P.S. Tom DID notice the eggplant...though I suspect he didn't at first. He was finishing up the last of the casserole last night, and picked out a bit of eggplant. He glared at me. "Stop. Just... stop." sigh. I tried. And he still ate some, even if it made him cranky, and he picked them out last night.

Also - I have my Zune. I am seriously loving it. The size is not so bad as I'd feared. I'm getting the hang of the touch-screen, though it's taking a bit. It does not appear that I can snag files off my computer from the Zune without plugging it in (though I can send them from my comp to the Zune), but we'll see if I can't set it up to sync on its own and maybe do it that way. (I have waaaaayyyy too much of everything to let anything sync automatically. ever.) I'm a little annoyed that I can't play/pause without looking at the screen, and that the screen brightness is only "low - med - high" (the iPod had a full range of 0-100). Also... is there no sleep timer?! I counted on that every night with my nano...

Though, as Tom has pointed out, the screen issue I ran into with the nano might have been the result of me rolling over onto it in my sleep. I *tried* not to do that, but if I got tangled in the headphone wires, I'd sometimes pull the iPod over into the rolling-onto-zone. That happened briefly last night with the Zune, and Tom suggested what I'd already been considering:

Use the nano to fall asleep to. (The screen is already iffy. I don't need the screen to play/pause, or even navigate to some degree. Also: it HAS a sleep-timer. ...and, I feel awful neglecting something that I used to share basically every waking moment with. ^^; )


...but, I should give some positives on the Zune. Because I really do like it - the things mentioned are the oooonly downsides. (Well, that, and I suspect the headphones they sent are crap.) I can set my own picture as the lock-screen image, yaaaaay. It's pretty. It's REALLY pretty - the interface, the screen (I don't think I've ever seen a black like this on a screen... even *I'm* drooling over the OLED!), pretty much everything. Flipping through albums is a nightmare for me, because, as Tom put it, "Things are designed to work with the PERFECT music collection." I don't have album art for everything! Good lord. I'm lucky if 3/4 of my music has the basic tags filled out correctly. But, you can flip through your stuff via artist, album, playlist, genre, the usual mix. AND! You can shuffle a playlist on the fly! And if you don't like it (it shows in tiny-print what the next three tracks will be), you can unshuffle, and then RESHUFFLE!!! There was NO reason for my old nano to not have had that ability, and it always irked me.

Interface is insanely intuitive. I'd read somewhere how to "go back" in a menu, so I was ready for the brief moment of confusion when I tried to do it - but once I saw it (at the top of the screen, there's a zoomed-in cropped chunk of your previous menu's name - tap on that), I reeeeaally liked it. I can get from one thing to another really fast, and it all just feels really fluid. The visual style of the thing is just really, really nice, it's very sleek and modern and simple but stylish.

...which is WEIRD. The Apple interface feels old and chunky next to the Microsoft one. Who'd-a-thunk.

Labels: cooking, life in general, product whoring, technology

 
Just bought the Zune (thank you New Egg for having it cheaper!). I *have* learned to navigate between podcasts when the screen on my iPod cuts out, but... it's a little annoying. If I hit a button every 5-10 minutes, the screen stays on, but if I don't, there it goes again, and has to sit for half an hour idle before it will come back.

I looked at the Sony - no Audible. I looked at the Zen - a few things bothered me, and it was the same price point as the more-appealing Zune. The new Nano just pisses me off. And the Zune has wifi.

So, that has been ordered. Tom is all excited to have a new toy to play with. He seems to forget that it's ME buying it, not him.

Oddly, I am almost more excited about the skin I'm planning to buy for it - I'm getting one with this image on it. <3 I love the style, I love the colors, I love the wood grain.


...I've been very sleepy this week. Anytime my period comes along, it saps my energy levels, but it's a little ridiculous this time. The shift from a stunningly gorgeous summery day to thunderstorms of doom yesterday made my sinuses do all kinds of weird things. And I definitely stayed in bed too long this morning, but... Tom was pretty upset by whatever case came up during his jury duty yesterday.

