Technology

Please

/ wvfurandroot / 11 Comments

For the past couple of hours I have listened to distant thunder rumble. In a spirit of prayer, I have breathed in and out – please.

The sky darkened. A few large raindrops fell. The deluge began.

It’s a wonderful rain. It’s the kind of rain they record for those nature CDs one is supposed to listen to for calming of the spirit and mind.

I have the big white floor fan parked in front of the patio door and myself parked 6” in front of it. I am not nauseated by heat for the first time in days. I am also drinking my first cup of coffee in this house of the past 8 days.

Oh yes…there’s almost a chill in here. Almost.

To keep the heat down as much as possible in the house, I have kept lights off and appliances (especially the dryer) off. The house is very dark and I finally turned on the dragonfly lamp the better to see my coffee cup lest I dribble coffee on the keyboard.

It’s been a bad technology week and I don’t need Something Else. During a fit of heat stroke, I had a tantrum upon calling my DSL provider and what with one thing and another scissored my DSL connection. It was an accident. In the hideous heat that was yesterday, I dangled out the second floor of my window running new DSL line. While I’m very tickled at my ability to figure out how to do this (seemingly correctly), I am very ashamed of my tantrum. I seldom lose such control of my emotions and the venom I spewed all over the woman at Frontier Communications was unprovoked and undeserved. The accidental scissoring of my DSL connection was, I’m convinced, instant karma.

The rain has already slowed down. I was once told that big raindrops heralded a fast, intense storm. I hope that is not the case; otherwise this storm will prove to just make conditions worse.

Deep breath.

Please.

The sky is clearing and the rain has stopped. I can still hear distant thunder.

Please.

I cannot bear much more of this heat.

I have solaced myself by telling myself everyone used to live without air conditioning. And did so while wearing unbelievable amounts of clothes. I have consoled myself by telling myself that millions still live without air conditioning. I have chided myself for not doing yoga because it’s too hot when the practice originated in a country that is the Mother of Hot. I have read myself the riot act for my incessant whining about it. I have told myself this is the last July 25th I will spend without air conditioning.

I have had quite the conversation with My Self. When it’s all said, there is me and there is heat. We’re going to have to learn to live together – at least for another month or two.

I can still hear thunder, but the sun is shining and the fan that just a moment ago nearly chilled me is now merely circulating hot air.

I can still hear thunder.

Please.

Addendum:  My DSL connection is not fixed.  My original assessment, prior to the tantrum, was correct.  Everytime it rains, my DSL goes out.  I was no sooner ready to upload this post than it went out again.  I have a dozen or so posts sitting on the hard drive that never got uploaded due to my intermittant DSL problems.  I called Frontier, kept my emotions in check, and went through the long ugly history of my whole-house filter, line noise, and inability to reach Cyberia when it rains.

As for the rain.  It petered out and then a gentle misting replaced the storm of a few hours ago.  I’m using the time of comparative coolness to tackle laundry.  The dryer is heating the house to nearly the temperature it was prior to the rain.  I hate being a grownup.

Thanette

/ wvfurandroot / 10 Comments
Chef Boy ‘R Mine’s Thanette was better,
but this will have to do until I clean that damn closet.

The internet has been very good to me.

I’ve been hanging out on the ‘net since before sound and pictures – before there was a web. As for social networking, I dived into the Usenet groups somewhere around 1990.

There I met a significant number of people who became friends, sometimes good friends. The Ex referred to them as my Invisible Friends which seemed apt and so I adopted the description..

The arrival of the digital revolution was so new that home computers were a rarity; and trying to explain to folks how it could be that I was making friends was daunting. It can be a tough thing to explain. Nonetheless, I blathered on and on about my cyber-life to anyone who would listen. Over family dinner, I would talk about the funny things people said on the ‘net.

One bright Saturday the phone ring and my son, who was practicing his telephone etiquette, answered. I heard him say, “May I tell her who’s calling.” He ran to get me, proclaiming all the way that Thanette was on the phone. I searched my memory banks and could not summon any memory of anyone named Thanette or Annette or anything similar. Curious, I took the phone and said hello.

The caller was Jane who lived near Perth, Australia. She and I bonded in the rec.food.cooking group on Usenet. Chef Boy ‘R Mine, bless his heart, had listened to me babble on and on about the ‘net thinking it a person, one person, named Thanette. I asked Jane what she had told him in response to the who’s-calling-thing. She had announced herself as Jane, Jane from the ‘net. It’s curious that my son didn’t think of Thanette as a place. Of course, with her accent, it’s a wonder he understood anything at all.

