June 2006 – Page 2 – red paper boat

Comments Policy

June 24, 2006January 16, 2016 Shelly

FYI:

I get a huge amount of comments spam. To combat it, I have moderation turned on for first-time commenters. This means that it may take awhile for your first post to show up. I get e-mail notifications for comments, so if I’m on-line, I’m pretty quick about approvals. If I’m not on-line, though, it will take longer. Please be patient! As long as you aren’t a spammer, an misogynist shitbeard, or named Hugo, your comment will get through.

After your first comment has been moderated, all subsequent comments will go straight through automagically unless you have a dynamic IP address. If you do (and there are a few of you out there), then each comment you make will have to go through moderation. It’s an imperfect system, I know, but with hundreds of spam comments each day, the alternative does not bear thinking about.

Crankypantsing

Grandma’s Bath Mat(thew)

June 24, 2006October 16, 2015 Shelly

Since the beginning of time, whenever I’ve visited my grandma, she’s taken me into her bedroom, opened the closet, and proceeded to shop for me. And not just me, either. She does this with with pretty much anyone who will stand still for it. She shops like nobody’s business, and hoards away all sorts of cheap-but-ultimately-useful junk, so I suppose the “let’s shop in grandma’s closet” routine is her way of justifying her hobby.

The last time I visited–sadly, several years ago–I was awarded a gawd-awful rubber-backed acrylic bath mat(thew)* in a disturbing shade of hot pink. Now, I’m all for pretty colors, but pink is not in my decorating vocabulary. Nevertheless, I brought the bath mat(thew) home and packed it away. I figured that I could surely find some use for it, if I thought hard enough. And, I did. Grandma’s hot pink bath mat(thew) became Elliott’s chewy spot (the place where he was Allowed to have grotty bones and whatnot). Then, a few years ago, I realized it would be a perfect way to protect the car seat from dog hair and–as it is rubber-backed–potential spewages. The rubber backing would also keep the mat in place on the seat. It worked so beautifully that I recommend that anyone who transports dogs in their car, pick up a few cheap bath mat(thew)s to lay on the seats.

So, onna counta having taken a couple of days off earlier in the week, I had to work this morning. When I reached B-ton, I realized I’d left my ginormous iced tea at home (alas and alack!), so I stopped at Bigfoot and purchased a tasty beverage. I reached work, parked my car flawlessly (an unusual enough occurrence that it merits mentioning), got out, and while collecting my various accouterments, managed to deposit the entire contents of my pepsisodapopcoke on the driver’s seat. I stood there for a moment, stunned. One, I now had no tasty beverage and only a $10 bill, so I couldn’t purchase a replacement from the vending machine. Two, my seat was saturated with wet, red stickiness. O ick. Three, I had recently spilled a Mudslide down the console (no, I wasn’t drinking and driving, I was taking a drink next door with me to a party), and had used the dog towels I keep in my car to clean up that mess and hadn’t replaced them. So, I had nothing to drink and no way to clean up the mess. Hmmm. How to replace the lost beverage, without getting my behindermost parts saturated with red, sticky goo? I know! Grandma’s bath mat(thew)! I removed it from Harriet’s spot and laid it across the driver’s seat, hopped back in my car, and returned to Bigfoot, where I was treated to a consternated look from the clerk.

Thank you, grandma, for insisting I needed a hot pink bath mat(thew).

Oh, and I managed to park all sorts of cattywampus the second time around. Hrmph.

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* There is a story there, about dogs, the mats some of them develop in their coats, and a very nice Canadian man named Matt. The long and short of it is that bath mats shall forevermore be known as bath mat(thew)s in my world. Bonus: I dare you to try saying bath mat(thew) out loud ten times, fast. If it doesn’t make you laugh (assuming you can accomplish it), then I suspect that there is something wrong with you.

Crankypantsing, Letters to Esther

New Letters to Esther

June 23, 2006October 16, 2015 Shelly

I’ve added eight new letters to Esther.

Even though it’s been warm out today, I decided to turn on the oven and make roasted vegetables for supper. They smell really good, especially the onions. I put them on the bottom, so they should get nice and caramelized. Mmmm, Caramelite Nunions.

