It's nice outside, and I'm...

...in my playpen. What on EARTH is the matter with me? I've been asking myself this for hours now. The last couple of weeks have been exruciatingly tiresome for me, just because I've been on the go constantly, so little time to myself to simply sit back, relax, and do absolutely nothing but think, ponder, or even just stare into space.

I know from experience that when my mind is full of information that it has yet to organize, that I physically start organizing things. Disorder starts to irritate me. Not to the point where I hate seeing things out of place, mind you. It's not the mess itself. It's that I could be figuring out where to put it and thus make a new empty space. So far this week, in the little bouts of time off I've had, I've emptied three or four totes of stuff, threw some of that stuff away, and organized the rest into the many drawers I've bought for this purpose. My playpen is now completely filled with organizational tools - drawers, cabinets, shelving, tables, a closet of boxes and totes - even the wiring has been drawing my attention to it, begging to be rearranged and tied down to reduce the clutter UNDER the tables. It's insane. To look quickly at my playpen, you'd think "messy." But upon any semblance of inspection, it would amaze anyone just how much stuff occupies this tiny little space.

I am the master of organizing when it comes to my stuff.

Yet today, it's roughly 60 degrees outside, the sky is full of sunshine and deep blue hues, and there'll be a little outdoor concert just 10 minutes from here in about 45 minutes. I don't wanna go. I know I don't. I don't want to see all the people milling around, I don't feel like smiling and nodding my head at fellow spectators, I don't even want to get in my truck and drive down there to try finding a parking spot. And in fact, I actually don't even want to hear the music, because it'll be amplified and brazen and people will be talking over it and traffic will dilute it! Besides, I might hear something I like and start dancing, and I honestly do not have enough energy to spend on that kind of joy.

This has nothing to do with feeling poorly, or bad, or depressed, or even funky. I'm just feeling very quiet, reflective, organizational, peaceful, physically tired, and ... oh yeah, hungry. I should probably pick at this nice boiled dinner I just made for myself. It's got corned beef, potatoes, orange peppers, onions, and spinach in it. There's a nice cup of Earl Grey here, too. *takes a few nibbles*

My picture drive announced that it was full today... I had to delete some stuff, move things around, and eventually I will be forced to reorganize my hard drive, too. Well, actually, I've been working on that... but it's a slow process. When I installed 440GB of drives on this thing, I never once figured I'd actually use it all. 200GB was supposed to be used for backing up most of the rest of it, in fact. HA! Here I am less than two years later, scratching my head and going, "Wow, what the heck is on here, anyway?" Truth is, a lot. The three biggest culprits? You guessed it: CDROM images (so I don't have to insert my CD's), music, and of course the latest little bugger, pictures. Most of the latter are backed up to DVD, of course the cd images I have on the original cds, and music... don't even go there. I think I've backed up the few things I've bought from iTunes. I hope so. The rest I could care less about because I've got all /that/ on CDs. All of which are downstairs, neatly organized by artist name. Still, to have to re-rip all those... As I said, don't even go there.

Okay, I'm still not eating as much as I should be right now, so I'm going to end this before I fade away to a shadow.

~nv

Hair Salons

Check this out. I'm going get myself pampered for a change. I'm terrified, though. (Is it pampering when you're afraid of it?) My hair has been driving me insane for weeks, the little wispy things in face, etc. So I inwardly decided it would get chopped off so it could NOT get in my face unless it grew bionic arms and said, "Ah HAAAAA!!! Take THAT!!!! YOU CAN'T BEAT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

I mentioned this at work last night, and one girl there who's into hair says, "OOOH!! GET A PIXIE CUT!! It would look soooooooo good on you!!" Which I found interesting, because lots of people have said that in the past. So I asked her to recommend a place, which she happily did. Just waiting for a call back for an appointment. I probably won't get in for weeks, but if things get real bad, I'll just chop off enough to cease the craziness, and then hope they've got enough to work with.

Dang, I hate salons, though. I've not been to one for myself in about 15 years I think. The girl at work told me this place is kind of Buddha-themed, though, so maybe it'll pique my interest enough to keep my mind off the pampering part. LMAO Geek for life, I suppose... hey!! I should start a geekalon... a salon for geeks to have geeky haircuts!! It could be themed in gaming and dos-based colours, laptops on swivel arms could come over to greet you as you got your hair done, and the only mirror would be the one on the cover of the laptop so when they're done you can look and say, "Yep, that’s it. I'm a geek!" Then you could submit payment with a click which automatically calculated the tip based on your satisfaction and subtracted it from your bank account.

