I'm not 100% sure on this, but since I'm updating this a lot more frequently than I am my main page (on here or my Crosswinds page), I'm considering moving this to my main location. So, I'm going to try and import all my manual news update entries from my main page. This is going to take some time to do. Even though I won't be entering them by hand, I still have to do a lot of copy/paste and formatting to get the import file ready to actually import. But we'll see... maybe I'll import a month or two at a time, rather than the whole shebang at once.

[EDIT: This is going to be difficult. I'm supposed to specify a date & time. While I know all the dates, I never bothered putting times in, so I'm not sure if I should make 'em up, or just set them all to an arbitrary time like 0:00:01 or something.]

1. What's your favorite piece of clothing that you currently own?
   That's actually a tough one. I thought about it a while, and I don't really think I have one. I could probably go on and name at least a dozen different things that I could classify as favorites, but... I won't.
2. What piece of clothing do you most want to acquire?
   A hot, sexy, strapless party dress. Simply because, that will mean I fit into one and look great it in, which means I will have accomplished one of my goals: to get back in shape and lose some weight.
3. What piece of clothing can you not bring yourself to get rid of? Why?
   I have a few items under this category, mostly t-shirts, etc. Mostly because I could wear them at one time, when I was still in my early teens, and while they don't fit anymore (even if I did accomplish the aforementioned goal) they still have some nostalgic significance.
4. What piece of clothing do you look your best in?
   Hmm. Really loose-fitting clothes? Nah... I think I look really great in this dark red sweater I have. It's not the fuzzy kind, but it's closer to the form fitting kind. It has a vertical-striped weave to it, comes just to the belt, and has a turtle-neck collar. As long as I'm reasonably holding my stomach in (not for dear life, just a normal amount), it's pretty damn sweet.
5. What has been your biggest fashion accident?
   Probably when I first started high school, when I was 14. Middle school fasion for me had been into those skin-tight stretch pants (with or without the ankle-loops at the bottom). Well, by the next fall they had started going out of style, but I hadn't quite gotten the message. I remember wearing, at least on a few occasions, purple stretch pants, a pink (an even mix between carnation pink and hot pink) t-shirt, with matching pink socks. Definitely NOT the way to go after the popular scene, nor to keep from getting noticed. Oddly enough, I don't remember anyone making any comments to my face, though.

I've added a few things here. First, I decided to split things into categories, including my Blogger posts. Second, since Blogger didn't provide titles and MT does, and I decided to use them, I changed all the Blogger entry titles from "Blogger entry" to titles that makes more sense to the entries. Third, I added some virus feeds from Sophos.com. I found them being used at some site or other yesterday, and it looked like a great idea. Fourth, I jumped on the bandwagon and added a mood indicator from Imood. It's in the "About me" section next to my name. Who knows if I'll update it regularly or not, but we'll see.

As to doing the Friday Five and Saturday Scruples this weekend, the first one I can get done on Friday, but I'll be out of town on Saturday so I doubt I'll have the chance to do it until Sunday or Monday. Just in case anyone reading this gives a flying f*ck.

I also might decide to change the layout again. I'd love to move away from table layouts entirely. The trick is making it correct, yet making it work in non-compliant browsers like Netscape 4, and in some cases IE 5 (it has some bugs in its CSS box model support as well). I wouldn't want it to be a kludge, but I don't want to go with anything like the MT defaults because I want it to be at least readable in N4. A lot of times, no matter the different stylesheets available for the default, it definitely was NOT readable with it (text overlapped, didn't appear, etc.). I tried, but... who knows. (Not to mention, to test in N4, IE5, and N6.2 or 7b, I can only do design of it at home.)

I cannot believe how bad I slept last night. I even slept poorly when I took a nap yesterday afternoon. It's so bad I actually asked J this morning (he happened to wake up while I was getting ready for work) to get me some OTC sleeping pills if he goes out today. I have no reason at all for not sleeping well last night, and I feel like I'm just about to drop.