He's on grand jury duty, once a week for like a month and a half. So they look at evidence and decide if there's enough of it for something to go to court. Which means less conscience issues, buuuttt, means the cases are pretty severe. No traffic tickets. Large-scale crimes, like murder rape larceny whatever. Last week, he came home somewhat depressed, and in definite need of cheering-up and reassurance that not everyone is evil. This week, it was a shorter day, but... he's been in need of constant distraction since he got home. Even sleeping hasn't shaken his mood - he's lined up enough tv shows and things to keep his mind occupied while playing Guild Wars today. For like the whole day, until I get home.

...so, even though I knew I'd be bleary, I stayed in bed extra-long this morning, since morning-snuggling is pretty much his happiest time of day. He seemed so content, and so reassured, there was no way I was getting up before I absolutely had to. (And, yes, I was pretty cozy and content myself. :)

Labels: life in general, product whoring, technology

 
//WARNING// The following is me writing things out in order to help myself make a decision. I would recommend skipping this post, unless you're in the market for an mp3 player too, in which case, omfg help.


Blehhhh. Trying to pick out a new mp3 player is annoying. I had to go up a price-range, because the 8gb Zune I was thinking about is an old (and apparently iffy) model.

So. iPod Nano 16gb: $179. Zune HD 16gb: $199. blehhhhh.

I *like* my current Nano. I'm used to it, and god knows my iTunes has hours and hours and hours worth of effort already put into playlists. (I am playlist-happy. I use playlists like most things use tags.)

Tom has heard nothing but rave reviews on Zunes, and I think the software has a lot more going for it in terms of growth.

The Nano has VIDEO CAPTURE. ickickick. The Zune's big advertisement is the ZunePass music-buying deal, which I am not so sure I would do.

...Tom finally had to tell me that I need to look at what things I WANT, not things I DON'T want. lmao. How sad is that. But the problem is, that with each new generation of mp3 player, they add more bells and whistles. The Nano does voice-overs that will tell you (in basically any language) the title and artist. The Zune has an oled screen and will supposedly play HD quality (on a 3" screen). I DO NOT CARE. I rarely watch video on a screen that small (I'm an art kid, I want to be able to see details!). It does not cause me any trouble to glance at the screen if I'm not sure on a track title, and the need to do that is insanely rare anyway.

I rarely buy things from the iTunes store. The ZunePass deal lets you download all you want, but only 10 of those songs each month will be playable after 30 days. (Which, honestly, is a huge leap forward - thank you for being reasonable about letting people try out new music. But... I need more than 10 songs a month if I'm after an album or two.)

The fact that the Zune will sync wirelessly is making me lean pretty heavily that direction. But, my iTunes is so nicely organized right now - and having used both, I feel like iTunes handles huuuge quantities of music better than the Zune software. Granted I've only thrown in a test batch of music, just to poke at the Zune software, but.. meh I don't know.

I'm aware that there are other things out there, buuuut, I want to stick with a major-major brand on this. I use my iPod.. probably 6 hours on a workday. All but like two or three waking hours on a day off. So reliability is a major issue, as is compatibility. I haaate that nothing will handle flac or ogg or anything still, but, I can deal. What I do not want to happen, is have major chunks of my stash inaccessible. MUST have Audible support. Occasionally I have weird formats floating around, and goodness knows what I'll get in future, audiobooks I download are sometimes in weird things.

Zune also has a touch screen, which I'm not sure if I want or not. I probably do. But I also foresee it potentially causing problems.

Both of them are stupid annoying sizes. I do not want something as big as a phone, but apparently there's not much choice on that one.

Lmao this should be such a fun, exciting thing to think about, but it's just making me angry! Maybe I *am* becoming a curmudgeon. (Tom keeps accusing me of this, but he also tends to forget what the word actually means.) sigh. idek. I *did* *want* a nano, but having looked at all the info... it really looks like apple is just rehashing the same old things and trying to keep up with microsoft, in this round of releases at least. The Zune just looks like it handles all the extra goodies in a MUCH more logical way, while the nano has to kind of fudge things into working. (Tag a song you hear on the radio, so you can buy it from iTunes when you plug your iPod into your computer! Or, hear a song on the radio, click and buy as long as you've got wifi going.)

