knock yourself on the head

Monday night I stayed up late to watch “The Greatest Game on Earth” – guess what the game is – golf. Unfortunately it didn’t send me straight to sleep like a regular golf game does, but was actually a bit exciting at times – true fiction!

Grace has friends over for a few days. Cato and Bailey have come to stay while Ruth is at a quilting conference. The birds have already been talking back and forth to each other in their funny parrot/people voices and are well settled in.

 

I spent much of Wednesday morning wrestling with software, or more specifically, trying to move data from one piece of software to another. I recently downloaded a new journaling app - it has a nicer interface, and a few features that I like better than the one I was using. Obviously I want to transfer the entries from my old software. Hold the boat! It isn't as simple as that. I exported from the old software in csv format, updated the file as it had lots of formatting inconsistencies, then played around with getting the date into unix timestamp format. Next, I saved it as an xml document. I used to do this sort of data manipulation a lot during my working life, and had even written a few export/import programs to make life easier for myself, but I'm a bit rusty now. It will take some manoeuvring to get the xml file formatted to match up with the new software’s input format. By the time I'm finished I would have been able to do the whole thing by hand many times over! And may still have to do so! But it is fun to try ;-)

~

This was written on Tuesday afternoon:

I could still hear the spirited discussion from the bedroom, even with the door closed. It was one of those days that I wished to be back in the 1950s, serving the men in the dining room then retreating back to the kitchen, which hopefully had a door. We had Carm's friend Eric, from past work days over, and I don't think he even made it fully in the door before the work talk started. Keep in mind that both have been retired for 4 years or more.

Phrases like 'infrastructure' and 'technology' peppered the conversation and they rehashed (again) their years working at odds against each other. It is a most unlikely friendship, as, due to department structure, they were often pitted against each other. However, they both love to discuss things (i.e. beat a dead horse), and neither seems to have a thin skin. So, like two huge elephant seals, bellowing at each other and crashing their enormous chests together, they continued their discussion through the afternoon. I'm sure you aren't surprised to learn that as soon as lunch was finished, I beetled out of there and took refuge in the bedroom, with the door closed. Which didn't bother me any – it gave me some time to work on this week’s writing assignment… I am having a hard time writing this one and need all the time I can get.

~

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. ~Horace Mann

I'm testing Bloggeroid - an android blog writing app

So far the interface is not as good as Blog Post that I used ages ago (its developer stopped supporting it a few years back, but I kept using it until it was broken). That app let the user add photos inline, as well as easily change text characteristics. With this app you need to know some html :-/



I'll post and see how it goes.

There IS an App for That!

When I was on the treadmill this morning I started thinking about some of the stuff I've read recently about the cognitive effects of bipolar. Some of these problems are related to the drugs used to treat it - I could barely string two thoughts together when I was on a higher dose of Lithium - but many are related to the disorder itself. It is only recently that the cognitive decline has been spoken about, and they are suggesting that problems with organizing and planning are areas that are affected. This makes sense to me as years ago I had to start implementing tools to help me do what I used to do easily.

We used to entertain regularly and it wasn't unusual for me to make a meal with several courses, no written plan needed. Now when we entertain I need a detailed schedule/plan to get even a simple supper on the table at a reasonable time. I have to schedule things like when the oven gets turned on, when food goes in and goes out of the oven, what time to start chopping vegetables, what cleaning needs to be done. In other words I have to have EVERYTHING written down - in 5 minute increments. I thought it was just me, but I've been reading of others with bipolar who have similar problems.

This explains why the spare bed is covered in clothes arranged by type. It is still 2 months before I go, but I just can't keep a picture in my head of what I have and what I might need (not much). Shouldn't there be an app for that? Plus as I go through the clothes on the camper I just add them to the pile so I don't have to go out to the camper when it is -20C. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

[on edit: it seems there might be an app for that after all, I've downloaded one to try out - will report tomorrow!]

Speaking of the camper... it is all put to bed for its winter hibernation. We finally decided that we weren't going to make it out for one last hurrah. So there it is - winter time... It isn't a big process to get the water system winterized, but carrying in the tons of food is a little more time consuming. I swear, we could have lived for a week or two without hitting the grocery store... as long as we didn't mind canned food!

Carm made a fresh loaf of bread this afternoon, so since I'd had just a very light breakfast, spent 43 minutes on the treadmill, and hadn't had lunch yet I decided to splurge. After I was done I went onto Calorie Count to add it to my food log for today. Since I had weighed the slice I could be more precise (I entered the recipe some time ago) - WTF!!! 303 calories in ONE slice of bread!!! And that's BEFORE anything put on it. There must be some mistake with that, cause really! The crazy thing is I could have had 1 McDonald's hamburger and still had 53 calories to spare (of course that's hardly a healthy option, but still). It was disturbing!

In fact it was so disturbing that I just said to he$$ with that and ordered Chicken Shwarma for supper. Oh my, it was ever so garlicky! And 1/2 of it is in the fridge for tomorrow ;-) Tomorrow's will surely count for zero calories (won't it). We are just one week away from the end of the first challenge, and here I am stuffed with chicken and garlic sauce...

