Personally, I think that "Friendship Sweet" is a sort of smarmy name for a chocolate, the pineapple-as-the-symbol-of-hospitality connection to the contrary notwithstanding. But if you like dark chocolate, you'll like today's candy from the Harbor Sweets advent calendar. I do like dark chocolate, though when it's all by itself, nothing in it, I feel like it's missing mint just a little.
But damn, it's still good.
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I checked the forecast late last night, and was highly amused by this part of the winter weather advisory:
"ABRUPT CLEARING IS EXPECTED IN THE INTERIOR TOWARD DAWN..."
It made me want to stay up, so I could watch for it, snowing snowing snowing and suddenly boom, all clear.
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Happy Hockey Watching
The Bruins have been doing better of late, but Friday night they played a stinker, losing 5-1 to Montreal in Montreal. I couldn't even watch it all, it was so bad. Thus I was nervous for last night's game, back in Boston, and with Toronto bringing Phil Kessel back to town for the first time since the big trade. How would the Bruins react?
Oh, by winning 7-2. It was great fun to watch, as the bounces just went their way. I mean, I'm not knocking the skill and work that went into it, but you don't get a 7-0 lead without some luck.
Bergeron got two more assists, and the Bruins' young goalie, Tuukka Rask*, played well again, and got an assist on one goal. As Puck Daddy put it:
"Facing his former team, Tuukka Rask made 31 saves and assisted on Mark Recchi's goal in the third giving him more points on the night than 14 Toronto skaters."*Yes, he's from Finland; how did you guess?
Heh heh heh. That was fun, do it again.
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Technology Question
Do you have an MP3 player? An iPod or any other? Do you have any advice about brands, features, and the like?
I'm thinking it may be time for me join the ... well, what would it be? Is it late 20th century, or 21st, to move on from radio and walkman and all? Whenever, the idea of a tiny (lightweight, fragile) device that holds tons of music (and books? and podcasts?) is slowly tipping from scary into covetous. But I don't know what to get!
What do you have? (I'm assuming that just about everyone has one of these. I'm a late adopter when it comes to new technology. I don't quite have an 8-track player, but practically.) Do you wish you'd gotten more memory? Where do you get the music? Am I going to have a learning curve?
I am, right? Halp!
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I would never wish a migraine headache on anyone (other than Hitler, say, or Osama Bin Laden); I know what they're like. And when I heard that the reason my boss was out on Thursday was that she had one, I felt sincerely sorry for her.
However. I can not say I'm sorry that she now has personal experience with migraines. She knows what they're like now. That they're not just "a headache", and sometimes you can't come in to work with one. And now she gets that.
I think this is probably a good thing for me.
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I put the lights and loops on the tree yesterday, and will start ornaments today.
Miri helped.
**********Technology (part 2)
Technology reminded me of a dictionary today. Have you ever tried to check the spelling of a word in the dictionary, and because you don't know how to spell it, you can't find it? My beloved Google failed me today because I didn't know how to ask the question.
I wanted to post a photo, but with one part blurred out, which I've seen others do, but don't know how to do myself. And because I don't know the right term, I couldn't get the answer I needed.
In the end, though, I made it work*. Using the eraser feature of MS Paint took off what I wanted (and makes it look like I applied white-out to the real card, which I find kind of funny). Since I didn't need it to look lovely and professional, that was Good Enough. (Though I'm curious still about the right way to do this: anyone?)
*Using the writer's advice: when in doubt, write around it.
And what was the point of this, you ask? Well, when we were cleaning out my Dad's files this Spring (my pack-rat gene comes from his side of the family, if you were wondering), we found this card, which I've been meaning to share:
He received this card, "For the best organized note Book for the term", in 1945, when he would have been 15. It was signed by his teacher and by the principal, and do you see what it says at the bottom?TO BE KEPT BY THE STUDENT AS EVIDENCE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT
He sure did keep it.
Where to start?
ReplyDeleteI have an iPod. I have "iTunes for Dummies." I have to read it every time I try to update my song list. I forget to charge it. I love it. I hate it. I get annoyed with it... mostly when I realize I forgot to recharge it.
I do not "do" the tree until the week before Christmas. Other decorations come out, but the tree has to wait because it stays until Epiphany (January 6th/12th night). Your lights (and their age!) are enviable!!
The tools you use depend n the tools you have. If all you have is MSpaint, I would marque select a square of the area I wish to ibscure and hit delete or paint it black or white. To blur something, you need a photo editing program and marque select an area and then select the blur option. You can use Canvas (isn't that available free from Google?). I can use Acrobat to 'redact' an area. That makes it look like you took a black marker to obliterate the text. I prefer PhotoShop because I have it and it is a pre-selected option.
Miri certainly knows how to supervise!
If you want to listen to books or podcasts on your player, be sure to get one that will bookmark your place somehow so you don't have to remember/write filenames/timestamps to continue listening without a lot of FF or Rew. Some players have one or more "bookmarks" in the menu. I ordered one off woot.com last week (it isn't here yet) that is supposed to let you Pause and Off to make it remember where to pick up next. Such a feature is no big deal for short music files, but book files can be an hour or more long with multiple files per book; some books are one huge file. The one I ordered is a Sandisk Clip 2GB MP3 Player.
ReplyDeleteMy county library has audiobooks available online for downloading, and there are a gazillion knitting podcasts. You can download most podcasts directly to your player if it is connected to your computer; the computer treats it like a drive similarly to the way it handles your camera.
You can google "best mp3 players for audiobooks" or similar to find reviews and lists of players that work well for "readers."
Hope that's not too much info! LOL Give Miri a skritch for me!
I have an ipod and love it. I find itunes fairly simple, and the added bonus is that pretty much all podcasts or audiobooks can be imported into the programm.
ReplyDeleteFor a free image editing program try GIMP. It's open-source and I use it for everything.
ReplyDeleteWe are an iPod family. I cannot use earbuds or, really, any kind of headphone. They mess with my eardrums in some fashion so I have to have the ability to plug my iPod into a speaker system. If you have a MAC then you have the software right there to put the content on your iPod. If you have windoze you can also get iTunes (for windoze) and still get the content on your iPod.
One of the things I use mine for is to listen to podcasts. I have several knitting related podcasts as well as old time radio and npr podcasts I subscribe to. You can also load up audio books on them if that's your thing.
I haven't tried any other kind of mp3 player so I can't recommend anything there.
Sorry I didn't get to weigh in on the tech questions. I have an iPod and while it is great for being on the train and going walking, I don't love it. I wish I could bypass the computer transfer part.
ReplyDeletePicnik.com is the (mostly) free online photo editing site I use for my blog. Easy to use IMHO. They offer certain effects for free, and one of them is pixellation. It's great. I love the resizing tool.