Who's got the button?

Things are going slowly on the web site front, but they are going. I keep tweeking things and it's getting better. I'm not sure I could be a web designer for a living though. It gets really frustrating to deal with erm...interesting and surprising ways that different browsers interpret the css. I've been looking at it in IE and Firefox because that's about all the irritation I can take. So I guess users of Opera and other browsers will be on their own. The next step I think is going to involve getting some pictures of stuff, which I'm a little nervous about. I'm not the best photographer and one thing that can make a website really shine is good crisp pictures. We'll just have to see how it goes I guess.

In other news, my sister called me the other day and asked if I wanted her to send me the buttons she was going to get rid of. I thought, sure I can go through them and keep what I want and donate the rest. Little did I know she would be sending me one metric ton of buttons. Seriously, it was a lot of buttons.

Blanket

I sort of got off track on the AnneArchy deal for a day or two because I wanted a new blanket. About four years ago I found a really cool fur blanket at Target for like 20 bucks. It was very soft and was backed with ultra-suede also very soft. However after four years it is seen better days and it just isn't that soft anymore. I have always been a sucker for the feel of a soft fabric. Both my mother and I shop based a lot on how a fabric feels. You can watch us shopping together and see us reach out and feel items we might be interested in. If it doesn't meet with a certain level of 'ooh that's nice' we don't even bother trying it on. In a fabric store...forget about it. We walk along the aisles looking with our eyes and running our hands down the whole row of fabric. A week or so ago, I was in a store called The Rag Shop (which is a lot like the Hobby Lobby of the great white north) looking for fabric for the cases/totes I'm hopefully going to make soon. I was, of course, feeling my way through the store and ran across some sinfully soft fleece. It is single sided fleece with a checkerboard pattern, and it is soft. I didn't get any, since I didn't have any need for it, but I thought to myself 'I wish I had something to make out of that.' A couple of days went by and I finally put it together. I could make a replacement blanket out of the super soft fleece.

I went back to the store and got some of the fleece in purple since it was the most palatable of the choices (neon orange just wasn't going to cut it). Being a single sided fleece I was going to need a second layer to back it, so I swung over to Joann (because I had a coupon) and got some darker purple fleece and since I like heavy blankets some heavy cotton batting. I fused the batting to the dark purple fleece and used white blanket binding to close the whole thing up. It was my first experience with blanket binding and so it isn't terribly beautiful, but it's definitely fine for my purposes. Here is a picture of it:



And just for fun, the other day I turned around in my chair and there at my feet, was the most pitiful sight:



Notice the erm...brains that are being pulled out through the cheek and what was once a cute little squirrelly smile is now just a black thread.

The etymology of Mer

caw posted a comment about my last post and my use of the (made up) word mer. This is an interesting question and I think it deserves it’s very own post, but I can only tell you what I know/remember, which may not be accurate. Other people feel free to chime in and correct whatever needs it. This word was invented by Laura and Ryan Wiles (who should totally start a blog so we can get info about their life and their son). But to properly understand how this came about you need to know a little about Ryan.

Ryan is an awesome, fun, and caring person. However, he sometimes lacks tact. He is the kind of guy who will tell things like he sees them (regardless of who may or may not be offended), but also the kind of guy who always has your back.

Anyway, at some point in their relationship Laura was talking at Ryan (I say at because it becomes clear a little later that he had stopped listening) I think complaining about stuff not getting done or some such. Then, when describing the situation later Ryan said that sometimes when Laura was talking like that he stopped hearing the words she was saying and started hearing the word mer over and over again (sort of like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons, but less lilting and more punctuated or staccato and with your bottom lip pushed out into a very slight pout). Over time mer came to indicate complaining and/or upsetitude at something or someone; a way of letting someone know you are unhappy with something in a cute way; without anger, yelling, or an argument. It can also be a statement of “I am whining and I know it, please commence commiserating with me at this time.” This last one was the usage from my last post.

