Textpectation
The anticipation one feels when waiting for a response to a text message.
I just texted her for a date but now the textpectation is killing me.
Texpectation - Mair has high Textpectations when Dave texts her.
Here’s a picture of Mair’s dog Rad, the Velociraptor.
Here he is from another angle after going potty on the rug. It pays to know how to look cute.
I found something new to look at during this dreadful dearth of new and good tv. It’s on the intarweb, though. And although I don’t really like watching tv/movies on my computer, I’m happy to sit through this.
Nathan Fillion, a.k.a. Captain Malcolm Reynolds, is in it! I love Nathan Fillion. I even liked him in that gross zombie/bug movie, Slither. And I don’t do gross movies.
I now love Neil Patrick Harris, too. Who knew? He’s Dr. Horrible, and pretty damned funny. Felicia Day rounds out the cast, at least for the first three episodes.
Got a few minutes? I’m talking about Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. It’s amusing. It’s a musical! Try it! You’ll like it! It’s directed by Joss Whedon, the man who became My Master when he created Firefly and Serenity.
15 minutes + or - per episode. Three episodes that I know about. But I’m probably late to the game, here.
from awryone:
Vets claim cats cost half as much as dogs to keep healthy.
But, you’ll pay double in lowered self-esteem and constant doubt of their love.
Dudes, here’s the “after” haircut.
I know dogs shouldn’t get on the furniture but he’s too short to look out the window. I’m being lenient in regards to this particular piece of furniture. His stumpy little hind legs get tired if he has to balance on them for too long when he looks out the window.
His head is such a funny shape, and he’s sitting so regally there. NOT. The pink areas are his skin where I scalped him. Note the terrible eyebrows and trim job on his feet. His weiner is pretty bad, too, which you can see on the next to last picture if you’re interested.
I told him he was very pretty now and he seems to be okay with it. You can click the pictures to see them a little bigger.
Lewi and Goober Aka Gunnar AKA The Scarecrow (If I Only Had A Brain).
The neighbors came home and rescued Howlio from the back yard and let him out in the front. All three of my dogs were whining and shrieking out the window [MOM!!MOM!!MOM!! LOOK OUTSIDE THERES A DOG A DOG A DOG WE'RE LOOKING WE'RE LOOKING MOM! MOM! MOM! LOOK LOOK !!!LOOK!!!. ] I went to get the camera to see if I could capture the intensity of the moment, but now, when I got back Sissy crawled under the table and flipped me off. The other two stuck around for the photo op, albeit a bit calmer.
The bad haircut in all its glory.
Shih tsu hair should look more like this:
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAH!!!
Not in my lifetime.
I am wasting a perfectly good day today. There are lots of things to do, but I surely don’t want to do any of them.
On Cobbler:
Kathy, we tried your cobbler recipe last night. It was good, but we decided we liked the first one better. There are two reasons for that, I think. First is that recipe #1 was created for fresh apricots. #2 is it didn’t use nearly as much sugar and butter, so there were less guilt spasms wracking our bods as we ate the entire thing.
If I make the first one again, I will probably double the dough part so it will cover most of the top, thus becoming more suitably fattening. It was divine and I had a hard time giving Bob his share. Don’t tell him that, k?
Here’s the original:
Fresh Apricot Cobbler
Mix 1/2 cup sugar and cornstarch in a 2 quart saucepan.
Stir in apricots and water.
Heat to boiling, stirring constantly.
Boil and stir one minute. Pour into ungreased 1 1/2 quart casserole.
Stir together remaining ingredients until a soft dough forms.
Drop dough by tablespoonsful onto hot apricot mixture. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with cream if desired, or a la mode if you’re feeling decadent.
Like I said, there wasn’t enough dough for my tastes, so I’ll make half again as much or possibly double it. This was toe-curlingly good. I think I got the recipe from About.com, but not positive.
I was out picking apricots this morning and two nauseatingly overripe ones fell on me from above. One onto my head in my hair, and the other on my boob.
