I gave up my job and returned to college full time to get my 4-year in writing. I figured that I'd take the first week or two to get my pace on and then probably go ahead and apply for a part time job in all of my free time. I was going to take the opportunity to clean up my house - just 15-30 minutes a day, and it'll be done in no time. Get in shape and curb, then reverse, the 10 pounds overweight isn't much, 15 pounds overweight I should really do something...after this last taco and beer, 20 pounds, holy sh!t, I'm 20 pounds overweight??? So I figured, again, all this time that I have, I'd workout every day. Or at least every Mon-Fri day. Healthy breakfast every day. Oh, and since I'm home every day, I can make a healthy meal for the kids and I for supper every night. Getting the pattern?
It's funny how easy it is to forget how hard it is to be a student.
I am taking two online courses and one hybrid course with reduced seat time - a grand total of 6 Wednesday night classes over the whole semester. So I'm at home pretty much All. The Time. I don't even have to walk out to my car and then from my car to the office. I just walk downstairs, turn on the coffee, and plunk down in front of the computer. From 9 AM to 10 AM, during the time that I was going to do strength training and cardio one day followed by a nice yoga routine the next, I read my personal email, check in to FB, read the design blogs I like... Sometimes I even remember that I'm supposed to have breakfast with my coffee.
I worked in education for five years as a tutor. I helped students figure out how to balance their lives so that the schoolwork was getting done as well as family time. I helped them figure out how to schedule their homework time. I had wonderful advice such as "Start your research paper early. Then it won't be a whole bunch of work at the end of the semester when everything else is coming up due." Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I'm so not taking my own advice.
I need to turn things around because I'm missing important things. I forget my friends' bday parties, I double book for social events, I'm missing assignments, the house isn't getting any cleaner, I'm not working out more than once a week, I'm not spending any time with my kids... I could keep going but won't.
And actually, that's just it. I could keep going like this, but I won't. I'm going to figure out how to get on track with this stuff. I don't really know how, but I"m going to make it happen.
After I check my favorite design sites and eat breakfast.
2.16.2012
5.02.2010
Project: Mozilla Thunderbird
*Huge Sigh*
I am now exhausted. I feel like I had to fight Thunderbird the entire way.
A friend of mine told me about Thunderbird years ago. I couldn't understand what the heck he was talking about or why he had email on a flashdrive - how did he get Internet on there? After he explained it to me thoroughly for a while I finally just did the ol' smile and nod. Wow, here was a guy who knew his stuff (and was totally outclassing me on the techno front).
Lesson 1: It doesn't take much to impress the computer illiterate.
Lesson 2: After a sufficient amount of time has elapsed and expertise accumulated, attempt to incorporate Mozilla's Thunderbird into life, which will clearly by then need such a jaw-dropping, awesome, powerful tool.
Fast forward to now, a date at which I really could use a tool to end all tools in order to bring my computer and Internet experiences in check.
I'm going to call what Thunderbird is an email aggregator (Mac users: very similar to what happens in the Mail software that comes with your computer). I tell it my email address and password and it imports everything from said account. Then I tell it my information for another email account, and another, and so on. I can also put my RSS reader/s in there. Well, there's nothing like importing an inbox to make you notice that you have hundreds of emails sitting in it. My metnet account alone has over 1,400 because I gave it out to register for a free tube of lipstick once and now get emails from all sorts of companies. Ergh.
On that note, metnet wasn't really up to snuff for Thunderbird. TB warned me that my metnet account's security for outgoing messages did not use encrypted (enter words I am only pretending to understand here), and that it is a weakness that might allow others to get my passwords and other sensitive data. Stupid metnet.
Anyway, now I have to learn yet another email interface. AND - all of my careful, systematic use of folders in my gmail account? - pointless in Thunderbird. Sure, I can make new folders. Sure, eventually this will be the bomb because I will be able to have all of my emails from all of my accounts on a particular topic in one folder. But today...ugh, I just feel tired.
Thunderbird also offers all sorts of add-ons. I added one for playing music that wound up being pretty pointless, and a calendar add-on that made the Thunderbird interface look so much like Microsoft Outlook that I felt like I was at work on my day off and wanted to close the program.
One of the things that Mozilla advertises about Thunderbird are the themes and personas that User can customize the viewing experience with. I got the persona to install on my Firefox browser (one good thing out of this is using Firefox at home now instead of the default Safari, bleh) but I can't get it to go onto my Thunderbird page. I tried one of their themes but it brought me to an older (and larger, space-wise) version of Thunderbird, so I canceled it out.
