That Wonderful Sound

I got a new computer with some of the money from this year's summer work.  I really needed one.  My old netbook had become so sluggish and grumpy that I just hated to use it for anything.  I think when I upgraded it to Windows 10, it just wasn't quite up to the job somehow.

This new one has no such issues.  It is nice to feel that the machine is a tool and not an obstacle again.  Even though I'm not a programmer or a power user, as a teacher, I need reliable access to be able to get everything ready for my job.  The old netbook just could not provide that anymore.

My favorite part of it is the most absurd, I suppose.  It's not the big screen or the backlit keyboard; it's the fact that it FOUND MY PRINTER without my having to perform an arcane ritual under the light of the full moon and that it PRINTED A DOCUMENT FROM WORD without my having to turn it into a PDF, route it through Thailand, and offer up incense and prayers.  I simply opened Word, clicked the little "quick print" icon, and that wonderful sound, that soft click and whir, issued from across the room.

Technology working like it is supposed to work.  Who ever thought of such a thing?

Another Galaxy

I have been waiting for years, literally years, to upgrade my phone.  I got a Galaxy S4 and made the great leap from iPhone to Android, and I loved it.  Loved, loved, loved it.  I could customize it the way I wanted.  It was friendly with my PC.  It was sleek and lovely, and it made me as happy as any electronic device is going to be able to do.

But time went by....

It started being a little insufficient to the demands I was making on it about a year ago, but Samsung was going through its "no SD card" phase.  Since that was the primary feature I had changed operating systems for, I decided to wait it out and see what was coming with the S7.

Rumors abounded.  I saw some really crazy ones, too.  Finally, as we got closer to the release, it looked like the card slot was back and the battery life was a priority.  Despite the fact that my own phone needed charging at least twice a day and I had stripped the apps on it down to the minimum so it had enough memory to function, I kept the hope for better things.

Friday was AT&T's release day, and despite the rain, I took myself to my local shop and had them hook me up with the new model.  Life, at least as far as it can be controlled by a cellphone, was instantly better.  Apps that haven't worked right in awhile because they needed the Marshmallow update my S4 was no longer eligible to receive  were smooth and quick again.  There is no annoying warning constantly forecasting the End of All Things because memory is running out.  I could take pictures of all my dogs every second of my life and not fill up the storage.

To my astonishment, my Asus ZenWatch2 started making noises after it got the update it needed to match the phone.  It is constantly doing things I didn't know it was capable of now.  It is almost like it became a totally different device, too, just from being connected to a different phone.  Good.  All things are good.

I also noticed that it synched faster and sounded better with my car stereo system.  I don't know if that's a product of stronger bluetooth or what, but apparently, it also sounds much better for people who call me, too.

In fact, the only things I don't quite like are incredibly minimal.  I miss a certain sound I used to have for text notifications.  I also wish I could make the screens scroll endlessly like they did on my S4.  Both of these things are almost certainly correctable with a download or a setting I haven't been able to locate yet.  They're both so minimal, too, that they are practically non-existent.

It's nice to have confidence in my device again.  Even though I had the irrational moment of sadness when I turned off the S4 for the last time (a part of me always feels like I should have some kind of formal funeral for things like that when their useful life is done), reliability is a comfort.  The S7, then, isn't a revolutionary change.  It's a stronger, faster, more stable, and better version of everything I loved from my S4.  Good job, Samsung.  Very good job.

The Allure of Shiny Tech

Every year I do the AP national reading, I set aside part of that check for something special.  This year, the vast majority of it has been earmarked for the various portions of my National Boards, but as always, I have decided to keep just a little back to spend on something nonessential.

I have a FitBit, and I love it.  I wear it almost all the time, and it really has helped me increase my activity.  (Well, except right now in the summer when it's hotter than nine hells outside and World Cup is on all the time...)  The only thing I wish is that the FitBit had a watch on it.  If I'm going to have something on my my wrist, I wish it could at least tell me what time it is.  There are many situations where I simply cannot pull out my phone, and I do not want to wear a regular watch, so having the time on this slender band would be great.

Recently, a whole new batch of smartwatches has been released by several companies.  I looked at the ones from Samsung, and I liked what I was seeing.  They have gone past the Pebble phase of something functional but quite ugly and are actually becoming interesting.

I was most interested in the Samsung Gear Fit, a combination of fitness band and smartwatch.  When compared to the other things that are available, the design is lovely.  It is designed to do all the things I want one to do, measure my steps, run my music player, show me notifications, tell me the time.  However, when I started doing research on it, the reviews were almost universally lukewarm.  Everyone loves the design but hates the functionality.

I could have dismissed some of the reviews.  Those people expected it to summon a space pegacorn to sweep them to a solid gold house, apparently.  Some of them had such piddly little faults or expected such massive things no simple smartwatch is probably going to be capable of for a long while that I took them with the required grain of salt and moved on.  I probably would have already ordered one except for the repeated claim that it does not measure steps accurately.  One reviewer claimed he'd been sitting in his chair, swung his arm to reach for something, and the Gear Fit registered 36 steps.

