Archive for the ‘Living’ Category

I’m an automatic uploader. Can’t help it. When I see that there’s a new version available, I nab it without thinking, that’s just how on-the-edge and kinda stupid I am.

And WordPress, the blogging software I use for my sites, is excellent in that regard. It wasn’t terrible to upload before, just time-consuming, and ever since an automatic updater was developed it was ridiculously easy to keep those little version numbers current. Just hit the button, click OK a bunch of times, and you’re golden.

This morning they launched v2.8. And I clicked. And suddenly the post editor fizzed out and just showed me little red lines where the timeless prose used to be. And I had a momentary freakout, because, as I said, all my sites are WP-driven.

Fortunately the support forums – which are now lighting up like an upgraded Christmas tree – supplied some suggestions. I deactivated all my plugins, manually deleted and uploaded \wp-admin and \wp-includes, and then reactivated everything one by one. (The Social Media page plugin is still broken, by the way) But judging from the other posts in the support forum, I may have gotten off lucky. So before you upgrade your own blogs, go skim the forum and make sure you’re ready, and be sure to upgrade manually.

Or just wait for 2.8.0.1 or whatever to come along.

Spotted at Whedonesque, these fan cakes are perfect for snacking while you’re making evil plans, sharing with the homeless, or using as a delicious shield while thwarting evil plans. Mostly, they’re just cool. Cake goggles? Amazing.

We’re about to go rejoin the Y in the hopes that putting ourselves in the proximity of lots of exercise machines and a pool will somehow frighten our bodies into toughening up. Problem: there’s a pool.

Which is good, because Teres and I both love to swim and it’s good for you. But I haven’t bought of pair of swim trunks for many fashion cycles now –  jean shorts, which aren’t allowed at our Y — have served me well for decades now, and I’m at a loss. What to buy?

Last time, years back, the style was for fairly short shorts that now, compared to the usual knee-length versions I see around me, make me look like a pervert who’s temporarily misplaced his trenchcoat, and this is not the image I wish to portray (we’ll leave the accuracy of it alone for a moment). But should I get the knee-length ones?

According to eHow.com, hell no:

Pass on the board shorts if you are big in the belly. These have a tendency to hang low under the gut emphasing it more than you want.

As I resemble an albino manatee, they recommend something called “volley” shorts, in dark colors, no stripes, all cotton, possibly with warning buoys to ward off speeding motorboats.

Personally I kinda like the old-fashioned look (see above), but only if I can find a straw hat to go with it. What do you think? What should a fat man wear to the pool?

So, went to the doctor today. Overall cholesterol still good and well within the safe range, but good cholesterol isn’t as high as it should be. He’s suggested other things before such as fish oil and walnuts and whatnot, and today he mentioned the report that a daily glass of red wine can improve cholesterol and help lessen the chance for heart disease.

I’m willing to try most anything, except… I don’t drink. Not because I have anything against it, I just really hate the taste of alcohol in any amount. While sampling some with friends I managed to find combinations of fruit juice and sangria that were palatable — essentially an extremely weak homemade wine cooler — and a friend introduced me to ice wine one night that was as good as any I’ve had, but for the most part I’ve been disinterested in finding ways to stomach something I didn’t really want anyway. “The winter grapes add a rich overtone to this kerosene…”

But if it does in fact help my health, I’m willing to give it a shot. Which beings me here, with a question. What should I try?

Ideally I’d want something that resembled a strong sweet fruit juice, with as little alcohol taste as possible. Recent reports from the UK suggest that sherry also has the cholesterol-lowering properties, although not the lowering-heart-disease ones, and that might be an option. And it can’t be a budget-breaker.

Any suggestions?

I’m still deep in the “add 5 cool apps, delete 4 after trying each one once, immediately add 5 more” phase of my iPod Touch love affair. My little mini-desktops are constantly spinning with apps that zoom in just long enough to wiggle the others aside before I bore of them and consign them to iTunes hell.

And yet, even with the amazing time-wasting bonanza available to me through the iTunes store — and that’s not even counting the new world open to me if I ever hold my breath and jail-break the thing — there are still whole categories of applications I can’t find. So, with a hopeful hint to restless programmers who just need a direction, here are the apps I want.

RealTip

I want to enter the total of my dinner and get the amount of the tip. But, and this is important, only after I check off boxes to describe my waitperson’s performance, which would then positively or adversely affect the amount of the gratuity. Did she smile and remember everything, but spill ketchup on my wife’s head? Was the food present, warmer than room temperature, and more or less on the plate? Were we treated to unwanted dinner theater involving our waiter and his ex-girlfriend-who-still-lives-with-him? Were we left waiting less than the time it would have taken to hunt, kill, and prepare the food ourselves? RealTip should take it all into account and give me a total I can live with.

GeoPerv

Not sure about your new neighbor? Shivering whenever you walk by your new babysitter? Wondering why your date seems so creepy? Snap a surreptitious pic of him and GeoPerv will instantly compare it to the local sexual offenders database (determined by geolocation) and “To Catch a Predator” reruns.

