Dear Wal,
This semester, for my geography class, someone had the fantastic idea to use Google Earth instead of an actual map. Now, don't get me wrong, Google Earth is an amazing accomplishment in satellite mapping, but it is the hardest program I've ever used. I mean, I took this class to learn how to read a real, paper map, not a program that only works half the time even when you have a good internet connection. Let's face it, in everyday life Google Earth will never conceivably be used for navigation. Let me rephrase that, it will when everyone has free broadband internet implanted into their brain. (Which, frighteningly, might not be that far off...)
1) No names/incorrect names on rivers and mountain ranges. I don't expect every trickling mountain stream to have a name, but major rivers like the Rhine? The Thames? Honestly? If you have time to map out every single street in the United States, surely you have time to name a few rivers. The same problem exists for major mountain ranges, such as the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. (In case you're wondering, all these places were on a quiz that took me two hours to complete on Friday. To find them, I had to consult an atlas. That's how useless Google Earth is.)
2) Searching locations. I want to be able to search everything, and get a list of things I can choose from, instead of just being propelled across the globe to somewhere I've never even heard of.
3) Start-up tips. I don't need to know any 'tips' to know this program sucks. (Is there any way to turn this off? Anyone?)
4) Glitchy speech bubbles. I don't know what these bubbles are actually called, but this is how I refer to them. But when you click on one of the thumb tacks, it opens up a bubble. Half the time, these bubbles open like they should. The other half of the time, they spazz out and flicker, which causes my eye to go into epileptic spasms.
5) Streetview. Who in the world thought combining Google Earth and Streetview was a good idea? I try to zoom in just a little further, and the program puts me through to Streetview, causing everything to reload all over again. Plus, unless you want to wait fifteen more minutes for 3D buildings to load, everything is completely flat, which is beyond disorienting, almost maddening, and it causes you to lose your sense of direction completely. Then you have to zoom back out, figure out where you are, try everything all over again. That is, if Google Earth doesn't crash when you're switching back to 'normal' mode from Streeview.
Eventually, I'm sure I'll get better at using Google Earth, but for now I'm absolutely helpless.
/endrant
P.S. Reasons for not posting for a week: schoolwork, schoolwork, schoolwork. I started with seven assignments on Friday, and that's basically what I've been doing all weekend.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Adventures in Pest Control
Dear Wal,
Last Friday, it got suddenly cold outside. Thus far, this winter has been extremely mild, so we haven't had to practice any kind of regular pest control, other than the poison Dad puts under the house. All the mice have been outside enjoying the warm weather and happily multiplying. Now that it's January, and winter has finally decided to show up, the mice are panicking and running for cover.
In the house.
Friday night, we start hearing noises in the walls. And then on the kitchen floor. And then on the floor in my room. And then on the floor in my closet. I didn't understand what was going on, and I wake up bleary and half-dreaming to these rustling sounds. My first thought is the cat, but we put the cat out at night (because, strange things happen in the night when we forget to put the cat out). My second thought is: someone has come into my room and they're about to kill me. It took me a few more seconds of wakefulness to realize that was ridiculous. If someone was trying to kill me, they wouldn't make that much noise. A brief image of my floor covered in deadly vipers flashed before my eyes, before I got a handle on my imagination and woke up the rest of the way and I realized it had to be a mouse.
We all got up the next morning with tales of noises in the night. Dad got under the house and put out some more poison. That took care of some of them. But lo and behold, Saturday night while Mom and I were sitting on the couch we heard something scrabbling around in the kitchen. So I took off my shoes and crept into the kitchen in my socks. I pretended I was the cat, and padded very carefully toward the source of the sound. Unfortunately, after a few exploratory kicks at the trash can I still hadn't discovered the mouse. However, that night there weren't anymore sounds of mice moving around in my room.
Sunday morning I scooped up my earbuds from where I had left them on my chair, plugged them in and discovered that the rubber end of one of them had been half eaten by a mouse. I could see the teeth marks. Thankfully, I have about a million of those rubber things. Skullcandy puts three extra sets in with every set of earbuds. Sunday and Monday go by, nothing exciting happens.