It’s interesting how the cots ripen at different times. There are still some fairly green ones on the tree, too. Mostly ripe now, though. Cobbler again tonight.
Can’t wait for the peaches, should be next week.
It was finally a little bit cool this morning and I’ve had the house opened up. I started smelling smoke again about an hour ago so I’ve battened down the hatches.
Off to give Lewi a bath and a shave. I’ve not shaved him myself yet, this may be interesting. Or just hard and unpleasant. As opposed to my earlier “task” which was hard and pleasant.
I’ve got it on the brain, people. Bear with me.
Update: I took a shower and the apricots came right out with scissors.
Nah, just kiddin’. Also, Lewi looks like a convict from the pound did his haircut, only with more bald spots. I’m going to have to rub sunblock on him before he goes outside. My bad.
PS: I’m looking for my camera. It’s somewhere. No before haircut pics, but maybe an after.
Twitter has certainly eaten up a lot of my time lately. I’m always looking for a good distraction and this may be the ultimate. Bzz Bzz every few minutes. Need to concentrate on something? Best turn the phone off. Cuz I guarantee you can’t concentrate if you follow some of the people I follow. Yesterday and some today it’s all about the new iPhone and the spectacular problems Apple is having with their server loads. I expect them to start putting up a failwhale of some sort any time now. Maybe an Aggravating Apple. Bob hasn’t been able to get to his mac.com mail for 3 days now.
My favorite tweets today from tj:
Mobile Me: “Our logo is a cloud because your data has evaporated.” about 2 hours ago from twitterrific
Mobile Me: “It’s like .Mac, Except with different features that don’t work.” about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
Good morning iPhone/MobileMe. Nice of you to delete all of my contacts on my iPhone, but would you consider syncing from “the cloud” now?
My son is now Following me. That makes about three now. w00+!!11 I don’t have to worry about being too circumspect, my tweets are mainly boring as hell. I just post ‘em so I’m not a complete lurker.
Funny/Interesting/sometimes crude people to follow on Twitter:
@Moltz
@SmartAssHat
@TJ
@effingboring
@FarkerPeaceBoy
@awryone
@ejacqui
@hotdogsladies (Merlin Mann)
@lonelysandwich
@fireland
@matthewbaldwin
@SeoulBrother
Smart people to follow for some industry buzz (and some of the people above are good fer the buzz, too)
@jlouderb
@DaveTaylor
@JimRay
@bobbyanderson
@LeoLaporte
@WilW (and sometimes very funny, too)
Some smart but normal people who might talk about knitting and dinner:
@haldechick
@MrsMagoo (me!)
@SundayDinner
@undisturbed
@idyllichick
In a class by herself -
@zadi (who is pretty normal but also a _star_ and one of those people I could love dearly)
Today’s Top Five from TopFive.com. Good one!
July 11, 2008
NOTE FROM CHRIS:
You know those Out-of-Office AutoReply e-mail
notifications you get when you send e-mail
to someone who’s on vacation? Great idea,
but the messages are so *painfully* boring.
The Top 15 Out-of-Office E-Mails We’d Like to See
(Part I)
15> I’m at my desk right now, but Minesweeper is a timed game.
I’ll respond to you as soon as I set a new high score.
14> I’m attending the funeral of my grandmother. Please do not
make the effort to count and realize that this is the sixth
time my grandmother has died in the past four years.
13> I’ll be out all week. And my office door’s unlocked.
And there’s all kinds of cool stuff in my desk drawers.
12> I am not able to reply to your e-mail because I am on
vacation. If you fill up my mailbox with more unwanted
pictures of your ugly kids while I am out, I will hunt you
down and kill you.
11> You talking to me? You talking to ME? Well guess what?
Today I ain’t talking to you.
10> I like some of the things you wrote in that last email.
And it inspired me to come up with something completely
unconventional. Now stay with me because it may seem
irrelevant, but brings up a valid point. Imagine that you
represent everything you just wrote, and I represent every
person… GOTCHA! I’m not really here — this is an automated
message. I’ll be back next week!
