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The creeping crud hit home
Here at casa de GOAM, the creeping crud has hit me and hubby. It hit him two weeks ago, then hit me Tuesday morning. Symptoms have been fever and massive sinus and chest congestion. At the height of it, I started seriously wondering if it was possible to blow out one's own body weight of snot.
Yah, it's gross, but after 5 days of this, gross is what I have. It does seem to be on the downturn now, as I can be up and around without sounding like I'm hacking up a lung. The worst part of was actually the sore throat, and there is really nothing good for a sore throat, medicine-wise. In pain, I turned the internet and googled "throat on fire sore throat remedy". The results? Salt and water -- two of the most common things imaginable. Even better, it worked! A good salt water gargle, and I could breathe and swallow without wanting to cry.
Highlights from the week of "hack-hack-wheeeeeze!" include:
- Having to explain to multiple clients how my ill health impacts their projects. The upside of full-time employment = you only have to call in sick ONCE. Still not worth going back, but it is an upside.
- Dee asking me, "Don't cough on my moon sand, mommy! You'll make my moon sand sick!"
- Me tapping on Dee's door after her bedtime asking her "stay in bed and be quiet please"; followed by her banging on my door after an explosive coughing fit and asking me to "keep the noise down."
- Dee finally getting happy faces from school (after over a week of notes)
In other news, we got Dee's Tinkerbell video exchanged for a working copy and watched that about a bazillion times. I was not overly thrilled with the idea, figuring it would be more of Disney's "pretty pink princess" pablum that so aggravates me, but I also figured that being on cold meds might at least make it watchable.
I have to admit that I was quite pleasantly surprised. The theme was to follow your talent instead of trying to do what looked cool/fun/pretty. When we got to the end, I realized that, in the fairy world, Tinkerbell was a geek girl! That, plus some incredible music by Lorenna McKennitt (one of my favorite singers), made this a movie I actually enjoyed. Hopefully, it wasn't just the cold meds... ;-)
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Posted by geekmom on Saturday, January 31 @ 08:04:49 CST (387 reads)
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Minor change
I have moved the RSS feed box up to be just under the Modules list on the left. That should make it visible without scrolling, as it was brought to my attention that a friend was unaware that the blog had RSS. I wll be doing more "post to blog lists" and maybe some other minor changes throughout the day.
Edit: I have now moved the RSS Feed box to the top, so no more "You have RSS?" discussions. I have also added a "Vote for me" box. The blog has been added to several new sites as well.
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Posted by geekmom on Tuesday, May 15 @ 02:06:20 CDT (159 reads)
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Oh, no! It's Ads!!
As you will no doubt have noticed, there are now Google text ads at the top of my site. I could do the usual web-excuse and say that it was a hard decision, but frankly, we have gone from a two-income household to a household with a lot of little income streams, and it's time for the blog to add to the influx.
That said, it is only going to be the text link ads, as the banner ads annoy me in general, and some of them (particularly the moving and/or audio types) do bad things to certain browsers and people with low bandwidth. The links will base off of the content, and given some of the HTTP Referers I get , I can't begin to say what I'm going to be linking to. If you get a particularly odd one, please let me know in comments.
Additionally, I know have an additional push to blog more regularly. Yay me.
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Posted by geekmom on Thursday, April 05 @ 16:58:08 CDT (125 reads)
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Where I landed
Heh. No great surprise to folks who know me...
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Fifth Level of Hell!
Here is how I matched up against all the levels:
Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test
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Posted by geekmom on Tuesday, April 03 @ 17:30:00 CDT (230 reads)
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My tractor!
Hoo boy, what a day. My brother-in-law had a little John Deere ride-on tractor that he had offered to Dee, and we went up to pick it up. First, however, we had to go shopping for the week, and I made the mistake of telling Dee that we were going to see her cousins after we went shopping.
When we got to the first store, Dee started fussing because we weren't at her cousins' house. Then, when we got to the second store, Dee started fussing again because we weren't at her cousins' house. Finally, we got home and got the groceries put up, and hubby went out to measure the vehicles to see if we could get the tractor back in the van.
It turned out that we couldn't, which lead to a very long trip, during which Dee fussed about Daddy not being in the van. The short version of our 35-minute conversation is given below (the long version is the short version repeated ad nauseum):
Dee: Where daddy!?
Me: Daddy's in the truck up ahead of us; you see Daddy?
Dee: There's his truck! Daddy, come back! Daddy, slow down!
Me: It's ok; we'll stay behind him, and we can watch him all the way to your cousins' house.
(brief interlude of silence)
Dee: Where daddy!?
Eventually, we got to our destination. When we got to the door, there was a nearly-decipherable letter from Dee's oldest cousin to my husband -- it was the boy's wish-list for his birthday. He had put it there so that hubby would be sure to see it. I love my husband and his family, but subtlety is not their strong suit. As opposed to my mother, who can't say a thing without it meaning that plus 3-5 other things as well.
