Seismic Twitch

They come to the rescue again!!

I now have comments again! Not only that, but they’re Haloscan comments, which means that I get to have my little fleur back! Just like with Blogger, I much prefer the look and such of Haloscan. Of course, the fact that they work is a help as well.

The problem I had was that the instructions to put Haloscan into WordPress were so complicated and really it was so much easier than the instructions said. I deleted what I’d done, taken out WordPress comments, put my stuff in the header (as per manual instructions) and voila…there it was. All I was going to do was have a general comment thing in a widget, but somehow things worked out this way.

I guess three cheers for not having any idea of what to do. Sometimes ignorance is a good thing.

Today I was made aware of a situation. A blogger that I read (past tense since he’s shut down his blog again) has been found to be a plagiarist. He stole his entries, his poetic writing from another blogger.

The one who created Cooper’s Corridor and then Nico’s Niche is that very thief.

He has been stealing, not just entries, but photographs from Sweet|Salty from the outset of his writing his blog. She confronted him once and he quickly shut down Cooper’s Corridor with the excuse that he was being victimized by some right wing yahoos. He made it sound like his own life and the life with his children was endangered because another blogger mentioned him in his blog. He blamed it on someone else.

He then created Nico’s Niche and invited a select number of people to read. However, as with all things internet, word got around to the author of Sweet|Salty that he was doing it again. Now Nico’s Niche is shut down and gone from the internet.

This whole thing leaves me feeling angry, sad and more than a little nauseated. I despise being lied to and worse, I despise having been taken in. It’s just another lesson for me that the internet can be a very nasty, low-down place. This man, Nico, or whatever his name really is, is one of those low-down people.

These past couple of days I’ve discovered that working graveyards is not very conducive to writing in my blog. When I’m usually writing I’m sleeping and when I’m usually sleeping, I’m working. It’s totally topsy turvy.

On Saturday night, after the deluge the city got (there were a few funnel clouds associated with that storm as well) 1.5 inches of rain in 20 minutes, Bran, Boy and I went for a nice long drive. I know that gas is expensive and all that, but I think we spent far less on gas than we would have for a movie, popcorn and pop for all of us. Anyway, we drove out westward and headed toward North Battleford. The extremely high humidity of the day created a couple of rather impressive fog banks. It was really neat and we got to use the fog lights. The fog was never thick enough to be a hazard, thank goodness.

On the way back into town we stopped so that Boy and Bran could take photographs of farm lights and such through the fog. While we were there the fog moved closer and closer until we were wrapped in the cool, moist cloudy air. While we were stopped there (Bran and Boy used the car as a stand because they didn’t bring the unipod or tripod with them) many cars went whizzing by. One car slowed down and stopped. The guy was the only one to stop and check if we were having trouble with the car.

Yesterday I went and saw my advisor/supervisor at school. It was good to see her again. I will be taking 18 credit units of classes per term. They are: Advanced research, Advanced theory (mandatory to all grad students in Sociology), Women in Law (mandatory to me by my supervisor - she’s teaching the class), and Advanced Criminology (because it’s dead interesting and despite having it as a 400 level class, I don’t have it as an 800 level class, nor do I have it from that particular professor, so I’m taking it). Now all I have to do is register for the classes. I’m also going to see if I can fit in Cree 102. I hope so.

Vegitarians, don’t read this next paragraph. Just skip down to whatever I’m going to come up with after this paragraph.

Now, for all the carnivores out there…on Sunday morning we had steak for breakfast. We’d been trying to get our spit together to barbecue the darned things but since Friday it didn’t work out (what with having a short monsoon on Saturday and all that on Saturday). Sunday morning I cut up and fried a huge pile of mushrooms (there were even leftover mushrooms - that never happens in our mushroom loving household!) and Bran fired up the old Weber grill. He cooked up the most tasty, most tender sirloin steaks ever! He sprinkled them with Montreal Steak Spice (if you can get this stuff in a grocery store, do it!) and cooked them to perfection. I even managed to get a couple sandwiches from the steak that I wasn’t able to finish.