After taking enough time to really learn how to use this, I could see my life as being much better organized personally and professionally. It could be a very powerful organizer/aggregator for me. It would allow me to stay current with all of my subscriptions and email accounts without ever leaving one inbox...with time going by faster and faster all of the, ahem, time, this would be useful. But I am totally disinclined to take the initial output of time to master it that it would take, when I see little benefit to the program that I don't have in my gmail account already. In gmail, I already have aforementioned folders, a Google calendar, Google RSS reader, it signs me in to my blog, and so on. To get basically the same thing that Thunderbird offers me all I have to do is forward my other email accounts to my gmail account, and there it is.
Presumed public domain photo of non-Mozilla Thunderbird nabbed at: http://grizzledoldtraveler.blogspot.com/2009/07/thunderbird-photo-and-false-memory.html
I am now exhausted. I feel like I had to fight Thunderbird the entire way.
A friend of mine told me about Thunderbird years ago. I couldn't understand what the heck he was talking about or why he had email on a flashdrive - how did he get Internet on there? After he explained it to me thoroughly for a while I finally just did the ol' smile and nod. Wow, here was a guy who knew his stuff (and was totally outclassing me on the techno front).
Lesson 1: It doesn't take much to impress the computer illiterate.
Lesson 2: After a sufficient amount of time has elapsed and expertise accumulated, attempt to incorporate Mozilla's Thunderbird into life, which will clearly by then need such a jaw-dropping, awesome, powerful tool.
Fast forward to now, a date at which I really could use a tool to end all tools in order to bring my computer and Internet experiences in check.
I'm going to call what Thunderbird is an email aggregator (Mac users: very similar to what happens in the Mail software that comes with your computer). I tell it my email address and password and it imports everything from said account. Then I tell it my information for another email account, and another, and so on. I can also put my RSS reader/s in there. Well, there's nothing like importing an inbox to make you notice that you have hundreds of emails sitting in it. My metnet account alone has over 1,400 because I gave it out to register for a free tube of lipstick once and now get emails from all sorts of companies. Ergh.
On that note, metnet wasn't really up to snuff for Thunderbird. TB warned me that my metnet account's security for outgoing messages did not use encrypted (enter words I am only pretending to understand here), and that it is a weakness that might allow others to get my passwords and other sensitive data. Stupid metnet.
Anyway, now I have to learn yet another email interface. AND - all of my careful, systematic use of folders in my gmail account? - pointless in Thunderbird. Sure, I can make new folders. Sure, eventually this will be the bomb because I will be able to have all of my emails from all of my accounts on a particular topic in one folder. But today...ugh, I just feel tired.
Thunderbird also offers all sorts of add-ons. I added one for playing music that wound up being pretty pointless, and a calendar add-on that made the Thunderbird interface look so much like Microsoft Outlook that I felt like I was at work on my day off and wanted to close the program.
One of the things that Mozilla advertises about Thunderbird are the themes and personas that User can customize the viewing experience with. I got the persona to install on my Firefox browser (one good thing out of this is using Firefox at home now instead of the default Safari, bleh) but I can't get it to go onto my Thunderbird page. I tried one of their themes but it brought me to an older (and larger, space-wise) version of Thunderbird, so I canceled it out.
After taking enough time to really learn how to use this, I could see my life as being much better organized personally and professionally. It could be a very powerful organizer/aggregator for me. It would allow me to stay current with all of my subscriptions and email accounts without ever leaving one inbox...with time going by faster and faster all of the, ahem, time, this would be useful. But I am totally disinclined to take the initial output of time to master it that it would take, when I see little benefit to the program that I don't have in my gmail account already. In gmail, I already have aforementioned folders, a Google calendar, Google RSS reader, it signs me in to my blog, and so on. To get basically the same thing that Thunderbird offers me all I have to do is forward my other email accounts to my gmail account, and there it is.
Presumed public domain photo of non-Mozilla Thunderbird nabbed at: http://grizzledoldtraveler.blogspot.com/2009/07/thunderbird-photo-and-false-memory.html
Assignment: Google Docs
I have, at long last, figured out how to use Google Docs. Years ago, a friend of mine sent me a link to it so that the members of our writing group could collaborate on projects online (the group never met once in person, but I had a wonderful time talking to all of those incredibly interesting [and busy] people on the phone while I was trying to coordinate our meetings). I opened the link and saw – gasp – something new, something that was going to require EFFORT to learn *shudder*.