I found another thing like The Friday Five that I think I'll like. (Heh, this & the other will keep me posting twice a week! ) It's called Saturday Scruples. It's based on the game Scruples, and the author takes three questions every Saturday & puts them up for people to answer. (The full game, obviously, isn't being played.)

Since I just started The Friday Five yesterday (3 days late) I figure it's ok to start Saturday Scruples today (also 3 days late). So, here goes:

1. You're an M.D. A patient asks you for a sick note. She took time off work to visit a daughter who just had a baby. Do you provide the note?
   Hmm... nope, don't think so. I mean, the patient should've been able to get the time off for the real reason, so why the subterfuge of claiming illness?
2. In a supermarket, you send dozens of packages tumbling into the aisle. No one sees you. Do you tip toe away?
   Um... DUH!!! Of course not! I put them back as best I can. If I could reach them to knock them off, I could reach them to put them back. I'm lazy, but I'm not that lazy!
3. A colleague is out of her office. You notice her paycheck stub on her desk. Do you glance at it?
   Nope, don't care that much. Besides, that's private and I've no business looking at it.

Heh, wow. Three lanes coming up to the light, ok? One left turn only, one straight only, one right only (it separates off & becomes a yield thing). A few cars, including me, were in the left turn lane. No one was in the straight ahead lane. Some pickup truck w/ a camper shell on it, apparently was in a hurry and didn't think the traffic laws apply to him. He goes down the straight ahead lane, slows & looks, then goes. Very red light. It hadn't just become red, and it didn't turn red right after he did it either. It was pretty much in the middle of the cycle. I can't believe my jaw didn't unhinge while dropping open in shock.

I mean, everyone's used to people making rolling stops (I make them on the rare occasion, and I never screw anyone doing it), light to moderate speeding, even the occasional guy who blows the doors off everyone else on the highway. And of course, the people who go through anywhere from light to dark orange, or even flat out red, as their light changes. But... this was definitely unusual. I just wonder: when looking for any traffic with the right of way crossing the intersection, was he also keeping an eye out for cops? 'Cause if I'da been one, he woulda been screwed. No warning for him. There are 2 situations I can think of that might get him a warning instead: wife in the car about to give birth, or him or a passenger within minutes of death. Neither of these things happens regularly, so... yeah, he woulda been sooo busted.

You are a siren.
What legend are you?. Take the Legendary Being Quiz by Paradox

[Links and image removed because host no longer exists.]

It seems there's this thing a lot of people are doing called "The Friday Five". Basically, every Friday there are 5 new questions. The idea is that you answer them in your weblog and then post a link to your answers in the comments section. (It used to be at www.fridayfive.org but that now auto-forwards to the above link. Dunno what happened, since I only just found it for the first time, with the redirect.)

Anyway, Even though it's Monday, making my entry incredibly late, I figure I'll try and keep up with these if I can. So, without further ado...

