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Before Fat Tuesday ends, I want to say happy Mardi Gras! Congratulations to the unsinkable city of New Orleans for showing such courage in the face of adversity. I have no doubt that Mardi Gras, and soon JazzFest, is just the beginning! (here's a great set of photos from the BBC) |
Recently, I had a tiff with UPS. They delivered an expensive and important package to the wrong address where a completely unknown-to-me human signed for it. Oops! It was the most frustrating conversation because it took me about 15 minutes just to get to a human. By the time I got to the human, I was seething mad. Really, customer service would benefit from eliminating all those stupid electronic voice systems - they just piss people off. I only ever call a customer service number if I'm desperate. I'm sure I'm not the only one. All that can now change - for many big firms you can now get directly to a human. There's a site out there for people like us called GetHuman. It has a database of the largest companies and tricks for getting directly to a human. It also has general guidelines to follow. It's a great little site!
Seriously - I love it.
There are things that are awful though, as far as ease of use. You have to sneak code into your profile - fairly complex CSS with some HTML thrown in. The code is all messy too. And a lot of the pages out on MySpace give me a headache. I'm trying to keep my sort of classy looking.
Anyway, why do I love it?
1. Because it's given me a place to post all those crazy internet memes. I get them and now I have a place to put them! (The blog part of MySpace)
2. Because I've "found" a YaYa or two again. I've missed some of these ladies a lot!
3. Most importantly, I've "found" my Parker's kids. To be more accurate, they found me! It's so great hearing from them and seeing what they're up to! I'm trying not to pass judgement. I was a freshman in college once too. ;-)
To me, he will always be a guest star on Scooby Doo.
Don Knotts passed away this weekend at the age of 81.
A month or so ago, I posted about my frustration with RoboHelp and the emergence of Madcap Flare, a new product for Help Authoring. I was also pretty unsure about Madcap Flare.
I downloaded a sneak peek, but I really couldn't decide how it felt. I'm very dependent on User Guides - I read them cover to cover - but the Sneak Peek didn't include the UG. I didn't find it very intuitive for the novice help author. (Many help authors hand code everything and avoid RoboHelp, or use RoboHelp and then re-code everything. I'm "novice" compared to them.)
I called their sales team twice, to speak about the support available. The sales guy repeatedly told me that I MUST purchase the $500 maintenance plan in order to get patches, hot fixes, etc, as well as the message boards. Now, I tend to avoid maintenance plans and focus on message boards as my primary means of support. To be cut off from message boards and hot fixes (on a 1.0 release software product) was just too much.
Couple of technology tidbits have caught my attention:
Courtesy of Kara ...
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Michelle -- [noun]: A person with a sixth sense for detecting the presence of goblins 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com |
So the problem with having two nicknames is that I never really know what name to use in these things. "Shelley" brought up the odd "Filled with bees." But "Shel" brought the deeply disturbing "Someone who falls into an outhouse and dies." You can see why I went with Michelle. Detecting goblins at least seems useful.
Truthfully, these are some awesome decisions to be making. First off, I have a conference in Orlando again at the end of March. This time we're going down before my conference (most likely) and going to Sea World. We'll have time to go to one other park as well, and I can't decide - Universal Studios or Universal Islands of Adventure?
We've been to IoA before - it was our first trip together back in 2000. But it was so much fun, it's tempting to go again. I know very little about Universal Studios. We just did MGM Studios this year, and it was overall pretty dull.
The other decisions ... Kevin only has so many vacation days this year. We used some for the cruise, others for Orlando and for an upcoming day at the races, and two more for an upcoming wedding on an inconvenient day. There are three trips we want to take as well, but only enough vacation days for two trips.
So what do you think?
Hawaii and Napa/Sonoma? or Hawaii and Key West? Keep in mind that we've been to both Wine Country and to Key West. In both places, we haven't seen half of what there is to see. Any thoughts?
Apple had a refurbished 512 MB iPod Shuffle today really cheap, so I ordered it. I'm hoping it will inspire me to go to the gym.
