good weekend. suck monday.
isn’t that how it usually is though?
I actually felt like I got some things accomplished this weekend… and managed to walk to the front door without horking up a lung…progress!
I’ve been thinking about that sweater I felted… I think I will put a zipper in, possibly add a knitted neck and then I might embroider it a bit with grey thread for pattern but nothing really bright.
Voila, new jacket.
I repotted the ivy and put my little houseplant sized garden gnome from Target in it. (sorry Eden.)
Did some reorganizing in the kitchen with snapware (the kitchen; I am not in love with it lately with because of ants) and made breakfast twice.
I made some killer home fries (zatarain’s, onions, butter and chile powder), bacon and eggs then experimented with buckwheat pancake mix from Whole Foods the next day. They looked pretty weird (like hamburger patties) but tasted enough like pancakes that I didn’t just toss them.
Not a bad weekend.
Then Monday sucked.
Whatever.
Also? Fuck ants.
Adventures with hospital personnel
So yeah… this thing I developed last Friday afternoon?
Rampant snot all weekend, very little sleep (sleeping sitting up irritates me… and the bunnycat) and the Sudafed just wasn’t working anymore. Taking it hourly hasn’t hurt me yet, I have a healthy tolerance for it, but it wasn’t doing much. That’s just a waste.
So I got on the horn to the advice nurse to wheedle an inhaler which generally does the trick.
They asked the standard “cover your ass” questions:
“Can you breathe?” -yes, but it feels like its starting to get a bit squirrelly in there.
“Do you have asthma?” Not for a very long time…don’t worry, I’m not going to drop dead just yet, I just want to head off the snot at the pass before it really takes hold… not to mention, this doesn’t feel like an attack.
Anyhoo, they decided they wanted me to come in anyway, so I got a non-emergency appointment in the afternoon and saw a really cool doctor. No kidding, she rocks and you know my opinion about most doctors who don’t bother to listen.
After slightly freaking out the nurse who took my blood pressure (yes, when you eat sudafed like candy your heart moves along pretty clippily.) and then telling the doc all about the accelerated timeline of this onslaught, the *ahem* various colors involved (nothing yet which indicates infection yet. I know that color…ew.) and letting her listen to the symphony in my lungs (which again, was sloshy but nearly as bad as my lungs used to get-I really didn’t have fun when I was younger. Got a lot better after I laid off the flour…). I told her about sleeping upright contributed to being pretty tired and that it irritated me and the bunny. She seriously asked if I was allergic to my cat and I said, well I’ve had her for 17 years, the timing seems a bit suspect if that is the case… she laughed. Good.
Anyhoo, I got my inhaler, but the next part surprised me… she then said I have noisy lungs and sent me off for a chest xray and gave me antibiotics (which I questioned her about… Are you sure? Yes, dear. Really sure?-its not green yet… Yep. Well OK.) and cough medicine with codeine…
Also, and she said this with her stern voice, that I needed to be at home resting. She blessed off on working at home, but we’ll see how that goes with codeine involved. I’ll probably avoid that stuff as much as I can anyway.
Dang.
Guess it sounded bad in there.
I walked over to xray and they guy handed me some lovely material to put over me then gave me instructions on how much to remove for the xray then walked off.
I do confess I was pondering how to squirrel away the gown because it looked nice and soft and would be great as a quilt. I behaved, but as I was holding it up and turning it around… and around… and around trying to figure out how to actually put it on to cover up the girls I just could not figure out the origami of this particular hospital gown.
So I put my shirt back on and stepped out looking for the guy.
“Um… Hi” I said, after I caught his eye “I know I’ve had a lot of cold medicine, but I have no idea how to put this on.”
He held it up , turned it around like I did, then laughed and handed me one with actual arms.
Phew.
Got that over with, got my meds then went back to work to grab my laptop and made my way home. Not a surprise that everyone was all “Dude, take you and your cooties home!” but in a nice way.
So I’m home… and tired. My brain is doing the microsleep thing here and there, I am reading a knitting mystery, pondering egg salad sandwiches (did I mention that the stupid ulcer I have is letting me eat eggs? Also I ate some onions the other day and didn’t double over in pain! Hooray! Only took 4 fekkin’ years.) and at home for an unspecified period of time.
On a related note, I do have a pretty spectacular spider bite on my arm, and while I am allergic and have reacted very badly in the past, this wheezy stuff happened before I got bit (plus that other bite was on my face and this is on my forearm)…but I’ll be certain to let you know if I can soar through the city easily or walk on the ceiling.
Y’all can all get together and start singing “SpiderFred! SpiderFred! Does whatever a SpiderFred does!”…knitting without needles most likely.
still crabby.
