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Archives for July 2007

The dump truck in my yard woke me up

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Yesterday, I was awakened by the sound of heavy equipment. Now, this wasn’t too out of the ordinary, as the neighbour behind us had been doing some landscaping. Except then I noticed it was a little louder than that and it sound a whole lot closer.

Like in my yard closer.

I ran down the hall and the stairs- which was more like an old-lady shuffle – to go look out the window by the driveway. Yep. There was a big ol’ dump druck (with custom paint job on the cab) on my lawn with four guys standing around it. As I quickly got dressed and went outside to find out what in the heck was going on, I remembered Ron saying something about our neighbour had been talking to CableCompany (that owns the dishes on our property) about tidying up around them.

Dumptruck on my lawn

As a side note, what is up with all the dump truck drivers I have ever met going into a panic and apologetic state as soon as the lady of the house comes tearing out? Do they cover that in dump-truck driving school? I told him it was all fien with me, as long as he made sure not to make tire tracks on my behind-neighbour Debbie’s lawn. A bit of it comes right up next to mine and he had driven back right alongside it. “If you mess up her lawn,” I told him, “She’ll come right up here waggin’ her finger at you.”

“Oh, I ain’t scared-a her,” he drawled as he eased his cap off and scratched his head.

“Really?”

“Yeah, she’s my aunt.”

I laughed so hard.

Anyway, I got brought up to speed on the landscaping that was happening on the easement around the dishes and little maintenace shed. Hey, if they’re paying to make it look nicer, I’m not gonna complain. I think it gives my neighbour Earl something to do, as he also mows that spot for them. (Why they never asked us, I dunno. Not that we want to, mind.)

Later as I surveyed the work they did, Earl and I mused together why on earth they hadn’t paid to make the property look nicer when it was for sale. He doesn’t know either. Worked to our advantage though, didn’t it?

Random meme

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Doc is doing a random meme, and I was surfing by bored and got there first. 😀 Her questions:

1. Do thinly veiled as nice/snarky comments ever get a good rise out of you?
Oooohhhhh yes. Actually, in real life we have snark fests and verbal sparring almost daily. “Oh snap!” is uttered almost daily. But if it’s some random person or someone I don’t know that well, I usually go on and on about it for *days*. I hand it out too.

2. Have you ever had a blog fan stalk you?
Nope, just my mom. I have had blog fans buy me stuff like tshirts and books. I like that better.

3. Which one of you is the “easy” parent?
It depends on the kid I think. Or what they are doing. Or maybe it’s whatever situation. 😀 Usually we tag-team them. But mostly the easy one is Ron unless it’s something big, then I let him be the heavy.

4. Aren’t all your winters “very cold”?
HA! Most of ’em. Why back in ’90 it got down to a blistering -28C for two weeks solid. Not counting the wind chill. It hasn’t been quite that cold since, at least not for that long. It was the winter after that when I read all those Mother Earth News back issues. It was almost that cold but not quite.
I was just telling someone that our seasons here are Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter and August. The past few winters have been unseasonably warm. We’re lucky if it snows by Christmas, even though it’s been frosty since Halloween or before. There’s usually a week in January where everything thaws, and then February is the *really* cold month. If I can last through that, I’m good. Then I have one last storm in April to look forward to, usually around my birthday.
For the farmers in the audience, planting seasons lasts from the first weekend in June thru to September’s first frost. If it’s a dry spring, we might get stuff in earlier, but not usually. So it’s not so much cold as looooong.

5. How many moves have you made in your married life?
Since the wedding date or since I moved out of my mom’s house? 😀
– I moved into Ron’s at his parent’s place (they were gone all summer) while we started bulding a hosue across the road (and down the hill)
– we moved into town (and got married in there somewhere)
– we moved back into our house we were building
– we temporarily moved for 3 months for a job
– we moved back
– we moved to the green house
– and now the red
In most of those moves we had hardly any stuff. It’s just the last couple where we had a kajillion boxes.

The Rules of the Meme:
1. Leave me a comment saying anything random, like [the food you hate most in all the world]. Something random. Whatever you like.
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. You will update your [blog] with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be asked, you will ask them five questions.

The hurrider I go the behinder I get

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It’s been too hot this week to even think, and now that I am cooled down some (oh thank you furnace fan and dirt floor basement), I have to play catch-up around the house. There’s still boxes everywhere.

So while you are waiting for me to horribly mis-type our adventures (there weren’t many this week), you can pop by the Blogathon. Surf around some blogs, help keep people awake as they raise money for their favorite charities, and maybe even donate.

Swing

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We did this last night:

Porch swing
Put up the swing set swing on the proch swing hooks on the front porch. (I’m wokring on gettign that image rotated. Sighs. It’s too hot for this)

I’m also tinkering with the layout, mostly the sidebar and footer so all the blog-bling is way at the bottom.

Moving email from Windows to Linux

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Well, we finally have all our computers in one place. The sexy black computer (formerly known as “Ron’s” and seen here) now sits on the main desk in the office. The windows box is mostly for the kid’s use, gaming, and if AMD64 (the black one’s name) is in use.

(warning: Hard core techie stuff ahead.)

But all my “stuff” was on the Windows machine and I had to move it over to AMD64, which runs Fedora Core 6. My profile runs the gnome desktop while Ron likes the other one better. K-something, HA! Oh wait, it’s KDE. We can have each profile look and feel completely different from one another.

I’ve spent a large chunk of the past few days moving files onto a thumb drive and setting them up the way I want. The worst part was getting files on and off the drive in Windows. At one point, it took over an hour, but the same files going onto the AMD64 with Linux took literally under a minute. THANKS Microsuck. Eventually, I worked my way around that by zipping up the thousands (literally) of dicky small files I wanted into one big zip file. That took a good thirty seconds to transfer, like it should.

The last and most difficult job was transferring my mail. I already had mailboxes set up on this machine and had to figure out how to merge the old mail from the Windows box with the new mail on AMD64, some of which was interlinked – meaning I had mail from one day and at least one account on both machines.

Since I use Thunderbird on both machines, a quick Google search and I found what I needed. Combining two profiles in Thunderbird. Again, even though the instructions seem complicated and need to be followed precisely, the only problems I had were on the windows box. That machine is set up with two drives. Actually, it has more than that, including virtual, but for this story, let’s go with two. The C drive holds Windows and is supposed to hold nothing else. Anything else that needs to be installed goes on D. Well, Windows is funny, because even though I installed Thunderbird on D, it forced all mail files onto C (among other things). It also marked them as hidden and even after checking to make sure windows file explorer was showing me hidden files, I had to select it again and restart before I could see files I needed. (2 megs for the curious) Another slow transfer, and I walked through merging one of my mail accounts. Presto! It was magically delicious and worked.

Although I now have over 600 emails in one inbox, on top of the subfolders, not counting spam or mailing lists. I still have 3 or 4 other email addresses to do this for, but that was my main email. So hands-down Linux wins this round for usability, even factoring in a different file system and learning curve.

Behold, I am Super Buzz mom

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Lapazfarm made me do it.

Your Superpower Should Be Manipulating Electricity

You’re highly reactive, energetic, and super charged.
If the occasion calls for it, you can go from 0 to 60 in a split second.
But you don’t harness your energy unless you truly need to.
And because of this, people are often surprised by what you are capable of.

Why you would be a good superhero: You have the stamina to fight enemies for days

Your biggest problem as a superhero: As with your normal life, people would continue to underestimate you