(Before my "real" post, I just realized something. Our cats are going to loathe us when that camera comes.)

I did take pictures of all the flowers Wednesday night. But, after that, I also watered 'em all, doused 'em all in both hot pepper wax and nasty stinky stuff, then went and trimmed all six bushes on the side of the house. Would have done the front ones too, but it got dark.

I forgot to take a picture of the left pot on the ground all by itself, of the two hanging plants and two ground pots by the tree. Oops. But, it is in an overall.

• Back: left hanging plant, right hanging plant, right ground pot, all four plants by the tree together, and the two extra pots of the purple mix I got
• Front: close-up and between the two bushes

The red and white ones I got a week or two ago, a 6-pack each of red & white. The various shades of purple with some white are from the 5 9-packs I brought home. I'm thinking of going back for more to plant behind the decorative rock there. Looks kind of bare.

My forearms are still sore from using those big clippers on the bushes. So wussy. But, I think I did a decent job, and looking last night while watering the flowers I saw that I didn't actually miss much of the clippings for the last bush like I thought I had. The loose needles from the ewe yew bushes need to be swept off the sidewalk though.

So after much research (haha, Vivitar shouldn't even bother making a camera, damn!) I ended up going with the original A620 suggestion. Newegg had it cheaper than anyone else, too. Ended up ordering the powershot, plus since they had a $20 discount offer on 1, 2, and 4GB (yes, GB!) SD cards for it, a 2GB SD card for $26. Also, went ahead and got a camera case that sounds from the reviews that it'll be big enough to hold memory cards, USB and A/V cables, spare rechargeable batteries, and maybe even the AA battery charging kit. (The one thing J didn't like about our existing camera, was that we're always buying batteries for it, so he was hoping to find a good Li-ion powered camera. However, once he heard just how much life a high mAh rated set of batteries would have, and given they appear to actually be cheaper than the e2 alkalines we'd been buying. That, and that the top two camera brands, Canon and Nikon, had cameras comparable to them with Li-ion batteries but they were all $400+.)

My dad sent me a really awesome link to a site called Digital Photography Review that reviews cameras. I checked out the review for the A620, and they had damned few complaints, and most were minor or didn't really apply to us. Plus, they tested out all sorts of things, including how many pictures the camera estimated would fit on a 512MB card based on the five different detail/size settings. Fuck. At the absolute highest size, it estimated 322 pictures for that. That's better storage than ours, stored on SmartMedia cards (no more using those *sniff) at the small size high detail setting it has. Ours, with a 256MB card, could only hold 227 (I think that's the estimate, some weird number) at a much much smaller resolution and less detail given the difference in MP. With the 2GB card that means we'd be able, at the best possible resolution, to get over 1200 fucking pictures on it before it's full! The overall review scores from people who own one average out to be 4.57/5. Works for me.

When I ordered, they estimated that with UPS ground it would take 1 day for delivery after it was shipped. O.O Orders take 24-48 hours to process, no weekend processing. So if it somehow gets shipped today, everything could theoretically arrive Monday. Probably won't happen, but I suspect that even with the 4th as a holiday it'll arrive by the end of next week, which rocks.

Next entry will be about the rest of my recent life: gardening, pictures of flowers, yard work, etc.

Canon Powershot A620.

This was a recommendation I got here. $220, 4x optical zoom, really incredible close-in macro, good night shots, several modes (indoor, pets, underwater), etc., 7.1 megapixel resolution, shittons of resolution modes (3 different quality settings, 5 different size settings). Can buy an underwater case for it. I compared with other Canons (A700, A610, SD700 IS, SD630, SD600) and priced some of them via Newegg, and for features we'd ever use or want for the price, the A620 is the absolute best of the bunch. The SD700 IS and A700 were comparable, with more features (99% of which we wouldn't ever use) but the A700 was $320 and the SD700 IS was $450. The SD series are all Lithium Ion battery powered, but for quality similar to the A620 cost a bunch more. The A series are all AA powered, but of course take rechargable NiMH ones. Can't tell for sure whether the storage media is the same, don't think so.

So I'd say the A620 is the best possible option for us within Canon. Have to look at Minolta and such for other comparisons.

Edit #1: Found a Minolta at their site that had a decent MP and optical zoom, and didn't have "discontinued" in red on the page, but it's $670 at Amazon. That would be a "no."

Edit #2: The Nikon Coolpix L1 lists as $250 MSRP on their site; Newegg doesn't have it to see what it normally retails for, though I'd presume that. 5x optical zoom, not quite as good but equivalent macro mode, can't really tell how many different resolution and quality settings it has, and there's no detail on what exactly the different "special modes" actually are. Pretty darn limited on accessories.

