December 2004

I want my peridot back...

I lost my favorite pendant today. I went to the doctors and stopped at a coffee shop on the way home and that is when I discovered it was gone. The broken chain dangled. I knew that chain was weak. I'd priced replacements and they were so expensive I thought I'd wait. It never occurred to me to stop wearing this necklace. Now my grandmother's peridot is gone. I want to cry. I left word at the doctor's though they'll be closed till monday. I am hoping it fell off there as that's the place where I first untucked my shirt from my pants and that's when it most likely fell out. I tried retracing my steps but it was dark and my headlight went out from the cold. No luck. I keep hoping it'll turn up here. I cried, my tears freezing on my face in the -20C air outside. What good is that? I feel so down.

wind

The wind started last night but by the wee hours was enough to invade my dreams. Yep, I'm on day shift. I didn't do it on purpose but what the heck. So I woke up to cooler temperatures, although the base temperature isn't dramatic it IS chilly and this incredible driving wind. I think it's the same one that took out trees, tarps and construction sites in Alberta. It makes my TV antenna on the roof sing. It whips my spruce trees like egg beaters. It's driving a snow in front of it that blurs the sky and furls off roofs and across roads. In other words, geeze what a shitty day! I still plan to go into work and load my car with the bottles from home and work to be taken in to the recyclers. It's a chore I'd like to do before christmas as the next day they're open after christmas is likely to be unbearably busy. One advantage of the crappy weather is that there will be people choosing not to do this chore and that will reduce the crowds at the centers. After all, it's after a lot of christmas parties already today. The snow sure is getting thick out there. yechhh. They're saying only 1cm accumulation over the next two days but I think they're being optimistic. I think we've already got that much now. Hard to tell with it drifting around and blowing around, but there's more than that out there, I'm sure. The air is white and the flakes fat. This is a classic blizzard.

potluck fun

So here the weather has gone warm again. Rain even! It's all melty out there, at NIGHT! Astounding really. I had a wonderful night yapping with weirdos at a pagan potluck all evening. I went early to help set up and left late after cleanup. I had to bring home far too much of my butter cake though. How ever shall I eat it all? I'll have to toss a bunch in the freezer for later I guess.

The problem of caring for my doggy during tuesday night's all night yule vigil has been solved by moving the party to my house. YIPPEEEEEE. I love parties! I am considering webcasting it but I'm not sure if I feel like installing and setting up software for it. I lost the software installed before during my recent hard drive glitch. I still have the files for setup but I don't know if I want to set it all up again. It's not like anyone will be watching. At any rate our plans are pretty loose but it looks like we'll take a trip to the grocery store for dinner ingredients and then cook up a tasty meal followed by movies, loud music and a morning bonfire. What fun!

beer and ice

Damn it got cold overnight. Brrrrrrrr. From melty to squidgy snow in one sleep! -17C today. I'd forgotten to plug the car in too but having it in a shelter (old wooden garage) helped and it's a valiant little VW rabbit. So I managed fine to get to work today. I know, I usually work on sundays. I went in today because then I don't have to try and fit it in after the potluck tomorrow and I can relax and enjoy my sunday. There really wasn't much to do at work since there's only a skeleton staff over the next couple weeks. Other than cleaning after the staff party there wasn't anything. Some dishes to wash. It took longer to do my laundry in the work machines than to get the job done. I picked up a case of beer while out too, and a bottle of sparkling wine. The beer is for me, the wine for the Yule overnight. There's some question if that will actually happen but if not I'll just drink it to myself. For now, it's a beer night!

tweaking

21:48 12/17/2004

Hummmm hum. I can cook far better than I usually do, heh. Almost burned the butter cake for the potluck on sunday because I was busy making a mess of a gingerbread house kit. I don't have much experience with icing and icing tubes and the sticky gunk was squirting out the back end on my hands, running when it should have stayed put and not squeezing out evenly. No surprise since I didn't know what I was doing, heh. I'll take it to the potluck anyway, there's sure to be some kids who'll like it and I can get rid of the thing that way. I am not gonna buy another gingerbread house kit again. Enough is enough.

I have a nice cloth to decorate a table and a bit of garland lighting as well as my tree, the house and the butter cake to contribute to this potluck, I hope it's all welcome. I plan on going in early to help them set up and decorate.

