January 21, 2008

Tag, She's It

I was tagged by Mark Stoneman to name 8 random things about myself. Like Mark, I often ignore tags. But when reading his 8 things aloud to my partner and coming across his gem about the chickens. I decided, as usual, to twist the meme and change it up.

Here are 8 random things about my partner. (Done with her approval cuz even though with as much as she's tossing and turning and flopping around at night with her surgery sliced hand, I don't really wanna sleep out here on the futon.)

1) In homage to Mark's chickens: My other half was raised in farm country and the entire family was very into 4H ... her younger brother LOVED fowl. At one point they had, and I quote: a bunch of "cross beaked little inbred freaks which did not help the hillbilly impression since they were loose all over the yard, the FRONT yard." Apparently their beaks did not line up. The top beak was not in the same line as the bottom beak which did make the entire family wonder how the durn things even managed to eat.

2) She cooks wonderful things. Delicious, wonderful things. This is both because of 4H and the fact that her mother was a Home Sciences teacher (involved far more than your typical Home Ec stereotypical stuff).

3) She is the messiest cook I have EVER met.

4) She forces ME to do the dishes. (Okay, okay. To be fair, she does all the laundry and I do all the dishes.)

5) She is clutterblind. I have watched her as she stacks papers and books and objects on her little table until it's literally a foot high. And then attempt to place something else on top. And then get mad when half of this slides inevitably to the floor.

6) She reads fem slash fan fiction based on Law & Order SVU and also of the Birds of Prey (DC comics, Batman universe). (And I bet she makes me delete this one.)
(Her first response was to say, Hell yes, you have to delete that. Her second, grudging response, was Okay, you can leave it. But you have to correct it to say fem slash fan fiction ... because if you have to out me about this, at least you can let people know I'm not reading that horrid straight shit.)

7) I introduced her to comic books and now when she recognizes something and makes a comment like, "That's not really a part of the Batman canon, is it?" ... she then whips her head to me and says, "You see? You SEE what you have done to me? I should NOT know these things!"
(hehehehehehe)

8) She FORCED me into getting a dog. Now we have two and I want a third.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:51 AM | Comments (4) | Blog | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Stumble

December 9, 2007

Coding Help

So here's the deal. I'm working on the design of another website, a pro bono deal for a church. And I had this nifty idea. They have an Events page. The page has a "headline" which gives the event name, the day, date and time. Then there's a description of the event. It's a straight-HTML and CSS page. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a little nugget of code in the background that could rip that "headline" to an XML file every time they update that page? And then that XML file would display in a little box on the home page? That way the current events (sans the longer description on the Events page itself) would appear in a little box on the homepage and on the events page and they'd only have to update it once instead of on each page.

I know this can be done. But I don't know Javascript or a whole lot about XML (hey, MT and Feedburner generate my XML for me). I'm a graphic designer who knows some code, not a full-blown web developer. Anyone wanna walk me through developing this?

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:33 PM | Comments (2) | Blog | Stumble

November 20, 2007

Holiday Happiness

Just some silly fun. First person to leave a comment correctly identifying ALL of the quotes (movie and the character speaking) will get a sketch from me. Remember you have to identify all 15 (and there are not 15 different movies here). Quotes which are divided on two lines are spoken by two people (that's number 2, 10, 13 and 14).

EDIT: IMPORTANT
It just occurred to me that the Captcha is going to be annoying for this. Dammit.
Here's how to beat the Captcha's timer (which, apparently I can't set to a different time).
Write your answers in a simple Text Edit program or Notepad. When you are completely done and ready to post ... then hit the comments link ... copy and paste your answers ... fill out the Captcha. Just don't hit the comments link earlier or the captcha image will "time out" without telling you.
If you did hit the link too early, just hit reload and it should give you a fresh captcha.
If it whines that the captcha is wrong, and you've done the answers in a text editor, it's no biggee to recopy.
Sorry ... but it's worth me not having to delete 300+ spamments a day :(

Name the movie and the person/people speaking ...

1) Is my shirt too big, or is that my flesh crawling?

2) How'd you like Grants Tomb?
It's lovely. I'm having a copy made for you.

3) You're just a bee-charmer, Idgie Threadgood, that's what you are. A bee-charmer.

4) Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz time.

5) When I was your age, television was called books.

6) Look, I can see you getting all bunged up for them making you wear these kind of clothes. But face it, you're a neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie.