Yeah.

That's a problem.

Again, one or two such instances would have been possible to discount.  The fact that almost every single reviewer on every site I checked said much the same means I just can't justify spending the money on a device that isn't what is should be.

There's another option coming later this summer, apparently.  Motorola is going to join the fray, and from the
very vague ads they have, I am optimistic that this could be the thing I need.  For one thing, it looks gorgeous.  It's not a conspicuous square with a technofabulous band that screams, "HEY!  LOOK AT ME!  SMARTWAAAATCH!!!"  Instead, its face is round, its band interchangeable, and with the right clock face selected, it wouldn't draw that much more attention than the old-fashioned analog watches I wore for years and years.

What they say it will do, however, would make my life so much easier.  It has deep Google integration, and just the little teaser previews available here and there promise fitness measuring and everything else I want.  Granted, this one probably doesn't have a "summon pegacorn" setting, either, but that is totally fine by me.  My wants and needs are simple.  (heh)

So I'm still waiting.  I'm sure that as we get closer to the season of commercial feeding frenzy (aka Black Friday/Cyber Monday), more of these devices will appear.  I'm not going to jump on the beta device wagon this time.  I want something that I can use for a long time, and I will wait until it appears.

Twitter Is Blocked in Turkey

....and the people have flipped a big old electronic bird to the oppressor by simply sliding around that block.  I want to stand up and cheer.  The images I see of people spray-painting the DNS numbers to skate around the government ban over Erdogan's own political posters fill me with the same satisfaction all those portraits of Ataturk flying on red backgrounds and plastered accusingly on the walls opposite the presidential residence did when we were last year.

Turkey is so dear to me after the Ottomans course and the travel that went with it.  The people who live in that wonderful place deserve better than their leader is giving them.  What a tremendously condescending insult to think that he has the right to shut them off from the electronic world.  What a tremendously arrogant stance to pretend he has that kind of power.  I keep thinking we're about to have a "V" moment there, and the results will be shown to us by the Instagram feeds, YouTube videos, and tweets of the people who will rebuild what he's tried to tear down and repress.

I want to applaud Twitter and Google, too, for standing up to a world leader who is trying to hide his own sins by denying his people freedom and access.  He's literally trying to cover not only his own eyes with dirty hands but also the eyes of the whole world like a petulant child who cannot get his way.  It heartens me to see them standing up, providing backdoors and work-arounds instead of folding their hands and waiting passively for someone else to do something.

I'm not much of a revolutionary.  I hate politics passionately.  It just makes me furious when I see such a vibrant nation under the heel of such a massive hubris-filled jackass.  So by all means, let's #occupytwitter since #twitterisblockedinturkey.

The Android Life

A little over a month ago, I decided it was time to upgrade my iPhone.  I had been debating whether or not I might want to change from iOS to Android for a long time, doing research and asking people who had the other platform for insights.  It was the day before my birthday when I finally found the time to walk into my local phone store, and as the tech-laden greeter came up to put my name on the waiting list for service, I still didn't know which phone I would walk out with.

One of the good things about the phone store always being so busy is that it gave me more than enough time to walk around and look at all the different models.  I started with the iPhones.  They were comfortable and familiar.  It looked great, and I knew immediately that it would be pleasant to use.

Then I strolled over to the Androids.

I've been using one of the Galaxy tablets from school to set up activities and hunt for apps my students might be able to use on the big class set, so for the first time, the Android devices felt familiar.  I started looking at the specs on memory and other aspects, and I realized that I could put in large memory card and have three times more space than the iPhone I'd been looking at, and the phone, the SD card, and the Otterbox all together would still be less expensive.

That sort of decided me.  Yes, my iPhones have always been tremendously good to me.  They've done hardcore duty all over the globe without batting even the tiniest eyelash.  Standing in that store, though, I couldn't justify spending more money for what was going to be less phone that I really needed. 

As I picked up the devices, the Android also felt good in my hand.  True, it was much larger than the iPhone resting in my jacket.  I had worries that it would be cumbersome to keep up with, too big to slip into a pants pocket.  The more I held it, though, the more I liked the way it filled my palm, the way the screen size increased because of it.

When my name was finally called and the sales associate finally came to ask me what I wanted, I knew I wanted one of the Samsung Galaxy models.  After a brief conversation with him, I settled on the GS4.  He took it over to the service desk, did that magic that they do, and thirty minutes later, I was headed out into the darkness of a February night with it clipped to my beltloops in a Defender holster.

It seems like a small thing, the addition of a new device to my life, but it has actually had a number of really rather profound changes on me.  The first came when I noticed the preloaded Samsung S-Health step counter widget.  I dragged it onto one of my screens out of curiosity, and slowly, I became more and more interested in watching the numbers go up.  I found myself taking extra trips down to the office and the mail room just to get a little more exercise.  This led to my buying a Fitbit Flex, and now I'm tracking movement and calories, and I've lost six pounds.  