Instance 1: I am not artistically talented, but there isn’t really anything that is going to fix that, so in this case mer simply means this sucks, and I am frustrated by it, feel free to tell me you understand what I mean.

Instance 2: Not having the regularly scheduled programming on TV is not terribly important in the grand scheme of things, but I was irritated by it and needed to whine/vent somewhere, please feel free to sympathize with me all out of proportion to the situation.

tiddly pum

Today wasn't a very productive day. I had one of those days were you spend a lot of time seeming like you are getting stuff done, but then at the end of the day you look back and voila...nothing to show for it. I did make dinner tonight, so that was something.

After a serious storm yesterday the weather here has taken a turn for the nicer today. Apparently there was a tornado watch in our area, but mostly what happened was a LOT of rain (about 3-4 inches in a hour), thunder, and lightning. PW didn't appreciate the thunder bits so much, and spent most of the time prowling the apartment looking for the source of this pesky nap-interrupting noise. It is in the mid sixties right now and supposed to get down into the fifties tonight. I threw open the slider so we could air out the apartment and cool things down as much as possible. It is nice to hear the outdoor type sounds like wind through the trees and whatnot.

I worked a bit on the website today, but every time I do I get sort of frustrated at my lack of artistic ability. I really don't want to have to rely on the end users font selection for certain integral elements, but I just don't have the ability to make graphics of what I want. Mer

And then there is all this basketball taking away all the TV shows. Dave isn't making me watch any of the games which is nice, but how long do we have to not have anything on the main channels because of stupid sport on one of them. Mer

Rubber ducky, you're the one

As you may or may not know one of my favorite shows is Good Eats with host Alton Brown. In some recently seen episodes (I'm not sure when they were originally aired) he has had an awesome soap dispenser in his kitchen. I don't know why, but I absolutely love this thing. I totally want one for my kitchen (even if it means I will have to MacGyver some place to suction him to). The colors on the site don't seem to sync with the ordering choices totally, but I think I would get the blue one because our plates etc. are blue.

And while at that site I also found this which cracks me right up. I want one of those too!

Project Pattern

Yesterday I spent most of the day making patterns for my knitting case and knitting tote. Although I did spends some time playing with the website as well. Previous to this I individually measured and cut each piece of the case and tote every time I made one. But if by some miracle this whole thing works out and people actually want some of these I don't want to have to do that. So I started with plain printer paper so I could measure out each piece accurately. Some of the pieces were pretty simple but a few are a bit on the large side and required a couple of sheets taped together to get the whole thing. This took me quite a while (think 4-5 hours) because I was trying to be very careful and there were over 20 different pieces. The next step is to cut those same patterns out of Pattern Ease (a thin, semi-transparent material that can be used repeatedly without falling apart and holds up to pinning well). That will be easier than the paper because it is a wide material so there won't be any taping, plus I already did all the tedious measuring. This will just be cutting around the piece I already have. Then I'm hoping to make a couple of each (case and tote) with the patterns to make sure they are correct and don't need any adjustments. Then I will also have some sample to experiment with taking pictures of to see what will work/look the best on the site.

In web site news people seem to prefer the version of the website that I came up with last. The first couple I made were based a lot on pages that I've seen on the web. An idea from that one, an idea from this one. But the one people seem to like the most I thought of up one night while I was lying in bed not falling asleep. In my head it's a lot fancier than what it ends up being because I don't know how to do art on the computer. Anne had a friend of hers make a logo for the site which is awesome, but I just don't have the talent for making other stuff. It's frusterating to have ideas, but have no way to get them out of your head. I'm no good at drawing either with paper and pencil or in a computer program.

