Category Archives: Technology

Jan23

On being a bad housekeeper, definitely

Posted on January 23, 2013 by heretherebespiders

Hubby’s closing in fast on one of those birthdays that ends in a zero. He’s got over a month to go, but he’s already been shopping for his desired big present. Actually, we already bought it on Sunday. I don’t even want to know how much research he put into this, but he is a very very good technology shopper and looks at reviews, energy consumption, warrantee, and pricing (in at least three countries). This is why he gets to buy his own prezzie. I’m just the one who says if it looks pretty or not. Yes, I’m nothing but a pair of educated and opinionated eyeballs – especially when we’re talking about a new TV.

I wasn’t going to say what we bought – I sure didn’t announce it in Facebook – because it’s kinda dumb to announce to the world you got some new stuff ripe for the stealin’. But I don’t think any of you are so hard up as to drive or fly over here, try to find my house, and then brave the dog just to take a telly you could probably get cheaper where you live. And trust me, with the amount of time it would take to unhook the umpteen things connected to the TV, the dog would have made good progress on removing bits of valuable anatomy. It wasn’t expensive (we are cheap and broke), it’s not huge, or even the newest model or anything, so it’s not worth it. Really. Disclaimer/discouragement ends.

I had one stipulation: that as we removed the old TV, we cleaned the hell out of the components and the corner the whole shebang sits in. This had not been done in the almost eight years we’ve lived here. It was well, well past time. I’m hairy, iDJ is hairy, and over the 8 years the animals have gone like this: 1 cat, 1 big dog; then 2 cats, 1 big dog; then just the 2 cats. Currently, 2 cats, one big dog. And both big dogs would blow their entire thick hairy coats twice a year, yay! So. Bound to be a fur-fest back there, despite my semi-monthly attempts to stick the vacuum hose behind there. Very half-hearted semi-monthly attempts. Probably bi-monthly. Maybe bi-annually. It wasn’t high on my list of stuff to do, in any case. And moving all the gear out of the way was never, ever going to be a job I did alone.

I was quite pleased when he agreed. It had to be hard to wait to play with his new toy until after everything was vacuumed, wiped off and tidied up. It did take over an hour, if not two. Here’s some of the evidence:

Hahah, Christmas tree needles! No telling what vintage these are.

I didn’t even know we had an extra Wii-mote battery thingie…

What’s with all the spiderwebs? And I have no idea what this remote went to, I’d never seen it before. It says DVD on it, but we only had one and that was mine from the US. It’s a mystery-clicker!

The worst one. This was what was underneath the Sky box, which was underneath my DVD player, which was underneath some stuff I didn’t know how to use. Note the nasty SCART cables: this could not have been good for the electronics. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

There wasn’t as much fur as I expected, and only one sticky spot on the floor under the stand itself (we believe this may have been beer at one point, spilt at an impromptu get-together). One thing I am proud of – yes I can still have some pride after sharing this disgusting mess – is that me and the Dyson kept hubby from having an allergy attack during all this. Usually dust gets him sneezing like a donkey.

Perhaps new television sets are a placebo cure for allergies?

Jan10

The ABC’s of the Internet

Posted on January 10, 2013 by heretherebespiders

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I’m fascinated by the predictive search suggestions in Google. For a while I’ve been wanting to look every letter up one by one, to see what is suggested, and tonight seemed like a good night to try it. So for your (but mostly my) amusement, here are the ABC’s of the Internet, aka Google, (as of January 10, 2013, as searched by a mobile device in the Republic of Ireland.

This will be a long one!

Come on, Apple, you can beat Amazon! AOL? Do people still use that?

I’ve already found something that I have no idea what it is, backpage. This is going to be the first of many, many times I don’t have a clue. I’m about to prove that I’m pretty culturally inept.

“Cool math”? I’m boggled. Firstly that there are people looking for this, and secondly that it actually has significant search results. Where’s “cool spelling”?

I’m assuming dominoes is the pizza joint and not the game. I have no idea what duck dynasty is, but it sounds like a computer game. And, I have my first pop culture result, dancing with the stars.

I don’t know what edmodo, easybib or edline are. And why does ESPN get two searches? Is ESPN3 that very much different than any other ESPN?

Thank feic Facebook beat out Fox News. I’m still disgusted that Fox came in second, and I’m pretty sure they are entirely responsible for fiscal cliff showing up here, too. Forever 21 I heard about recently, and the name rather nauseates me. Donno what fandango refers to, other than a dance, and frys? I’m guessing it’s either yet another American place to spend money, or there are a lot of people who need basic cooking tips.

Color me surprised: Google and it’s relatives get seven out of 10 spots. And the other three are all pretty geeky, too. Looks like if you want to get Internet attention you should either embrace or avoid a starting G. I’m not sure which would be better, I know SFA about marketing.