I've also sort of rediscovered what a smartphone is all about.  I had gotten into a tremendous rut, it seems, with my apps and my habits.  I didn't get all the same apps I used to have when I was reloading this new phone, and some of the ones I kept work for me now in a totally different way.  Since Android is intimately welded to Google and since I am such a tremendous user of Google stuff, things I do all the time have become much easier.  

When I walked out of the store that night before my birthday, I admit I still had doubts.  It's hard to believe that now.  I know some people have horrible experiences with Android devices and flee back to iPhone as soon as they are able, but I have to say, I don't think that will be me.  This change has been totally for the better.

Wonder Woman and Fountain Pens

Today, a new iOS update rolled out, and I dutifully upgraded my Apple products.  As the screen returned to functionality on my iPad, I was greeted with the colorful Art Deco Wonder Woman graphic I have on it just now for my lock screen wallpaper.  I put in my passcode, and the home screen full of icons floating above an image of a vintage fountain pen collection filled the screen.  I sort of laughed to myself, thinking, "And now you know everything that's important there is to know about me by looking at those two pictures."

It was a joke, but as I turned it over in my mind, I started thinking about how much truth there is to it.  The things we choose to decorate the things we use every day probably say an incredible amount about what goes on behind the closed doors of our psyches.

I started thinking of the images on my other devices:  the shot of the Old Place at sunset on my iPhone, the READ MORE owl graphic I made into a sticker on the outside of my Kindle, the Jailhouse Rock Elvis currently dancing his way across this wallpaper of this computer.  If you pay attention to the little glimpses of what people decorate with, you can learn something about what they value.

Case in point:  every parent or grandparent who has their children's faces plastered on every single one of those places.  Every pet owner who has ever used his or her dog or cat in a profile picture or as screensaver shot (I've done both, btw.)  Every sentimental soul who has his or her true love as the first thing they see when they activate their phone....

I change out the images I see on my various devices quite frequently, but I think most of them would speak to a listening eye (heh).  Wonder Woman?  She shows up a lot.  I think I have at least three different backgrounds with her in it.  You can find the blog post about why I think she's so super awesome and how long that's been going on.  I guess probably everybody has one superhero kicking around in the upstairs, whether they festoon their surroundings with him/her or not.

The fountain pens?  Now that I think about it, I have at least two vintage advertising images of them in addition to the photo of the collection mentioned earlier.  They represent my love of old-fashioned, graceful, and functional things.  They show my love for writing.  They speak to my love of things that last.

Now that this has occurred to me, I will undoubtedly be trying to collect scraps of information about others around me from it.  It's sort of a puzzle, and I have a hard time escaping the lure of those.  I will also probably wonder what it says about me when I switch to the bright orange graphic of a little black cat with librarian glasses on.  Hmm.  Maybe I better not over-analyze too much.  Sometimes, maybe a picture is just a picture is just a picture....

Why Evernote Is Awesome

1)  It works everywhere.  I mean EVERYWHERE.  I have it on my iPhone.  I have it on my computer(s).  I will have it on whatever tablet I get.  All my crap is available at the slightest whim.  This means I can stand in the middle of Wal-Mart and look up the ingredients I need to make cachasa Brigadero.  And while I might not be able to get all that stuff AT Wal-Mart, it's worlds better than having to tote index cards or not have what I need to try.

2)  The logo.  Have you noticed that it's an elephant?  Elephants (after owls and giraffes) are some of my favorite animals.  It's also a happy-looking elephant.  He's so spiffingly pleased because he hasn't forgotten that document he was going to share with his coworkers on a USB drive that's at home.  This is the secret to happiness, after all.

3)  The ability to make and share notebooks.  Most awesome tool for team collaboration ever.  You can throw anything in, PDFs, web clippings, images, your own freaking handwritten notes, and then pass along the treasure trove to somebody else.  I used to do things like this with ring binders or file folders (which, of course, were never where I needed them).  This is the digital equivalent of my resource cabinet in the back of my classroom.  I want to start my students using them, too, so they can do group research projects with greater ease.

4)  Clearly.  If you're using Chrome and Evernote and haven't managed to stumble on this extension your-own-self, hie it over to the web store and get it now.  It strips pages down to their essentials (removes ads, ornate headers, and other fluff) so all you are saving is something that can be easily edited or printed without taking 487 pages.  It lets you preview and then "clip."  I am preparing all sorts of articles for teaching (Common Core, anyone?) simply by putting them through Clearly when I find them online and then tucking them into notebooks for later.

5) CamScanner.  This one is brand new to me, but it's something I've been needing.  It's an iPhone app that lets you create PDFs by taking pictures with your iPhone's camera.  SHEER GENIUS.  If it works like they say on the tin, it will replace having to take a document to a big scanner for quick recording.  It will also allow me to archive some things that I only have in hardcopy from the days before I did everything digitally.

6)  Did I mention the green elephant?

