Ma and Pa's Blog

This is what I imagine every time I see companies going overboard with marketing schemes and promotions that say nothing about the quality, utility or aesthetic of the product being offered.   It’s likely close to the conversations that went on (go on?) at the investment firms and banks that created the real estate crisis . . . just substitute “sub-prime mortgage instruments” for “billing errors”.   I really wish honesty could trump greed more often . . .  I guess that’s what heaven and hell are for.

So we decided we needed to take off some weight, Larry and I. Me more than Larry. But still. Time to get the house in order while there’s still a little bit of skin tone left to keep us from looking too much like shar-pei puppies. Larry found a great app for the iPod called “Lose It” that has become a new hobby round these here parts. After entering your current weight, sex, height, birth date and your target weight, you can choose how much you hope to lose per week (1, 1.5, 2 pounds) and it tells you how many calories a day you need and the date on which you should achieve your goal. And then you enter the food you consume during the day and it calculates the calorie count.

It’s been a revelation, y’all.

We eat a fairly healthy, varied diet and it’s been really frustrating to see the lbs. adding up.  But to actually see what the caloric value of the foods that we shove in our pie-holes during the day–even those healthy “bites”– add up to has been an eye-opener.  Those almonds we roast, unsalted?  I now count out 14 almonds to make a 97 calorie snack.   My glass (or two or three) of wine?  125 calories per.  Shit.  Larry’s peanut butter sandwich-bedtime snack?  Diet buster.  The coconut covered dates we bought at Mustard Seed? 127 freaking calories per.  The vegetarian wrap I had at Mustard Seed? (spinach tortilla, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, avocado, hummus) I figured out was nearly 600 calories thanks to the crazy-high tortilla calorie count. Larry’s platter of California rolls? Equally high (thanks, white rice).  See?  Who knew?  We are already more aware of what we’re consuming and we’ve only been doing this for a few days.

So why am I babbling about this now?  Well, for one thing, I’m done obsessing about my hair:  transition to natural gray is complete.  It is what it is. I’m still looking for a good style, but not obsessing. So I thought if I sort of put this new eating thing out there that I’ll feel more obliged to keep it up.  And I can bitch about it here ‘cuz no one really reads this on a regular basis, anyway.

That’s what we’ve been up to lately.  That and slipping on the dirty-gray ice that has blanketed everything.  Thank the gods the weather’s warming and it should GO AWAY in a day or so. So I’m off to prepare our vegetarian Moroccan Stew tonight, because I’ll be damned if I’ll give up my glass of house red.  If I cut back on the quinoa side dish, I can have two glasses…

I fear FB is taking a toll on our precious blog. There just isn’t that much noteworthy going on in our world to require two forums . . . probably not enough for one forum, to be truthful. This troubles me, because I’ve come to value the chronicle as an enhancement to (occasionally a replacement for ) my memories. We’ll have to make more of an effort to use the blog, lest FB obliterates it.

First off, I didn’t waste the entire weekend.   We did have a nice outing Saturday to Wendell August Forge (Berlin, OH) and Lehman’s Hardware (Kidron, OH).

On to the wasted time . . . Following the iPad experience, I began to wonder what I’d been missing on the PC side, since I started using Linux exclusively a couple years ago.   So I restored Windows (Vista ) to my laptop.   The larger hard drive I installed a couple months ago leaves plenty of room for Windows and Linux to coexist, after all.  That took the better part of a day in all, and I did  experience the frustration with my computer becoming  overwhelmed by the early background work that Windows does — installing voluminous updates, creating restore points, scanning for viruses and spyware, and issuing those annoying (“are you sure you want me to proceed”-like) warnings.

Anyway . . . that’s behind me and Windows is running relatively smoothly.   I can do most of what I could do in Linux with only minor sacrifice of speed and flexibility.   Plus I can do the few things that I couldn’t  – iTunes, Google SketchUp,  Netflix streaming, and Kindle reader.   This is not to say that there were not close cousins to each available in Linux.

Now for what I learned:

First, the security suite offered by Time Warner (CA Security Suite)  is a pain.   The firewall was overly restrictive and conflicted with Windows built in firewall.  It prevented me from logging into my own sites because it wouldn’t allow cookies from the scripts used on the sites.   The anti-spam and anti-spyware components added two more levels of background activities (downloading updates and scanning files) on top of that needed for the anti-virus component.   I uninstalled the CA firewall and turned on the Windows firewall.  Since my email systems already do anti-spam, I uninstalled the CA anti-spam.  I also uninstalled the CA anti-spyware, which I think I can do without by being careful about what sites I visit, what I download, and how frequently I purge cookies — plus Window is still warning my about every software install.   The computer seems much happier without these items.