I asked him to draw me a picture of what he thought Thanette looked like. The end result was a portrait of a woman with brown curly hair, glasses and a big smile. [Damn it all, I saved that artistic work and it’s probably in The Closet I’m Afraid Of. Resurrecting that drawing could be an impetus to start that project. I don’t want to start it, but I do want to find that drawing and frame it.]

My Invisible Friends were far flung. Most of them were in the states, but a good number were scattered about the globe. These were people I had never seen, but who I counted good friends – the kind you tell secrets to.

They lived in Mexico and Scotland and England and Denmark and New Zealand and Sweden and Australia and Canada and, I’m pretty sure, most of the states. Eventually, I started meeting up with people – to meet in 3D – learning what they looked and sounded like.

In the early days, my Visible Friends were shocked that I would travel, one time all the way to London, to meet people I found on the internet. They were sure my brutal death at the hands of a serial killer was an inevitable destiny given my loss of common sense.

Last night, I met and had dinner with the infamous Buzzard Billy. She represents the first Invisible Friend from West Virginia that I’ve jumped in the car to go meet. I’m sure it’s a badge of honor that she’ll wear close to her heart – Hillbilly Thanette.

Lucy and Ethel Build Shelves

/ wvfurandroot / 8 Comments

Before

Bit by bit, the Great Study Remodel of 2010 is approaching conclusion.

In February, I dragged everything out of the study. I patched the walls and ceiling. I primed. I painted. I whined.

All that stuff I dragged out? It’s been sitting in the upstairs hallway plotting ways to do damage to my body as I tunneled my way to the master bedroom. It’s been sitting there devising diabolical plans lo these many weeks.

Amongst the flotsam and jetsam was the world’s ugliest dresser used to store sundry computer crap dating back to the early 90s, various plastic containers housing yet more junk, boxes of old college papers and unfinished short stories, and my son’s taekwondo stuff. There are boxes of cards sent to me, boxes of old photographs, and a box of all my reading glasses from the olden days when I used to coordinate such to my wardrobe. (Alas, they are now all too weak to correct my eyesight.)

And books. Lots of books. Feet and feet of books. Some of the books were shelved on the world’s ugliest bookcase.

After I dragged all the crap out and put it in the hallway thinking this would be a quick project, I began painting. After finishing the painting, I was stunned by what an attractive room it was. A room that didn’t need to be cluttered up. A room needing to be somewhat spare, yet housing all my treasures.

I vowed (yes, I did) that 90% of the crap I hauled out was not going back in there. In fact, all that crap was going to a landfill.

And functional. I want the room to be a correctly appointed room for me to do Something Worthwhile.

[That’s a tricky thought. The past couple of years the study mostly served as the place where I scan photographs and stare out window while drinking coffee. I have high hopes of doing something constructive in there once I get done.]

Still. Even paring down to what I consider bare essentials was going to result in a lot of surface clutter. I also vowed that ugly dresser and ugly bookcase were not going back into the room. I also pondered how to get the computer crap off of my 1920s library table.

I peered at the closet.

I measured.

Almost After

I decided. Oh, yes I did.  And it was a good decision. I hate looking at computer equipment when it’s not in use and stuffing it all in the closet seemed like a stroke of genius.

By mid-March, I was down to 3 tasks – build shelving and a desktop into the closet, shampoo the carpet, and sort through all the crap only dragging back into the room that which I truly loved. Oh. And stain the leather chair brown – more on that later.

The first project was to complete the shelving in the closet to turn it into a miniature office. First it was too snowy and then I was too busy and then I was sick and then it was too rainy and then I was too busy and then I couldn’t summon any ambition.

Ambition welled during this 3-day weekend when I have much more time than usual.

Today, my mother (69) and myself (50), dragged out old shelving left over from the Great Master Bedroom Remodel. The plan was to cut it to width, cantilever it on the walls with wood laying around here and there, touch up the stain and paint the supports. [Cantilever is not the exact term I want, but I can’t summon the correct one. Trust me, a true cantilever is way beyond anything I’d ever try to do.]

Two old-ish women bearing bifocals and hot- flashing in 90F weather shouldn’t be allowed near power tools. Nevertheless.

The first three shelves we tortured on the table saw were too short. (Twinky tape measures, sweat and astigmatism are anathema to good carpentry.) We eventually prevailed without (a) a trip to the emergency room, or (b) angry words spoken to one another. [During this stage of the adventure, my father ambled out to see what all the noise was about and quickly returned to the safety of his study.]