Aww, quaint and annoying Hotmail gets top rank. Hobby Lobby…only heard of them recently because of their opposition to birth control…or was that gay employees? Or both? No clue what happy wheels are. Shocked that HuffPo is way down in fifth! Not surprised to see Honey Boo Boo (shudder), but I think we have our first non-US retail chain with H&M. Unless they’re over the pond, too. I wouldn’t know.

The I section is a lot like the G section, is it not? Mostly techie, but I’m still surprised that Apple products aren’t higher on the list. IMDb is awesome; I often wish my mother was around for the Internet age as she would be on IMDb constantly. No clue why indeed is so high up the list, seems strange entirely that anyone would look for that. Yet another one I don’t know, clearly.

Jimmy Johns, justice and Justin TV all have me scratching my head. I can guess the last one is linked to our first ‘celebrity appearance,’ Justin Beiber. Good to see that JC Penney’s is still around.

Um. A kayak is a small boat. Is there a fad to run the rapids lately? I feel as though I should know what KBB is, but I can’t pull it out of my head just now. Khan Academy: please, please tell me that is where people go to study Star Trek. And we have royalty on the scene, we are amused to note.

What’s a lululemon? My mental picture is the old cartoon character Little Lulu, with a head like a lemon. I’m sure someone will enlighten me. I also see a first result that has anything to do with romance with love quotes. Awwwww.

I nearly knew all of these. But nope, I haven’t a clue what city metro pcs refers to. I’m also a bit saddened by mortgage calculator.

Except for Nordstrom, the N’s are all about sports and current events. Keep that in mind when naming your next blog or retail business.

Omegle? Sounds like a confused breakfast dish. I don’t know what that is, obviously. We have our second quote-unquote musical artist, too. And a second mention of lurve and infections with OKCupid.

Never heard of project free TV. Powerball seems kind of vague as a search term, doesn’t most lotteries have a version of the game called powerball?

Quizlet, qwibids and qwop are results that leave me quizzical. We seem to have more literary thinkers in Q, with life and love quotes both in the top ten. Mathematics is rearing its incomprehensible head again, too.

I’m stumped with the top result this time. I do not know what redbox is. This is the first time I feel kinda stupid, to be honest. Rate my professor sounds like Ireland’s rate my teacher – a pretty cool thing for us here as two of iDJ’s uncles are teachers and get high marks. Restoration hardware… I don’t know what that is, but if it is a TV show I’d probably like it. Is REI a real estate company?

I know all of the S’s, go me! Still, seems significantly slanted Stateside. I’m not good enough to alliterate for any length of time, it seems.

Back to being schtupid again. TMZ? Sounds vaguely familiar… The Voice? Not a sausage. Very odd that out of all the instances of the word ‘the’ online, just one is a top-hit Google result. And I don’t know what it is. Sigh. A couple of linguistic searches here, that’s comforting.

I know all of these! I do if Univision is a TV/Internet provider, that is. The U’s seem to be about sending things places and banks. Interesting.

Sigh. I’m getting tired of being reminded that I’m ignorant. I don’t know who or what Vera Bradley is, or vrbo.

Wow, the W’s are a big disappointment! Of course WallyWorld gets top billing, damn them. Weather and white pages are completely dependent on where you live; how can these be top searches when they are so generic? I’m also baffled by the two results starting with www. I mean really. If you’re gonna type all that, people, you no longer need Google.

X-Factor. Also generic. I think every damn country on the planet has a version of this show. Sigh. At least one of my very favorite websites ever is here, xkcd. Go visit them.

I had no idea Yahoo was still so popular. Six out of ten! Two to YouTube and poor Yelp hollering to itself somewhere in the middle.

Huh. I guess the less a letter is used, the less likely I am to know what the hell it’s been used for. I don’t know zillow, zumiez, or zulily. I have no idea why anyone is searching for zero dark thirty, either. I use the expression oh-dark-thirty to mean whatever godawful time the cat wakes me up, but why would anyone search for it? What does it all mean?

Well, none of it means anything, really. I was just curious! It can’t be correct – no cats showed up anywhere. We all know the Internets are 99% cats.

Jan7

Cat-annoying fail

Posted on January 7, 2013 by heretherebespiders

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Total fail. Me trying to irritate Spottie to the point where he’ll wake up. This, in the hopes that he won’t annoy me to the point where I wake up tonight.

Yes, my voice really is that nasal and whiny.

Dec16

What I learned this week Dec 10 – 16

Posted on December 16, 2012 by heretherebespiders

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I think we all learned what I learned on Tuesday. Never again.

I’ve also learned it didn’t work. But, thanks to Sled, I may have learned what is really wrong with me. This will take time, and I hope my physio will be able for it as so far, my experiments are fruitless. I know SFA about my musculature.

