Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Sticky Note Thieves, All-Caps Updates, and Selective Amnesia...

These are a few of my most fervent pet-peeves.

My desk is an explosion of gregarious colorful sticky notes in the shape of stars, speech bubbles, and 80's inspired squares. Unfortunately, because this is an office, some unknown klepto has felt the empty hole in their life too much to handle. Thus, my annoyance at stepping into my cubicle and noting the stickies gone, gone away....skyrocketed. A glare swept my other colleagues, the simple, vengeful warning clear: Next time, someone dies. In the face.




MMS is finally a reality with my iPhone. I spent several hours on Saturday sending adorable pictures of my cats to anyone who had the capability, sealing my fate as a desperate cat lady forever.




Went to Manito Park with my own man this week, in a blatant attempt to get some exercise. It did me no good: we got hamburgers on the way. *facepalm* but I did get some awesome pictures. ^.^
















Yep. I was on a roll. Granted, I doubt I'd ever be a photographer because 1) there are 3 in my building alone, 2) it's expensive, 3) it's not an exact science. However, I feel good about my iPhone pictures because there's no pressure with a camera phone. Someone might look at the resolution and say, "this picture could be made better by..." and I just have to say "dude, chill, camera phone." raise a meaningful eyebrow, and suddenly the moist wall of the sea of critics melts away, and I'm free to splash around in my ignorance. Hot damn if that wasn't the most poetic thing I've written all day.




Can't end without showing off my babies. Who were only staring at the camera because of a shaking can of kitty treats behind the lense. No, that's not adoration, that's greed. But it worked.

All Caps Dude, your keyboard will be broken swiftly if you don't turn off the Caps Lock Key.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Almost.




It's coming.




And it's awesome. I can honestly say this is my first double decker bus experience, and I liked it.




I got to see my best friend Trina this week. She is the rock for my crazy emotions, and sets things right when I'm going through a rough time. You know-typical best friend stuff. She's also got the smoothest skin ever. It's rediculous.




Hai Joey! Nice hat! Did I mention my family's retarded? My sister Ashley popped a diaper on Joeys head as he was running around, and maaan. He is one happy baby.




Yep. Happy.




In no way should this EVER be comfortable. EVER.

I'm ready for the weekend. Seriously.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Babies Don't Grow On Trees

But it sure seems like they do. So many people I know are pregnant right now! Heavy winters always seem to be followed by a mini baby boom- I imagine you'll reach your conclusions.

My baby sister, Michelle, (well...younger sister, Paiten's the baby) is having a girl, a simply unprecedented event, due to the fact that out of my blood brothers and sisters, we have no girls in the family. Not only that, but she's decided to name my neice Emma, which is probably the BEST girl name ever. EVER.

So, after being laid off (so to speak) by Starbucks, she was worried about a crib.

Before we go any further, I want to point out that my sister can be clueless sometimes, maybe a little rash or forward, but she is *always* funny. Always. And so, when I offered to buy the crib, she thought about what she wanted, shopped around, and called to tell me she had found an exciting crib! So, in my excitement to see what it was, I asked her what it was:




Talk about a mouthful. We made several jokes about how long the name was, and flirted with the idea of shortening it to a code word, like BJ, but that didn't exactly jive with baby room happiness. *cough*

I'm excited to help her out.




I'm thinking of also getting her this bed set since she is adamant that we not get pink and brown. She so hated the combo that I think she gave herself a contraction thinking about it.

Little Emma will be bought and sold to me in the form of bribery. Bwahahaha. Just kidding.




As you can tell, Lilo and Stitch are thick as thieves (and they are thieves) and pretty much ignore the existence of poor Brian and I. Alas, what shall we do? I've also noticed attacks on the toe regions have risen sharply-we've invested in reinforcements (in the form of squirt guns) to keep the enemies at bay, but they are wily, and know the under-the-bed region better than we can ever hope to.




Finally, the best thing about working where I do, is I'm across the way from Starbucks. Yessssssss.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Photo Apps FTW!

