No shopping!

I was browsing over on Blame it on the Voices, and I came across a version of this letter and I just had to blog about it.  I don’t know how much truth is in it, and I really don’t care – the thought of the husband doing even 1 of these things just cracked me up.  Lord knows I hate shopping, but if I liked it, and was bound and determined to take my husband with me, and he behaved like this guy, I think I’d change my mind and leave him home.  Clearly the guy doesn’t want to be there!  Then I’d probably think about divorcing the guy because if he’s going to act like a spoiled 12 year old just because he doesn’t like to go shopping with me, then he’s got bigger problems than I signed on for.  Just sayin’! 

In other news, I have my 1st post up at my new recipes blog, called “Nessipes.”  Clever, no?  Uh, no … I know.  I hope to post to it once or twice a week, maybe put some cooking tips on there too.  If you have any recipes or tips you’d like to share, please do!  And let me know what you think of the blog in general – it’s still in the “under construction” phase, but I thought simple was best. 

~~Ness~~ 

 

Her Diamonds

Rob Thomas reads my blog, I’m sure of it now. 

I was cruising around on the Comcast OnDemand music section – which left a lot for me to desire, that’s for sure.  I only found one Aerosmith video.  The moment I started it, and Steven Tyler started singing, my husband – who was at the computer with his back to the TV – said, “What’s that horrible sound?”  My amazing boy replied, “I think he’s a good singer.”  Vindication. 

Anyway, I found this new video by Rob Thomas and it really touched me.  It reminded me of a post I did some time ago in which I included a portion of one of my private journal entries where I likened tears to sparkling jewels.  Rob always gets me.  I don’t know how he can have such a grasp of human nature and emotion but in my mind, he’s an amazing talent.

Without further ado, one of my new favorites.  Enjoy! 

Rob Thomas Her Diamonds Music Video

OH WHAT THE HELL SHE SAYS
I JUST CAN’T WIN FOR LOSING
AND SHE LAYS BACK DOWN
MAN THERE’S SO MANY TIMES
I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOIN’
LIKE I DON’T KNOW NOW

BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON
SHE RUBS HER EYES
SAYS IT’S FUNNY HOW THE NIGHT
CAN MAKE YOU BLIND
I CAN JUST IMAGINE
AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M SUPPOSED TO DO
BUT IF SHE FEELS BAD THEN I DO TOO
SO I LET HER BE

AND SHE SAYS OOOH
I CAN’T TAKE NO MORE
HER TEARS LIKE DIAMONDS ON THE FLOOR
AND HER DIAMONDS BRING ME DOWN
CUZ I CAN’T HELP HER NOW
SHE’S DOWN IN IT
SHE TRIED HER BEST AND NOW SHE CAN’T WIN IT’S
HARD TO SEE THEM ON THE GROUND
HER DIAMONDS FALLING DOWN

SHE SITS DOWN AND STARES INTO THE DISTANCE
AND IT TAKES ALL NIGHT
AND I KNOW I COULD BREAK HER CONCENTRATION
BUT IT DON’T FEEL RIGHT

BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON
SHE RUBS HER EYES
SITS DOWN ON THE BED AND STARTS TO CRY
AND THERE’S SOMETHING LESS ABOUT HER
AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M SUPPOSED TO DO
SO I SIT DOWN AND I CRY TOO
AND DON’T LET HER SEE

AND SHE SAYS OOOH
I CAN’T TAKE NO MORE
HER TEARS LIKE DIAMONDS ON THE FLOOR
AND HER DIAMONDS BRING ME DOWN
CUZ I CAN’T HELP HER NOW
SHE’S DOWN IN IT
SHE TRIED HER BEST AND NOW SHE CAN’T WIN IT’S
HARD TO SEE THEM ON THE GROUND
HER DIAMONDS FALLING DOWN

SHE SHUTS OUT THE NIGHT
TRIES TO CLOSE HER EYES
IF SHE CAN FIND DAYLIGHT
SHE’LL BE ALL RIGHT
SHE’LL BE ALL RIGHT
JUST NOT TONIGHT

AND SHE SAYS OOOH
I CAN’T TAKE NO MORE
HER TEARS LIKE DIAMONDS ON THE FLOOR
AND HER DIAMONDS BRING ME DOWN
CUZ I CAN’T HELP HER NOW
SHE’S DOWN IN IT
SHE TRIED HER BEST AND NOW SHE CAN’T WIN IT’S
HARD TO SEE THEM ON THE GROUND
HER DIAMONDS FALLING DOWN

Quick!