7) The latest advance in their OCR technology and the fact that they just hooked up with Moleskine to use a specialized notebook to ease scanning in of handwritten stuff.  I admit it, as much of a technophile as I am, I still prefer to use my fountain pen and paper when I need to take notes.  However, having those notes put into Evernote when I'm done allows me all sorts of options I didn't have before.  Since I usually wind up as the "recorder" or "scribe" for every group, I think I can try to do it by hand now and turn it into a PDF, etc., so I don't have to write then type.

I could go on, but I think this is enough.  I am finding new ways to use it all the time.  Tonight, I added an IFTTT action that will archive my Instagram photos automatically, saving me the hassle of individual downloads for each one.  Good stuff, that.  If you're not using it, I think you should at least give it a spin.  Who knows, maybe the green elephant will make you happy, too.

Thanks. No, Really. THANKS.

I was looking for some quotes on dating and relationships for the last post, and Google helpfully popped these ads up.  As a very dear friend of mine once said, "F--- you, Google.  F---- you."  I will PIMP SLAP you, biyatch.

The Beauty of the Pinterest Recipe

I spent some time tonight after church talking with a lady there who is from Brazil.  She and I were comparing notes about my recent trip, and we started talking about food. She expressed how much she missed certain dishes and items from Brazil.  I know what she means.

Why is it always the food that we miss when we leave a place?  Why does what we eat become such an evocative reminder of somewhere we love?

The taste of green tea, good green, always takes me back to Japan.  It makes me think of all sorts of things...sitting and talking with friends, coming cold and tired into the train station in Nagoya and having a bowl of gold-flake matcha, having green tea soft serve ice cream at the annual pottery festival in Seto.

There are other things that take me other places.  Spicy green curry makes me think of Chiang Mai and walking up all.those.steps to get to the temple at the top, the little hotel where I stayed where I slept in mosquito netting, the market where I bought a cheap pair of flip flops and ate coconut balls off leaves, the bicycle with the broken seat I rode around Sukothai.   Oddly enough, guacamole also always makes me think of Japan where I learned to make it from a fellow teacher.  Thanksgiving dinner carries me back to my college days at State when my friends and I commandeered the Wesley Foundation kitchen and made a meal for about twenty people.

There are dishes from Brazil I want to learn to make.  Feijoada, a sort of black bean and pork stew for lack of a more accurate definition, is the first one.  I adore it, and it is linked to both my recent trip and a friend I lost track of a long time ago who introduced it to me.  Brigadero is a sweet that we were served in almost every classroom party we were given.  Tonight, after my conversation, I decided to see if I might be able to find some easy recipes for these things.

God bless Pinterest.  I think everything is there.  I did a quick search, and I found the things I was looking for.  Next week, I am going to attempt the feijoada.  I didn't get to bring home the proper stone pot, but I will substitute my crockpot instead.

I don't know if my plans for getting back to any of the places that are special in my heart will succeed.  Until such time as they do, I will keep my memories of it all alive through my photos, the assorted bits and pieces I brought back, and my kitchen.

Clean It, Make It, Fix It

I opened my Cricut, the Christmas present from my parents this past year, yesterday.  O_o  I swear, cool craft things are like crack cocaine for me.  I cannot stop fiddling with it.

At first, I was just going to "try it out," make sure I could use it so when the new school year rolled around, I'd be set to do some bulletin boards.  Then I made my first little cuts.  It was so neat that next I started looking for used cartridges.  That led to the discovery of online goodies.  Next thing I knew, I was foraging for an A/B USB cable and hooking it to my computer, downloading the free design software from ProvoCraft, and updating the firmware on my Cricut.    

While I was waiting for the firmware to do its thing, I got on Pinterest and looked up Cricut projects. This search led to lots of stuff people had done with their Cricuts, websites with information and tips, and A MILLION FREAKING PRINTABLE PROJECTS.  I kept going from pin to pin thinking, "Oh, this would be so cool for departmental 'happies'," or "Wow.  I can make a bulletin board with that.

THAT led to "cool crap to do to your house" pins.  I banked benches, storage, all kinds of things I can make with my own three hands.  I just need a small old shutter, and I'll be in business.  Oh, and some magnetic letters.  And a mason jar.  And...

Somebody once said that the best thing about things like HGTV and craft websites is the feeling of accomplishment you get after you've been watching/surfing them for awhile.  Somehow, by looking at all the cool projects and bookmarking or pinning them, one begins to have a feeling of satisfaction as though the project has actually been done instead of just added to a probably-overflowing file of things that were also interesting at the time.

We all have our "someday" files, I guess, those places, electronic or real, where we stuff all that type of thing.  I know I have binders in my craft room of things, stained glass patterns pinned to the bulletin board wall, e-files abounding.  What I want, though, is to start doing them instead of just collecting them and saying, "I'll get to that when I have the time."  That's the best way never to do any of it, probably.

Tomorrow, I will leave my dreams and e-crafting and work on the major overhaul of the back part of my house.  I have to clean out some crap so I have space for many other things, including perhaps some of the ideas I have recently seen.  It will be good to move from dreaming to doing.

