7/31/2005

P.I.T.A.

So I was hoping to print off those pictures from Pri's album. My computer isn't connected to a printer, so I used my parents' computer. The first obstacle was that the computer no longer recognised my JumpDrive. I tried both USB ports, rebooted the damned thing, no luck. It knew that there was something plugged in, and it even knew what it was called, but I couldn't access it, just eject it.

But I moved past that, e-mailing myself the photos. Three cheers for my resourcefulness! I go to enlarge the photos so that they're 4x6s. This, however, requires a few tries, since I was stuck using MS Paint. I tried using the photo editing sotware that came with my mom's digital camera, but it does jack all. I discovered this a few days ago when I tried to use it to crop the photos. It forced me to take a break for these past days. "User-friendly" software may have me worrying about my blood pressure soon, despite the fact that it's usually extremely low.

Anyway, I enlarge the photos to the right size. I even find a small use for the stupid photo editing software with it's "Auto Enhance" function. Then I go to print. Of course, by this point, my photos are completely mauled. Since I cropped so much of them off, enlarging them to 4x6s made them all pixellated and grainy. I am left with a choice between grainy photos and too-small photos with lots of unfilled space. Argh.

Anyway, I got frustrated and ran out of paper (and didn't feel like getting any more) after completing this process on only four photos. There are ten more. So, before I lose my mind completely, I extend this plea: Does anybody know a better way of doing this? Right now, the only way I can think of is to send the pics to London Drugs or something online and ask them to crop them to 2x3 ratio and print them as 4x6s. This would be an improvement from the originals, but you often lose part of the picture this way, and if often doesn't crop as much as you want. See, this is why I still don't own a digital camera. And when the time comes that I buy one (because, let's face it, they're not going away), I will make sure to get one that supports 2x3 ratios!!

Grrr...

7/29/2005

Pictures!




Yay for posting picutres! It took a number of tries to get both pictures to show up properly and not block any text, but I'm pretty happy with this layout. And it didn't require any html!!! Anyway, both of these pictures are from Eric and Jo's going away party. The one at the top is, obviously, just a group photo of most of us non-family members who were there. Hey, why isn't Morgan in this picture?? Huh... Anyways, the one on the bottom is Eric and John, and, as I've been told, John was sooo drunk. Look closely--those are wine bottles they're holding, not beer bottles. ^_^ Ah, good times...

7/28/2005

Completely Pointless

Well, I've decided against the indecisive whining and posted a couple more links. Despite having done this a good hour ago, they still aren't showing up on my sidebar, but oh, well. The request for any interesting websites still stands, though, if anybody has any suggestions.

I cropped a bunch of photos that I got off of Pri's online album, and I'm going to use them in my first attempt to post pics here. I understand it requires a bit of html. Here's hoping I'm not as inept as I imagine I could be.

I'm kind of having a chill night. Good times (tv that I actually don't mind leaving on in the background) and iffy times (I managed to get myself stuck in a funk over Sarah for a while), but overall uneventful and tolerable. I'm currently munching on microwave popcorn, watching the 11 o'clock news and wishing I had something to occupy the next few hours. As is the guilty pleasure trend during the summer, my sleep habits have been skewed. I remember during the teachers' strike in my grade 12 year, I fell asleep at 2 every night and woke up at 10 every morning, in time to watch A Makeover Story on TLC. Looking back, at least I can say I had a reason to get up in the mornings... ^_^

My computer is telling me it'll die soon if I don't plug it in, and as much as I would like to not believe it, the little orange light does make a very convincing case. So I will leave this post as-is, more or less completely pointless.

7/27/2005

Links

I'm trying to spruce up my blog, give it that nice lived-in feeling, but I'm encountering some difficulites. I have no idea which links to put up. I mean, I have friendly blogs, which are great, but I can't find any decent sites related to my interests. So far all I've got is a link to Joe Smith's ReBoot page, which is the definitive ReBoot page, and I order you all to go look at it RIGHT NOW! It's ten years old and has never undergone a reformatting, so it's not that pretty, but I love it to tears.