Next, I noticed that my satellite TV receiver showed up on my network.   I’d connected it to the network as an alternative to connecting the phone line — the latter was less convenient now that we’re using Vonage.   Anyway the receiver showed up as a “Directv MediaShare Renderer”, and that piqued my interest.   After some investigating, I found that Windows Media Player could interface with the receiver to share photos, music and video to the TV over my home network.   Photos and music worked right off.   Video, on the other hand was more trouble, because it required an MPEG2 encoded file and most of  my fires were AVI or MOV or WMV.   Conversion was going to take forever.   THEN I found a program called “TVersity Media Server” that organizes content and transcodes the videos on the fly.   The program has a free and a PRO ($40) version.   The free version handles all my media files and YouTube.   The PRO version can handle Hulu, RSS media feeds, and more.   Also, it appears the same MediaShare is available on ATT Uverse DVRs.   And it sounds like with the DVRs you can also watch recordings remotely on the PC.   FLASH:   TVersity appears to work with the WII also.

OK, to summarize . . . I spent a day an a half to learn that (1) I can make my PC run Windows almost as well as it ran Linux and (2) I can look at media files on my TV instead of my always-handy laptop.   Damn that really does does sound like a waste of time!  I apologize for wasting your time telling you about it.   That’s all . . . until next time.

We’ve been able to crack the bedroom window for some fresh air overnight the past two nights. So glad that Spring is arriving. This morning, however, I awoke to the not-so-sweet smell of skunk. Probably Jean’s, that she was so excited to have seen on her drive to work yesterday morning. Anyway, that’s why I’m up at 5:30 AM, and Ma is doing away with me in her dreams — for closing the window and making her less comfortable. Now Cali wants out again. Hope she doesn’t get sprayed.

Since joining the ranks of FB zombies, I was still a little baffled by its appeal, but then I realized why  it’s been a long time since we updated the blog.  Facebook has sort of taken the place of the stream of consciousness posting that sometimes occurs here.  It’s a lot easier to write a random thought, no frills, over in FB than to compose a blog entry.  And, after all, do we really need an entire blog  to say, essentially, “Holy Freaking God, When Is This Damned Winter Going To Be Over?”, which is pretty much what our Ohio February lives are like.   So I guess the FB appeal is to let our “friends” in on the minutiae of our humdrum lives without the burden of worrying about composition.

Not that this is particularly well-composed, but still.

I’m sure we’ll post more blog entries when we can get some sun and fresh air and blow away the winter brain-fog that grips us every February.   Oh, and as my silvery stripe of growing out gray hair becomes more visible, I’ll be sure and share the horror of accepting my 60 year old hair with grace and dignity .

White Summons –

Common Pleas Court

Jurors summoned on-call for the week of December 21, 2009 through December 23, 2009: Your service for the one week period has been completed with sincere thanks of the Court for your time and consideration. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Yay!   I’m safe for a year at least!  Woohoo!

It’s been many years (35? 38?) since we owned just one car, but after due consideration, we decided it was time to downsize our fleet.  The Taurus (the AuntHelenMobile) was just sold to a lovely lady from several blocks away, who is thrilled to have my white baby and will take good care of her.

So:  one car again.   Full circle.

1. Updated http://hickeyhoo.net . This looks about the same as it did before, but I rebuilt it using Drupal. Drupal is an opensource content management application that does alot of the organizational grunt work. It’s a learning process for me, and I’m just getting started. Thought I’d mention it because the site is a good road map to our various family sites. Nobody really cares about Drupal.

2. I came across UNR Ubuntu distribution customized for netbook computers (UNR = Ubuntu Netbook Remix). I’m using it now, and I like it. It is really fast running on a full notebook, and the user interface is very attractive and intuitive. The distribution installs from a bootable, 1GB thumb drive, and you can run (like a live CD) without installing it on the hard drive. My installation is on a 2.5GB partition. The small partition size provides minimal user storage, but it gives me a true netbook (minimal resource) experience.

Time to resume the yard work. 1 more hour today working under my 3 hour rule — anything is possible with 3 hours effort per day / more effort is allowed only if you really enjoy what you’re doing.

I  think this is interesting.    We need a historic perspective to avoid being manipulated by today’s politicians and pundits.