Yep. One of these /needs/ to be demoed... somewhere... probably in Boston or L.A. Sigh.

~nv

Stuff. Gone.

If I acquire one more item in my household I swear I'll... well, okay, I suppose it depends on what it is, but... there is stuff EVERYWHERE. All stuff I "can't live without." Bullsh**. Well, I've been slowly getting accustomed to the idea that stuff consists of a bunch of things that can, for the most part, be replaced eventually, and it has a tendency to create a large mess when you decide to haul it out, look at it, and use it or whatever.

Clothing - egads, I never thought I was much of a "typical woman" in that regard - I had already given away two or three bags of those to the Mission when I moved. All stuff I never wore because it didn't quite fit right, or it was staticky (I'm full of static, even in the summer), or it wrinkled too easily for my free and easy lifestyle, or it was the wrong colour. Well, someone somewhere can use it, so I finally said, "You know what? I keep this around because I'm afraid I won't have anything at all to wear, but why should it be sitting here going to waste when I've got enough to begin with, and can probably afford more if I /do/ need something new?" So, I bagged it and gave it away. Most of it was probably given to me, actually, because I never bought clothing until a few years ago when I discovered where to buy stuff that actually fit me. I had better luck with second hand clothing in that regard...

Well, it's spring, and once more I've been going through stuff thinking, "What AM I doing with this? I'll never wear it. Why do I have this here?" So I just stuffed yet another bag with clothing. Currently I have two pairs of zip-off jeans that I'd like to have hemmed; they fit perfectly except they're too long and the zipper part is just ON my knees. I figured they could be hemmed there and I'd have pants AND shorts at just the right length. So why haven't I had them hemmed yet? Are these going to end up at the Mission, too? I actually bought these, knowing how they fit, and with the full intent of having them hemmed. Hello... that was almost a year ago... egads, self, get with the program.

Also, I've been buying those three-drawer carts lately from Kmart. They're awesome for storing stuff. If I'd had these when I was little, and I mean, like LINING the WALLS of my room, my room would never have been so messy. And if I'd had a scanner, I wouldn't have accumulated so many boxes of paper over the years. I would have been too busy developing organizational systems.

Moral to this story? Stop collecting so much stuff. It just takes up space. As for the stuff you already have, get drawers and line the walls with them. Then spend the next five years organizing it all.

And ironically enough, Weird Al's version of "I Want It That Way" just came on. Its subject? Ebay, the epitome of stuff-collecting (I should know, I've more than one item obtained from ebay...)

~nv

My Trivia Podcast!!

Hey, it's not every day you're featured as one of three guests on such an awesome podcast... And my boyfriend and I both were featured this past weekend!! Go to http://www.mytriviapodcast.com/ to hear us at the end. Horrid to know my voice is out there being listened to (or turned off) but still, it's cool!

Anywho, *promote promote* I've been listening to this podcast for a few months now. It started because of Aflac of course, that insane person who's always finding new podcasts to listen to. Like, where does he find all this time? Okay, granted, he travels a lot at times, but still!! I guess it's just my tendency to have to listen so carefully to catch everything that throws me off the podcast trail. For me, it's not just casual listening, it's work, because I hang on every word, processing and reprocessing the sound into "text." I do subscribe to The Geekcast, though. I love that. And The Onion Radio News of course!! Then there's the Ask A Ninja /video/ podcast, Photoshop Killer Tips, and Linux Reality (sorry, couldn't find a link for this one offhand).

Podcasting is an awesome idea. And with my little Leif now in hand, I, too, can broadcast them to my truck's antenna and listen on my way to work. I discovered that the Geekcast is perfect for a one-way trip to or from work. It's like 18 minutes long, it takes me 17 to get to work! Yay!! Just leave a couple minutes earlier and sit in the parking lot when I arrive, hearing the end tail of it... :)

Anywho, signing off (for now)...

