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September 06 Cool web sites to visitI'm back on my ancient Egypt kick again, thanks to a new book I found by Mark Millmore, "Imagining Egypt". It's a very useful overview, with a eye to the novice and includes gorgeous computer created reconstructions of temples, palaces and monuments. It also has a very colorful guide to entry-level hieroglyphics, which is something I have been toying with for some time. I have always meant to teach myself at least the rudimentaries of reading hieroglyphs, but I've never stuck to it. SIGH! Oh well, the book is cool and so is Millmore's web site: http://discoveringegypt.com . Of course, he's trying to get you to buy his book, but there is some nice free stuff too, like wallpapers, screen savers and links to some other neat-o Egypt sites.
And on the same subject, here are my favorite Egyptian links:
http://eternalegypt.org .......this has great information and some fun multimedia stuff as well as pictures of famous artifacts and is all in all a very good resourse.
http://thebanmappingproject.com ......This site allows you to explore the Valley of the Kings with interactive maps and a virtual tour of KV14. There's also a vast database of info about the whole Theban necropolis, updates on current excavations and of course links to other Egyptian web sites.
http://egyptology.com/reeder ......lots of nice graphics and articles.
http://egyptvoyager.com .....This site is mainly dedicated to people who are interested in touring Egypt, but it still has good historical info, virtual tours of some pyramids and temples and other articles of interest.
Anyway, that's just a few to get you started. You never know, you might end up as hooked as I am on this facsinating culture. Enjoy!
October 23 The Great Computer CrashOh lordy, the things we suffer because of our little electronic helpers (?????)! On Saturday morning I tried download the new IE 7, and for some goofy and now never-to-be-known reason, I had an error while installing and being the patient person that I am, I just said "!#%^! it!" and restarted the computer as commanded by said error message. Well, things were just acting squirrlely, so once again said above mentioned expletive and decide to reset the computer to the restore point on Friday afternoon using the handy-dandy utility so thoughtfully provided by Windows XP for just this very sort of happening. All was clicking along merrily when the power went out. Just when my computer was at a point where is was minus all sorts of .dll thingys etc. Disaster. The power was only out about 5 minutes, but alas, the damage was done. I could barely get booted up and there was no systray, no icons, no way to access the restore utility. All gone, folks. Most of the system files were corrupted or scrambled or just plain missing. I had some program files, but no way to run them. I went straight from annoyance to sheer panic. I called a couple of computer geeks, but they all said the same thing: call Dell tech support. And so I called and ended up talking to a very nice tech named Val who tried his best to get my poor wounded computer back up. At first at seemed that a reinstall of the XP disk might work, but too much of the computer's bits were missing. After a few serious conferences with the Grand High Tech Geek, it turned out the only way salvage things was a radical restore. I mean like it was when I took it out the box and hooked it up. No way to retrieve anything personal on it. Oh dear, what choice had I? And so it was done. With many thanks to Val for his patience with my somewhat panicked self, I began the long tedious process of reloading, installing, and updating, updating, updating. Remember folks, I still have a 56k dial up connection. So I had about a year and half worth of updating to do. First, the Windows updates. That's still going on as we speak, merrily downloading in the background, and it probably will be until 2008 or so, because I've been online for hours in the last day and a half and it's only at about 15% completed, and as more updates become available, the percentage drops lower periodicaly. I worked on the Mcaffee stuff next. Download, wait......wait......wait...and finally install and restart. Many, many times.
I guess it could have been much worse. Thank goodness I'm positively anal about backing up things, so all banking stuff from MSN Money was OK and easily reset up. I did lose a lot of things like pictures and funky little videos I downloaded. Fortunately, nothing truely vital was wiped out, although I'm somewhat pissy about losing my brilliant scores on my silly little computer games. Speaking of which, I am soooooo glad I printed out and saved all the registration codes for the games I downloaded from Gamehouse, etc. It will just take a week or two to redownload them, but that's just a minor irritation. I suppose you can say I got off fairly easy compared to what could have happened. Take heed from my little moral tale, dear readers, and back up EVERYTHING! On disk, on paper, on a file saving site, whatever.
And then a small revelation came over yours truely. Starting over with a totally squeaky clean computer perhaps isn't such an awful thing. I know a whole lot more about the darn thing now than April of last year when I got it. I won't clog it with as much crap as I did, and be utterly scrupulous about using the Window Washer and Spysweeper utilities (If you don't have them, hie thee hence forthwith to http://webroot.com/ and get them. They are not very expensive and do wonders for cleaning the junk and keeping the old computer running smoothly and quickly. If nothing else, go over to http://filehippo.com and get Crap Cleaner, it's a very good clean-up freeware program) and refrain from keeping some of the silly pictures and videos that people send me or I see and can't resist downloading for myself.