I need blog fodder!  Seriously, you have no idea. 

See, before my computer died, I had my beloved Windows Live Writer set up with about 200 drafts in the drafts folder.  It was one of the things that helped me get my posts set up so that I could “future post” all kinds of stuff – and not just for this blog but also for my political and faith blogs.  I could browse my drafts and get ideas.  Now that’s all gone and I’m lost!  Lost, I tells ya! 

Now I feel like I’m blogging on the fly and I don’t think I like it.  I’m a planner and organizer and doing things on the fly bugs me.  I try to plan out as much as possible – sure, call me a control freak – and not being able to plan for things, even blog posts, makes me feel sort of … naked somehow.  Plus, sharing my beloved husband’s computer, I’m resistant to putting any more stuff on his than necessary.  He’s been such a sweetheart to me, not complaining even once about sharing his computer.  I got the “what’s mine is yours” line and really, how awesome is that?  He dismisses it as being one of those “that’s what husband’s do” kind of things but I can tell you, it’s not standard husband behavior that I’ve seen in the past in other husbands, so I like to show my appreciation when I can.  He deserves that much at least. 

Also, having to share a computer means I have to be quick about it.  That is so not me.  I’m prone to opening up Live Writer and just leaving it up during the day and adding things as they occur to me.  Now I can’t do that as much.  I try to be conscious of the fact that he needs his computer more than I do and I can’t just take over the thing.  So when I blog I have to blog quickly, and to be truthful, I’m just not that good on the fly.  I’m not one of those “witty in the moment” kinds of people.  Give me a year or 2 and I might be able to come up with something but quick with the comebacks, I’m not. 

Now you know.  *sigh*

So if you have any blog ideas, PLEASE pass them along in the comments!  I’ll be your best friend if you do! 

~~Ness~~

Wordle Word Cloud

This is my blog.  This is my blog on drugs.  Just kidding!  Actually, it’s a word cloud generated by a cool program found over at Wordle.  You click the create link, and put in the URL of your blog, and it will take your blog’s front page and make this nifty cloud for you.  You can pick the layout, the font, the colors, all kinds of neat stuff. 

I see this and think: Wanted! One Funny Criminal Perfectionist Love!  Amazingly, that’s just what I have, too. 

What does your blog say about you? 

Oh, be sure to use ctrl+print screen and then paste into Paint to get the image.  For some reason, utilities like FireShot won’t grab the image.  There’s a link over at Wordle to include your image in their gallery, but when I tried that and to use the code on my blog, it came out all blurry. 

Blogging Awards! Woo!

Blogging awards!  Yay!  What could be better for a blogger than an award?

Here are the award rules.

1. List six things that inspire your creativity

1. Music

2. Reading

3. Gardening

4. Spider Solitaire

5. Prayer

6. My family

2. Pass the award on to 6 more kreativ bloggers Can we re-award someone?  I don’t know … somehow, I think not.

1. Stranger – she’s charming!

2. What An Amateur – Casey makes me smile

3. Pink Sunshine – Pink makes me think

4. Seeking Faithfulness – Holly inspires me

5. A Womb at the InnSane – Kadi makes me laugh

6. Because I Said So – Dawn encourages me

3. Link back to the person who gave you the award

WIGSF and DarcKnyt Thank you!

4. Link to the people you are passing it on to and leave them a comment to let them know.

Um … They already know!  I think … okay, I’ll tell them. 

Live Writer SOS

I had a frustrating night and morning.  My Beloved Windows Live Writer blew up on me.  Can you imagine?  There are 2 programs that ARE my internet connection to the world: one is FireFox, the other is Windows Live Writer.  When I say blew up, I mean blew up.  I was working on a post, and when I clicked in the tags bar at the bottom, suddenly an error message popped up, about 40 times.  It just kept popping like one of those awful pop-up windows you used to get on websites.  I don’t know how many times I clicked the “Yes, notify Windows of this error!” button. 

I uninstalled Live Writer, tried to re-install it, was informed by the installer that it was already on my computer after I’d uninstalled it, ad nauseum.  I don’t know how many times I went through that process.  I went through the registry and deleted all the Live Writer things in there I could find.  I blew out the Live Writer folder, and still the installer told me I already had Live Writer installed.  Uninstall, reboot, uninstall, reboot, over and over.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  When I’d try to uninstall again, the add/remove programs thing told me there was nothing for me to uninstall.  Darc helped me find some other folders that also had Live Writer files in them so I blew those away too, and then I got Live Writer to open, instead of just flashing a splash screen at me.  I tell ya, it’s amazing I have any hair left. 

