In defense of that guy, I’ve known many people who were working in gardening for the town as part of social service, judge-mandated vocational training, vocational training required to keep their unemployment benefits…
So I’m guessing your behavior led him to believe that yes, you’re not completely baffled by the differences between a daffodil and a geranium, but he just phrased it badly.
That is so cool. I only wish I had a mutant clematis!
They have ointments for that, y’know . . . 
I’m really tired.
Oooh, ooh! How do you do that? What kind of PDA? I only have my Zire72. Could I do the same? What software and hardware do I need to get to watch TV on my PDA? Sounds intriguing.
Hello everyone.
I’m sorry about the kitty, Bobbio..
Jahdra, I hope your blues start fading away soon.
Still nothing much exciting going on here. I guess there was high drama at work yesterday, but since I was here, I missed it. I’m glad I did though. It seems one of the staff members in my office “went off” on everyone and some of the comments he made genuinely frightened the rest of the staff. When he returns from leave, he’ll be working elsewhere. 'Nuff said about that.
I am so looking forward to Friday, and really, really hope this is a “do nothing” weekend. If the weather cooperates, maybe I can get out in my gardens and do some weeding. I also need to weed my lawn. I still just want to rip it out and start over, but the hubby isn’t really keen on that.
I think I’m gonna go watch some TV now. It’s been a long day.
Hugs to those that need them.
P.S. I’m trying to screw up the courage to talk to our AMO/IT guys about allowing me access to the SDMB at work, for work purposes. I have some samples printed up of the questions and answers concerning things I do for work. Keep your fingers crossed in hopes that I can sway them. I’m not counting on it, but it’s worth a shot.
Does it do the waltz?
Whew! Dunno what was up with the Intraweb last night, but SDMB was one of the sites I couldn’t get to. Some sites I could reach, others not. Seems to be working today, so far (knock on wood three times with crossed fingers - and that’s -not- an easy feat! ;)).
Glad to see you’re still around, Bibliocat, but sad that your RL is so busy! Well, if it’s good for you, that’s a good thing, just sad for the rest of the MMPers. I’m also looking forward to Kaiwik’s posts; I love hearing about Alaska and life there - and I love Poms!! 
SCL, those clematis vine sports are beautiful, thanks for sharing the pics of them. Swampy, if you’re out there (and on your mother’s dial-up snerk), hope that your second interview went well, and that all is going equally well with your uncle.
Time to get ready for work…
Off to work, Big truck. short help. If I don’t come back, avenge me.
::Looks in Yellow Pages for doggio’s Cyborg Lemur Army:: (Gotta be prepared! I’m sure Dollar Tree would be intimidated by cyborg lemurs.)
Cool clematis, SCL! I want a mutant too! Since you were able to find an answer so fast, Fetchund, we guess we’ll believe that you’re a horticulturist.
Mork, I’m always amazed at your ability to tear computers apart and put them back together again.
Sorry about the kitty, Bobbio. But 14! :eek:
Hi BibKitty! You don’t have to follow, but you should definitely stop by from time to time and tell us how you’re doing.
Has anyone noticed? It’s Friday!!!
Back eventually…
GT
She sort of wobbles…
Morning. Too early. Must do laundry and run round a lot. Hugs as appropriate.
I am filled with much grrrrrrrrrrrrrr! right now. A humunguous rock hit my windshield this morning, leaving a golfball-sized dimple and radiating cracks. I need another new windshield, and I had this one replaced some time last fall.
The pisser is that it came from the side of the road, out of a high angle. Some peckerweed had to thow it. I’m playing telephone tag with a a state trooper right now, trying to get this reported.
Oh that’s terrible, bobbio! And how odd you just had a windshield replaced. I personally have never had to have one replaced my whole life.
I’ve never seen a clematis do that! How totally cool. I have a clematis I need to move right now; it was part of the landscaping when they built the house, and apparently whoever planted it didn’t know it was a vine. :rolleyes: It’s behind the bushes in the front of the house, and looks dumb there. I just started a new magazine subscription, Birds & Blooms. I can’t go wrong–it’s my two favorite things! (Well, besides my family.) Anyway, the photography is gorgeous and it’s full of interesting things people have observed in their back yards. I read most of it last night, and it only comes out once every two months. I need to pace myself.
BiblioCat, sorry to hear about your marital trouble, but I understand the “long time coming” part. Good luck.