Damnit I'm leaning toward the Zune. I can't believe something non-Apple costs more than something Apple. But then again, touchscreen (and a bigger screen, and an oled screen) and wifi for $30 more. That's not bad at all.

Blehhhhh I did not want to spend much over $100. And I do NOT want to have to migrate eeeeverything into Zune from iTunes. But if I do it now, I should have a few playlists good to go by November, which is when they're most crucial.


My iPod isn't dead yet - it still comes back from screen-death if I let it sit untouched for about 15 minutes - but as Tom's pointed out, the SECOND it does die, I am going to OMFGNEEEEEEED!11!! a replacement.

Labels: griping, product whoring, technology

 
Yes I signed up for Twitter.

Mainly because I wanted to try and snap up a Phat Fiber sampler box (which I did! successfully! barely! holy CRAP they sell out in under a minute!), and I thought there might be notes on their twitter feed. (There weren't. But they were on-time with the sale, as per their email list.)

Also because Mary Beth Temple, of Getting Loopy podcast fame, is always talking about the conversations the crochet people are having on twitter, and I felt nosy.

We shall see. I'll play for awhile. I suspect it will be my doom come NaNoNovember again.


...meanwhile, I am playing in Photoshop. I've been toying with the idea of making some kind of record of my crochet projects. 1) I want to show off what I've made, which I might do via flickr. 2) It's hard enough to give things away, I need to have pictures of everything. 3) I've made enough stuff now that I'm going to stop being able to keep all the info in my head (where the pattern is from, what yarn I used - which is probably most important so I know what I can machine-wash and what I can't!).

But taking photos and uploading them is seriously, seriously boring. And I realized 95% of my digital creative output this year has been in CorelDraw, at work. Which I've grown to love, I admit, but... I feel like I've been neglecting Photoshop. Which is my onetrueluv!1!.

So I am playing, and it is looking seriously awesome. Plan is to print it out on the nice sharp color copier at work one of these days, and get a scrapbook/binder another one of these days. Playing with paper and glue is very fun, but, so is doing it without the mess.

Labels: art, being social, crochet, photoshop, technology

 
DAMN YOU WINDOWS!!!!! Computers are supposed to know what time it is. Especially when they have the internet. My iPod syncs to my computer-time. I do not stare at my cellphone 24/7 - I glance at it like twice a day, when I remember. My coffee-maker and microwave have long-since succumbed to blinky-red-12:00 hell.

I STARTED MY HAM AN HOUR EARLY THANKS TO YOU, WINDOWS!!!!

...Obviously, this is not really a major issue, it's ham and a slow-cooker. Exact timing = not an issue. But I'm so confused now! It's an hour earlier than I thought it was!!! This is actually good, but, omfg I just mentally plotted out my afternoon and now there's an extra hour in there. I think. Is there really??? DAMNIT!!!!

(I've had an ongoing issue with my clock not syncing up correctly. It likes to ignore daylight savings, or have it happen when it's not supposed to, or just generally be an hour off one way or another whenever it feels the need to SERIOUSLY MESS WITH MY HEAD. >_<#! )

Labels: cooking, life in general, silliness, spazz, technology

 
Posting here mainly so I remember that I made the thing, and can refer to it for book-buying after Christmas:

Kaboodle wishlist


I went through a few different sites, and Kaboodle is definitely the best wishlist site. You can paw through their selections, OR, plug in a direct weblink to what you're looking at, and it'll pull in all the pictures and info you'd like to show up. Very cool. Also - other people can click and say they've bought something...which for some idiotic reason, many other sites DON'T have. Given that this is the main reason for using a website to make a wishlist, I found this rather odd.