Then I get up this morning, grab my ear buds off my chair like I always do, sit down to watch Good Mythical Morning, and discover that one of the buds has been entirely eaten off. This is the weirdest way I have ever lost a pair of earbuds. Gotten them pulled out of my ears a few times, gotten them caught in things, or worn out. You know how it is.
But no, my earbuds have been eaten by mice. I'm thinking about keeping them just for story telling value.
/endrant
P.S. I'm going to set a mouse trap in my room tonight. Wish me luck.
Last Friday, it got suddenly cold outside. Thus far, this winter has been extremely mild, so we haven't had to practice any kind of regular pest control, other than the poison Dad puts under the house. All the mice have been outside enjoying the warm weather and happily multiplying. Now that it's January, and winter has finally decided to show up, the mice are panicking and running for cover.
In the house.
Friday night, we start hearing noises in the walls. And then on the kitchen floor. And then on the floor in my room. And then on the floor in my closet. I didn't understand what was going on, and I wake up bleary and half-dreaming to these rustling sounds. My first thought is the cat, but we put the cat out at night (because, strange things happen in the night when we forget to put the cat out). My second thought is: someone has come into my room and they're about to kill me. It took me a few more seconds of wakefulness to realize that was ridiculous. If someone was trying to kill me, they wouldn't make that much noise. A brief image of my floor covered in deadly vipers flashed before my eyes, before I got a handle on my imagination and woke up the rest of the way and I realized it had to be a mouse.
We all got up the next morning with tales of noises in the night. Dad got under the house and put out some more poison. That took care of some of them. But lo and behold, Saturday night while Mom and I were sitting on the couch we heard something scrabbling around in the kitchen. So I took off my shoes and crept into the kitchen in my socks. I pretended I was the cat, and padded very carefully toward the source of the sound. Unfortunately, after a few exploratory kicks at the trash can I still hadn't discovered the mouse. However, that night there weren't anymore sounds of mice moving around in my room.
Sunday morning I scooped up my earbuds from where I had left them on my chair, plugged them in and discovered that the rubber end of one of them had been half eaten by a mouse. I could see the teeth marks. Thankfully, I have about a million of those rubber things. Skullcandy puts three extra sets in with every set of earbuds. Sunday and Monday go by, nothing exciting happens.
Then I get up this morning, grab my ear buds off my chair like I always do, sit down to watch Good Mythical Morning, and discover that one of the buds has been entirely eaten off. This is the weirdest way I have ever lost a pair of earbuds. Gotten them pulled out of my ears a few times, gotten them caught in things, or worn out. You know how it is.
But no, my earbuds have been eaten by mice. I'm thinking about keeping them just for story telling value.
/endrant
P.S. I'm going to set a mouse trap in my room tonight. Wish me luck.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
This Has Been a Terrible Week
Dear Wal,
Are you supposed to capitalize "has been" in a title? I think so...I DON'T KNOW! LIFE DOESN'T MAKE SENSE ANYMORE! Actually, lately life has made perfect sense. Only, it's the kind of sense that causes people to end up in Arkham Asylum. One terrible thing after another seems to be happening to me. This is just not my week for good luck.
First of all, it's been raining all week. And when I say raining, I mean raining. Like, the kind of rain that Gotham usually gets. Nowhere is safe. No part of the yard has solid footing anymore. Yesterday we got about an hour of almost sunshine, but then it started raining again. Tonight, it's supposed to freeze and/or snow. This means that I've been trapped inside all week, unable to do anything except watch Star Trek, write and read (which isn't actually that bad, but it drives you crazy after a while.)