We saw this show last night. I'd been wanting to see it for years. It's a very happy show, with typically catchy Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes. It was possibly the most confused show I've ever seen - perhaps more suited to a talented high school stage. I could definitely see this as a show that Steven's high school should do. There was French music, calypso, Rock and Roll (Elvis as Pharoah), standard Broadway, flashbacks to Evita-ish music, cheerleading, disco, and many more types of music. All rolled into one cheesy, over-the-top show about a Biblical character.
This show was originally a short, pop "cantata" for kids written in 1968. It was revived in its current form in London in 1991 and on Broadway, with Donny Osmond, in 1992. It was a smash hit. It remains really short - maybe 90 minutes with intermission. The first act is only 45 minutes. And I think it remains aimed at kids.
Continue reading "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" »
A road sign outside of a school in England misspelled "grammar." It's a great little story:
So, MySpace remains fascinating to me. Today, however, it began to border on a little creepy. I got an email from a guy who lives in the area and he wanted to say hi. Except that his spelling was bad, not a scary message, right? Then this line:
I was wondering if you are married and looking?
*SNORT* That made me laugh lots!
"... married and looking?" I supposed that would be the short version of married with a guy on the side? Egads! Can you imagine hunting down married people to have affairs with? What a load of stress and trouble!
What's particularly funny is that it not only says "married" in my profile, but most of the photos I finally managed to post include Kevin.
Anyway, I was floored by that request, and I'm not even going to bother to answer it. What an idiot! But wow ... I didn't even know "married and looking" was a category.
WritersUA announced the results of their annual salary survey. WritersUA (Writers of User Assistance) is a group - a HUGE group - of technical writers, help authors, and trainers.
As far as contractors go, I fall squarely in the middle. This is good, because it means I'm right where I should be for an hourly rate and not over-charging my clients. However, the contractors are lagging behind the salaried employees by a fair amount. The reasoning is that people like me aren't in it for the money, but for the personal benefits, such as working at home and never seeing a cubicle again. Both are definitely high on my list.
Salaried professionals are making a fair clip, and there's a decent chance, considering what I was making in 2003 at a "real" job, that I would fall in line or slightly under that amount if I was still in my previous position. Ohio is about $10K under the national average though. I was particularly enthralled by the numbers in Chicago and Northern California (both places I'd like to live). I realize the salaries are higher because of the cost of living. However, I also know that compared to what I make as a contractor, salaries are unbelievably high. It'd be an extra infusion of cash no matter how you look at it.
Not that I'm in a hurry to return to the cubicle. In truth, I don't know that I could. There are only a couple of companies out there that I think I'd be willing to work for full-time, and none are local. Now, if a Google outpost crops up in Cincinnati, I'd probably jump at that.
Here's a thought for you: If there was a position open in a faraway land, say, Switzerland, would you apply? It would mean leaving your family and friends, experiencing a whole new culture, immersion in new languages, a large and costly int'l move ... Would it be worth it? My answer is yes, but I was wondering how other folks felt.
(Not that I'm heading to Switzerland or anything, just musing.)
Thank you for becoming my MySpace friends. The social networking thing fascinates me - the chain of people ... 6 degrees of separation will soon become too many I think. It's amazing the people I just found on MySpace with just a few clicks. High school, college, kids I've taught dance to, awesome women I've lost touch with ... all out there on MySpace with a click or two. And all connected in one way or another.
The MySpace tools? Still primitive.
I lost a second post on Cellar Tracker yesterday. Basically I discovered a "spirits" category, where our Bourbon, Brandy, and Kevin's Scotch now happily reside. I also discovered the abillity to download the entire cellar & reports into a "live" Excel spreadsheet. It's pretty cool to be able to access the cellar at any point in time, whether locally on on the web. I'm probably more excited about the tool than I am our wine.
Suffering from work-related avoidance issues again. The good news? The client liked the course outlines I put together. Now I have to put together the courses ...
One last thing before I'm off to the Land of Work - my sister emailed me today. She is doing a group project for Freshman English on Structural Criticism (which apparently sucks the fun out of literature). She needed help understanding it and ideas for a presentation. I sent her to Wikipedia and suggested she do a multimedia presentation comparing/contrasting scenes in West Side Story and Romeo + Juliet (the Wikipedia example) and throwing in some of those stupid formulas (I don't like this theory at all) as well. I also told her to verify that her prof will let her use Wikipedia as one of her sources. Anyway, if anyone else has ideas for resources or presentation ideas, leave them in the comments. I imagine this project is sort of scaring her.