But other than that? I love The X-Files, but the best site for that show, The Idealist's Haven, shut down a year after the show went off the air. I miss it desperately on occasion. And I can't really find any other sites of note. They're all 7 years out of date and hosted by Geocities.

There's an okay Gilmore Girls site, gilmoregirls.org, but it's not as well-kept as it's too-early-gone predecessor, gilmore-girls.net. The KTLA/WB site actually rather impressed me, but network-run websites still aren't terribly useful. Gilmoregirls.org is getting serious consideration, though.

Harry Potter has a couple of good options, but I have yet to check out The Leaky Cauldron, really, and I'm currently mad at Mugglenet for their incorrect spoiler-ish thing they had giving a description of somebody they claimed was the Half-Blood Prince, but wasn't.

I went and looked for House, MD websites, not knowing any, in my search for blog links. The official site is a flash wonder, complete with the beepiong noises that have kept me awake whenever I've stayed in a hospital. Nothing else leapt out at me.

Then there are the big ones that everybody knows about already. Fark, Penny Arcade, Homestar Runner (which I don't tend to visit, anyway)... While I do enjoy these sites, they're not the first things I check, and they don't really reflect my interests (though Penny Arcade does reflect the effect of Peter's efforts to make me into a gamer).

Musicians, I'm contemplating. There are artists I like, but I've never really checked out their webistes. The two worlds (music and the internet) just never really seemed that connected to me...

So, I extend the following challenge to my vast number of loyal readers: If you know of any good links pertaining to the topics mentioned above, please leave a comment telling me about them. If you know of any good links _not_ pertaining to the topics mentioned above, please leave a comment telling me about them.

7/25/2005

Post #3

I have received confirmation that somebody has read my blog! Yay, Jo! Thus, I feel alright about adding another post.
Went shopping this weekend. I wanted this jacket from American Eagle that I found on their website, but I tried it on in the store and it just didn't look any good. I was rather disappointed. So I bought a skirt and a sash instead--much cheaper, too. Sunday dinner last night at Peter's was fun. The roast beef had been rotisseried opn the bbq, and it looked like the hedgehog Tony gets stuck eating when they're staying with the gypsies in Tenth Kingdom, but it tasted alright. Does anybody even know about Tenth Kingdom except the people I've told about it (and Joyce, who told me)? It great. It's a mini-series and you can rent it at Alternative Video and I think Movie Studio, too. Much fun.
But, yeah, anyways, a discussion at dinner had Joel (Shelly's son) insisting that he could tell the difference between tap water and bottled water. Peter insisted that this was because bottled water was generally colder, and that impurities were easier to taste in warmer water. I ventured forth my view that Dasani has a unique taste to it, and Peter was skeptical of that, too. After dinner, we were asked to go get some ice cream for dessert, and so we bought a bottle of Evian and a bottle of Dasani as well so that we could do a tast test. We tried to chill the bottled water while we were eating dessert, but it wasn't a very long time, so all three (the two bottled waters and tap water) were kinda, I'm not sure how to say it... luke-cold? It was an odd temperature for wter to be, in my opinion. But the point is, I was the only person who could pick out each type of water. *proud idiotic grin* Everybody got Dasani, so my point was proven (albeit rather unscientifically), but I was the only one who could tell Evian from tap water. Peter, who was orchestrating the whole test (and who claims that, had I not been there, he would have done something mean like fill all three glasses with tap water), told me that I was in fact mhy father's daughter. I blame nurture.