Project WebSite

In order to start the HTML project I went looking for a book to learn from. OK, so I actually started looking at tutorials and whatnot on-line, but I seem to have a hard time learning that way. There is something about having a real life book to read from that makes the difference for me. This is apparently the way I am wired so I'm working with it. To that end I found Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML. It got a lot of good reviews around the web, but I almost didn't buy it because it was published by O'Reilly¹. But after looking around I decided that it was the way to go. And I'm totally glad I did. The introduction is all about why they style their books the way they do. It is full of words like metacognition, cognative science, and dendrite. Clearly this is my kind of book. And I agree with what they have come up with - the high school textbook manufacturers should take a page or two from their notes. The book is large (about 650 pages) and I completed it in about 5 days including stopping when my brain was full so I could come back later/the next day and hopefully it would make sense then (it always did). Plus I did a lot of flitting from project to project just because I felt like it.

So I started my way through the book and now feel comfortable making a basic web site using XHTML and CSS. I made a couple of options for the index page (mostly the same XHTML, different CSS) and sent them to my sister and my parents. Hopefully they will have some feedback for improvement and whatnot. Then I will start in on the other pages in the site. Which I am thinking will be mostly the same as the index, but with one large element that changes from page to page. My main issue is that I'm not an artist. I don't have the ability to make cool stuff in a computer program to use on my website. So my websites are pretty basic, but I guess they will get the job done.

I'm excited to hear what they think both good and bad. I think I'm missing that camaraderie that you get working with other people. Not like the dreaded "group project" (just ask Jason about some of the group projects he had to work on complete all by himself in college) but more like working with people around who can give you feedback and support. That back and forth of normal conversation that I don't get a lot of staying being a stay at home...person (props to DrJ). Unfortunately everyone else will have to wait and see when I get around to Project WebServer to be able to check it out. Too bad because then I could get your opinions too.

1. This is because of WWdN in Exile. O'Reilly published his book "Just a Geek" and botched it pretty much completely. Reading WWdN in Exile has apparently biased my opinion of this publishing company.

Irresolution

I've been feeling rather unproductive lately so I started up an old idea again. Selling stuff on-line at annearchy.com (again, that site isn't up right now, so I'm not even going to bother making it a link). The reason it is down is that up until now Anne did the whole thing, made a site, found a web server and all that. However she actually has a full time job and didn't really have time to make the site what it she wanted it to be, with a cart and all that neat-o stuff. So when I called her about whether or not she was still interested in doing our sisterly craft collaboration she said yesbut. Yes, but she didn't have time to make it work. Understandable (that pesky job getting in the way again). So I set about trying to figure out what to do first. I was unable to settle on just one thing so for the past week or so I've been working on about 5 or so projects. Doing it that was means I don't finish any one project very fast, but when I get fed up/frustrated with one project I can just flit over to another one. I find that my mom was right about solving problems, if you get stuck, go do something else and while you are not thinking about the problem your brain will come up with a possible solution or two.

The projects started out as:

(re)Learn HTML and make a website
Figure out a web hosting solution
Create a pattern for the knitting needle case
Create a pattern for the knitting tote
Modify pattern for hoodie to fit adults

So for the next while those things are probably what I'm going to be blogging about. Maybe it will be interesting, maybe it won't...like the blog says: a whole lot of nothing.

Testy McTesterson

This is another test....


This was a test...and it worked. If you notice below and on the side bar I now have categories. Woot! Thanks to being a part of beta testing a sa-weet new application called Labelr. I mean it would be cool if Blogger just had tags as a part of their blogs, but this is about the same. Rawk!

Anne of all things Techy

Anne told me about this cool new thing to put on your page. People who read your blog can put in their location and a little pin will appear to show where they are from. I'm guessing that because I think this is cool, other people won't or will think it's too much bother. But hey, this is my blog and I will do what I want. So put a pin in the map.

Take us to...ludicrous speed

If you have read my blog in the past you know that I've been having some computer troubles. Well, apparently seeing that my original drivers went back to pre 1998 was too much for my Dad and for my birthday he got me a new computer! Wow and a half! I totally wasn't expecting it (and not just because it was early). I've never actually had a new desktop before because I usually hork my Dad's hand-me-downs. This was totally cool with me because his hand-me-down was usually still cooler than what I would have been able to buy for myself. But now I have a new wicked fast computer (I didn't realize how slow the old one was until I booted up the new one). It is a Dell and the thing I find funny is that they are trying to be cool/hip. The case has a, albeit minor, mod. It has a little see through protion with metal mesh behind it. Looks like this:

It's no TIE Fighter or anything, but it is interesting.

