mom used to tell me that I was nice to everyone but her. Perhaps
there was a reason for that? Now I strive to be nice to everyone I
can, including her. I believe in Mom as a human being and I want the
best for her. She does have a lot of strong points. So despite my
initial reaction to her email, I was able to write a somewhat cooler
response. It hasn't full released my initial reaction, however. I'm
still very angry over her timing of negative words toward me. And I
have every right to feel whatever I feel. If I don't, it'll just
build up like it always did.

I'm living my life now, not ignoring it. Life's also too short to
spend ignoring it only to have it catch up with you just in time to
kill you.

~nv

addendum to HP

I forgot to mention that you can set up the scanning function in a
few ways... I normally scan in greyscale, so I set the one-touch-
button to greyscale, 150x150. I set the clicky-option (bring up the
software, not hit a button) to do 200x200 colour.

I could technically customize all three buttons on my Canon scanner,
but... it's nice that this feature is there. :D

~whit
back to playing

I LOVE this scanner!!

And macs... omg... I'm finally getting smart and choosing quality
equipment that I'll actually use rather than a bunch of crap I don't
need.

But let me start from the beginning of my equipment happies.

First I bought a WD external 250GB hard drive that only had USB
connectivity. I got this at Staples because I wanted to back up
Shady sooner than later after witnessing my neighbours' hard drive
crash unexpectedly. With the photos and music and other such
goodstuffs on this thing, I do NOT want to lose it all. However, I
wanted a BOOTABLE external hard drive. What I did not realize is
that you must have Firewire to boot off it on a Mac.

In the meantime, I had also purchased a 250GB internal by WD for
Raven, and a new NIC for her as well. (Her onboard was
intermittently failing when Shady came along, so it was time for an
upgrade.)

Shortly after all this, Dale happened to be shopping for another
external drive for his iMac. He stumbled across a more suitable (and
cooler) version of the WD. It's got a cool blue pair of rings on the
front and DOES have firewire. So I had him buy me one, too. It
works beautifully. I found a program called SuperDuper! for $27
(have yet to buy it, but I will soon), and in 2 hours and 11 minutes,
I had a full backup of Shady. (I've got 90GB left, which means it
backed up about 160GB of data, in case you're interested.) I was
able to boot off it and it was like running off Shady himself except
it was wayyyyyyy slow. (To be expected for sure.)

So, today I returned the first external and went shopping for a
scanner/printer combo. My old scanner still works well, but I
couldn't get its software to work with Shady, so I had to open
Windows inside Parallels and run it through there. The kludge
worked, but it was exactly that. I'm lazy in my old age and
uninterested in being FORCED to do cool workarounds just to get a few
things scanned now and again. Plus, I didn't have a printer that
would work with Shady, either, and I hadn't bought one in years. It
was certainly time. A friend got a Brother all-in-one for about a
hundred bucks and it seemed to be good... besides, Shady should have
his own scanner/printer. Funny how spoiled he is. ;)

Well, we came home with an HP C3180. It cost me a little under $100
and so far is proving its worth. I'm not a fan of the little ink
cartridges and am displeased with being forced to have both black and
colour cartridges installed when I want to just use black, but I
admit, it's very nice. And the scanner can do over 19,000 x 19,000.
My other scanner maxed out at 1200 or something to that effect. I
had NO idea things had become so advanced. Not only that, but the
quality of a 200x200 colour scan is superior - I could have sworn a
scan of a little card was the card itself stuck to my screen. It was
jumping out at me more than my better photos do. A simple little card!!

The best feature of this thing, however, is the memory card area. It
takes everything I'll ever need for a long time: SD, MMC, MS, XD, MS/
DUO, CF. Currently I use primarily SD but I do have a few old Sony
cards laying around from Maverick, my 1.2MP camera. It can print
photos from all the cards and can even do those multi-pic things
photographers need on occasion. My use, however, will be file transfer.

This is where Shady's native programs come in so handy. It was
pretty easy to tell the scanner's software to push everything into
iPhoto for me, but I was pleasantly surprised when Image Capture came
up asking where I wanted to transfer my card's files. I noticed that
I even had the typical options I get for my camera and portable card
reader!! So I quickly selected "Download Some" and "DateandTime.app"
- the latter being a script I wrote via Automator. It first waits
for Image Capture to download the files, then renames them all
according to my naming conventions. Then it moves them to a new
folder and imports them into Last Roll in iPhoto.

It worked seamlessly, as if my camera were plugged in.