9> I will be out of the Oval Office until January 20, 2009.
(Barack Obama only)
8> All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.
All WORK and NO PLAY make Jack a DULL BOY.
All work and no play make jack a dull boy.
Allworkandnoplaymakejackadullboy…
7> I’m out of the office, unless I came in today. It’s a
Microsoft thing.
6> smhdiohsddhmd mdmvre’gjwe’ wojt’g ojmqge’ojmv q’q gvjegvr’C
gv’gogvjgrj (That’s my new assistant’s ass banging on
my keyboard; can’t get to your message, obviously.)
5> I am currently trapped in a dead-end position with a
vision-crippled, lifeforce-sucking conglomerate, having
lost the will to even respond to email. Please send
appealing job-openings and humorously twisted motivational
poster parodies.
4> Sorry, but I’ve lost all of my fingers in the large paper
cutter and won’t be able to respond until I learn how to
type with a pencil in my mouth.
3> If not back by Aug 06, please avenge my death.
2> I’m away on business, so your requests are being forwarded
to our general customer service center. Of course it’s 12
time zones away and the associates only speak Hindi, so
you’re probably screwed until I get back anyway.
and Topfive.com’s Number 1
Out-of-Office E-Mail We’d Like to See…
1> For questions about the GMS project, ask Bob; he took
the credit for it, so let’s see if he knows anything.
Friday night, 9:50, I’m still trying to wrap up a work project. However, I’m so disgusted with it (and the person I’m working with, damn her to hell) that I’m going to give up and tear her a new arsehole on Monday. Long distance, so I won’t choke her and go to jail.
Gawd, I only had one nerve left today and between her and my complete retard of a German shepherd, that nerve has been thoroughly stomped. I can’t really go into it without sounding like more of an asshole than I already am, but FUCK, I expect people to be able to do their jobs after 10 years.
Gah. And the dog didn’t actually do anything, he’s just annoying. And stupid. The other two are angels by comparison.
To illustrate — Goober ate a bee on Sunday. He eats flies regularly, and he decided to try a bee. It immediately stung him on the tongue. He shook his head a bunch, spat it out, stared at it for one second, and snapped it back up and ate it. I was hoping his tongue would swell up and choke him but no such luck. I suppose it’s the Claritan we give him every night for his allergies.
How can one dog be so smart and the other such a peabrain? It’s like two completely different species. Sissy knows the names of the different rooms in the house and will go to the right one if you tell her you’re going there next. Goober knows two words: outside, and cookie. And the shake of the Claritan bottle, because it means a cookie is coming next.
Keerist, I just slopped wine down my bra. Where’s Bob when I need him? Hmm. I just had a good idea for releasing my frustration.
More later.
Bend over and take it in the ass now - advertising during Burn Notice - it’s for real!
My lucky day:
I’ve never seen one of these, in all my 52 years, in hardboiled form - several in the frying pan, but none in this lovely hardboiled twinned form.
Bob’s Special Chinese Tallow dandruff:
Special rolling-into-the-valley-smog (gag me); the desert was so very much nicer. No, really, look at the skyline to the left of the hills. Isn’t that awful? San Bernardino, a good reason not to be there.
Possibly the most nauseating stop I’ve ever done with TiVO. Srsly, we couldn’t look at it without becoming nauseous. Can’t look at it now, even.
Andrew begins the long and arduous journey to becoming a Rock Star.
Our lame fireworks in front of the house - makes me long for the days of M-80s and Piccolo Petes I could pinch.
Andrew brands the street:
He burnt the living shit out of one of his fingers shortly after this. I made my tongue bleed biting on it, trying not to say I TOLD YOU SO. Frakkin’ Aries and their fire fixations. I’m old, I barely do it any more.