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

e. e. cummings

My Warm Feet

Spike has the "could you please bring me my socks" thing down pat now. He trots right off down the hall to the bedroom while I sit on the sofa. Of course I have to remember to keep a pair on the floor - I forgot today and sent him away twice before I clued in! I also have to make sure there aren't a ton of other clothes lying about on the floor as these would only confuse him - no more lazy mornings!

This morning was another one of those beautiful mornings full of sunshine. I love going out for my little walk on those mornings. The surroundings are uplifting and go a long way to starting my day in the right frame of mind.

Yesterday we went with friends to a do-it-yourself wine place where we picked up BOXes of wine! I never thought that we'd have wine in a box as Carm is such a connoisseur... Each box holds 5 liters (about 6 1/2 bottles), but supposedly since it is in a bag that keeps the air out, it will keep for a long time. I hope so as we don't drink more than one or maybe two bottles a week. This format will make it easy to grab a few ounces to put into a sauce.

After several days of being totally off track with our diet, today we kept to healthy food. Roasted vegetables graced our plates tonight - I love roasted vegetables.

I'm using the new software to write this post and it seems to be working fine. Last night though I had a little post written up and then hit the wrong key and it disappeared. DOOH! I immediately sent an email to the developers to suggest that the default when backing out of the program should be "save locally" and not discard the whole thing.

O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

Christopher Marlowe

More New Software!!

I'm getting my gadgeteer/computer fix and I'm loving it! I found more new neat software, this time for arranging recipes. It is called ChefTap and is another free android app. It imports recipes from a web page (and seems to do a decent job of it), or you can add your own. Of course you can add categories, choosing from a list or adding new ones. And to make it even nicer it will export the recipes as either text or html. I currently use a program called BigOven on my pc and really like it, but the android version doesn't do any of the things I want it to do. So... with this program on my tablet, and the other on my laptop I will be good to go! I'll export my BigOven recipes and load them onto my website so that I can suck them into this program. I just have to figure out an easy way to do the initial load.

I love software! I am a computer junkie!

I'm using the new BlogPost software to write today's blog. I love it when software does all the things I want it to do - I want to hug the developers for thinking of everything :-) But I'm disapointed that I don't have any photos to insert! May have to take a picture of Carm snoring on the sofa next to me ;-) But he might get mad so I'll just take a picture of Kabira. The dogs haven't featured in many pictures lately.

This morning I had a dentist appointment in my old office building. It has been under renovation for 3 (or is it 4) years and it seems that they are almost finished. But not quite - the dentist office is all torn apart. It has always been weird re-entering the building where I worked for 29 years (yes, the same building - sick eh!), but with the renovations it didn't make my stomach sink. Or maybe it's the passage of time. Regardless, I didn't feel dragged down by the building itself. AND as a bonus and to make the visit really good :-) I met with Jo Ellen for 1/2 an hour. She's my old boss and one of the good things of all my years there. We worked together well, and now we are good friends. She and Chris are the only ones that I still socialize with from work. I'm ALWAYS happy to see her.

After Carm picked me up we went to MEC (Mountain Equipment Coop), also known as the million dollar store cause everything is so expensive. But I had seen a few windbreakers on sale on their website so wanted to check them out. We found one of them, couldn't find the other, but did find, for only $30, a really nice one in red. I would have preferred black as it is so easy to coordinate clothes with, but for $30 red will do (besides, they didn't have the black one). It fits nicely over a thin sweater as well as just a t-shirt so it will be really flexible. The fabric was treated with some chemical so that it is water resistant. Not full-on raincoat water-tight, but it will do perfectly for NZ and camping.

After MEC we went to a new LCBO and checked out their huge selection. We picked a bottle of bubbles that we hadn't tried before. Yum, maybe this weekend. Then... we wandered across the street to the Subaru dealer. There is a new model which is a gussied up Impreza - I really liked it and for just a bit of $ more it doesn't look like a little hatchback. Or there's the Outback $$... We'll hold off as long as we can, but just in case the car dies while I'm gone we want to have our decision all sorted out. It is 14 years old with over 414,000km.

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.

George Washington Carver

BlogPost

I don't really have much to say today, but since I am trying out new software I had to post something! Please bear with the slightly odd formatting here and there.

I'm using the free android software BlogPost. It is letting me insert photos, and once I figured out what I was doing wrong, upload them with the post. It has a local setting so that I can work off-line and when I'm ready I can either send it to online draft, or publish it. So far I'm pretty happy! It looks like it will do the trick for my trip, and even day-to-day. Yay!

As it turns out we ended up going out for supper with Trudie & Leo - I'm not going to say what I ate or where we went, but let's just say that at this rate I will be the biggest loser of the challenge! I'm weak!!!! It would be much easier if there were a restaurant in the area that had good food that wasn't so nasty- Thai or Vietnamese would be good. I just wanted to get out of the house for a bit!

“When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Big Yellow Taxi

While my head is still a little fuzzy from the bubbles (sparkling wine), and still one glass to go, I'm going to talk about our supper.

