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24
Feb

Updates

Ginger

February has been an interesting month. I didn’t do so much work-wise that I was anticipating, though I did finish up a couple projects for various nonprofit organizations both domestic and foreign. I haven’t felt like blogging much, whether nattering about my personal stuffs or professional doings.

I cleaned up most of the fraud-related stuff that occurred at the beginning of the month; I have confirmation from my bank, iTunes, and Paypal that yes, I am not responsible for these charges from iTunes. I still have $300 overdrawn on my bank account, because refunds are slow in coming. I did finally get the bank to cancel the overdraft fees associated with the fraudulent purchases. And after it happened the second time (after I had changed my password everywhere to something horrifyingly difficult and long to decipher), I removed all financial information linking the aforementioned three websites. I’m confident that Paypal and my bank are reasonably secure, insofar as they are not responsible for the sanctity of my password or my electronic devices.

But iTunes… I no longer trust them, their security protocols or their ability to weed out fraudulent apps in their own store. How can you not be aware of exactly every activity of every i-Device and every account? It’s on their servers, surely they have fail-safes and safeguards for such. Apparently not. I’ve seen hundreds of written accounts of other people swindled out of money thanks to the iTunes Store. The apple is rotten, folks.

I’ve been filling my time with personal activities: watching and listening to podcasts relating to writing, crafts, and electronics; playing with other personal websites relating to interests I feel strongly about; writing; cooking; and cleaning the clutter out of my habitat and my daily life. My former friend J was once trying to articulate the varying moods he had, sometimes playing video games and involving himself with online activities, and sometimes writing or creating game stuff. I mentioned something about output vs. input, which he adopted into his own vernacular.

I have most definitely been on an input kick. That doesn’t mean that my output has stopped altogether; I have just felt like focusing on just one thing at a time, rather than spreading my interests and activities as far and wide as I’m prone to doing. I love to juggle, I never get bored of one thing for very long before something else comes along that amuses me or captures my attention to the exclusion of all else. I guess that Mercury is direct and not retrograde just now. In fact… *looks at astrology stuffs* Oh yeah. As that is my ruling planet, I am definitely prone to that planet’s meanderings, especially when I fall out of discipline and let my mood take me where it will.

Anyway, I felt like poking in here for a moment. Next month looks to be an interesting one as well. At the forefront, the promise of car repairs in the immediate future?? We’ll see. The rest of life is going along pretty well, hubby and I are still disgustingly close, we’re setting our eyes on moving, and I just picked up a new job position that could very much be a profitable one. Gotta love volunteering on ventures. We’ll see where that gets me. In the meantime, there are fresh new listings to paruse regarding my usual schtick of freelance and volunteerism.

–

Oh yeah, one thing I wanted to mention: gamification. I think it’d be really fun (ha) and profitable to get some training for that going; with as many Facebook apps and socially engaging websites I have been and will be involved in, this might be a really good skillset to have. It seems to be huge this year, and I love finding ways of making menial or necessary stuff fun.

Another thing, I have a recent new favorite blog that I thought you might like: Unf* Your Habitat (warning: f-bombs flung freely there). It’s almost gamifying in its straightforward kick-butt attitude about the crap you should be doing anyway. Do something that improves your environment, and celebrate the hell out of it. On one hand, it’s disturbing that society has apparently stooped to such a level that we must be praised for doing what we’re supposed to; on the other hand, it’s awesome to become aware of personal habits, and to improve them. So, there.

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14
Jan

Snow! In Winter! Shocking!

Ginger

For the first time this winter, the soothsayers meteorologists are predicting snow overnight, as soon as the sun sets. I always squee at the first snows of the season, as there are entire years when it is just too warm. It would surely accumulate at the moment if it were cold enough, as it is raining fairly heavily, the awning fabric damp with the precipitation, our panoramic hillside view obscured by sheets of water, the parking lot covered by rivulets of the stuff seeking its own level.

I’m always a kid when it does snow, whether it’s after watching it for a few hours out of the living room window, or waking up to see that familiar stark blue-white glow of daylight hitting the blinding ice crystals. I always, always, have to put on a pair of gloves and warm shoes or boots, and wander outside to touch it, step in it, and play with it for a few minutes. I’m usually in my jammies during such times, and I quickly get cold enough to have to run back inside.

I suppose if I lived in a different climate where snow became old-hat, common, and drearily, stubbornly present during this time of year, I might not find it so amusing. As it is, once I’ve had my fun, it becomes routine to dress for the adverse weather. But I always spend more time than usual admiring it out the window, than I do if it were merely raining, even unusually heavily as it is today. I notice that I also like to gaze for a long time in the early summer when the deciduous foliage is fresh, green, and nearly vibrating out of the visual spectrum with its rich shades of color.