I spent some time this afternoon fooling around with MySpace. Granted, there's a part of me that feels slightly too old for MySpace, but I suspect that's due to the crazy publicity of teenage girls loving the site. Anyway, I'm thinking it's going to be around for a while, so I ought to be familiar with it. Plus, I'm fascinated by online social networks.
I'm having MySpace issues though. It won't let me in to my profile to edit things, make my page look less bland, etc, due to an "error". Repeatedly. Plus, the upload tool for photos won't work for me either. Also, an "error." So my page is bland and boring right now. Their blog tools are also rather, um, primitive. I'm sticking right here as far as blogging goes.
My MySpace is also lonely. If you have a MySpace account (or want one), get your butt over there and become my "friend." I have none, other than the obligatory guy they give everyone when you sign up.
Shel's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/wrtgirl
Not surprisingly, I celebrate Valentine's Day. Hell, I celebrate every holiday - I love the inherent cheesiness apparent in most holiday celebrations anymore.
I know everyone complains that V-Day is a "Hallmark holiday," but guess what? It's not!
Kevin and I have started to acquire a rather unwieldy wine collection. There are wines everywhere! Upstairs, downstairs, in boxes ... OK, so we need a second wine refrigerator - possibly one that will hold whites and reds. We have over 80 bottles. I realize that by real world standards that's small, but still I'm impressed. I had no idea. A good number of those are aging, with the furthest Drink By date being 2016, so they'll be sitting in the wine fridge for a while.
My tasting notes are all crazy too. I keep them in a Tasting Notebook, complete with wine label. But there's really no rhyme or reason to the notebook either, and no simple way to find out what we drank and if we liked it.
Enter Cellar Tracker. I had originally tried to create an Access database, but that didn't work out very well. I didn't find Access user friendly and I didn't have the time to learn more about it. But Cellar Tracker does the same thing - it organizes our wine. It lists everything we have cellared, plus tasting notes for everything we have consumed. It has most wines already entered - I just have to enter in the purchase location/cost and any personal notes I might have before (or after) drinking.
I'm so sad for Michelle Kwan. However, I really admire her decision - it had to be the toughest decision she's ever made, and will result with her never capturing the gold. But I also believe she did the right thing.
Michelle Kwan means more to the United States Olympic Committee than maybe any athlete that's ever performed for the United States Olympic Committee," said Peter Ueberroth, chairman of the USOC.
She's definitely a skating icon. And her career isn't over - now she just turns pro (and stays off of shows like Skating with Celebrities). I imagine she has a future in skating, coaching, and sports comentating.
Michelle Kwan always exhibited a wondrous grace on the ice; at times the artistry of her skating moved me to tears. Today she succeeded in moving me to tears again, as she displayed another sort of grace in her decision. I believe she represents the ideal traits of an Olympic athlete. Perhaps she will be recalled more for her excellent skating and grace in adversity than as the skater who never captured the Gold.
Well, we purchased a vacuum cleaner. Everyone I tell laughs when I tell them this, but I took my impossible IKEA area rug to Best Buy and vacuumed it with the floor samples. We tried the Dyson DC07 and the Vax X5. I don't know if there was too much of a difference. They both picked up stuff the other had missed. They also both picked up tons of stuff. I've never seen machines with so much suction.
We ended up with the Vax because it seemed to perform as well as the Dyson, but happens to be $100 cheaper.This is a $300 vacuum cleaner. I expect a lot out of it.
We get it home and I'm blown away by how well it's cleaning the carpet. However, I put it on our hardwood floors and nothing. It's not sucking up a thing.
I'm going to try it again today. In fact, I have 30 days in which I can try it before I have to take it back to Best Buy and get the Dyson. It was hard enough spending $300 on a vacuum; it'll be really difficult to drop $400 on the Dyson. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I did something wrong somewhere and that the Vax will work on the hardwood floors today.
