Book Commercials & Misanthropic Observations

Slap (2001-2006)

My tough old goldfish.
I was so happy to find this picture - I knew I had taken one of him before he died. Yes, I actually get quite attatched to pet fish.

Something nice to say about Vista?

We have 5 computers in the Dopkins household, 2 of which run on Vista:Hannah’s laptop and one of mine. It has been kind of fun to see the differences and many more before me have written all about how Vista is not really worth an “upgrade” from XP. Yea, I agree with that.

Vista may be the next windows ME, but I don’t HATE it. It’s fine for someone who’s purchasing their first PC and will be using all new software and hardware, just kinda no fun if you want to use your Adobe acrobat 7 (not Vista compatible). And until recently, Palm desktop software. Oh- and don’t even try to join your work domain and work with an exchange server. On my cheap Everex laptop it’s been a fun little experiment.

What I wanted to share with you is this: I am kind of a rebuild fiend. I actually ENJOY wiping out a hard drive and building fresh and tend to do annually, whether I need to or not; more often on my office laptop. So I just did my first Vista hard drive wipe out and rebuild.

Get this: I didn’t have to reinstall any drivers!!! What a wonderful surprise. I was done in like 3 hours instead of 8. Wow. Nice. And Palm desktop is out of beta and now works great with Vista & Office 2007.

True story

I am vulnerable anytime I take my glasses off. If for any reason a take a few steps away, or forget where I laid them, I cannot see to find them. More than once I have had to call Paul and ask him to find my glasses for me. So I habitually put them in the same place and then just instinctually know where to reach for them. (this is the reason I never know how a haircut will turn out until it’s over)

Recently I reached for the brown line that my glasses look like when I don’t have them on and was disturbed and well, beginning to panic because, somehow, in the short time it had taken to take a shower, my eyes had deteriorated to the point that my glasses made no difference at all. I had finally gone blind, rather than just legally blind.

I walked into the hall and told Hannah that something was seriously wrong at which point she laughed, took her glasses off my face and went to find mine for me. Whew.

Philly Jazz club

I took this picture while visiting Alex & Kaui in 2006.

Dear whoever

I am writing this just in case the “ecard” I did not open was actually from someone, like Grandma Gayle, or Mom.

I simply do not ever open ecards- expecially if the announcement does not tell me who it is from. Too many nasty things come disguised and ecards. I also don’t open attachments unless I know what it is and am confident it is real. So, please to forgive if I offended. Can’t be helped in this fallen world of viruses, worms, spyware, keyloggers and such.

Long awaited design fix

By long awaited, I don’t mean that anyone other than me actually cares- only that I have been really wanting to do this well for a long time.

Problem: My wonderful book collector program has a handy export to html feature. It doesn’t have a handy export to excel or mySQL and I have been insisting on trying to create our online book inventory in these formats to allow for a search query- after all, who wants to browse a million HTML pages? Without a search this online inventory is well, boring.

Secondary problem- I needed to find a way to manage the handily exported HTML pages, because, let’s be realistic, I’m only going to keep it up if it’s “1 click” easy. And well, the “1 click” pages are ugly. I wanted a customized header, a pretty page, without all the extra work of adding this header to each “1 click” exported page.

Answer to problem 1: Zoom search engine - this post’s random helpful tip-

Answer to problem 2: iframe pulling of “1 click” pages into single pretty page.

Leading to problem 3: how to make Zoom search engine work with iframes; which I have been too lazy to learn the answer to - until today.

Now I will actually keep the books database updated- it’s 1 click easy. Ok, 3 clicks- 1 to export pages, 2 to upload new pages, 3 to update search database.

See final result here - the book review, recommend part

Dear Paulers

Doing the dishes on Saturday morning while I sleep for 2 weeks in a row? You are definitely trying to seduce me.

Dragonfly

On the St Croix river last summer.

Bee in hasta

Taken in our front “garden”. See the pollen on his hips? I love it.

New York

With Hannah, Alex & Kaui. I used a portable tripod and, yes, dangerously set it on the edge of a tall building. Cool angle though.