I fumbled about for just long enough to get utterly frustrated, without having tried to read the directions, never to return…until now. It is really, really easy to use! Especially if you take the ten-twenty minutes that it takes to read through the getting started guide. Seriously, if I’d taken the time to do that years ago when I received the link, I would have saved myself so much bother over the years as people have attempted to send me Google documents or email attachments have opened in that program. Sometimes being obstinate really comes back around to bite me.
The basic low-down on Google docs for those of you who haven’t checked them out or read another student’s blog about it already: upload existing documents into the program and go from there, or search through their thousands of templates to write your own document, spreadsheet, drawing, or form (I sound like an advertisement!). They have also added “Drawings,” but I didn’t spend much time exploring that since I can’t draw for the life of me, and if I could, I don't know why I'd want someone to collaborate on it with me. Once you’ve got some type of document with which to work, you can invite people to either view or edit it with you (easy privacy control) – up to ten people at a time can be collaborating on a project at the same time, and 200 people are allowed to the same document total.
This is a truly powerful tool. I don't see myself as using it professionally for the main reason of having a shared intranet here on campus that allows us to save onto shared drives in the first place, and the chances of having a collaborative team large enough to warrant Google Docs seems far-fetched. But personally…I’ve been working on free-lance editing, and this is a great way for me to work with an author to keep straight the latest mark-ups without getting lost under emails (very similar to the Common Craft Show’s scenario but I am being serious).
What do I want it to say about me? My documents will be speaking for me. Beyond that, it will also probably say that I spend a lot of time online. :)
I fumbled about for just long enough to get utterly frustrated, without having tried to read the directions, never to return…until now. It is really, really easy to use! Especially if you take the ten-twenty minutes that it takes to read through the getting started guide. Seriously, if I’d taken the time to do that years ago when I received the link, I would have saved myself so much bother over the years as people have attempted to send me Google documents or email attachments have opened in that program. Sometimes being obstinate really comes back around to bite me.
The basic low-down on Google docs for those of you who haven’t checked them out or read another student’s blog about it already: upload existing documents into the program and go from there, or search through their thousands of templates to write your own document, spreadsheet, drawing, or form (I sound like an advertisement!). They have also added “Drawings,” but I didn’t spend much time exploring that since I can’t draw for the life of me, and if I could, I don't know why I'd want someone to collaborate on it with me. Once you’ve got some type of document with which to work, you can invite people to either view or edit it with you (easy privacy control) – up to ten people at a time can be collaborating on a project at the same time, and 200 people are allowed to the same document total.
This is a truly powerful tool. I don't see myself as using it professionally for the main reason of having a shared intranet here on campus that allows us to save onto shared drives in the first place, and the chances of having a collaborative team large enough to warrant Google Docs seems far-fetched. But personally…I’ve been working on free-lance editing, and this is a great way for me to work with an author to keep straight the latest mark-ups without getting lost under emails (very similar to the Common Craft Show’s scenario but I am being serious).
What do I want it to say about me? My documents will be speaking for me. Beyond that, it will also probably say that I spend a lot of time online. :)
4.27.2010
Multimedia Tools Assignment
I checked out two sites for this assignment: Aviary.com and Animoto.com. I plan to look into Aviary more at a later date (it appears to be sort of a free online Photoshop deal); I signed up at Animoto.
Animoto makes music videos out of the user's photos and/or video. Uploading is incredibly simple; it's actually easier than Flickr or Facebook, since I don't have to tag anything or describe anything. After uploading photos/videos, choosing music, and some extra features if you choose to use them (text, elements) Animoto puts together what is essentially a fancy slideshow for you. With almost no effort on my part, I have a nifty little video that I can share with friends.
The major downside is that free service only gets you a thirty second video. You have to buy in if you want to have full-length videos made. I made the mistake of uploading an entire album (50 pics), figuring that I would decide which ones I wanted to use once they were uploaded. Then I read that I'm only supposed to upload 8-12 for maximum effect, so I had to wait a really, really long time for the computers to stop talking to each other since I couldn't find a stop button anywhere.
I haven't seen anybody use this exact site yet, but I have seen people put their slideshows to music, and that always makes it more interesting. I think that there is a lot that I could do with this site if I were willing to pay for the full package and if I used the video feature on my camera more often before I killed it (accidentally). I will most likely not use this professionally.