Anyway, once we got inside, my brother-in-law called down to where Dee's cousins were playing, and they came home. Everyone played together nicely, and hubby and his brother got the tractor (which turned out to be a jeep-like thing) into the back of hubby's truck.
We hung out at their house for a while and let the kids play; however, as it got closer to supper time, we needed to leave so that we could get home and eat. This engendered an absolute meltdown, as Dee did not want to leave her cousins. She howled for a good five minutes, and only stopped when we took her outside and showed her her new tractor in the back of the truck. (We didn't show it to her earlier, because it needs some work and won't actually run yet; and we didn't want a conniption fit based on "I want to ride it now".)
She was happy enough to see her new toy that she calmed down some; however, once hubby got into his truck and headed off for home, she screamed "Oh no; my tractor!!!!"
After I pulled my nerves down out from the roof of the van, I explained that the tractor was in the back of Daddy's truck and it was going home with us.
Dee: Oh, no, where's my tractor!?
Me: It's right in front of us; see?
Dee: Yay, tractor, tractor. I have a tractor. Oh no, Daddy! Come back!!
Me: He's not getting away from us, Dee. I know where he lives. Calm down. See? He's right there.
Dee: Tractor, tractor! It's my tractor. Not your tractor! Mine!!
Me: (chortling) Yes, Dee. It's your tractor.
Dee: Oh, no, where's my tractor!?
Fortunately (in the sense of the glass being 1/3 full), Dee went to sleep after 20 minutes of this, and I got 15 minutes of unaccompanied driving.
Holy crap, what an adventure!
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Posted by geekmom on Sunday, February 11 @ 13:14:18 CST (204 reads)
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Mark/Space effing rocks!
Yes, it's yet another chapter in "My love/hate relationship with my Treo". When I went from a 600 to a 650 (due to the 600 dying horribly and doing so under the Sprint warranty), I discovered that my synchronization programs simply did not work any more. This led to a fine range of obscenities, followed by a web search to see what my options were. I discovered that the best option seemed to be a program called The Missing Sync by Mark/Space. This would work with iSync on my Mac and actually get my computer to once again talk to my handheld. It was amazingly easy to set up (after all these years, I'm still conditioned by Windows to expect a huge frigging ordeal every time I install something), and it worked exactly as advertised. It even transferred the pictures from my handheld to a folder I specified, which completely eliminated my ORIGINAL problem with my 600 of not being able to get pictures off of it.
Last month or so, they came out with version 5.1.1, and being a stupid little geekette, I upgraded before I checked their message boards. Apparently, 5.1.1 had a bit of a bug in it and would seize and shut down the events transfer in certain situations ... and mine was one of them!
This led to a couple of weeks of bitching and moaning and more web research to eliminate stuff I could fix until last week when I bit the bullet, admitted to myself that I have a problem (always the first step ;->) and emailed Mark/Space support for help.
The first response was a large "here are the basic troubleshooting steps" email. It would have been nice if I had found this on their website, but hey, at least I had it now. I went through the steps, and while I was waiting for the last step to run, I checked my email. I found another mail from Mark/Space announcing the release of version 5.1.2, and this time I checked the effing message board to make sure that the problem I was having had been addressed. According to the board, it had been.
Kewl! And useful, as the troubleshooting steps did diddly-squat to fix my problem. So, I downloaded 5.1.2, installed it, and then went through the troubleshooting. This resolved the original problem; however, I now had a new problem. Fortunately, my time as a Windows user taught me that as long as you keep getting new error messages, you're at least making progress! So, I sent another e-mail to support.
This came back with a quick explanation that I had to change a setting in the calendars which had probably been reset at some point. I changed the setting, ran the synchronize again, and VOILA! I have data!
I sent them a nice thank you email; I used to handle email support, so I know how good it feels to get a happy response. I also endeavored to be very calm when writing my emails to them, which was a bitch since I really just wanted to jump and down in front of my computer screaming "WORK, DAMN YOUR EFFING EYES!! WORK!!!!" while gesticulating theatrically for maximum effect.
However, while this is great cardio exercise, it doesn't set a good example for the impressionable toddler, and it gets the dog wound up like you wouldn't believe.
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Posted by geekmom on Saturday, October 21 @ 13:24:58 CDT (175 reads)
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Well, THAT was weird.
After coming home from taking Dee out so that I could take a conference call regarding freelance work (on which the effing HOST failed to call in), hubby mentioned that my blog was down.
He said that the index file was new along with some others and wondered what I did. Well, I also wondered what I did, because I didn't recall changing the index file.
