Spice Girls Announce Reunion Tour

(…Is that really Geri Halliwell in the middle of the top photo? In the flowy floaty flower-child dress? That’s a bit of a change…)

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Sometimes I wonder if my subconscious is mocking me. Like right now I’m sitting here all gloomy. I’m tired. I feel like my clothes hate me and my body’s not far behind. My back hurts, as do various other parts of me. I can’t get my brain together. I may have to buy some more clothes but find it depressing to spend much money at all on something I’ll only wear for a couple of months. Boo hoo, poor me. And then I realize what song I have stuck in my head…

…”Only Happy When It Rains” by Garbage.

Now I can’t decide what’s worse: That I started mocking myself without realizing it, or that when I realized it I found it amusing. It’s hard to be too gloomy when you’re laughing at yourself, though.

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I’ve had this philodendron on my desk for more than a month now. Despite my often forgetting to water it, it seems to be thriving and shows no signs of dropping dead. Yay!

Sign of a good restaurant: Stuffed to the gills, you see another table’s appetizers come up and are inspired to wonder if you have the money to order some of that to go, so that you can snack on it later while you’re watching a movie. I mean, seriously. I couldn’t have eaten another bite without puking if you’d paid me, but those kraut balls and loaded fries were making me hungry anyway. And Tim too! So it’s not just the pregnant thing!

Tim’s making some serious progress on painting Natalie’s room. There are stars all around the top border now, and even a crescent moon over the window. He needs to go over them again before it’s done and we can finally put away the paint and pull up the drop cloth and stuff, but it’s beginning to really take shape. I think it’s going to look really nice when it’s done.

Check this out: Plate Aids Diabetes Weight Loss. Diabetes or no diabetes, these actually look like a really interesting concept to me, and something that could be really useful to a lot of people who don’t have a good grasp on how much they need to eat or how to balance meals. Which… I don’t know how it is in the UK (this being a BBC article), but here in America I think that’s a lot of people. I mean, sure, we’ve got dietary guidelines and all. But it’s one thing to say a serving of fruit is half a cup, and another thing to actually show people what half a cup looks like. I think it would really help people get a better grasp of how much a reasonable portion is, which would go a long way toward helping them eat better in general. (I could do without the motivational “You can do it!” on the rim, though. But to each her own.)

Those resolutions I made in the last post seem to be helping. My blood pressure’s still high, but it’s down to just being borderline and not hugely elevated. And although I think I slip on the weekends more than I should, in general I’m finding I feel better mentally and emotionally for the parts that touch on that. (Surprise, surprise.) Why I didn’t think of some of this stuff, like prepping lunch ahead of time, before I’ll never know.

I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm, continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls…

…And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you, go I

–Simon and Garfunkel, “Kathy’s Song”

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Yeah, I know, I’m real good at resolutions. But my blood pressure’s getting a little high and I’m looking to find ways to reduce it. (Preferably without cutting certain activities I enjoy but that can sometimes be stressful; I think I can work on this without having to do that just yet.) And I think it’ll help if I say it out where people can see it instead of just making a mental note to myself. So, with stress control and other considerations in mind…

I will do what prep work I can for lunch the night before, so that I’m not running around like crazy worrying about getting out the door on time in the morning.

I will not salt my food and I will make low-sodium food choices where possible.

I will be more strict with myself about getting up and moving around during the day instead of just sitting here staring at my computer screen ignoring my little timer that tells me I need a rest break. When working at other computers or doing non-computer sedentary things, I will remember to get up and move around at least once an hour.

I will not skip exercising on Monday, Wednesday or Thursday as usually scheduled unless there is actually something preventing me from exercising. If I have a schedule conflict, I will exercise at another time to make up for it.

I will start including my prenatal yoga DVD more often in my exercise regime.

I will let go of things that don’t matter anyway instead of dwelling on them.

I will start relaxing half an hour (or preferably an hour) before bed instead of rushing around doing all the stuff I’ve forgotten that can wait until the next day anyway. I will go to bed at 10pm each work night, or 11pm on non-work nights. Once in bed, I will not think about anything particularly serious that would keep me awake.

I will keep an eye out for regularly occurring high-stress situations in my daily life and take steps to reduce the stress they generate as best I can.

Most of all, though, if I screw up on any of this? I will shrug, move on with life, and try to do better next time instead of beating myself up over it.