I have never been one for absolutes (pun intended). Which is why we had steak for supper tonight. I know that it isn't good for me, that animal protein consumption is linked to cancer, heart disease and a host of other ailments. But surely a little piece of steak every month or so won't hurt me (much). It's not like we are having bacon for breakfast, deli meats for lunch, and a big piece of animal flesh for supper. It's just a little 6oz chunk. Oh so good grilled on the bbq with some garlic, dark soy sauce and sesame oil. Our side dishes (I couldn't spell the word I wanted even close enough for spell checker to figure it out) were all healthy to offset the badness.




I guess I just can't see giving up meat 100%. How do people convince themselves that a little steak ever now and again is to be avoided at all costs?


Oh - I'm writing this using software I found called BlogPost (hence the photos stuck all over). It seems like it might do the trick. Hurrah (fingers firmly crossed). Although it looks like I may have to pre-load the photos into Picassa. Why doesn't anything work how you expect it to?


You'll notice that Carm has the remote in his hand - he's watching Bill Moyer with Anne Coulter. Two outspoken people (ha ha understatement).

Frustrated

As per yesterdays topic about wasting time - I spent a good portion of the day searching the internet for ways to edit blog posts on my tablet (other than blogger which is totally bare bones). I had hoped that Polaris or another office word type program would have a "send to blogger" function, but no. Not even Google docs does (hey Google - you guys own blogger so get with the program!). Bother. Maybe by the time I go to NZ? Editing blog posts is one of the main things I use my laptop for – there just isn’t anything in the android world that allows me to insert photos and add formatting. Android blogger is good for writing but only sticks a photo at the end of the post, and there is very little other formatting available.

On a better note, yesterday we were in our neighbouring village putzing around and came across a shop to check for new runners for Carm. Well, this shop turned out to be a good (if rather expensive) find. Sure, Carm got his shoes, but I scored the perfect outfit for travelling. It is a knit houndstooth tweed jacket and matching pants that look a little dressy. They are super comfortable and will be perfect for the plane. I'll be able to wear the jacket with jeans and a nice t-shirt, as well as with black dress pants. I just need to add a top (and I have a few in mind) and I'm all set. It will be perfect for non-travel when I need something just a bit dressier. I have lots of jeans and t-shirts, but not much else. And the good news - size 10!

This shop also had a good selection of woman's and men's shoes. I didn't buy anything but will keep a few pairs in mind.

Yesterday there were snowflakes flying around with an overnight forecast of -2. The camper isn't winterized so we turned the heat on overnight. We are hoping to hold off winterizing for a week or two in case the weather turns nice. There was a heavy frost this morning so it is a good thing we did. The cold weather prompted us to start putting the outside furniture away :-( bye bye swing till next spring. For a few years we kept it upstairs in the living room in front of the fireplace!

Btw - Dorothy! Don't give up. It doesn't take (too) much effort to make healthy meals. Last night I cooked a sweet potato in the microwave for 4 minutes, then cubed it. I cleaned and cut in half some Brussels sprouts. Cut a red onion into big chunks. Cut 6 medium mushrooms in half. Tossed all these in a big bowl with 1 tsp (that's teaspoon) of olive oil, a pinch of red pepper flakes (optional), and of course chopped garlic. Spread it all onto two baking sheets lined with parchment and stuck it into a 400F oven for 30 minutes (giving them a shake 1/2 way through). While that was cooking I cooked 1 cup quinoa with 1 cup chicken broth; 1 cup hot water, and the zest of one lemon (in the microwave 5 min high, 15 min med high).

Voila! Dinner for two or in your case dinner for two nights! It is one of our favourite dinners. The selection of vegetables can vary - sometimes we add red pepper, or cauliflower, or zucchini, or broccoli, or green beans, or, and, or, ...

Tomorrow night I'll sauté (in chicken broth) 1lb of zucchini and some mushrooms, probably some chopped onion, and as always, garlic. That will be served on lentils mixed with brown rice (3/4 lentils, 1/4 brown rice). I'll top it off with some chopped tomato.

Tonight we will venture into the dark side of meat eating (gasp)! We still have some small beef strip loins in the freezer so we’ll share one, along with a large helping of vegetables (grilled zucchini & mushrooms). And bubbles. Can’t keep to the straight and narrow every day :-)

When making lentils I always make enough for a few meals. 1 1/2 cups lentils picked over, 1/2 cup brown rice. Mix with 4 to 5 cups hot water (or a combination of water and stock). Add a bit of garlic, and whatever seasonings you like (I often add turmeric, cumin, mustard seed). In microwave, cook on high for 5 minutes, then med high for 35 minutes. Sometimes it will need a bit more time or some more water. Sometimes I heat them up in the sauté pan with onions, garlic and frozen chopped spinach.

I usually try to have a few "leftover" dinners a week - it takes away some of the burden of cooking every night.

To cut down on prep time we clean heads and heads of garlic, chop with the food processor and pack into a jar with some extra virgin olive oil. Kept in the fridge this will keep for ages (my current batch was done in August).

Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.
Joseph Addison

Isn't Technology Wonderful

I took my tablet with me on our walk this morning so that I could map out the track for distance, etc. I hadn't used the "My Tracks" software before so I did do a minor screw up... but it is still pretty neat. Not only did it map out our route and calculate the distance (until I inadvertently stopped it), when I was done it zoomed into Google Earth and "walked" us around the route - it even paused at the right times. Not only  that but I can send the track to Google Maps and access it later at my conveniece. How cool is that. Of course it would be WAY MORE COOL if I had a phone as well and wasn't carting my tablet around in a backpack (geeks unite).

I started my career in IT fresh out of high school with  no computer experience. Mind you in 1981 there weren't computers where ever you turned. I started on a contract with my friend June's father, documenting master files. I took to it like a duck to water. While I was on that contract I was offered a more permanent job if I took a typing class (being able to type make life much easier), so of course I did. Twenty nine years later I retired/quit from the same spot. Of course I wasn't doing the same thing, but had learned some programming, how to install and manage computer systems, as well as being involved in a slight degree of Data Management, not to mention how to torment developers with requests for documentation that was actually understandable. But, back to the point I was going to make - computing came to me naturally. All these things were intuitive. I sometimes wonder what I could have accomplished if I had a university education (I would have liked engineering I think as I love to problem solve).

But I digress again - back to the early days of work. We worked on a mainframe computer as well as a PDP11 mini computer. Some things I did with PUNCH CARDS. There were no PC's. We had a terminal room where there were a bunch of "dumb" terminals for us to do our work on. It was only a few years though until PC's made their entrance, and not long after that we had connectivity to the mainframe from our PC - we could work in our office (which was good and bad - there was so much data transfer by working side by side with people). Using DOS. And then Windows came along. And years after that the internet.  Now look at the information that people have at their fingertips. No trips to the library for them.

Years ago, we got new data dictionary software (Rochade) that installed on Unix with a windows front end. It was just newly available in North America as it was a German product. Well, I can't count the number of times that I fell to the floor laughing so hard cause an error message was displayed - one giant word that was almost the width of my screen... in German.  The first time I ran to the bookstore downstairs in our building to see if they had a German/English dictionary. They did. The word was not in it. These days it would be a simple query on Google!

Anyway, despite my 29 years or perhaps because of them I am a computer junkie and a gadgeteer. I love technology and would go into serious withdrawal if I didn't have automated tools like Excel, Word (wordperfect was my favorite - I loved macros), Advanced Diary, MyMemories Scrapbooking software, digital photos, CALENDARS!!! oh and Email... and of course I can't forget Blogger.

In fact I wrote the majority of this while sitting out under the awning, glancing up at the water sparkling in the distance and hearing the rustle of leaves in the trees. It is hot - 28C - amazing for mid September. Now time for my book, Kristen Lavransdatter, which I am slowly getting through.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ticks and Snow and Other Yucky Things

Last night we found a tick on Spike’s head. Ewwww. It was all big and engorged. We got him under some good light and carefully took the tweezers and pulled that sucker out. There are different methods on the web, but they all stress not squeezing the body,pushing out potential Lyme disease. So we were careful to just grab it right down close to the intersection between Spike and Tick.  Spike was a good boy and held still, even though I took a good portion of his head out along with the tick. We aren’t too worried about Lyme disease though as we have only seen deer sign on our property a few times in all the years we’ve lived here.

I woke up so many times last night feeling phantom ticks crawling about me.

The second yuckiness was this morning - we woke up to a bunch of snow on the ground. I can always tell as soon as I open my eyes if it's the first snow as the light is so different from when there's just barren ground. It is pretty… I guess. But I'm not sure if I'm ready for another winter yet - of course I don't get a choice. The good news is that it’s supposed to be in the double digits (Celsius digits that is) for the weekend. So winter will recede, at least for a little while.

Today I was down in the storage room cleaning out a few old boxes of software. Some of the software only required 3mb of disk space and 512 kb of memory! Can you imagine! Just think of todays bloatware. Some software stated it was Now for Windows! Do you remember DOS? We thought that Windows was such an amazing breakthrough, and it was – we are all still running it, or some off shoot, years and years later. The gui interface was such an improvement. Look at the software and electronics now – they wouldn’t have the same experience if it weren’t for such a user friendly interface. ‘Cause really, the interface itself is not all that different from the original Windows. I love how all the smartphones and tablets are reminiscent of Star Trek. I remember watching and thinking wouldn’t it be cool to have such a great hand held device.

I just heard from my Dad that he has started a blog. We’ve all be bugging him for ages to write down some of his memories starting with growing up in small town Alberta. He’s done so many interesting things in his life we think he should share. What a treasure for all of us kids and grandkids. (see his blog here)

Sometimes when you are feeling jaded you can revive your sense of wonder by merely saying to yourself: "Suppose this were the only time." Suppose this sunset, this moonrise, this symphony, this buttered toast, this sleeping child, this flag against the sky... suppose I would never experience these things again!

Author Unknown

(I tried this with regards to today’s snowfall – suppose this were the last snowfall…)

More Software Upgrades

I got two emails yesterday about new versions of software being available. I know it's crazy but I went ahead and upgraded them both - My Memories scrapbooking software and Advanced Diary journaling software. These both run on my laptop and neither will be replaced by functionality on my prun. I've been using both pieces of software for nearly a year and would be lost without them.

