Pre-vacation test

Backyard
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

Testing the concept of blogging from my XO while on vacation.

I can take snapshots with the XO. I can then upload them to Flickr direct from the XO.

I can compose a post offline in the Write activity and save it to copy and paste later into Blogger.

Here goes, does it work?

Soon to be coming to you from Hawaii

Library Tan paint

Library Tan paint
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

Some paint company named a boring beige paint color Library Tan and then my library used that color to paint rooms within the building.

Don't libraries deserve a more vibrant paint color? Shouldn't we be petitioning Glidden Paint to honor libraries with a vivid color such as Library Red (or Read)?

The power of suggestion and a shameful endorsement

Last weekend as I was flipping through the TV channels I came upon a documentary of Harland Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken. They discussed the 11 herbs and spices and how people would line up to buy the chicken.

I haven't had KFC's fried chicken since college, which was a few decades ago. I'm thinking it's just fast food, it can't be that good and tasty. But even so, it got me craving a piece of the original recipe.

Today I convinced S.O. to go to our local KFC for lunch instead of eating our usual heart healthy food. He too hadn't been to one in decades.

After navigating the confusing menu and explaining to the 20-something cashier we hadn't been to a KFC in decades, we finally decided on our orders. Already prepared chicken was sitting under heat lamps behind her. Again my thoughts were that I'd find the food to be rather mediocre, fast-foodish.

She rang up the order and gave us a senior discount! I don't think we qualify, but maybe it was because she thought a decade was a good 40 years or so.

We sat down with our original recipe chicken breasts and darn if they weren't good eats. Really flavorful crust and moist chicken meat. Maybe a little salty but full of flavor. I even ate the little bones to get at all the flavor.

Now back to healthy eating for another couple of decades, but it sure was good to get a fix of those 11 secret herbs and spices.

Now off to the athletic club to work off the extra calories.

A roller-coaster week for my XO laptop

Shared chat activity on XO
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

Wednesday I met with another XO owner for a third try at sharing applications (activities) via the mesh network. Third time seemed to be the charm. We were able to chat, collaborate on a document, and share photos taken with the XOs' cameras.

Thursday I brought my XO to a Cool Tech Brown Bag lunch at my place of work and passed it around for folks to play with.

Thursday evening I noticed that sometimes what I typed would be in capital letters, yet there is no cap locks key. I also noticed that typing the letter A would shift all future letters into capitals. I was able to get the keyboard back to typing lower-case by repeatedly hitting the shift key and typing and erasing and typing and erasing.

By Saturday I was unable to get the keyboard to shift back to lower-case at all. This made logging into my email impossible since passwords are case sensitive and I couldn't type anything in lower-case.

Luckily there is an excellent help forum for XO owners and a wonderful wiki. Keyboard issues are common. Many people experienced the problem while under the 30 day warranty so had their laptops replaced. I've owned my XO for three months now. Others in my position disassembled their XO's and cleaned under the keyboard's rubber membrane and got theirs working again.

Also luckily my S.O. loves to take apart electronics and he's generally pretty good at putting them back together again.

I owe lots of XXX's and OOO's to my S.O. because he did manage to fix my XO, at least for now.

Will that be bottled or tap?

My commute bus passes a new housing development.  Yesterday they put up street signs.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the name of the major street running through the development so asked others to look too.  They verified that the street was indeed named:   Chromium.

The signs for the side streets are not visible from the bus.  One can only imagine what they might be.  Arsenic? Lead?

I wonder if Erin Brockovich has purchased a home there.

Pelotons in Sepia: or how my camera tripped me up

Amgen Tour of Calif in Davis - peloton
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

The Amgen Tour of California (http://amgentourofcalifornia.com) came through Davis and the route passed near my home. I was all prepared to take some action photos with my digital camera. I pulled out the owner's manual for the camera to read how to set up for continuous shooting, I even tested it out in my living room. The pictures looked a little washed out but I figured it was because I was shooting indoors.

The day stage 2 of the race came to Davis the weather was very overcast. As the peloton came through I'm happily shooting away. I took over 100 exposures. I downloaded them and was disappointed in how washed out they appeared. What was going on? Yes, the day was gloomy and very overcast and grey, but these pictures looked brown. All the other pictures I have taken with this camera have been fine. I showed them to my significant other. He said it looks like the camera was set for sepia. No, couldn't be, I always use full color, full resolution, etc. OK, maybe he had something there, so I decided to check the camera. Sure enough, the setting was for sepia. Now, why would they even offer that option when you can achieve it quite well with photo editing software.

I guess I'll have to wait until next year and hopefully I'll remember my lesson and check all the settings on my camera before I try to record history.

Where have all the editors gone?

I'm currently reading a book loaned to me by a co-worker. I'm not really enjoying it all that much but I rarely put down a book once I've started one. Today I read the following where the authors are describing a character at a Pilates class:

Instead of sitting at home feeling sorry for herself, she's literally taking
her demons to the mat and fighting them off one after another.

Now I have to continue reading the book to find other glaring grammatical errors, because this book is not a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel. Demons and ghouls are not characters in this novel.

Shame on the authors (James Patterson and Peter DeJonge) and shame on their editor and shame on the publisher of Beach Road.