I'm currently in the throes of a battle royale with a coworker. We're having a clip art war. And yours truly is WINNING.

Also, very recently, I found an epic new app for my iPhone. Not only did this app make my non-Makeup'd face look downright pro, but my kitten went from cutie in a tub to the poster child for Kill Bill's next adventure. And more!

The name of the app is CinemaFx. Also, it's on sale. FYI. Lemme show you some of the EPIC this app can do.




I may or may NOT have put this cute li'l squishy on here already. In any case, this is the original picture.

Now, let's see what CinemaFX does!




Screen one has a few options at the bottom. It's kinda obvious what they all are- except the first one (at least for me). It makes the pic go black n white. A nice touch, all on it's own. Truly.




I really like some of these, like English Tea and Mars Poster.




I like Japanese Memories. Makes everything very fan-girlesque.

Now that you've seen my options, here's some interesting tidbits:




Notice the little slide bar at the bottom? That shows how much you can saturate the image. The app automatically saturated it to a default level, but I moved it to 100%.




Now, in order to get it darker, I chose Vampire World (but obviously, there's tons of options) but I didn't saturate it fully. You'll see why: to saturate fully makes it barely definable, so you have to scroll back until it's to your liking.




Check it OUT, fools! Cute little Podunk pup turned into Cujo in 3 steps!

As an added flair, I took it to TypeDrawing, (another delightful app) and added a caption:





Yeaaaaah baby. Here's a few others I did too:















Epic. Wrapped in win.

Happy Labor Day!

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Aaaaand I'm Back!

Typing a blog entry on an iPhone is harder than it looks, I'll have you know. And since my
slothfulness knows no bounds, I've been putting it off.

Anyways, my camera has been reborn, a Phoenix in the ashes of the reload my poor baby endured. She now takes pictures quickly, efficiently, and lovingly. I have a great email from Ismael ( he insisted on Zee) that gives me all the tips and tools needed for a successful Reload and Back up. Yours truly has supplied the information below in case the same dreadful thing ever happens to you:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414?viewlocale=en_US

(if link doesn't transport you to the magical land of Steve Jobs and Apple goodness, copy and paste into the Address bar)

If you got to the right place, it *should* look like this:




As you select each hyperlink, it magically unfolds into a simple, easy to understand step by step guide on how to reload your phone.

The biggest thing Zee advised me was BACK UP. if you don't want to lose apps, music, photos, contacts, etc, sync, back up, back up again, then reload. I can't stress that enough!

In other news: I promised Lilo goodness, and here she beee!!!!!












She's fiesty.




Couldn't forget Stitch love. <3

Oh, and a shout out to skyrog-thanks for the shameless plug on radar.net. <3333

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Lilo and Stitch

Did I mention that I was bored? I am, so I thought it might be nice for all of you to hear about my latest addition to the family, Lilo. I don't have a pic at this very moment, so don't ask. I'll post one from my phone presently, promise. In the meantime though, lemme tell you how we came to be.

Brian and I have been talking about getting a kitten/companion for Stitch for a while. We wanted to get one that was young so that they had time to grow up together. Lilo is 3 months old, and as best as I can tell, a "silver tipped tabby." Isn't that nice? It's nice.

I should also mention she's made of air and nothing more. And I feel that she might have a leak, because everytime she saw us those first few days, she emitted a tiny scathing "hiss" that sounded like a balloon releasing air. Nevermind her tiny, very high pitched musings about computer cords and bed spreads. Whenever she saw Stitch, the musings turned into loud mumblings of anger, and he learned quickly that she could teleport from one side of the house to the other at will, and bite his tail. He's become wary of little Lilo, but he enjoys her. I can tell by his twitching tail and the fact that he hasn't hissed at her at all yet.

So now that she's gotten more comfortable, I face a few issues:
1: Can they successfully share a litter box? We haven't tried yet. I wanted to give her a sense of familiarity and privacy, so I let her keep a tiny one in our room. But I already grow weary of flinching as I hear tiny pebbles of litter-ary goodness fleck my hardwood floors, so I feel her moving to the cats room will be sooner, rather than later.