Got my website tuned up and found out that the hits I was suffering were because I had a popular movie available via my http server. By a combination of removing that directory from the server and doing some security tweaking I've effectively stopped the nonsense. It was a good learning session so ultimately I don't mind. I still wonder how they found the movies since it's not something I advertise and I couldn't myself find them in the search engines. Furthermore they all seemed to be coming from the same corner of the IP world, the addresses were all in the 200.*.*.* or 201.*.*.* range. Well the movies are gone now. Imagine being insane enough to actually use http to transfer 1.6GB worth of files! sheesh.

The weather today got very warm and now it's very windy but I have been inside all day. Firstly I slept an extra hour as well as going to bed late after work. I spend too much time reading at work and wind up being much too late there. So the day was already short and I spent it baking the cake and making the house and then cleaning up and putting a turkey in the oven. I decided to go ahead and eat the turkey I picked up at the store a couple weeks ago. That'll be tasty. ~yawn~ I'm so dull I'm making myself sleepy, think I'll take a nap.

tightening the webserver

Spending the evening in unexpected study of IIS exploits and vulnerabilities. Finally figured out the webhitting, sorta. I have had to remove my mp3 directory from the webserver as someone out there was abusing it. I thinkspect they'd actually linked it or maybe google got it in the search, not sure, but I think that's what was causing the high hits and suckage that was making it inaccessible to me. No sign of Dan tonight. Maybe not wanting to use streaming audio last night has him in a sucky mood towards. I dunno. He does seem to get petulant that easily. I just didn't feel like talking, am I not allowed to be that way too sometimes? heh. Oh well. I get to missing him sometimes, it's been days since we spent time together, but as the days go by I find myself needing his attention less and less. Hence why I didn't feel like putting myself out to make time for audio. Lets face it, if you starve someone for attention long enough they learn to do without it. Then they don't want it anymore. I still want the man here for my spouse, but as far as the paltry contact online, ~shrug~. I don't think he's even aware of this blog. Frankly I don't think he's aware of much about me, sometimes. So long as I exist, that's good enough. Now some folks reading this disgruntled whining might conclude I'm selling myself short or that he's somehow not good enough or other relationship killing ideas. Let me assure you, while the man has flaws and I'm realistic about those flaws, he's hands-down the best man I've ever known on more levels than most folks even think about. I know I could do worse, I have done worse. I haven't ever done better and at my age, that's saying a lot. So the goldsmiths couldn't fix my ring but they could explain the problem to me. I need to investigate hobby shops for something that will wick into the air space and fill it and then dry in place without discolouring over time nor damaging the stone. I'll go out tomorrow and see what I can learn. Tonight I have to go to work. I could go now actually, but I have stuff I'm doing. Weather was warm again though not as warm. Things weren't as melty. A little melty still, but mostly salt puddles where spread salt had melted and salinated the water. Still it was reasonably pleasant for cycling.

My sweety

 

This is my current fave shot of Dan. Yeah, I'm in love!

gotcha

Hah, gotcha ya fucker, found the ip filtering area in my firewall. Because of you, shithead, (who can't read this) nobody on your isp gets in. Now if you're someone else and you're thinking of using something to download my entire website or my whole file directory or something else that's going to use all 10 connections available on my puny home website and clog up my puny home DSL connection, please don't. I'm sure if you contact me we can work out something with ftp to allow you to get the data you're after. When I can't even access the server on my own machine, I have a problem with that.

hackers?

23:52 12/15/2004 I dunno what's up but my webserver was screwed. I couldn't get in at all! It told me max users. Checking network connections showed it maxed by one single IP in Holland. Damned if I know who it is or why they need to be constantly connected. I shut down the network and he was still connected. I shut down the server, and that stopped him. Spent an hour with it off, turned it on, it immediately connected back out to him. I'll have to find out why and what to do because that's intolerable. I can't get my own website because this crapper is dominating the server and I don't even know who or why! Grrrrrrrrr.

talking when one should shut up

21:15 12/15/2004 Got some more installing to do. Maybe I should backup the system again? Blah. Tasty brandy beans at work! Damn jeweller screwed up the ring even more and I tried to show them what I was talking about, even used some sketching but the jeweller was just too dense to get it. I'll try a goldsmith and see if he can grasp the concept. Well I thought I had stuff to say but I'm just too tired.