One helluva morning. Slept decently until a quarter to 2am, when I got startled awake from a dream. In my dream, I was lying in bed the exact same way as I really was. Only, I guess my vision was better... I saw two slightly brownish white spiders, slender bodied and thin legged but large in diameter and not spindly, coming right at me along the edge of the blanket. I freaked, pulled away and turned on the light, hesitating because I was thinking I'd wake J (then realizing after the light was on that he wouldn't care since he wasn't home) and... of course there was nothing there.

Then I eventually fell asleep, only to wake up again at 3:30 or so. I realized it was really dark in the house but that there was light coming from the bedroom window. "What, is it dawn or something?" Clock told me it wasn't, then it hit me: I'd turned the back porch light on for 2 minutes while I went to grab the bottle of liquid fertilizer from outside, then forgot to turn it off. Got up, turned it off, went back to bed.

Slept like crap till about 5:30, woke up groggy and itchy, tried to sleep till my 5:50 alarm. Didn't work too well. Zephyr got up on me at a quarter till 6, wanting lovies, started purring when I pet him. He didn't even get down when I had to stop and turn off the alarm. After he jumped down, I realized I hadn't taken my allergy meds, took one (it's by the bed from a couple weeks ago when I was doing OT in bed and didn't want to have to get back up when I was done before turning out the light), figured since I showered last night I could try to sleep a little longer. Rested in and out until about 6:15, doing the whole "oh, just five more minutes" thing. Then I fell asleep until a quarter to 7, which is when I need to be leaving if I want to be on time. Uh, oops?

I needed that last bit though. I slept better during that than I did the whole night past a quarter to 2. I'll tell you about the vivid dream I had during that hard sleep in a bit.

So after getting up, wetting my hair and putting stuff in it (didn't bother putting anything in last night), checking weather, yadda yadda, I get dressed. Pull on my jeans, and... ACK! Spider. Crawling on my butt! Real one this time, and much smaller but definitely thicker bodied. Not a small wolf spider or anything, but probably a hunter. I actually screamed a bit. Couldn't get to anything to grab it off with so I just sat down. Hard. Rocked up a bit and it was still moving, leaned back, farther and harder this time. Rocked forward, still alive, pushed back. Finally got up and it was moving but crumpled and slow, and he finally dropped off my pants instead of crawling around on that back pocket, so I was able to grab a nearby shoe and finish smooshing him. I needed that about as much as I needed a shotgun to the face. I was definitely more awake at that point, sheesh. This was the pair of jeans I bought yesterday. I'd not even taken the tags off. The spider was there while I took the tags off, threw them away across the room, then put them on. Ugh! I would've expected a spider more likely to be hiding in the stuff I wore to garden in last night, or the pile on the floor that's grown up again. Not a neatly folded pair of pants I'd just brought home with definitely no spiders on it. And my gardening clothes all went down the laundry chute last night when I got in the shower.

Now on to the dream I had.

The dream I had this morning was messed the hell up. It was like, I woke up in my house, but it was an amalgamation of our house, my parents' house, and "other". My boss and a coworker, Dan, were both in... some room, having a meeting. ??? Whatever. I go to the bathroom, door doesn't want to latch, frame and wall are loose somehow. Bathroom has stuff all misplaced in it. Then they leave and she said she somehow messed up the door, sorry. Then I'm trying to figure out how they even got in (nevermind why apparently) when J was gone. Then I realized my parents were living with us, and it dawned on that my dad had let 'em in. So I'm getting ready to shower, only I can't find anything. The dream then gets all morphy and I'm in a bigger house with like 2 or 3 showers or something, and my mom has moved everything around on me, stacked a bunch of shit in the tub so I can't shower, then it wasn't but there was other weird shit going on. I'm yelling at her that she can't be doing that, that I don't have time and I have to wash my hair to go to work (just remembered, I was looking in the mirror after using the toilet and saw that I had... stuff, I dunno, really thin gauzy but stiff material all over my hair, and I thought it must've happened from sleeping with my head on the blanket while it was wet) and I was gonna be late and would have to clean all that stuff up still, saying I should just take the day off. So. Very. Weird. Oh yeah, and as my boss left I saw just outside the front door that she'd left four saplings of some sort, and I was thinking "WTF am I going to do with these??" and my dad was gonna take one home, and two other people (don't remember who) were as well so I'd only have to figure out one. They were in slim cardboard boxes up to about 6' up, then the rest of the tree stuck out the top.

I can't even begin to describe any of the little details of the weirdness of the scenes in my dream. They're beyond description.