Back to the regular entry without the consumption of animal flesh…

On the weekend it appears that our guys had some trouble keeping away from the booze. Three to be exact. Two of them didn’t have abstinence as part of their parole conditions, one, however, did. The two that didn’t were hauled away and spent time in the RCMP holding cells. The fourth, caught on Sunday night, has been sent back to prison to await the decision from the Parole Board to find out if he’s going to be revoked and go back to the pen or get a reprieve and come back. Either way, for now he’s gone. He is one of my favourite people there. He’s always trying to pull our chains and then grins and laughs when he succeeds or fails. He’s a hoot. I hope he comes back.

The two graveyard shifts really kicked my ass. Maybe it’s the heat making sleeping more difficult than it could be, maybe that it’s only two shifts, but when I finished my shift today I was dragging butt on the floor (not a pretty sight). The husband of one of my co-workers brought by coffee and doughnuts. I took full advantage of one of the large double/double javas he brought. It was a little bit of heaven in a cup. I didn’t have any of the doughnuts though. I wasn’t hungry.

Yesterday my copy of Shoah arrived from Korea. I spent most of last night’s shift watching the first 2 discs. I got about 1/2 way through the third disc when I had to pack it up and give the shift report to my co-worker. They arrived in good condition and I’m very happy with them. I just sent off an email (writing this reminded me) to the guy in Korea to let him know that they arrived in good order and I’m pleased.

Yesterday the car died, literally. Bran drove me to the university for me to see my adviser and then headed off gas up the car. After the car was filled up he went to start it and…nothing. There wasn’t even the click of the distributor trying to get the spark plugs going. He checked all the fuses and they were good. So he called CAA (it’s paying for itself already) and got a tow to their garage. This meant that I had to buy bus tickets and take the bus home.

I don’t mind taking the bus…much. It’s ok in fall, spring and winter, but in summer it can be somewhat uncomfortable. The city is replacing the older, un-air conditioned buses with newer buses with air conditioning but they tend to be on the express runs. There are a few on regular routes but there aren’t enough for all the routes yet. This meant that I was on a regular bus on a very hot day. I sat at the very back of the bus to take advantage of the tornado of wind coming in from the open windows. However, when the bus got to the downtown terminal it sat in the very hot sun for about 10 minutes until the scheduled leaving. By that time I was soaked in sweat. Luckily for me I didn’t have long before I was getting off the bus into the less than stifling heat of walking home in the shade of large elm trees.

The car was towed off and Bran was given a taxi ride courtesy of the CAA. The car was left at their garage. Today Bran called to see what was the cause of the problem…they couldn’t find it. The car is running just fine now. So the problem was either a loose connection or the damp had created something somewhere preventing things from getting going. When the car was inspected they noted that the U-joint (whatever that is) needed replacing so they’ll be doing that first thing in the morning. We should have the car home not long after that’s done.

I have tomorrow off, so I’m going to be setting up the backgrounds and photographing my jewelry. I figure that if I want it done I should do it myself, afterall, they’re my responsibility, right? Anyway, that’s what I’ll be doing. Of course, I’m going to need some help. Tomorrow night will be dedicated to editing the photos and hopefully they’ll be up Thursday. I know I’ve said that before, but I’m really wanting them up. You might have to wait until Saturday though. I have the root canal on Friday and I’m not sure how I’ll feel that day.

My comments are still broken. I don’t know what I did to bork them, but they’re well and truly borked. In any time that they aren’t borked I get spam. This means that sometimes it’s not borked. This also means that spammers are waiting for an opening and then leap in when things are open for a few seconds. Really, the only comments I’ve gotten are a few spam. Nertz!

I think that’s about all that’s happened since I last blogged.

Ta-Ra

I don’t know why, but my comments have been disabled or broken or something that wrecked them. I’m working on trying to upgrade my Wordpress, but I’m not sure how to go about it. I’ll have to do a little research and such.