~nv

Poem - We Renamed The Moon

We Renamed The Moon
a personal parody of the Waterboys' "The Whole Of The Moon"
42006042151 - ©2006 WLL

I picture a rainbow
Touching down on the land
I used to have flashes
But I had no plan
I wandered out on the streets for years
While I just stayed in my room
I looked through Windows
And hated all versions of Doom
All versions of Doom

You weren't there playing Tiles
You had rocks at your heels
You photographed stars
And you knew you were real
You climbed so high
So far
So soon
One day I found I was real, too

I'm still grounded
While I'm filling your eyes
I was dumbfounded by you
As you told no lies
I saw the rain on my Windows
You saw Apple's tunes
We ate some crescents
And we went and renamed the moon

I try to do things
You just do
I wondered, I learned and applied
What you just knew
I've tried
You have, too
We had some bagels
And we went and renamed the moon
We renamed the moon
We renamed the moon

With keys in your pocket
And the rocks at your heels
You climbed lots of mountains
And you knew you were real
You climbed so high
So far
So soon
But it's we who have renamed the moon
We renamed the moon

Ping pong vs hackerdom
Fallacies and fears
I love everything I am
The oceans dried my tears
Flags, tags, and tournaments
Lots of download bars
We're every precious dream and vision
Alive beneath the stars
Yeah, you climbed on the mountains
With the wind at your tail
You hike like you're seasoned
With blazes on trails
So high
So far
So soon
Oh, oh, oh
But we went and renamed the moon

What's Important

I woke up this morning dreaming of an evil pc that has been kicking my butt since yesterday morning. This is no ordinary pc. It's newish, so it started out fast enough. But as I worked on it, it became progressively slower until I was bordering on tears. There's no apparent cause other than perhaps Norton Internet Security 2006, but after uninstalling it, I could no longer get the little bugger online whatsoever. No amount of registry searches would explain why. DHCP works, I got the network card working again after installing a mini network, etc. So I go to reinstall the whole damned thing and lo and behold, it hoses the system - now it won't boot into XP, and it keeps hanging on a hardware error that causes a memory dump.

Anyway, that electronic pile of frustration is not the sole reason I write this, although it is the cause of the reasons I write this.

As I said, I woke up this morning dreaming about the evil pc. My mind was working on a solution while I slept, going through all the steps I had taken. As my eyes opened upon the daylight, I realized I could not find any reason to put myself down for not being able to fix it quickly. That realization was quickly and logically followed by a renewed desire to tackle the problem. So I decided to get up. That didn't work, because then I realized I was in Aflac's arms. He woke slightly and smiled that beautiful radiant glowing smile of his. I smiled, too, breaking my thought patterns.

It was at that moment that I found myself actually faced with a dillemma. Do I tear myself from his loving arms and go play on my beloved computers, trying to find a solution, or do I stay, and enjoy his presence until he's off to work? At first I thought the computers would win. It's been in my nature for years to be on them during every waking hour of my life, and it's been somewhat difficult to make a life for myself outside the box, so-to-speak.

But lying there, a soft flotsam of words drifted through my head, a whisper. They were accompanied by faded images I'd created to go with them. In the soft light they emerged before me, wavering, shimmering, delicately balanced on the edge of my mind.

"You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." The image of thorns, and a rose. I think I was recalling this from a song. "People often don't appreciate others 'til it's too late." My coworker, lying in his coffin, looking so not like himself, so still, so unreal. "He was so young." Another person from work, I'd met him a few times, he died in a car accident in his twenties while en route to an airport to see his parents. He left behind his fiancé, too, and a lot of people who would miss him. "It was so stupid." The image of another coworker, a sweet guy, always nodded to everyone in the halls. He'd been with some friends shooting a video and died in a stupid accident that shouldn't have happened. If he'd already finished high school, he had barely done so. "When my husband was alive." This time a former coworker who always talked about her husband as if he had just died yesterday, when in reality it was at least 10 years earlier.

The last image hit me hardest. I heard Aflac's voice: "I can't go on without her." I saw him and a coworker whose friendship I've come to value greatly over the years. Aflac had two little girls with him and he looked so sad and weary, on the verge of tears and/or collapse. One of the girls turned to look right at me, piercing me with her gaze. "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."