I love Apple, and despite some criticisms I've shared with typical HP
printers, I admit I'm pleased with this all-in-one. Oh, another cool
thing is that the new HP is grey and off-white, so it matches the
iMac pretty darned well.

Ah yeah, and I also got another UPS... :)

~nv

Pot vs Kettle

Life is an interesting place. It's isn't always fair, either, but I
believe for most of us it balances out pretty well.

I find many negative things in life that do not make sense. Cleaning
up after people for a year, for instance, only to have those same
people come back at you when you make a mistake (and a minor one at
that). Threatening to write someone up for a slight wording faux pas
when 90% of everyone else can't even spell well enough to MAKE a
wording faux pas. Being called on in a classroom simply because
you're quiet and contemplative and thus an easy target to bestow
one's inner demons upon. Forcing kids to modify their writing style
when they obviously have one of their own already. Telling someone
to "dumb down" a school report so other kids don't feel bad about
themselves, rather than praising the use of words far beyond the
typical so that other kids can LEARN from them. Telling someone
they're depressed because they write a mixture of sadness and hope
into a poem about their freshly deceased pet, rather than seeing it
as grief that needs to be expressed so things can go forward. People
with degrees but no brains getting high-paying jobs while hardworking
families everywhere with far less opportunity are still struggling to
feed and house themselves.

It's as if the world is setting itself up to fail sometimes.

But when I reflect on these things, I also recall many happy
instances that also do not make sense. The woman who smiles at a sad
stranger in a parking lot, instantly giving the stranger hope that
perhaps she's not alone after all. An employee who readily and
without hesitation helps another despite their own heavy workload. A
hopeful face in the brunt of certain adversity. Two neighbours
shovelling each other's yards in unspoken turns during a snowstorm.
A driver stopping for another and offering use of their cell phone
even in today's dangerous times. A fiancé who buys his girl a
computer instead of an engagement ring because he truly understands
her and loves her for who she is.

And, the most statistically improbable thing I've ever witnessed
occurring: Two very compatible people meeting through Yahoo in a
three-day window of time, who end up deciding to get married two
years later.

It is easy to focus on the negative things in life, especially if
life starts out more negative than it does positive. But there are
so many blessings that counterbalance the misgivings that perhaps
focusing on the positive can only bring more positive.

They say attitude is everything. Quite honestly, I believe it.

Tea Cup Eulogy

Gracie passed away in her sleep sometime today after I left for
work. I knew it was coming soon despite the vet's reassurances, but
I did not expect it to hit me as hard as it has. Grief is funny that
way. Gracie was at least three years old and I suspect she lived
pretty well into old age. Mercy died nearly a year ago so I feel
blessed that her sister hung around a while longer.

Attached are my favourite two shots of my little ratty foodsnatcher.
I will always remember her as the youthful, sweet, shy, hungry
critter she always was. She didn't like my hands when they picked
her up, but I know she appreciated them when they offered something
new to eat. It has been difficult to watch her grow old; her eyes
never showed any pain and were always bright, curious, and eager. It
was as if her body and her were two separate entities in the end and
she finally split off from the limitations so she could hunt down her
own tea and cookies.

Tea Cup Eulogy
in memory of a beloved food-snatching rat

Life is like a day
So quickly does it pass us by
At first it seems so very long
And then it ends and we're surprised

I knew your time was very near
I knew one day you'd not be here
I blinked just once and you were gone
You leave us here to carry on

But I have memories, pictures too
Of all the reasons I love you
I only pray my memory stays
So that yours will never fade

I still see you drinking tea
Stealing food in front of me
Hiding morsels in your stash
Though I'd throw them in the trash

And when you slept you were serene
You ate it all and stayed so lean
I'll miss your hands and twitching nose
And the eyes which sparkled so

God, I know that You know best
And I know she wanted rest
Lift this burden off of me
And please make sure she gets her tea.

Preferably Earl Grey if you have it.

I'll miss you, Gracie. You are indeed a wondrous soul.

eeeeeeeevil malware

and hard drive. Or something.

I spent nine hours last night trying to kill off cmdService on my
neighbours' pc. I tried everything. It was horrible. Finally,
around 2am, I killed the little bugger. Then I found something
called Spysomething or other installed on the computer and figured it
was one of those tricksy ones that pretended to be a helpful thing
when it was really not. Since it hadn't registered in Spybot or
Adaware, I thought, eh, let's just uninstall via windows
uninstaller. Big mistake. It stalled midway. I rebooted and
whammo, now I'm getting the eternal loop - regardless of which boot
option I choose.