Anyway, if you have anything you want to say to me, you can email me at dykewife at gmail dot com.

Ta-Ra

Yesterday our friend from BC introduced us to a new restaurant. It’s not that the restaurant is new, but that we’ve never been to it. I think it’s just become one of our favourites. They don’t deliver, but that’s probably how they keep the prices down. Generally the prices start about $5 for some dishes. They’re totally fabulous! It’s a sort of Thai/Vietnamese place.

Yesterday I had Tom Yum Shrimp soup and it totally rocked the Casbah! Today I ordered Pad Thai shrimp. It’s phenomenal. I don’t have it in the past tense yet because I got full too quickly so it’s in the fridge awaiting my stomach to empty. The only possible problem is that my heat palate isn’t what it used to be. However, I have a feeling that is going to change. That place has an entire menu of foods that we haven’t tried and are eager to explore.

I slept the afternoon away and got up to a grumpy Bran (he said he was grumpy), a hungry Boy…sorry, there was a pause just there while Bran and I cleaned up spilt Coke Zero. Bran tried to answer the phone and it didn’t work out as well as he would have liked. At least there’s no sugar to leave crap all over if it gets missed on the cleanup…anyway, I was also hungry so we got out the menu that Bran picked up yesterday while we were leaving the restaurant. Boy ordered sate beef soup, we have a pile of Vietnamese rolls and Bran and I ordered Pad Thai.

Because they don’t deliver we had to go pick up the order. I walked out of the door and commented that the clouds looked like we might get some hail, but it wasn’t quite right for that. Anyone who lives on the prairies knows what a hail laden sky looks like. It’s got an odd yellowish-green colour. It wasn’t quite there. As we walked to the car it started to spit on us. Then, when we turned the corner in the car we saw it…

It was a wall of rain just south of us. About a block away we entered the storm. The rain was coming down hard enough that it was beginning to look like the wipers were going to be overwhelmed. We drove to the store to get our pop. He had about a 15 foot run to and from the door. He got back in the car soaked. Not only that, but there were tapioca sized hail coming down with the huge drops of rain. Bran had me phone home to get hold of Boy and tell him to close up the windows of the house. Then it was off to the restaurant to pick up our delicious food (I knew before we even got it that the food would be fabulous!).

Some lucky boob had parked right in front of the restaurant so Bran had to park in the third space. He had another 20 or so feet to the door of the restaurant. While he was inside I did crosswords and watched the rain pour down. Poor guy. He ran out with our food and popped it into the back seat and then ran for the driver’s door. Water was dripping off his fishing hat’s beak.

The road home was a river with the pooled area being at the city’s bus barns where the ground levels out. Our roads was running wildly with water. As we were driving up to the house there was a young man walking in the puddles, apparently enjoying the fact that he was soaking wet and taking full advantage of all the water surrounding him. He was walking in the water running down the street. He appeared to be quite enjoying his rain walk. I guess he figured that he’s going to be soaked anyway, he might as well enjoy it.

I handed the bag of pop to Bran and then quickly popped out of my door. I opened the back door, grabbed the food and then quickly walked up the sidewalk to the front door. Boy must have been watching out for us because he was there waiting with the door open for us. I made a discovery. Crocs/Dawgs/cheap knock offs are not good shoes to wear if you expect to get wet at all. You end up sliding about inside the shoe making it hard to walk.

We finally all settled down to eat as utensils were fetched, Bran stripped off the wet clothing and we all sat down to eat. The rest you know because I’ve already written about it.

That’s about it. I’m still waiting for my stomach to empty so that I can continue eating on my Pad Thai and eat my share of the rolls.

Ta-Ra

I think I’ve finally got some of the spamming under control by putting some of the key spam words into the filters. I got up this morning and for once there were no spam. I feel especially good about this because yesterday was the record number of spam comments…64.