I just wanted to remark on the remarkable weather. And I know I can trust bojack.org with the latest on the not-news regarding snow. I laughed when they started making snarky commentary about the way the local media treats any accumulation, no matter how minute, of snow. They always over-exaggerate to the point of ridiculousness. It amuses me.

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12
Jan

The Doorbell

Ginger

I must confess, I’m very easily amused. For instance, I’m rewatching the Columbo series on Netflix for perhaps the fifth time since I first got the video streaming service last year. Among the things that amuse me are the peculiar habits of Peter Falk‘s character, as they evolved over the life of the series, the increasingly goofy things he did with his raincoat, cigars, car, and other icons of the fictional detective, including that poor basset hound they could never get around to choosing a name for. It became a trope for the script to mention Columbo’s wife in passing, but never showed her face (spinoff notwithstanding).

If I were to create a drinking game for this series, I’d certainly prompt the watcher to keep track of how many times a particular prop was used. Not so much items like the ill-used and much abused Peugeot that Columbo was fondly attached to, but rather inane objects such as a telephone, or a magnetic tape recorder. The latter could be seen in a secretary’s desk drawer one episode, and then propped up on its side and part of a box full of blinky lights to simulate a computer the next. The more of these recycled props I find, the more amusing it gets. And you could always tell when they were pressed for new and exotic locations; having been produced by Universal Studios near L.A., they’d often use the attached theme park. One time, they filmed near the Jaws pool, usually part of the movie studio tour ride.

But I have to say that the thing that never fails to garner a giggle out of me is the number of times they used the same old doorbell sound. I imagine, perhaps not accurately, that they paid a small fee for this sound effect, and used the hell out of it. It was featured heavily in the first season, whenever they needed a doorbell sound. They always used it in a setting in which there was an expensive home, whenever there were rich and/or famous people about. It was very distinctive, with three tones, almost akin to a pipe organ with three large gong-y metal tubes. There was one particularly obnoxious episode in which they played the sound over and over for over a minute, with video of a girl freaking out superimposed over another video of a camera quickly zooming in and out of visual range of the device. I always have to play that particular scene several times, just because I’ve laughed too hard upon initial viewing to pay attention to whatever else is going on.

They got, erm, smart in the second season, and while they continued using the obnoxiously loud and overplayed doorbell sound, they would only use one or two of the three tones, muting the unused ones, trying to creatively recycle the sound effect without appearing to do so. Ahh, the 70s. lol The tri-tone doorbell sound is rarely used after that, though it still has its uses in occasional episodes later on.

I’m writing about it because I’m watching a dreary episode in which I’d forgotten the doorbell sound was used again. I’m always reminded it’s there as the music swells during a particularly intense early scene. The established three tones create a major chord, starting at the top and working its way down. This particular song features a gong-like tone, in the same key as the doorbell’s first note. While it isn’t the actual doorbell sound, hearing that gong makes me sing to myself the other two notes that make up that chord.

I can’t find a compilation of this sound in use during the series on YouTube. I keep thinking I should remedy that sometime.

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06
Jan

The Most Uncomfortable Topic Ever: with Morals!

Ginger

I’m going to talk about end-of-life topics in this entry. If that’s not the sort of thing you want to read just now, then don’t click to read more.

more » The Most Uncomfortable Topic Ever: with Morals!

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31
Dec

One More End of Year Meme

Ginger

I can’t help it, I was inspired by the call for bloggers to list the places they slept in 2011.

My list is very short.

I spent nearly every day this past year sleeping on my futon bed, the vast majority of the time with my sweet husband snoring next to me.

For two glorious nights in January of this year, I got to sleep in a hotel bed in Forks.

And for one nifty evening, we slept in the very luxurious abode of Andrew’s sister and her family’s house, a cabin in the rural woods not far from Port Townsend, in a tall, unbelievably comfy and soft bed with the natural wood head and foot boards, with wooden paneling, books, and sheets soft enough to sink into. Yeah, that made a bit of an impression on me.

<rant>
Woulda slept other places, but the car pooped out and all that. I think I’ll give the car back, the arrangement of us paying them for it sitting in our driveway for four months doesn’t really strike my fancy. I could have paid over $1000 on an actual car. I’m tired of my husband being a tightwad, I want a car. :(
</rant>

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31
Dec

Year in Review

Ginger

I pilfered this interesting survey-thingie from beckydancer, who got it from someone else. I thought it’d be fun to do.