2. Secondly, can they *eat* together? As far as Stitch is concerned, what food is his is his, and whats hers...well...thats also his and she should find another way to eat because he hates his cat food, and likes hers more. The hating of his catfood is my fault-we finally transitioned the behemoth from kitten food to adult food, and he's not exactly overjoyed. It took a few days of him not eating to finally start eating fervently, and even then, I get the stink eye at every meal. And now I've brought a baby in here, and she eats like...gormet...because thats what she came with, and the bitterness has given way to ninja-ness. He has somehow managed to infiltrate her food every time, and disguise himself as a Hoover vaccuum, and suck her plate dry. No wonder she bites his tail. I've had to seperate them into different rooms in order to feed her, and on payday, I plan on getting a mixture of kitten and adult food so that they both get the same thing, and no one complains. And by no one, I mean Stitch. The glutton.

3. She's loud. And by loud, I mean she talks to us whenever she sees us, thinks about us, hears us, hears someone else, see's Stitch, string, a mouse toy, food, water, the kitchen, the bathroom, my laptop, the remote, and the popcorn bowl. She's also timed using me as a claw post when I've just relaxed all my muscles as I sink into the couch. She then sinks into me.

4. She's energetic. I'm exhausted from learning all about my new job, and I try to just sit back, chillax, and enjoy the moment of peace before making dinner, doing laundry, cleaning the house, and doing some chores. She just wants to climb all around and meow at me incessantly until I snuggle her and she demands I set her free. By pain of death. Her energy exhausts me sometimes.

But I love both of my cats, and so does Brian, and it's fun to watch them interact with each other. You can see Stitch has forgotten we exist and only wants to chill with Lilo now, which is fine by me. The only bad news is, she tends to start playing rough with him, and then when he finally retaliates, you would think he had dealt her a fatal blow. The YOWLING. THE AGONY. The Paiiiiiiiin.

We've learned to ignore it, but I cringe to think of what guests will think when she does it while they are there.

Okay, now that my musings have covered all that I know of my newest furry child, in addition to my humans and fat cat one, we'll see how my family operates. Wish me luck!

Broked

My iPhone is great. I heart it. Truly, I do. HOWEVER, I do NOT heart the stupidity that is my camera, or AT&T. My camera will *take* pictures, and show me that I have indeed taken that picture. BUT, when I go to look at it on the roll, and log out of the roll w/o doing anything else, and then go back in, it's gone. This has been happening for sometime, and for no apparent reason, unfortunately. So when I finally went in to AT&T to ask them what was what, here was my response:

Call the phone number. Talk to a rep. Ask for a replacement. Done.

SO I called in. The guy I got was totally cool, and he talked me through all the steps, and then I advised him I was not near a computer to do a DL to verify what was going on with it. And then he told me this great news: If it was the hardware, than they would send me a new phone. If it was the *software* however, they would have to charge me half a grand for a new phone.

So wait....what? So lemme get this straight-if their HARDWARE fails epically, then I get a new phone. If their SOFTWARE fails epically, where they supply the updates, they supply the information, and it's all created *by* them, then I'm SOL? Does that make any sense at all? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

And then it dawned on me. A conversation with a plump, elderly woman at the AT&T store surfaced in my angry memories, and a reedy voice cried out, "If I were you, dear, I would get the 200.00 insurance as well, just in case something happens." Oh, *only* 200.00. Okay, well, if it's only that much. See, I dunno about you guys, but I don't just say, "Oh, well, in that case, let me just pay *over* what I paid for my phone. No big deal." No, generally, I look at insurance as a scam to get more money from the people for something they should supply as a service in the first place. Truly-if your product doesn't work, and it's because of an update *you* put into the phone, don't you think that means that *you* should have to fix it? Mayhaps they kill soooo many of the phones with these updates, they decided to only give new phones to the ones that paid.

The way I see it, that's rediculous, unfair, and pointless. And I miss my camera. Do they have a back up camera app? I need it. T.T