1. What is your current occupation? Is this what you chose to be doing at this point in your life? Why or why not?
   I'm a programmer/analyst for a large corporation in their local business IS division. I never really had a set course of action, a "where do I want to be in x years", so I guess the answer is, no I didn't plan on being here at this point in time. However, I didn't plan on not being here either, so I don't see the big deal in that. I did plan, in general, on having a job that could support me reasonably at this stage of my life. This job does that, so I guess I halfway planned on being here...
2. If time/talent/money were no object, what would your dream occupation be?
   Heh... money and talent no object? Knowing the laziness I'm capable of, I probably wouldn't have a particular or steady occupation. I'd probably putter around, doing things for a while as I felt like it, dropping those to do something else, etc. Basically I'd live life on a whim if I could, as far as occupation is concerned.
3. What did/do your parents do for a living? Has this had any influence on your career choices?
   Hmm... my mom has always been a full time mom, though she did get an associates degree. She also now works part time for my old school district as an "office assistant" -- specifically, she subs during lunch when they're short & need someone to keep an eye on the kids either in the lunchroom or on the playground. My dad's an electrical engineer. Senior engineer, as a matter of fact. He's quite happy where he is too; monetary promotions are good (and forthcoming, periodically) but he desires no further promotions as that would stick him in management with all paperwork and no play. I really wasn't influenced specifically into computers; rather, I am more technically inclined than liberally inclined (read liberal arts, etc.) which I think I get genetically from my dad. I also did go to the same school (started w/ chem engin -- BAD idea!!). Most of all, my parents always made sure my sister and I knew that we could be anything we wanted when we "grew up" and that no matter our choices they'd support us. And that's something every child should learn from their parents -- the sky really is the limit.
4. Have you ever had to choose between having a career and having a family?
   Nope, not yet. So far so good. And if things keep going well, I never will. I actually do have a goal in mind for that: since I work with computers, mainly web stuff, I hope that when my husband and I start a family I'll be able to at least work part time from home for a while post-maternity leave, and move to part time (if I could swing the full-time) at home after the child(ren) is(are) in school.
5. In your opinion, what is the easiest job in the world? What is the hardest? Why?
   This one's a tough one. There are plenty of easy jobs to be had, though I think they fit into two categories: the mindless low-income jobs, and the mindless high-end jobs. The first category, anyone can hold. I mean, there are just some jobs out there that are very easy, but because they're so easy (and often menial) they don't pay much. However, the requirements are usually low, so it's not as hard to get one. On the other end of the scale, are the cush jobs that you have to be pretty much born into, where you just have to look good and throw money around. I would like to think there aren't many of those, but that's probably just false hope. The hardest? I couldn't pick just one of these either. Teacher, fire fighter, police officer (not the desk jockeys, but cops on the beat), EMTs, etc. And those don't pay anywhere near what they should. Which is why there's a harder and harder time finding anyone who wants the job (especially teachers & firefighters -- though I don't know as much about the others, so maybe them too!).

Those're my first Friday Five. What do you think? (Can't comment yet, but there's always my forum!

Found out this evening that my first grade teacher passed away on Tuesday. My family had made friends with her, and so she wasn't just a former teacher to me. I had contact with her all through my life. We even invited her to our wedding. (It was her mom's birthday in Michigan that weekend, so she couldn't attend.) And my mom had even planned on calling her about having lunch this coming Friday.

They guess it was heart arrhythmia (sp?) that caused it, so I figure she died peacefully, but it's still sad she's gone. I mean, her mom's still around, right?

There's not going to be a memorial service here, but we're hoping to have a memorial lunch or something for her some time soon, with all the teachers that knew her (both retired and not), and others who knew her in town. She loved the Science Center, so I plan on donating there in her name. She was a wonderful woman, and will be missed by many. *sniff*

My sorceress is now a level 32 and has gotten all the way to Act IV. Wahoo! It took forever to kill Izual though. I had to come up with a new strategy from what I used with my amazon. I ended up running around in a circle, with thunderstorm giong, and casting frozen orb at him. Periodically, to make sure he'd get hit with a lightning bolt, and to steal mana from him, I'd run up while he was still cold & hit him. Took about 20 minutes to finish him off. But, he never hit me hard enough to even worry me. Yea!

And an extra hurray in general for level 30 spells. Woo!

In case you hadn't noticed, the layout of this here page has changed a bit. That's because I've made the move to MovableType. MovableType can import entries in a specific format (given in the user manual) and I found instructions on how to get Blogger to output all entries into that format. Then it was a matter of saving the file in MT's import directory, and importing them.

MovableType also offers a nifty calendar function, so now you'll have a calendar on the right with all the dates of posts clickable to go to that individual post. And assuming I rebuild my index pages once a day, the current date will be highlighted as well. (If the highlighted date is off, you'll know I didn't log on & rebuild.)