7/23/2005

The Morning After

Alright, I've decided that that first post is insufficient as far as riveting beginnings go. It's 8:15 am on a Saturday and I'm wide awake, which doesn't seem healthy for someone my age, but it's windy outside, and the breeze kept coming in through my open window and pulling my door open and shut. Naturally, my dog thought this meant that my mom must be coming to take him outside, which is not altogether an unreasonable conclusion for someone who enjoys Jerky Treats with such an indecent enthusiasm, but it meant that, despite me taking him outside and then locking him back up in my room so that both my parents and I could get some sleep, he made a break for it the next time the door opened wide enough for him to get his snout wedged in there. A chase ensued, many angry whispers were made, my mom was woken up, and Farley ended the whole thing by looking ridiculously cute by sitting there looking ashamed, but still with his Milkbone in his mouth.
For once, it's a Morning After where I don't regret the night before. Well, that's a bit of a sensationalised version of that statement. Usually my less-than-advisable nighttime decisions are of the mostly harmless variety, such as dying my hair purple or getting my eyebrow pierced, but I still feel horrified that I decided that the next day, even though I don't go through with them. This from the person who's had five piercings (even if they are all in my ears) and blonde, red, pink, orange and blue hair. Oh, well. A lot of things instill horror in me these days, but I suppose that anything that stops me from spending money unnecessarily is a good thing. Besides, I have at least some pseudo-legitimate reasons for keeping a blog. I have friends outside of Edmonton (Kaitlyn, Jo and Eric, Sally, Sean, Doug...) who might like to know what's going on around here. I suppose it's not too big-headed of me to assume there's something worth them knowing about. ^_^ And it's not like I'm forcing the world to read my most intimate thoughts and feelings so that they understand me and can sympathize and tell me I'm beautiful and yada yada. I've seen that done. It wasn't often pretty. But, yeah, I have my own journal, and no part of me is big on the gut-spilling-in-a-chaotic-but-releasing-way shtick, so y'all should be fine. Then again, I'm sitting here justifying this to myself, so maybe this is a good time to be blissfully un-self-aware. ^_^
I need something to do today. Something that isn't laundry. Well, actually, I need to do laundry, too, so maybe I should just consider the whole deal two birds with one stone and be happy about it, dammit, but, really, laundry does not excite me that much. Despite how hard television tried to brainwash me with the character of Danny Tanner from Full House, I just don't love the smell of bleach in the morning. In fact, I don't even have a whole load's worth of whites, so the best allure the task presents to me is colour-safe bleach, which, as we all know, is a weak and inferior substitute.
Oh, well. Maybe I'll go look at showhomes with my mom. She's been a little obsessed with them ever since we put the second deposit cheque on our new house. She bought a very glossy magazine-ish book called "Fifty Dream Kitchens" the other day. I flipped through it and summed it up in three words: Woods, Whitewashes and Stainless Steel. Well, fine, four words, but three terms. What's really bad is that I was left a little breathless. Some of those kitchens were really, I mean _really_ nice. (And no, I'm not bothering with html tags just yet.) If only our new house was, I dunno, at least _North_ of 23rd ave. *sigh*
Oooh, or maybe I'll get my mom to come shopping with me! I can tell her that she needs to buy clothes for her October cruise to Hawaii while all the summer stuff is on sale. She'll totally see right through that, though, because I keep giving her a rough time about how many vacations she's taking this year (three weeks driving the Oregon Coast in May, two weeks in Holland in June, a cruise to Hawaii in October, a weekend in Vegas in November...), but, hey, anything that means I have advance permission to get her to pay for things is good by me. I wanna go peruse Gap's new denim. Then agian, that should wait until the weekend of August 4th, I think it is, when I'll have that handy-dandy Friends and Family discount, courtesy of Joyce. :-)
Okay, it's now half an hour later and this post is looking pretty damn long. Here's hoping people actually find this thing worth reading! Oh, and this reminded me: I don't have a current e-mail adress for Doug, so if someone could give it to me, that'd be great. Yay, Doug coming back on the 29th!

7/22/2005

Uh... Title

I suck at coming up with titles. I apparently also suck at resisting the temptation of this blog trend. Dave registers his disgruntlement. I'm sitting at Peter's Dad's place, and, despite the fun of watching Peter and Dave play Mario Tennis, I decided to do this. Now they're watching Family Guy and the pilot of Futurama at the same time, and I'm chatting with Joyce on MSN (hi, Colbert!!), so this post is going very slowly, and I need to have at least one post up before I can edit my settings. Eh, this'll do.