Kai, hope you’re doing OK. We want to hear what’s going on with you, whether or not you do the OP. ((hugs))
Happy Friday, everyone!!
HELLO, FRIDAY! Good to see you again.
Caffeine is seeping into my essential fluids and it’s an absolutely gorgeous day outside, s’posed to be hitting the 19°C (66°F) range today. Notwithstanding last night’s Further Adventures in Technological Crappery, I’m not feeling too badly, all things considered. I don’t even feel dog tired like I usually do at the end of a work week. Remarkable.
This weekend’s theme however will be Adventures in Video Editing. (Technological Crappery permitting.) First, I have to finish putting together a dynamic “hybrid” photo slideshow and music album on DVD for the birthday of MindWife’s grandmother who, like the rest of the elders on that side of the family, are crazy about Daniel O’Donnell. (I say “hybrid” because the photos zoom in or out or pan across the screen and occasionally, in outdoor shots, there’s a cool lens flare I apply where the sun is that moves with the zooming and panning to make it seem like it’s a “live” shot. Mostly just video photoshoppery, but I’m sure it’ll impress 'em. :)) The pictures, incidentally, are just scans and images of Daniel O’Donnell himself from his concert booklets or fan club mags or whatever. Did I mention they’re all nuts for this Irish fellow?
Then I got a DVD of classic video game commercials (which I collect) that I have to rip apart into their individual commercials (the DVD is a straight play-through, no chapters or anything; very amateur production), then try and clean up the audio and maybe the video, 'cos 25-year-old VHS/beta recordings don’t hold up well.
I’ve been trying a number of different video editors, but I have to say, the vast majority of them are crap. Those that aren’t buggy and crash after about 2 hours of editing just don’t have the features I need/want to do what I do. All the stuff you find on store shelves is aimed at the amateur home movie crowd so they’ve all been greatly simplified and bereft of advanced features for ease of use. That’s great for the video neophite, but there just doesn’t seem to be anything between the simple $70 “let’s-make-a-DVD-of-Uncle-Rolly’s-clown-act” suites like ULead Video Studio or Pinnacle Studio, and the $700 “so-you-think-you’re-the-next-Speilberg” suites like Adobe Premiere. sigh
gt - Comes from both the fact that I’m a geek, and that I’ve always hated relying on other people to do things for me when I figured I could just learn to do it myself. Comes in handy when something asplodes and I’m left to figure out what. 
Heff - I play my videos on a Dell Axim X50v upgraded to Windows Mobile 5 with ROM A02. I used to have a Zire72 a couple of years back, so I know it’s quite capable of playing video just fine. Some notes and info on that:
You have a square 320x320 screen and a 312MHz processor, so you can’t play large, high resolution videos. 320x240 is ideal for this PDA, though you can use 352x240 (VCD or standard NTSC broadcast aspect) as well and it will scale down.
If you go the download route for your favourite TV episodes, you should know that most of them will probably be AVIs in higher resolution – usually 512x384 or 640x480, which your Zire can’t handle smoothly. Search instead for iPod versions.
If you have some DVDs of your favourite TV shows and/or movies and decide to rip them, do so in 320x240, preferably MP4 format. It’s economical and produces good quality.
The best video player that is also the cheapest is The Core Project Media Player (TCPMP). It’s free, and handles the widest range of video formats, including iPod MP4s. The Core Project have also made a commercial player simply called Core Player, but it’s about $20 and isn’t a whole lot better – mainly just prettier. I use TCPMP on my PDA and it’s never failed to be an excellent player for videos.
If you do download videos and they turn out to be too large (dimensionally) for TCPMP to handle on your Zire, there’s an awesome (and free!) video transcoder called MEncoder (download page here with links to both MPlayer and MEncoder; all-in-one install-and-go packages include Super, and the one I personally use, MediaCoder). It’s not the easiest thing to use but there’s lots of documentation and it does an excellent job of converting videos from one format to another or maintaining the same format and resizing without too much loss of quality.
Yeah, seems like a bit much just to watch videos but it’s not always necessary (other than the player), it’s just nice to have the tools on hand in case you need 'em. Me, I downloaded the Family Guy episodes, some of which were 640x480, which is just a bit more than my PDA can handle, so I used MediaCoder to batch convert them down to 512x384 and it worked perfectly.
