Shelly

Mah Motherboard

May 28, 2007November 2, 2015 Shelly

I pulled the dead motherboard out of my old computer, thinking it might be useful for an art project. At the very least, it’s kind of fun to photograph.

That little thing in the center of the photo, that looks like a miniature paper cutter, is where the processor sits. The itty bitty arm holds it in place. The cooling fan sits in the black plastic cage surrounding it.

After I’d pulled out the motherboard, I realized that it looks a bit like the model in at the beginning of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. If I had a better camera, I’d be able to capture the streets-and-buildings feeling. It’s really kind of cool.

Photography

Mr. Worm

May 28, 2007November 2, 2015 Shelly

It’s still raining, or at least, it’s drizzling and misting, which is probably just as irritating to the folks who are trying to engage in traditional Memorial Day activities.

This little guy was wriggling around on my patio this morning. I couldn’t get a properly focused photo of him, because he wouldn’t hold still for me. Not to be gross, but somehow worms and remembering dead people seem to go together.

Pets, Photography

A Play in One Act

May 27, 2007September 21, 2015 Shelly

SCENE: A small dining room in a small town in the middle of nowhere. The scent of jasmine rice wafts on the warm, spring air

[Miss Brown, tantalized by the smell, settles herself and waits patiently. She knows her turn will come…]

[Eventually…]

[Slingers, though, wait for no one.]

Yes, she was drooling like that over rice. Plain old rice. Something is seriously wrong with my dog, I think.

Photography

Blue Ball in the Rain

May 27, 2007September 21, 2015 Shelly

It’s been raining on and off all day, with low, rumbly thunder. I guess we needed it, because I don’t think it’s rained much recently.

When I was out in the country, I’d check the weather religiously. Things can sneak up on you in the hills, and somehow living in a valley made bad weather seem especially menacing. Since moving back to town, I’ve noticed that I rarely pay attention to the weather beyond noting what it\’s doing right at that moment. And sometimes, even then, I don’t notice what the sky is doing. Living in a brick building makes it difficult to hear the wind and rain. It’s a solid building, which has hugely reduced my storm anxiety.

It’s nice to be able to actually enjoy storms.

Crankypantsing, Photography

Unforseen Consequences

May 26, 2007September 21, 2015 Shelly

One of the things I hadn’t considered, and under the circumstances it wouldn’t’ve made any difference if I had, is that all my cookies are fubarred–even after importing them from my old drive. Hrmf! This has resulted in me being locked out of my Coppermine gallery, because forgetful me can’t remember my password. I have a list of numbers + words that I rotate through, so eventually I should be able to figure the correct combination, but in the meantime, I seem to’ve hit the limit for incorrect attempts. Grrr. For some reason, I’m finding that the words “You have been banned” in big red letters are just a little bit irritating.

This whole forced upgrade experience has not been going as smoothly as I would have liked. And by “not going as smoothly,” I mean “is a galactic-sized pain in my behindermost.

Clouds at Sunset

So maybe thinking about happy little clouds will help? Because, on the bright side, I think I’ve got pretty much all of my software installed, including the 99.9% useless Adobe Photo Deluxe, whose only purpose in existing is to provide me with cheesy faux film negative borders on images.

Addendum: I figured out my Coppermine password. Whew!

Crankypantsing

Instant Review: Dial-up

May 26, 2007November 2, 2015 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

May 26, 2007November 2, 2015 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.

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

May 26, 2007September 21, 2015 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).

Front Cover

Wings

Then I Shall Be

To Those Who Know Her Less

Solving for X

Mending Bone

Eclipse

Three Unknowns

The Moon Came Down Too Soon

Fig.42

The First Last

Form of a Radical

But what will our gift be, riding afar,
Our brightest jewel, the Northern Star

Would you dream those were our shadows
Weight in carats, price in dollars

There Have Been Wrecks on Smaller Seas

Left: A tiny “Mayflower” launched on sunlit seas
Right: And the visions faded that now we see

Inflorescence

Three Pennies and Two Birds

Ten Pieces Given

My Annie dear, you lift your eyes
To ask me where the moral lies?

Five Paper Dolls

Cut Away Here

If You Should Get it and Let It Fall

Dancing Hands

Spine

Foredge

Crankypantsing

Adventures in Computing

May 24, 2007November 2, 2015 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.

Uncategorized

It’s Heeeere!

May 23, 2007November 1, 2015 Shelly

Not only did they update the tracking info, but they delivered it a day earlier than originally estimated. And without a signature. Yay!

BASKETCAT IS PLEASED