So I did lots after I left work. Went to Jamestown Mall, got a few things (a couple bras in my size that fit, plus a strapless that doesn't make my boobs look all weird; really cheap Bath & Body Works stuff; jeans & sleeveless shirt on sale at Express). Then I went to the hardware store and snagged 5 9-packs of petunias. Should've gone with four, but I managed to plant 'em all. (Interlude: WTF are people shooting fireworks off for already?? Besides the fact it's not legal in the county, it's not even close to the weekend that precedes Independence Day. Knock it off people! Brought to you by the occasional sounds I've been hearing tonight.)

I'd have taken pictures, but I didn't get home with everything till 6:30, had to bring in my laptop and mall purchases and change into more suitable gardening clothes. So I wasn't done until 9, when it was very definitely dusk. I planted 3 of the packs out front in the very dead looking space in front of the livingroom window, between two bushes and in front of the decorative rock spang in the middle of dead space. With the other two the two hanging planters (bought two new ones, because they were cheap and had far thicker gauge wire to hang from which means they won't get bent up and ugly) only barely held 6 each without serious crowding. So that meant I still had six plants left after I was done. I could in theory have put them in another hanging planter, but I have nowhere to hang it. So, I pulled out two smallish pots that held the hostas I planted outside, and put three in each. Those are now sitting on top of the storage thingy I put out there to hold gardening things.

I'll try to remember to take pictures tomorrow. It should be sunny enough out not to need any flash and to take a few decent ones.

I came in and J called to let me know he'd be staying at his parents' tonight because he got really tired. So I called him back and we talked for a while. Then I grabbed the leftover sammich and dug in while the leftover tortellini reheated in the microwave, and had those with a huge glass of OJ for dinner at a little before 10pm. I'm ever so glad I went ahead and had a granola bar right before I left work. I didn't think I'd be eating dinner this late.

Is it normal to end up wearing rather a lot of dirt when gardening, or is it just me? My legs are covered in it. Some of it is dirt from the front, some potting soil from putting it in the potters in the back. My legs are dirty enough there are smear marks, and that I refuse to go to bed until I've showered.

I'm going to miss J not being here tonight. It's fairly often he comes to bet far later than I, given all the latenight WoW raids. But, it's rare for him not to even be within 20 miles of the house overnight. It'll be interesting to see whether I sleep better, worse, or about the same.

I also need a soak in the tub. But, the tub needs cleaning and of course so do I. I draw the line at soaking when I can see the dirt all over me. I'll just crank the temp up as hot as I can stand and change the shower to "beat down" mode and have it hit my back for a while.

J's and my anniversary was very nice, very relaxing, very happy. I took the day off. We had a late lunch, watched a few Dr. Who Season 2 episodes, went to dinner, then went to see X3 in our dressup clothes. Obviously more than that, but... y'all don't want to hear those bits. Can you tell we're nerds though, watching Dr. Who and XMen on our anniversary?

J surprised me and made me smile big. While I was in the shower he sneaked out of the house, me none the wiser, ran up to a flower shop close by, and brought me back a dozen orange-red roses. Now, I don't ask for flowers pretty much ever; if you have to ask for them it kinda misses the point, especially when cut flowers only last so long. I especially don't ask for them or hint at them for V-Day because the quality then is actually not as good for twice the usual price. However, I definitely appreciate it when J snags some out of the blue like that. They're really pretty, and even have some scent, and are still open.

That, in a nutshell, was Thursday. I loved every moment.

---

This weekend I had J all to myself as well, for the most part. He would've had friends over, but was picking up his aunt at the airport early evening so it just wouldn't have worked out. So he didn't invite 'em. Instead we had a nice lazy day, with WoW playing and such, then picked up his aunt together, and all of us went to his grandma's and visited and had dinner. Got to see his grandma's cat Fritter, lovey and sheddy as ever, and see her garden. She puts just about anyone's backyard garden to shame, simply because she likes to grow a lot of things and has the space for it. All manner of flowers, and even more veggies.

Sunday was more laziness and WoW playing. Did the last cooking quest, got the last fishing quest though I haven't started fishing for the special fish yet. Lots and lots of running around.

Today J's out all day at his parents' helping with yard work (which is more substantial than most, given all the trees and large amount of land and such). There's my leftover tortellini from Friday night, as well as half of a regular Quizno's sub from last night (ordered a small, they made a regular) in the fridge for dinner. I'm going to do a few errands after work I think. I'm going to get a bunch more petunias (I think that's what they are?), some for hanging baskets in the back yard, some for the NE corner of the house in the front yard on a raised stepped area that gets a lot of sun. Plus some potting soil, since I'm all out. I'm also going to see if I can buy one or two bras in the size I am right now, just to wear to death like I did with the last ones until I manage to get in enough cardio to get back with the weight loss again. (Still going to class, just not doing anything else.) I might mow the front yard for exercise this afternoon, if it doesn't rain.