Some of the things on my to-do list is to create albums in MyMemories for pets and horses of years past. I plan to go through my piles of photos and scan good pictures to include in the albums. Then once it is all good I'll send the albums out for printing. I found one place that prints the albums on archival quality silk paper for quite a reasonable sum. I like having hard copies to look back at - old fashioned I guess!

This morning was the first morning of really heavy frost, in fact the frost wasn't fully off the grass when I went out for a little walk around 1pm. It was the first day of tearing eyes and running nose. The cold didn't slow down the dogs any though - they still raced around like crazy. Oh, the good news (touch wood, fingers crossed) Spike has not gone near the gate since our training session. We'll do another setup in a few days to make sure. His large chicken-bone is a good thing. The chicken bone is something that he and I share - I'm pretty safety conscious too - I learned the lesson well from my Dad... being a doctor I guess he saw his share of outcomes from accidents. Did you know that you shouldn't wear flip flops or sandals on your bike - I cringe when I see such disregard for personal safety! Just ask Carm, I can see danger where only the very smallest possibility exists.

Carm had his cardiac "stress test" today, not because there was anything wrong with him but just as a baseline and to make sure. Of course they never give any indication of the outcome of the test right there, he'll have to wait to hear from his doctor. Carm's mother has heart disease and had a heart attack in her late 70s and now has a few stents in place to keep her healthy, but I think Carm has a healthier lifestyle. We do have to get more consistent with exercise though. No excuses cause we have an excellent dreadmill - oops - I think I meant treadmill ;-)

We are due to get our first freezing rain and snow overnight. Already the sky has become overcast, obliterating the beautiful sun and blue sky that we had earlier.

Food... food is so time consuming... making it, cleaning up after making it, eating it, cleaning up after eating it. No wonder America (and I count Canada here too) has such a love affair with fast food. That being said, most of the time I get a lot of satisfaction in making and of course eating, food. Tonight on the menu - Curry flavour brown rice & lentils, leftover grilled zucchini and mushrooms. Simple and healthy food, but even still required a certain amount of time in the kitchen.

Pictures of the dogs as usual... Spike lies on that pillow for hours everyday looking out the window. I've never known a dog so much into window watching. It's a typical pose for Kabira - in a tight little ball trying to keep warm (yes we heat our house) - she loves to sleep.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
Theodore Roosevelt

Writing on the Futon

It's been a pretty lazy last couple of days, yesterday cloudy, today sunny. We have managed to get out a few times with the dogs, but other than that there has just been a lot of reading.
Right now (Monday afternoon at 2:20) I am 1/2 sitting, 1/2 lying on the futon with dogs all around me, the sun is shining on me, but not in my face. It is really rather lovely. I might finish writing this and have a nap, or maybe I'll have some lunch first (homemade minestrone soup). I do feel like I should get busy with something, but the sunspot is just too comfortable. At the very least I should clean some of the dog nose prints off the window so I get a better view from my current vantage point. Or maybe they aren't nose prints at all but are instead nose-paintings, artistic expressions of canine viewpoints.
I've done some more playing around with files, updating them on my pc and my prun using google docs and that's working just fine. I do like the Polaris word processor better though so as soon as they've fixed that table bug I'll start using it again (being sure to keep a regular backup in non polaris format just in case).
Oh - sun just peeked around the corner to the west window - now it's in my eyes so I guess it's time to end.

(later) I may have just fubared this post as I tried to edit it in Live Writer but got an error, so then tried blogger in my brower. That didn't work very well so I'm back to the blogger app - it's added html codes into the text... and it looks like it has rotated one of the photos. Oh how I love technology!

(later still) Updated it again in Blogger on my pc. Removed extra codes, the duplicate photos, and the photo that it rotated.

Testing Inserting a Photo

Saturday

Yes, I'm still playing around with my prun. As it stands I've abandoned the Polaris Office as they introduced a bug with the last firmware update. I've downgraded my requirements and making Google Docs work - it's less buggy (it seems). Now I've tried attaching my camera to download a few photos. I've figured out how to crop (easy) and now have to find out about resizing and then attaching into my blog post. Although I love Windows Live Writer, I'd like to be able to do the whole shebang when my laptop is not so readily available (like when I visit New Zealand).

What it doesn't let you do is layout your photos where you want, but sticks them in a photo bar.

Do you think I'm expecting too much from this little Android tablet? (oh yeah, no spell check anywhere - which is a big drag for me - I'm the worst speller!).

---

Sunday

So there you have it, it just inserts the photos right in a row. Pretty stunned I would say… Unfortunately I can’t find any better Blog editor on Android.

And I think I’ll have to find a better program for resizing photos – this one seems to do a pretty rough job (see second photo), or it could be just a lousy photo taken with my prun.

We had a nice break yesterday from all things computer with a visit from friends Laurie & Kelly. I met Laurie in 1997 on a horse forum. I saw from her signature that she was from the same village as I’m in so sent her an email. Well, it turns out she lives just around the corner from us, had 3 horses, and her father used to raise Irish Wolfhounds (we had an Irish Wolfhound, Max, at the time) so we had lots in common. We arranged to meet for lunch in a little restaurant and quickly became friends.

