Tresa's Blog

I have an old iBook, not quite as old as this one.

It looks like this. We call this unbreakable husbands computer, he’s been home quite a bit lately so I’ve been using his laptop off and on. So now that I have to actually use it it’s time to like actually WORK on the thing and speed it up a bit. I’ve installed Virtual PC and different OS on Macs years ago so I”m not a complete stooge as far as mac goes and unix, I do love the look of the old iBook, it’s sort of like an old two tone corvette.

Anyway right now I’m verifying file permissions with the Disk Utility and repairing. I also downloaded MacJanitor and Onyx for my appropriate version of os 10. So if your mac is a bit sluggish start here and THEN buy more RAM which will be my next step. (unless I go to the iPad which is absolutely imperative that I get high on my wish list, that or a mini mac or both?)

Oh BTW (shameless plug) I work for a web design company freelancing, writing, researching, some designing, we have a new website, feel FREE to check it out….

I didn’t get my email in 24 hours like facebook said.  So probably by writing this article I’ve completely screwed my chances of being a facebook beta tester but I think they were already screwed because I haven’t heard a word from facebook (or anyone I asked to comment on my entries, you know who you are, ahem….).

If you have NO idea what I’m talking about go to your home page on facebook, (you ARE on facebook aren’t you?) and see if there is a link on the right for beta testers, if not don’t despair, refresh, maybe it will appear later, I’m not sure mine is always there.  If it’s not there then I really don’t know what to tell you.

The first part of the page says:

We at Facebook are preparing to launch a brand new product to the world. We think it will be as exciting as Facebook Photos and Facebook Events, but we need your help to make it great.

As a beta tester, your job will be to ask great questions and provide great answers about your favorite topics. Economics? Skydiving? Relationships? Mexican Restaurants? It’s up to you. You’ll be the first person outside of Facebook to use this product. Your expert writing will be seen by tens of millions of people — including job recruiters. And we’ll bring our best beta testers out to California to tour Facebook headquarters and meet the team.

Now some took that to mean they were entering and immediately  flying out to CA to visit facebook.  I ask you does it say fly anywhere?  No?  Well it does say they will bring you so I suppose they will give you gas money @ least….OK, I’m just kidding.  I haven’t packed my bags yet though.

I know why they didn’t pick me.  But I couldn’t help it….I went on and on, not badly, just longer than their examples.  In other words I have problems with stopping writing, sort of like this paragraph.

I used personal examples too.  I’m not sure that was a good deal.  But ya know I haven’t lived anyone else’s life yet so mine is pretty much all I can be sure of drawing from…

Anyway has anyone else tried this or gotten the return email?  Don’t tell me everyone else has gotten the email in 24 hours, it says facebook hearts you and gave you warm fuzzies?

Famous People With Bipolar Disorder

No smart aleck comments for once, just Jane Pauley???? Who KNEW??  Ok, probably everyone in the free and non-free world besides me OK?  I’m a bit slooooow some times.  I knew steroids were poison!! see my post about shingles on Florence View.

(@ this point you are saying WHERE in the expletive did that come from?

Well you have to read the link,

duhhhhh and double duhhhh,

OK maybe a bit smart aleck?)

Me SA, not Jane Pauley, no no no.  And SA can represent anything your little heart desires.

Kids on patio

We all know the horror stories of step families, I’ve seen some and experienced a few with other step families.  I’m not saying this because I ever really didn’t like the kids (OK there were times but my own have given me some grief too) but because I just wanted to thank them for being what they are and who they are.

The kids call me old witch (all of them) but I don’t mind as other words which rhyme are MUCH worse and I do have dark hair and a big nose….

We had my two girls who were in their teens and husbands two sons that were 8 and 11 when we first got married living with us most or @ least part of the time.  He had two older girls and a girl who was 5 when we got married, she stayed with us every other weekend.  Yes that adds up to 7 children.  There were already grandkids in the equation….

Freezing stuff from the garden 15 years ago.....

I love my biological children.  I expect them to think like I do in certain ways.   It’s just programmed into  every mother.  The last few years I have been able to appreciate fully what we have all accomplished though.   It hasn’t always been pretty but now family gatherings are my most precious moments.  It’s a gentle roar with 7 kids, assorted kids and grandkids?  Plus spouses, spouses to be etc.    I don’t know how long it’s been since we all tried to sit down @ a table, usually we fill a room up with folding tables.