---

I can't decide if these damn wrist braces are helping or annoying. First off, where my right pinky attaches is getting sore because it's harder to reach with my pinky for things like the shift key, plus I'm used to using my pinky on the side of my mouse to move it around which doesn't work so well. Plus, I keep hitting the alt and windows key with my left hand, which brings up all manner of context menus. And, XP must have some "utility manager" in it; it keeps popping up when I bump something, dunno what, telling me that I don't have the screen magnifier or onscreen keyboard on, blah blah. I dunno how long I need to wear these infernal things to get my wrist healed while still working, but damned if they're not driving me nuts.

I snagged the link for this test from antiarc...

I got a 132 with 5:47 left on the clock. Probably would've done very slightly better if I could concentrate better. Just feeling kinda scatterbrained. I was even pretty sure one or two questions later of a couple I probably answered wrong, hehe. Just couldn't focus long enough. Still, not bad, though probably a little higher than would really be accurate to be honest. Not a sself-lam, but remembering what my mom said about the one I had in kindergarten (the ones given for children, before lots of book learning and rote memorization set in, are still the most accurate) and the one I had to take in HS to get into a summer program.

Yes, a meme, but it's reasonably accurate. Highest on sloth, lowest on pride, nothing "very high".

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	High
Envy:	Medium
Lust:	Low
Pride:	Very Low

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

Happy Four Year Anniversary, Jeremy!

I love you with all my heart, and look forward for many, many more years together.

Love, Kate

I broke a nail! Tore that shit right off, missed the quick thankfully so no blood and no hurty. Was slammin' my hand on the desk to White Zombie. Hehe. Mannnn. Last post I swear.

Uhhhhh yeah. Yay for vodka and stuff. And "the most redudent techno song of all time" according to J, which keeps repeating "around the world" over and over and over and over and over again.

Woooo. I'm sad because our ice hasn't frozen yet so I'm drinking my second fuzzy navel not as a frozen concoction. But, it's still tasty. It's just not as frozen.

I see booze in my future. Not sure how much, but there will be at least a single fru fru drink poured down my throat this evening. Guh.

I hate production support. Hate it. Hate hate hate.

Why? Why is it that on the off chance there's one single fucking day that our regular group box monitoring guy is gone and I get to monitor the box, that all hell has to break loose in the previous night's processing? Plus other random bullshit breaking that isn't under our control? That I have to come up with answers for when there's no communication?

*sigh* No really, I didn't really want to get any coding done. That was just a silly fantasy...

I just got to take a half hour break from work. Zephyr wet himself. On the bed.

I'd say he peed on the bed, but his target wasn't intentional. He's been twitchy kitty moving around like he can't get comfortable, acting like all these random places itch (attack-washing random spots, etc.). I think he just stressed himself so much he pissed himself, and just so happened to be on the bed when he did it.

I didn't know until he started trying to bury it on the comforter. Saw the dark spot, saw huuuuge wet spot on the sheet. Got up, found huuuge wet spot on the fitted sheet. Sniff test was positive for ammonia, yay. The positive? We found out the mattress pad (padded fuzzy thing, has sides that stretch around like a fitted sheet only tighter) must be scotch guarded or something. There was very little wet anything on it, and what was wet was all on top and soaked up 100% into a wad of tissues, completely dry afterwards. So, no having to spot clean a mattress to get cat piss out, woo.

The sheets have been stain treated (off white sheets, various dark shades on the comforter, yeeeah... soak-thru color) and put in the washer, and the comforter is piled in the livingroom so it can be taken to the cleaners. There are fresh sheets on the bed, with a blanket in lieu of a comforter (sorry, I can't put a blue wolf comforter or blue sheets on a bed that has an olive green with gold patterning bed skirt on it, it would clash OMG), and I'm back on the bed. Zephyr has been calmed some (I had to stick him in our bathroom because he jumped up on the bed four times in succession with me lifting him off four times) and I made sure their litterboxes are clean.

Back to work, and in the morning J probably will be taking him to the vet to see if he somehow got fleas (would've had to have hitched in on one of us, because they don't go outside) or has some skin oddity or what. If it's fleas we'll be asking for 2 squeeze treatments of Revolution, one for Zephyr and one for Pele so they don't jump to her. If not, who knows. I hope he wasn't just being neurotic. As twitchy as he was I can't think of anything other than fleas (though you'd think on short white fur I'd be able to see any he has).

and if I want to avoid CTS I need to head it off now. Evidently there's a tendon that kinda leads straight into the middle of the heel of your hand (i.e. centered) that can be hurt. If that's hurt, which mine likely is in both wrists, if steps aren't taken to make it stop hurting then the body will try to compensate which leads to CTS.

