The Time Sink

Hey, there! Happy Monday. ...and maybe a rainy one here again (only for a day?). ...but I'm really glad I did that weed-whacking on Saturday so Daniel could rake it up Sunday; the rain will let me see what we missed, and we'll finish up this weekend if things work out.

...and the tax gathering and collating got done; Shelley will turn that in to the preparer today. We're hoping for a little something back since we have a couple of projects we'd like to work on. ...but hey, breaking even would be okay, right?

...and for the geeks and geofiles crowd: GeoURL is back up! Yep, there's a blog and the lead page (in beta), but the basics are working again. The map isn't expandable yet, but he's working on it. ...and for those of you who are curious, this tag (on the bottom of the blog) takes you to my localized information. Yeah, yeah, just a geek thing <g>...

...and the rains came and the rains left. ...and the power left sometime in mid-afternoon at home. Yeah, Shelley got home to a dead house and a dead neighborhood. ...and as I traveled home about thirty minutes later, I ended up following the service truck heading into our neighborhood. When Shelley came back from picking Brad up at school she asked the guy whether she should plan on dinner out; he told her "Dinner out and find a hotel!" because he didn't have a clue what was wrong. She directed him toward the construction site to the north of us and told him crews had been working there all day...

Not long after that some neighbors wandered down from that direction and said that the crews at work had blown up a transformer in the early afternoon! Yeah, evidently no one had reported it... We ended up heading out for an early dinner, but only after setting out the flashlights and candles. ...and things worked out okay, at least for most of the neighborhood: when we got back it looked like he'd managed to route the two southern blocks around the trouble spot. ...but the one area to the north was still dark; I'm hoping they can get them back up real soon.

Well, iTunes and the downloading service aren't things I use in all their full functionality, but maybe this will help someone else out there who does want to do what is apparently impossible. ...or was! A friend of mine was all sorts of perturbed a month or so back after she'd purchased some music from the iTunes store, downloaded it and then wasn't able to burn a music CD. Yeah, that sounded funny, but evidently there was a file format tweak that prevented someone from burning music they'd bought.

Well, that type of thing gripes me to no end, so I dug up a program or two to help her out. ...but she's non-tech and the process of booting into DOS mode and such was a showstopper. But! The other day, she checked back again and found out the system had been updated significantly and seemed to do exactly what it promised. For an intriguing read, take a look here for the details of the project...

...and for me? I use iTunes on the Win2k box to rip the occasional CD. ...but then I just copy the mp3s to a memory card and pop it into the Zaurus. So, no iPod for me. ...and now I'm not so sure about Apple's place as a source for music.

Hey, thank you for the feedback from the Mac crowd on yesterday's post. We received some good suggestions to try. How about the Windows bunch? Is anyone burning Audio CDs direct from iTunes? Thanks!

...and the weather here is playing total havoc with the forecasters; I think they've just given up on calling things for a while. Monday's 20% turned into an overnight torrent; and yesterday's 'maybe but clearing' turned into a wakeup call and and not much clearing at all. Still, the mountains are looking good!

John, check your mail for a 'first pass' attempt on that scan... Oh, hi! ...just a private message for someone I'm doing some work for. ...and oh, man, is the weekend finally here? I'm ready! Well, maybe not <g>: we have a Home and Garden show Shelley would like to attend, and both boys have science projects to work on. I'm not sure how conducive that's going to be for detox or 'free work' time on my part...

Well, we made it to the weekend. ...and we made it to the Home and Garden show last night (amidst winds and threatening thunderstorms. That was fun for a bit, but the pie on the way home was probably as much fun <g>.

...and today is another 'homework' day, especially for Mr. Brad: he has major work to do on a science project (like get it started!). Daniel has one in progress, but he's rolling along on that pretty well. Me? I'm actually going to try to get some yard work and maybe even some computer work done. Shelley? Shopping!

...and a Happy Sunday to one and all! Yesterday's list? Hmmm... Not too bad; I managed to blade and get a tree restaked for Spring and get a photowalk in and transplant some dahlia bulbs and clean some out back and ... well ... that was quite enough. ...but my stamina seems to be coming back up some; my thanks for all the prayers and well wishes over the last several weeks.

...and Brad's project is started and pretty well along. I believe today will be a day of typing and formating while we wait for the process to complete. ...and Daniel's 'brochure' should be in at least the second draft stage (well, it better be or playtime just isn't going to happen <g>).

In health care news, the Betaseron Foundation is finally shipping the newer packaging for their injectable product. If you're an MS patient self-injecting with the old style Accuject, I have the simplified instructions for the new style

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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