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One year ago today, I was marching in a circle with many of my television heroes and an awful lot of people I had previously only known as screennames. Me and some friends managed to organize a gathering of 450+ people to picket FOX Studios during the writers strike, and Joss Whedon and Jane Espenson helped make it a themed strike by inviting writers (and stars) from their various shows to come out. Here’s what I posted at SerenityStuff afterward.

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Sorry for the delay in reporting. I’ve been recuperating from being, in QuoterGal’s perfect phrase, “blissed out.”

So. When last we left our hero, he was taking off for Los Angeles to attend Mutant Enemy Day when fans from the four corners of the globe would be gathering to show their support for the writers’ strike by marching along with writers and actors from Mutant Enemy, Joss Whedon’s former TV production company. Oh, and some Joss fellow.

The flight was uneventful, aside from the med student in the seat next to me who spent the time studying descriptions and full color images of surgeries and some extremely unfortunate man with a rather spectacular genital-based disorder.

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Best thing about the presidential campaign so far? The incredible sense of power it gives me.

Not the power to help elect a new presidentm arguably the most powerful person in the free world, or to affect the course of the next four years. Not even the power to make my voice heard. No, I’ve been given the power to totally blow off some incredibly important people.

In the last few weeks, I have hung up on both Barack Obama and John McCain. I have cussed out, loudly and at length, the heads of both state political party campaigns, and even screamed at Jill Biden when her call dragged me out of the shower. Granted these are robocalls, pre-recorded messages sent out automatically, but there’s still that wonderful feeling of power I get when I hear “Hi, this is Matt Damon, and I’d like to–” and I slam the phone down on him. Take that, Bourne! I’ve heard from sports figures and local politicians, and not one of them gets past my secretary ( i.e. me) to waste any more of my time.

Look people, I’m not going to believe anything your recording tells me over the phone anyway. You’re hoping that the sound of a famous voice lulls me into believing whatever talking point is on the table because hey, we’re friends now, right? We’re talking together on the phone!

Well, my friends know better than to call me during “Pushing Daisies,” Michelle Obama. Click!

Friday was an interesting day. And I use the word “interesting” with loaded meaning (couldn’t find the right smilie to indicate that, so here we are).

High point: finding out with an hour to spare that I would get to do a phone interview with Joss Whedon. All I really remember was that I was focusing on not sounding like a doofus, my painful discovery that it’s a big, big mistake to pound down a large Sprite to calm your nerves when you’re afraid to leave the phone long enough to pee, and that when he did call and we talked I sounded like a doofus.

With luck it’ll appear online Tuesday and in the paper later in the week. Only really new thing in it that I haven’t seen anywhere else: the Dr. Horrible episodes will appear on drhorrible.com pretty close to 12:01 am on their launch dates. Didn’t get if it was PST, I’m hoping to hear back about that. My favorite quote was when I was asking about his knack for attracting obsessive fans:

“That’s what I am, that’s what I grew up as. The things I love, I love very hard.”

Low point: immediately thereafter, when my car blew a head gasket on the way home and my brother-in-law and I spent four fun-filled hours next to Beville Road trying Bars Head Gasket Fix in the desperate hope that mine had blown in just the right way for this to work and save me many hundreds or thousands of dollars that I don’t, strictly speaking, have.

Results: I have an interview which I have now transcribed and will tomorrow edit, modulate, and possibly remaster until I sound like David Attenborough, am now working on my article. Car is running well if not smoothly, the oil has been changed, and we’ll see how that goes.

All in all, best thing about the weekend? Watching the little videos Teres took of the concert with our camera, where her fangirl shrieks can plainly be heard over the din. She’s been blushing nonstop, I’m working on making one of them my Windows startup noise.

Teresa has decided to become a full-time groupie.

Not just the type who gushes about her band online, pins posters around her room and writes “Mrs. Bon Jovi” on her notebooks, although she does that too (not the Mrs. part, she said she has no interest in leaving our marriage or breaking his; I believe she has in mind more of a sophisticated arrangement, like a time-share). No, she plans to be the one who follows her band, concert to concert, city to city, country to country, becoming friends and confidant to the road crew. The fact that we’re broke has no bearing on this. You can’t deny your calling. She has already begun looking into which countries allow you to sell your children.

Yesterday, on an extended and carefully planned last minute whim, she flew to Boston to see Bon Jovi in concert. She’s even now in the air on her way back, possibly without waiting for the plane. With her are the well-wishes, advice, and (in some cases) open envy of the other ladies on the Bon Jovi forum she frequents. They have kept up on her doings from other forum members at the concert who are calling in song-by-song updates, and from me, as I’ve been hearing from Teresa and posting on her behalf with her account. (I am, apparently, “Mr. Teresa.”)

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Well, that was fun.

Dreamweaver was giving me problems yesterday so I rebooted. Or, rather, I turned my computer off and it came back up partway. The graphic image of your motherboard logo or graphics card that you see for a second before your system starts loading? It stopped there. That’s kinda weird.

Memory was fine, checked it in different slots and tried different memory sticks.
Blew out all the dust everywhere.
Video card was fine.
Unplugged all the drives, same thing.
Had it down to either the power supply, the motherboard, or the chip. None of which I could easily test without buying the components.

Here’s the difficult bit: Office Depot has a clearance price on an HP Pavillion computer that’s better than what I have now: $399 after rebate. Tempting. Read the rest of this entry »