A Tax on Buggy Software
Forbes (06/26/08) Greenberg, Andy
David Rice, an instructor at the SANS Institute* and a former cryptographer for the National Security Agency and NASA, has published “Geekonomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software,” a new book that criticizes the software industry for its careless attitude toward security. Rice says the total economic cost of software security flaws is about $180 billion a year.
Rice suggests creating a tax on software based on the number and severity of security bugs, even if the cost gets passed on to consumers, in order to hold software manufacturers accountable. He says hackers simply use tests to discover flaws in the software, which software publishers could do before hackers have access to the programs.
The software companies control how much testing they do before programs are released, Rice says, and they do not have the right incentives to do the testing necessary to create secure software. He says the tax model would solve software problems in the same way that taxes help curb pollution from manufacturing. Rather than trying to stop manufacturing or prohibiting pollution, companies are taxed for the amount of pollution they create, motivating them to reduce emissions.
Rice says software vulnerabilities, like pollution, are inevitable, so instead of requiring software to be secure, tax insecurities and allow the market to determine the price it is willing to pay for vulnerabilities in software. Software manufacturers who are the most insecure will pay the most. The tax will also create a system, similar to the safety star-rating system used for cars, to help consumers know what software is the most secure.
* Completely off the subject: I attended a Linux bootcamp at SANS many moons ago. It was heinous. Great instructor, but OMFG it was very, very long. A 6 day week of 12 hour days in a school chair. My arse has never been the same. OTOH, I built my own kernel, which was swell. I was one of about 6 women at that conference, with about 2000 guys. Also heinous, except I never had to wait for a toilet. If you’re into internet security at all you probably know all about SANS already. They are the end-all and be-all of hackerific security info.
Listening to a song by Mark Selby
“I see a light at the end of the tunnel ….
Sure hope it ain’t a train.”
That was a lot more amusing to listen to than write, BTW.
I’m listening to a great streaming radio station, if you like rockin’ blues. It’s called BellyUp4Blues. Very good to work by when I’m at home.
These made me smile this morning. Probably have to be kind of geeky to appreciate them, however.
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July 2, 2008
NOTE FROM CHRIS:
Bill Gates has officially cleaned out his
desk and stepped down from his Microsoft gig.
It’s about time that nerd got a real job
and stopped mooching off his parents!
But seriously, folks…
The Top 15 Things Found in Bill Gates’s Desk
15> A frame holding the first $1 billion he made.
14> Those compromising pictures of Janet Reno that ultimately
saved Microsoft’s monopolistic bacon.
13> iPhone, iBook, Airbook, iPod, etc.
12> “Past Due” notices from Hell’s Souls Receivable Department.
11> A copy of “Home Haircuts for Dummies.”
10> $863,979.42 in loose change.
9> Crumpled copy of Al Gore’s patent on the Internet.
8> A copy of Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” an IOU from Pope
Benedict XVI, Jimmy Hoffa’s wristwatch and some Skittles.
7> God’s cell phone number.
6> Memo to Microsoft employees now allowing consumption of
apples and Big Macs.
5> His old cardboard “Will Compute for Food” sign.
4> Steve Jobs’s life force — and damn if it didn’t get out
of the bottle again!
3> The title deed to Liechtenstein.
2> Unsent letter to girl who spurned him in 10th grade, written
on back of bank statement.
and Topfive.com’s Number 1 Thing Found in Bill Gates’s Desk…
1> Severed limbs of the Microsoft product developer who wrote
the original specifications for Windows Vista.
[ Copyright 2008 by Chris White/TopFive.com ]
Mobile Users Make Same Mistakes as Disabled PC Users
University of Manchester (07/01/08)
Able-bodied people who use mobile phones make the same errors at a similar frequency as physically impaired users of desktop computers, according to new research from the University of Manchester. Researchers in Manchester’s School of Computer Science reviewed an earlier study on physically disabled users from scientists at the University of Edinburgh, and put mobile users through the same experiments.