That was about a half hour ago. 30+ minutes of wading through files and looking at two identical index files while trying to figure out what in hell's own name had gotten changed, I gave up thinking logically. I opened the copy of the index file on my computer that had supposedly changed (no change was visible). I then saved that file and uploaded it over the visually identical copy on the server.
Voila! I am back. Don't know where in hell I went or why, but it's nice to see that the "thump it until it fixes itself" method of troubleshooting still works for me.
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Posted by geekmom on Friday, September 15 @ 10:20:23 CDT (182 reads)
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Music
After getting my 1GB card for my Treo 650, I changed my settings in Missing Sync to synchronize the card to a playlist in iTunes. As I have a sheer buttload of songs on my Mac, I had to go through and select just my very favorite songs. This lead me to rediscover something...
I have very weird and varied taste in music.
Here (in no particular order) is a brief sample of the songs just on my Treo:
- I Keed (Triumph, the Insult Dog)
- All Your Base are Belong to Us (Treephort)
- The Privacy Song! (Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie)
- A.D.D. (Ten Foot Pole)
- Dr. Evil Ska (The Superspecs)
- Long Shot Kick de Bucket (Skaboom)
- It Wasn't Me (Shaggy)
- Loco Gingo's Like to Party (Reverend Horton Heat)
- Don't Let Me Get Me (Pink)
- Where Have All The Cowboys Gone? (Paula Cole)
- Original Prankster (Offspring)
- The Devil Made Texas (Ed Miller)
- Mr. Moran (Mighty Mighty Bosstones)
- Mother and Child Reunion (Me First and the Gimme Gimmes)
- Son of a Preacher Man (Mavis Staples)
- Trip Like I Do (Filter and the Crystal Method)
- Pipes from Hell (Eryri Bagpipes)
- Good Rats (Dropkick Murphys)
- Neverending Story (Dragonland, speed metal cover)
- Four o'Clock in the Morning (Jim Branigan)
- Brian Wilson (Barenaked Ladies)
- Smooth Criminal (Alien Ant Farm)
- Because I Got High (Afroman)
- Stayin' Alive (Ozzy Osbourne)
My music includes reggae, ska, metal, punk, hiphop, folk, techno, trance, dance, and just plain fucked up. I have in the past had to add the tag "explicit" to some of my stuff so that I could set up a smart playlist that would play high-rated songs without playing stuff that contained language I didn't want Dee picking up. For a while, I was having to jump over my fence to hit the mute button on my Mac keyboard!
Many of these songs came from the old MP3.com website, before it got taken over by fuckheads who got rid of all the old content and turned it into a linkboard to other people's stuff, 90% of which ISN'T EVEN MP3S!!!
The old site was primarily for unsigned bands to promote their work, and you could find just all kinds of new and odd music in straight MP3 format. Now, most of it is in a secured format, and they have SHIT. They're trying to make money off of advertising, but I haven't been going back because there's nothing there that I want anymore. OK, here is an experiment. I will go back and see if I can find anything by TreePhort (a band I found on the old site).
Well, TreePhort came up all right. Used to, MP3 had several free songs and links to go purchase albums. Now, all that is there is links to buy music and some reviews. There is no real content and no reason for me to go there instead of eMusic or iTunes or CD Warehouse. Like I said before, it sucks. Weirdly, the TreePhort site does have free MP3 downloads. So, the band gets it, but CNET has their head up their butt.
I'm not big on the pirate love; if I like a band, I don't have problem paying money for thier music. Also, buying their CD means that I can do a higher-quality rip than you normally get (I prefer at least 196, and normal downloads are 128). My problem is the tendency of some artists to offer a couple of good songs surrounded by an album of crap, which amounts to paying $15-$20 for two or three songs. CD Warehouse has much lower prices, so if I get an album like that, the cost per song isn't so painful; and eMusic (while it does not have a big range of the "popular" music), carries a huge range of musical styles and bands, and it provides a 30-second preview of all songs that are at least that long. That way, I can tell whether I want to buy the whole album or just the songs that don't suck.
A new service that I really like is Pandora. I punch in songs that I like, and it matches the music style to similar songs. Over time, my stations are finding stuff I really like that I hadn't heard of. It's very cool.
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Posted by geekmom on Tuesday, July 04 @ 06:08:46 CDT (279 reads)
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Charter Cable -- Die Die Die Die Die
Man, the tech gods give and the tech gods take away. We got hubby a new computer with the intention that he could tweak out the old computer for Dee for her birthday. To do this, we would need two things: the old computer, and internet access to figure out how to maximally child-proof it.
Three days before her birthday, we lost internet access. I called Charter Communications, and the phone message said that there was an outage in the area. Over the next two weeks, I was told that there was an outage (with the standard "no idea when it will be back") and/or there wasn't an outage. When told that there wasn't, they would waste an hour or more of my life troubleshooting, only to say, "Oh wait, there's an outage; you must be affected by that".
