Stupid ISP

I had a ton of student wrap-up work to do today as their grades are due, so of course our internet service went out as soon as I got online this morning. And now that I finally did everything I possibly could do offline and then gave up--and it's almost midnight--it's back up again. Blasted company. It's not the first time, either!

Close Encounters of the Chromatic Kind, or, Math is Cool

I have to steal this find of Mark's, just because I'm so taken with it. (Note: noise will occur when you click on it! And colors, but that's less intrusive.)

I think numbers 10 and 13 are ready for parts in scary movies, while number 6 should somehow be associated with the work of this site's creator.

Those Crazy Kids

Okay, I have to admit, this probably is the "best home made lightsaber duel video ever," as it claims to be. I think that Dorkman kid has had fencing training, though. (And possibly krav maga, based on those doity tricks.) Good ending!

Careers

Yesterday TheLimey sent me this link and pointed out that between the two of us, we have four of the Top Ten Jobs in the country.

He also expressed, shall we say, interest in how much the average Psychologist makes [and that high-end salary, too], according to this article. I raised a skeptical eyebrow at the putative amount.

"Don't forget," I reminded him, "I'm also a woman so I'll be making 72% of whatever the real amount is." (Technically inaccurate if they're taking both sexes into account in the figure, but I'll certainly be on the lower end of whatever it is. And anyway you get the point.)

So, men--hetero men at least--if you want more money in your life, work for higher pay for women. (You gay men can go on being selfish by that argument, but of course women's rights also generally advance LGBT rights by association.)

Progress

I'm very excited (probably unduly excited) that two people have joined my art support group. One is a new father in Spain and one is a mother of three in...somewhere in Canada, I'd guess, based on her email.

And it's going to be 72 degrees F this afternoon. Yippee! Pretty shocking considering that two weeks ago it was actually snowing.


Well, it'll all be completely different (and worse) soon enough, as we learned watching that NOVA program last night about global dimming.

TheLimey proclaimed "global dimming" to not be a scary enough term for how catastrophic a concept it is; therefore I propose we all start calling it "global nightfall".

16 weeks

16 weeks
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

Okay, now a normal person could tell I'm showing.

Try not to look at my chin(s).

I swear it's just the angle. I blame the photographer.

Half Annoying, Half Pathetic

I tried looking at some Yahoo groups to see if there were any likely potential members for my own group. What I found was a cartload of stay-at-home-mom sites, each with thousands of messages that were obviously spam.

Apparently these group spammers think that stay-at-home-moms either want to start some scammy pyramid scheme in their living rooms, or are all looking to sell their bodies online.

"Wanted! P* rn-Style s 3x!"

Yeah, get in line, pal.

Gfrustrator

After being recruited (brainwashed?) by my personal human internet-service filter (sister) yet again, I decided to go ahead and try out the Google calendar. I was particularly interested in the capability to share calendars, as TheLimey and I have been threatening to have a mutual calendar for our mutual events since we got married (even just a paper calendar.)

I was pretty excited as I synced up my PDA and prepared the various paths to my files, up to the point where I hit "IMPORT". I was brutally disappointed when all I seemed to be able to get to was a mini-"page cannot be displayed" thing inside the importing operation field.

Maybe a gazillion other people are trying to do the same thing and we all crashed it.


UPDATE:

Okay okay okay---I take it all back.

The initial simple instructions make it appear (to the severely uninformed, like me) that a person can simply import one's Outlook format calendar into Google Calendar without further ado.

However, upon closer inspection of various help pages, it turns out that you have to open your Outlook and do some fantsee savin' and exportin' of your data in 1-year chunks into CSV format. Which I now know exists.

This finally worked for me, although GC didn't appear to want to keep any events older than 1 year. Understandable, I guess.

Recruiting

But not any kind of money scheme. Thing. Stuff. Niner.

I like the kind of support found in the Yahoo group I'm in that is for mothers juggling family and PhD demands. Therefore, I decided that I'd start something similar for parents who are visual artists. So if you know any mums or dads who've put their art on the back burner for now, send 'em on over. I'm lonely with my three sketches per decade.

Chevy's Open Door

Ha ha ha!

Speaking of making your own movies: if you haven't already seen this story about SUV ads, check out the examples mentioned on the sidebar of this story. Before they take them down. (Note: I couldn't get some of them to load. Maybe they were the ones with the objectionable language.)

I can be a little smug about this now, as we've just turned in our (relatively small for an SUV) Jeep Liberty for a Pontiac Vibe.