I've also been really discouraged lately about my craftiness. About a week ago I went to 6 different fabric stores looking for some nice, interesting fabrics. I didn't really have any particular project in mind. I was just looking for fabric I liked and could potentially be used for costumes, knitting cases, fleece for clothes, etc. I was seriously disappointed. None of the stores really had anything I liked, except a few bolts in 100% cotton. I don't like to use this cotton because it wrinkles something fierce, shrinks quite a bit and is very thin. It's great for quilting and whatnot, but not for things that should be at least somewhat sturdy. I thought, moving to a larger city (which I'm liking less and less - I just don't cope well with the press of people all the time, the lack of any open space, and the driving) I would get the benefit of some larger/nicer fabric stores. Alas, it was not to be. In my opinion they were worse than the stores in Grand Rapids. Then yesterday I decided to make a trek down to a different Joann than the one that is by my apartment. It was about a 40 minute drive (it is about 2 seconds from Roland's office) but they did have a somewhat better selection. Don't get too excited though, I was still not terribly enthused overall. But I did find some fabric that I'm going to use to make some knitting needle cases/totes. They are patterned twill (and very similar, but I'm not counting on my luck to find much else I like) and I still have to think about what I want to use as the contrast fabrics (pockets and whatnot). What do y'all think?

This one time...

Because DrJ asked and it's fun:

Q: What breed of dog do you have?
A: Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

Q: How old is he?
A: He is 2 years old.

Q:What kind of science did you participate in?
A: I taught high school biology for three years.

Q: What are you doing now?
A: A fat lot of nothing. After moving I haven't gotten a new job. Most days I enjoy being a bum, but sometimes I feel a bit useless/not productive. I'm thinking about focusing on creating stuff for Annearchy.com (which is currently down so I'm not even going to make that a link).

Q:What brought you to Germany Florida?
A: Dave (my husband) didn't care for his old job, ok mostly it was sucking the life right out of him, so he did something about it. The result? A job he really likes and more time to enjoy himself.

Q: How long did it take you to adjust to the massive shift in weather from one to the other?
A: I haven't. I'm going the other way though. It is freakin' hot here all the time. Ok, there was that once when I put on long sleeves. I'm told that it takes a year and half before your "blood thins out" (technical isn't it?) and you adjust to what people here call cold.

Q: What sort of embroidery do you do?
A: Mostly cross-stich. I would really like to learn blackwork!

Everyone join in! Tell me a fun fact about yourself. Woot!

Well, I'll be...

I listened to Radio Free Burrito episode 7 today and in it there was a bumper from a women named DrJ. So I trotted on over to her site and took a look. Nice place, apparently she is/was a scientist (I think a chemist) living in Germany (Australian by birth). Her profile says she is in for a career change, but I'm not sure if that will happen or has happened. So having eaten my Wheaties I commented on her blog. Later today she came and visited here (hi DrJ) and commented that she had just finished reading the book I'm reading (The Other End of the Leash) which I am finding fascinating and I recommend it to anyone who has a canine companion, well behaved or not. Now I'm feeling the need to connect to things lately so I notice the following things we have in common. Science, time on the planet, embroidery, dogs, German (well in that that my Mom teaches it), Australia (in that I've always wanted to go there, SCUBA dive the GBR, baby!). Anyway, by merely posting to my blog, DrJ seems to have sparked my brain into a flurry of questions. I pondered putting them in a comment on my blog, or her blog. And then I decided to just put them in their very own post and then if she wants to answer them, bully for me.

What breed of dog do you have?
How old is s/he?
What kind of science do/did you participate in?
What are you doing now?
What brought you to Germany?
How long did it take you to adjust to the massive shift in weather from one to the other?
What sort of embroidery do you do?