Yes, I considered begging Joe Cheng to charge in on a white Micro-horse to help me.  But, I felt really awkward about doing that.  Yes, I understand he’s a developer on Live Writer, at Microsoft.  But I don’t know him, and it just felt somehow tacky to me to go begging for help like that.  He’s a working guy, and a daddy with a wife and babies, and it just felt wrong to bug him with an email at 2 AM with my whiny little problem.  No doubt he’ll see all the error message things I sent in when I clicked that error button and if he ever sees this post, he’ll put 2+2 together and know it was me.    And I got it fixed with a little help from Darc, without harassing someone I don’t know.  Harassing people I do know, however, is another matter entirely.  Mwuhahahaha!  You have been forewarned!

I did copy my drafts folder though so I still have all those, but I’ve lost all my plug-ins and my auto-link list; I had dozens of things set up to auto-link so I didn’t have to do it manually every time.  Now I have to reinstall my plug-ins, and once more begin the laborious process of building up my auto-link library.  It’s been a Live Writer nightmare.  I am sad.  You all know how much I adore this program.  And no, I’m NOT going to ditch it now.  Crap happens, especially to computer software, and I have no idea what caused the blow-up last night, but today, Live Writer has been open all day long and has been sitting quietly in the background, minding its own business, just patiently waiting for me.  Part of me wonders if there was some hiccup with the Google Desktop thing I have, because once when I re-booted, the Google app didn’t open.  And it’s supposed to.  So, who knows what caused the crash.  It happens.  Life goes on.  I, and my Windows Live Writer, will recover.  At the very least, it forces me to dump those plug-ins I thought might be cool but never used.  And to be more diligent about backing it up.  At least it’s still pink, like I told it to be. 

Funny Search Terms

Here’s something I haven’t done in a while – Funny Search Engine terms!  Here are a few things that have popped up on my screen lately.  The things people search for – the folks at Google must be in stitches all the time. 

The Writing Month!

Image via Wikipedia

Many of your are familiar with NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, but how many of you have heard of NaBloPoMo?  National Blog Posting Month.  I just heard of it myself.  It’s pretty interesting.  Write a blog post every day for a month and possibly win a prize.  The cool thing is that this occurs every month, not just November. 

It’s still the 1st, so click the links and check them out.  You might find you like the challenge. 

(cross-posted at Writers Nesst)

 

 

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Right Behind Me

more lol celebs!

Bad thing for the Joker, good thing for me.  Being married to the DarcKnyt has its advantages, and knowing he’s behind me , beside me, every step of the way is a source of comfort. 

I’m almost through my Reader!  I’ve cleared through about 90% of the stuff I had backlogged.  Honestly, I have no idea how it got so backed up.  Yes, I added a couple more political blogs to it a few weeks ago, but I think I got involved in reading other things and put my Reader on hold.  Now, Darc’s solution was, “Who the hell cares?  Just blow it all away!”  But I couldn’t bring myself to do that.  I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything.  I’ve utilized some of the stuff I’ve read over on my own political blog too.  And now I’m almost done.    Woo for progress!

Closets next!

 

©DarcsFalcon

A Sleepy Typist

So, I got this new keyboard over the weekend and finally plugged it in Monday.  It’s sort of like a laptop keyboard in that it has a very low profile, and the keys don’t have much height to them.  It’s also slightly rubberized so that it’s much quieter than the keyboards that came with our computers.  I’ve noticed a thing or 2 though.  I’ve developed such crappy typing habits over the years that I barely know how anymore.  I got lazy with my wrists as I’d pound happily away.  Darc’s a loud typist too and I’m pretty sure it was his typing waking me up on weekends, just as mine probably disturbed his sleep in the evenings.  Plus, I learned to type on manual typewriters back in junior high in the 70’s, when you had to hit the keys REALLY hard.  Since this new keyboard is more compact, I’m hitting the edge of the board instead of the spacebar and it’s driving me nuts.  I feel like I have to learn how to type all over again.  Sigh.  Still, it’s a decent keyboard if noise is a problem for you and if you’re interested, you can find it at Wal-Mart.  It’s the black one from mi.