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Nyah, nyah. Fixed the link problem. I’m still not entirely happy, because I had to screw with the code and that really seems like something you ought to be able to do from the Dashboard without going to all the trouble of messing with code. But at least it works now. Off to fix my other blogs.

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I love WordPress 2.2 for the most part. It’s neat. But my links hate me, they really do. I mean, I’m neither surprised nor upset to have to install a new version of MyLinkOrder to allow me to stick the “Recently Heard” category above “Blogroll”. But suddenly I can’t seem to alphabetize the links within those categories (unless I do it manually through MyLinkOrder, which–there are 389 links in my “Recently Heard” category, I don’t think so), and the Description field isn’t showing anymore so the artists don’t show up with my recently-heard songs. I also can’t mark multiple links and toggle their visibility anymore; I have to do each one manually.

What the heck is up here? I must surely just be missing something, because usually you don’t go backward in functionality with new versions…

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We the people demand a Gadget Bill of Lights

My PC and other computing equipment make my office look like a jet cockpit. I have two LCD monitors, each of which has two indicator lights that flash even when the PC is turned off. The attached sound control has a light on it. My keyboard has multiple lights. The power cord has lights, the printer has lights, and the power button is illuminated. My cable modem and Linksys router flash like crazy all the time. Together, these useless lights create a visual cacophony of blinking, multicolored lights that make me feel like I’m taking part in a NASA stress test for astronaut candidates.

Yeah, I’m swiping from Slashdot again. This popped up a few days ago, and I’ve been mulling it over ever since. Because when I read the article, and the particular paragraph quoted above, I was struck by how different two people’s reactions to a given stimulus can be. Mike Elgan’s response to the various LEDs on electronics is more or less the opposite of mine.

At corporate HQ for the retail chain I used to work tech support for, the physical location housing the IT department was commonly called “the cave” because it was always cold and dark; there were no windows and the room was heavily air-conditioned for the sake of the servers. In addition to three workstations in cubicles, there were four servers, monitors for the same, at least two large hubs, a RAS server, an ISDN modem, and a couple of dial-up modems all lined up on a couple of benches. There were also 2-3 cash register test environments, running on old Compaq PCs, set up near the servers. I remember many times walking into this darkness, illuminated only by the LED lights from these various electronic devices, silent except for the gentle humming of case fans, and feeling the tension of a morning commute (or in some cases, a long weekend working inventory) just drain away.

I’ve had the same experience in our living room sometimes at night, though there are fewer lights there to create the effect. I don’t find these lights disturbing or distracting at all. Rather, I find them soothing and calming, a reassurance that things are still operating as usual. Sometimes, especially when all the lights are green, they remind me of little electronic fireflies over a grassy lawn on a dark summer’s night.

These are differences of personal preference and association, and I can understand that not everyone feels the way I do. Some parts of the rest of the article left me scratching my head, though. For instance, if your Palm or Blackberry is keeping you awake, why not put it in another room or in a drawer where its light won’t bother you? Why is case lighting on a laptop that’s marketed toward gamers automatically in poor tastes? I don’t understand people who want airbrush art on their cars either, but the appropriate course of action there would be to refrain from getting my car airbrushed, not to make fun of artists for targeting their product to a potentially lucrative market. And most of all, while I see how some of these lights he lists are actually fairly useless, how can he possibly include the lights on his router and cable modem in that? They’re invaluable tools for ensuring that you can tell when something’s gone wrong, and for troubleshooting when needed. I find myself wondering how someone writing for a computer magazine could be confused on this point.

Eh. I guess Elgin and I will probably never see eye-to-eye on this one.

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Cucumber Flavored Soda Sold in Japan

I saw this headline on my RSS reader and I have to admit my reaction was, “…And?” It’s not so much that this isn’t news; all sorts of things get reported that aren’t news. But if we’re going to get into the snack foods and beverages of Asia and particularly of Japan, actually, cucumber soda… doesn’t sound that odd. I mean, talk to me after you’ve tried the grass jelly drink. (Interestingly, this is not the jelly drink I was looking for a link to, but that’s OK because this one works much better! And yes, I have tried it and no, I don’t recommend it.) At least this cucumber thing is a soda.

Actually, I want to know if I can try this cucumber soda. I wonder if Jungle Jim’s will have any; we’re going Friday, so that would be the perfect time to keep an eye out. It’s such a new product even in Japan, though, that I don’t exactly have my hopes up.