7) We are men of action, lies do not become us.

8) So, what's an old-timer like you want with a two-timer like me?

9) This is your badness level. It's unusually high for someone your size. We have to fix that.

10) Oh, it's all right, Joe. It's all right. It's my dog. And, uh, my wife.
Well you might have mentioned me first on the billing.

11) I'm not even supposed to be here today!

12) I don't have it. Screws fall out all the time, the world's an imperfect place.

13) Say listen, is he working on a case?
Yes, he is.
What case?
A case of scotch. Pitch in and help him.

14) What's the idea of the kid?
Well, we have a dog, and he was lonesome. That was the idea, wasn't it, Mummy?

15) For once, I'm stuck without a punchline.

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:18 AM | Comments (4) | Blog | hobbies | Stumble

November 19, 2007

Reflections

It's a big week this week for a lot of reasons. Thanksgiving will always be an odd time of year for me. I dreaded the coming of November as a child ... it meant the holidays were approaching and I preferred school to the winter holidays. Not so much because I was an academic geek, but because it gave me something constructive and often at least semi-fun to do. It meant I socialized with other kids.

Being home for the holidays, on the other hand, was stress. We were either preparing to go to Grandma's for Thanksgiving or we were preparing the meal at the house. And while Mom didn't do any spectacular meals at any time, she stressed out about them all the same.

But like so many things at our house, it was all stress and the appearance of tradition rather than reflection and tradition. We didn't really reflect on what we were thankful for as a family. Sometimes, because I was an odd child who genuinely enjoyed quiet contemplation (almost as much as I enjoyed babbling with friends at school) ... sometimes I would try to engage in that thankful reflection by myself. It generally turned into a plaintive wish for different parents, however, and since that simply wasn't what Thanksgiving was about, I eventually abandoned the attempts. And about the time I abandoned them, my mother would begin bringing it up at the dinner table, trying to force us to say every little thing we were grateful for: the house, our family, the house, our stuff, a father who was a good provider, our stuff, oh yeah our health ....

But it was rote answers. What we were supposed to say. Mom had already decided what we should be thankful for and we were supposed to rattle off the correct answers with the proper respect and "thought" in our voices. However, by that time I was a teenager, full of the teenager's contempt for fakery. I like to think that it would have been one thing if we'd been seriously contemplative rather than regurgitating Mom's answers ....

After I moved out of the house, Thanksgiving was simply a day that I neither went to work nor school. It was a day to make Koogali (an old family recipe which I intend to make, take pictures of and share with you one of these days). It was a day to relax and a day to work on the inevitable mess in the house. It was a day to get caught up before a long weekend of frenetic work. On rare occasions in those early years, it was a time for a family visit and dinner.

When I moved to Indiana for graduate school, Thanksgiving remained simply a day off work and school and nothing more. We didn't have the money to go back to Texas to visit. We didn't really cook unless I made Koogali ... perhaps we warmed up some store-cooked turkey ... maybe we made chicken breasts. My ex and I were not big on cooking.

At that time Thanksgiving, like all the holidays, were simply bittersweet to me. It was nice to have a day off. But it was also a reminder that I simply didn't have the kind of close-knit Leave It To Beaver kind of family that I longed for.

And then 1999 rolled around. I'd been sickly, off and on, for about 2 years. I kept going to the doctor and getting fed antibiotics. He wouldn't run even a simple blood test. I'm not a particularly sickly person and I was finally getting irritated and nervous by 1999. By the beginning of '99, I was now getting sick just about every other month. I knew something was not right, but my doctor was not doing anything except phoning in another round of antibiotics.

Monday, the week of Thanksgiving, I finally dragged myself down to a doc-in-the-box that afternoon. The older doctor there, semi-retired but still practicing for the love of his profession, instantly takes a blood test. I listen at the door as he calls my doctor and yells at him. This is not good.

Tuesday, I see my doctor again. He's going to send me to a specialist and he's ticked because I can't get in that same day. This doesn't sound good to me. All I know is my hemoglobin is a 5.8 and apparently that's not good.

Wednesday, I see the specialist. I'm given a bone marrow test (this doesn't sound good) and then asked which hospital did I prefer, St. Joe or Memorial? Umm, neither? This was not an option.

So, Thanksgiving of 1999 I spent in the hospital, no diagnosis ... the specialist turned out to be a hematology/ oncology specialist. I had no idea if I should be thankful to be alive ... or preparing for a painful death. It was Saturday before I found out that I had Hodgkin's, aka Cancer Lite.