The upshot of all this is that except for all the bleary-eyed waiting for the agonizingly slooooooowwww downloads to complete, things will proably end up better than they were before the crash. Think about this: that restore point utility only takes about two minutes or so to run. In all the minutes that make up a day, the power went out during just those two little minutes. I say again, folks, nothing but nothing happens by accident. I guess my Goddess decided I needed to clean some of the crap out of my computer, and perhaps, by extension, my mind. So with that I wish you all blessed be. August 15 Phooey on Filelodge!Hey, the title says it all, folks! Ever since Filelodge merged with Bolt, it's been one headache after another. Most times the server is unavailable and so are my files. So after a bit of checking and hitting up DV3max's Hack MSN Spaces site, I have switched over to Fileden. So far, just as easy to use as Filelodge, and no problems yet. I recommend it to anyone using the media player on his/her space. Check it out: http://www.fileden.com/
So now for your listening pleasure, I've added a lively little Scottish dance called "The Landlord's Walk" to my space for the nonce. Getting back tp my cultural roots, as it were. Hope you like it. Oh and don't worry, the Raiders theme will return on game days for a bit of inspiration. Speaking of which, the Raiders beat Vikings in our second preseason game. Yeah, it doesn't count, I know, but I'm becoming rather impressed with Andrew Walter at QB. The boy needs some experience, but I'm sensing a future starter here. We will see.
Hope everyone out there in blog land had a great weekend. Blessed be one and all. August 16 Tripping through blog landI don't know about you, but some of the blogs that teens are keeping are very disturbing to me. Yes, yes, not all of them, of course. Some are very sensitive and poetic and show a real flair for the written word. But so very many of them are, well, a bit shocking to this old fuddy-duddy. They brag about sneaking out at night, drinking and drug use, and a very predatory attitude abou sex. Some are only 13 or 14! Ok, maybe some of it is made up. Maybe some is just bragging and posing. But it still makes me sad to read about so many lost young souls who seem to to have little or no parental supervision. I know I'm starting to sound like Ms Prude with her knickers all in a bunch about kids just having fun. What scares me is that they don't seem to be having much fun at all. Mostly they're bored. And I see so much dark imagery of death and blood and hell and such. Woo-hoo, sounds like fun to me. NOT! Now I admit, in my misspent youth I was a heavy metal head banger and I was all about attitude. But so much of what I see on some blogs goes light years beyond that. And I'm not even going to mention the salty language. And the atrocious spelling.
Ok, maybe I'm over reacting. Maybe all the little dears will grow up to be Nobel Prize winners and Republicans and such. But I do wonder.....Anyway, There are plenty of sites that are interesting or funny or thoughtful to read, which is why I started this blog in the first place. Until later, Blessed be. July 30 Oh Kat, where art thou?This is a quick note to Kat of "Scrupulous Scribbles": Have you moved your site? If so, let me know. I loved reading about the crazy 911 calls. Take care and blessed be. Online relationshipsIt seems for one reason or another, nearly everyone in my circle of blog friends is weighing in on the subject of online relationships. Now do you think I could go very long without getting my two cents in? I think not, gentle readers! I have made some comments on this to several others and of course, that's the kind of thing that always gets my little pea brain humming. Now I must say that for the nonce I am completely uninterested in romantic realionships of any kind. I was divorced in 1996, and a long-term nightmare, uh, relationship, finally ended for good two years ago. The gory details are unimportant, but I mention this because it is possible some bias may come seeping through to color my opinions. I consider myself blissfuly single, and I tend to be a bit superior and removed from all those mere mortals and their romantic entanglements. (Biased? Who? Meeeee???)
 Ok, so here's how I see it: My first impression of the online dating/flirting/looking for The One is: Sheesh! How desperate can you get! Get a life! Then, after further pondering, I thought "OK, Wilma Flintsone, get out of the cave and join the 21st century!" It's true that with work, commuting, etc, it's more difficult to take time out to meet people. And forget the work place! Dating folks from work is a mucho bad idea. When it's good, you're distracted and when it turns bad it's a freakin' nightmare. So lets say I'm not opposed to the online thing in theory. It seems to make sense. But in practice it tends to melt down. I think the whole point of online communication is to "reach out and touch someone" all the while mantaining a certain emotional distance as well as a degree of anonmynity. After all, you don't know this person from Adam, and you may be on the other side of the planet. So it does make a great medium to share ideas and interests, to learn about other cultures and things of that nature. So far, so good. But all the little things that really tells us about a prospective partner are missing: gestures, body language, eye contact, tone of voice and even smell. Let's face it: he may be Mr. Wonderful, but if he reeks of crappy cologne over poor hygene it's a major deal-breaker for me! So many clues are just not apparant over the internet. You can't see the charming eye twinkle (or the "Fatal Attraction" mad glimmer either!) or hear a laugh in an IM.
And here's another biggie: it is sooooo temptingly easy to exaggerate, to avoid, to misrepresent-- in short, to lie. That whole semi-anonmynity thing just begs for it. I mean, have you read some of the bios on the dating sites? If you believed them, it would seem that there are huge masses of good-looking, charming, witty, rich hotties out there having a tough time getting a date. Sort of stretches the credibility, doncha think?
OK, so maybe there are a few decent sorts online looking for love. So just maybe the web could be a way to make an initial contact. But after that, Friends, I think it's back to the old-fashioned way of doing things with a person to get to know them. Getting to be friends and maybe then lovers. And yes, in that order! Remember, technology changes, human nature doesn't. And with that, I will end my perhaps pompous pontificating. Geez, I do love alliteration, almost as much as puns! Blessed be one and all.
June 14 Interesting spacesI'm going to keep track of some MSN spaces that have caught my eye for one reason or another. Here's the first: An Army grunt deployed in Iraq : http://spaces.msn.com/members/NCSarge/. Perhaps it's my Marine Corps brat upbringing, but the day-to-day trials of our troops in the middle east is very compelling for me. Stay safe, Sarge, I'll pray for you and all of the guys (and gals) who are so far from home doing a very dirty job. Blessed be. |
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