1. List 5 personal victories – big or small – that you experienced.
a. I acquired a car.
b. I kicked butt over last year’s sales.
c. I started this blog, and didn’t delete it in a nuke&pave when I got tired of it.
d. I got to see hubby’s dad and sister for the first time.
e. I lived a conscious life, in which I made the decision to be and feel happy. Aside from the occasional gripes, I’ve done well with that. I’ve certainly become more conscious about how I flail about.

2. List 5 precious, priceless gifts that you received from others or from the Universe.
a. Hubby and I were called to a friend’s bedside, where we watched hubby’s father figure pass away from cancer and total system failure. We had a week to prepare, and a night to witness.
b. Hubby’s former apprentice came back into his life, and subsequently mine. There have been many games of Tablero and game nights.
c. I got to see family again, at my grandmother’s funeral.
d. Andrew got to see his dad and sister again, during the same trip as c.
e. I got to work one of my favorite jobs ever, again, during December.

3. List 5 challenges that you faced and the valuable lessons you learned from them.
a. A couple of friends turned out to be douchebags, and I cut them entirely out of my life. There are still moments where I wonder what the heck happened. But I’m better without the toxicity in my life.
b. We’d known for a couple of years that hubby’s father figure was not long for this world. Hubby thought that the loss of the man would break him apart in ways he couldn’t even fathom. In the end, hubby was able to do everything he’d promised the man, we had a week to see him again, and hubby spent the entire night glued to the man’s side. Having that time with him, no matter how short, really helped the whole process. And as with other traumas hubby has suffered, I was a great balm to the soreness of those wounds both old and fresh.
c. I had the opportunity to work a permanent position at the same store I do seasonal work at. I found out that I’m not as young as I used to be, I can’t lug heavy boxes around like I used to. I have become more ruthless about getting more of hubby’s income into the bank.
d. Promises were made by others about getting hubby and I to the peninsula, and to the beach, many times this past year, but none of them ever happened. I have learned patience and temperance.
e. We acquired a car that has spent four out of the past five months sitting in our driveway, useless. Again, I have learned patience and temperance. I have also learned that perhaps this is not the car for us.

4. Set a timer for 2 minutes, and during that time brainstorm as many things as possible that you are grateful for in your life. It doesn’t matter how small or how large.
iPad, roof over head, food in belly and in fridge, shoes that fit, clothes in closet, computer that (sorta) works, cat, Facebook, the natural beauty of the area I live in, the car sometimes working, continued lack of pain from lack of gallbladder (no more sensitivity to milk and spices, yay!), roommates, hubby, hubby’s family, friends, Darby o’Gill (local Irish band), sunrises and sunsets on our panoramic balcony on Pill Hill, the possibility of snow and surprising thankfulness that car doesn’t function at the moment so that I don’t have to drive in adverse conditions haha, Youtube, Netflix, webhost, reasonable health, sunlight, having enough where it matters most.

And another survey, from the same entry via beckydancer:

1- Have you closed out your 2011 projects? What things do you not want to carry into 2012? What do you need to finish, schedule in, or simply drop in order to maintain your sanity? How important is it? WHY are you doing it and does it serve you/your family?
I need to drop the J & J thing (aforementioned douchebags), that isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon, not if I don’t wish to communicate with them at all. An olive branch was recently offered and I totally ignored it, because what they pulled, I don’t think is forgivable. I don’t need that in my life. Why it keeps coming to mind perplexes me. I look forward to leaving that friendship in the past. Let it go, Gin, let it go. *breathes in, releases*

2- Have you spent time telling the people you care for that you love them?
Reasonably. I’m still estranged from my family, though I’m happy there was no overt drama during gma’s funeral. Knowing I had a 4 hour drive in front of me, I was not invited to stay the night, though I did ask, to rest before heading back. So I pour that love into the friends and chosen family I do have.

3- Have you slowed down and caught up on your sleep?
I’m getting there. It’s amazing how many spoons you go through in a month’s retail.

4- Do you know what you want the next year to look like?
Next year will undoubtedly be better than this one. A working car, a working me, better use of my leisure time, and busier than ever with coding nerdiness.

5- Have you meditated on where you are in life and sifted through the noise to ask the important question of “Who am I?”
Not particularly. I think my actions and motivations, and minute-by-minute triumphs of my day, speak enough on that one. It’s the same reason why I don’t really ponder religion or politics, I tend to be too practical for theoretical and hypothetical discussions.