I stayed with Aflac. At that moment I realized that if I let him go for one second when I could have him with me, I was being stupid and unappreciative of all we've got together. I once had a woman back into my truck at midnight in my own parking lot when I was on my way to see him. No one was hurt, but you just never know what could happen. Aflac drives even farther than I do every day. There are freaky things that happen every day in life. I don't want to be one of those people who says, "You know, I didn't tell him I loved him this morning. And now I can't because he's gone." I can't replace Selene or Raven per se, but they're computers. They don't love me like Aflac does. They don't watch me from afar with a twinkle in their webcams, or hold me gently but securely when I've had a rough time with a computer who refuses to cooperate. I once refused to rely on any computer other than Selene because she was my "firstborn." For the past month she's been sitting next to Raven without a single watt of power going through her, while Raven's share of the workload has more than doubled. I discovered that while Selene will always hold a place in my heart, I can always use another computer to satisfy my creative and geeky outlets. She'll be revamped one day when I have enough time to deal with her flailing 98 configuration, but given my lack of drive to do it right now, it's obvious that computers CAN be replaced after all.

Aflac can't.

If by some miracle life spares us the heartache of an early separation, that would be immensely awesome. But in case it doesn't, I'm not taking chances. Live life, yes. Forsake it, no.

And that's my two cents for the day.

~nv

Eminem

There is one rap artist that I like. Correction. That I love.

That would be Eminem.

Talk about being open-minded (considering I generally hate rap)… but he’s really good in a heart-wrenching sort of way. He speaks of his childhood, his fans, his daughter, his rise to stardom in his music - which I do deem as music because his spoken lyrics have so much poetic style that it’s as if he’s singing. I just downloaded one of his albums on iTunes, "Curtain Call - The Hits."

To the story about his ditching school after repeating ninth grade three times, he apparently says he's not stupid, just wasn’t interested in school because all he wanted to do was rap, but also that his example shouldn't be followed. Judging from his lyrics and the story of how he rose to success, I’d have to agree he’s far from stupid. I think he’s screwed up but is working on himself somehow. There’s so much anger in his work but it’s not the typical “f*** da police” style. It’s open, raw, honest, and skillfully crafted. Certainly it's unique. For someone who flunked ninth grade three times, he's got one heck of a vocabulary.

The girl that told me rap is the hardest music to write may have been partially right. I've started to think that perhaps most rappers simply aren't that talented. Without talent, it's probably quite hard to write this stuff in such an emotional, yet skillful, way. Then again, I know firsthand that when you're driven out of yourself by an overflow of emotions, sometimes words are the only escape.

~nv

Apple!!!

Okay, so I've not blogged in a while, but today I MUST blog. Today I write about Apple Computer. It's an awesome company in my eyes. Here are some of my more recent experiences.

01. I ordered a PhotoBook through iPhoto on Aflac's iMac. It's very easy to lay out and customize despite the tiny resolution that Aflac's got things set at. The only problem I had was this auto-fill message on certain fields which, every time I made a major layout change to one or more pages, would reappear despite many deletions, sometimes even wiping out the text I'd already put in! And after checking it thoroughly, I submitted it. It came a week or so later. Beautiful, but those fields had come back again!!! I was horrified. These things are well-worth the expense - if they print properly. So I emailed them and asked how this could happen and what I might be able to do about it. Much to my surprise, they emailed back and said they would replace the book. They explained how to do this, gave some tips for how to work around the bug until it's fixed, and then promised that they would fix this bug in a future update. I did what I was told. The book came within a week. It was *perfect* in every way. Now THAT is customer service!

02. iTunes. I admit it. I was not happy with this software at first. On Windows, it's clumsy, slightly bloated, and inefficient as far as a music vault goes. But one thing I fell in love with and almost got addicted to was the music store. Yea, if you can't help but spend money on music, you do NOT want to go in HERE very often. They make it VERY easy to find what you're looking for, to browse new music, and the worst part is that you can preview clips like on Amazon - by double-clicking the song. Steve Jobs has always been good at one thing: Marketing. He's a pro. BUT, the one thing I did NOT like about the store is that you're buying m4p's - which you can ONLY play in iTunes or a device that plays m4p's. My old mp3 player wouldn't play them, I could find no way to crack this protective file type, and since I had no m4p-compatible player (which I suspect would be only an Apple product such as an iPod), the only way I could use my newly purchased music was to listen in iTunes or burn to a CD. The latter would allow me to rip afterward into the proper mp3 format for use on my mp3 player, but it was a huge PITA because the strength of iTunes is your ability to buy one song off an album and mix things up. The burned cd's do not retain any CDDB info, so any time you rip them, you need to fill in your own id tags. No way, no thank you. But despite this evil protection - and I do understand they're trying to copyright their property, but zheezh, can't we just all behave instead? - I am falling for iTunes a little bit. I think part of that is music videos and shows, though. I found two seasons of Knight Rider. I downloaded one episode for $1.99. Not cheap if you get the whole set, but if all you want is one show, it's a deal. And now I've got old music videos I'd always wished I could watch again. Now I can - anytime I want, on my own computer! Still, if only I could play my new music without iTunes or a lot of effort... which leads me to the iPod Nano.

