Month: December 2004

bookmark_borderWriting again

Posted on by PaulaO

Started writing again today. Sort of.

I worked on a non-fiction article today (which reminds me of another one I need to do) and worked on the chapter divisions on The Graced. I also did a Table of Contents (TOC) for The Graced so I could flip through it better. I made the TOC in another document so it doesn’t effect my word count and I can easily get back to it without having to scroll aaaaallll the way back up. OpenOffice.org uses links just like hyperlinks, going to either a website, a target in that document or a target in another document. I can even have a hyperlink in a text document that goes to a target in a spreadsheet. Cool, eh?

Found out today that my nephew Ryan will be testing for his first degree black belt April 2, ’05. Lorna and I still need to find a sitter so we can both go. Even if we kick them outside with six bags of dog food, we are going. (okay, probably won’t do that but it is a thought)

Everyone ready for the New Year??

bookmark_borderComputers

Posted on by PaulaO

I first got involved with computers while in college. I dated this guy (yes, a man) who was ‘into’ computers. I was doing work study as a tutor and he managed to get the workstudy moved to the computer lab. All the tutors did there was remind everyone where the on switch was (waaaay in the back of the CPU) and a few other things. I learned it all fairly quick and begun having fun. We had this mainframe that was HUGE, as in 5’X3’X7′ sized. It produced a lot of heat. All the computers in the lab were just terminals actually, hooked to the mainframe. I remember when the 3 1/4 disks first came out. This would have been ’85 or ’86. BASIC was the language of choice while the geeks were into UNIX. I wasn’t interested with writing programs, I was interested in manipulating the programs once they were written.

I continued my fascination with the machines after I finished school. At that point, the ‘net was Prodigy and other text only email. Everything came in ‘digest’ format, very hard to read. Access to websites grew, their number increased, email improved immensely.

Upgrading and modifying the computers became my fun activity. Put in a new drive, upgrade the BIOS and CMOS. Win3.x was all the rage. Wow, what you could do with that. *snort* In my Real Job I was the one they called over to fix whatever it was they just did to the software.

My point to all this is that I have spent almost all day arguing with my laptop. Mozilla is an excellent program, the problem is not with Mozilla. It is XP and how it handles files. I have finally decided to just start brand new. I can kinda sorta access all my old email, but for the most part, it’s a big pain to get to. But email became just one of the many problems with starting new. I had to load my bookmark file, find the password file and figure out how to transfer it, on and on. I had to do the password thing because while I usually write down the user/password things for all the sites I visit, I hadn’t for this blog. And, as weird as it sounds, it’s been fun! What an amazing thing the human brain is! And what a great thing it is to use!

Well, got more to do. Still doing the email thang. If I had your email address, you might want to send it to me again. paula ….. at….. holyroller.org

bookmark_borderAargh!!

Posted on by PaulaO

I did a chkdsk on the laptop today and it messed up Mozilla, dangit. That should teach me to try and keep my hard drive running!

I got the browser but the email is all wonky. Luckily DreamHost has webmail.

Haven’t gotten any writing done the past few days. And I feel no guilt over it!

Yay! Lorna’s Blazer if fixed-ish and I get My Truck back!

Spent the day figuring out the handheld radio and its manual, put together the vertical antenna (it is tall!!) and took it back apart (to await someone to climb up on the roof and mount it for me).

Insomnia is the pits. I force myself to get up early, today 9AM, no matter what time I went to bed (yesterday was 3AM) and yet here I am, approaching 3AM again and I am just now starting to feel as if I could sleep. So much fun! NOT

I go to bed and about an hour later, Lorna gets up. By the time she comes home I have hit my stride and she is exhausted.

bookmark_borderSanity Clause

Posted on by PaulaO

Ms. Santa was nice to me this year. Don’t know why. Maybe I was good after all. Nah, can’t be that. 😉

I was nice right back at Ms. Santa. I got her a bunch of DVDs: Shrek 2, Finding Nemo, If These Walls Could Talk 2 (it was very well done!), But I’m a Cheerleader, and Buffy Season 3. She also got a bag from LLBean, a bottle cap opener (the kind you nail to the wall), a new wallet, and some other toys.

I got Zoo Tycoon 2! For some reason it is slow on the laptop, which is fairly new. Gotta check out why. I also got a Kitaro CD! I haven’t heard his stuff in a long time. It was good to hear his latest music. Still rather electronic but there seemed to be more traditional instruments this time.

But the best was I basically got a 2M hamshack. There is a person on her mail route that is a ham radio operator but is getting out of the ‘hobby’. He sold the lot to her for an indecently low price.

MFJ-4035MV Power Supply
Tripp Lite PR-12 Power Supply
Icom IC 2100 2M mobile (w/ manual and mic)
Icom IC T2H 2M HT (w/ manual, tiny little mic, 2 BNC ducks)
Kenwood TH225A 2M HT (no manual, tiny little mic, 1 BNC duck and 3 different power options)
Hustler G3-144 2M roof mount antenna (never been opened)
MFJ-8100 Shortwave Radio w/ long wire antenna
Mag Mount 2M antenna w/ BNC connector
log book, Q signal card and RST reference card

I already have an Azden PCS4000 2M, a Radio Shack mag mount, an MFJ-815B and a Workman SX 144/430 SWR meters, and an MFJ-557 key and practice oscillator (Morse code that is). So I have a decent shack contents, just not a shack yet. Now that my 2M set up is ‘enough’ , I will be starting to gather the HF gear. I have a long wire dipole already, just no radio to hook it up to.