I read over their privacy policy, and I don't see anywhere how I can make my video private - the policy just says that they won't be sharing my information with anyone.
I'm not overly concerned with what this would say about me - it could be a useful way to market myself, except that I have better software on my computer with which I could do similar things but maintain greater control over how it's all put together. I will most likely delete my account after this class is over. (I wish I'd chosen Aviary!)
Huh. Well, just after writing this, my friend got done watching the video and said that it looks really nice. Maybe I should try again after all. :) I need to be more careful about my music selection though - I chose one of their songs and I feel that it didn't match up well with the pictures.
Animoto makes music videos out of the user's photos and/or video. Uploading is incredibly simple; it's actually easier than Flickr or Facebook, since I don't have to tag anything or describe anything. After uploading photos/videos, choosing music, and some extra features if you choose to use them (text, elements) Animoto puts together what is essentially a fancy slideshow for you. With almost no effort on my part, I have a nifty little video that I can share with friends.
The major downside is that free service only gets you a thirty second video. You have to buy in if you want to have full-length videos made. I made the mistake of uploading an entire album (50 pics), figuring that I would decide which ones I wanted to use once they were uploaded. Then I read that I'm only supposed to upload 8-12 for maximum effect, so I had to wait a really, really long time for the computers to stop talking to each other since I couldn't find a stop button anywhere.
I haven't seen anybody use this exact site yet, but I have seen people put their slideshows to music, and that always makes it more interesting. I think that there is a lot that I could do with this site if I were willing to pay for the full package and if I used the video feature on my camera more often before I killed it (accidentally). I will most likely not use this professionally.
I read over their privacy policy, and I don't see anywhere how I can make my video private - the policy just says that they won't be sharing my information with anyone.
I'm not overly concerned with what this would say about me - it could be a useful way to market myself, except that I have better software on my computer with which I could do similar things but maintain greater control over how it's all put together. I will most likely delete my account after this class is over. (I wish I'd chosen Aviary!)
Huh. Well, just after writing this, my friend got done watching the video and said that it looks really nice. Maybe I should try again after all. :) I need to be more careful about my music selection though - I chose one of their songs and I feel that it didn't match up well with the pictures.
Photo Tools Assignment
Hello All -
I chose Flickr. I did go to the websites that Ms. Scow put up for us to look through, since I thought that maybe there was something pretty neat out there that I hadn't heard of yet, but after a couple of dead links and one site that merged into another one and blah blah, I went ahead to Flickr's site. I've been on there from doing image searches through Google, but I have never used it for my own pictures.
I had to create an account with Yahoo!mail before I could open my Flickr account. Great, yet another email to check (my friend uses an email address that checks all of his emails for him at the same time - Mozilla Thunderbird? - I should probably check that out). The site is easy to use, with a nice clean interface with big numbers next to the directions. Yay! I'm really tired of cluttered websites that assume I care enough to figure out how to use them.
I chose Flickr mostly because it's so widely used now and I felt behind the times on not knowing how to use it. I liked that there were gift/stuff-making options - I'll probably never use it since it seems kind of spendy and time-intensive, but it's fun to know that it's there. My sister went ahead and made one of those Blurb books out of her blog of traveling in New Zealand for two months - considering it's all pictures and it's a vanity press (known for being generally expensive) $45 or so isn't bad.
Most people use Flickr personally, but I don't know whether I'll really bother for the most part since I'm on Facebook and I already have a place to share my pictures with people. I don't really like the thought of my good pictures getting ripped off by people, so I don't plan to put anything seriously awesome up. I do see it as a good place to back up photos from work events, though - with the privacy setting enabled, it would make good storage that could be accessed by anyone in my department whenever there's a need.
I am not particularly concerned with what this tool says about me, but I don't plan to post very personal pictures, either. I dislike posting pictures of my children for any weirdo to look at.
One other thing that I learned is that there are many tools for conveniently getting pics off of a computer and into Flickr. I downloaded a desktop tool that allows me to put more photos in faster than their online uploading tool.
For those who may be interested, I added a few pics from my family vacation last summer. http://www.flickr.com/photos/zombieviscer8r/
I chose Flickr. I did go to the websites that Ms. Scow put up for us to look through, since I thought that maybe there was something pretty neat out there that I hadn't heard of yet, but after a couple of dead links and one site that merged into another one and blah blah, I went ahead to Flickr's site. I've been on there from doing image searches through Google, but I have never used it for my own pictures.
