16. July 2008 · Comments Off on So What’s Up With This New Look? · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

“Why the new look, Major Mom?”

Many of you have known of my quest to find a blog layout that took advantage of the space on the left AND right sides. As much as I enjoyed the color schemes in the previous layout, enough was enough.

When Dave started putting together his new train blog, he was exploring the Blogspot layouts and came across several layouts that included a “stretch” variation.

So I reached out and grabbed one of those. There’s a little bit that I still need to get used to, and once I have my desktop computer back in a couple weeks (our goal is a 1-2 August delivery in Nebraska), I can pretty things up a little more.

I like the ability to make my pictures appear a little bigger, and hopefully you don’t have to scroll as much to read my pontifications… 😀

26. May 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
26. May 2008 · Comments Off on Another emailed beach pic · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
19. May 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,


*Come on — those who know me KNOW that’s where I’d go!

Anyway, my new blog friend, Christina, has payed forward her “Excellent Blog Award” to none other than me…I am sincerely humbled by this, especially after yesterday’s somewhat-controversial post!


Thank you Christina — I’ll do my best to keep up with the high standards of this award and continue to reflect great credit upon the Ground Control to Major Mom Blog, Blogger.com, and the entire Blogosphere.

Back to resussitating my wireless router. CLEAR!

15. May 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

I’m sure that’s what Dave’s going to be calling me for the next few days.

First of all, I want to share this hilarious blog entry that Dave showed me. I’ve felt this mother’s pain, hm, EIGHT times and counting! And we’ll be going through it again in June in Strasburg, PA.

Anyway…

I GOT MY iPHONE! I’m SO excited! Our economic stimulus money is scheduled to deposit on the 16th, but I just received a reserve drill weekend paycheck so I figured I’d do some money magic and get the phone a bit ahead of time. Despite reports that Apple is planning a shortage of iPhones this month in anticipation of some new released, our local AT&T Wireless retailer had plenty of both the 8 GB and 16 GB models in stock.

So, as advertised, it was very simple to bring it home, break it out of the package, and plug it into the computer once you have the latest version of iTunes up and running on your desktop/laptop. It’s pretty straight-forward.

I have only two concerns:

1.) Since I don’t use Outlook to manage my contact information, I wasn’t able to smoothly migrate contacts. I had to manually input phone numbers, e-mail addresses and even several physical addresses into the phone.
2.) I bought a super-fancy iGo car phone charger, which allows you to change out tips only for much less than buying a whole new charger. The iPhone tips are pretty hard to find, so I’ll have to find it online.

As Wendy, Julie, Gloria and Rick will all tell you this afternoon at the park, I was glued to the thing all afternoon while the kids played. Mainly I was showing it off to friends, but I was also feverishly transfering the contacts from my old phone to the new phone.

I got that done tonight. Phew!

So this contact list, once transfered, turned out pretty cool! You can put under one name the cell phone, home phone, work phone, home and work e-mail addresses, physical addresses and even homepages! All in one place. Here’s a demo for you, I’ll pay homage to the guy who provided me the money this week to buy my new toy!

Touch the phone number and you place a call:

Touch the e-mail address and start drafting an e-mail:

Touch the homepage address, and the web browser appears with the web site:

And get this:

Touch the address and Google Maps comes up with the location of the address.



How about a satellite shot?

Then, “Would you like directions here from your current location?”

WOULD I???

(For those who don’t know me, I’m such a map geek!).

I was able to upload almost my entire iTunes music library without putting hardly a dent in the phone storage capacity.

Time to reply to some e-mails…not with the iPhone, though. It’s cool, but I still need to practice typing with that little thing.

08. May 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,


The latest laptop trauma: I believe the fan has stopped working. Our weather station receiver that feeds the outdoor weather to our websites also has a local thermometer and while it used to read the ambient temperature pretty well next to my laptop, it’s now reading the mid-80s consistently.

Maybe that’s why it arbitrarily reboots itself every 24-30 hours or so…

We are really, truly coming to the end of this kitchen laptop’s service life. A few weeks ago, the one-year-old battery stopped carrying a charge. It keeps itself at about 5%, just enough for me to run across the house to plug it into a living room outlet.