Update: Okay - I did the hardwood today, and then the carpets in my office and had no problem whatsoever. Here's hoping the Vax is a keeper.
Did I mention it has a scented filter as well as the HEPA filter? When I vacuum, the whole house smells like cinnamon (or whatever scented filter I use).
Last night Kevin took me out for a very tasty Valentine's Day dinner. We went to a new restaurant called The Napa Grille. It's in the Hyde Park Regency, where J's Seafood was once located.
They have an extensive wine selection, and you can even order flights of wine. We tried a flight of Pinot Noirs (California, Oregon, and Burgundy) and a flight of Napa Valley Whites. Of the flights, I was particularly taken by the St. Clement Chardonnay (2004) and the Trefethen Gewurtzraminer (2004). We also had a Cakebread Sauv. Blanc, but it just didn't resonate like the other two. The Pinot Noir that really jumped out was the Willamette Valley Hangtime (2004). I ordered a glass of it to go with my meal. Kevin had a New Zealand Matua Sauv. Blanc (2005) with his meal, recommended by the waiter, that was also really good.
Dessert was heavenly. A trio of creme brulee, and a decadent flourless
chocolate cake. For me, always, the entreee is just a way of getting to
dessert. I rarely enjoy my entrees, but I always enjoy my dessert.
Really, I just need the dessert and wine and I could skip the entree
entirely.
The entrees were excellent, even if I did prefer
I used to get really into the Winter Olympics. It started in college, duing the Lillehammer games, when Pam & I lived together. We would stay up late and watch the end of the games after we got home from our various jobs/play practice/etc. Then we'd watch David Letterman because we loved the Dave's Mom segment, where Mrs. Letterman reported from the Olympics. (Because of this I still have a huge affection for Dave's Mom.) Then we'd stay up a little later and watch Bob Costas recap the games.
I continued that tradition long after Pam and I ended up in different states and graduated college. This year, though, I cannot seem to get into the games. I'm can't seem to get excited about many of the athletes or their stories.
I am still obsessed about competitive figure skating though, which is something that has fascinated me for a long time. It's like ballroom and ballet combined and on ice. I love it. I've read about. I've studied it. When I was a little girl, I had a Dorothy Hamill doll and a Dorothy Hamill haircut. My absolute favorite skater is Michelle Kwan. There was always something extra graceful about her - I guess I've never seen such effortless grace combined with such intense technical accuracy. (Also, love those Vera Wang designed skating dresses.) But she's never really had good luck at the Olympics.
This year, she came back for her 3rd Olympics at the old-figure-skating-age of 25. Her body is beat up and you can actually watch her fight through the pain
Did you know that the reason the waiter presents one person at your table with a pour of wine, before continuing to pour both glasses, is that you are supposed to verify the wine is not bad? Okay - your average Joe doesn't know that. Until about a year ago, I didn't know that either. (If you did, you are apparently not your Average Joe.) I always thought it was to see if you approved of the wine, if it smelled good and/or swirled good.
Not so much.
That "pre-pour," as I call it, is your chance to see if the wine is "corked." A corked wine suffers from TCA, or cork taint, which basically leads to wine gone bad. TCA is why you'll see more and more wineries, particularly the upstarts, using fake corks or even screwcaps. (We bought an excellent Chardonnay at Plumpjack last summer, and they gave us a choice: screwcap or cork. We chose screwcap.)
Anyway, it looks like technology is on the way to make that pre-pour easier on those of us without the sensitive nose required to sense TCA.
Electronic nose vapor sensors are printed arrays of transistors that can detect ambient chemicals and odors and then alert a consumer if the internal contents of a medicine bottle or bottle of wine have changed. Thus, if acetic acid has begun to build, sensors will send a signal that the wine is going sour before you inadvertently give it the thumbs up at tasting.
If they can succeed at making these cheaply, they'll have a very successful little product on their hands.
I can't believe I haven't seen more about this in the news. Feminist pioneer and author of the feminist classic, The Feminine Mystique, has passed away. Betty Friedan was 85 and died in her home of congestive heart failure.