Then, my alarm clock ceased working. I think it's fallen out of my drawer too many times. It makes a weird buzzing sound when I pick it up...anyway, it won't actually turn off when I press the off button. It will just go off for a little while, and then started pinging again five minutes later. The first time, I decided I probably just missed the button, but now I'm sure there's something wrong with the clock itself. One of the main problems with this stupid clock is that the snooze button is gigantic, and the off button is a tiny point and impossible to find. I don't use the snooze button. I never have. I get up as soon as the pinging starts. I don't understand why they don't make the off button the biggest, and the snooze button smaller. Gah.
That was nothing compared to what happened to me next.
The one day this week that we had sunshine, yesterday, I decided to make a salad. I cut up the lettuce, and started to slice the onion. We have a slicer where you just put whatever veggie on the slicer, and then slide it over the blade, in order to cut the veggie. However, the onion wasn't the only thing that got cut when I used the slicer. It took a chunk off the side of my thumb. There was blood everywhere, and it wouldn't stop bleeding for like twenty minutes. The wound is really deep and it hasn't scabbed over yet. It's going to take a long time to heal. I have a giant tape/bandage configuration on my thumb that makes it look like I cut it off or something.
Changing the bandage this morning was sooo much fun, because the gauze I used last night had stuck to the wound, which meant that when I pealed the gauze off it took what little scab there was with it. Hurt like hell, and it started bleeding again. I got Mom to help me bandage it this time, and she found a non-stick pad to use on it. She was gracious enough to tell me that the tape she was using could rip your skin off if it was too weak. The cat was extremely worried about me. When mom was finished bandaging my thumb she came and checked on me, and then went to check on Mom. It was very sweet. She's a great cat.
Earlier today, Watson found this video on youtube (fast forward to 2:20):
Oh, the irony.
The story doesn't end there.
I spent most of my day at school learning how to write without the use of my thumb, and working on a sci fi story I came up with over the summer about a war that lasts for a thousand years (if I ever make a timeline for it, I'll post it.) On the way home on the bus, the drive just dropped me directly at the end of my driveway, which was great because that meant I didn't have to do the usual four bus transfers to get home, but it also meant I had to walk up the driveway in the pouring rain. Not fun. When I got down to the house, I set my backpack down in a chair and hung my bag on another chair, and discovered something horrible. My backpack had been soaked completely through. (My first thought was: BACKPACK, YOU HAVE FAILED ME! D8) I had two textbooks, three notebooks, two sketchbooks, a binder and The Dark Tower in it. Thankfully, not everything got wet. Only the worst things. I.e. the bran new sketchbook I was actually using, and the writing notebook I was using to write the sci fi story in and one of my textbooks. Of course, the first few pages of the sketchbook that I actually drew on were the wettest, and about five more blank pages were ruined. Other than that, the rest of the book is usable. My writing notebook I don't mind so much, because you can still write on wrinkled paper. Drawing paper however, is a completely different matter. Plus, my writing notebook had gotten wet once before. On our biology trip last semester we went on a boat tour, and I was stupid enough to bring trusty notebook along. I dropped it in the inch or so of water in the bottom of the boat. Thankfully, it was fine once it dried.
Everything's had about an hour to dry now, but the sketchbook isn't fairing very well. The paper that got wet is just disintegrating, same thing for the cover. I'm probably going to have to do duct tape surgery on it.
/endrant
P.S. I gave one of Buzzy's horseshoes to Austin the other day. Maybe that's why I'm having so much bad luck.
Are you supposed to capitalize "has been" in a title? I think so...I DON'T KNOW! LIFE DOESN'T MAKE SENSE ANYMORE! Actually, lately life has made perfect sense. Only, it's the kind of sense that causes people to end up in Arkham Asylum. One terrible thing after another seems to be happening to me. This is just not my week for good luck.
First of all, it's been raining all week. And when I say raining, I mean raining. Like, the kind of rain that Gotham usually gets. Nowhere is safe. No part of the yard has solid footing anymore. Yesterday we got about an hour of almost sunshine, but then it started raining again. Tonight, it's supposed to freeze and/or snow. This means that I've been trapped inside all week, unable to do anything except watch Star Trek, write and read (which isn't actually that bad, but it drives you crazy after a while.)
