8th Birthday party

This one (a new big brother) had his 8th birthday party yesterday. He is diagnosed with @sberg3r $yndr0me. I typically have fun with children by teasing them. I had to be careful with this one. When I told him I got him a pink tutu and pink fingernail polish he became quite upset. Then he looked at me and said "Are you joking with me?"  I smiled and said "Yes."

He is high maintenance but he is adorable. His mom looked exhausted. She had "baby brain".  The article I linked to speaks of controversy of baby brain. Well, I think it exists, if only because of sleep deprivation and stress. Day after day, night after night and a high maintenance sibling to cope with. She was stressed.

For some reason I have a lot of luck with their new little pink bundle of joy and I sat with her while the Mom was able to enjoy the party. Their sweet new baby would fuss (she wanted fed and this was something I was unable to do - wink, wink) so I let her suck on my finger. Yuck! Thank God I don't smoke. She won't take a Binky (not sure the parents want her to) and she is not on any bottle feeding at this time.

She is a sweet baby - but wait. This post is about the big brother, darn it. He loves gadgets. He was focused on his presents (as most 8 year old children would be) and he tore through them and opened them as fast as he could. Then after the party, he went through all of them again. I got him a bag of "stuff".  I believe at that age they like quantity over quality. He already got big gifts from parents, grandparents etc... I went for the fun stuff.

I got him a spy set and a bag of little things. I did tease him about getting him rings. He said "I hate rings!"  I told him you will love these rings. He said "Are you joking with me?"  I shook my head and said "No, I really got you rings."  He groaned. I actually got him "ring pops." Of course, he loved them.

There was a cook out, cake and a piñata. I missed the piñata because I was holding little sister. I did not mind one iota. She is the kind of baby who will stretch, make a face, fuss, cry a wee bit and then smile and go back to sleep.

Ack! Here I am talking about the wee baby again! I am enchanted with her.

Good thing she is over a two hours drive away or I would be there every day wanting to hold her. Sheesh!

To get the "ñ" for the word piñata, hold the Alt key down (Windows machines only) and ensure your Num Lock is on. Using the keypad, (and still holding the Alt key down), type 164.

Atl + 164  =   ñ

For a list of all Ascii characters, go to:  http://www.theasciicode.com.ar/.

The way I roll

I have my own way of making a blog roll. I create a page with all my blogs in links. I just click the icon on my desk top and all my blogs that I read come up in link fashion. If you have created a web page in html you can do this.

I have moved ten more of my blog list to the "Do not post often" list. Above, there are over a dozen more underneath the last name listed there. Sigh.  I hope they begin posting more and I can move them back up to my "daily"or almost daily list that I read. I enjoy them all.

Some have not posted in months. And some are quitting this year. Boo! Too sad. I always keep the link because I have known some to re-surface months (or even years) later. What a nice surprise when I click the old link and there they are - posting again.

This blog "roll" is easy to create (for me).

Open Notepad.

Here is an example, type this:

the href= is the link that you would type into the address bar of  your browser, the second part Daily Dose of Imagery is what you name the blog to identify it.

Note: the "wvs" is not a typo. You can read more about   wvs here.

Here is what a link to my page would look like, if you add a second one:

Now, the Peruby part is up to you. You can label it how you want.

When you go to save, do the "Save As" and make sure you enter .htm in the name instead of letting Notepad make it the default .txt name.

As shown above. I always save to my desktop. The icon should appear to look like your default browser. For example, my default browser = Firefox. So the icon will look like this:

When I click on it, the page opens up in a new tab in my browser, but each blog is a separate link and I just click on it and it goes straight to the blog. When I am finished reading, I click the Back Arrow and go to the next blog.

To edit or add more blogs, right-mouse-click on the icon on your desktop and choose Open with....then choose notepad. You can add, edit or delete the data in the file. When finished, simply choose "Save As..." again and save it as an  .htm file.  I think this kind of stuff is fun. :)

The instructions are probably lacking, since I received a phone call from my sister during the middle of posting so I hope you can understand it. If you really want to give it a go and have difficulty, just let me know and I will assist. If you don't want to communicate via the blog, my e-mail is on my profile.