6- Have you taken on some life/health enhancing practices that you will do the next year?
Nothing extravagant. I always strive to become more self-aware, and more positive. I’m human and it is an ongoing project.

7- Did you spent enough time in nature this year? What are your plans to integrate more contact with nature for 2012?
I have been able to do very little of that. When we had access to a car, we did have occasion to go to a nature park nearby, and to the peninsula, though it borked out before we could take our long-lusted-after trip to the beach, or sight-see on said peninsula, we were in too much of a hurry to get to family and then home again, grr. *kicks car* Hopefully we’ll get that fixed in some sort of permanent way and make many more trips out of the city limits next year. Grr.

8- Have you closed out energies that no longer serve you?
I hope so. Whenever I feel the need to start ranting and raving to the wall (I speak aloud to an empty room as if I’m talking to them) regarding the J & J issue, I tell myself to either talk to them directly and stop “practicing”, or to let it go. Such rants are diminishing, though my confusion about their last actions to me will continue to pop into mind until it is resolved. I’m probably being childish in not addressing it with them directly, but I have no further need to expose myself to their lies, manipulations, or toxic ways. Obviously I have a ways to go to close out that energy and probably imagined negativity. Evidently it’s still a more sore spot than I thought. We’ll see what the next year brings.

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22
Nov

Dragons, Telepaths, and Other Impossible Things

Ginger

There are a few people, famous people, that I mourn the loss of. Victor Borge. Jim Henson. Johnny Carson. Jerry Orbach. The list goes on, but you get the idea. There are as many women as men that I miss, but these are just the ones who come easiest to mind.

There are a few people that I will miss when they are gone. Carol Burnett. Roy Dotrice. I don’t care to dredge up more names for this list. It will bum me out unnecessarily. It’s bad enough that anyone I put in the latter category will eventually become a member of the former.

I learned, a few hours ago, that Anne McCaffrey passed away yesterday. I accredit her with my lifelong obsession with all things sci-fi, as I firmly remember browsing the paperbacks on the single freestanding bookshelf at the surprisingly well-stocked high school library, picking one up out of curiosity based on the artwork on the cover, and immediately falling into the world of Pern. It is because of that experience that I urge any young person yet to be acquainted with this author to pick up the novel Dragonsinger before any other of the series. If you’ve the right mind to be intrigued by what is contained within those pages, you will hunger to glean more details about that world by pilfering other novels in that series. If nothing else, you will have solved the mild mystery of what a seemingly fantasy novel is doing in the sci-fi section.

It wasn’t enough that I glomped upon the entirety of the novels of Pern; oh no, I also tasted the other ones by this author, too, curious what her other series were like. The Rowan/Pegasus/Tower seri, for example. Wow. I’m presently inhaling those stories all over again. I love that the Brainship and Killishandra series overlap, and it’s conceivable that the other series can live in the same universe, even if unmentioned and unreferenced.

Sometimes I’m self-conscious about admitting to liking this author’s works. A close friend once chided me for including this among my nerdier and loftier favorites such as Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. For those who are familiar with the Harper Hall Trilogy, I liken Anne’s writing style to that of Menolly, a character of Anne’s creation, discussed by the character’s teachers at one point. “Her [singing] style is not very technical and she hasn’t had a lot of instruction, but her tunes are catchy and sing-able by any gather (faire) attendant, and thusly popular.” (I’m paraphrasing but you get the idea.) Her characters live, and breathe, as far as my mind’s eye is concerned. There’s incredible depth, and love, that goes into her characterizations that they are clearly influenced by her real life associations, for whom these characters are modeled after. A teacher, a brother, a fan, a pet, they all get immortalized, often more than once, in her writings. We may never have met the model for Robinton the Masterharper, but those of us who identify as fans of her works bloody well know how she felt about the man.

It’s difficult to think of her in the past tense. I always rather hoped she’d delve more into the not-Pern series that I enjoy and reread voraciously, revisiting them every couple of years like close family. I really hope there’s a writer given permission to continue forays into those worlds. She was always very protective and critical about allowing others to “play” in her worlds–even fanfic was closely monitored.

I have other thoughts but I am distracted by dinner. *raises a glass of Benden red* The world is less one more gold dragon, and her rider. Huzzah to Lady Annie Mac.

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06
Oct

Bookmark!

Ginger

I had to share my latest bookmark, A Quiet and Peaceful Life. The choice of font is a bit unfortunate, but the entries are quite entertaining to read. I can’t tell if the blogger is only giving the appearance of living in a primitive setting and presenting photos that perpetuate that notion, or if she truly resides in a shack, but she references a lot of what is surely her surroundings. She’s married with at least one child, and she carefully blogs her family’s progress with this unusual lifestyle.

