Letters From Home

Life looks at infmom / infmom looks at life

June 29, 2006
by infmom
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moving right along…

Ahhhh.   I have the Vespa back.   Even though it took an hour-long journey on two buses to get to the dealer to pick it up, it was well worth it.   I took the scenic way home, too, just to enjoy the simple pleasures of scootering along.

I understand why people are so passionate about motorcycle riding.   I wanted that Vespa since I was eight years old.   Took me more than 40 years to get it, but it was worth the wait.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

June 28, 2006
by infmom
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the more things change….

It appears that after oh, four or five tries, I actually did get the WordPress upgrade installed. While I’m proud of myself for managing it without screaming for help, the more I try stuff like this, the more the holes in my personal “knowledgebase” show up.

I’m beginning to wonder if there will come a time when I’ll just simply run out of brain space for all this stuff.   I hope not.

In the meantime, yeah, I pre-ordered a book about WordPress.   Oh, please, publisher, hurry up and release it!

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

June 27, 2006
by infmom
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why it does not pay to go shopping at warehouse stores

Yesterday at Costco I saw a cute little package of four cute little 256meg flash drives. My first reaction was to start making a mental list of useful things I can do with four cute little 256meg flash drives.

    Get security software to make secure partitions on drives
    store novels-in-progress
    store medical records for a lot less money than MedicAlert is asking for their flash drive
    Hmm, get some kind of autorun for medical records if I really want to make an equvalent of eHealthKey
    Store a Lemmings game on one so I can play it anywhere
    decorate the already-colorful shells with paint and rhinestones and wear as a necklace

And then I thought, you know what, I already have 1 gig worth of flash drive sitting here on my desk and I haven’t done anything with it yet.

Temptation comes in very strange forms.

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June 27, 2006
by infmom
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back to the… future?

Going to be babysitting a 3-year-old tonight. My daughter’s convinced I can handle anything with the “Mom Voice.” Truthfully, I am not so sure. The 3-year-old in question does not know me very well. A very small kid who doesn’t know you is more likely to totally freak out than obey. I’m hoping he’s in bed and stays there, to tell you the truth. But the two of us will work it out somehow.

I don’t mind being an honorary Grandma. It saves me a lot of frazzle by making it possible for me to keep insisting I’m not old enough to be a real one.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

June 25, 2006
by infmom
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That’s most illogical, Spock

I’ve come to the conclusion that if my brain worked in any kind of logical fashion I would never be able to figure computer stuff out.

Case in point: My recent tussles with Eudora.

First problem: Eudora started telling me, over and over, that it needed to rebuild all the mailboxes. A logical person would assume this meant a problem with Eudora, and I started off taking that logical approach. I let it rebuild a few times, and then I got irked enough to start looking for the real reason.

Which turned out not to be Eudora at all, but the newest update to ZoneAlarm Security Suite. Apparently something inside the latest ZA was the villain in the piece, and the only solution was to dump the upgrade and go back to the previous version. Which I dutifully did, and all was well, except of course that ZA now had to ask me a bajillion times whether to allow this, that, or the other, because all my custom settings went bye-bye with the uninstallation of the upgrade.

OK fine, toodle along… until yesterday when Eudora absolutely, positively, would not send any mail. It’d download it just fine, but would not send out my replies. Arrrrrrrgh! I looked at the Eudora web site for the error number, and they didn’t even list that number, just a similar one, and the official solution to that similar-error-message problem wasn’t helpful.

I got some high level help from Girlfriend, who knows way more about computer stuff than our whole family put together, but even with her best efforts, Eudora wouldn’t budge. I even tried reinstalling it, but no go.

So, off to the message boards again.

About an hour later I found that it (once again) wasn’t really a Eudora problem. It seems that once Eudora gets its innards poked at by other software (and Norton Antivirus seems to be an even bigger problem child than ZA in this regard) it reacts badly to hardware settings. Specifically, a setting in the nVidia chipset in some onboard network cards.

So, I disabled that particular hardware command, rebooted, and all was well.

Sure am glad I’m flexible enough to just keep batting things around, no matter how far into outer space I seem to be venturing. If I took a strictly linear, logical, straightforward approach, I think there’d be a smoking crater where my computer used to be.

EDIT: And when I tried to post this, I got a message from WordPress saying I needed to allow referrers. Which wasn’t a WordPress or Firefox error, but a lack of permissions in ZoneAlarm. You know, maybe I better keep an eye out for a better security suite.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

June 20, 2006
by infmom
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tickticktick…

Got another box of watches today, one I bought on eBay last week for $8.50. One would think that a box of 30 watches for that price would be mostly junk, but no. Granted, we’re not talking a pile of Rolexes here, but most of what was in the box was either nearly new or lightly used, and in good to like-new condition.