We couldn’t find screws long enough and when we did they weren’t wood screws. We dug through workshops, toolboxes, and kitchen junk drawers collecting wood screws one by one. It’s difficult to explain exactly why, but attaching wood to walls with a corded drill required both us to stand on the ladder at the same time – one to hold and one to drill. It’s a small closet. We’re full-grown women. The ladder was a traditional size. I looked at Mom and said, “Lucy and Ethel build shelves.” We both got the giggles and had to sit a spell while we discussed which of us is Lucy.

Future Brown Chair

We  did, in fact, attach shelving to the walls.  We also put a shitload of books on one of them to make sure future concussions were out of the question, and declared the project done. Before we could gather up the debris, we got the  bright idea to cut a hole in the desktop portion (actually two shelves shoved together) to pass computer cords through. Playing with table saws and hand-held drills was exciting enough, but finagling the drill press was especially exciting.  You kind of had to be there.  Picture Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory.

We did not do any of this in a way a carpenter would recognize as best practice. Still, there is shelving on the wall to house books and a desktop to hold the monitor, keyboard and printer. There’s room under the desktop for the CPU, the ensuing rat’s nest of cables and, perhaps, a box of junk or two. [I have to be realistic – there will most assuredly be absolutely useless crap that I can’t bear to trash, but don’t intend to use.]

I’m tired. I’m hot. I’m sweaty and there’s a thin layer of sawdust in my hair and on my glasses. It took way longer than I had anticipated. I had expected to have everything done today except for weeding through the crap in the hallway.

Tomorrow I will touch up paint and stain the shelving and shampoo the carpet. I hope to at least begin the Great Purge of the hallway. The Trash Guys are going to hate me.

[As for the leather chair – I have a blue wing chair that is Entirely The Wrong Color for the study, but which I love. Back in February, I dabbled some walnut stain to the bottom of the seat cushion to see What Would Happen. It wasn’t bad, but it took a couple of weeks to dry. I’m going to do the whole chair. Not today. Or tomorrow. Or even next week. Eventually.]

Oh deliver me.

/ wvfurandroot / 5 Comments

It's a simple task. Really, it is.

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for my ability to play well with machines. To recap:

  • My circuit box went crazy to the tune of $1500;
  • one of my water heaters died;
  • the windshield wipers on my car take turns not working;
  • my Shark carpet sweeper is refusing to pick up anything;
  • I spilled a full cup of coffee on the laptop and it wouldn’t work [It’s working now, but sometimes the s won’t work and sometimes the w initiates a Windows voice recognition program while simultaneously starting msconfig];
  • the server at work, for which I’m responsible, is flashing scary red lights at me and is refusing to back up anything;
  • and my camera keeps resetting the date to 9 years in the future.

Nonetheless, I’ve pretty much been cheerful throughout this. Today, however, I want to go live in a log cabin without any machines at all.

I finally get up a head of steam to finish the cow bathroom. I finished spackling and sanding the multitude of nail holes that cropped up like ‘shrooms in the Spring as I moved frames around and around and around looking for the best configuration. The only thing left to do is to resize some photos and print them out, put them in the frames, and wallpaper the ceiling. [The frames have been hung, many of them empty, for months now. It’s well past time to complete this project.] None of this should have taken more than five or six hours. 

I need a drink.

I have a blue gazillion number of imaging programs on the upstairs ‘puter (an old Win2000 machine) and not any of them are the one, the name of which I can’t remember, that will allow me to resize the photos. I have cursed, thrown photo paper at the portable hard drive, and stomped around the house perilously close to a major tantrum. I cannot resize these photos to save my life. I have spent three hours trying. 

I do know that the imaging software included with Windows XP will do exactly what I want done with minimal fuss, but, given the past couple of weeks, the last thing I need to do is try to set up the XP machine HMOKeefe gave me to replace the Win2000 beast. The thought of initializing the wireless modem gives me the heebie jeebies. 

A tall one.

None of that changes the fact that I have resized and printed photos from Old Reliable before – many time, in fact – I cannot fathom what the problem is. 

I should be wallpapering the ceiling since I can’t do the photo thing. I’m now so frustrated that I’m not sure I should be trying to manipulate wallpaper glue and an electric staple gun (long story on the need for staples) while standing on a rickety folding chair and/or the toilet seat. 

What do you want to bet that WordPress will behave badly when I try to upload this post? 

I need a drink – a tall one.

[Yes, indeedy, WordPress did behave badly. Or I did. Hard to tell these days.]