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Monday I went back to the prenatal yoga DVD. I haven’t used it as much as I thought I would, and I’m not entirely sure why. This time I went beyond the warm ups into “standing poses”. I put this in quotes because most of the poses, for me, were not actually standing; for third trimester, it’s recommended to modify many of them by sitting in a chair for extra support rather than doing the standing or squatting or lunging that would be done in the first two trimesters. (I know! Third trimester already, can you believe it? Two more months…)

You’d think it would be easier, sitting in the chair, not having to support your weight with your legs and not having to deal with squatting positions. (Squats I’m OK with; it’s holding them that kills me, even non-pregnant.) It’s still a pretty good workout, though. You can still do a lot of stretching, and even holding an arm up at an angle is a decent effort if, like me, you have no arm strength. And I have to admit, the yoga did help. I did feel more stretchy and flexible afterward, and that made me feel more comfortable in general. I need to make more of an effort to include this. Sigh.

I think I’m going to have to start skipping the guided relaxation at the end, though. It’s just not doing anything for me. I wind up focused on whether I’m comfortable or not and missing instructions and not really relaxing at all. Plus, there’s a lot of “feel the tension drain away” stuff that doesn’t make intuitive sense to me when I’m in a lying-on-my-side position as suggested by the video. I realize that lying down makes relaxing all the muscles easier, and lying on one’s back is not possible in the second and third trimesters, but I just always feel like gravity’s working against my attempts to let the energy drain away as suggested.

I also continue to have problems with breathing. I don’t know if this is something I just need more practice with, or something that just is, but when I try to consciously follow the instructions during the workout about when to breathe in and when to breathe out and all, I wind up short of breath and feeling clumsy and no longer focused on what I’m doing. I think I’m going to have to focus on just getting the poses right for now, and add in the breathing when it’s actually possible… Which I know is probably not good yoga practice, really, but it may be what I am able to do at the moment. And all I can do is what I’m able to, you know?

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Not so jazzed about Windows Safari anymore, after playing with it for even a few minutes. This feels more like an alpha than a beta to me. Here are my lists of pros and cons…

Pros:

Doesn’t give me the glitch on Netflix where I can’t switch from Tim’s user profile to mine, the way the latest Opera did.

Actually loads my iGoogle stickynotes, unlike previous versions of Safari.

Seems to load pages relatively fast.

Cons:

It froze on me a couple of times at the beginning, but then it stopped. I’m not certain why; I was trying to troubleshoot so I could more accurately report the bug, but never figured out what was going on.

Clicking its button on the Windows Taskbar does not minimize it. (I know this is consistent with standard Mac behaviour, but… this is Windows.)

Security options allow zero fine-tuning. It’s all or nothing. Exceptions to the policy of denying cookies, blocking pop-ups, etc. cannot be set. This tends to block legitimate content as well as problem content.

Speaking of pop-ups, the blocker is too thorough. It blocks things that aren’t pop-up windows. For example, on Netflix when you hover over a movie you get a pop-up with a brief description and the cover art and such. Safari Windows’s pop-up blocker blocks this (and, again, there’s no way to set an exception).

The browser also doesn’t pop up image descriptions where they are available. Turning off the pop-up blocker doesn’t fix this.

Options for customizing the toolbars are limited. One of my most-used buttons in other browsers is “new tab”, which isn’t available here. There’s a keyboard shortcut, and a menu option, but those aren’t my preferred methods. I also can’t navigate more than one page back or forward from the toolbar, whereas with Opera I can get a drop-down list of the past several pages I’ve been to, which is much more convenient. (Yes. Picky. I know.)

When arranging/managing bookmarks, I can’t seem to copy one. I can move it, but then there’s no copy left in the source folder. There’s an option for “Copy” in the right-click menu, but it doesn’t seem to do anything.

Some of those things may be bugs and glitches that get worked out during beta testing, but others… I mean, the security stuff isn’t a bug. It’s just not there, and that bothers me a lot. And this is all after only a few minutes of playing with it… I’m not holding out much hope right now. When they get a release candidate out, rather than a buggy beta (alpha?), I might try again. Right now, I’m not sure if I can stand it long enough to really use it on a regular basis. (Which I really hate saying about an Apple product.)

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