In other news … there is no other news.  I had a weird dream that I was being threatened for my political beliefs, probably the result of having coffee before bed.  This is America and that would never happen here.  Or in Missouri.  Right?  Right?  I guess Gov. Blunt is concerned about it too.  He must be drinking coffee before bed also.  Gov. Blunt Statement on Obama Campaign’s Abusive Use of Missouri Law Enforcement

But because of weird dreams, I woke up at 5:15 AM.  So now I’m totally sleep deprived.  I’m going to take a long bath – if you don’t hear from me tomorrow, I fell asleep in the tub. 

see more puppies

©DarcsFalcon

A Stalker’s Best Friend

more animals

Several moons ago, my husband ranted in one of his posts that he couldn’t figure out how to get more hits to his blog.  Someone unknown to him commented that they’d been reading through his fiction and loving it.  That person became a friend, our friend Raga. 

Well, I bugged her for months to get a blog, and not long ago, she finally did.  However, in a show of loyalty and support to my husband and his fiction work that brought her out of her lurker status, she calls herself, “KnytStalker.”  It’s a private joke between us now, but when she also created a DeviantArt page with the same name, some of my husband’s friends there thought for a moment she might be a real stalker.  We had a good laugh over that one.   

So when I saw this particular LOLcats, I knew I had to use it in a post dedicated to our beloved Raga, and tell her how much I love her, and am glad she’s my friend, and part of my life.  She’s loving, loyal, generous, helpful, dependable, funny, and kind.  Raga love, this one’s for you.    *hugs*

Why don’t you check out her blog and say hello? 

©DarcsFalcon

Sherri and Dwight …

For Sherri and Dwight:  Hurry back you guys!

 

How’s that for the guilts?   

Seriously, hope you’re doing okay.  Just wanted to let you know I missed ya.   

Did it work?

Random Thoughts

The weekend … it was an anniversary here in the Darc Household.  It was the anniversary of when Darc and I met, lo those many years ago.  It’s fun to recall those 1st days of meeting and knowing “this is the ONE for me!” 

There’s also a great lump in my football heart, and I’m sure I don’t need to explain why.  *Heavy sigh.*  No doubt by the time you read this it will be official, but for all intents and purposes, our season is over.  In the 1st quarter of the 1st game of the new season, it’s done.  Finis.  No Superbowl for us to look forward to this year.  No doubt you will all be grateful because this means you won’t have to hear us yelling and cheering for the next 5 months.  It also means less stress for us, since we won’t care about the games so much.  Except that the Jets. Must. Lose.  The Dolphins and the Giants too, for that matter.  But overall, I expect a ho-hum season now.  Go Pats?  Rah? 

I’ve been feeling inspired.  Not sure why, but I do.  As some of you know, I’m a pretty opinionated person.  Yeah, yeah, okay, strongly opinionated person.  Sheesh!  Cut a girl some slack!    I’ve been planning on making some new pages for my blog but I decided instead to create a couple of new blogs altogether, rather than simply pages added here.  Why blogs?  Well, that way I can post to them and have something ongoing as thoughts come to me, rather than static pages that I’d have to update.  And since Windows Live Writer can hold all my blogs in one place, it’s no big deal to switch to whichever blog I want to post to.  I do this already with my football pages, so, no big to add a couple more.  Also, they’re heated topics and I want to keep them separate from my day-to-day blog.  I’ll let you know when they’re up and running, if you’re interested.  (My football blogs – DarcNess2 & FootballNess) 

My plate is full.  I went through and chose potential winners for the vampire poetry contest over on DeviantArt.  I’ve been cleaning up the page I’m helping to moderate too and that’s going well.  A nice sense of accomplishment for me.    Darc and I have begun the edits on Ghost Hunters, so if you want to read it now’s the time, because when he’s done, he’s pulling it down.  He wants to give it time to clear out of the Google cache before submitting it to agents.  Hurry hurry and read it!  You’ll fall in love with JD, Dillon, and Wendy, I promise.    Just ask my good friend Raga.    Yay!  Raga has a blog now Raga has a blog now!  Woo!  Go on over and say hello!  She’ll love it! 

I still have that feeling.  That joy I was telling you about a few weeks ago.  Still there.  It’s like beneath the surface somehow, like that underwater current I can’t recall the name of at the moment.  (Advance thanks to my Love who will no doubt remember what it’s called and tell me so!)  It’s just always with me, surrounding me, and within me at the same time.  I am thankful. 

How was your weekend? 