(This will be an ideal place to make a gift registry, somewhere down the line... I keep hinting at Tom that we're coming up on five years now. It's about time my ring finger stopped being so naked, I think. ;)

Labels: life in general, product whoring, technology

 
DEEENNY'S LEEEEAVES THEIR WIIIIIIFI OPEN, DEEEEENNY'S LEEEEEAVES THEIR WIIIIIFI OPEN!!!!!

(And they're JUST close enough to Tim Horton's, where I am curled up with coffee and much novel to write, that I can jump on their signal. mwahahahahhaha.)


...admitedly, this is freaking crazy. I'm in Fredonia, the back-end of nowhere for tech things. And yet here there are like SIX OR SEVEN wifi networks, most weak, but within range of my wimpy lil laptop. Most are locked, which is a surprise, but something I have to approve of. They're not stupid people.

But Denny's... Denny's I can borrow. I feel like Tom. ^~_~^

Labels: nanowrimo, silliness, technology

 
Posting this here so I can find it later to show Tom. (And on the off-chance anyone else is geeky enough to get it and have a few giggles.) The Babel Fish on my laptop [the program is called Wanda I think, but I re-named the fish - it's a random fortune/quote generator for linux] spat it out at me while at Starbucks novelling, and I had to be good and not giggle out loud, and risk scaring the swarm of music kids at the table next to me.


      Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out. They screamed down the mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged rocks. They all got out of the car:
      The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it."
      The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it into town and have a specialist look at it."
      The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back in and see if it does it again."

Labels: silliness, technology

 
Today was an awesome, awesome day.

The Droid, the phone with the Google software, came out...today or yesterday? So since I wasn't working, and Tom didn't go in until 4, he decided it would be a good day to go get one. He has been dyyyying for this phone to come out. It's like the iPhone, except Google instead of Apple, so it's not locked down within an inch of its life. Tom's actually been toying around with writing an application for it for the past week or two.

Nearest Verizon store is in Jamestown. Sooo, we make the half hour drive down there, through all of its crazy streets that make no sense, and enter the Verizon store. Staff was all super-friendly, though we did have to wait maybe ten minutes or so before a sales rep was free to talk to us. Tom decided he wanted the more elaborate model (with a pull-out keyboard, which I can actually type fairly reasonably on), and, THANK GOD, there was an unlimited data plan available.

Now, going back in time a couple of years, shortly after 9/11, Tom's name got on the no-fly list. He happens to share a name with a mass murderer from Connecticut or somewhere. First name, last name, and maybe middle initial? Not *remotely* a birthday, and certainly not a social security number. But now and again, his ss number won't register. He actually can't use paypal normally because of this. He *has* the ss card, with his name, and his number, but when he punches it in to paypal, it says it's wrong.

Neither Tom nor I has ever had an account with a real phone company. I have barely any credit history, and I'm pretty sure he has none, or close enough to none. The friendly saleswoman entered his information, and it spat out his social security number. Tried it again, and no-go. She had to fax a copy of his license AND social security card, off to God knows where, and wait for the higher-ups to approve it.

This did not make Tom a happy camper. Every time he's tried to fix this issue, whatever office he calls refers him someplace else, nobody will actually try to fix it.

So, since the woman told us to come back in like fifteen minutes, we decided to run Melissa's errand of the day: BUY SWEDISH FOOD!!!!!1!


Every year, my grandparents trek down to Jamestown to buy 1) korv (sausage) and 2) Bond-Ost (pronounced something like "boond-ust") cheese. Traditional Christmas-ish food by this point. I found Bond-Ost ONCE, but it was plain, without the caraway seeds. It's pretty wimpy without the caraway seeds. So! Since we were actually in Jamestown for once, I called my grandma.

"Oh, Peterson's! Peterson's Market. It's a little ways outside of Jamestown, it's not in the city itself, it's on Fluvanna Road... oh, as you come into Jamestown, the road is off to the right, it's about a mile outside of the city..."

Tom, who could hear every word of this from the other side of the car (I hadn't talked to Grandma on the phone in awhile...I forgot about the volume issue), was cracking up. Eventually, Grandma found something with the street name but not the address, though it did have a phone number, which I scrawled onto our Dunkin' Donuts bag with one of the (at least two, probably 3+) Sharpies Tom leaves laying around in his car.