And now for a wee rant about Netflix. I’ve been a member for, oh, three years or so now. I’ve always been pretty happy with their service. The turn-around has been speedy and there have been relatively few bad discs or mailing mistakes. Over the past couple of months, though, the quality of service has nose-dived. About half the discs I’ve gotten have been scratched, a few were broken or scratched so badly I had to return them for replacements. The turn-around time has increased, too. The kicker, though, is that twice now, they have decided to send me random discs from way down on my queue. Today, I got two notices that they were mailing discs that had been at #26 and 27. Now, that wouldn’t have been a huge deal, except that I’m watching a series and I’d kinda like to see it in chronological order. I can’t figure out why they changed my queue order, because discs #1-25 were showing as available now. There should have been no wait, and therefore no reason to monkey with the natural order of things. It seems to me, if they are going to pick random discs, that there’s not much point in having an ordered queue.

But, the icing on the cake is that there appears to be no way to complain about this new queue reordering habit they’ve developed. I looked at the “report a problem” page, and while there is an option for “received wrong disc,” that doesn’t really apply. It’s not the wrong disc, exactly; it’s just out of order. So, I went to their “suggestions” form and sent them a piece of my mind (cuz I’ve got so much to spare, dontchaknow?). Not that that’ll do any good, because there’s a big, fat warning that complaints about account-specific problems will not be entertained via that avenue.

I think, when I move, I’m going to ditch Netflix and get basic cable. Which is sad, because for three years I’ve been a very happy Netflix customer.

Crankypantsing, Ladybusiness

Make it Sto-o-o-p

June 23, 2006October 16, 2015 Shelly

As I’ve spent the afternoon transcribing more letters, and have had the teevee on in the background, I’d like to take a moment to share a few words about commercials.

First, KFC needs to pull the plug on their new “Music to a mother’s ears” ad. It features a family sitting around the dining room table, chowing down on crispy, chickeny goodness. The idea is that A) shutting the hell up is what a mother wants her family to do and B) the noise of people smacking, chewing, and swallowing is preferable to that of normal dinner conversation. Not only is the premise bizarre, but the smacketty-smack sounds of folks eating is sickifying. And, need I add that it’s something that even my uber-lax mother would not have tolerated at the dinner table? Not only is it all sorts of bad manners, but KFC (and Hardee’s) really ought to rethink their plan to entice diners by inducing them to vomit. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a very good business plan to me.

O ick!

Second, an old anti-smoking commercial is currently being recycled. I don’t know if these are Indiana-specific, or if they’re being run nation-wide, but there’s a whole series of similar ads. This one begins with a music box-like tune tinkling away as a mother straps her young daughter into a car seat. We see the kid sitting in her car seat. Then, the mother gets into the car and the camera pans to the rear-view mirror, where we see the child looking back at us. The expression on the child’s face throughout the commercial is unreal. The first time I saw the ad, I thought it was a PSA about mentally disabled kids. The depiction of the child is so distracting that I have a difficult time even registering that the commercial is about smoking. Now, I assume that they were going for a china doll sort of concept, in order that the viewer understand that the child is helpless; but, they’ve gone too far, making the kid look so vacant and vacuous that the point of the sermonizing is pretty well lost on me.

Crankypantsing, News & Politics

Some Bastard Company

June 22, 2006January 8, 2016 Shelly

Title o’ the day: Friendly Fascism.

So, I meander over to Boing Boing for my daily dose of this-n-that, to find that AT&T/SBC are wasting no time getting down to business. I knew no good would come of them merging. It’s bad enough that AT&T were one of the companies accused of secretly handing over subscriber data to the US government, but now that they’re bigger and better, they’ve got the brass balls to come right out and declare that they own your private information, not you. This will apparently be retroactive, and AT&T/SBC will require subscribers to agree to its updated privacy policy as a condition of service. This policy, which will supersede their current policy (the main policy was updated June 16, 2006, but their video and satellite policies have not been updated since 2004), apparently goes into affect on June 23.

Hrmph. No good can come of ginormous mergers like the SBC/Yahoo/AT&T mess. I remember when the Bells were broken up, and the subsequent technological advancements and improvements in customer service. Yeah, I know, it’s hard to believe, but as bad is it is now, it was even worse then. Remember back when you had to lease a phone from Ma Bell? Your options were rotary or push-button, desk or wall-mounted. That’s it. Returning to that sort of business model is not something I look forward to, especially when the scope is so large that it encompasses everything from television to telephone to internet service, and eventually who knows what else?

I guess it’s as good a time as any to switch to Sage, eh? Their privacy policy is short and sweet and non-intrusive, and it actually involves keeping your personal information private. Their prices are much better than AT&T’s, too. I should have switched ages ago, but just didn’t feel motivated, as it wouldn’t have solved my other, hardware-related service problems. (Note for friends and family, Sage services the B-ton and Muncie areas.) I’m feeling all sorts of motivated now, though.