So my tasks:

1. Stop resting my wrists/heels of my hands on the mousepad when mousing, or on the wrist rest or desk at a keyboard.
2. Start doing forearm curls (elbow doesn't move, just up and down at the wrist, both palm up and palm down) to strengthen my forearms and by extension my wrists, so that it's easier to do #1.
3. Stretch my wrists, by pulling fingers and palms back over the top of my arm, then down towards the insides of my arms.

If I do those consistently and keep it up, I should be able to keep my wrists happy, be able to do normal pushups, etc.

Grr. So annoying. My right forearm is already kinda tired just from holding my wrist off the mousepad while mousing with my rather heavy MX700 mouse. Such wussy arms!

Edit: And what do I do right after writing this? Get started putting in a couple hours' OT on the laptop in bed, where my laptop keyboard is on my lap and thus lower then my elbows, and my mouse is even lower and thus my wrist may not be resting on anything but it's still bent some instead of straight in order to use the mouse at all. Great eh?

I've been kind of in a state where I have things to talk about, things to say, but not the urge to sit and write them down. This post would be much longer if not for the fact that I've probably forgotten half of what I might've written about. Not that I know how long it's going to be yet, but whatever length it ends up, I know there will have been more that simply got overwritten inside my head.

Weekend before last, we all watched Oscar. Funny movie. Stallone plays a mobster whose dad's last dying wish is for him to clean up his act and go straight. Of course, the morning he's meeting with bankers to make an investment so he can do just that, let's just say all sorts of shenanigans happen one right after the other.

I hit 40 this week in WoW with Brennh, my Hunter v2.0 on CC. With all the greens and two or three twinky blues that dropped for me, I had more than enough gold to spend on both talents (ended up being about 15g for my level 40 talents including the 2g for pet training skills) and on a mount. I didn't end up getting one for her until she was nearly 41 because I was just too busy with quests all the way in Stranglethorn to really want to make the ridiculously long trip to Darnassus. Ended up taking the boat to Ratchet to turn some things in, then when I was figuring out the best way to get to Gadgetzan J suggested I just hearth to Auberdine, get my mount (got my skills beforehand in SW when I did an AH run to offload a ton of stuff), then fly back down that way. So I got a Nightsabre to ride (only dark kitty mount, and matches my nightsaber stalker pet). I tell you what, the flight from Teldrassil to Gadgetzan is just way too long.

The rest of this week was largely uneventful. The weekend was a bit more interesting. I ended up getting some new and much better gardening gloves. The others I had were the cheapy cloth ones, and somehow had ended up under a pile of mulch and crap on the back patio up against the back stair and gross, so I pitched those. We were at the hardware store to get some better hose to connect the pump to the pool, because the one it came with was pinching off under the suction, which meant it was putting pressure on the pump and also making it only do its job in fits and starts (where the water goes back into the pool was spitting, rather than a steady stream). I decided I wanted some flowers in the back yard, so we ended up picking up a 6-pack each of red and white petunias. By that point, I picked out some gardening gloves that are a little more heavy duty, made with leather and generally thicker and tougher.

The petunias went into two largish planters I already had, six each alternating red and white. One of the planters still had usable soil in it, so I split that between the two. I also had some potting soil left over in a couple different bags, used that too. I topped it off with some mulch I still had from my parents' house, then mixed it all together. I still would've liked another inch or two of dirt, but I didn't want to go back out. So far no squirrels digging in it, though I'm not going to hold my breath. Sunday I sprayed them liberally with stinky stuff, and I'll try to keep that on it every few days. J suggested we get more flowers to hang from the shepherd's hooks that're still out there, so I figure I'll head back to the hardware store and either get more petunias or get some impatiens, depending. They didn't have that many impatiens Saturday, and most seemed to be a coral color I didn't really like, and none had many flowers at all. So we'll see. I will have to buy dirt then; I'm all out at this point.

Sunday was spent mostly lazing around. We grabbed Bread Co. for lunch, then went to Target since it was right there to see if they had any decent Father's Day cards for my grandfather and dad. They did, barely. On the way to the car we ran into my friend Jane and her mom. Her mom had gone in because they'd charged 'em twice for something, but she came back out while Jane and I were still chatting, got to say hello. It'd probably been a dozen years since I'd last seen her. That was nice.

