BeMused

While publishing the link to Long Way Down over under Quick Bits there, I noticed that I’d passed the 200 posts mark. That’s since I started using WordPress. I’ve been blogging since before it was blogging. I have posts on my computer back home from 1997. 10 years. Wow. You’d think I’d have something, if not important, at least stimulating to say in all that time. Nope.

There are currently 201 posts
In those posts there are 277 comments
All contained within 10 categories.

And Spammers have tried to spam my blog a whopping 13,571 times. Lord only knows why.

Long Way Down

There is a decided lack of color in my life as of late. This has been very much in evidence over the past few days as we’ve not seen the sun in almost a week. We’ve had gray, cloudy, Oregon-coast like weather, unseasonably cool, but blessedly wet (we’re in a drought right now. We need the rain!). It seems as if this blandness in colors has been carried into my life.

I guess it’s obvious that this site is rather bland - pale, vague hints at colors, if that. The yellow in the background is muted, and the rest of the colors are various shades of grey, with the exception of the links. We’re doing better in our real-world life; we have some nice reds in the house - but our bedroom has white walls, and my basement has light brown wall paper. Nothing exciting, nothing invigorating. I want something that pops!

I’ve been a member over at ColourLovers for some time, and I enjoy creating palettes. I wonder how some of my favorites would look in either a website, or as a color combination down in my basement or my bedroom;

While this one has browns, it has the nice contrasting blue in it as well. Might look good on a site, probably not so much in my basement or in my bedroom (unless I did the walls in a light tan and got all new linens in blue for my bed).

The greens are nice in this, and I think they contrast nicely with the grays, but again I think it’d be better for the website than a bedroom. In my basement, I might think I was in a fish tank.

Just kidding…

Some nice browns and oranges here, but again, I see it more of a website color than a bedroom color. The basement would be brightened considerable done in an orange.

This one I could see on both - on a website it has the nice neutral colors, with good contrast, nothing to bland or dull in my opinion. I would also put these colors in my bedroom or basement, more likely the lighter shades on the wall.

Some color links:

• ColourLovers
• Color Wizard
• Color Scheme Generator
• Color Palette Generator
• Color Jack
• Kuler

That’s just a few - there’s tons out there. And as you can see from my palette selects, I suck at colors. I need help.

The Horror of Blimps

Since starting this job, I’ve been on the Windows platform probably 98% of the time now. Between here at work, and using Gail’s laptop at the house (Vista, ew!), I rarely find myself using my Mac. Part of that has to do with the fact that I don’t have a Powerbook anymore, and can’t work at the dining room table like I prefer. I at least feel in touch if one of the kids or Gail needs my attention for something, rather than have them yell down into the basement, where my G4 is.

Well, this past weekend, Gail was gone for most of Saturday, the kids were out and about, so I took the time to work on a new website for a friend. I probably spent a total of 12 hours over the past two days on the Mac, holed up in my basement, listening to iTunes, using Textmate and Transmit, and the occasional game of poker online.

Now, Monday and back at work, I find myself using all the wrong shortcut keys, looking for the minimize in the upper left rather than upper right, and hitting the F11 key for Expose among other Mac-centric stuff. It’s amazing that after 5 months using mostly windows, it only takes me a weekend to revert back to how my Mac feels.

I miss my Powerbook. Anyone want to spring for a new MacBook Pro for me? Call it an early Birthday/Christmas present? C’mon, I know you all have an extra $3,000 laying around…

*sigh*

I do web development for banks, as most of you know by now. We host approximately sixty banks, from small credit unions to larger ones you’ve probably heard of.

My second day on the job, I was tasked with updating one of those larger banks - Discover Financial (you know, Discover Credit Cards?). Being a complete noob at the time where ASP is concerned, I was diligently checking my work. I pushed the changes, reloaded the website and was greeted with “Include file not found” - and that was it. The complete Discover Financial website was down, by my own hand.

I panicked.

A quick ‘undo’ didn’t alleviate the problem, so I literally ran to my boss’s pod, jumping from one foot to the other, hands flapping like I’m trying to take off saying “Emergency! Emergency!”

She was on the phone and said “uh…let me call you back.” I quickly explained what happened, but in the explanation, figured it out, and fixed the problem. The site was down maybe all of two minutes, and we received zero calls about it.

Today, some five months later, my boss was having a problem with an ASP login script. I took a look, and in 10 seconds had it fixed.

I’m learning…

Cool Wooden Bike

I like to mess in Photoshop, but I’ve not been able to in awhile. We had Photoshop CS3 here at work, but because of a snafu in licensing issues, I had to go back to CS, which quite frankly, is probably more than I actually need. Want is a different matter all together.

While reading Valerie’s site, I found a picture of a trowel she’d taken*. I thought it was a not only an interesting picture, but one that I could mess with in Photoshop a bit, and see what I could come up with.

I decide to orientate it going from lower left to upper right, and then used Curves, Levels, Brightness & Contrast and the Burn tool to bring out some of the highlights, as well as color correction to bring out more of the red in the bricks. I liked how blue the metal of the trowel came out.

It’s mostly just a fun experiment. Unfortunately, the monitor here at work sucks balls and the color isn’t the best on it. I’ve noticed when I’ve gone home and looked at stuff on my monitors at home (most noticeably, my palettes from colourlovers.com) that the colors are all wonky. I’m hoping to get a new LCD here at work eventually - but I’m not holding my breath.

*naturally, the copyright for the picture goes to Valerie herself

Saturday was spent down in my basement again, and trying to clean up the mess that’s my office/computer area. I’m wanting to recycle all the old computer stuff that I can, so I spent the time sorting hardware that can be recycled from stuff that can’t. It’s amazing what I’ve collected over the last 14 years or so that I’ve been messing with computers. I have 5 towers, 2 laptops, 2 Zip drives, 1 Jazz drive, a bunch of modems (I found a 14.4 internal modem if you can believe that), not to mention a plethora of cables. Some I can use, some I can sell, some I can recycle, a lot are getting tossed (apparently I have a soft spot in my heart for phone cords. Lord knows why, but I had 30+ phone cords…all tangled up).

I have a couple of those big Rubbermaid containers that I kept those cables in. And with the exception of half a dozen or so, all the cables were tangle in a heap in there. Phone cords, SCSI cables, power cables, power bricks, MIDI cables, Compact Flash Drives, even a hand-held scanner. All tangled together. It probably took me 3 hours to untangle it all. In between this, I was getting Cody’s computer back to a working state (nothing a format and re-install can’t handle…), and looking over at the bookcases, deciding which books to toss. Some are horribly out of date.

Sunday was spent in the same manner, this time in the garage. We cleaned it out, tossed a bunch of crap, and then moved everything back in. Right in the middle of the day when it was like 94 degrees outside. That was just dumb. So Gail and I camped on the couch the rest of the afternoon while the kids were occupied and watch Casino Royale, and had chips and salsa and queso and beer. Not a bad way to wind down.

A Gentlemens’ Duel