Then, my alarm clock ceased working. I think it's fallen out of my drawer too many times. It makes a weird buzzing sound when I pick it up...anyway, it won't actually turn off when I press the off button. It will just go off for a little while, and then started pinging again five minutes later. The first time, I decided I probably just missed the button, but now I'm sure there's something wrong with the clock itself. One of the main problems with this stupid clock is that the snooze button is gigantic, and the off button is a tiny point and impossible to find. I don't use the snooze button. I never have. I get up as soon as the pinging starts. I don't understand why they don't make the off button the biggest, and the snooze button smaller. Gah.
That was nothing compared to what happened to me next.
The one day this week that we had sunshine, yesterday, I decided to make a salad. I cut up the lettuce, and started to slice the onion. We have a slicer where you just put whatever veggie on the slicer, and then slide it over the blade, in order to cut the veggie. However, the onion wasn't the only thing that got cut when I used the slicer. It took a chunk off the side of my thumb. There was blood everywhere, and it wouldn't stop bleeding for like twenty minutes. The wound is really deep and it hasn't scabbed over yet. It's going to take a long time to heal. I have a giant tape/bandage configuration on my thumb that makes it look like I cut it off or something.Changing the bandage this morning was sooo much fun, because the gauze I used last night had stuck to the wound, which meant that when I pealed the gauze off it took what little scab there was with it. Hurt like hell, and it started bleeding again. I got Mom to help me bandage it this time, and she found a non-stick pad to use on it. She was gracious enough to tell me that the tape she was using could rip your skin off if it was too weak. The cat was extremely worried about me. When mom was finished bandaging my thumb she came and checked on me, and then went to check on Mom. It was very sweet. She's a great cat.
Earlier today, Watson found this video on youtube (fast forward to 2:20):
The story doesn't end there.
I spent most of my day at school learning how to write without the use of my thumb, and working on a sci fi story I came up with over the summer about a war that lasts for a thousand years (if I ever make a timeline for it, I'll post it.) On the way home on the bus, the drive just dropped me directly at the end of my driveway, which was great because that meant I didn't have to do the usual four bus transfers to get home, but it also meant I had to walk up the driveway in the pouring rain. Not fun. When I got down to the house, I set my backpack down in a chair and hung my bag on another chair, and discovered something horrible. My backpack had been soaked completely through. (My first thought was: BACKPACK, YOU HAVE FAILED ME! D8) I had two textbooks, three notebooks, two sketchbooks, a binder and The Dark Tower in it. Thankfully, not everything got wet. Only the worst things. I.e. the bran new sketchbook I was actually using, and the writing notebook I was using to write the sci fi story in and one of my textbooks. Of course, the first few pages of the sketchbook that I actually drew on were the wettest, and about five more blank pages were ruined. Other than that, the rest of the book is usable. My writing notebook I don't mind so much, because you can still write on wrinkled paper. Drawing paper however, is a completely different matter. Plus, my writing notebook had gotten wet once before. On our biology trip last semester we went on a boat tour, and I was stupid enough to bring trusty notebook along. I dropped it in the inch or so of water in the bottom of the boat. Thankfully, it was fine once it dried.
Everything's had about an hour to dry now, but the sketchbook isn't fairing very well. The paper that got wet is just disintegrating, same thing for the cover. I'm probably going to have to do duct tape surgery on it.
/endrant
P.S. I gave one of Buzzy's horseshoes to Austin the other day. Maybe that's why I'm having so much bad luck.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Remodle
Dear Wal,
As you guys might have noticed, I haven't posted in a while. Excuses aside, it's because I've decided to redo the appearance of the blog. Maybe organize a little. Reboot for the new year. Never fear, everything should be back to normal by the end of January.
As you guys might have noticed, I haven't posted in a while. Excuses aside, it's because I've decided to redo the appearance of the blog. Maybe organize a little. Reboot for the new year. Never fear, everything should be back to normal by the end of January.
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