She co-founded the National Organization of Women (NOW) and helped found NARAL; both groups are still very involved in politics and women's rights on a global scale. It's a fair statement to say that Betty Friedan helped change the world. She didn't advocate "feminazism" of the 70's. Instead, she helped women understand that it was okay to be smart and to challenge their own intellect. She helped women understand that their choices were more than society girl, housewife, or flight attendant. And that's cool, because I'd make a lousy flight attendant.
Current NOW President Kim Gandy said Friedan's "Feminine Mystique" book "opened women's eyes.
"Betty recognized a longing in the women of her generation, a longing for something more -- opportunity, recognition, fulfillment, success, a chance to live their own dreams beyond the narrow definition of 'womanhood' that had limited their lives," Gandy said in a statement on NOW's Web site.
I've been meaning to post about this for a few days and have managed to keep the Firefox tabs open with the links. I'm low on time right now though - so quick and simple.
Gov't staffers have been modifying Wikipedia entries. Now, on it's own, that's not a bad statement. It's that, among other things, they've been "vandalising" and using a negative or positive point of view in the modifications. Wikipedia insists (rightly so) on a neutral Point of View for entires. It is, after all, an encyclopedia.
Following my own personal superstitions, and dressed in team spirit all day, I can proudly cheer for my Steelers. I'm extra happy for Jerome Bettis who can retire now having acquired a Super Bowl ring and having kissed that Lombardi trophy. I'm also happy for Big Ben - because he's just a cutie. I guess he'll be shaving that beard tomorrow.
And you know what? I'm thrilled - THRILLED! - that the Steelers pulled off a Super Bowl win while I still actually care a little about football. Last time they won a Super Bowl, I was too young to care. Last time they went to the Super Bowl, Dallas destroyed them and I watched sadly in a room full of Dallas fans!
After the game, we finally cracked open my MacFarlane Toys Jerome Bettis "action figure". He's been in the package all season and when it came down to it tonite, silly superstition reared it's head and I left him in the package throughout the game.
Not up for the Super Bowl? Ben Roethlisburger just not cute enough for you? That's okay. From 3 pm until midnight you can continuously watch the 3-hour Puppy Bowl II on Animal Planet, including the All-Kitten Halftime Show. (Watch video clips here.) I've flipped over and it's cute and hilarious, but even I have a limit. It's puppies playing with each other and toys - for 3 hours. Non-stop. Definitely gives you the warm fuzzies.
Hey - did anyone else see the repeated Jessica Simpson Pizza Hut commercials during the pre-game shows? I was just completely tired of Jessica when suddenly, it was Miss Piggy, in the same commercial and it was suddenly really funny. Go Piggy! If I remember, I'll hunt it down and link to it tomorrow.
I've decided that I'm going to post our tasting notes for some of the wines we taste. We already record our tasting notes in a notebook, and I'm trying to learn Access to create my database of our tasting notes (needless to say, Access is not intuitive to the dbase-clueless like myself).
I'm starting out these Tasting Notes with a fun Cabernet Sauvignon for under $10. Usually we drink in the $15 - $50 price ranges, but I read about this and was intrigued.
Three Thieves 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon - California. Bottled in Oakville (Napa). $9.99 - purchased at the local Cork and Bottle.
Read on for our "review."
We're in the market for a new vacuum cleaner. Back when I had cats, I destroyed several vacuum cleaners - including Kevin's - sucking up cat hair. We're still using Kevin's old vacuum cleaner that has never regained its suction, even after the kitties have passed.
I have a lot of area rugs in the house, which are always a challenge for vacuum cleaners anyway. One of the rugs - our hallway runner from IKEA - refuses to respond to a vacuum. In fact, both of our IKEA rugs have an aversion to easily being vacuumed. I also have the beautiful Persian rug that I couldn't bear to have ripped apart by a vacuum cleaner. Finally, we have the hard-wood floors that I don't want scratched, but would like to be able to vacuum in order to pick up the stuff that I don't get with the broom.
So we've narrowed it down to two high-end vacuum cleaners. We're currently looking at the low-end (hah!) Dyson All Floors and the Vax USA X5. Both are originally British vacuum cleaners. I've been hunting down reviews on both and here are some of my concerns.
