The Cutest Thing EVER

OK, I know you're not supposed to play favorites with your nieces and nephews... but honestly, she's the youngest one - The Last Baby - and she can just be so damn cute sometimes... my other nieces are in Knoxville, so I've never gotten to take care of them the way I have Emma.

Anyway - she was in a wedding this weekend, and with a 3-year-old, that can be Delightful or Dreadful. Fortunately, she was quite the little professional when onstage, and only lapsed into rampant misbehavior when required to sit in the pews during the ceremony.

She's an avid Princess fanatic, with an addiction to the Disney princess product line. She wants to be one, she wants to hear about them, she loves a nice tiara, you name it. So this was right up her alley. More pictures available here.

In Which I Reluctantly Join MySpace.com

So, Friend Frank from my days at Hillsboro High sends me an email today mentioning that there's a number of SophistiCats on myspace, and I should join. (The SophistiCats were a very advanced show choir & chamber singers group I was in throughout high school, and pretty much the only worthwhile thing about high school for me!) Plus my friends Paul et Cherie have occasionally pestered me to join so they can add me to their Friends... apparently one's myspace dignitas is dependent on how many Friends (clients, a la Roman Empire) one can claim.

So I set up my profile (suhouladoo) and begrudgingly wrote a few lines about myself, and made a discovery: one should not fill out one's online profile when one is in a bad mood. One is apt to say things that will not reflect well upon oneself. oneoneoneoneoneoneoneone.

And yet, not off-putting enough, apparently - two total strangers sent me Friend invites within a half-hour of setting up my profile. Apparently my comment that I wasn't there to make new friends or meet anyone had a different effect than I had intended. I shall have to re-edit and be more obvious about my lack of interest in making random Friends.

I really had thought that listing my remorselessly geeky Interests of Ballroom Dance, Bollywood, Embroidery & Cross-stitch, reading and Doctor Who would be sufficient to shake off all but the most Worthy and Perceptive of Friend-wannabes. I guess I'll have to put in the one piece of information that is the kiss of death: my current weight and height.

A Day of Frustrations

I hate not being able to fix things, and I hate failure.

So the last 24 hours have been rather disheartening. Of the semi-Burst-Into-Tears-on-the-Least-Provocation category of Disheartening. I thought maybe if I listed the specifics I might get a sense of the actual scope of my failures, as opposed to a general Everything-Sucks malaise.

1. Can't get my living room TiVo to dial in. I have tried countless times, going so far as to bring it to Elder Sister's house to use THEIR phone system. All to no avail.
2. A web design client from 8 months back went with another designer without any notice (that I can recall) and (very politely) won't pay for the 3 hours I spent on her site.
3. Another web design client isn't entirely happy with what I've done in a beta format, and I sense he wants something more sophisticated than I am capable of.
4. I haven't had time to work on 2 other client websites, and I don't want to right now.
5. I spent 4.5 hours this morning on a home wireless network job that should have taken 1 hour, and the problem STILL isn't fixed; so of course, I don't feel like I can charge them; and I don't know where I went wrong with the whole thing.

That's the gist of it; nothing absolutely devastating, but enough within 24 hours to cause overall melancholia. Oh, and I was unable to go to my part-time job at Vandy since I spent all morning at a job I can't charge for, and therefore lost 4 hours of legit paying work. [invective]Bugger all.[/invective]

Nuhfing in Particular, Part 2

"In our last episode, Susan discovered a certain fascination with an indefinable accent of the charming, working-class Rose Tyler from Doctor Who."

So I was watching the first episode of Season 2 titled "New Earth," and a bit of slang was used that made me (and my QuickTime software) pause. Rose, being temporarily "possessed" by a snobby spirit named Cassandra, took a look at herself in a mirror and burst out with a dismayed "Oh my God, I'm a chav!"

A chav? What on earth is a chav? I was mightily intrigued. I dashed to my computer, and once again, Wikipedia served me far better than I could have imagined. Read on:

The description fits Rose to a T, and goes into all sorts of detail about accent, fashion, cultural tendencies, etc. Absolutely fascinating - sortof like a British version of a Jersey Girl, I guess...? So when I resumed the episode and several minutes later, Cassandra re-assumed Rose's body, looked down at herself, and sarcastically snarled "oh, Chavtastic!" my pop cultural anglophilic joy knew no bounds, and I clapped and squealed, since I know knew what she meant.

Damn, I love the Brits.

7/15 Mike in MI has directed me to a far more alarming series of definitions about what "chav" is on urbandictionary.com. Not so funny anymore...

Travails with Tivo

I love my Tivo very much, as anyone who knows me well should be aware of. Like many of my other passions, such as:

• Bollywood,
• Haayo Miyazaki movies,
• Doctor Who,
• Ballroom Dancing,

I am prone to evangelistic fervor. I want everyone to share my enjoyment of said entertainments.

Well, I have been having difficulty with my TiVo of late... ever since I switched to the ridiculously cheap Vonage phone service which runs over my cable modem, I have had problems getting my TiVo to successfully dial in to download updates. Because Vonage can't seem to work with the phone wiring in my apartment, I have had only one functioning phone in my living room, with a very thin 20 foot phone line running across the floor from the phone router under my desk, through the sliding door, onto the porch, and back in through the bedroom porch door. This line is for my TiVo; I watch more TV in my room than I make phone calls.

So I've had the Vonage for a few months now, and was able to get the TiVo to dial in successfully overnight most of the time. Since it stores 2 weeks of upcoming programming data, it's not been a real problem, but a couple of days ago it started warning me that it would run out on Saturday the 15th. I tried everything to get it to dial in and download - called Vonage, tried their online help tips, etc. - nothing worked.

Then I went online and did a search for work-arounds, and found a vast sea of discontented and frustrated former Vonage customers who had found out which I was just learning - Vonage does not play well with TiVo. By typing in a ridiculously long string of dialing prefixes and forcing it to dial a NYC #, I was finally able to get it to make one download. However, the TiVo in the living room, which is newer, still can't get through. It gets halfway into the call and then gets interrupted; by what, I do not know!

So I'm now on the phone with BellSouth (as I have been for over 45 minutes) switching my service back to them. Just a few days ago they sent me the 3rd or 4th "Please please please please come back to us... we'll give you low rates/cash/our first-born child" Letter of Desperation, and so last night I dug it out from under some rotting raspberries and various gooey things in the trash can. They will drop my rates to almost half of what they used to be, which is pretty darn good for the various difficulties Vonage has caused me. The rates will go back up in 12 months, but who knows what advances in technology will happen by then!

Bottom line: If you love your TiVo, don't get Vonage unless you have TiVo with broadband or wireless service.

Yes, I'm still here...

Vacation weeklet! WOOOOOOOOOOOOT! Granted, it's only Friday-Tuesday, and I worked some on Friday, and I sing for about 5 hours Sunday morning EARLY, and I'll probably see about getting some computer work on Monday... but still! Whooooooooo!

I still wish I could have a whole week of vacation... *sigh* Pity poor, poor Susan.

If you're in Nashville and you wanna see something cool, go to the Belcourt Theater @ 3 pm Sunday and get a ticket to Krrish. You'll be glad you did.