Hugin Lives

My trusty netbook died on me yesterday.  It has been more than a trooper, having been to England, Rome, San Francisco, DC twice, Nashville, Louisville twice, New Orleans a couple of times, and who knows how many other little local trips.  It has been my travel workhorse banging around in my bag and through airport security.  When I was getting ready to go to England for Spring Break, I noticed that it was behaving badly, blue screening me and so forth, but I had hoped it was a software issue that I had remedied.  Apparently not.

I got on NewEgg and started looking.  I managed to find this Acer Aspire One 722.  It's a dual core netbook, and the difference in performance from my old one to this is completely a night/day thing.  I'm amazed at how well this little computer is working.  It settles my mind in so many ways, not having to worry about the old one dying (because that's over with), not having to worry about it hanging up or being insufficient to the tasks at hand, having about as much horsepower under the hood here as with my big laptop (I think).

I kept the name.  This one, too, is Hugin.  I like my paired ravens from myth, and I still find them appropriate.  Just as I had rechristened my 1GB external hard drive Muninn2, the new netbook is HuginII.  The newest incarnations of my sleek black technological birds can fly and deliver now.

It's been a long day of setting up Hugin and trying to get my desktop in the back office working right again.  I had been very neglectful of the desktop, and the antivirus had run out.  That was the least of the problems.  It was in bad shape.  It took HOURS of work to get it unSNAFUed.  It had to be updated, cleaned out, synched, protected, and generally made functional rather than a liability again.  I could not do computers all day everyday.  I would lose my mind.  There are hours of wait-time while they "do their do," and moments of blood pressure elevating frustration when they refuse to do what you want them to do.  Granted, if I were more technically savvy, I might be able to hack through the latter with greater ease, but some things, I think, just take time to walk through all the steps and stages.

I hate that.

Anyway, I do feel some accomplishment in finally getting this big list of tasks taken care of.  I am thrilled with the new netbook.  It should be perfect for keeping in touch with everyone and keeping them up to date with what is going on during my trip.  While I know that the need for it when I travel indicates the level of my technology addiction, I don't really intend to apologize.

Google Play and Google Drive

I stumbled across an article on Lifehacker that led me to another article on Lifehacker (I swear, it's like a maze, and at some point, you will wind up on something that references binder clips....) that dumped me on a page that was talking about Google Play.  I had probably seen it at some point when it was introduced, but I didn't really pay much attention to it, since it is aimed at Android users (and I'm not one) and tablet folk (not me, either, yet).  As usual when one reads something on LH, though, the "duh moment" occurred, and I began to see a whole other universe of uses for Google Play.

So far, I've looked at a couple of streaming music services, and they're fine.  Spotify is fairly nifty, and Pandora is okay.  In fact, I owe Pandora for a couple of artists I really like.  I enjoy it for discovering new folks.  Spotify, if I were looking to pay people for a service (which I'm not.  I'm poor like that, see?) would be great on my iPhone.  I only use the streaming stuff on my iPhone more or less.  (Well, and Pandora through my Roku, but that's a different conversation.)

What I've always dreamed of is having all my music on my iPhone.  I change music moods constantly, and I have very diverse listening tastes.  My library isn't as big as some people's I know, but it isn't exactly tiny, either. That's a crapload of GB on an iPhone that won't hold all that and my pictures and my apps and my...  You get it.  Enter the everlovin' Cloud.

I am, even as we speak, uploading all my music to Google's cloud through Play.  It is going to take about fifty years, probably since my connection on this DSL is CRAP, but it will get there.  I already have access to more music online than I do on my phone.  Granted, there are restrictions (a live internet connection), but when I have it, I have all my music and my playlists everywhere.  It makes good sense for me to use Google for this, too, because although I am not an Android user, I am a hardcore Google user everywhere else.   This is a very good thing.

I added the gmusic app from the iTunes app store (since Apple and Google can't play nice together and required a third party) and this was really the only missing piece.  There is a native web interface from Google, but without the gmusic app, Google Play won't play in the background, and getting to playlists, etc., is a bit clunky.  The only complaint I've had so far with any of it is that my iHome dock seemed weirded out by it in a way that it never is by iTunes.  This is a very, very minor thing, and, I think, a compatibility issue with the gmusic app, not with Google Play itself since I ran them both on the sleep timer and it turned off the native web interface fine but couldn't kill the app...  O_o  Lesson learned there.

Added to all this wonderfulness is that I have Google Drive now.  It's basically just Dropbox by Google, but because it's by Google, it seamlessly integrates with everything else by them I use (which is everything) making my life worlds easier.  I love them. This is it.  This is the dream come true.  All my stuff everywhere without having to carry around a huge laptop of doom.  I don't have all my documents in my Google Drive folder, but I keep the ones that are important and needed there.

The feeling of knowing that I can pull them up on my phone and send them to whomever or share them with others through Google Docs while I'm sitting in a waiting room somewhere or in a meeting instead of having to wait until later (or in my case, possibly forget...damn you, Topamax) is extremely comforting.  When John Q. Student has a crisis (and can't get into the Docs locker) and needs PowerPoint  or handout X to resolve it, I can tap, send, and we can all be a little happier.  This is a good thing.