Beautiful Dreamer

13:51 12/15/2004 It's morning to me! Having my morning cuppa tea after breakfast. The birds are all fed and watered but the bunnies wait, with relative patience, for the distribution of their morning freshies. I locked the dog out of the living room. She's a sweetheart but she bugs me. She comes up and puts her cute little paws on my lap begging for me to play. I'm just too much of a crusty old bitch to wanna play. Well, she does want to play like every 5 mins. So when she went in the kitchen to see if it's any more interesting I shut the gate on her. Hehehe.

I have this gate between the rooms, it's basically a sheet of quarter inch acrylic blown off a restaurant in a tornado years ago. I got my paws on it and it's been my "bunny barrier" ever since. It has a floor track and rides between the table and wall to shut off the living room. I have a black stripe with a rabbit sillouette scratched out of it at about rabbit eye level. Currently it keeps freddy separate from the other rabbits till I can spend the money to get her spayed. All those hormones are making them fight, it's not pretty.

So the weather is loverly again. All soft and melty and relatively warm. Too warm sorta, the roads get nasty because the city doesn't clear the snow, just lets it get packed down, and when it's this warm that doesn't work so well. I have to go back to get my repaired ring. I hope he did it right this time. That opal looks so much better when it's wet because then it makes full contact with it's enamel backing.

I found out last night I have to clean after one last student matinee too so I'll get my biking exercise today going from down town to up to work. Gonna be sucky at work. Students are fucking slobs. They make SUCH a mess and with all the melty snow it's gonna be muddy. One last show and I've gotta mop the floors for them. Bah. Do you ever walk into a theatre, school, store, etc. and take a moment to appreciate that someone stayed up all night cleaning for you and tonight they'll do it again cleaning up after you?

I remember as a youth thinking that being messy in indoor spaces like university, malls, etc., was “creating employment.” Well if you're so delusioned let me correct you. No. You're not creating employment, just work. The employer is too cheap to hire an assistant, the person working may be working on some kind of fudged up “contract” which translates to a flat fee, so they work harder, cursing your sloppy ass, for the same amount of money. So sort your trash, pick up your litter and quit slopping your drinks on the floor!

I've been having SO much fun with my design software. It's called Sketchup and it's a riot. Yah I know it's expensive, you don't think I actually bought it do you? I've been designing my little villa sub rosa in it. When the house is all built I can use it to daydream my way through various possible additions and renovations plus I can export it into my 3d world to have my little cottage in there entire. Dan wants to make up all my furniture and artwork too but he does tend to dream a little overly large. I think he'll see that it's more work than it's worth. I wonder sometimes if he dreams so big to please others or actually believes in his huge ideas? Oh it's not like he's planning to build a giant bridge or finance a world tour, but he seems sometimes to miss sensible boundaries. I sure do love him. I think that dreaming is part of what I love. It's ok. He doesn't act on oversized dreams, he just dreams them. When we act, it's together and I can pare it down to more realistic sizes.

I got this little cypress tree at the store. They had this shelf full of these little green baby trees with stupid red bows on them. The bow looks charming on Sarah. I brought one home knowing I'll probably kill it. Not enough sunshine, not enough water, etc. I'm not good with plants anymore. I used to back when I had nothing better to do than housework. Nowadays I'd rather sit at the keyboard and my plants which can't call out to complain of thirst are suffering. It's a cute little tree but I can't figure out what it really is. Looking up “cypress” trees online gets me lots of things that don't look like this bush. It's cute and dense and grows needles something like a juniper. The only thing I learned for sure is that it can't take our cold (zone 3-4) and it needs more sun than my house provides. Sheesh.

First Ever Blog Entry

17:15 12/14/2004 I dunno what's a blog exactly. It seems to be a cgi formatted collection of musings. A place where the technologically challenged can publish their inanities and profundities. Mostly it seems like a place to write down your musings on whatever basis they come to you, with a date, and the most recent entries first. Heck. I can do THAT! So I don't know if this is a blog but I'm going to start musing in cyberpublic like so very many other people. Fact is, I really don't have as many friends as I'd like and the few I have get tired of hearing from me. What's more, I get tired of hearing from them. The written form doesn't need to be listened to. I can muse when it suits me and others can listen if and when it suits them and the dialog, if one occurs, doesn't have to be in real time.

