Two Cents and a Thousand Words

So, yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this thing. I’ve been working at the library, going around the state, that kind of thing. I’ll have new pictures up soon.

My laptop continues to die a slow, miserable death. It really shouldn’t – it’s only 2 years old. I’ll be sending it into Dell to get the fan fixed (again – they didn’t fix it the first time and now it doesn’t seem to work at all – thumbs down to Computer Renaissance) and the keyboard, too, since some of the keys don’t work. I’ll probably be without it for a month, so that’ll probably force me into learning more about my iMac. That’s a good thing. I’ll be reformatting both of my computers before I go back to school to start clean, so that’s a project in itself with backups and synchronizing and stuff.

On another note, being at the library really makes me want to start reading again. I haven’t read a book for pleasure for years, and I’d love to get back into it. I’d also love to read some works about technology and not about technology alike – anything to get me off of the computer. When I’m bored, I go on the computer. Maybe if I could read instead when I was bored I wouldn’t be on the computer so much. Who knows. Worth a try.

Our kitchen is complete, finally. It looks great. I’ll put some pics up of that, too, soon. It looks a lot bigger now and the only things left are painting, wallpapering, and getting a new window for over the sink. Overall, I really like it. Mom went through everything and we have a lot of space in the cupboards now, too. Not to mention there’s lots of stuff for our yard sale next month.

Hopefully I’ll be writing more entries soon. We’ll see. 🙂

We had one of the worst thunderstorms I’ve ever seen last night. We had lightning almost constantly, and we had thunder and heavy rain, too. We even had a tornado warning here, and they think a tornado may have touched down near Lincoln.

All I know is that it made me miss a chat with my Leoville folks. Sorry about that; if we didn’t have electricity striking all around and we had electricity in the appliances in the house, I would’ve been there. 🙂

I was able to shoot some video of the lightning; keep in mind that I didn’t edit this at all. It was pretty much like this for at least a half an hour. Click on it for a 1.5 MB MPG.

It’s Maine, dammit. It’s never supposed to be above 80. 97 is just too damn hot.

In other news, we’re having our kitchen redone. We’re getting new cabinets and getting the floor replaced (there was some pretty bad water damage in a corner; we could see downstairs once they pulled the rotted wood out, and we could look down and see our washer). Click to make ’em bigger.

I love Photoshop Elements. More specifically, I like the Photomerge feature. It helps you create panoramas of pictures you’ve taken. Take a look at a picture from Weston during my Aroostook trip (click it for a 320Kb version):

All this from a program I got free with my digital camera. On top of that, I’m finally learning how to use some of the more advanced features of the C-700.

More Aroostook pictures here.

First the fan, now the keyboard.

The b, n, space, right alt, right control, left arrow, right arrow, and down arrow keys don’t work on my keyboard. Sometimes they do, most times they don’t. I’m typing on an external keyboard now. I’ll probably have to send the thing into Dell; I’m NOT going to have it done locally again.

This is me grumbling.

I think a lot about what I’ll do when I grow up. It usually comes down to something having to do with web design, a little psych, a little photography, and maybe some journalism. Hell, I’ve learned a lot about TV just by watching TSS.

I’ve started to think I might have a new title, though: Internet Theorist (or something). I have a file on my laptop with about twenty ideas for sites. Each one of them could make me a million bucks. Of course, I’d have to spend my life on one of them to make a million bucks on it, but you get the idea. I’m thinking I might like the whole business path where I own a web business devoted to making services and a network of other sites. I think I could really get stuff done like that. And I already have a lot of ideas.

Apparently while I was gone from the library, one of the monitors started to flicker, click, and then did what was described to me as sounding like a ‘poof’ before a small stream of smoke began to rise from it and the odor of burnt electronics filled the room.

I’m not really sure what caused it. The monitor was doing fine. I just set up a 13-inch old Gateway 2000 monitor made in 1991, and it works OK; there’s a sizable black border on the left and right and no horizontal size control, but at least it works. The quality’s really good, especially from a monitor made in 1991. Hopefully this one won’t blow up.

This weekend I’ll be heading to Houlton and beyond for job training tomorrow and Friday and for exploration over the weekend. I’m not sure where exactly I’ll visit, but I’d like to go at least to Caribou and maybe (maybe) make Fort Kent. Sometime I want to get to Allagash to see the Wilderness Waterway, but that’s just so far over that I’d need a separate trip. I still have a lot of territory to cover, but we’ll see how far I get on this one. I’ll be away until Sunday afternoon. I’ll come back with pictures; as I’ve said in other places, it’ll probably all be trees, potato fields, and maybe some meese, but we’ll see.

So… I had another conversation with my parents last night about moving into a bigger/better house. The one we have now (and have had for 18 years) is fine, but there are an increasing number of problems with it (wet basement, water leaks, etc.). Now that my parents know that I’m really not opposed to living in a new house, we might actually do something about it.

We’re getting new kitchen cabinets sometime in the next couple of weeks and hopefully (this has been on hold for a couple of years thanks to a non-responsive contractor) our new deck door will be fitted in. The kitchen floor’s getting kind of soft, too, in places, so we’ll need to have some of that replaced. After we get that resolved, we might consider moving.

I really am beginning to consider the option. I mean, the house we have now is really too small for what we need and it’s also very dark. As I told my parents yesterday, it kind of depresses me and I like my dorm room better than my house; there’s dark panelling in a few places at home and it really makes it feel small. If we can find a nice (not big, just nice) house with a couple/few more rooms than what we have now and also one that is newer and has less problems, I think there’s a good chance we’ll pack our bags for the first time since I was one.

I’d like to stay in my town; I really like it. There are a lot of new developments going up with some houses upwards of $400k, and that’s just not for us. They’re huge houses and we don’t need that. We just need some sort of extended ranch-type house that has some room for storage, some better closets, hopefully a dry basement, and other stuff like that. I think we’ll be able to find something like that.