I learned that there isn’t a good version of C.W. McCall’s ‘Wolf Creek Pass’ on YouTube. Sometimes you hear something that sticks with you for life, and becomes “something I say all the time.” This song has one phrase I love and have used here on the blog, so I was trying to find it for a comment elsewhere. There’s tons of vid of the actual road. But there’s nothing that comes close to the droll, sarcastic redneck trucker perfection of McCall’s original. I would do such a better job than what I found online. Wonder if hubby could play the tune? Maybe there’s a future for me in cover versions of old comedy country songs. What a fun idea! I can do redneck and sarcastic with the best of ’em. And my singing voice, to me, is annoyingly nasal – so maybe country singing is my only hope.

I already knew that despite disliking country music as a rule, I have a soft spot for trucker songs. I blame my dad for having an 8-track tape of Trucker Music in our beautiful customised Ford Econoline van (how I loved that beast). However, I have just learned that I cannot find what that tape was anymore. I was going to post a picture. Wonder if dad still has it? Probably not, it’s been well over 20 years since we’ve had anything to play an 8-track on. And the tapes themselves went bad pretty fast, playing two or more tracks at the same time. Records are soooo much better, if impossible to play in a van. Yes, I still prefer vinyl above CD and most digital. The high end on CD hurts my ears, and I can’t afford a good sound system to let digital do all that it can do.

I’ve also just learned that despite talking about 8-tracks (and earlier today, rotary phones), I don’t feel old due to the changes in technology since those things were common. I’m totally confident that people who are kids today will look at iPads, CD’s and smart phones the same way when they hit their 40’s. Actually I think CD’s are already on the way out. I’m happy to be young enough to work the new tech without getting too irritated, and old enough to really appreciate how fantastic it is.

I think I’m done for the week. I’m not funny this time, if I ever am. I’m tired and hurting a bit, and worn out from getting packages ready to post to the states. At least we could do that much this year! Even if I really get cranky with all the tape and paper and tape and scissors and tape…

Nov23

First video test

Posted on November 23, 2012 by heretherebespiders

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I’ve finally gotten off my arse (figuratively) and figured out how to upload a video to YouTube, so I can post it here. Since I’m poor and I can’t pay for the fancyschmancy WordPress add-in.

So here’s a link to a few hilarious moments of Neko trying to stomp-nip Spot, Spot running off to chase a laser, and Lokii bitching about it all.

Sep15

Growing Thing

Posted on September 15, 2012 by heretherebespiders

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I ran into the house few minutes ago. “Come see! Come see! Better put on shoes, it’s damp out.”

Fabulous hubby, iDJ, didn’t stop for shoes but did grab his iPhone.

“It’s over here, in the corner, you probably won’t get a picture,” says I.

I showed him a gourd I’ve managed to grow. As he was taking a pic, I was blathering away about how I didn’t know if it was a pumpkin or a courgette (zucchini). I lose track of these things, he knows well. I also was telling him how I figured out how to stop gourds from rotting on the vine – it’s called blossom-end rot and if you just manage to keep an eye out for baby fruit after the bloom has faded, you can scrape off the mushy flower with a fingernail and voila! it doesn’t get all icky and decide to die. Hey, I had to Google that one, it was killin me to have a fruit and then, suddenly, a ball of mush.

It’s still small and unidentifiable – I’m guessing it’s a courgette based on two things – I think that’s what I planted there, and pumpkin usually comes from the vine rather than right at the heart of the plant.

Look at all the other female flower ready to bloom! I might have more, yet – and there is another small one at the back that you can’t see.

Wish me luck!

Aug29

More snooze alarming

Posted on August 29, 2012 by heretherebespiders

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I don’t know what’s going on with me lately, but I have some serious thoughts in the 10-minute snooze gap. I’m sort of half-awake, half-hallucinating, half-intellectual, half-bad at mathematics.

Today I wondered if digital clocks have any internal parts that rotate. If they do, what direction do they turn? Are they still really digital if the rotation is clockwise? Is it still really a clock if the turn is anticlockwise?

No wonder I never hit snooze more than once a morning.

Aug24

Snooze alarming

Posted on August 24, 2012 by heretherebespiders

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This morning, in the surreal 10 minutes I allow myself between snooze alarms, I had a Commodore 64 text-only game half-dream wherein your “soul” left your body when you hit the snooze, and if you slept through it, you would turn into a goblin.

The “soul” was a lower-case p, by the way.

I used the above as a FB status update today at 8pm because at 8am it still felt too visual for a short synopsis. I’m not entirely sure if a goblin really was the thing you’d turn into, or if it was a game I was playing in the dream, or if my dream idea of a ‘soul’ just happened to look like a lower-case, slightly green ‘p’ on a black background and my waking brain decided it was an old computer game.