Well, that's it, who knows, maybe we will get to learn more about DrJ. However, she should feel free to not answer any question she feels she would rather not, or to not answer any of them. In fact there is no guarantee she will come back at all. So anyone else who is reading this should feel free to make up questions of their own and answer them. Won't this be fun?

See no evil

Due to the Olympics I got all confused about what shows were on TV when and what was running new episodes, what was re-runs, and what was taking a hiatus. Then today I was playing around on the internet and I thought about that show on CBS called Love Monkey. I thought, hey I really liked that show and the songs that the young guy Wayne played. He was clearly playing his own self so I'm sure he is really a recording artist, I will go out and find out who he is immediately. So I went to the website, clicked on music and noticed that a large portion of the songs where written by one Teddy Geiger. Aha, I have deciphered your code you wily CBS people you. I then Googled Teddy Geiger and found his website, then I went to Amazon to see if his album(s) were available there. It is. So I innocently scrolled down to read the review and got a longish review which included this:

Geiger, known...already for...playing a budding rock star on "Love Monkey," a CBS show that flopped weeks prior to this disc's release...

What? What, what? Love Monkey flopped? Where was I when this memo came out? I liked this show a lot and somehow just thought that it had been preempted by the Olympics or something. Bummer.

So I took my bummed out self to iTunes to see if Teddy Geiger's music could be downloaded, but alas only two tracks are available there. Maybe I will add it to my wishlist at Amazon.

Hope springs eternal

This is totally a test, I sincerely hope that none of you are reading right now, so you won't have to deal with this test. Move along, nothing to see here.

Well, if you were wondering what this was about (Anne, you peeked!) I was trying to figure out your tagging thing. I think I did (sort of). The long and short of it is, I'm not sure it's worth the effort and I hope that Blogger comes up with integrated categories of their own. If you would like to know how to do it I can try to explain it. There are a lot of people out their explaining how to do it while using Firefox, but the differences between this and IE can be a little confusing.

Update: This method isn't what I wanted...now I'm experimenting with something new!

Back in Black

Henry posted a comment about the new trend in South Park avatars, coming so close on the heels of the OOTS avatars and all. I think my sister put her South Park one up on her website, but I think I'm sticking with my OOTS version. I like the South Park one and might use it sort of intermittently for a little variety, but I like that Bleys is in the OOTS one with me. That makes it more me. Plus the OOTS avatars actually require some talent to make (talent I do not in any way possess), while the South Park avatars merely require time (which I have in abundance). But just so Henry could have a little variety if he so desires I put together this:

To be honest I have no idea what sort of facial hair he is sporting now, but I was always I fan of the goatee. The ACDC shirt: self explanatory. Also notice he is holding not one but TWO kinds of beer, showing his fierce love of all things hoppy (and I'm not talking about rabbits).

Just Jason

And for Jason we have four options:

For everday use we have simply, Jason (hmmm maybe I should add an ipod?):

For special occasions we have, Burgerwhop Jason (for some reason they don't have any chair slats or burgers):

And for vacation use we have both, Ski Jason and Scuba Jason:

Novelty Candy (not available at Joann)

Click here if you are a Harry Potter nerd!

I've tried the Every Flavor Beans and the Chocolate Frogs (yummy), but I totally need some of the Cockroach Clusters and the Fizzing Wizbees. The Acid pops are probably too sour for me, but Roland would love them and the Slugs appear to just be gummies, buy hey I love gummies so bring it all on!

It was MY turn with the blue phone!

A fellow on SucbaBoard pointed this out. I thought it was very funny and I'm hoping for more coverage if and when talks resume.

Sigh

I got a voicemail from Shannon today. I really should have been awake to get it, but the dog woke me up in the middle of the night to go outside and I had a hard time getting back to sleep afterwards. Roland also tells me that I didn't seem to be sleeping very well when he came to bed either (something about a lot of running).

She was calling to tell me that my gift for Doc's baby shower got there just fine and she would make sure that it to the shower tomorrow. All that is awesome and I'm glad it got there in time, but it also sort of made me sad. I don't even tend to like showers (due mostly to the toilet paper games), but I really wish I was able to go to this one. Probably because it has been long enough that I've been without friend type people (especially of the female variety), I'm feeling a bit lonely.