When it comes to work, I tend to avoid what I don't understand. This leads to procrastination and often tears. (Yeah, I know.)
Right now I have my gigantic manufacturing client. Earlier in the month, I had shock. I had thought they would be providing me with course outlines. I would then be fleshing out the outlines using provided SOPs, and then creating the storyboards and dropping it into the course delivery software. I was fine with this, and created the proposal based on that information. Although I said "predefined outlines" in the proposal, that apparently wasn't enough. I am now working for very cheap, as none of the hours creating the outlines are included in the accepted proposal. It starts with Storyboarding.
(Curses! I learn a little more about proposals everytime I write one - basically that there is always SOMETHING I forget or incorrectly assume or state unclearly). Anyway, the guy who led me to believe all this left the company at some point between when I submitted the proposal and when it was accepted. (Since I saw him as my main contact and the man capable of translating engineer-ese into Shel-talk, I am rather irritated.) The now-gone executive had led me to believe that these outlines already existed. Now he's gone and guess what? No outlines. I've been freaking out for three weeks about the fact that I have to write these outlines about stuff I, quite frankly, don't understand the subject matter. I get it all on a broad level, but it's all the little nuances that come from working in the plant for so long that I don't get. And I don't have tons of access to those folks either.
So I'm supposed to go back up there tomorrow to take photos. And guess what - today - yes today - I called and said "Help!" I asked one of the guys to just sit down with me and help me put one of these together. My theory is that once I can get one or two of these outlines together, it might all start to make sense.
Alternatively, I could give them a lousy outline (one of the ones that has thus far made me throw a book of useless SOPs across the room) and ask them to fill in the blanks. I don't think that would make a great impression though.
It doesn't help that this plant is paper-based. They don't seem to save anything electronically - they just print and copy hard-copy documents. So anything I want to cut and paste from I either have to scan in and convert to Word via PDF or manually type in. ARGH!
My level of frustration is very very high.
Alright - so I've only read excerpts and reviews of the State of the Union address. I can't get through the whole thing in depth. And I know I said I wouldn't blog on it. However, I have to say that this sort of stands out:
Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms; creating or implanting embryos for experiments; creating human-animal hybrids;
WTF? Human animal Hybrids? Where did he get this? Is it him, or are his speech writers just insane? And to think, I spent a good part of my childhood wanting to be a presidential speechwriter. Argh! I have to point out [the original] Wonkette's take on this statement, as she was live-blogging the speech:
9:57 PM “Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research – human cloning in all its forms … creating or implanting embryos for experiments … creating human-animal hybrids” OMG HUMAN-ANIMAL HYBRIDS! BUSH SAYS NO TO WEREWOLVES. HEAR THAT CONGRESS? The man is taking a stand. To repeat: Hybrid cars: Good. Hybrid human-animals: Bad.
There's nothing that gets me more than a dog story. I found this via Wonkette today (although the story is old news apparently). Rex was a bomb-sniffing German Shepherd (my favorite) in Iraq. He & his human partner, Jamie, were caught in an explosion. He suffered a slightly burnt nose, but she was seriously injured. Her last thoughts before slipping into a coma were of the dog.
Rex was brought to her in the hospital and his presence helped her heal. She sought to adopt Rex, I assume as she was discharged from the military (not sure on that) and was told that because he still had several good years left in him, she could not. There was an outpouring of support - which I missed or I would have poured out as well - and Congress actually passed a law allowing the adoption of military animals in extraordinary circumstances, such as this. Rex now lives with Jamie, her husband, and their other pets.
I don't tell it as well as this page or this page. They made me cry.
Interestingly, Rex and Jamie were supposed to be in the First Lady's box at the State of the Union last night. I don't know if they were, though. After all, where would the dog sit?
For once, I applaud Congress. Our military animals work hard and deserve good homes. They also help our people heal and can continue to do that once adopted.
David Allen: Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Craig Ferguson: Between the Bridge and the River
I'm hoping that Craig will compare to Christopher Moore. I love Craig's extemporaneous monologues on his show.
Christopher Moore: A Dirty Job
And speaking of Christopher Moore - his newest will arrive on my doorstep shortly.