In the past eight years, I've gone from an adjunct professor of first year writing (with no health bennies ... yes, cancer, chemo and no health insurance ... it was fun) ... to a full-time instructor with health bennies at that same school. In February of 2004 I was told that my services were no longer needed there, but that I was to finish out the school year. It was a very painful semester of teaching. I still miss teaching. Every day. But, full-time teaching gigs at the college level are not easy to come by. So, I looked elsewhere.

Thanksgiving of 2004, I had interviewed for a job as a copy writer at a dot com based locally. It was one of perhaps two interviews I'd had since I started really looking for a new position in April. I got that job and was to start the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving of 2007 now ... and I was laid off in July. I'm thankful for the severance package I've got. But today I looked at our old website ... and I see that the new owners have finally taken it over. There's so little left of what we had done. The logo that Alan designed is still intact. The nifty triangles that I think Rob adapted from Alan are there. And that's about it. The first project I worked on there, a huge educational piece ... that's gone. All of the work that Warren, Cory, Alan, Rob, Bob and I did on the site design ... it's gone.

I've had just one good interview since July. And that was about 3 or 4 weeks ago, so I guess it's too much to hope that I managed to land that job. The interviewer did tell me that they had over 60 applicants for the one position. They interviewed 8 of us. I'm thankful to have been one of the 8. My ego needed that little warm fuzzy even if I didn't get the job.

So even while I'm thankful this year that I have a steady paycheck even if I don't have a job, that I'm not in the hospital facing a cancer diagnosis, that I have a partner who loves me, that my little sister is expecting her first baby in just 3 months, that I celebrated my 20 year high school reunion by re-connecting with several beloved friends, that some old relationships seem to be getting more healthy ...

... a part of reflection for me will always hold a certain wistfulness as well. I am thankful for those things and more. And yet, I regret that I haven't secured a new job yet, that I haven't used this time off to completely whip the house into shape, that I am still in Indiana and not Texas, that I still haven't gotten my life to the point where I can begin the rigmarole required for adopting a child, that I still have not managed to single-handedly bring about world peace and ended poverty, that I am unable to help a friend whom the system has neglected from the day she was born and who is now in a wheelchair and a nursing home because no one in the system will listen to her, that ....

The list always goes on and on until I do nothing but dwell on the fact that I am not a perfect super-being; I am merely a fallible human.

I am thankful. But rather than simply being thankful for what I have, I choose to focus on what I can accomplish still.

That one day I may learn to walk in balance, to walk in beauty, to walk in harmony.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:20 AM | Comments (2) | Blog | Struggles | Stumble

November 5, 2007

Four Things

That lousy Jod{i} over at Looking Beyond the Cracked Window tagged me. I hate memes. I hate being tagged. She knows this. She owes me interview questions, and yet, she decides to go the easy route and "distract" me with a meme first. Hmph. Only because it's mildly interesting and I'm tired of moving crap around the living room to make room for my beautiful new drawing table ... I will answer. But don't think just anyone can tag me. I ignore most of them. Have even ignored some from the illustrious and lousy Jod{i}.

Four Jobs I've had:

• Assistant Professional Specialist (fancy way of saying not a professor, but a teacher of college students)


• Graphic Designer


• Copy Writer


• Cashier, Customer Service, Sales Rep, Cash Office, Inventory Specialist ... at Bizmart (which was bought out by the evil OfficeMax)

Four Movies I can Watch over and over and over (ad nauseum):
only four?????

• Incredibles


• Stand By Me


• Radio Flyer


• Dead Poet's Society


• Breakfast Club


• The Matrix


• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm


• Lilo and Stitch

Crap, I'm over four, aren't I? Tough.

Four Place I have Lived:

• Amarillo, Texas


• Houston, Texas


• Albuquerque, New Mexico


• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma


• Carmel, Indiana


• Austin, Texas (then I started kindergarten)


• Arlington, Texas


• South Bend, Indiana

Name the two places listed above where I would be ecstatic to live again.

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch:

• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends


• Dog Whisperer


• Life


• Law & Order: SVU


• MythBusters


• Bones


• House

Four TV Shows I'm Still Bitter Were Canceled:

• Joan of Arcadia ... so many curse words come to mind when I think of this show being canceled. It was one of the most intelligent shows on television. Which, of course, is why it was canceled.


