Month: May 2007

Crankypantsing

Instant Review: Dial-up

Shelly

In two words: It sucks. Yea, verily, doth it suck. I suspect that my ISP is throttling the throughput, because I am unable to achieve anything higher than a whopping 28.8kps. Oh, yeah, bay-BEE. So I’m crawling the internet at something significantly slower than a snail’s pace. Which is why I decided to upload photos this ayem, before work, instead of yesterday, from home.

But I’m online, and everything seems to be working just fine, with the obvious exception of no Ethernet and therefore no DSL.

Also, if you are ever in the mood for the blackest of black comedies, and you have an hour or two to kill, try calling AT&T’s tech support. If their voice response system doesn’t give you an aneurysm, being passed around to kingdom come and back should do the trick. It did not help matters that my current phone number is not the same number that they have in their system for me[1], and that my e-mail username is not the same as my network username[2]. I’ve heard of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, but in this case, I’m not convinced that the right hand knows that there is a left hand. Heck, I’m not convinced that either the right or the left have hands, period.

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[1] They are THE PHONE COMPANY, for pity’s sake, they ought to be able to get that sorted out, or at least properly cross-referenced. Sheesh!

[2] Don’t ask me how that happened, but I suspect it had something to do with Yahoo wanting me to fold my 10+ year old e-mail account into my new AT&T DSL account.[3]

[3] And then Flickr jumped on the bandwagon, and everything went kerplooie!

Photography

Jumping Spider

Shelly

It’s summer time, and you know what that means: pictures of spiders and other assorted creepy crawlies! This little guy (I think it’s a male) is a fishing or nursery web spider. He was hanging out on the outer wall of my building, near the downspout. He didn’t like having his picture taken, and kept crawling around and giving me the evil eyes (eight of them!). He fidgeted so much that it was difficult to get a completely focused photo of him.

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100_3713

Isn’t he gross and meaty? Also, hairy.

Jumping spiders don’t use webs to catch prey. They go out and hunt for it. Their silk is used to as a sort of safety line. If they jump and miss their goal, they can climb back up and try again. Jumping spiders are fast, which is necessary for their method of catching prey. They are not particularly aggressive, and usually won’t bite unless threatened.

Art, Artist Books, Collage

Balancing Equations

Shelly

It took me half the day yesterday just to get it scanned. I would insist on making books that don’t quite fit on the scanner when opened. It’s not hard to stitch the two halves of a spread together, even in my old version of Photoshop, but it’s still an added pain in the ass.

A few of these will be repeats, but I wanted to stick them all together, in order. The entire set, with large versions of the images plus a few more photos of the book itself, can be seen here.

Addendum: You can also click on each individual image to go to that image’s page, then click on that image to view it full sized (for most artwork and photos, that means 1024px wide for landscape format images or 1000px tall for portrait format images).

Balancing Equations Journal (front)
Front Cover

Balancing Equations: Wings
Wings

Balancing Equations: Then I Shall Be
Then I Shall Be

Balancing Equations: To Those Who Know Her Less
To Those Who Know Her Less

Balancing Equations: Solving for X
Solving for X

Balancing Equations: Mending Bone
Mending Bone

Balancing Equations: Eclipse
Eclipse

Balancing Equations: Three Unknowns
Three Unknowns

Balancing Equations: The Moon Came Down Too Soon
The Moon Came Down Too Soon

Balancing Equations: Fig.42
Fig.42

Balancing Equations: The First Last
The First Last

Balancing Equations: Form of a Radical
Form of a Radical

Balancing Equations: Our Brightest Jewel
But what will our gift be, riding afar,
Our brightest jewel, the Northern Star

Balancing Equations: Would You Dream Those Were Our Shadows
Would you dream those were our shadows
Weight in carats, price in dollars

Balancing Equations: There Have Been Wrecks on Smaller Seas
There Have Been Wrecks on Smaller Seas

Balancing Equations: A Tiny Mayflower Launched on Sunlit Seas
Left: A tiny “Mayflower” launched on sunlit seas
Right: And the visions faded that now we see

Balancing Equations: Inflorescence
Inflorescence

Balancing Equations: Three Pennies and Two Birds
Three Pennies and Two Birds

Balancing Equations: Ten Pieces Given
Ten Pieces Given

Balancing Equations: My Annie Dear, You Lift Your Eyes
My Annie dear, you lift your eyes
To ask me where the moral lies?