So, I called the phone number. The nice lady on the other end started giving me directions... "I'm... not very familiar with Jamestown, but I actually have a GPS. Can you give me the number of the street address?" "Sure, uh.. hold on a minute." And I hear her call out to somebody across the store. Then she gives me the number. "Thanks... and how do you spell Fluvanna? I have a guess, but..." "Yeah, it's F-L-U-V... hold on." And she calls out to someone again. "Okay, V-A-N-N-A."

And then the GPS tells us this place is literally like five minutes away, on a road parallel to the one we were on.

But! We get there, and it's a farmer's market style little barn of a place. Brief moment of panic as we tried to figure out if they'd take credit cards (since nobody in my generation, least of all Tom and I, ever have cash on hand). I spotted a credit card machine, and then a woman came up to the desk. "Can I help you with anything?" "Yeah, do you take credit cards?" "Yes we do." "Oh good. Do you have Bond-Ost cheese?" "Yep, it's in the dairy case, right over there..." "Yes! I'm so glad, I've been dying for some for like a year!"

I made a bee-line. And found both plain and caraway! So I snagged and rejoiced. And then started poking around. There was an awful lot of pickled herring (which I'm sure I'll try someday, but...), but then I found more goodies. All kinds of rye bread, and cookies, and mixes, and... Tom watched me for a minute as I bounced around spazzing at everything. "..you want *everything*, don't you?" "Uh-huh!!!"

What I ended up with: Bond-Ost with caraway, lingonberry jelly, rye flour (Heidi has a recipe for Swedish Rye Cookies that I've been dying to try - and Mom just bought me large-grain sugar, too!), rye crispbread (super-crunchy dry cracker things that I adore), some maple sugar candy just because, aaaaand! A spice mix for glögg! Which I was always "too young" to drink at Lucia every year, but which always smelled amazing. Just holding the little ziploc bag, you can smell the spices: cloves and cinnamon and cardamom and orange peel... it smells amazing. The packet included a recipe for glögg: spice mix, quart of water, 2 cups sugar, 2 quarts port wine, and a quart of vodka. Mix and heat.

I see now why I was never allowed to drink it, but that sounds AMAZING. Mom pointed out that I will need to have a party if I'm going to make a full batch, which is true.

I've been bouncing all day thanks to my Swedish food. And! First Saturday in December, they do a Swedish food expo, where they make all the foods and you can eat it. (Plus, I forgot to look for korv, which Mom suspects is seasonal, since the grandparents always called ahead to ask for.) I'm thinking we're going to need to go back for that one. (Plus, I found out via both parents, that there is a Swedish bakery like right up the street from there. That makes fresh donuts!!! And Swedish breads!)


So, after a super-successful bit of shopping, we went back to the Verizon store, where it turns out, why yes, they were willing to take Tom's money! However, most likely due to the lack of credit history, it was going to be A LOT of money - a $400 freaking deposit that we had not at *all* anticipated, which they hold until you've paid your bills on time for a year. But, after some discussion, we decided we were going to run into that with pretty much any first-time phone... Tom had enough money to do it... and, as the woman so intelligently pointed out, the 3% interest on that deposit when it's returned is more than a bank's savings account gives you. Thankfully, Tom is super-attentive about paying bills on time, so no worries about that.

It was with a rather sorrowful wallet that Tom walked out of the store. Buuut, ten minutes later, as he was driving and I was playing with the phone, he perked right back up. We installed the Pandora app and cranked up some Jpop, and I linked up his Google account - which automatically added all his contacts from Gmail into the phone, so the only delay in calling his dad was...uh, to be honest, finding the "phone" button. We took some video, watched some youtube, looked at some websites... the thing is SERIOUSLY fast. The screen is *unbelievably* sharp, website text was tiny but *so* freaking crystal-clear I had no trouble reading it. The screen is huuuuge. We had internet all the way home, and 3G for probably 10, 20 miles around Fredonia.