I had to create an account with Yahoo!mail before I could open my Flickr account. Great, yet another email to check (my friend uses an email address that checks all of his emails for him at the same time - Mozilla Thunderbird? - I should probably check that out). The site is easy to use, with a nice clean interface with big numbers next to the directions. Yay! I'm really tired of cluttered websites that assume I care enough to figure out how to use them.
I chose Flickr mostly because it's so widely used now and I felt behind the times on not knowing how to use it. I liked that there were gift/stuff-making options - I'll probably never use it since it seems kind of spendy and time-intensive, but it's fun to know that it's there. My sister went ahead and made one of those Blurb books out of her blog of traveling in New Zealand for two months - considering it's all pictures and it's a vanity press (known for being generally expensive) $45 or so isn't bad.
Most people use Flickr personally, but I don't know whether I'll really bother for the most part since I'm on Facebook and I already have a place to share my pictures with people. I don't really like the thought of my good pictures getting ripped off by people, so I don't plan to put anything seriously awesome up. I do see it as a good place to back up photos from work events, though - with the privacy setting enabled, it would make good storage that could be accessed by anyone in my department whenever there's a need.
I am not particularly concerned with what this tool says about me, but I don't plan to post very personal pictures, either. I dislike posting pictures of my children for any weirdo to look at.
One other thing that I learned is that there are many tools for conveniently getting pics off of a computer and into Flickr. I downloaded a desktop tool that allows me to put more photos in faster than their online uploading tool.
For those who may be interested, I added a few pics from my family vacation last summer. http://www.flickr.com/photos/zombieviscer8r/
4.23.2010
Yardwork
I feel the need to share my marvelous stupidity with the world.
I bought my first house in November. It had been foreclosed upon, which means various things (beyond affordability), such as a yard that had not been tended to for quite some time. Shortly after the purchase agreement went through, the lawn care stopped. The purchase agreement itself went into effect in, without checking my records, ah, August or early September. The grass got pretty long. There is a large cottonwood tree in the backyard, and the leaves fell down on top of the long grass. This spring has seen me outside working to rectify years of neglect.
It turns out that the owners of this property really weren't yard people. The mature apple tree, also in the back, was in sore need of trimming (part of which the electric company came along and mowed off last fall with no regard for the proper way to do it). There is a small orchard around the apple tree of suckers that were allowed to grow unchecked, many of which are so large that I'm going to need to pull them out with a chain attached to a pickup truck. I had attempted to trim the tree in the early spring when it's healthiest for the tree, but as that is the extent of my knowledge of how to properly trim, I had a hard time even determining what was dead or alive and so decided to finish at a later date.
The suburban neighborhood that I live in came with many neighbors who do normal suburban things such as mowing their lawns in a timely fashion, and I was the last person on my block to get around to it. Having determined that I could no longer have a scrubby, half dead yard and hold my head up high, I decided that tonight was going to see me breaking out the lawn mower that I recently purchased and getting at least some of my grass chopped down.
This might be a good time to mention that for over a week I have been so tired that I am drunk. Yesterday I almost went home from work sick because my body was crashing so violently. Today I was shaking from exhaustion while just standing still.
After having put my kids to bed, I started to mow. It went fairly well until I got to the hill next to my house. I have a very healthy respect for the damage that a mower can do to a human body since I have seen the toe of a man who had a lawnmower run it over when he lost his step on a hill (*wince and onomatopoeic word of fear and disgust here). The mower got stuck in some soft dirt as I was pushing it uphill, but instead of wisely figuring out how to safely deal with the situation, I pushed harder and harder until it became dislodged. It was alright in the end, but, eh...kind of stupid.
After having mowed the entire lawn and feeling quite pleased with myself for my grown-uppedness with not only owning a house but a lawnmower and having the drive to get the job done, I decided to sit in the backyard and admire my handiwork. It was at this point that I looked at the apple tree and saw how much deadwood there really was in the tree, now visible by contrast to the growth on the rest of it. I went to the garage and took out my pruning shears and pruning saw and proceeded to the tree.
I have no ladders. I priced them a while back but was too stingy to buy one, so I lodged the shears in a crotch in the tree, put the saw firmly between my teeth, and started climbing.
I also have a healthy respect for the dangers of tree trimming, since one of my grandfathers fell while doing it and broke some pretty necessary bones and nearly died.