How many people do you know that have or had Irish Wolfhounds? Not many I’d bet, but since I’ve had mine I’ve met 4 other woman that have had them in their lives – and not through dog shows either. One though birds, 3 through horses. Pretty strange eh!

Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.
Robert Browning

Nesting

A few years ago, when horses still roamed, I found a tiny little nest woven with horse tail hair and fine grasses. It was just so perfect. I stuck it safely in a cupboard cause I couldn't think of a safe way to display it. Well, I was reading a crafty blog and they had buttons, and stuff in jars which seemed like a brilliant way to display my little nest. So Tuesday I went through my jar cupboard and found just the perfect one. I have some fake eggs that we used to encourage nesting when we removed Timneh eggs for incubation, but they were too big for this tiny nest. I'll save a few little candy eggs next Easter.

 

At one point in my struggles with my machines I looked out the window only to see SNOW FLURRIES - oh my gosh - I guess it really is mid November. Actually we've been really lucky this fall for these to be the first I've seen.

The IT World is just not what it used to be. In the "olden days" when software developers had rigorous testing plans that had to be run before anything was released to production. There were pre-production environments where users and testing plans would test the user experience. This type of rigour seems to have gone the way of the mainframe. Case in point - BNS (a bank) recently released a new front end. It was totally buggy with some drop downs not working, some things just missing and even more alarming in one case a decimal point was moved. This is a bank folks! Some things would work for Carm one day, only to be fubared^* the next, and working again later in the day. Hummm - it looks like they are changing PRODUCTION on the fly - gasp.

And my example, yesterday I had everything working on my prun. My files were uploading and downloading, the tables were showing up properly, the pictures in the files were showing up too. Everything was hunky dory - I was finally happy. This morning when I turned the thing on it said there was a firmware update and I could apply it now or in an hour. I ran it "now". Well, strangely the documents no longer display properly - the tables go all wonky and when I send them to the cloud to edit them on my laptop they are corrupt. Wait, there's more - I can't download software from the Android market, nor does the screen timeout seem to work, it can’t see the second sd card anymore, and times on the calendar are now loosing the “:30”. That’s what I’ve noticed so far. Are there other fubars^*? Possibly... Is this another case of rolling something out without testing?

In my early days of computing we had things like development lifecycles and rigour and testing and planning, etc.  With the advent of distributed computing things got a little less structured. And the final few years I think it denigrated to chaos. They started using a methodology called "Extreme Programming". In other words, don't bother planning, just make a bunch of changes and hope they work with everything else.  Whew - I feel all worked up and somehow glad I'm not in the thick of it all.

 

^*Glossary: fubar - f_cked up beyond all recognition/repair ; mainframe - really, really big computer - think Watson of Jeopardy fame.

At least I had some nice non-computer time with my friend Christina. We got outside for a little walk - it was blustery and cold, but sunny. We had to cut it short cause I didn't bring enough Kleenex - it's that time of year I guess!

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Oscar Wilde

I've Lost My Edge

Figuring out how computer stuff works has always come easily to me - I've never had trouble working things out and in fact it was due to this skill that I did so well in the working world (as a consultant in the IT field there was never any training $ so I usually flew by the seat of my pants). Now though... I've spent days trying to get this transformer integrated with my pc. Right now (Tuesday afternoon) I'm trying to get the Asus file cloud sync to work but I just can't figure it out! I feel stupid and useless and old.

Yesterday was a lovely sunny day, perfect for being outside, but also energizing for doing housework (both of which were a welcome break from IT stuff). We need guests on a regular basis just to keep the house in order. All those years of hired house-keepers did not build good habits!

Betty and Eric

little birds and pine cones graced the table

Last night we had a lovely time entertaining dinner guests. Eric worked with Carm for years so they have lots to talk about. Betty, his wife, is from Tucson, Arizona so it was fun hearing all about living there. They commute back and forth as required, with most of the winter spent in Tucson - sounds like a plan doesn't it! As usual Spike was anxious to show off his tricks and did so with his usual aplomb. This winter I think we'll work up a little routine that flows nicely. Don't want to miss any of his fine jumps. One of his favourite tricks is bringing me things - a little bag that I keep in the kitchen, a tissue, a bottle of water - any will do. Of course I keep a little bowl of treats nearby - he is somewhat mercenary!

Oh - the bread maker - yumm! It’s huge and since we’ll be using it regularly it had to go somewhere convenient. I had to empty some of the junk from one of my “appliance garages” but once I did it found a perfect home. And the junk, well… some of it made it’s way to the garage sale pile in the basement.