Another change I've made, is that I'm no longer archiving by week, but by month instead. I decided I'd rather have less files to worry about backing up & such. I also plan on having a main archive page, but until I figure out a better way to do it, it's still in the testing stages and I don't want to make it available.

Oh, and if you see any blue smilies ( etc.) I also have a plugin installed into MT called MTMacro that lets me define certain bits of text to get replaced by other bits of text. In this case, I'm using it to replace things like :) with an img tag that shows . Cool, huh?

Finally, while MT provides the ability to use comments, I like and am used to NetComments. Not to mention I don't feel like setting up the templates for that too (again) so I'm going to stick with NC. However, since the post IDs changed in the move, I have to disable comments for the time being. Fortunately, the creator of NC plans on soon implementing the ability to change the post IDs of the comments (for just such an occasion, I presume). So, as soon as I can do that, I'll be changing those over (there are all of 3 posts commented on, so it will be a short process ) and then I'll re-enable commenting here. (And even though I don't have it enabled yet, I already have NC set up to use my own smilies, which are the same ones being used in here.)

This is just cool: Screen Calipers

Well, I'm going to try out a new blogging interface. i've decided to start installing Movable Type on here. Once it's installed I'll create a test blog to mess around with, to see if I can get it to do this template (maybe better -- without the <br><p> tags inserted to [incorrectly] do new paragraphs that Blogger uses), etc. If so, and if it'll let me import my existing entries somehow (or if I can figure out how to add them manually to the db) I'll move this one over to it.

Okay, more stuff I forgot to mention.

I'll be 25 on Wednesday (tomorrow). Yea. It feels a little odd, different than either 24 felt or 26 will feel. It's a quarter century. Just... wow.

My parents had dinner for me at their house w/ my grandparents there on Sunday. Probably the coolest thing I got was a media reader I can plug into my USB port that will read, among many other things, SmartMedia cards. This means we'll be able to transfer our digital camera picks (right now, of our VT honeymoon) to computer w/o sucking batteries or buying an adapter for the camera, and it's probably a lot quicker than it would be than going directly from the camera. So no more excuses now, we'll have to start cracking on that. I'll probably install it tonight and take it for a spin. Should be fun.

Okay, I just did this big ol' rant, but not here. So, to both showcase that mound of steaming crap (this is my place to do such things as complain, after all), and to plug a relatively new thing a friend has started up, I'll link to where it is.

Go here and then click on "Stupid signs". And while you're there, it couldn't hurt to read a few others, and if you'd like to post, go 'head and register (only a valid email addy you can access, along w/ a username & password, is necessary -- don't have to give out your real name, age, gender, location, etc.). Just be warned: it's a pretty darn long rant, and it's probably good I didn't post it all here, since the page would end up WAY too long.

Hurray for server side includes! My blogger template (and all my archive files, etc.) just got a whole lot smaller and easier to manage. Now, instead of writing out all that extra stuff every time to every file, it's all in one file I can edit (for instance, the links to the side). That gets included via SSI in any of my blog files, any time someone views it.

When technology works....

A story with a sad start, but a very happy ending: Here.

I've now been married 6 weeks, and while I love it (for things like the ability to say "my husband" when referring to Jeremy) it wasn't a really big change in lifestyle (we're still living in the same place, etc.). I did change my name officially with the Social Security office Tuessday, which is cool. Our wedding and reception were a blast, and our honeymoon to Vermont for a week was awesome. I plan on putting up pictures (we got a digital camera as a wedding gift) but we need a power adapter so we don't run out of batteries just transferring pics to the computer.

More recently, I got an email from a cat story list I belong to, along with a couple of follow-up emails. The initial email was heartbreaking (the current owner should not beallowed to have pets after this, but that'll never happen) but the story has a very happy ending. So, I whipped up a few pages containing all three emails. Click here for the story.