We played a little WoW, J ran me through Razorfen Kraul. Interesting, but I can't say I'd want to keep going back, hehe. Then we got showered and dressed to go out to dinner. Mom made reservations for all five of us at Bristol's, quite the nice place. Since her paychecks don't amount to much of anything compared to what my dad brings home (substitute aid -- playground duty -- for grade schools in the district doesn't pay that well or have a ton of hours, hehe) that's her personal "frivolous" money, and she keeps it in an envelope. Only, she hadn't spent any in a while. So she decided she'd treat all of us on Father's Day, making doubly sure my grandfather didn't get hold of the check from our waiter as he likes to do. Good, good food. I think all of us ended up getting one or another of their fish items. J got the lobster bisque first, and oh man that was some good stuff. We each had a glass of wine with dinner; J and my dad both each got a glass of Guinness to start off with since it was on tap. It was a very nice night out. We then went back to my parents' to chat and have some apple pie. I should've just said I'd have one bite of J's piece; even the really small piece I had put me over the limit, and that was after we waited an hour for our food to settle.

This Thursday is our 4 year anniversary. Normally we would've been gone on vacation all this week and most of both weekends, but given our deadlines for the project at work that just wasn't happening. So I'm going to talk to Jennifer to see when I can be off, and whether I can do a full week or if I can at least have a MTW or WTF off adjoining a weekend. J suggested, especially if we can't be gone for over a week, finding somewhere near the Branson area to stay, and maybe go on a nice long float trip just the two of us one of the days we're gone, and just hike a little here and there, spend a lot of time in whatever accomodations we find.

Not sure what's going on, but there are definite oddities. If you see that not all the menus are there (stopping after "credits & mentions" with no reading list, no weather, no news articles, yadda yadda) that's what I'm seeing too. It's stopping in the middle of a for-loop in PHP code, in the middle of writing out a string. It's looping through an array, which is made up of links & their associated images. The first 14 of these are static; any others are dynamic and associated with the theme to give credit for images that aren't mine. By the time my script gets to that loop, the array is already populated. Yet, the execution always dies in the exact same place: some point after the static links. If you see a link for a whole crapton of text that reads like an Internal Server Error (which is what it is, though why it prints it there in the source I don't know) then if you were to view the source you'd see that it happens in the middle of writing out a title tag for the first dynamic link. So the link tag isn't closed, even the opening part, before it writes out an entire ISE page, HTTP headers (which aren't supposed to be displayed by a browser) included. Edit: It just died after the very first static link, followed by an ISE, this time while writing the image tag, so I guess I spoke too soon. I'd add that information to the ticket, but I can't, so... yeah, we'll see what happens with further discussions.

Now, if you're viewing a theme that has absolutely no dynamic credits available, I don't know what happens. The default theme has two; the theme I use here at work also has one. So I need to fire up an alternate browser, pick a theme that doesn't have one, and see what happens.

I just wanted to mention it so that y'all don't freak out about it; I know about it, I submitted a rather lengthy trouble ticket detailing what I'm seeing, and there's not yet anything I can do about it for sure. My host recently changed something about the way PHP scripts are handled in order to have them run faster, and that they did, but they also reminded that with any such software change there are bound to be oddities, quirks, and bugs that aren't found until the change goes live, and to report any problems. This is only showing up about... 1.5-2 days after the change, so it's probably tied into that somehow. No idea yet whether it's a configuration they need to tweak, or if I have a script that could be more efficient and that I need to tweak. I just have to wait and see. I'd guess, though, that the caching software (it caches actual PHP pages somehow) just isn't caching correctly, or something.

Edit 2: Seems to be working again. I'll leave the ticket open a little longer, in case they need to know of intermittent problems and it wasn't anything they changed to make it work, but if I don't hear anything in a day or two and it keeps working I'll just close it.

Anyone who's ever played DOOM more than a few times probably remembers that to activate no-clipping mode you had to type the cheat code idspispopd, which of course was a great big pain in the ass to type. Well, if you didn't know its origins, have a read on this Wikipedia page that explains it.

I could've posted this Tuesday, but I forgot all about it.

Weight as of June 13, 2006 @ 6:30am: 141 pounds.
Long-term weight comparison from scale at Dr. Catus' office as of June 7, 2006 @ about 4:30pm: 145 pounds, fully clothed.

Last one I could find for the long-term was from 6 months ago; apparently I forgot to record what I weighed at my last Depo appointment. Anyway, my weight then on that scale, with winter clothes on (so maybe 2-3 pounds heavier than the jeans, t-shirt, and sandals I wore last week), was 162 pounds. So according to their scale I've lost 14-15 pounds since then (assuming the lighter clothes this time around).