Now to the real test – does it make good bread? The first loaf came out great, but I used mostly white flour for it – it didn’t last very long though ;-). Last night before bed we started a loaf to be ready this morning - this one is 100% whole wheat, and uses olive oil instead of butter. It was easy to assemble the ingredients which is good ‘cause Carm will be responsible for it most nights. We tried the second loaf this afternoon (toasted with butter and a side of Earl Grey tea). It tasted GRrrreat! We are going to have to be careful with all this bread eating or we'll both balloon out :-(  Fun times getting there though.

bread machine in it’s new home

our first loaf turned out great

And my troubles with syncing to the cloud? I think (think) I have it all figured out. It's going to take some coordination though as it creates a copy of the file instead of replacing the old one. So I'll end up with files like filename (1) ; filename (1) (1) ; oh bother. I have two files that I update on a daily basis, a menu planner for a month, and a file with other data for a month. So I'll just keep them on my prun and upload them at the end of the month to keep things a bit simpler. Google Docs would be a lot easier and more seamless, but it just doesn’t have some of the features for tables and spreadsheets that I need – namely the ability to merge cells.  The document processing software that came installed (Polaris Office) is a bit more fully featured.

Yesterday was a lovely sunny day, perfect for being outside, but also energizing for doing housework. We need guests on a regular basis just to keep the house in order. All those years of hired house-keepers did not build good habits!

If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.
Lucy Larcom

Software Fun

I'm still setting up the environment for my new prun (productivity unit). Today was spent trying to get Google maps to work but it was hard to test as I was experimenting with offline access. Then I turned my sights onto recipes and menu planning. I am currently run Big Oven on my laptop which is great - I can enter recipes to create my own cookbooks (really handy for camping), however, I am having trouble upgrading to the newest version and am getting a "catastrophic error" message - not good!

Why all this effort? Cause I'm not one to do something with a paper and pencil when an expensive computer system can do the job almost as well!

We did have a break from all this computer geek stuff though - Spike's breeder Dawn came over for a most enjoyable lunch. Spike get’s so excited to see her – it’s amazing that he remembers her so well as we brought him home at 9 weeks. No visiting puppies this time though.

And now I'm back scratching my head at a few other problems:

• why won't all my Google calendar calendar's show up in the Calendar Touch program. It claims to manage multiple calendars but no matter what I do I can only get two particular ones to show up.
• how can I edit a draft blog post using Windows Live Writer? I thought I’d done just that yesterday, but now can’t find a way to download that draft post from Blogger.
• there's still the Big Oven thing
• more to come tomorrow…

My brain needed a bit of a workout!

 

Honeycomb, Won’t You Be My Baby

I got it! The Asus Eee Transformer tablet which runs Honeycomb Android :-)  (see http://youtu.be/anRqh02N8UM for the honeycomb song – who knew it wasn’t just a cereal!).

We saw that they were for sale at Best Buy so headed into town on Sunday to check it out. Yes they had some in stock so yes, we want to buy one. Then we were lucky enough to find one in an open box for $100 less – yes that’s right one hundred dollars less! What good luck :-) The gadgeteer has her new gadget :-)

We got it home and set up to charge but it was too hard to keep my hands off it, so on it went (while it was charging). I got everything set up and a bunch of apps installed. I started with Google maps, Google navigation, and LCBO wine store locator, another LCBO app that tells you where bottles are in stock, a wine review app that reads the barcode (how neat is that!), an online editor for blogger, goggle star chart, oh and a few more odds and ends. I’m sure I’ll end up with more but this was a good start.

Now the bad news, when I set it up I did it using a new Gmail account which turns out to be unlinkable to my existing goggle account that has blogger, calendar, etc. The only solution – blow the machine away and start over… so that’s what I did when I got up this morning. Imagine if Windows worked that way… Now it’s set up with the right account and I’m good to go (think, hope, pray).

Google Maps Navigation has a GPS with turn by turn guidance and there’s some way that you can set it up so it’s stored offline on your SD card. I gave it a try but didn’t have any luck. It’s supposed to store the step by step route instructions with a voice, so that you can use it without an internet connection (the tablet only has Wi-Fi and not 3G or HSPA).  I could see the map and it did show us travelling as a little blue arrow (a bit like Harry Potter’s magic map). More testing required.

Our little test drive took us to the Upper Canada Bird Sanctuary about 45 minutes away. We travelled on the smallest back roads, ones that we’d never been on before. I could almost hear the banjos at some points as it seemed we had entered Hillbilly Land - there were “houses” so run down you couldn’t imagine anyone living there, and with yards so full of junk that I almost stopped to take a picture. These were BACK roads!

 

The Bird Sanctuary is a pretty little campground with some really lovely sites (47, 48, and 11 were the ones that caught our eye). It’s a booze free zone though so I guess we’d have to forgo the bubbles - or drink it in a coffee cup ;-) We were planning on going for a camp there this fall but the weather didn’t cooperate. In fact it was warmer today at 17C (61F) than it was the days we were going to go!

I’m off to play with software to try to integrate and automate my life  :-)

Food Freedom Day

Today is the last day of food freedom for a few months. That’s right, I’m back on the Eat 2 Live 6 week plan for at least 6 weeks. Some of the weight I lost last winter has crept back this summer, so…

As a last hurrah we had company for supper on Saturday night, and then went to friends for supper last night.