That includes Safe Mode with command prompt!!

I tried booting off another XP disc and was able to enter recovery
console, but now I cannot get into the C: drive. It won't let me log
in. I was able to chkdsk it and was informed at 34% that there are
unrecoverable errors on the drive.

So I thought, well, maybe the hard drive is on its way out... let's
find out if I can recover ANYthing on this thing. I borrowed Dale's
external hard drive enclosure only to find out that the iMac doesn't
read NTFS drives. It can see it, but I can't access the contents.
So much for that idea. I was about to stuff the drive in Raven (my
xp box) but then Dale reminded me about Parallels. Sure enough,
Parallels WILL see the drive... however, maybe because I neglected to
pull the "master" jumper off the drive, XP in Parallels is painfully
slow since seeing E:. And, I've yet to actually peek into the drive
to see if I can see anything anyway.

Okay, currently shutting off the drive... and reseated as slave. So
far so slow... but you never know. It might be the interface or the
drive for all I know. If this doesn't work within reason, I'll try
Raven after all...

Sigh...

And, I'm starving, but I don't want pancakes. I actually have no
idea what I want. I think my stomach is simply irritated with the
stress of this evil incarnate of a computer. I need to get out of
this business. I wonder what'll happen when I attempt to do a
"simple" restore of a client pc later today...

~whit

Mac II and MUSIC

I posted last night that Dale got a Mac Classic II.  OMG it's soooooooooooo SIMPLE!!  And it still works!!  Looks like it's about 15 years old, it's copyrighted 1983-1992.  Right now he's solving a puzzle.  It's got a few programs on it, even MS Word.  (Yikes!)  Pretty slick for such an old beast.

I tell ya, dems were da days... back when things lasted forever.  I bet my Tandy 1000 TL would still be working today, too.  I got it in 1988 and it was still running nine years later.  Monitor had since lost one of its fans, though, so I had to put a little box fan behind it to keep it from blacking out.  It was LOUD in my room.  It was also huge by comparison - bigger than the Apple IIe that I used from 1986-1989 or so.  Even now the Apple products are more intuitive, simpler, and quieter than their pc counterparts.  They truly are things of beauty.  I still miss Chris, though.  (That was my Tandy.)  I should never have left him behind when we moved...

Dale and I were talking last night and decided to name the new baby "Chip."

Oh!  In other news... I discovered a new techno band last night called BassHunter.  Dale sent me a site that showed sliding cars (here's that clip:  http://www.hugi.is/hahradi/bigboxes.php?box_id=51208&f_id=1724)  It's a site in Iceland, I'm assuming the clip is in Iceland, too, but not sure since everyone's speaking English.  (I could tell by the language and the .is on the website.)  Well, I started playing with the menus on the left and found what resembled music genres, so I clicked one that said "Popp" something.  Saw a Klippur (video clip?) and clicked the play button.  International symbols are so wonderful.  BassHunter is a swedish dude - he does all his own music on his own computer.  (Read about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basshunter)

Anywho, the song was Boten Anna - no idea what it means yet, still researching, but it's COOL!!  He calls his own music Eurodance... I think it sounds like a combination of pop, eurodance, gaming music, and a hint of rap at times (I once hated to admit it, but some techno is actually quite similar to rap as far as the vocals go).  He even did a version of Jingle Bells!!  It's awesome... I now like Christmas music again!!  (Usually I play Weird Al carols... and a bit of Peter Cetera since he released his Christmas album.)

Aight, must find liquid to infuse into my bodily cells...

~chip

Hey, wait, we named the computer after ME??  Drat...

Macintosh Classic II

Wow!! Dale just got home from a Table Tennis thing and he brought
something he'd ordered on Ebay. It's a Macintosh Classic II!! Even
has its original manuals, although I think it's missing a disk or
two. Supposedly it even still works!! It's cold, though, so we'll
have to let it warm up before we try turning it on. We've agreed
we'll let it sit all night and play in the morning. Don't want to
ruin a Classic!

I have a surprise for Dale, too... he'll see it soon I think. I put
one of two on his desk for his use. He doesn't have a phone jack in
his den, but I found this pair today at Kfart and one is simply a
handset that connects to its mate's base station, which IS plugged
into the phoneline. So I put the line one in my playpen and the
other in his. That way he gets a phone (FINALLY!) and he doesn't
have to be connected to a long cable running from the bedroom to his
room or whathaveyou.

And... he just found it. :)

~nv
who can't wait til morning to play with mac classic ii