Someone on FO linked this adorable video of a kitten falling asleep while making bread. I absolutely had to pass it on.

Some dude sent me an auth request with jibberish characters in it for the "why". I looked at the info, and it looked pretty obvious that the person doesn't speak much English, and especially when I'm at work I'm not going to try to carry on a conversation with someone where it's going to be harder work than deciphering our old codebase. So I declined. Trillian doesn't let me input a reason (ICQ does, or at least it did the last version I used which was like 2000a or something), so he didn't get one. No big, right? He just IM'd me to say "fuck you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (Roughly that many exclamatin marks, really.)

Yeah, welcome to my ignore list bub. I guess he felt that everyone he sends an auth to he has some inborn right that they allow it and talk to him, or something. I just find it highly amusing.

Kitten playing with a Mac laptop on the floor. So very cute.

Friday afternoon was interesting. Last Tuesday (9 days ago, not 2), J started working to get the pool up to snuff and actually open it this year. First that involved sucking all the crap out of the cover that'd collected in it, so he could dump the water. On Friday he was ready to take the cover off (he didn't want to end up dumping all that crap into the pool, and he was doing it during the day so he couldn't have me or whoever help him take the cover off carefully enough to avoid it). He took it off, and... man, I didn't expect it to smell quite like that. Granted we never opened it last year, but still. It turned out there was a dead bird that'd somehow gotten underneath and drowned. Talk about sad and nasty at the same time. It couldn't have been in there long, since its skin was loosening but still there and the feathers were still there mostly. Looked like it might've been a starling, but I can't say for sure. Anyway, other than that it was very, very green and murky but could've been worse. He was was able to scoop out the few leaves and suck a lot of the non-fine smaller detritus out with the wet/dry vac. To kill off anything living he used a plastic freezer bag, the butt end of a hammer (the business end started putting tiny holes in the bag) to break up three chlorine tablets into bits on the back porch, then scattered that all over the water.

I mowed most of the backyard. I would've done it all, but I had to stop at least three times to go in and gulp down some water and douse myself with a spray bottle to cool off. The grass was very, very thick in places, and I'd had to adjust the mower up a few notches just to get through it (non-motored blades-only mower; the shitty Craftsman mower hasn't worked since it was used all of three times or so). I did everything except the really wet matted down spot by the pool where J'd been dumping the wet/dry vac, and between the fence and other side of the pool. I was just spent at that point, and I told J he was welcome to do the rest and re-mow the stuff I'd done at a shorter height, but there was no way I was going to that day. It already looked a lot better, even though the grass blades that'd gotten tall enough to go to seed wouldn't mow.

This weekend we went out to J's parents' house. His aunt & uncle from WI were in town through Tuesday morning, and his sister and brother in law came in with their baby as well. J's baby sis had a dance recital on Sunday that his parents were going to go to, but as they charged for that (of course) but anyone could be at Saturday's dress rehearsal, we all went to the rehearsal and stayed until her part was done. She was so cute in her dance outfit! After that we all hung out, the guys cut down a dead tree and chunked it up while us ladies all took turns with the baby. He's so cute and little still! Eee! It's so weird still for me to think of myself as an aunt, hehe. Then sis- and bro-in-law got ready to actually have their first date in months (movie and a little light shopping), and we took turns with Gabe. He was quite the good baby, very drooly but not really all that fussy. I held him a fair amount, and still had him when he started getting hungry later in the evening.

He started out as a bit fussy, then he was very definitely starting to root around, drooling heavily all over both my arms, then noticing my lumpy bits and sort of mouthing my shirt and stuff. I told him mine don't work, but I don't think he believed me. Then he went from making little fussy noises to getting upset... he had a pumped bottle in the fridge and J's mom started it warming, but of course he was hungry and quite angry about it by the time it was done. Then there was the extra fun that he absolutely hates having a bottle, though they are working on it by trying to give him one every evening. He went from hungry angry to just plain pissed off when I tried feeding him. He was crying so hard I was afraid he'd aspirate any milk that dripped out, so I finally stopped. J tried with no luck, his mom tried a little with no luck, so eventually she just gave up trying to feed him for a bit because he wasn't interested anymore, then walked him around outside until he cried himself out. He fell asleep for a bit after that, and once he woke up he had the whole bottle then fussed that it was empty, hehehe. Then when momma was there he had some more after she had some food leftover from dinner, and was quite happy to go to bed.

