Category: Crankypantsing

Pennies

I was playing around with holding a couple of stacked Lensbaby macro filters in front of the phone camera lens.

My cute little laptop went back to the store today. Two BSoD episodes and one huge crash were enough to make me reconsider. They didn’t have anything in stock (aside from the ridiculously overpriced MacBook the salesdude tried to talk me into) that had the specs I wanted, so I had to have one shipped to the store. That means waiting another week, and I am sooo not good at that. Hrmf.

I adore my new laptop, but I was starting to think maybe there was something wrong with the screen and I should take it back. Every time I touched the top part, above the function keys, the screen would dim. Hrmf! After spending the better part of the last two days getting all my software updated and all my data migrated, I was not looking forward to that. Not one little bit. And then I noticed that the screen dimmed when I held my hand above the keypad area. I wasn’t even touching the computer, so it couldn’t be a short in the wiring, right? I did a little searching online and found that this is actually a feature. There’s a sensor right above the keypad that tells the screen and the backlighting on the keyboard to dim themselves when the ambient light dims. DUH.

In other news, I went grocery shopping today. That may not seem at all noteworthy (and it’s really not), except that it’s the day before the Superbowl. The grocery store was a zoo. I spent almost half an hour in line at the deli (must have cheese!). The asshole in front of me, when it was his turn, was busy talking on his phone. Despite the fact that there were about 12 people behind him, he told the deli guy to wait while he finished his call. I just don’t understand how people can be that self-absorbed

And now, a gratuitous pig picture.

The weather has been disgusting. I don’t care, though, because I get a four-day weekend. I am soooo looking forward to it. And next week they’re supposedly going (finally!) start replacing my interior doors. Apparently it’s a little more complicated than I thought, so they’re doing them one at a time. Hopefully this will mean that not only will they not be flaking paint all over the place, but they will actually shut properly. As it is now, the only door that latches is the bathroom. One bedroom door is too loose and one is too fat.

The painters removed the vent cover in the bathroom. I don’t know why, because it already had 487 layers of paint on it. What difference would another one make? They forgot to put it back, so I took the opportunity to clean it really well, then run it through the dishwasher to loosen the paint. After a couple of hours with a razor blade scraper, a letter opener, and a pair of tweezers, it’s mostly cleaned up.

So, my real blog is down AGAIN.  God knows why.  Possibly hacked or (more likely) my web hosts did something that broke it.  In any event, I can’t access the back side or the public side.  Until it gets fixed (tech support is slower than molasses in January), I guess I’ll be playing here.  I also think it’s time to switch hosts, once the holiday cat sitting money starts rolling in next week.

In the meantime, here I am (I’d move back here if I could find a way to import a large blog from WordPress to Blogger, but that doesn’t seem possible, at least not with my non-existent coding skills).

Alsoplustoo, here’s a photo of FEET.

I spent the early morning scraping and scraping and scraping in the bathroom. And then the painters came, and they scraped some more. And now there’s drywall mud everywhere. They’re coming back on Monday to finish. Supposedly maintenance is going to replace my three interior doors (today, I thought, but I haven’t heard from them yet). After that, there will be no more peeling paint! I hope.

Also, there’s a new film/lens pack available form Hipstamatic, and it’s not crappy! In fact, I’m kind of in love with it. It’s geared toward food photography, but I like it as an overall combo. The photo above was taken in really crappy light bathroom, but it doesn’t have the harsh yellow/green tones that most of the other film/lens combos have under interior lighting. So, if you have an iPhone and use the Hipstamatic photo app, I’d recommend picking up the Foodie SnapPak.

Further lessons in why we do not use latex paint on top of oil paint. The painters are supposedly coming on Friday. At this rate (the photo is just what I peeled off the bathroom walls this morning), everything will be peeled and scraped before they get here.