03. Aflac got me one for my birthday. I can not tell you how wonderful my little Leif is (that's what I named him). A client of mine once had me work on a Nano because he didn't have a computer yet and wanted to put songs and such on it, so I knew I liked the little buggers and I had also become somewhat familiar with the controls. So of course I mastered the thing in less than an hour - right down to putting photos, calendar entries, contact info, notes, and - oh yeah, let's not forget MUSIC - on it. I created a couple playlists, made one for my photo slideshow, played solitaire (yep, it's got games, too), listened to music, and finally attached it to the FM transmitter I got with it so I could play it in my truck. Awesome. The biggest learning curve has been (yes you guessed it) iTunes, which at first I felt was kind of awkward and clumsy and not particularly friendly even for its own iPods. But, I'm a DOS and Windows native. OS X isn't exactly difficult, but Apple's software designers definitely have their own style. Menus are NOT going to be intuitive to a Windows user right away, and given the new technology in my hands, there's going to be some new ideas, too, with their own terms. Which brings me to...

04. Podcasts. I've been familiar with this technology for a while, because Aflac listens to them religiously. Well, once I had Leif in my hand, I knew I had to subscribe to a podcast. So I went browsing the categories and selected two that Aflac subscribes to which I love - The Onion Radio News and the Trivia Podcast. Then I found Linux Reality, The Geekcast, Your Computer Minute with Peter Kay, and a couple of video ones: Ask A Ninja and - this is my favourite by far so far - Adobe Photoshop Killer Tips. I'm done. Finished. I will never leave my computer again. So this morning I was listening to this Killer Tips, and just HAD to try them out myself. Which leads me to an Adobe product.

05. Photoshop. I'm truly floored by the abilities that Photoshop has when it comes to images. It can seem complicated, but the Killer Tips podcast has certainly offered me some ideas to make my life easier. One I'll likely use often is this: No matter which tool you're using, you can press the spacebar and the cursor turns into the hand tool so you can move the picture. Useful if it's hanging off the screen (most likely). But I wanted something to help me select single images without going through the magic wand thing all the time. You know, selecting, selecting more, still leaving out pixels, then needing to do it all over again if you wanted to overlay a colour or something. Well, lo and behold, there IS a workaround. Instead of hitting Space to move my picture, as described in the aforementioned tip, I accidentally used Shift. Suddenly everything BUT the object was selected! I realized I was still in Magic Wand, and that Shift must affect it somehow. So I played. The workaround is this: Paste just the object into its own layer. Click the Magic Wand, and make sure it's set to Contiguous. Shift-click in any "white" part around the image. It'll become selected. Hit Delete. This will delete all unnecessary white parts around the image. Do the same for any white parts you want to become background (i.e., the background will show through). Then UNcheck the contiguous box and Shift-click outside the object again. Right-click the object and click "Select inverse." Vóìlá!! The object is selected. Now you can move it, fill it, whatever - the WHOLE object. All at once. Once you do this a couple times it becomes second nature - MUCH faster than pinpointing points around the whole thing little by little or continuously magic-selecting little pieces to get the whole image. If it weren't for that podcast, I would still be struggling with that issue...

Oh! I also updated my website yesterday. I discovered Publisher the other day and within two hours had a new "site" of 7 pages. I called it PCA - Personal Computers Anonymous and tacked it into www.psychomuse.com. Once I get Selene back up and running, I'll update the links on the left of my main page so it can be accessed there permanently. Until then you'll need to click the link I stuffed in the body (some may call it "news"). One of these days I'll also pack my old front-page ramblings into their own section and simply link to it. That would clean up that mess...

Signing off to go play with Photoshop some more (and listen to another podcast),

~nv