But there’s a silver lining! When Dave is finished with his PhD program and he starts at his new position at Air Force Weather Agency, his Gateway laptop will stay home! Yay! Mine is circa 2000, his is from 2006! Just a couple more months to go…

It’s now sitting atop a small cookie/cake cooling rack. Let’s see if that helps.

30. April 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,


Me: “I want an iPhone.”

Dave: “How can you be such a slave to technology?”

Me: “It’s cool and it takes care of many of the things I want to do in today’s wireless world. After all, my current cell phone is on the brink of death and if I lose it, I not only lose my phone, but also my MP3 player. So we can replace both the phone and MP3 player, or get it all-in-one with an iPhone!”

Dave: “It’s Skynet — it’s coming!”

I’ve already been to our local Apple store where they have banks of them with which you can log in to your own e-mail accounts and send messages, make phone calls, you can take photos/videos and you can surf the web. I thoroughly enjoyed playing with them, as did my boys, who immediately asked me to bring up the Peanut Butter Jelly video on You Tube!

Dave showed me this cartoon, which is pretty funny, but does a good job bringing to light one of my fears of getting a full-priced phone. I’ve been pretty brutal on my cell phones. I’d need to get insurance and one of those super-armored “skins” to protect it.

Since we have that IRS Economic Stimulus money coming to us later this month, and President Bush wants us to spend more money, I’m thinking our opportunity for me to get an iPhone couldn’t be better!

A valid concern I do have about having this iPhone is the, um, URGE I’ll have to want to be on the web all the time. Might I be trying to write e-mails at traffic lights? Or worse yet, while I’m cruising down I-40??? Do other people do that?

We’ll see whether I get one or not. So far I’m not completely sold, but I’m about 80% there.

-Patricia the Techno-Slave

13. April 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Hey — if anyone knows how I can break into the blog-format code so I can maximize the blank space on the left and right sides of my blog, please send me a note or leave me a comment. I’d be happy to send you the blog code and you can edit it for me.

I could be filling that space with so much more junky information, Air Force pitches, etc.

Ideally, I’d like a 3rd column on the left, the same width as the one on the right.

Thanks!

10. April 2008 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Paul did it again! He’s pointed out some crazy website to me and I’m now addicted.

NOTE: My affinity for The Pioneer Woman’s site is all his fault!

Presenting: the Do-It-Yourself Demotivational Poster Generator

Dave and I have always gotten a kick out of those motivational posters, such as this one:


But we get MORE of a kick out of the parodies on the motivational posters. This one was framed in Dave’s office in Florida.


Sure, folks have tried to make up their own, and you get something like this one below, which is from the USJFCOM Joint Warfighting Center in Suffolk, VA. Framed, hanging up on the wall. I couldn’t even go into this room with a straight face. I did a lot of Reserve work in the room with this poster in 2006 and 2007. There was a series of posters featuring different facets of military capability: “Intelligence”, “Operations”, “Logistics”. While I’m honored that someone thought to include “Meterology”, I wish someone had consulted a spell-checker first.

I didn’t add that Post-It note, someone else did:

With the link I’ve shown above, you can upload a picture of your choice, then add your own title and catch-phrase. Then you can e-mail the poster to friends, save a JPG of the poster to your hard drive, and you can even order an 11 x 14 of the poster for about $12!

Enjoy my latest creations.



Feel free to try it out and let me know if you come up with any particularly good ones!
Here’s a link to the company that markets the REAL motivation posters, if you’re wanting to learn more about the real thing: Successories.

19. February 2008 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

I put up a poll, and the people spoke.

Well, 8 of you spoke. Might have even been 6, since I voted on each of our computers.

But majority rules, and the ruling is that you liked the original template better. I have been looking for a format that will let me take advantage of the edges of my blog a little better.

Don, I like yours quite a bit, if I could tweak the colors some. Your information extends out to the edges of the screen.

Of course, if I were smarter in HTML, perhaps I could just get into the code, add a second “sidebar” and make the colors whatever I want.

Quick quiz! Name these colors! Just leave a comment with the answers. Maybe I’ll cut a portion of my ad earnings as a prize. Just the general hue, like “blue” or “red” or “green”:

1.) 0000FF
2.) 00FF00
3.) FF0000
4.) FF6FCF
5.) 6728B2
6.) FFFF00
7.) FFFFFF
8.) 000000

Remind me to post answers tomorrow.