I know there are people out there who hate Google.  Well, that's okay.  To each his own.  They are making my life a whole lot easier, and I'm grateful to them for it.  If other people want other solutions, fine.  Spiffy.  Corking.  The only thing I guess I have to say is from the Rolling Stones then..."Hey, you, get off of my Cloud...."  Because you know what?  Right now, it's working fine for me.

Technology Is Your Friend and Mine

It's amazing what you can do online these days.  Today I renewed my teacher's license.  I can't tell you what a huge relief that was to me.  When I applied for it the first time, there was no online option, and the paper application process was a nightmare.  It took forever to fill out, forever to process, and the entire process was so unsatisfactory that the people in Jackson had barricaded themselves in their office with big, hostile signs on their door saying "Thou Shalt Not Enter" and "We Will NOT Process Hand-Delivered Applications."  Any encounter with the office of licensure was sure to end in tears and bloodshed, probably on both sides of the equation.  It was not uncommon to wait six weeks, get a license back and have it printed wrong leading to six more weeks of waiting and praying for a new one that was right.  Most people just took a day off school to go over to Jackson and "hand carry" their stuff to MDE (hence the nasty signs).

Today, I sat down, signed in to an account I had created the other day when I became aware of the website service, entered some information, and notified my Central Office when I was done.  They, having the hard copies on file for everything, were able to verify, and by some arcane ritual I don't understand, the necessary was invoked and I now have a shiny new license good for five more years.  No pain.  No blood.  No trips to Jackson.  No screaming into a phone.  I have the e-copy right now.  The actual paper document will get here when it gets here.  It's not as important as the electronic document right now, anyway, since the fact that it exists in the big computer at MDE is the thing that is of vital, earthshatteringly immediate need.

This is why technology is good.  Everything that has an application should have it online.  I know all about the risks of breach of confidentiality and your personal information going awry, but the speed factor in entry and processing really can't be over-praised.  What used to take SIX WEEKS (or more since this is the "busy season") took less than two full days.  Yay Tech. Yay, yay, yay.  Really.

I can sort of breathe again now.  Now that I know how to keep up with it, I can make sure it doesn't get to this crisis point again.  Because believe you me, buddy, it better not EVER get like it got Thursday again, or I'm going to have to be carried out on a stretcher.

Aaaaaiiiiirrr.....

I just gave up the battle and cut on the A/C.  I held out as long as I could.  The first of April is ridiculously early to have to cut it on, but it was 10:30 pm and 78 degrees in my house with all the windows open and the attic fan running.  Enough already.

I think it's probably cooler than that outside, but that's sort of the thing with this house.  It's been remodeled so many times that it has very thick walls.  It holds whatever temperature it reaches for a long time.  I know it got really hot in here earlier today when it was 80-something outside because I was trying to take a nap and I kept waking up at every little sound and having bad weird flashes of dream in-between.  I don't sleep well when it's hot, another reason I went ahead and gave up on the A/C battle.

Blessedly, the good old unit outside is steadily churning away (knock wood and praise the saints, the fairies, Tesla, and anybody else who might be in charge of holding all the the little wires together inside it).  Granny bought good stuff whenever she bought, purchasing for the long haul, a philosophy I have always tried to follow even though my crappy budget makes it very, very hard.  After all, if you buy it right the first time, you usually don't have to buy it again, or at least not for a very long time....  (Unless the *#$#@*s install it wrong, but that's a whole 'nother story...)

Well, I think my last washer of the night has finally stopped spinning, so I'm going to go hang what needs to be hung, tumble what needs to be tumbled, crate a dirty white dog (don't ask.  really.), and put myself into a bed that hopefully won't be stifling now.  Maybe with this sweetly cool air will come sweet dreams.  Heh.  I know.  Don't ask Tesla, the fairies, and the saints for TOO many miracles out of one central unit, right?

Not Funny, Twitter

In their "Who to Follow" recommendations, Twitter recommends I follow Google Maps.  Unfunny, Twitter.  Very, very unfunny.  (And probably, I couldn't even if I tried..... Damn blinking blue dots.....)

Tech Crap

It's been a day of fixing technology on the fly.

Chewie started it by biting partially through the power adapter for my laptop.  Unlike the other electronics and cords he's destroyed, this one had current running through it.  Aww.  How sad I am!  He yelped and ran away, looking at me with those big sad eyes.  I just said, "GOOD.  Now maybe you'll leave my stuff alone."  He only got shocked, not hurt.  I have no real hope that he will really learn from this.  I've already had to throw out a sync cable for my iPhone, a non-plugged-extension cord, TWO USB connection cables for my wireless music system, and he has torn up countless non-electronics things.  He doesn't get a lot of sympathy from me.  I got the damage mended.  Black electrical tape is a wonder.

My parents called next.  I bought them a Roku for Christmas, and they'd gotten it connected as far as plugging it in and getting the RCA cables attached.  Past that, they needed me.  I went up, fought with their wireless router which had never been set up for things to connect to it since nothing they have is wireless, added their Amazon account to the Roku and reactivated a defunct Netflix account and generally got the thing up and running for them.