• The Black Donnelleys


• Firefly


• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (actually, I'm not bitter over this one ... but I do miss it a lot ... I give Joss major kudos for knowing when to bow out, when the storyline was over ... I'm just ready for a new storyline in that 'verse!)

Four Places I have Been on Vacation:

• Talequah, Oklahoma


• Anadarko, Oklahoma


• San Antonio, Texas


• San Francisco, California


• Omaha, Nebraska

Four Websites I Visit Daily:

• BBC News


• ComicSpace.com


• Gaiaonline.com


• BlogCatalog.com

Four of My Favourite Dishes:

• Flautas con pollo from Fiesta Tapatia in Mishawaka


• Chicken Fajitas


• Lime Chicken (very spicy)


• Omelet with jalepenos, cheese and chorizo

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:

• In a bigger house which was completely paid off in my name


• Texas


• At a job I loved


• Somewhere warm

Now, I'm supposed to tag four more people. I hate tagging as much as being tagged. So, I'll tag you, you ... ummm, you and naturally YOU.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:59 PM | Comments (2) | Blog | Stumble

October 29, 2007

Mozilla and Leopard

I love computers. We had a Commodore-64 back in the day and I've been utterly fascinated ever since. We also legally owned about two pieces of software and everything else was pirated ... so I learned very quickly to explore the program, explore menus and to experiment.

Today I'm one of "those" people. You know, A Mac Person. I've got a happy Intel MacBook Pro that I love. I installed APE and shapeshifter a while back so I could mess with the look of my GUI. Sorry, I've lost the non-computer people, haven't I? My bad. Suffice it to say that APE and shapeshifter let me change the appearance of windows and such, much like a theme for FireFox or Windoze XP.

Out of the kindness of my heart, I did NOT upgrade my computer Friday upon arrival of the new Mac operating system. I was good. I was going to wait until after my other half's birthday was over so that I was not totally distracted by the thousand and one small details that come up after an upgrade. Instead, I posted to the 9rules Notes asking if anyone had discovered any issues whilst upgrading. At first, I was lambasted for a fool and a not-true-Mac-Person for not instantly ripping open the box and running the update. I tried to explain that I was a softie who was trying not to be Teh Computer Geek for the other half's birthday.

After reading about no problems, Saturday I ran the update. I backed up a few things, but not everything. (Oh yes, I was really THAT stupid!) Thunderbird, my email client, had begun crashing inexplicably and I was hoping that the upgrade would stabilize that. Apple had sent through a firmware update and since then, Thunderbird has been freaking out over anything with an attachment. It was driving me mad.

I got the Blue Screen of Death upon the finish of Leopard's installation.

The Blue Screen of Death? But that's a Windoze thing!!! How can this be?

I searched the house for a boot disc so I could finish the backups that I should have already done. Couldn't find one. And, oddly enough, my restore discs that came with the laptop were NOT in the software archive in my home office with all the other software. Grrrrrr. I finally found them, hoped to boot for them, found myself having to use Restore instead. Fine.

Restart.

Oh. My. God.

Wiped. Everything gone!!!?! Noooooooooooooo!

And then I looked more carefully. Instead of approximately 110 gigs of free space on the hard drive, I had about 40. Hmmm. I found a folder called Previous Systems and luckily all my files and preferences were there and, apparently intact. It took me the better part of Saturday and Sunday to get everything working again, but I'm hopeful at this point that I didn't screw up too badly. Turns out that Application Enhancer (APE) blows up the Leopard install. That didn't hit the 'nets until after I'd discovered the issue myself. D'oh!

But the thing that has me frustrated beyond belief at the moment is this:

Thunderbird will NOT have ANYTHING to do with attachments at all now.

I've reinstalled it. I saved my mail and my addressbook, but otherwise deleted everything in the profile and re-created the profile. Nope. I couldn't reply to any email because Thunderbird didn't want to use the signature file. I couldn't even open the Attachments portion of the preferences.

I'm now to the point where I've deleted my signature file ... I can get to everything in the preferences again ... I can now reply to emails. But if there's an attachment, I can't open it or reply or the damn program crashes.

I'm at a loss. On top of that AIM has stopped opening and FireFox was being awfully screwy yesterday as well.

I'm beginning to think that Teh InterWebs hate me.

Anyone else having Mozilla issues????

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:06 AM | Comments (5) | Blog | Stumble