kellementology

life according to me

Tag: Technology

  • Internet Storminess with a Chance of Fish Tacos

    For the first time that it really ever mattered, the Internet wasn’t available today. Assuming it was a glitch that forced me to get down on my hands and knees to dig around in the wires and see if everything was plugged in, reset the router, and whatever that box is with the flashing lights that has something to do with our phones, cable, and internet service, I completely avoided calling the Time Warner for quite a while. Stupid me.

    There was no service available in our area. Sheesh. And right after I’d been able to finally find a new wrap for my blog. One that everyone seems to be able to see. Abe was so wrong about not being able to please all the people all the time. So what do you do without Internet?

    Organize photos on the external hard drive. There’s about 17oo of them. And play around with albums and iMovies and slide shows. Oh. And ask the RT to share with all of you how tired our Big is from her race at the County Fair last week. She needs a bone, and then she’ll perk right up. Better not be a pork bone, though. Gotta wait until tomorrow for that one since NOTHING is moving right now. That stoopid little wheel is turning and turning, slower than molasses in January.

    Oh, well. I just got the “42 minutes until departure time” call from the MoH. No time to do more than say I haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth. I’m still enjoying my summertime cold, and getting ready to go to a Padres game. You do know that:

    • Jake Peavy is 9-2 with a 2.09 ERA and is the league leader in strike outs, right? Too bad he’s not pitching tonight.
    • Chris Young is 8-3 with a 2.14 ERA and a league leading 0.88 home ERA, but nope, he’s not pitching tonight either.

    So why the hell are we going then?

    • Because Greg Maddux with a career 340 victories IS. And our ball park is cute. With fish tacos. Served at your seat.

    Good thing I get to just sit there and stare at the grass, or the guys on the field in their spiffy uniforms. That’s always a nice distraction. And I hope our seats allow me to stare straight ahead since I can’t turn my eyes without howling silently in pain. Truly.

    Does wine taste good when you have a neutron bomb style head cold?

  • That Simple Green Scent

    Okay, so I know this is ugly right now.  But at least notice the effects I learned how to create with Photoshop on the palm tree up there. Yes, I also know there are two boxes above that are supposed to be for ads.  I’m not game on the ads above my header, so I have to figure out how to get them off.  The serious bummer is that I spent a lot of time working on the “kellementology” piece and it doesn’t show up on this stoopid laptop.  I know.  I’m not supposed to have fun with the fonts, but jeez.  I get tired of the boring verdana, helvitica crap.  Life’s seriously more interesting with swirls. 

    I know this (blob transition) is wearing me out (yah, right) because I actually cleaned my house today instead of writing first thing like I always do.  Trying to write when my blog is a mess is like trying to relax when the house is a mess.  Wait.  Blogging usually is relaxing, which is why my house stays messy.

    Does it count as being messy when I have to use Simple Green straight up to get the catfood off the laundry room floor?  Or the catfood out of the laundry sink that has stuck to the sides after I’ve rinsed out the can in the morning?  Messy vs. dirty?  Hmmm…I know.  Gross.  But it’s clean now.  And laundry is swirling around in the dryer, the fresh scent of the RT’s whites wafting up the stairs near the garage — a marked improvement from the odor that was emanating from his bedroom yesterday morning.

    And I’m noticing our motley crew of pets is very content because they got their first dose of warm weather “flea medicine.”  No more Presh-Ass Yack Star Flea in-cu-bus lounging over the cable box and creating more tiny flea eggs than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime of owning cats.  Totally gross.  Biggity, our dog, is snoozing in the family room on the clean couch.  The one that the MoH stripped of its cover last weekend because it was sour smelling and covered with lick stains — a by product of the Big’s obsessive compulsivness.  We haven’t caught her licking it again — yet — but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.  It’s a drag sitting on the wet spot…

    And I could bore you even more than I already have to explain the condition of our carpet, beyond cleaning or repair because of the animals.  Yes.  The animals.  I don’t know what’s worse — the stains from the nocturnal hairball launchings, or the cleaning that happens afterwards.  Either way, I’m sick of the whole mess.  I know you’re sick of me ranting about it, but you have no idea how hard I’ve worked to avoid writing about the record size of some of the hairballs I’ve seen lately.  Guiness should have been contacted.  Somehow, taking a picture of a hairball seems a tad bit whacked.  Don’t you think?  Think about the poor RT. 

    “What does your mother do for a living? 

    “Takes pictures of cat hairballs to post them on her blog.”

    Uhhh…nope.  You’ll just have to wonder.  Or not. 