My dream place is a room with cable internet, all my ham gear on a huge desk like structure, a work bench were I do my home brew electronics, a humongous stereo system, another large desk to hold my laptop, extra keyboard and such, a side table for a kick-butt printer, and of course a very large bookcase full to its proverbial gills with books of all sorts. Sigh. Add in that each piece of furniture has to be either made from scratch or bought and adapted. See why we haven’t done it yet?

I like the idea of an ‘office’ where I can go to do my work. Our minds and bodies recognize where we are and what we are supposed to be doing. So a place where I always go to sit and be creative or to get into a ragchew on some net, now that would be nice.

bookmark_borderWhatever

Posted on by PaulaO

I’ve got some writing done today, surprise surprise. Worked some on Centric and on The Graced. Also worked more on mapping. I like getting lost in that. 😉

I put up two parts of the map I was working on. The port of Doma Proper and the island of Gobali. These are just an itty-bitty part of the bigger map I am working on. It’s only for reference but it’s still fun.

Normally the postal workers don’t get to take any vacation time, even their usual days off, from Thanksgiving to Christmas. They’ve changed that in recent years. You can take your usual days off but not any vacation. Lorna’s day off is Saturday so… normally she would have Friday off instead but because it is Christmas Eve, they would have to pay her time and a half. To make a long story short, she’s got the day off anyway but has to go in to see if they need help with package delivery. Every package in the joint is to be taken out. They’ll get stuff that has been pushed out of every other post office.

So Lorna will actually be home at a decent hour tomorrow! That’ll be the first!

I got her gifts together and put them all in one bag and put it in the livingroom. It’s huge but she didn’t see it!! Arrgh. I finally pointed it out and of course she wanted to open it. Heh. I like to keep her waiting.

But she keeps telling me to be good or she won’t go get mine. Should I be worried?

bookmark_borderSlow day

Posted on by PaulaO

Didn’t get any writing done today. No, wait, I did some this morning. Not much but I did solve a problem I’d had earlier.

I just finished working on a worldbuild map for Centric. I like AutoRealm but it does make me wonder what the other map program is like.

Did laundry, ran the dishwasher, bathed myself (a difficult task) and played on the ‘puter. Yawner of a day, eh?

bookmark_borderEnter Something Witty Here

Posted on by PaulaO

I’m not used to having to come up with a ‘title’ for my blog entries so y’all just get used to such nonsense.

Anyway, didn’t get much writing done during the day then bam! I started writing finally. Got over 4700 words by the time my eyes gave out. I worked on The Graced again, deleting a bunch of crap I wrote yesterday. There ought to be a better word to use than ‘crap’. Superfluous? Excess?

The water pipes finally thawed out this afternoon. It warmed up nicely today, getting well into the forty’s before the sun started going down. If it gets as cold as it did before (single digits) then we’ll leave the water running in the kitchen. Lorna says she needs to get under the house and check the insulation on the pipes. *shudder*

I grew up with gravity fed water system, not a water pump. We have a spring, not a well, but they have the spring piped into a holding ‘tank’ and then the pump puts the water in a pressure tank which then pushes it to the house. Far too many points for something to go wrong.

At any rate, I can bathe now and flush the toilet. Ah. There’s a saying “You don’t appreciate the water ’til the well runs dry.”

bookmark_borderCold day!

Posted on by PaulaO

I shivered more than my timbers this morning! Boy howdee it was cold!

Oh, and before I forget, I need to gather opinions. I am changing the look of my site. Trying out a few things. Anyway, these pages are new:
Airport
May Challenge
Butch Girls Can Do Anything

The original ‘theme’ is like these:
Simple Sarah
Scholarly Ways

If you don’t mind, let me know what you think of them in terms of readability and looks.

Haven’t gotten a darn thing written today. I’ve been playing webmaster instead. I have far too many websites to keep up with.

bookmark_borderSnow Part Two

Posted on by PaulaO

In case you haven’t figured it out, it is snowing here. It did off and on all day but typical for this time of the year, it didn’t lay. Even when it did kind of stick around, it only did so for a half hour tops. Then as the sun started going down, so did the temps. At the same time, the storm front finally realized it was supposed to be doing something and chose to do so.

Right now it is 18F with a windchill of 0F, according to WeatherWatcher. A local weather monitor and it says it is 13F. In other words, it is kinda cold here.

I’ve not looked outside in a while, the wind is just too sharp, but last Lorna looked we had about 1.5″ or so. Joella, my rottweiler, went out to do her business and came back looking like a Great Pyrenees!

Got some writing done, not much. Tried an idea out on The Graced but I don’t think it will work.