Photography

Between the heaves of storm

June 21, 2006October 16, 2015 Shelly

We had an amazing storm in the early evening yesterday, with high winds, lots of lightning, and heavy rain (4 inches in one hour). The trees around me were bent over with the force of the wind, and I may have lost my largest sapling. When I went out to take pictures, after the worst had passed, I found the 8 foot tall tree bent over, with its top touching the ground. I wanted to cry, but I reminded myself not to get too attached to the baby trees because I’ll be moving soon. I can’t exactly take them with me, can I?

While I was out taking post-storm photos, I noticed an area of mammatus clouds to the south.

Then, I noticed a break in the clouds to the southwest. A bird was wheeling around, appearing to circle the small patch of light. Right after I took this photo, he flew off to the east.

To the south, there was mist rising from the trees. During the worst of the storm, this ridge was completely obscured by rain.

A few hours later, another squall line moved through, less intense than the first.

IE Fortmatting Oddness

June 21, 2006January 16, 2016 Shelly

Okaythen! Apparently, something about the blockquoting in the previous post caused Internet Explorer to lose its mind. It was running the left-hand margin off the edge of the column, so the initial characters of each line were cut off. I don’t use IE, so I don’t know if this has been a problem in the past, but for now, I’ve removed the offending blockquotes. That seems to have fixed the problem.

I’ll try to remember to check blockquotes in the future. It may be that I did something stupid, but in looking at the HTML, I couldn’t see anything wrong.

Music, Poetry

Remember Me

June 21, 2006January 8, 2016 Shelly

I finished the second season of Little House over the weekend, and started on the third. One episode contained a funeral scene in which a sweet little poem was read. It reminded me of a song, but even though the lyrics and melody were on the tip of my tongue, I couldn’t identify which one. It nearly drove me to distraction.

Then, this morning as I was packing my lunch, it came to me. Class, please compare and contrast:

Remember me with smiles and laughter,
for that is how I will remember you all.
If you can only remember me with tears,
then don’t remember me at all.
— Julia Sanderson, Remember Me
Little House on the Prairie season 2

And now, Mr. Cuddlygoth:

Treasure, by The Cure
She whispers
Please remember me
When I am gone from here
She whispers
Please remember me
but not with tears
Remember I was always true
Remember that I always tried
Remember I loved only you
Remember me and smile
For it’s better to forget
Than to remember me
And cry

Remember I was always true
Remember that I always tried
Remember I loved only you
Remember me and smile
For it’s better to forget
Than to remember me
And cry

Now, as much as I’d love to think of CuddlyGoth Robert Smith as a closet Little House fan (and I dearly would, just for the absurdity factor), I’m having a small amount of trouble picturing it. More likely, both Robert Smith and the writer of that Little House episode were both inspired by the Christina Rosetti poem, Remember.

Remember, by Christina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Uncategorized

An ill wind

June 20, 2006October 16, 2015 Shelly

We must have had a storm last night. It’s hard to believe I could have slept through it, but when I tried to go to work this morning, the road was closed. There’s probably a tree down. There were high winds yesterday, and if a storm did come through last night, it wouldn’t surprise me if it brought down trees. The ground being pretty thoroughly soaked doesn’t help, either. If you’ve ever seen an uprooted tree, you will have noticed that the root system is surprisingly shallow. It’s a wonder they stay up at all. When the ground gets soft, it doesn’t take much wind to topple them.

So, here I sit, contemplating whether I should call in or send an e-mail. I changed my schedule this summer, so that I have Mondays off. After three days at home, a fourth makes me feel like I’m playing hooky. As a penance, I might have to actually do some work. Or, I could wait awhile and try again. They may have the road cleared by now. Or, I could try going the alternate route, but I’m not familiar with it and would rather not get lost and spend the day wandering around back country roads. I’m pretty sure that staying home is going to win out, but I still have to decide whether to call in or e-mail. It’s far too early in the morning for this sort of decision-making.

Hmmm… Phone or e-mail…? E-mail or phone…?

Photography

Stormblogging

June 19, 2006October 16, 2015 Shelly

A storm cell just passed overhead. Hoo-boy! It moved through quickly, thankfully, and we didn’t get the worst of it. North of us, there was a lot of rotation and tennis ball sized hail. We didn’t get any hail–in fact, we only got a few drops of rain–but there was rotation and a lot of movement in the clouds. Eeep!