 

Well … it’s over

I had an amazing run on blog stats for about a week and a half.  I knew it couldn’t last – I mean, c’mon, people looking for funny were coming to my blog!  But it seems that WordPress has fixed that little glitch in the matrix now so I’m back to being simply the Queen of Chicago Sucks, and no longer the Empress of Funny Pictures.  Oh well, a girl had dreams.   

Our Internet is still up and running, FAST, so we are happy here in the Darc Household.  I’ve been on tenterhooks all day, waiting for it to go down again, but it hasn’t, so maybe it will hold this time.  Woo!  But, the maintenance guy that was supposed to come take care of a few things in my apartment never showed up.  I called on Friday to put my work order in, and they told me they’d have someone here on Tues.  Tuesday afternoon I called, and was told that no one put my work order in on Friday, but she promised, promised someone would be out TODAY.  Well, that was yesterday.  No one showed.  So I kept my bra on all day for nothing.    And know what that means?  I have to keep it on all day today for whenever they show up, and they probably will while I’m in the shower or something.  Hey, nothing like some strange guy walking into your apartment when you least expect it, even when you’re expecting it, you know?  My life’s just all fun like that.   

And good grief, the regular season opens tomorrow night and I haven’t even made my picks yet and gotten my football posts up!  I’m lagging!  Oh noes!  Guess what I’ll be doing today?  It’s football seasonnnnnn!!  Woooooo!

Here’s a bit of funny, in case you come here looking for it.   

 

©DarcsFalcon

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Zemanta!

Image by Zemanta via CrunchBase

Remember the other day when I told you about Zemanta, and I was crying because it only worked in the posting page online on WordPress and not in Windows Live Writer?  What?  You don’t remember?  You don’t commit every word of my posts to memory??  Shame on you!    Here’s the link if you wanted to refresh your memory.   

Well about a week after I did that post, I got a very nice email from the CTO and co-founder of Zemanta, Ltd.    I know!  Isn’t that cool?!  You write a blog post about a product and then get an email from one of the designers of that product!  That rocks!  Anyway, he told me that he’d seen my post and wanted to let me know that Zemanta had released a plug-in version for Windows Live Writer.  Talk about front-door service!  And you know I downloaded that program within like 10 seconds of replying to the very nice Mr. Tori.   

Since I had a few posts already queued up – I call it “future posting” – I haven’t had a whole lot of opportunity to play with Zemanta but I’ve done a little experimenting and thought I’d tell you about it. 

First of all, in case you aren’t aware, Zemanta is a plug-in for blogging.  I saw it originally as an add-on for FireFox and downloaded, but since I don’t blog from WP, I didn’t get much of a chance to use it.  I did check it out however, to see what it was about and what it was like.  What Zemanta does is take the content of your post, and go out searching the web like a hound dog to find you relevant pictures, links, and articles to go along with your post.  It makes your blog into this cool rich content thing – very dynamic and professional looking.  So I was all over that plug-in for Live Writer, cuz you know I don’t blog without it.  Even my husband mocks me about it now and he’s the one who encouraged me to try it!

Here’s what I’ve discovered so far:

The first time I used it after installing it, I got a Windows scripts error, but only that first time and not since, since I clicked the YES, Windows, keep running the scripts for this plug-in, I installed it didn’t I? button.  In Live Writer, I clicked the “insert Zemanta” link and it opened the program up and began processing.  I did notice that it’s a bit slower running through Live Writer than it does on WP/FireFox.  I’m going to presume that’s a Windows thing, because Windows is a resource hog and God knows I’ve only made it worse by confusing it with all the Live Writer plug-ins I have.  I love plug-ins and add-ons!  But what’s life without customization? 

So I did a post, and also a couple of mock ones, just to play, and I can safely say that if you blog, you’re going to love Zemanta.  (It’s good on several different blog platforms and also different browsers)  I waited until I’d pretty much finished my posts before I clicked the "insert Zemanta" link so that it would have content to search, (but that’s just me because I’ve been having some connection issues – you certainly don’t need to wait like that) and in just a moment or so it had about 4 pages of pictures to offer me, a few links, and about 2 dozen articles to choose from for inclusion into my post.  Oh, did I mention it suggests tags too?  In addition to pictures, links, and articles, Zemanta also suggests tags.    Do you see yet how awesome this tool can be for blogging?  Go check it out!  Look around the site, take the Z-tour, watch the demo – and I have no doubt you’ll be using Zemanta too.  It’s awesome! 

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