I love the juxtaposition of the low-tech life, the photos, and the fact that she does maintain a blog and shares the occasional photo, so she is surely connected to the internet at least a minimum of the time. It amuses me to imagine she has wifi or a smartphone, and uses them while living in a place that might not have running water or much in the way of other modern conveniences.

And I’m very jealous that she gets to live that way. Yeah, I do daydream of residing in a place where you have to turn a crank to wash a load of laundry, pump a handle to retrieve water (though, heated is nice, lol), more along the lines of the Tiny House. Or a teeny apartment in NYC. I have weird daydreams. :)

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29
Sep

Didn’t Even Realize…

Ginger

I didn’t even realize that this was on my bucket list until it happened this morning.

In the course of driving hubby to work, I noticed a car directly ahead of me with a 360° camera mount sticking straight up. As we moved in closer, I started squealing and clapping. Andrew asked me what was going on. I exclaimed, “We’re right behind the Google Maps Street View car!”

We caught up to the car as we stopped at a red light. And spent the next ten minutes making goofy faces at the camera before Andrew’s workplace came up and we stopped following them.

As I exclaimed on Facebook this morning: “Immortalized like morons!”

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14
Sep

Infographics Make Me Grumpy

Ginger

The phenomenon of the information graphic has percolated into online forums. I think it was on a tech blog that I first started seeing these unmistakable things. It was very well done. It had a lot of white space, whimsical outlines and typography, and it featured graphs, the sort you would find in spreadsheets and the like.

And then everyone started doing them. They’re very popular in tech blogs. There are even generators that allow you to make an infographic very easily. And I’ve noticed some stuff about them, and stuff about my reaction to them, the more that I see of them.

I’m starting to have a “get off my lawn” reaction to them. For one thing, most infographics these days are nothing more than huge blocks of text on a static image that is so large that my monitor, which is not small, does not have a resolution large enough to show me the entire image without either requiring me to scroll, or with resulting text so small that I must zoom in to read it, and, again, scroll. You can get the exact same information across with a simple paragraph of text in an HTML document. A large static image requires so much more bandwidth, processor power, and temporary memory to display. A paragraph of text can load in milliseconds, seemingly instantaneously. A huge image showing that same paragraph of text? Depending on your connection, it loads anywhere from ten seconds to several minutes, even hours for those poor souls still on dial-up.

The info contained therein has also deteriorated, as more people create infographics and don’t quite understand how best to display their information. Blocks of text are boring. That’s why the early infographic was such a draw and a pleasure to see. It’s visually appealing because of the colors, the blocks and shapes, the simpleness of the graphs. But these newfangled things the least experienced are creating are horrible, in comparison. Besides the generic block of text that seems a staple in most any infographic today, the graphics are complicated, requiring one to turn one’s head this way and that to read the almost illegible small text presented vertically or diagonally, sometimes even upside down.

The thing that makes me most cranky about infographics today is that so many of the graphs, statistics, and such are presented in percentile form, without credit, a link to a study in which the statistics and percentages were acquired. They don’t tell me how they arrived at those stats and percentages. 13% of what? 29 times of who? There isn’t even a complimentary link, in which the author of the infographic describes the math behind what they depicted. “20% prefer Apple, 50% prefer the PC, the remaining 30% prefer something else.”

Who where they polling? A bunch of people in an Apple Store? Kids on a college campus? Parents at a playground? Professionals in an office building? A sample of the general public polled on the street by being chased by people with clipboards? A closed study in which people were paid for their opinion? A scientific blind study in which a specific subset of people were solicited, and THEN asked for their opinion? Each pool of people would garner very widely varying opinions, facts, and preferences. Presenting an infographic with no info on how that info was reached, makes it useless. Statistics and percentages can be impressive things, but without any context, it’s meaningless to those who pause to consider such things, like me.

I use Google Reader and Facebook to keep up on the feeds of blogs and websites I care about and/or find interesting. In Google Reader, the infographic requires me to scroll past it. I treat it like a popup ad now, ignoring it and finding it annoying. On Facebook, I must click on the direct link to view the image, and more often than not it was filled with information I can’t grok or didn’t care about anyway.

It’s a silly thing to rant about, I agree, but I felt the need to say something regardless. On a snarky note, I considered creating an infographic that displays in graph form how cranky I am about different elements. But I didn’t want it to annoy those on slower connections. :)

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