By the way – it is (or will be) possible to watch live broadcast-to-air (non-cable) television on your Zire with the use of an SDIO TV card plugged into your SD card slot, such as this one. Unfortunately the only simple cards I know of are for PocketPC, and the only one I know for Palm is designed to pick up 1Seg broadcasts (Japan only). They are also rather expensive (In the $200 range).
Thanks for the tip! As soon as we get a chance (most likely when we move), it’ll get unearthed from the “kitchen chaos” pile in the garage to be cleaned and inspected. Apparently the bowl still exists, but there’s probably alginate dried up in it.
gardentraveler: We haven’t named ours yet. It’s one of those ugly off-white/yelllow sort of colors. Might call it Butters or something equally silly. Depends on what it gets used for most. Thanks for the breadmaking tip. Luckily enough, Acid Lamp knows about making basic doughs from scratch without a book. I’ll catch on quickly enough.
Mindfield, both of your recent posts just barely went over my head. I had a good idea of what you were talking about, but, man, I could not do that myself without having an instructional person to supervise me so I don’t electrocute myself.
I’m so glad it’s Friday. After work, I get to go to the bank (and pick up a cashier’s check for deposit) and drive up to the Orlando area. Then on Saturday, I get to check out the house, fill out the last bit of paperwork, pay the deposit, and go shopping for the minimum required furniture pieces that we’ll need. I was so excited last night that I had a hard time getting to sleep. Of course, this was 'cause I bottled up my excitement (which nearly pushed my lunch back up) all afternoon at work. I’m still excited, but I got some of it out last night so I’m not so jittery.
Even though I’ve never lived by myself in anything bigger than an apartment, I still have managed to collect more kitchen items in cubic feet than clothes that I own. It all started out like this, though; I had the best-stocked “kitchen supply” area out of any of the kids I knew freshman year, including those that lived in apartments with more storage than my tiny shared dorm room. The silly thing is, it’s my mother that keeps buying me more things. She’s pretty happy to come home with more little kitchen doo-dads and gadgets for me. 
I may very well die with the most kitchen stuff if this pattern keeps up.
Driveby post - Happy Friday everyone! Yesterday my friends and I did a belated bday celebration, and today a handful of us are driving down to Peoria to get away for the weekend. See y’all Sunday! Appropriate hugs and kisses and noises to all.
Heh. My mother does the same thing, even though I’ve never really lived on my own except for four months last year. Our attic is full of kitchen gadgets that my mom has bought me. We’re actually using my microwave now, though, since the one at home died mysteriously. In fact, several kitchen things bought originally for me have been pressed into service of late. :dubious:
It’s a very slow work day. I have basically been told that I can fool around all day if I wish. Some clients are coming to pick up stuff, and when the boss comes in this afternoon, I’m sure he’ll have something for me to do. Other than that, nothing. So what am I doing? Posting to the Dope, sending songs to MOTM, and contemplating the order of a certain female-type product what I heard about here often–the DivaCup.
So haze, pray tell, when did Peoria become a getaway spot???
My goodness, who IS actually going to do Monday? Did jah actually apply for the job or was she railroaded? How bout all three? That would be Jake.
The people at Posadas are idiots. No, I’m sorry, they are. We are trying to put together press kits for them for a big event in NYC starting Tuesday. All we asked them to do is to send us the press kit folders. For those who don’t know, a press kit folder is a simple two pocket folder that usually has a slot for a business card. What we “got” is a stack of 9x12 envelopes. Envelopes! Complete with glue. Maroons!!!
So eff em, their press kit’s going 21st century (entire thing on a CD). Thankew!
TGIF!
Tupug
I would just like to register my drool. 
I subscribe to the theory that the one who dies with the most kitchen gadgets wins. Although, after lusting for a breadmaker literally for YEARS, now that I have one, I’ve never used it. (It came as part of the New Husband Package v. 2.0) Damn carbs and Advancing Middle Age.
Speaking of which, remember the pigeon pose I told y’all I did in yoga this week? This is it.
:eek: Ouch!
Yanno, I’m young enough and probably flexible enough to do that, but it’s not gonna look too pretty. 
:eek: I should get back to doing yoga and other such exercise-related things. At least packing and unpacking in less than a month’s time will help out on the exercise quotient. Running around like a chicken with your head cut off always burns more calories than being a couch spud.