Shouldn’t take me long to get these cleaned up and working again, and then I’ll have a really good inventory of refurbished watches for my eBay sales.

Still haven’t made up my mind whether to open an eBay store or not. I think they charge ten bucks a month, but I must admit it’s been a while since I looked into it. The thing is, I don’t know if I can sell enough refurbished watches and costume jewelry per month to cover the store fee plus make me a reasonable profit. I’ve got a store name in mind and have sort of sketched out a logo, but I think I should probably wait and see how the current inventory sells before taking the plunge.

I sure do enjoy the work of fixing up the watches. Wish I knew a way to guarantee they would sell.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

June 18, 2006
by infmom
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Father’s Day

Today’s newspaper had a feature article about people recalling the best advice their fathers ever gave them.

I don’t remember my dad ever giving me any standout advice. He wasn’t a very “hands on” parent; like most men who became fathers in the 50s he was focused on his job and left the child-raising stuff to my mom. He spent long hours at the office, and when he was home he was often in his study, working, and my brothers and I weren’t supposed to bother him.

In later life he said he regretted that, and should have spent more time with us. I don’t think my brothers and I ever had a problem with the amount of time Dad spent with us–he tended to think up neat things to do, like going on picnics up in the mountains, or spending a lazy Sunday afternoon sitting on the side of the hill leading down to the airport runway, watching the planes come and go. He took us to the ballpark now and again to watch baseball games, or to the high school stadium to watch football. He always got us seats on the “visitors'” side, because he said they were better. I think my oldest brother, whose sense of order and logic were uniquely his own, had objections to that philosophy, but Dad bought the tickets and Dad decided where we sat.

I sometimes would watch sports on TV with Dad, just to be doing something with him. I was never a major sports fan (and not even Dad could make TV golf interesting enough for me to sit still for it). But sitting there listening to Dad explain the game was always worth while.

Dad died four years ago after a long struggle with Alzheimers and other illnesses. I don’t have much of a problem with the anniversary of the day he died, or with his birthday. I always miss him on Father’s Day, though.

He might not have given me any memorable advice, but he was a good father. Happy Father’s Day, Dad, wherever you are. I miss you.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

June 17, 2006
by infmom
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hot time in the old town…

I think we all get used to various situations in our lives and have trouble adapting when the situation changes. Thus it is with me and cars that have air conditioning. Through all the various vehicles we have owned over the years, either there was no air conditioning to begin with, or the vehicle was old enough that the a/c just didn’t work.

So I never got used to driving around with air conditioning. Strictly 4/60, baby. Four windows rolled down and go fast enough and hope for the best.

So when it got up to 103o today, I automatically set aside all the errands I had planned to run, because, y’know, I didn’t want to go OUT in weather like that and drive around in a stifling hot car hoping for a crosswind.

Because I just can’t seem to get my mind around the concept that we now own an air conditioned car. Oh, the kids keep reminding me about it, in tones of greater and greater irritation, but so far it hasn’t sunk in.

Tomorrow, I’m running errands and blasting the air. It’s the only way I’m going to get used to this.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

June 13, 2006
by infmom
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learn something new every day

Putting up a little URL-icon turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would. The original iteration looked too much like Iomega’s corporate logo, though, so I changed it.

I always thought web page creation was a complicated and difficult endeavor, but now that I’ve actually gotten off my duff and started in on it, I’m surprised how much easier it was than I thought. Of course, I got some good software to do most of the hard work for me, and that did make a difference.

Thinking seriously about buying the upgrade to Fusion 9. On the one hand, it’s got a lot of new features that I know I would use. On the other hand, though, it is still over $100 even at the upgrade price. I guess all those years of using Commodore computers, where $40 was about the top price anyone asked for software, conditioned me to think software should be cheap.

Hah, hah, and double hah, right? At least as far as “buy it in the box at the store” software is concerned, at any rate. Thank goodness for shareware, freeware and open source. And a big thank you to the many contributors to this wonder that is WordPress, too. I just wish I knew more about what I was doing. 😀

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

June 12, 2006
by infmom
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technological whoopsie

I tried to update the WordPress software today and apparently didn’t manage to do it right. Took me two tries to put back what once was there, too. I need to read those instructions again.

On the bright side, I did manage to get a little icon in the URL. It’s pretty blah; I’ll have to create a better one. But at least it worked right the first time.

One step forward, one step back.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.