Balancing Equations: Five Paper Dolls
Five Paper Dolls

Balancing Equations: Cut Away Here
Cut Away Here

Balancing Equations: If You Should Get it and Let it Fall
If You Should Get it and Let It Fall

Balancing Equations: Dancing Hands
Dancing Hands

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Spine

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Foredge

Crankypantsing

Adventures in Computing

Shelly

I won’t bore you with the details of the comedy known as “Shelly loses then finds then loses then finds her Windows disk,” but I assure you, it was only a comedy in the strictest Greek drama sense (e.g. it does not matter how awful the events were, as long as they ended on an up-note). The short version is that my computer did, indeed, arrive, and I did, indeed get it minimally set up.

Even after the drama of getting the hardware sorted out[1] and getting Windows installed[2], I might have been able to get on-line last night, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the on-board Ethernet is not working. I tried everything I could think of to make Windows find it, but my 133t sk1LLz are not good enough, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to buy an Ethernet card, which means waiting for one to be delivered ($11 including shipping) or buy one locally ($22). I want instant gratification, but it seems really stupid to pay $22 for an Ethernet card. Sheesh! I also need to get a USB-to-Parallel adapter cord, because stupid me wasn’t paying attention and bought a computer without a parallel port. Duh. Considering how much money I saved buying the machine I did, though, a $7 cord seems like small potatoes. It’s just that I’m a spoiled brat and I want my computer to work properly rightthisminutedamnit! Patience is not one of my virtues, I’m afraid.

It’s not all bad news, though. I can snag the modem out of my old machine and use my ISP’s dial-up service to get on-line. It’s not ideal, but it’ll be light years ahead of the crappy-assed connection I had in Spencer. Ah, how quickly we are spoiled by broadband.

Mah bukket i mournz it

Day 76 without bucket[3]

Anyway, come hell or high water, I will have some eye candy uploaded by Saturday, hopefully in the ayem. If the planets are in the proper alignment, I may even manage to get a few things uploaded tomorrow.

Crankypantsing aside, I have to mention that the new computer is super fast and uber quiet. You can hardly hear the fan when it’s running, even with the case off and half of its guts hanging out. It also has a capacious hard drive (120G, which is almost 2x as large as my old drive). Once I get things backed up from my old drives, and can reformat them to be used strictly as storage and back-up drives, I will have a metric ass-load of space.

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[1] If you ever have a computer shipped to you, and nothing happens when you first try to turn it on, donut panic. Or, if you must panic, please do the following first: Open the case and check to make sure that the RAM is properly seated. Twice now, I have gotten computers that did not turn on, and it was because the RAM had become loose in transit. The first time, the RAM was half-way out of its slot, which made it pretty obvious that that was the problem. This time, the RAM felt like it was properly installed. I had to pop out both sticks, then pop them back in, after which, Mr. Computational Appliance sprang to life fully armored from his father’s forehead. Wait, no, that was Athene. Anyway! The RAM is probably the easiest thing to trouble-shoot. Even if you have never before opened up a computer, you should be able to install RAM.

[2] I also took pee-churs of my torn apart studio. It looks like a Borg spaceship explodiated all over the place. There are computer guts everywhere. Pandora is happy, though, because she loves–loves, I say!–boxes. She’s commandeered the big computer box, and has been sleeping in it and shredding the sides.

[3] I just can’t get enough of poor Lolrus.