Crap and other fecal references.
By the ninth phone call, I was getting downright cranky. In addition to the lack of service, the system listed our account under our old telephone number. Each time I called, they said that they changed it; but when I would call back, I would still have to use the old number.
Finally, I spoke to someone that actually had a fucking clue. This gentleman explained that there was not an outage in my area at the time; however, there have been ongoing issues in my city. He scheduled a tech to come out, but because of the ongoing issues, a tech was not available for two weeks. Also, he determined that they can't change the phone number on my account because the person who previous had my new number also had a Charter account, and they haven't changed THEIR number.
Bollocks and other physical parts.
So, the upshot is, I won't even get a tech OUT here until three weeks after the service went down, and I have to call and deal with the trolls in accounting to get my phone number changed.
The only plus to this is that we called AT&T and had them set up DSL for us, as it is finally available in our area. It works well, aside from the fact that we had no phone service for a few days due a loose wire in the box. However, the telephone company (with little better reputation than the cable company) actually sent out a tech THE DAY THAT WE CALLED THEM to fix the problem, so they get points for not screwing around, and it appears to be as fast as the cable internet was, so we may just wind up punting Charter, as it is fexspensive, unreliable and the service department is unresponsive and incompetent.
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Posted by geekmom on Sunday, June 18 @ 05:08:15 CDT (299 reads)
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GOAM's got a new toy!
Well, I'm back now. The weekend before last, I got ahold of Sprint (again) and continued my ongoing complaint about my Treo 600 (see previous posts for details). This time, I got all the way up to Advanced Technical Support, who determined that we had done everything software-based that there was to do to my poor handheld, and that the problem was therefore hardware-based.
For the non-geeks, that translates to "it's broke, but we can't do anything about it". Normally, I would have had to go back to the seller or manufacturer at this point, but I had taken advantage of Sprint's full coverage option when I started with my Treo. $5 a month to replace the phone if anything happens is a small price, when you consider that the Treo cost around $350! So, having Sprint insurance in hand, I contacted the nearest Sprint store I could remember, which was a kiosk in North East Mall. He said that they don't do service issues, but that there was a store in front of the mall that could take care of this for me.
Happy day! Off I go to the Sprint Store, only to be told that while they are OPEN on Sundays, they don't have techs in store on Sundays. I need to come back Monday. Well, crap.
One workday later, hubby gets home feeling bad, and mean old GOAM leaves Dee (who is being cranky herself) home with hubby so she can get her "brain in a box" fixed. Or at least looked at. My hopes weren't real high at that point.
Once I got there, I put my name on the list, and it was 40 minutes before I got to talk to a representative. He took my complaint, took my handheld, gave them to the tech and said that it would be 45 minutes to an hour. Home is more than 30 minutes away, so I was stuck wandering around the strip center. I called hubby to let him know I would be home late, and browsed a few stores. I went down to the Quizno's for supper, then went back to Sprint to wait.
The representative went back to the tech and asked about my Treo. The tech's exact response was "This is a very sick handheld!" Nice to see SOMEONE vindicate me. I was half afraid we were going to play the "problem? what problem?" game again.
The representative told me that they were going to replace my handheld. YAY! Progress!! Even better, because the 600 was discontinued, they were going to replace it with a 650! However, they were going to need to order it from the warehouse rather than using store stock. This I could understand (I can be very magnanimous when I'm getting my problem fixed); but then it turned out that the warehouse stock were the 650's without the camera, so they went ahead and replaced it with store stock!
Less than two hours after going to the Sprint Store, I left with a brand new Treo 650. Now all I had to do was go home, restore from backup, and I was set.
Shyeah right....
Turns out the problem I had been having with my sync was related to a compatibility issue between Palm, some of my conduits and my Mac. I found several comments on-line having the same problem, and the only solution that I found (other than Palm's solution of "no third-party conduits") was Mark/Space's The Missing Sync. Hubby came in as I was bitching loudly about the injustice of it all, asked how much the software was, and handed me the credit card. He's a very nice guy, but I figure at least part of it involved "here, buy the damn software and stop griping about it". < .grin >
I have spent the past week pounding on everything to get it synced. Now (finally) it seems to be working well. All duplicate entries and missing categories have been fixed, and it is backing up my pictures (and videos!) to a folder on my Mac.
One of the problems of having a single box that does everything (planner, to-do list, address book, telephone, etc.) is that when the beast doesn't work, EVERYTHING is kaput. I rely heavily on my handheld, and I've been even more scatterbrained than usual lately, so I've really been needing it. To paraphrase Cheers:
"What would you say to a new handheld, GOAM?"
"Mommy wuvs you!"
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Posted by geekmom on Wednesday, April 12 @ 16:31:27 CDT (266 reads)
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