I know there are blog rolls out there, Google Reader, and you can add all your readers to your blog page, and a hundred other different ways - but this is the way I roll. It works well for me. I can put the file on a thumb drive and take it with me w/out typing my personal blog page into a browser to get my reader list.

Edit:  Hah! I lied. I guess my e-mail is NOT listed in my profile. Not that I could see, anyway.

It is:         perubee   at     gmail   dot   com.

On the menu

My sister likes to have lasagna on Christmas day with ham. No turkey. Her husband does not like turkey. Who doesn't like turkey? Eh... no matter. I fixed a turkey on Sunday.

Anyways, she asked me to bring a vegetable lasagna. It is funny because her daughter is vegetarian but made the sausage lasagna. LOL! And she told me that her daughter was making the dried beef cheese ball this year so I did not need to bring one. Wow! Mix it up!

I sautéed the zucchini and yellow squash in olive oil and garlic for a wee bit before placing them in the lasagna for baking. I did not have any of this dish. I ate the sausage version which was exquisite.

By the way, do you know how to get the symbols to post? Such as the small e above with the accent over it? There is a table called extended ASCII character set. ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange. There is a code chart and then there is an "extended" code chart. Here is the IBM DOS extended chart. This chart will not work if you are using a Mac. Sorry. Here is a page you can try for Mac.

Anyway, find the character you want to use. We use Dec (decimal) so the Dec number for the small e with the accent coming from the right top corner down is number 130. According to this IBM DOS chart. You can use Notepad or any text program to practice this. Using your Alt key and holding it, type 130 on  your numeric keypad. Must be the number pad (not the numbers above the letters). When you release the Alt key, the symbol (character should appear).

How about this one? Hold the Alt key and type 146 on your numeric keypad.

Æ

Better still, just start with 1 and go down the line. 

☺☻♥  ♦  ♣  ♠  •  ◘  ○  ◙   ♂   ♀     ♪    ♫    ☼    ►

1   2  3  4  5  6  7  8   9 10  11   12   13  14   15   16

Are we having fun, yet?

Years ago, when I worked in DOS (before Windows) I used to create "hidden" folders on my hard drives. I can still make them. They are making it harder to get to DOS, but you can still create an invisible folder (sort of) in Windows.

Go to your desktop and create a New Folder. When you re-name the folder just hold the Alt key down and type 255. This is a blank. Press enter and you have a folder with no name. Sounds a bit Neil Young-ish, doesn't it?

You can even perform a search for this folder. Just chose Search files and folders (depending on the version of Windows you are using) from the Start button, choose the Search command, choose files and folders and in the area where you type "all or part of the file name" just hold the Alt key and type 255 from your numeric keypad. Release all keys and click the "search" option.

Eh, I could go on all day.

More than just trees

There are more things to look at in the museum than trees. I always like to get a few shots of the trains that are on display while taking pictures of the trees. I left this photo in a very large format. If your browser allows you to view it in a large format. If not, instructions are at the bottom of this post.

I was reading my paper yesterday and under a section called '30 seconds' where people call in to whine post their opinion somebody remarked that somebody was stepping on the tree skirts while trying to get pictures of the trains at the museum. They went on to say that the trains are there all year long and to respect the trees because somebody purchased them and they are sure that buyer did not want their merchandise stepped on. God, I hope that was not me.

I wonder if I got caught up in the moment and stepped on a tree skirt. Well, I got the point. I will be much more careful when taking pics. If it was me (and it probably was). Not many people take pictures. I do every year. Nobody else had a camera the evening that I was there.  Now granted, the display was on-going for two weeks, but yet I wonder. Smack myself in the back of the head.

Now, to look at the fine detail. Yes, the carver used ivory but it was not illegal back then. If you use Firefox and you are having problems seeing the image in a large format,  (and you must choose this view style BEFORE you click on the photo to look at it) - Go to the View pull-down menu,  click on Page style, and choose "No Style". It will get ugly, but scroll to look for the photo and click on the photo.

