What's Up?

Since my last post I've had another birthday. This is a good thing. People I cared about started dying shortly after my last birthday, starting with my mother. I feel as though I'm getting a fresh start. As far as I'm concerned, the rest of you are alive and likely to stay that way. Please don't disillusion me. I prefer you alive.

For my birthday, my sweetheart got me The Orange Box . This is because he knows I wouldn't get it for myself, and because he knows I'm quite taken with the whole idea of the portal gun. He also knows I'm a fan of Jonathan Coulton, and would really love to understand all the references in Still Alive (shown here playing his own song in Rock Band with a most incredible line-up of co-conspirators when they only get to 99%!).

My sweetheart also got me instructions to make my computer stop crashing all the time while playing the game. And he dug out a mouse for me. And so far, he's just amused that I'm playing a first-person shooter game. And sometimes I need to go to Strategy Wiki to find the door to get out of the room. I have no problem with the concept of shoot all the bad guys. It's just sometimes I can't find the exit door after I've killed everyone. And now that my computer doesn't crash every time I go from one room to another, well, I'm not always so sure I'm in the middle of a puzzle or between puzzles. Until someone starts shooting me, that is!

Anyhow, I'm also half-way through a very strongly-recommended book on HTML. Literally, I am at the half-way point - I've completed seven of fourteen chapters. I have finished with HTML, the one chapter on XML, and am now about to finally learn some CSS. I really, really need to be able to write CSS instead of being able to read it well enough to understand what's going on. After I finish this book, I plan to start on Python.

Mind you, what I really want to do is finally get my head around Prolog. Although, in truth, I don't suppose that's really what I'm after. What I think I really want to do is be able to write my own inference engine. I should probably go find myself someplace that teaches what I'm looking for and just sign up. But that would be too easy, wouldn't it? And there are too many other interesting things to learn along the way.

Anyhow, I'm knitting another Clapotis. This one is in Artful Yarns Broadway. Oh, and yes, I'm knitting socks, too.

A Gift and Finished Objects!

I came home one day last week and my sweetheart asked if I wanted an early birthday present. Ok, my photo is a little fuzzy. It's a Cue Cat. It makes Library Thing much easier to use. I love it! Thank you, Sweetie!



He also got a quick-release post so we could use our cameras with our new tripod. Well, new to us. I took him to a Goodwill store and we found a really high-end used tripod for $2. I think the post cost him $10. He's been in America for over twenty years and this is the first time he'd been to a Goodwill store!

Meanwhile, I did finish two things. One was a pair of socks. These are really simple Knit 2 Purl 2 socks. I needed almost mindless sock knitting after my last two lace pairs. I also finished another clapotis. I have only made two of these in the full size and a bunch of little ones. I made this one from a ball of (I have to go to Ravelry to look it up, hang on...) Stacey Charles Ritratto dye lot 0010. 28% Mohair, 53% Viscose, 10% Polyamid, 9% polyester. I would not recommend to anyone making a clapotis with mohair, but it worked out ok in this case. There's only one way I can think of to describe this: warm fuzzy bling!



Finally, I seem to have disabled the blogger spell check. It just doesn't seem to work for me. Unless, hmm, lemmetrymisspellingsomething. Nope. Nothing happens. I have to copy my post into a word processor to spell check it. Hmm. I wonder what I did. OH LOOK! It's a known bug! I cause those all the time at work. Hey, at least I searched help before whining!

Another Clapotis on the Needles

I'm on the foot of another pair of socks, and I've given up and started another Clapotis. I have yarn that doesn't want to be anything else. It's quite irritating, actually. I'll swatch a yarn or knit something with it and not quite have the right amount of yarn and I'll throw up my hands and realize that the yarn just wants to be a Clapotis. Good grief. What did yarn do with itself before the Clapotis?

In other news, sometimes you juts gotta say HUH???? Case in point. If I say the name AOL to you, do you not immediately wonder how many "install AOL now with this free CD!" offers you received in the mail over the years? You do know that the software AOL uses includes an embedded version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer software, right? So, I wonder, is it just slightly possible that AOL might have been able to avoid this? Perhaps they could've shipped their own browser? Maybe?

And finally, the article I'm about to link to is not funny. But I dare you to read this headline and not snicker. I do hope everybody's ok.