I am fredlet, hear me rawr.
All that aside, people, stop adding prepositions indiscriminately.
You print something (not print it off)
You paint something (not paint it out)
Cut it out, yo.
Also, welcome back Twinnie!!!!
I can handle Kottke.org vacation
I can’t handle the housesitter.
Radio silence is preferable to the ongoing static there now.
Leo and fredlet
Your January Horoscope by Susan Miller
As January begins, you may be feeling a little pressured. You may even say that the holidays, meant to relax you, are now becoming a blur to you. You had fun in early December – you know that – but as last month progressed, more and more work was piled on your shoulders.
no shit.
Now, as you read this, you’re working hard to keep up with the pressure of deadlines. You will meet those deadlines and live up to your promises, but since the last week of December, you’ve felt that someone turned up the heat. Things will improve, but you need to first get beyond January 1 and 2, two difficult days, when Pluto and Mars will be at odds. These two planets can make for a mean concoction, so if you feel unfairly pressed upon, you have my full sympathy. Still, you have some good aspects working for you, so things will work to your favor – be patient.
If I don’t explode from my ulcer going into hyperdrive before then.
If you need help, ask your co-workers to lend a hand, for you are likely to get it. They will be surprisingly cheerful and supportive. This is no passing trend, but something you will see to be true all year, due to the appearance of Jupiter, the good fortune planet, now in your 6th house of work. Jupiter slipped into this part of your chart quietly last month on December 18, a first-time visit since 1996, and will stay until January 5, 2009.
Help? That’s a crock of shit.
I hope it improves soon, because Starbuck’s looks better and better each minute.
Mood ring
What’s funny is that I found Jake’s mood ring first (he and I were QA monkeys on Dreamweaver forever and a day ago.) but his wasn’t bloggy. But go there anyway.
|
Your Mood Ring is Light Blue |
 Emotions mixed Unsettled Cool |
I’ve lost my mojo
I made lemon oatmeal cookies and something’s off…
they taste like oatmeal and are cookie shaped.
That’s wrong.
So Tex walks in and grabs a cookie and eats it…
“What’s wrong with these? Wait, if you want you can leave them at home and I’ll get rid of all these horrid cookies for you…” (as he grabs another cookie)
“Now what you should really do is make those lemon things…” chew, chew, chew.
I point to the cookies.
“These are them? yeah, you fucked these up. Can I have another?”
I’m not going to cook anymore this year. I’m off my game.
Same with every other thing I ever knew how to do.
I can’t keep it together here.
Just another airline…
“”I think people responded the way they did because it could have happened to anybody,” said Ebbert, who has left her job as a Hooters waitress in San Diego because it was difficult for her to balance work and school.”
and
“”What we want to entice people with is we want to fly on time, we want to treat them with respect and affection, and we want to entertain along the way,” he said.”
Though my developer was flying Virgin from LA>>SF on Monday and he was super late because Virgin canceled his flight and made him wait for the next one.
I’m not impressed.
iPhone Reality Check
Here’s the thing about the iPhone.
Yes, it is cool, but frankly I don’t want to deal with all the brouhaha over this toy (and I am calling it a toy because any feature that I would like to have had installed has been precluded by the AT&T/Apple agreement, and I shall discuss that anon.)
I am wondering why AT&T isn’t getting more of the brunt of the fallout from this shite.
When you have a phone and you want to get it unlocked (as is now LAW) you call the service provider, that’s AT&T folks, and you ask for an unlock code.
Has anyone actually done this?
Has AT&T said no?
AT&T is the one who wanted an exclusive contract with the iPhone and has anyone looked at the contract as to what they have specified is required on Apple’s part to maintain this exclusivity?
There really is no precedent set for this kind of tenacity in the cell phone business, but then again, the iPhone is its own animal.
Apple, on the other hand is doing WAY more than other phone companies do to update their “phone”; as far as updates to the iPod, it isn’t unrealistic.
They haven’t even really bricked the thing either… if you BRICK it you cannot back out changes. This is possible. I’ve seen it on YouTube (and if its on YouTube it MUST be true…)
Anyhoo, if you hack your computer, you automatically lose all rights to bitch if you continue on with your updates from the manufacturer.
No argument here people, you can’t have it both ways.
Any of you who overclocked your computers know this as well. You take your chances and if it doesn’t work IT IS YOUR FAULT. Now, stop freakin’ whining about it. I have no sympathy for you and if you whine, I will just make fun of you-well, more than I already am.
Come on, they even warned you that the next update will break hacks. If you didn’t want to have that happen, you could just not do the update. Its not to hard to figure out. Even my cat knows not to do something twice that hurt her (but then again, I like cats better than people. Most people are petulant children who never grew up.)
