Bernadine's assignment

Hi Folks, Bernadine was in charge of the writing group last week because I went with Catherine and Emily to the Ky Arts thingie in Woodford County. She passed on Silas House's blog where he writes everyday about something new he as learned each day. Now, I am no Silas House when it comes to writing but for the exercise, I will play along and try this out for awhile starting today. What did I learn new today? I learned that my grandchild, Richard likes to suck face. I went over to their house after church today to take them the jump seat I found at the consignment store. We hooked it up over a door and installed Richard. He needed a little propping up with a blanket, he is still a little small for it but when he got the hang of the bouncie aspect to his new toy, he was a liking it. He can use his feet and legs to bounce himself around and likes to talk about it while he's at it. He doesn't have a lot of control, but he knows this is cool. He is getting much more playful and is putting what he can reach in his mouth. This includes his hands, the blanket stuffed around him to keep him stable, and Gran's nose and chin. Good lessons for a Sunday. After I got home, I found out that Ron's purchase of a raised panel bit for his router does a good job and doesn't take fingers with it. It looked pretty huge before he put it in his router. Ron and I took Gus with us to Bloomfield to RCM Kennels to determine if we think Gus will be happy there while we are in Hawaii. The owner, Ron Morris, was very nice and he has a fine operation. I will be relieved to know that Gus will be well taken care of while we are gone. We took the old Bloomfield road back to Bardstown and the old Bloomfield Pike across town to get to the car wash on 245. Do not go in the touchless wash thinking it will relieve your car of the black crap that sticks to Bardstown cars & trucks. $8.00 worth of car wash didn't even bother the bird shit much less the black stuff. Took a walk with Ron & Gus when we got home again. Down the cobblestone path and back up the old swimming pool hill of East Broadway. We ran into a girl who knew that Gus was a Havanese. She said she was a trainer and managed to coax him into letting himself get petted. Gus is a very shy dog. Happy to be home with his food and water and his supply of shoes and toys in his bed. Dog Heaven. People Heaven for the rest of the night too. A good day.

Challenge 21

Well, I am very impressed. There were a whole lot of keyboard shortcuts that I didn't know and I just read through page 3 of David Pogue's list and viewer comments. That one went to the bookmarks. Some of the shortcuts don't seem a lot shorter than the coventional ways of doing things but others are "wow" moments of "I didn't know you could do that!" I am especially interested in shortcuts for this Mac. There is so much I don't know about this thing. But then again, LIVE AND LEARN. That is the name of the game. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this Emily. Otherwise we would have learned a lot less over the past month. Thanks. Carol 11/29/08 8:03PM

Challenge 20

I looked a just about every link on that challenge and found out that there is a whole lot I don't know anything about. I have been using Neooffice for this Mac laptop because it had no word processor loaded on it and that (according to Emily) is the MAC version of Open Office. The example they gave us to look at was a lot more impressive than anything I have seen in Neo office but that is probably because I really don't have a clue on how to use this stuff to it's best advantage. I did download Gimp on the computer at work and hope to learn how to use it. I will download it on my PC in the basement so I can play with it there also. I think it is wonderful that this exists and that these people who create this software are so generous as to just let everyone use it for free. There is hope for this world! I read most of what Courtney Love had to say about the record industry and I give the girl credit...She is one smart cookie. Who woulda thunk it. Anyway, it is Saturday, November 29th at 5:57 no matter what the bloglines tells you about what time this was posted. Carol

Challenge 19

I went with my email homepage (Yahoo) and just tweaked it a bit. I wanted netvibes but they wanted pop mail and I don't want to pay for that. If you recall a couple of posts ago about information overload...I don't need any more on my plate. I don't know how the individual who wrote that article ever survives what she goes through daily as far as the tweets and im(s) and emails and whatever. I can't go there. Yahoo and bloglines are enough for me.

Challenge 18, Web 2.0 awards

I looked at this. Nice. I signed up for My Heritage since I have most of the information to create my family tree from my relatives. I can see where it is designed to link up to other family trees. Guess we are all related if we go back and around far enough. I also liked fixya.com since I am still trying to fix my ipod that will not sync with my computer. I have several ideas to fix it that I didn't before I started looking at the site. Of course I have to translate one idea from vista to xp. Computers are a lovely puzzle for modern man aren't they?

Challenge 17, overdrive

I finally got a book downloaded on my mp3 player that I bought just for this purpose. I think I encountered every problem possible and can probably answer simple questions. I was on chapter 5 of the book when July and I got home from our walk. I think we are going to like this.

Challenge 16 Photoshop

I went to the trial and didn't really see anything there that would make me want to pay the price for Photoshop. It didn't seem to have much more than the free software that came with my Kodak camera. But then, I went to the internet meme timeline and watched a video called "You suck at Photoshop" Now that guy is not only funny but a much better advertisement for Photoshop than they are. I really enjoyed some of the free stuff at the end of that challenge. Thanks.