Does anyone remember the text-only game DND? It’s really the only text game I ever played, in 1990, on a Tandy 1000EX. I had graph paper and I mapped out all of the dungeon levels so I wouldn’t get lost. I fudged the truth on FB as no one remembers the Tandy but most would recall the Commodore 64 or 128. We had a 128, hahahah, suck it, you peons who only had the 64-bit version! Our Dad has always been great for keeping up with computers, technology and gaming. We even had an Atari. My older sister liked Frogger best, but I was mad for the Q-man. I played Q-Bert until I got too good at it, and turned the joystick upside down and played it that way as a challenge, until that got boring. And then I realised the whole time I was playing it on the ‘easy’ level. When I switched it to ‘hard’ it kicked my ass and I gave up.

Well I went off on a tangent there, didn’t I. Guess that’s what a blog is for. Mine, anyway.

I have no idea what might happen if you slept all the way through a snooze alarm, I’m just incapable of doing so. Does it give up and stop eventually? Or could it be that the part that makes you you will slip off into the ether, or ethernet, forever?

Aug13

Ooo.

Posted on August 13, 2012 by heretherebespiders

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I have no idea where I’m going with this post so bear with me! Just again feel the need to write, to reach out, and see what happens.

First off I use the WP app to write new posts – rarely for comments – so it was a surprise to realise the update I downloaded over the weekend made a lot of changes. Hence the ‘ooo.’ There’s all kinds of swiping and whatnot instead of the Microsoft-training we all have of closing or ‘x-ing’ out of something. And man, just then: attempting to get the iPad to accept x-ing was a trial… Second time, it’s a winner! I love this stupid thing.

Stupid thing is now a year old! My iPad is a year old. I never wanted it, never even considered it as something I would need. And now? Like a Texan’s firearm, you’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands. Yes, I’m teasing my Texas friends here – I seem to have quite a few and none of you fit that stereotype; I know it well but had to poke fun. Feel free to tease me for being a southerner myself, or an Irish drunk with a bad temper! Apparently I am both. Well, part Irish. I do say I’ve taken to the drinking aspect of the culture quite nicely. And I was born in NewJersey – go have a look on a map where the Mason-Dixon line was! Sigh. I can still speak ‘southrin’ any time I want, which entertains Irish people to a great extent. I think hubby only married me because I can do that. I need a south-Jersey refresher course, though – I end up sounding like Tony Soprano when I try. The bad temper is never going away.

What was I talking about? Meh, who cares. I have sunshine again, on a Monday.

And beer.

Woot!

Wait I need a fresh one. At least I’m not abandoning my empties in the grass like I did on Friday. Man, it was so hot that day my sweat smelled of beer. It might tomorrow at work. Whoops. I better switch back to rum and Pepsi Max after this one. It’s just…beer and sunshine are made for each other. I remember the day I discovered Sam Adams Cherry Wheat beer. I’m not usually a big fan of wheat beer but it was a hot day and I had plenty of them in the fridge, and sun and heat and no where to be. I reeked of cherries. It came out of my pores everywhere, liked I’d bathed in cherry skin-cream. Sort of gross, but by then I really, really, didn’t care.

And that wasn’t even the day I broke my pinky toe by sitting in the sun, drinking, and holding my pee so long that when I finally had to get up – about four or five beers later – I smashed my foot into some stairs and aw, first broken bone ever. I was close to 30 if not past it by then. Probably past it. Wonder if beer makes your bones weak? Or if having a massive-capacity bladder does? Ah well. I broke the same toe about 10 years later, just doing my usual tripping over nothing. Sober (ish) that time. Fun times… sad thing is, I used to be able to wiggle my pinkie toes independent of the rest of my toes, as a party trick, and that one doesn’t bend much any more.

Damn you, cloud, go away!

Better go back and reread and see if I have any point here today…

Ooo. Just hit preview and I have no paragraphs. That is bad…this stream of consciousness style of writing depends on visual breaks or I sound like I’m insane. Which is quite likely but I’m usually good at hiding it better. With paragraphs.

Man that cloud is annoying. Just wide enough to block my sunshine and make me cold. Go away, go away faster! Yes I see you moving, but move faster! And you! you, trailing behind! Move upward. Spiders need solar power.

Right, well, it appears I have nothing to say of any real import. I’m trying, I’m reaching out, because I’m in a good mood today and lately I haven’t been anywhere near a good mood. I’m doing my best to keep up a dialogue and even if it is me talking shite via writing, I imagine you listening and I don’t feel so alone.

Now if that second big-ass cloud would just move it along a bit, I’ll be happy…OMG still no paragraph breaks. Time to go find the help on this new app… Sorry… Will edit afterward so I make a modicum of sense.

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