In Explorer (mine appears to be a bit messed up right now) there is a view option under one of the pull-down menus with the option of Style and "no style" and "default style".  You may have to choose "no style" to see the photo in it's large format. Either browser gets kind of ugly, but you can always go back to the default style or Basic Page style.

This is fun!

You know. Sick computer/geek ticket that I am. If you have a blog here, chances are you may have a google login account.

If you do, you can get an e-mail alert each time somebody "googles" your name.  Or any other phrase, word etc... that you can think of.

This works if you have a unique name. DO NOT set this up if you have the name of J!m Sm!th or any other well-known and extremely popular name.

I set this up over a year ago for my name and I got one hit on it (except for when I was testing) and it was my daughter who had searched my name. She is probably one of three people who can and does spell it correctly. :)

I also have it set up for my blog name and my blog's nickname "Peruby".  This of course gets me a few alerts for "Peru" but it is not a perfect system. I just delete about six or seven hits a week that are not exactly "Peruby" and let it go at that. I also get a few variations of my name and I delete them too. It is still pretty interesting. 

Usually I will get a hit on my blog name when I comment on another blog. Google picks this up and sends me an alert to the e-mail account of my choice. I find it interesting.

To set this up, log into your Google account.

Choose Account Settings

If this is your first time setting up an alert, you will see the option "Try Something new"

Choose Alerts

In the Search Items: type in the search word/phrase/name you wish to be notified about.

Enter the e-mail address you want the alerts sent to.

It is fairly certain that if somebody searches that name/phrase etc.. on the web, you will get an alert since most folks use the Google search engine.

I don't believe I messed with the settings. I think I left them all at the default.

Have fun. I am.

I mentioned in a previous post that I have no less than 4 e-mail accounts. Actually, I have six. I do not check all of them every day. I do check 4 every day. I actually have all 4 of my accounts sent to my phone where I can glance and scroll through my messages. Usually at the end of the day, I will go through my 3 personal accounts and clear them out/ move the messages to other folders, etc..

I have other accounts usually for testing purposes. My work account will not troubleshoot well if my organization is having problems outside of our network. Sometimes I don't want to use any account with my real name on it (hence peruby).  I also like to use a generic account when I am on-line and a site forces me to enter a valid e-mail, then they will send the code to that account before I can actually set up on that site. This works for me so that I can have any junk e-mail sent to this generic account. Usually, I can filter messages or block messages in my generic account. Mostly it is just delete, delete, delete.

Cause you know they got those web crawly things that harvest e-mail accounts and some sites actually gather your data/info and sell it to junk mail organizations. Sigh. 

A Broken Shortcut

General shortcut

Do you know what to do  if a shortcut on your desktop is broken? What I mean is, if you double-click the shortcut and you get a message similar to "can't find...path has moved..." something along those lines.

I had an episode yesterday where the network guy at a school called me to say that the school Treasurer was not able to access the "name of the software that enables her to work with the state database".

I worked with him to troubleshoot over the phone and all it was- was a broken shortcut.

I talked him through the steps of how to go to Start, All Programs, Name of the Software, and begin the program that way.

I also walked him through how to right-mouse-click on the Name of the Software from the menu and send a shortcut to the desktop. (After deleting the broken one).

I was just a little bit perplexed that the guy they have hired to work on their school district network was not aware that this is what needed to be done if a shortcut did not work. A regular end user, I can understand. But the tech guy?!

Above are the steps I would take to put the Solitaire game shortcut onto my desktop. The Games menu with Hearts, Internet Backgammon, etc... is where I used the right-mouse-click option once I hovered over Solitaire to get the Options menu. Then back to the left mouse button when I  hovered the mouse over "Send To" option. It gets a little tricky for new users to try and figure out when to use the right mouse button and when to use the left mouse button. And sorry, but the directions here are for XP only. Not Vista or Windows 7.

You can usually tell it is a shortcut because it has the little white square with the black curved arrow in it. Although, there are exceptions. I once had a little program I found that actually removes that white box with the black arrow. What kind of TIME did I have on my hands back then?!

And,  hell! I didn't even KNOW there was such a thing as Internet Checkers!