The other not so fun highlight of the weekend, was when J and I were heading to bed for the night. We elected to sleep outside in the bed in the camper, which was fine. On the way out the door though, after I'd gone out and was turned waiting for J to come out as he was trying to shut the door with his arms full of sheets and pillows, we saw the biggest freakin' wolf spider I'd ever personally seen. ACK!! I didn't even see it out the door, and it was right on the bottom of the outside doorframe. Sucker must've been 2" across. Anyway, J managed to smoosh it so it didn't get in the house (it wouldn't do for his 3 and a half year old sister to get bitten by a big wolf spider, nosirree, or anyone else for that matter). I tell you what, we had to go by some overhanging trees to get to the camper door, and you better believe I had a very close look at all of 'em before I went in. I also was looking six ways at once at every camper surface once in side, even though we were told bugs don't really camp out in it even when it's sat unused for a while.

Sunday was a nice lazy day with a really yummy breakfast (fried eggs, hash browns, sausage, bacon, biscuits & gravy, mmmmm). J's parents and sister had to be at the recital place at 1:30, so they headed out. His aunt, uncle, and grandma had left the evening before since all three were staying with his grandma. So the rest of us didn't do a whole lot. J and his brother played video games, I read and napped (I woke up off and on during the night just from sleeping in an unfamiliar bed), sis- and bro-in-law sat with Gabe watching TV and entertaining him, then got packed up and headed back to KC. J and I stuck around until a little after 4. Ended up caught in stop-and-go traffic because they decided, with no advance warning or any signs well in advance along the highway, to close 2 of I-70's 3 lanes. Delayed us a good half hour. I did well with driving stick in it, not killing the car once.

This week J finished the backyard with generous use of the weedwacker and then remowing, gotten the front yard mowed and trimmed, and filled the pool, gotten the filter back outside and hooked up, and started its first round of chemicals. It looks a whole lot nicer now. All it needs now is to finish its chemicals, then get in and kinda slide the liner up in one spot where it's not under the rim and is gapping. (J showed pics of the liner where it gapped to the guy at the pool store, and he said we shouldn't need to replace it.) Liner also ought to be scrubbed to get off what will come off, and then the deck just needs a little laundry detergent and the little pushbroom scrubbing it (seriously, it's too small for a regular pushbroom, both in length of handle and width of brush head, but it's great for scrubbing the deck with).

Next update will probably talk about the shitty day I had Tuesday and why I was a completely lazy bum yesterday.

If you like Weird Al and legos, you're going to love this. It's awesome.

(Yes, still no real update. Yesterday was a really, really bad day. Just, ugh.)

but then I spent 9 hours at work, then 3 more hours working on the laptop at home. I found the initial problem I was having, but then I couldn't figure out why totals were coming out too high, and it took me 2 hours to realize I was looking at the wrong number to verify it. >.< So once I figured out what number I needed to look at, it was easy to figure out what I'd messed up and fixed it (was testing numeric Strings on each other, and doing a != instead of a !a.equals(b) because I must've forgotten that I wasn't dealing with actual numbers *headdesk*).

End result? 1.) Got the two charts 99% done, just need to tweak a few things this morning. 2.) I'm horribly tired this morning, and my brain feels like mush.

I'll try to write all about my weekend plus Friday afternoon, but I'm not holding my breath. I see a full day of work ahead of me, though I hope no OT, then I see a nap, dinner, and an early bedtime in my future. If I think about it, I'll write a little at a time in Semagic, then be able to post it all before I leave for my depo appointment.

If I reply less than usual to anyone, or not in a very timely fashion, well... I'm tired as hell, having a little trouble coming up with coherent thoughts when I'm not just rambling on in semi-stream of consciousness, and I may not get the time.

Or got too many neurons crossed (hehe, I only meant to cross a few for Kas getting the job he interviewed for, not all of 'em ).

I managed to get all the way into a parking spot at work without my laptop. *facepalm* I've had it since... some time in November, and this is the first time I've managed to do that. I really hope this isn't a sign of how the rest of the day is going to go.

I must express undying appreciation and gratitude to my husband. I called him on my phone still in the car, and just as I was going to ask him to bring it up to work for me, my cellphone died. I went in the building and called him from the phone on my desk and he figured that's what happened; he was sweet enough to agree to bring it up for me. When he got here he not only handed me my laptop bag, but also his cellphone for the day, just in case.

Yes, folks, I married quite the wonderful man. I'm going to find as many ways as possible the rest of this week, both intimate and practical, to express my appreciation. I'd say top of my list of the practical type would be putting away all my clothes that have already piled up in just a couple weeks since last time, cleaning the main bathroom again as it needs it, and really fully cleaning the computer room. They all need to be done, and I've drug my feet on especially the first and last items, so I'll see if I can get them all done this week.