I’ve been working on getting my keyboard working properly. I finally have the space bar fixed and don’t have to spend half my time using the backspace key to go back and put a space in. However now my 6 key doesn’t want to work properly. It’s acting a whole lot like there’s something caught underneath it. I’ve taken the key up and checked and used the blower but that doesn’t change the abysmal action.

Our dear friend left town today. She’s headed to Alberta to visit family and then pick up her spouse and then go back home. I miss her already.

I picked up more earring findings and a couple of tools yesterday. I also got some amethyst beads and some moonstone. I didn’t get much in the way of jewelry made though. I spent most of my time organizing and cleaning up. I’m going to see about getting a board, asking Bran to drill a grid of holes into it and using that to make my own chandelier earring dangely things. I’m also going to see if I can get a few photos done up today and post on Esty.

That’s about it for now. I’m going to go back to bed. I work tomorrow night at midnight on the graveyard shift so I need to shift my hours up some.

Ta-Ra for now.

It must be Thursday. Dad came up for a visit today. He phoned this morning to see if it was ok. Since the house was mostly clean and the day was clear we told him to come on up. He got lost again. He found us eventually, but he did get lost. However, he got here eventually. I was in the shower when he got here.

As something to do we all went to the Forestry Farm and Zoo. Bran took a zillion pictures. In fact he filled up one of the camera storage things. We saw moose, bison (moose are tall but bison are huge!), great horned owls, a cougar, swift and red foxes, wolves, grizzley bears (they were wrestling in their pool), bald eagles, a couple of other kinds of owl, big horned sheep, dall sheep, mountain goats, white tailed deer, the white tigers and the white tiger cubs (they’re so damned cute!!), lynx, elk (incredible antlers on the buck!), black tail groundhogs, a badger, and a capuchin monkey. I’m sure that there were more animals, but I can’t think of them offhand.

Before Dad arrived though, I got a delivery. It was my order from one of the places I ordered beads from. This order had 100 of the nickel free earring hooks (I could have sworn I ordered 1000), the aventure stars and my new book, Jewelry Making & Beading for Dummies. To cap off the wonderful “Yule in July” feeling I had going I got my order from Art Beads in the mail. In that one were the amethyst, malachite, orange aventurine, garnet, lapis lazuli order (there were more of them but I can’t remember them off hand), and my labels. Each packet of beads were not only in their own little bags, they were wrapped with the plastic white foam sheet and that was wrapped in purple tissue paper and sealed with a logo sticker. It was truly like opening gifts. I loved it.

So now I have to get another container box because the ones I have are all full. I also have to order more nickel free earring findings otherwise I’m going to run out fairly soon. Right now everything is put away because we are expecting someone to come for a visit tonight and don’t know if she’s going to stay the night or not. I don’t want to get all involved in doing something only to have to put everything away a few hours later.

I lost two long fingernails while I was in the shower this morning. They split at the corners and I didn’t notice until I was actually washing my hair and they were catching and pulling. Bran had Boy bring the nail clips to him and he gave them to me so that I could get to washing my hair without pain.

That’s about it.

Ta-Ra

I can’t believe the amount of spam that accumulates in my comments when I’m gone for a few hours. Sheesh! This time there were 38 comments…3 were from readers, the rest were spam. A significant number of those spam looked like they had rhesus monkeys sitting at keyboards typing. I swear, they were just random letters put together for the entire message. What a waste of bandwidth.

I woke up at 3:55 pm today. I had to be at work at 4. So today was a bit of a rush. Add to that stress was the possibility of being in very deep doo-doo at work and you have the circumstances for a very disoriented Dykewife. My co-worker managed to play a practical joke on me so I left him a very polite hate note. I’m sure he’ll laugh a lot, the jerk. Yeah, we all love each other at work.

Otherwise today was relatively uneventful. Supper was sweet and sour meat balls with rice and “vegetable medley” (broccoli, cauliflower and carrots). It was quite good. Bran and Boy went to the Olympia restaurant and brought me flavour packets for my water and the leftover salad that Bran didn’t eat. I thought they’d just ordered one to go, that’s how much was left over. Sadly I dropped the garlic toast as I was getting into the car so it became trash. Dang!