I had the wonderful idea that I would start from right where I was and prune my way up. I very sensibly lodged myself in ways that would most likely keep me from falling and proceeded to trim. I took off a lot of branches and was feeling pretty good about myself, when I realized that I had pruned some of my safe way back down out of the tree (much like painting oneself into a corner, only twenty to thirty feet up from the ground). I then further realized that I had left my phone inside of the house, and that the only people who knew where I was wouldn't be waking up for about eleven hours and that I might wind up having to spend the night in the tree (it now occurs to me that I could have shouted, but that was lost on me at the moment). Other realizations included that it was now mostly dark and that it was raining.
I kept trimming, largely unconcerned about all of these things. I climbed higher and higher into the tree, and as the branches left it and I had fewer places to lodge myself, my perches got sketchier and sketchier until I got to the point that I was holding myself into the tree with my left hand grasping a flimsy dead branch while my right hand vigorously sawed away.
Eventually I forced myself to throw the saw out of the tree so that I couldn't trim anymore, after which point I proceeded to just grab the branches and wrench them off (did I mention in the dark with rain falling?). I finally began to descend from the tree and noticed how much I missed those dead branches that I'd climbed up. I didn't have any footholds to make my drop to the ground safer, so I just grabbed a (dead) piece of branch that jutted out a hand's width and used that to swing my entire body's weight down and out of the tree.
By the time I was done gathering all of the dead branches into a pile elsewhere, it was too dark to even see what the tree looked like.
No, I didn't actually get hurt. No, this story is not high drama, nor is there any reason for anyone to care about it. But as I sat in my three season porch pretending that there was enough light to admire my work, I couldn't help but think that I needed to share, as I said, my marvelous stupidity.
I bought my first house in November. It had been foreclosed upon, which means various things (beyond affordability), such as a yard that had not been tended to for quite some time. Shortly after the purchase agreement went through, the lawn care stopped. The purchase agreement itself went into effect in, without checking my records, ah, August or early September. The grass got pretty long. There is a large cottonwood tree in the backyard, and the leaves fell down on top of the long grass. This spring has seen me outside working to rectify years of neglect.
It turns out that the owners of this property really weren't yard people. The mature apple tree, also in the back, was in sore need of trimming (part of which the electric company came along and mowed off last fall with no regard for the proper way to do it). There is a small orchard around the apple tree of suckers that were allowed to grow unchecked, many of which are so large that I'm going to need to pull them out with a chain attached to a pickup truck. I had attempted to trim the tree in the early spring when it's healthiest for the tree, but as that is the extent of my knowledge of how to properly trim, I had a hard time even determining what was dead or alive and so decided to finish at a later date.
The suburban neighborhood that I live in came with many neighbors who do normal suburban things such as mowing their lawns in a timely fashion, and I was the last person on my block to get around to it. Having determined that I could no longer have a scrubby, half dead yard and hold my head up high, I decided that tonight was going to see me breaking out the lawn mower that I recently purchased and getting at least some of my grass chopped down.
This might be a good time to mention that for over a week I have been so tired that I am drunk. Yesterday I almost went home from work sick because my body was crashing so violently. Today I was shaking from exhaustion while just standing still.
After having put my kids to bed, I started to mow. It went fairly well until I got to the hill next to my house. I have a very healthy respect for the damage that a mower can do to a human body since I have seen the toe of a man who had a lawnmower run it over when he lost his step on a hill (*wince and onomatopoeic word of fear and disgust here). The mower got stuck in some soft dirt as I was pushing it uphill, but instead of wisely figuring out how to safely deal with the situation, I pushed harder and harder until it became dislodged. It was alright in the end, but, eh...kind of stupid.
After having mowed the entire lawn and feeling quite pleased with myself for my grown-uppedness with not only owning a house but a lawnmower and having the drive to get the job done, I decided to sit in the backyard and admire my handiwork. It was at this point that I looked at the apple tree and saw how much deadwood there really was in the tree, now visible by contrast to the growth on the rest of it. I went to the garage and took out my pruning shears and pruning saw and proceeded to the tree.
I have no ladders. I priced them a while back but was too stingy to buy one, so I lodged the shears in a crotch in the tree, put the saw firmly between my teeth, and started climbing.
I also have a healthy respect for the dangers of tree trimming, since one of my grandfathers fell while doing it and broke some pretty necessary bones and nearly died.