Unfortunately, when we got home... 1) It was 3:30, and Tom had to work at 4. 2) We discovered that, while we had the plug for the charger...THERE WAS NO WIRE to connect the charger to the phone. Thankfully, all it is is a usb on one end, and mini-usb on the other - something Tom can pick up at WalMart - but... really people? I know it was launch day and you had bags of stuff everywhere, but... really?

Tom's going to a LAN party at his buddy DJ's after work tonight, and he's so psyched to get to show off his phone. I have a strong hunch he probably forgot to eat on his dinner break, and just played with the phone. The funniest thing was watching him be good and listen as the sales rep walked him through the basic interface on the phone while we were in the store. It was soooo tempting to point out that he's been RUNNING AN EMULATOR OF THE PHONE on his computer for like, two weeks. WRITING SOFTWARE for it. I think he can figure out how to scroll on a touchscreen. But Tom was very good and patient and attentive, and I kept my mouth shut. Probably not the best thing to tell the sales rep that you're going to find every software loophole the thing contains the minute you get it home...


When Tom left for work, I left for campus. The first meet-up of Fredonia NaNoWriMo'ers was tonight, and I met three of my fellow novelists. More details on the NaNo blog, but to summarize: what an awesome feeling it is to meet people you have things in common with. It was a very nice little writing session, I had a very yummy chai to drink, aaaand I managed to crank out basically 2000 words in a bit under three hours, with lots of chatting. *Awesome*.

Tomorrow, I work 1-9, and at 9 I'm heading over to Tim Horton's. Most people are meeting in the afternoon, but it sounds like I'll have a buddy or two there in the evening. Tom works until 1, so I may even get ahead on my writing! Though it's going super-duper well right now, I know toward the middle of the month I'll be banging my head against the wall trying to think of ideas, and something will come up to keep me from writing one or two days, or I'll get sick... so I'm determined to work up to being at least a day ahead, while the inertia of the beginning of the month lasts!

Labels: being social, cooking, life in general, nanowrimo, product whoring, technology, travel

 
You know what is super-exciting? For all that coding webpages has changed since I first learned - and a WHOLE FREAKING LOT has changed... basic html, I've got, but you pull up the source on any website, and it's a giant beast of... well pretty much every language but html. I know how css works in theory, but only remember a little off the top of my head. I'm incapable of doing the new style blogger templates. This layout, I managed, but... barely. And you will notice that there are no blogger widgets on it. (Which I don't mind, actually.) The code is a pretty disgusting mish-mash of bits I snagged from elsewhere, and super-basic html that's totally inefficient.

BUT.

Looking at my NaNo blog, I realized the copious amounts of text were getting hard to read. I decided I wanted more space between the lines - not quite double-spaced, but something more than single-spacing. So, into the code I went. It's all nice and neat and prettily organized...but there are A LOT of things in there. Every detail of the thing is laid out in the headers, and I have to figure out what's what. Thankfully, people who provide templates do things like put in comments to mark where different sections of the page are. So eventually I found the chunk that sets up how the posts are viewed. And I spotted "line-height:1.4em;". Line height! And ems are measurements! That might be it! So I arbitrarily doubled the number, refreshed the blog, and lo and behold there were vast amounts of space between the lines. I WIN! I may not be able to code to save my life, but I can still work out juuuust enough to get an idea of what's going on, and fix what I want.

+1 confidence.

And another +1 for cranking out the day's writing ration before midnight. woo! Tomorrow is a day off, so I'm running to campus to hang out with some other NaNo'ers (which, oddly, I have neverever done in all my years of NaNo'ing) and drink copious amounts of coffee and hopefully get some writing done.

...what do you mean, my fridge is empty and my sink is full of dishes?

Labels: nanowrimo, technology

 
Companies are putting PATENTS on HUMAN GENES. Like ones linked to cancers. Like the ones that we want as many people to be able to study as possible to help out the human race. Medical studies being a purely commercial venture are never a good thing.

Link to ACLU, where you can sign their petition.

Good freaking lord.

Labels: activism, technology