Then there is the combined virtual entity of Apple and AT&T; just how much has Apple agreed to try to prevent use of the hardware that they contractually agreed to license exclusively to AT&T? (or if you want to harp on AT&T) just how stringent are their contractual requirements of Apple to prevent expected hacks? Is this just due diligence on Apple’s part?
But truly, AT&T is being seriously draconian in locking this thing down so hard. No carrier no wifi? Pardon me?
Apple is kissing AT&T’s ass by doing all this and it makes me wonder why the hell they offered up the iPhone to them in the first place. You can’t install anything, ringtones are as (or more) expensive than an entire song, any sort of useful tool is killed immediately and returns the iPhone back to what I consider a glorified iPod. And I even like Apple…
I smell a rat.
Steve Jobs is an arrogant yutz, but he still has a decent eye for a bargain… so what the hell was he thinking?
So to recap in a less snarky manner:
-Realistically, there are lots of ways of making the hardware work with other carriers. This is not a brick after you do the hacks (and consequently DON’T put in the update that Apple said outright would break any hacks.)
-Apple is most likely trying to live up to its agreement with AT&T as it is contractually obligated.
-People have a way to make this phone work on other networks BUT they must live with the consequences of making it do so.
-I don’t see why I would ever want this phone, it does virtually nothing if you play by the rules.
Oh and Dongmei Li of Queens, NY… shut your trap. I hope you are counter sued by every single person in this country for wasting the court’s time AND MY TAX MONEY because you are a stupid excuse for a human being and are simpering because you can’t get as much money as you paid for an iPhone because you bought it fresh off the boat.
If you bought a car and turned around to re-sell it, you would lose money, too.
Grow up and stop acting like a whiny little baby.
Phew.
Someone else thinks that Dan Brown’s writing is crap.
[The Dan brown Code]
Linky found via Kottke.org
As much as I love RSS readers…
what renders them useless is the partial feeds (or complete lack thereof) from certain RSS services.
Let me put it this way, if I have to click through to the post to read it in its entirety, then the RSS feed is useless. Its nothing more than a spiffed up notify service or a glorified bookmark.
This has potential, but until the content isn’t truncated by the RSS feed serving it up, it will languish in my Google account.
http://www.google.com/reader
I have this theory
that if the universe sees you having a decent day that it will step on your head.
well, at least that’s what its felt like for the last several years.
xmoose for xtians
If you tell this to 99% of the people I know who call themselves christians, they would fight you tooth and nail that the little baby jesus is a capricorn through and through and that god ordained douglas fir trees as the official state tree. (sometimes baiting them is fun.)
December 25th was chosen as the date for the celebration of the birth of Jesus because it was already very close to a date that was used for a pagan holiday…the birth of Mithra (Sun God). The winter solstice is December 21st (shortest day of the year – from that point forward, the amount of sunlight every day increases, therefore it was thought that it was the day the sun was born) and the festival took place from December 17th through December 25th each year. These festivals included….surprise!….gift-giving and big ol’ feasts. Sources are unclear as to whether it was the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, Constantine in 336 AD, or Pope Julius I in 350 AD, but it was around that time when Jesus’ birthday celebration was decreed to be December 25th. And it was probably done to help entice pagans to convert to Christianity. It was a heck of a lot easier to get them to convert if you allowed them to continue to have their celebrations. [via Emma]
I tell you what… a medieval french degree is dead useful if you want to argue about the history of the christian church and its PR campaigns.
Humans=Cattle
Here’s why:
I get, on average, 3-5 emails a week with a list of forwards about 10 miles long (I’ve started to delete them without looking mostly because anyone who doesn’t bother to actually remove all this shite can’t be bright enough to be forwarding anything useful) and at the bottom of that waste of electrons is a story about how someone’s sister’s hardresser’s bother’s aunt’s dog’s girfriend’s neighbor who lived 4 doors down caught some crazy cootie from lipstick and was kidnapped in a parking lot while shooting her self in the face with mace.
Even the most cursory search on Google will find that 99% of these moronic and incindiary tales of woe and panic are urban legends.
Get a clue people and try to show even once a day that you have a fully functioning cerebral cortex.
Brain Stem!
Brain stem!
WordPress…import function sucks.
I’ve been trying to continue importing from my various blogs, but haven’t had any luck since early this morning. All I got for hours was a 404 error, then more recently, it tries to log me back into my own WP site.
Lame in the extreme not even counting how flaky web apps can be, this is beyond the pale.
I’m going to try to restart my computer (in case something is poo poo on my system) then I might give up and write off this as an exercise in futility.
No decision on whether I will continue to be a blogger or a wordpresser.
I’ll let you know.