They found that mobile users also press the wrong key and press the same key repeatedly by mistake, often click the wrong area of the screen and click the screen multiple times in error, and make mistakes when trying to drag and drop information.
The researchers suggest that small assistive computer programs could also be used by mobile users. “In recent years solutions have been built to help disabled users and it is hoped these solutions … can now be applied for the benefit of mobile phone users,” says researcher Tianyi Chen. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council funded the two-year Reciprocal Interoperability between Accessible and Mobile Webs (RIAM) project.
For those of you who aren’t twittering, you’re missing the answer to “Where have all the stand-up comics gone?”
They’re all twittering. I love this tiny comedy/life log - the whole world in 140 characters or less. I mostly lurk, but every now and again answer the basic question: What are you doing right now?
What is Twitter? Basically, it’s a way to send a text message to a lot of people at once. You can find entertaining people and “subscribe” (Follow) to their text messages. When they send a text to Twitter, it comes to your phone or browser. People can Follow you, too, if you let them.
I have two distinct types of people I Follow. The everyday “This Could Be Me” type, and “Stand Up Comics.”
Example: _True Tales Of Smart Asshat History_: Boss <reproachfully yelling>: A little knowledge is dangerous! Me: How would you know?
Entertaining folks to Follow, in no particular order:
matthewbaldwin - pretty all right guy and keen observer of the political scene, I just love his Defective Yeti blog. Great writer.
wilw - Wil Wheaton, all around nice guy and movie/tv star, pimps his blog a lot but still worth following because sometimes he pops out real zingers. Plus I loved Wesley Crusher.
lonelysandwich - some funny guy
awryone - funny in a painfully weird way
moltz - more funny ++
hotdogsladies - more funny + “Dwell is full of fresh ideas for the livable spaces we could create with as little as 80 times my current income.”
seoulbrother - more funny ++
mogrify - more funny “After years of abuse, Keith Richards’ liver became sentient and escaped. It now lives independently as Amy Winehouse.”
Reading Twitters/Tweets on my phone is fun, and it’s like TopFive - you have to read 8 or 9 of them until you find one that brings on the Guffaw. I’ll set my phone down and come back to 24 tweets waiting. I pick up my phone and catch up on the Tweets. It looks like this: Silence, silence, silence, Guffaw with Milk out the Nose.
Since I have no friends who text me, it’s very invigorating. [Note: the problem is that I'm in my 50s and a lot of 50 year-olds don't use text messaging, much less Twitter, not that I'm unfriendly (not very, anyway - ed.)]
Only problem is at the moment is that Twitter is built using Ajax which is apparently not very scalable. And Twitter has grOWN by leaps and bounds. They’ve been having all sorts of problems, and when they do, they put a picture on the website of a whale being carried with ropes, sling style, by birds. The Fail Whale. Lots of tweets about that, too. And sculpture.
The other thing you can look at it is textism.com for Favrd status. It’ll show you who can bring the funny. Warning: if you are looking for serious info, don’t look here.
If you want to follow me (and why would you?) Follow MrsMagoo. I post MAYBE one tweet a day. And it’s dull as dry toast. But at least you’ll know when I’m at the airport. You can post from the twitter site, or from various other little front ends/clients (like twhirl) or post straight from your phone.
Steps for the uninitiated:
Go to twitter.com
Sign up.
Add a picture if you feel like it. Fill in some more stuff if you feel like it. (My 140 words or less bio: Smart, cynical gray she-geek interested in all things gadgety)
Login
At the top, there’s a Name or Location search bar. Add one or six of the names I have posted above.
You’ll go to their page. Click Follow. Click the messaging bar by follow so you can have Updates On.
Sit back and wait for teh funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4_MsrsKzMM
Watch past the first few frames, it’ll get better. I love this song, anyway, and Joe’s delivery rocks, in whatever language it is that he’s using.
Ha ha. Star Wars dance off. It’s funny, but looooong. Only go here if you’re bored AND a StarWars fan:
http://ma.tt/2008/06/star-wars-dance-off/
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