I had the wonderful idea that I would start from right where I was and prune my way up. I very sensibly lodged myself in ways that would most likely keep me from falling and proceeded to trim. I took off a lot of branches and was feeling pretty good about myself, when I realized that I had pruned some of my safe way back down out of the tree (much like painting oneself into a corner, only twenty to thirty feet up from the ground). I then further realized that I had left my phone inside of the house, and that the only people who knew where I was wouldn't be waking up for about eleven hours and that I might wind up having to spend the night in the tree (it now occurs to me that I could have shouted, but that was lost on me at the moment). Other realizations included that it was now mostly dark and that it was raining.
I kept trimming, largely unconcerned about all of these things. I climbed higher and higher into the tree, and as the branches left it and I had fewer places to lodge myself, my perches got sketchier and sketchier until I got to the point that I was holding myself into the tree with my left hand grasping a flimsy dead branch while my right hand vigorously sawed away.
Eventually I forced myself to throw the saw out of the tree so that I couldn't trim anymore, after which point I proceeded to just grab the branches and wrench them off (did I mention in the dark with rain falling?). I finally began to descend from the tree and noticed how much I missed those dead branches that I'd climbed up. I didn't have any footholds to make my drop to the ground safer, so I just grabbed a (dead) piece of branch that jutted out a hand's width and used that to swing my entire body's weight down and out of the tree.
By the time I was done gathering all of the dead branches into a pile elsewhere, it was too dark to even see what the tree looked like.
No, I didn't actually get hurt. No, this story is not high drama, nor is there any reason for anyone to care about it. But as I sat in my three season porch pretending that there was enough light to admire my work, I couldn't help but think that I needed to share, as I said, my marvelous stupidity.
4.20.2010
Social Bookmarks Assignment
I signed up for two bookmarking sites: Google bookmark (which gives me the same interface that I have on my RSS reader, my email, my online calendar, etc, making it super duper easy to use) and StumbleUpon.
After registering with StumbleUpon, I tell it what topics I'm interested in and it comes up with sites that I might like. When I'm signed in, I can hit like or dislike and the software gets to know my preferences, as well as my vote going towards the overall rating from users. You can also comment on the pages on StumbleUpon's main site. Users can "Connect with Friends," and when I clicked on that area, StumbleUpon already knew some of my contacts on Facebook, which I found really creepy since I hadn't given it permission to access my account (at least not knowingly).
StumbleUpon is very easy to use and fun. I have found a bunch of cool websites that I never would have otherwise. Try this one: it's hilarious. http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html
I will not be using this professionally; if I used this at work I would not get ANY work done, EVER. :D
I'm not planning on being part of the social part of the bookmarking tools, which makes the privacy issue nonexistent. When I find bookmarks that I want to share I email them or post them as links on Facebook, and I don't have so many bookmarks that I actually need a special place for them. I can use my bookmarks function just as easily, and I know what sites are what typically because I bookmark infrequently and only if I use a site daily or I can't remember the search term easily.
I do think that I will continue to use StumbleUpon; it'll be a fun thing to do while I'm chatting online with people and they're typing slowly.
Here's some zombification for ya'll, because I feel strongly that it's been too long since I included something about zombies on here.
After registering with StumbleUpon, I tell it what topics I'm interested in and it comes up with sites that I might like. When I'm signed in, I can hit like or dislike and the software gets to know my preferences, as well as my vote going towards the overall rating from users. You can also comment on the pages on StumbleUpon's main site. Users can "Connect with Friends," and when I clicked on that area, StumbleUpon already knew some of my contacts on Facebook, which I found really creepy since I hadn't given it permission to access my account (at least not knowingly).
StumbleUpon is very easy to use and fun. I have found a bunch of cool websites that I never would have otherwise. Try this one: it's hilarious. http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html
I will not be using this professionally; if I used this at work I would not get ANY work done, EVER. :D
I'm not planning on being part of the social part of the bookmarking tools, which makes the privacy issue nonexistent. When I find bookmarks that I want to share I email them or post them as links on Facebook, and I don't have so many bookmarks that I actually need a special place for them. I can use my bookmarks function just as easily, and I know what sites are what typically because I bookmark infrequently and only if I use a site daily or I can't remember the search term easily.
I do think that I will continue to use StumbleUpon; it'll be a fun thing to do while I'm chatting online with people and they're typing slowly.
Here's some zombification for ya'll, because I feel strongly that it's been too long since I included something about zombies on here.
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