Also the people haven't called about my sewing machine yet, so I'm kind of antsy about that. I kind of just want to get lost in some crafts, but I can't without the sewing machine. Bummer.

Your wish...

Updated: 10:45 pm

Okay Anne how about this one? They also have an anarchy symbol for the shirt, but I kind of liked the skull. I wasn't sure you wanted a lipsticky mouth so I didn't give you one, but if you wanted a more feminine mouth I could change it. I also considered giving you an open (singing type) mouth, but then didn't. What do you think?

Good times...

One of the first things Roland introduced me to was his love of Roger Zelazny, especially his Amber series . I fell in love with these books at once (although Night in Lonesome October takes a close second) and have since re-read them countless times. Other people love these books as well and often draw what they think the trumps would look like. I find these interesting. Probably because I would like to be able to do the same, but have no talent for drawing, something I lament often. Anyway, I came across the best set of trumps today. You will have to scroll down to the June 06, 2005 entry as I was unable to link directly. I thought they were hilarious and then of course I had to go play with the make-your-own thing myself.

and then I couldn't resist making one for Roland...

My, wasn't that fun?

The power of positive thinking

My parents have been putting ideas in my head about the next time they visit. My mom mentioned going to the Keys somewhere and possibly checking out this. That looks pretty cool for sometime and then tonight I found a blog from someone on ScubaBoard who mentioned this sweet activity. It is quite a drive away (and in the opposite direction) being on the west side of the state and slightly north of Orlando. But snorkling with manatees? How cool would that be?

Eeesh

Apparently other people agree with you Anne:

http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com/

The-Midnight-Bomber-What-Bombs-at-Midnight

When Jason was here for vacation he had the brilliant idea of taking a picture of the fabulous meal that Roland made for us on our final day of AOW (you remember the cornish hens). Unfortunately I was unable to make use of any of them until I could get the compy back up and running (we can rebuild it, we have the technology - except for maybe the printer which I can't get to work for the life of me). Now that it is, at least for the moment running, here they are:

And then today, Roland whipped out his chefery again and created this mouthwatering meal:

Again, you should seriously pester him to explain it for real, but I can tell you it was succulent. Yes, succulent (and I don't throw that sort of approbation around freely you know). It was awesome and the creamed spinach was creamy and delicious. Seriously you people need to get right on that winning the lottery thing, 'cause you are missing out.

Busy day

I had a lot of errands to run today and Dave was nice enough to join me on my quest. My sewing machine needed to be taken in for yearly service (and yesterday it started sounding a little too loud for my tastes - I hope nothing is seriously wrong). I found a place to take it but it was a bit of a drive. The shop, of course, had all it's fancy schmancy embroidery machines sitting out calling to me. Oh boy do I want one of those, think of all the cool embellishments/personalizations I could make to my sewery. They have some that come with a computer program, so whatever you create on the computer the machine will embroider. How cool is that? Someday...maybe...I hope...please...pretty please...with sugar on top...and a cherry.

After drooling over sewing machines we drove to Circuit City to get a wireless USB adapter to replace the PCI Netgear one that I can't get working since resurrecting the compy. Unfortunately the first place we went didn't have any and we ended up driving all over tarnation to find one. In the end I ended up getting one at Best Buy for about 20 bucks more than I wanted to spend to get superspeed or somethingv (Now up to 35% faster!!!!!). But I wanted to get it done and now it is, so I guess it's all good. Unfortunately I still can't seem to get my printer to work. I just can't seem to win. As soon as I get one thing figured out I find something else that needs work. Such is life I suppose. I also did some baby shower shopping which I was hoping to get out in the mail today (as the shower is on Sunday in Michigan), but it was not to be. With all the extra driving around there wasn't time to get to the post office. I will just have to do it tomorrow, I have some other stuff to mail - packages for everyone!