I tried to use their computer at first, but something was using all the memory on it.  I took a few minutes to take care of that problem, cleaned off some old programs they didn't use, purged their startup folder, and tried to help speed up their machine a little.   I couldn't find what was eating all that memory even though I looked, closed some programs through Task Manager.

I'd brought my little netbook up to take care of the Roku setup since I knew from previous experience it's easier to have a computer in front of the screen to put in codes and so forth when setting one up.  My netbook, though, has serious issues because the hard drive is almost completely full of music, etc., and the memory is insufficient.  It started acting up and then it just began to shut down.  I guess it ran its batteries out and didn't warn me.  I was so afraid it was just dead from some kind of hardware failure, but once I got it home and back on the charger, it did finally load again.

I've been wanting to upgrade my external portable hard drive for a long time since the one I have currently is almost full, and I take pictures all the time and need space to put those fairly large files.  I have a plan to make my old 500 GB external my iTunes library for my netbook and take the load off its internal HD.  Friday, the 2 TB external and some new memory for the netbook will arrive, and we'll see if I can figure out how to make all that happen.

I'm not much by way of tech support.  I am hoping that I don't have to do much more of it in the near future. I can only do the most basic of things.  With any luck, I will be able to get my netbook working like it should before I have to start travelling with it, though.  In its current state, it's a real pain.  Maybe I have enough geek in me to manage this, at least.

Riveting Statistics

I just opened up my Last.FM page and looked at some of the statistics there. I never remember to go to the page with all that stuff they keep track of.  I don't know why.  I suppose I could take advantage of it somehow, but well, I just never think about it.  They track my "top songs" and "top artists" by week, month, year, of all time, etc.  That's kind of interesting, I guess, to see how my listening trends change over the course of time.  The "scrobbler" doesn't work all the time since frequently it's blocked by a firewall at school when I'm working in my room and listening, so I'm not sure these are entirely accurate, but I suppose proportionally, they are representative.  According to their record-keeping, my top ten artists of all-time are:

1) Josh Ritter
2) The Black Keys
3) The White Stripes
4) Maroon5
5) Calexico
6) Wilco
7) The Tallest Man on Earth
8) Bob Dylan
9) Pink Floyd
10) The Rolling Stones

This, of course, is based on number of plays.  I am profoundly surprised not to see Ella Fitzgerald or Chris Thile/Punch Brothers in my Top Ten.  (I just clicked "more" to see who else made the big list, and Thile is 11.  Fitzgerald is 20.  Who knew?  If Punch Brothers and Thile were combined, they'd be at number 4....)  I guess I listen differently than I think I do.  For some reason, I didn't perceive the White Stripes to be that high up my list.  Either that, or they are in EVERY SINGLE PLAYLIST I've ever made.  Heh.  Jack would be so proud.

Looking at this list, another thing strikes me.  F, if you're reading this, you probably have noticed that your little fingers are all over this.  I would imagine that you are especially amused by number eight.  Yeahwell.  So be it.  Nobody has managed to convert me to James Taylor yet.  On that point I hold resolute.

I never think about having true "favorites," so it's a bit odd to see these as a top ten list.  It depends entirely on my mood and current kick or obsession as to what I listen to.  I could just as easily swing into a country kick tomorrow and listen to nothing but Patsy Cline and George Strait for the next six months.  I wonder what my top ten list would look like then.  Hmm.

And now, I have to get back to listening to more stuff.    Maybe I'll look at Last.FM in another six months or so and see if anybody else has edged out these.  If I think about it again.  Maybe.  Because I know you'll be on the edge of your seat waiting.

And It Just Doesn't WORK

I'm trying for about the eleventh time to get a video converted from wmv to mp4 so I can (perhaps) upload it to the finicky BlackBoard system.  I hate this.  HATE THIS.  Nobody told me there was a size limit for uploads on BlackBoard.  I'm sure this was supposed to be a part of "learning by experience" ho-ho-ho.  Instead, what it is doing is PISSING ME OFF.  The video will not convert (I'm using VLC, and it is, for the first time ever, failing me.) The only version I've been able to extract is choppy video with no sound.  If I try to get better quality than that, it pretends to make it but doesn't.  I'm exhausted and I need to sleep, but I have to turn this assignment in.  I was so pleased with the video I'd made.  Now I just want to throw the laptop across the room because I can't turn it in.  I'm borderline migraine. I do not need this from something that is not even a job.

Quick Mix

A list.  Take what you can get and be happy.  Yeah.  It was one of those.

