Letters From Home

For some reason, trying to back up anything to do with WordPress crashes my backup software. The only way I’ve been able to get past this in the past is to make sure that anything to do with WordPress is in a zip file before I try backing up.

I’ve managed to crash Nero Backup four times in succession today, trying to do a full backup of all my data. And there doesn’t appear to be any way to go back and re-select the files once the backup has started. So tonight after supper (and hopefully after the steam stops coming out my ears) I’ll have to go through and pick the files to back up yet again.

Whoever thought being prudent would be such a royal pain in the butt?

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Over on LiveJournal there’s a “celebrity crush” meme making the rounds. I got to thinking about the celebrities whom I’ve found attractive over the years and for the most part they tend to be tall, dark, handsome white guys who are older than me. And all of them have brown eyes. I have always been attracted to men with brown eyes.

And who did I marry? A fairly tall man with dark blonde hair (at least it was that color when we met) who is the only green-eyed kid in a brown-eyed family. Not classically handsome, but still good looking. And we’re at 34 years and counting. I guess with all those celebrities I only thought I knew what I liked.

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Well, maybe it won’t thrill anyone else, but I’m ecstatic to have posted the Comment of the day on Gizmodo.

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I feel unusually efficient today.

Got my desk cleaned off and the office tidied up yesterday. Went to the grocery store today and got six meals for three people for less than $65. I’ll have to buy more milk and probably a few incidental items later in the week, but still.

Now, of course, I am sitting at my computer piddling around and not getting things done. I need to quit wasting what’s left of a very good day.

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MP3 players.

When you get right down to it, I can’t decide whether I want one or not. This, despite the fact that I have one. Not an iPod, but a 256meg Creative MuVo.

It works fine, and is about the size of two packs of chewing gum, so it’s extremely portable. But I rarely take it anywhere. I’ve tried it at the gym a few times, mainly because it includes an FM radio and I can tune that to the soundtrack of the TVs in the workout room. But reading the captions does just as well (and nothing makes a mile on the treadmill go faster than zoning out to “Judge Judy”).

Using instructions I found online, I made myself some nice earplug-style headphones. They work well and block out noise around me (like the radio blaring away in the next room–F’zer turns it up way too loud but absolutely will not get his hearing tested). But like the Etymotics earplugs that I often wear in noisy situations (and from which I created these ‘phones) I can’t wear them forever. Earplugs are a necessity for me but my ears don’t like even the foam ones for long periods of time.

Bottom line is, mostly the player sits here on my desk, un-listened-to. Every now and again I’ll take some of the music off that I’ve gotten tired of and put some new stuff on, from my CD collection. The space available doesn’t allow for a huge playlist.

So maybe I’d like a bigger player better? Creative makes some bigger ones that have come down dramatically in price. Vengeant’s been threatening to buy me an iPod for years now (and Apple has the black refurb 2g nano that I’ve decided would be the most Mom-compatible model for about $100 on their web site).

Truthfully, though, a bigger player would probably just sit here too.

Because mostly I just like quiet. I don’t play the radio or the TV when I’m here alone in the house, and if someone else has them on for background noise I’m forever turning them down. Too much noise is like itch powder for me. Oh, occasionally if I’ve bought a new CD I’ll put it on and crank it up. Or I’ll blast the radio in the car if they’re playing a song I like.

But mostly…. I just like quiet.

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I’ve been catching up with Wil Wheaton’s TNG-episodes blog. Got a long, long way to go before I’m done. He’s a very entertaining writer and he had me the first time he described Wesley Crusher as a “weenie.”

When TNG was on, a group of us had great fun writing song parodies about the various episodes, in the Science Fiction Forum on CompuServe. I’ve saved many of the ones I wrote (thought I’d saved them all, but some of them appear to be irretrievably lost, doggone it) and Wesley Crusher was often described as a weenie by me and by others.

I’m going to search my archives and find as many of those song parodies as I can, and upload them somewhere for the general amusement of all and sundry. One of my songs was actually sung at a Trek convention and I’ve got an MP3 of that. The quality is the audio equivalent of a cell phone camera, but what the hell.

Now I just need to figure out where to put all this stuff once I find it.

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I don’t know why I always put off upgrading WordPress so long. It really isn’t difficult to do. This is one of the best software packages ever, in that regard. Do a backup, shut down all the plugins, overwrite the old stuff with the new, reactivate the plugins and you’re set to go.

Except that there is something in one directory that tends to make WiseFTP hiccup and close, and even though I watch the screen, it happens too fast for me to tell which file it is that’s causing the problem. At least I know what directory it’s in. The solution is to transfer the old files over one directory at a time rather than just sending everything all at once. No biggie.

Also, Spam Karma seems to be doing a dandy job of getting rid of the spam trackbacks. Seems like there’s a solution for just about every problem. Wish the real world worked that well!

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What I’d like to see, somewhere, anywhere, is the reasoning behind the proliferation of “info-videos” on the internet these days. Seems like everyone who’s got a hot tip to offer, wants to do it via video.

That might be appealing to people who can’t, or won’t, read. Or for people whose reading speed is slower than the pace of speech. It’s also a useful way to deliver information that includes a demonstration of how a particular process works. But for everything else, come on, folks, the written word is much more efficient.

If someone’s explaining something complex, it helps not to have to take notes while they talk away. Far better to have written instructions, perhaps supplemented by a video if there’s some physical process involved that one needs to see to understand.

Have we become so addicted to the boob tube that everyone assumes we no longer remember how to read? How are we going to save and remember the information–bookmark the online video and keep watching it if we forget how something works?

I might well be interested in some of these products people are peddling, but if the only way to get the product is to watch a video, forget it. If you want my attention and my money, folks, kindly allow me to RTFM.

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