Today, when I got up I found a bag of earring hooks (sterling silver I believe) and a quartz crystal tip pendant on my keyboard. Bran insists that he didn’t leave it for me, Boy insists that he didn’t put them there and I’d never seen them before. I suspect that it may have been our lovely visitor who dropped them off. I mean, no one else has a key. Who’s going to break into our place to leave me silver earring hooks?

I’ve discovered a liking for Nine Inch Nails. I’ve heard several of their songs that were loaded into my player and I’ve liked them all. Yes, I load up music that I’ve never heard before. I like to think that it adds to the mystery of music.

I leave you with this video I found on Novel Woman’s blog. It’s amazing…Yo Yo Ma plays the cello and Phillip Scott Johnson did the incredible animation. I’m so very glad I watched it.

Mush forced me to go and create my own word cloud. Honest, she did. You don’t know how vicious and intimidating those singers/computer help women really are!!

Today, when I got up and started my morning routine on the computer I quickly checked out my dashboard to find out if any comments needed approval. When I logged in there were 43 spam. Not one was a legitimate comment. I really need to get some kind of writer challenge like they have on blogger to keep as much spam away as possible. Happily, I did figure out how to ensure that I don’t accidentally mark comments as spam. Yeah, I’m a slow learner. It’s all about checking things off and then marking them as spam.

I have beads in my keyboard. I had a small issue with my seed beads last night and I haven’t located them all yet. One was hiding behind my “page down” key. I’m pretty certain there are more lurking under there somewhere. I know there’s nothing under my space bar. However, for some reason it doesn’t want to work for spacing with my right hand. I can make it work with my left hand, but that’s terribly awkward.

Bran isn’t feeling well tonight. So there will be no photos posted until Thursday at soonest. I am nearly out of some of the necessary pieces to continue beading. I have to wait for my nickel free earring hooks. I only have a few pair left. I also have to get some more shells for the bracelets. Today I made a necklace and pair of earrings to match a bracelet I made yesterday. They’re all of snowflake obsidian. They’re going to go as a set.

I won’t be able to do custom orders until I have more beads as well. I’m enjoying myself, that’s certain. I made earrings of shell, of bracciated jasper, picture jasper, moss agate, autumn jasper, dyed coral, tree agate, the obsidian, and so much more. The shell that makes up the earrings is all “reclaimed” from other things such as old belts and other necklaces.

Today has been a Harry Potter-a-thon. I’m now on The Goblet of Fire and have only one more to go. Like many other people I’m disappointed that the book series has ended. I realize that Harry and his friends couldn’t be fighting Voldemort forever, but it would have been nice to see them finish their NEWTs before they took on the horde. I also find it difficult to like Snape, but I feel like I should because in the end he was a real hero who followed through on all the promises he made and yet he died in the end anyway. I would’ve liked to see him become a wizened, bitter old shit. Instead he ends up being some kind of shining example of self-sacrifice and love. I hate it when characters I despise do that.

I have one wondering though…will Harry Potter be ruined for all those people who saw butt-nekkid on stage in Equus. I saw the movie of that starred Richard Burton as the psychiatrist. I don’t remember a great deal about the movie, I was a teenager sneaking in forbidden TV time while Mom and Dad were out. I rather think that I was bored. It was a terribly long time ago. Anyway, I have to wonder how it will be for those people who’ve seen Harry Potter naked (yeah, I know, different role, but the same person) and then have to believe that he’s some love-struck psychologically damaged boy…or maybe it won’t be such a stretch after all.

I just watched as “Moody” turned Malfoy into a ferret. I still like that part. That and when Hermione punched Malfoy in the face. I’m normally not a violent sort, but it was nice to see after all the crap he’s done, the little weasel. (I haven’t lost touch with reality - much - I know it’s just a story).

That’s about it from here.

Ta-Ra