Pets

Unintended Training

Shelly

I’m not a fan of recreational barkers, so it is a good thing that Miss Brown is a fairly quiet dog. Indoors, she only barks for good reason, and even then, it’s just one or two warning barks. When she barks outside, it’s always because she’s seen another dog or a critter. When that happens, I give her one bark. On the second, I tell her to hush. If there is a third, I immediately bring her inside. The intended lesson is that recreational barking is not in her best interests, if she wants to remain outdoors.

Well, yesterday afternoon, Harriet was hanging out on the patio, basking in the sun. I was sitting inside the door, on the couch, binding a book, when I heard her make her little let-me-in “Yip.” I was in the middle of a stitch, so I didn’t look up immediately, but I thought it was odd that she’d be wanting back inside so soon. She usually basks for an hour or so when the weather is good. When I let her in, I saw that one of my neighbors was out with his two Pugs.

Somehow, Harriet seems to have taken the “recreational barking is Not Allowed” rule and turned it into the “I’d better go inside if there are other dogs out” rule. I’m okay with that, I think, but it’s not exactly the lesson I was trying to teach her.

Uncategorized

Farewell to Lloyd Alexander

Shelly

Lloyd Alexander died last week. He was one of my favorite childhood writers, one of the very few who did fantasy well. I first read the Chronicles of Prydain at about the same time as I discovered the books of CS Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, and Lucy Boston.

His final book should be coming out this summer. It won’t get the press that the new Harry Potter book will receive, but it will, I’m sure, be the better of the two. And I say that as a huge Harry Potter fan.

Crankypantsing

It’s Random Monday

Shelly

1. My new computer will be here on Thursday, assuming that FedEx can find my apartment in a timely manner.

2. Traffic on Hwy45, between B-ton and Unionville is kind of crazy. And by crazy, I mean that the drivers might actually be legit insane.

3. In a fit of collaging mania, I finished the Balancing Equations art journal over the weekend. It has about 20 two-page spreads, in all, so it’s not a huge journal. It’s a nice size, though, so I think I’ll probably make the next one in the same basic dimensions and with the same number of pages. If everything goes well (see #1), I should have scans by Friday or Saturday.

4. I hate my bank. I tried to make an ATM deposit this morning, but they were out of envelopes at one of the main branches. Hrmf. I could see if it were a stand-alone ATM, because those are more difficult for them to keep an eye on. An ATM that is actually attached to a bank ought to be monitored more closely than that, though.

5. Mr. Upstairs has taken to sleeping all day long, and watching television at night. I’m sure you can just imagine how, um, happy this makes me. And by happy, I mean possessed of an aneurysm-inducing level of irritation. Also, hemorrhaging ear drums. I hate having to complain to the management folks about him, and I really don’t want to get someone evicted for being an asswagon, but I prefer my brain and ears to be aneurysm and hemorrhage free, thankyouverymuch.

6. Speaking of Mr. Upstairs, he has now added a couple of random notes to his keyboard scales. Not the same random notes two scales in a row, mind you, and I’m not sure the extemporizing is a good idea, but it does make for a bit of variety. I think he should stop listening to the jazz music channel, though, because it appears to be giving him the strange notion that he is some sort of jazz musician.

7. Via Andy, Bush has a bald head fetish. Also, a turkey fetish. Kink one is okay, but kink 2, not so much.

8. Also via Andy, YMCA. I’ve seen this one before, but had forgotten about it.

9. I got polled by the CBS Evening News. It was a surprisingly thorough–taking about 30 minutes. Most of the questions were about immigration, with some about Chimpy McFlightsuit and his merry band of thugs. Polls are misleading, and if you take enough of them, you start to see how easily they can be manipulated. Still, I can’t help but appreciate that someone actually asked my random opinion on the world events. The results of the poll will be on the CBS Evening News Wednesday night, and on the CBS and New York Times websites Thursday morning.