Jo Ellen – note the Transformer on the counter

and Don the bearer of tempting gadgets

Sunday night Trudie created a real feast for us with venison, home made pasta with a seafood pesto sauce, roasted vegetables, shrimp, and a lovely dessert. I was SO STUFFED that I wished I had worn my bigger jeans! Diet advice often advises to wear tighter fitting clothes to make you more aware of eating too much – I supposed it worked in that I was aware, but it sure didn’t slow me down!

 

Today we thought of having pancakes for breakfast mainly to try out the homemade maple syrup that Trudie sent home with us but guess what – we were still too full from supper last night!

The website for Eat to Live had a good post a few weeks ago on why certain foods are good for us and how they act on our bodies.  See article here. It is a good reminder that what we eat does more than just fuel the body with calories. We can either help ourselves to stay healthy by eating the right foods or we can just blame fate. 

Saturday night Don brought over his new toy, an  Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 – I immediately fell in love (with the transformer not Don). It is both a netbook with a nice keyboard and then whoosh, the screen releases from the keyboard leaving a tablet with a touch screen. Sweet. It runs Android, is Wi-Fi enabled, and is basically everything I was looking for, except it’s not a phone, nor is it 3G or 4G enabled. But since the smartphone I’ll be getting is able to be a Wi-Fi hotspot we’ll have it all covered. Hopefully Black Friday comes along soon so that we can go shopping :-)

All these devices though leaves me with a question – how can I best integrate the data that I want shared across devices? Are there some programs that I run now that might be replaced by something that lives on both windows and android and that can run in the cloud? I hate double entry and am already doing enough due to coordinating between programs that do not talk to each other – not one program will do everything that I want and by moving to three devices I’ll be complicating things something fierce! Maybe the Google Docs & Calendar will be my answer – I’ll have to give up on some of the best of breed functionality that I get with my suite of windows products… more analysis required!

Spike after a bath – he was muddy from head to toe after playing by the pond!

 

Happy Tails Trails!

Summertime Hay

This morning our neighbouring dairy farmer cut our hay field – I love the smell of freshly cut hay as it starts to dry in the summer sun. The only thing that makes it better is the sweet smell of horse manure mixed with it (honestly – that is the smell of summer to me). Today it was hot and sunny, the birds were flying around gathering food for their young, the dogs were hunting frogs by the pond, we were lazing in the pool, the smell of cut grass was in the air – truly summertime – or even possibly heaven.

 

I love the long, languid feeling of this version with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong – it really evokes the feeling of a hot summer day.

It is time to get back to the Merriam Webster's word of the day. Unfortunately today’s word is one that was hard to incorporate into my blog post so I won’t – I’ll just add the word.

Temporize (TEM-puh-ryze verb 1: to act to suit the time or occasion : yield to current or dominant opinion ; 2: to draw out discussions or negotiations so as to gain time).

Blogger has been screwed up for quite a while – I haven’t been able to leave comments on anybody’s pages. I don’t know what is wrong (others have been having the same problem) but it may be IE? I don’t have plans to move to a new browser anytime soon, but maybe I’ll have to rethink this.

I have been using Windows Live Writer to compose my posts which allows me to do so off-line. I really like this software.

This morning I caught sight of the kingfisher diving into the pond after some fish. They are such an unlikely looking bird with that huge head. I do love watching him though. The one bird we haven’t seen this year at the pond is the Great Blue Heron. The grass and weeds have grown up so thick between the house and the pond that it is difficult to see it. The horses used to do a fabulous job of keeping everything trimmed. The original riding mower!

I found a new website called Brainy Quote. It has a quote of the day that I have been reading lately. I love these thought provoking quotes as they cause me to think and ponder if only for a moment.

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
John Lubbock

Bella's Big Day

Today is Bella's 6th birthday. It seems like just yesterday that we picked out our little puppy from a litter of 9. She was about 4 weeks old at the time. Then came the long, long wait for her to reach 9 weeks old and be ready to come home. I did go out and visit her once (maybe twice - I can't remember) and then finally it was the time.

I picked her up during the day and unfortunately Carm couldn't come with me. So I set up a crate in the truck's passenger seat - she wasn't very happy and cried all the way home. She didn't like the car for the next year or so and would puke every car ride. Poor little dear. Once we got home she settled in and quickly became a member of our pack. We had Pan, Grizzle and Titan - they each treated her like a princess. I know it's crazy but I hardly took any photos of her when she was a little puppy - maybe because she was a little black blob.

Today's word of the day is conventicle (kun-VEN-tih-kul noun - 1: an assembly of an irregular or unlawful character ; 2: an assembly for religious worship; especially : a meeting for worship not sanctioned by law ; 3: meetinghouse). Tonight our house will be a conventicle (meaning #3) for a few retired and out-of-work work mates (Carm's) who are coming over for supper and conversation. I'm pretty sure the conversation will be mostly boring work talk - I'll keep busy in the kitchen... I wonder how they'll like the healthy meal? It doesn't compare to the Prime Rib and Yorkshire pudding the last time they were over!

My pleasures today: remembering Bella as a puppy ; playing with my new software - I can see that this is going to suck up a LOT of time! But it will be fun. In fact I spent so much time playing that I hardly got this entry written. I'm a sucker for software.