• Good:  BLT, Chess Square, AND unexpected bonus potato chips for lunch.  Hell.  Yes.  Nothing I ate came out of microwave.  It was like heaven.
• Bad:  Watching a good friend of mine beat himself up for something he did not do.  I would take those stripes for you if I could.
• Weird:  Being told by a student my jeans were not dress code, and so I needed to take them off.  (Oh NO he didn't....  Well,  yeah.  He sort of did.)  Um.  You do know I'm old enough to be yo mamma, right?
• Good:  The elusive F came to see me (amongst others) today.  Don't see him nearly enough, but any day he shows up at my door is a good day.
• Bad:  Sick puppy, and now dirty puppy.  Some things, nobody should have to clean.  Repeatedly. (Said dog is now trying to play "shake the sock", his favorite game, while the sock is still on my foot.  Anybody want a dog?)
• Weird:  I'm hooked on a song about an Irish killing squad, "Shankill Butchers" as sung by Sarah Jarosz.  It is twirling in my head like a beautiful deadly little ballet.
• Good:  TGC sent me a gorgeous little electronics device called a Bloggie.  It's slim and lovely, shoots for about eight hours, does still pictures and video, emails, stores for later, or uploads instantly to FB, Flicker, etc.  Yeees.  Send me sexy tech, baby, and I'm yours for life.
• Bad:  I'm not sure I have any food in my house.
• Good:  I have almost all my TGC homework done because unlike my usual schedule of procrastination, I came home and was a good girl who worked diligently.  Gold star to me.

Now I'm going to go scratch around for something that isn't ramen or puppy chow and slack.  I have by God earned it this week.

The Curious Phenomenon

There's this odd thing that I used to see on FB all the time, the Inbox Question and Answer session.  You are all, no doubt, familiar with it.  People send you a bunch of questions, and you answer them publicly on your FB feed.  The questions are inevitably about really private things such as "Did you ever love me?", and so I guess there is a sense of daring given to the person when they answer there in that never-pausing wave of information.  It's the digital equivalent of stripping before a crowd, maybe.  It's always struck me as odd, though, as to why the asker of the question would want those things published in that very public forum, too.  If the question was asked anonymously, wouldn't they want the answer to come back that same way?

Until recently, I had never seen this sort of internet party game anywhere else but on FB.  The other day, a big version of it rolled through my Tumblr feed, too, a list of some 75 questions you could reblog and let people select from with a message.  If you reblogged it, you were telling your followers that you were willing to answer any of them that they selected.  As usual, the questions were fairly intrusive.  Some of them were things that, quite frankly, my close friends don't even know about me.("When was the last time you cried?")  Some of them were just goofy or ridiculous.  ("Do you think you can last in a relationship 6 months and not cheat?) So why would I volunteer to answer them for the entire e-universe?

I realize that there is this sort of anonymity that comes with putting fingers to keyboard.  And yes, I am aware that many of you are pointing fingers to the fact that this blog itself is not listed under my name.  However, I reveal just as much of myself as I'm comfortable with here.  You see only a flash of pale ankle under a long skirt, the nape of a neck above a kimono collar.  I'm not doing a full-on strip show for you here, no matter what you may think.  What is revealed is controlled.

That is my choice, I guess.  I just don't want perfect strangers asking me "Will your next kiss be a mistake?" or "Are you currently wanting to see anyone?" because my answers would probably have to be rude, flip, or total fabrications.  

Of course, I suppose that might be fun, too.  Maybe that's why people do it.  Maybe they all just make up nonsensical crap and nobody tells the truth at all.  For the one about the kiss, for example, I'd say something like, "Yes.  There is no way around it.  It's going to be a mistake. He knows it.  I know it.  We've been fighting it for so long because of all that stands between us, but every time we meet it gets harder and harder to resist.  There's this sort of ridiculous attraction between us, you know?  That kind where you look up into his eyes and you feel that little click and you have to make yourself look away because if you don't...well...  We mostly play it off, and since I don't see him very often, it's been easy to do, but I have this feeling that the next time we run across each other, it's going to be a kiss to alter two worlds completely."  I could say that and then everybody I know would be in a total lather trying to figure out who the hell I was talking about and what was going on.  That might be hilarious since it would all be complete and total fiction.  (Or would it?  Mwahahaha....  No.  Really.)

Or not.  Because you know what?  Even if it were total fiction and I had a blast writing little snippets of story to go with these snoopy questions, these things would still be items that if my friends wanted to know, I'd tell them privately.  I'm just old-fashioned that way.  I can't imagine that everybody on my FB feed wants to know crap about my life.  I'm having enough trouble imagining they even want to know the stuff I'm putting up as statuses, to be honest.  I feel silly every time I post something.  I can't imagine those few brave souls that follow me on Tumblr do, either.  Therefore, if you are absolutely full of curiosity about "If the person you wish to be with were with you, what would you be doing right now?" or "Have you ever kissed someone older than you?", I guess you will need to ask me privately.

(everything in quotation marks is a real question taken from the list that rolled through my Tumblr a few days ago.  I didn't make up any of them, and I left off a few of the more precious ones like, "Are your toenails painted pink right now?", "Can you drive a stick shift?", and "Is there a boy you would do absolutely everything for?"  O_o  Now you tell me.  Why isn't there a "boy's version" of this "ish"?  I would very much like to see one for the gentlemen.  In fact, I may just sit down and make one just as "precious" for the gents....)