Category: Crankypantsing

Crankypantsing, Photography

Unforseen Consequences

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.

100_3717
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

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!

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.

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.

Crankypantsing

It Is Done

Shelly

Mr. Computational Device has been ordered. Thankfully, I was able to find one without Vista pre-loaded on it. Ugh. Now, all I have to do is play the waiting game and cross my fingers that UPS/FedEx doesn’t screw up.

I stopped for coffee this morning, so I’m vibrating. For some reason, the coffee I make at home, even when it’s extra strong, doesn’t do this to me. Hmmm.

And that is the boring, boring, boring extent of my Friday morning news update.

Crankypantsing, Meta

Jeenyous

Shelly

Yahoo periodically tags mail from its own groups as “bulk.” This means that if you subscribe to any Yahoo groups, there is a non-negligible chance that some of your mail is getting snagged by your spam filter. This is not a new phenomenon, but I was reminded of it while doing a quick perusal of my trash bin prior to emptying it, and I thought I’d take a moment to complain to a bunch of folks who couldn’t care less and couldn’t fix the problem even if they wanted to. Why? Well, that’s the kind of day I’m having, so I thought I’d share the love.

Hugs n’ kisses,
Miss CrankyPants

Crankypantsing, Pets

Mystery Solved

Shelly

Do you ever have one of those days that should be skipped? When you know you should just go back to bed and try again tomorrow? Well, it’s early yet, but today seems to be heading down that path.

I got up this morning–after being kept awake half the night by Mr. Upstairs stomping around his apartment–to find that some jerk had parked a U-Haul behind my car. What the hell?! So I had to wander around the apartment complex, looking for a likely suspect. Knocking on strangers’ doors is not on my to-do list, and having to do so at 6am is enough to make my head implodiate. I did finally find our neighborhood asschapeau, though, by knocking on doors of apartments without curtains.

Speaking of Mr. Upstairs, I had to call and complain about him again. The office person said that the complaints do go in his file, and that after so many (she didn’t quantify “so many”) they will take action. She didn’t say if action meant fines or eviction or what, and I didn’t ask, because I was too cranky. It was good to find out that he really is being given written notification of each complaint, and that they are anonymous. Not that he couldn’t figure out that I’m the irritated party, but still.

In better news, Miss Brown received another compliment on her deportment. I believe the exact words were “What a good dog!” Ha! She is charming, for sure, but believe me, it is all a carefully calculated act. Also, while outside on her tie-out, she played peek-a-boo with my across-the-hall neighbor, who said it was very cute. Neighbor said she went out on her patio, and Harriet had her head craned around the end of the privacy fence partition, watching her. She called to Harriet, who ducked back around to our side of the partition. I was watching Harriet from inside my apartment, and it was pretty darned cute.

And speaking of my across-the-hall neighbor, she solved the Mr. Raccoon mystery! She puts out food for the stray cats, and Mr. Raccoon has been thieving it for years. He’s apparently quite brazen, and will hang around her patio and even peer into her window at dinner time.

Also, three more two-page spreads in the Equations art journal. If I keep this up, I may finish it before next Giftmas!

Art, Crankypantsing, Photography

Plaster and Paper

Shelly

Still no computer. Still cranky as hell.

Other than that, it was a (mostly) lovely weekend. I got a lot of arting done. I can’t play show-and-tell, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. I’ve been mostly playing around with re-creating the patina on crumbling old plaster walls. It’s actually pretty easy, and involves gesso, Caran d’Ache Neocolors II (other water soluble crayons may work just as well, but I haven’t tried them), and baby wipes. It takes a little practice to blend, then partially remove the color, but it’s not difficult. It helps to periodically refold the baby wipe, because unused portions will remove more crayon than those that are have been clogged with pigment.

I’ve also found that paper grocery bags are excellent foundations for this technique, because of the way they are folded and, after use, slightly crumpled. Even after ironing, the crumples show through the layers of gesso and crayon. The only drawback to using them is that they are not archival. There may be similar papers available that are, but I suspect that it would be difficult to find one that had the same weight and fibrous quality as used grocery bags.

Teach Hiúdí Néill 11

Teach Hiúdí Néill 4
Teach Hiúdí Néill by Seán Ó Domhnaill, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license

Frustration is: Six two-page spreads in an art journal and no way to share them. So, for now, you’ll just have to make do with beautiful photos of real crumbling walls.

Happy damned Monday, everyone!

[ETA: This originally was illustrated with different photos, which of course have disappeared from Flickr.]