     I’m more convinced than ever that, even though I couldn’t live without them at times, that I have been thinking about how it might be “without them.”  The deal with kids is that they grow up.  Whatever “messes” they make sort of follow in line with their developmental progress.  But even if they’re completely slovenly as my gorgeous and loving sons have been, they grow up, go to college and/or gain relationships with others, and move out of your house.  The animals, the darlins — they stay.  And our house has definitely accomodated our animals.  Cat litter tracked up the stairs, dog “gifts” left on the patio, and rinsed down the drain outside.  Jeez.  It’s more work sometimes than I remember taking care of my two older boys who are only 17 months apart.  Way more work.

    Wait.  I am remembering that ugly sculptured and multi-colored brown carpeting we had when the boys were very little.  It was a complete disguise for myriad raisins, flattened beyond all recognition, and requiring scissors to be removed from their attachment.  Okay.  And I also remember the oatmeal I had to chip off the high chair and the wall next to the high chair.  Oh.  And those cookies — the biscuits that babies eat when they’re teething and disolve (the cookies, not the baby) into a disgusting mess on their cherubic faces.  Well, not so cherubic once it dried.

     But you know?  Blathering about our lovelies has really allowed me to avoid looking at the condition of my newest “pet” that seems to take up as much time as the other darlings I’ve had in my life.  So there you go.  It’s all good.  Except for the carpet.

    So I’ve wasted a perfectly good 20 minutes or so saying absolutely nothing.  Yes, my Warholled self will return as soon as I freaking figure out how the H-E-L-L  to modify it, save it, and paste it in the header.  Well, I can’t paste anything with this skin, so whatever.  Just hold your shorts.  I’ll get there. 

    Thanks for your patience while I’m learning about how to adjust fonts styles, colors, and sizes as well.  Like how all that work I did that looks gorgeous on my Mac looks like crap or non-existent on the MoH’s laptop which is what I’m using right now.  How stoopid is that?  Sheesh.  Thanks again to Thought Sparks who always keeps an eye on what’s up and offers assistant.  Very.  Nice.  Person.

    Okay.  Enough boredom.  Off to the store for coq au vin ingredients.  Yum.  Crusty bread.  Salad.  Wine… No party.  Just us.  I love good food.  So a great meal tonight AND tomorrow night will just allow me to avoid the blob for a bit longer.  Right?

    Toots.

  • Upgrades, Blog Skin, and Patience

    Count yourself lucky, because today, you were going to be subjected to either a commentary on last night’s “So You Think You Can Dance, ” or a scathing review of that book I’ve been trudging through. But I decided to do a bit of work under the hood, so to speak. I’ll subject you to the tortures mentioned tomorrow or the next day when you’re supposed to be out and enjoying the weekend.

    Yes, it’s that time again. Time to pardon my dust. I’m working on a WordPress upgrade today, and most likely, a blog skin change. You might remember that not too long ago, I asked people about whether the Tree was doing it for me. I had lots of great responses that ranged from, liking the minimalist aspect of the blue against the white, to considering it presents a sort of Forrest Gump meets Andy Warhol. One person invisioned me sitting on the bench while thinking “all this stuff up,” and other questioned the relationship of the blue tree to my “science of grasping life by the short hairs” to my Warholled self. Schizophrenic sort of covers it. But the two column design is really not what I’ve wanted from the beginning, and the grey, very small font — although tasteful — is difficult to see for some. And I agree. There has to be a good mix of aesthetics and functionality. I’m more wrapped up in writing than playing around with the design because it’s a great excuse to effectively avoid learning how to do the CSS properly, or design my own. I have absolutely nothing but time, right? So what the hell.

    Anyway, everything’s changing. Yes, again. Because I can. I don’t have many options for changing the furniture around in my house, or the clothes on my body, or my hair, or…..well, you get it. So why not take out my frustrations on my blob — which it could end up being a blob again if I’m not careful.

    So I’m embroiled in reading WordPress support for the down load and reviewing installation guidelines on my hosting service, digging out my FTP client and wondering about the connectivity of all this and potential baldness.

    But just in case you’re wondering what this may end up looking like, I’m thinking of: (and click on Test Run) under the image that comes up on the links if you want to check it out…)

    • this, because of the changeable header, the three columns, general organizational quality, and clean-white look.
    • this, because of the header again, the columns again, and the interesting addition of the two sections at the top that I could have some fun with; or
    • this because it’s very different, the organization is cool, the font is very readable on the dark background, and I like how it’s set up for del.icio.us plus more in the post.

    Who knows. I downloaded a bunch of others just to mess around with.

    So cross your fingers.