March 2010 Archives

So I’ve finally gotten most things straightened out. There’s a couple of issues with the design site, but that is nothing new. I’ve created a new splash page to celebrate the re-opening of Sweetly-Evil.Org and added the other two sites to it properly. Make sure you check it out. It’s a little large for the screen at 1280x800 right now. I may redo it, shrink it up a bit, but for now it works.

Nothing much has been going on. I got a WiiFitPlus and have been working out with it almost every day. The trainer happily tells me how wonderful my posture is (which is sort of wrong since I have slight scoliosis). That sucker really does work you all over though! I wake up with joints cracking and muscles sore from it. But it’s a good thing. I need to get back into shape so I can climb stairs in order to do laundry (since the washer and dryer are in the basement).

The design site has a new name. Exquisite Designs. I was thinking it needed a new name for the hell of it. I like it and it works. It took longer to restore it than the other sites due to the complications I have been having with MT. Even though it is set up the same as the other blogs located on the site, it will not work properly when going to it as a subdomain. This seems to happen when I get to a certain number of blogs, but according to the information it says MT can handle an unlimited number of blogs. So perhaps it’s the server or the database screwing things up. I wouldn’t know how to fix it from that perspective at this point in time though so I will link to it like I did before.

Otherwise I’ve been working and keeping house. I went to Borders today and spent some money there. I also took the Little Lady over to Pet Supplies Plus and bought her a Betta fish. His name is Tokyo (but pronouced with the emphasis on ‘kyo’ instead of ‘to’ and we call him Kyo for short). Kyo is a beautiful shading of reds and actually seems to pay attention to what’s going on around him. So far Velvet has not cared to acknowlege him (which is a good thing). Alright, for now I am off. Laters.

So I’m a day late in posting birthday photos, but I had more interesting things to do, which I’ll let you know either later today or tomorrow all about (it involves finishing a brand new novel).

So I’m 33… Yay. Hehe. I have been told for the last 10 years that I look 16. Unless I do my makeup and then I might look old enough not to be carded. People assume that my daughter and I are sisters and to me that’s a backwards compliment. I tell people that I’m older than they are simply because I have a 15 year old daughter, even if they are older than me. Raising teenagers can be complicated, but so far I’ve been lucky and ended up with a pretty good child.

So here are a couple of photos taken and yes played around with in photoshop, I simply can’t resist. I’ll probably post some that are much more altered. Here I just adjusted lighting and so forth. (PhotoFixing, not Shopping.) The weather is sunny and bright and in the 60s. Pretty soon summer will be upon us and people will be whining about the heat. Not me.. I’ll enjoy every second of it. Laters.

Velvet has been playful, lovable and downright hilarious. I made her a ball of yarn and she tears it apart on a regular basis, at least when she isn’t carrying it around in her mouth mewoing. She throws it and chases it and attacks it. She backs it into corners. It’s quite entertaining.

Now she wants to play hide and seek. You can see her paws and tail sticking out. So I told her “Velvet, I can see your paws.” So she hid her paws from me. The unfortunate thing is that she forgot that her tail was still sticking out. But I just let her be and pretended I couldn’t find her after snapping a photo and walking away.

And then there she is after coming out of hiding. She simply doesn’t believe that I ever even knew where she was hiding. Do you see Velvet’s fur coat? She’s happy and healthy and her fur is growing back amazingly fast. I haven’t seen her full coated since a couple of years after we got her. She’s a very stressed kitty normally and tends to chew on herself. Since we moved here she hasn’t done any of the constant chewing and looks so much better for it.

All kinds of things have been happening in the past few weeks. The Little Lady and I left California behind (we will miss many people and many places) to return to the snowy depths of Northeast Ohio. There are a lot of reasons why we left, which I won’t bother going through. I know, most people air all their dirty laundry on the internet but I got over that stage (other than complaining about schools, drivers and other parents… people in general) a long time ago.

Since arriving I’ve been feeling much better about life in general. I have a job, I have friends I can go and see and meet with and I can pursue new hobbies and interests as they come to me. I am definitely going to pursue photography and graphic design in all it’s glorious ways. While I have been doing these things previously, most photography was kept close to home, or on some occasions I hadn’t thought to bring my camera (shame on me). I am going to start keeping it with me more often, to the point of bringing it on every day trips. You never know when I’ll see something worth taking a photo of.

Here’s a slideshow from my Picasa page of photos that I have taken of the house and backyard:

I hope that will suffice for now. The one titled ‘sunnyday’ is the best backyard photo ever. Enjoy.

Due to technical issues I was having when uploading images - it wouldn’t bring up the menu to tell it to make a thumbnail, what size to make it, where I wanted it aligned or if I wanted a popup as well anymore. When installing MT5, you have to do a completely new install (this is a warning to all of you out there) and that means you cannot use the database you used with MT4. I did and that messed things up. So I uninstalled everything, started a new database and deleted the old one, then reinstalled MT4 because it’s the preferred method of posting for this girlie.

MT5 is more for those who are starting out fresh and new and don’t want to have to go through the weeks it would take to establish a website and blog integrated into one. Although, I have a bit of a bone to pick about this. The way MT5 seems to be setup is on a new install you have to start a website before you can start a blog. And then it messes up the urls from there, especially when you work with subdomains.

I think MT4 is amazing for creating an entire website with though. You can create Pages that have the same exact layout as the rest of the website. Those pages get linked in a widget, or if you want them elsewhere you can put them anywhere on the site. So I didn’t see a need for the way MT5 was set up or why it even replaced MT4. Or maybe I’m just not savvy enough to see the use for it yet.

I like MT4, it works for my needs. And soon I’ll have everything here back in order, including the other three sites that are also currently down and out. I am reuploading photos one by one so that they are listed in the database and with work taking up a lot of time and the Little Lady taking up a lot of time (she had food poisoning saturday and is still feeling effects from it) this has been on the low priority list. Let me tell you though, it is driving me batty. So as always, be patient and things will come together very soon. Laters.