So what's inspired this first entry? A bagpiper! Well not just any old bagpiper. This was an indian bagpiper, playing the pipes in downtown Saskatoon in December. Granted he wasn't very good at it but I figure anyone who can play them at all, let alone squeak out a tune, deserves credit. I also figured if he's out there busking in December he must need money and I gave him my change. When I say Indian, I mean the First Nations People, not people from India. I realize that it's considered politically incorrect by many to call these folks Indians but heck, they call themselves that, everyone uses the term, and I haven't been told by any Indians that it's rude, the way “nigger” is considered a foul word for folks with dark skin and curly hair. I don't exactly understand why that word is so unspeakable. They use it. I think so long as I'm not using it as a descriptor, calling someone by it, and I'm respectful and considerate in my dealings with everyone regardless of my erroneous assumptions about their appearance, that oughtta sort everything out. However, here we are in the 21st century with sex, nudity and the words “fuck, ass, shit, goddamn”, and gory violence is served up to families over supper, but the word “nigger” is utterly verboten even in reference to itself! That's silly.

So back to bagpipers. In case you don't know how odd it is, well it's damned weird, it's on the other side of weird. Not just that it's a bagpiper in the winter, although, granted it was a nice warm melty day, only +2C instead of the -17C we had last weekend, but that he was clearly of native extraction. However, many of our natives do have scottish ancestors and names, a lot of the scottish explorers fell in love with native women and founded families. So the bagpiper could actually be playing a cultural artifact. Still it tickled me to see it.

This blog is SO gonna give my fiancee a break. He just doesn't have the ability to satisfy my need to talk about my day. I imagine if he were here in person that'd be different since he could just let the babble wash over him like a bubbling brook, but when he has to read line after line and send back IM text to assure me he's still there, that seems to be too much work. I figure anyway, since he doesn't do it. I, however, still need to yap. I need to pretend at least someone's listening and I'm just not quite capable of the self delusion to use the walls or my pets as audience. Besides which, it can be fun to get feedback.

I had to go downtown to pay my mortgage (yay, it's done) and bring my lovely engagement ring to the jewellers for repair. He screwed up glueing the stone in. I think he did it on purpose to be able to see it again because he's in love with my opal. He's not a sloppy jeweller. The stone wasn't glued in properly and didn't look it's best plus dirt was starting to accumulate under it. Luckily he recognized the problem immediately and they'll have it ready tomorrow.

After that and after banking I stopped at Fuzion for a small maki platter and a coconut bubble tea. Nummmy. Did takeout (still drinking the tea but the sushi is all ate up.) The guy forgot to charge me and it wasn't till I was at the commission sales computer store that I realized it. It was on my way home so going back wasn't much trouble. Finding the prices had gone up was though, LOL.

I'd brought in my old monitor to sell when I got my new loverly beeyootiful LCD display (did I mention it's gorgeous?) and the store, Quest Computers, had sold it. They're great down there, check them out, good deals on new and used and they'll sell your junk, Quest Computers on 2nd Ave. in Saskatoon, right beside SGI. So he didn't have enough cash in the drawer to pay me and the guy who signs the cheques had gone home for the day. Aw gee, whatever shall I do? I could come back, sure, or I could.... BUY SOMETHING!!!! hehehehe So the way I see it, I got a brand new 80GB hard drive for $6 and an old monitor. Ah I know, I should have gone back and got the money to put on my credit card bill. I know that. But I am going to put that lovely new drive into this computer and really have storage for mp3s!

Did you know I have my mp3s listed and linked on this server? Yes indeedy. Now remember, if you don't own the right to own the music, you aren't allowed to download it. Furthermore, if you do happen to find a copy of it on your drive, perhaps someone with a legal right to it has used your system to backup his files, you aren't allowed to LISTEN to it, ok? In my case these files are backups for my friends, I don't actually use them, ok? That's my story and I'm sticking to it! Link you say? You wanna check out the collection? No. :-b I don't just paste links to stuff like that all over the web, geeze, how dumb do you think I am? If you know me well enough to chit chat with me, ask for it. If you don't, go back to whatever you usually do to collect your music and don't bug me!