Christmas Two years ago....

My husband and I have only been married 18+ years but these people are my family and always will be through thick and thin.  I didn’t have anything to do with raising the two oldest girls but I’m not exactly a mother figure to them, more like an aunt.   I’ve come to realize what a precious gift I’ve been given lately.  The reason for all of this?  A gradutation, a wedding shower,  a visit from the new mother (youngest step daughter) and 4 calls later in the week one from each step child checking on how I was or inviting me to a family function.  My daughters are on facebook and we talk almost every day on there but  not all of the steps are but they ALL took the time out to call ME, their father wasn’t home this week.  It wasn’t even mothers day!!

I’m not given to extreme emotions (except for occasional anger which we won’t discuss now) and I’m usually way too COOL trying to be snide and dry to say these things but I just had to say them now.  I am so very proud, I’ve always said we somehow got the perfect step family (there is not such a thing but ours is VERY good).  I am so proud of each and every one of them.

There is no sure  formula for step families as far as I can tell.  Tolerance, time, humor and shared experiences and love for the same people are the key I believe.  OK, lots of laughter and good food and kids playing, movies stories, campfires….. and now a wedding…

God has truly blessed me, all of it may not have been what I envisioned when I was 19  but  he has filled my heart.

Me and second oldest Grandson.

Serious Rant….

I came home from the grocery store yesterday saying my famous line, we HAVE to quit eating.

What brought this on?  Store brand, great value, green beans, no fancy cut, no long, no no salt, just plain green beans and guess how much they were?

EIGHTY-TWO CENTS!!! that’s how much, now how in the name of …….well this green earth can anyone justify 82 cents for a can of green beans?   I can remember 10 for a dollar back in the cave man days…I can remember 4 for a dollar in the recent past but 82 cents???!!

The big deal?  I know these beans aren’t marked up very much, don’t ask me how I know but I know.  I shopped last Saturday and this Saturday, $180 last Saturday and $250 this week.  Of course I had to buy blood sugar strips $39 last week.  This week it was another pair of cheap reading glasses, 4 $3 shirts throw away but look decent for  a bit, hair color and a prescription.  AND I had the gall to buy a couple pork loins and some cheap cheap chicken and a pound of lean hamburger.  Otherwise it was ALL fruits, vegetables, dairy products, diet bread, diet this and diet that, almost no prepared foods except for desserts!!  Eating healthy is EXPENSIVE, little Debbies and potato chips were cheap compared with all of this.

And if I was a farmer I wouldn’t be getting nearly my fair share of the 82 cents, would I?

Oh and freight rates haven’t gone up seriously for 20 years, everything else is like 4,5, and 6 times as much if not more.  They can try to blame transportation for all of this but someone else is getting rich.  It’s not uncommon anymore to take 1 pallet of freight for $200, 1000 miles just because it was the only thing and $200 is better than nothing to get back to where they need to be.  Trucks get about 5 mpg, diesel is between $2.70 and $3 a gallon, do the math…

I don’t think this is a republican or a democrat question this is a question of big business cornering markets and squeezing every penny out of the consumers pocket they could.  Then everyone wonders where all the money went while looking out @ the miles of McMansions built with corporate greed.  Don’t get me wrong I’m all for business growing and profiting.  But having bloated upper echelon workers suck the lifeblood out of a company and America is not how we got where we are or maybe it is, but it’s definitely not how we got to where we were when the American Dream was alive and well.

I’m through now, what do you think?

Carry on…..

My true Geek is showing through.

I just installed a local apache server on my laptop and then installed Wordpress.  I am now happier than a pig in poop.  But I haven’t been blogging much lately or even fooling around on facebook!!  I helped finish a website and we modified the theme online, it would have been easier to do it on a local server (ie on my own computer).

For those who are remotely intersted here’s the link.  I think it’s neat anyway.  Almost better than finding a new purse or loosing 5 lb!

Good Day.

Can’t comment for a day or two, things I HAVE to take care of.  I will be back online soon.  OK I’m online but working…….like real work, website work.

I battled with at&t this morning. I had been near the Mexican border, got a message about data costing more. Phone quit working. Tried to get in touch with att with email and text since I couldn’t call, finally my daughter called them and they said for me to call them. Phone wouldn’t call and that’s why I was texting. Long story short if you see other providers towers like tex mex or movistar (I’m not kidding) near the Mexican border turn your phone OFF. I won but they said it was the only time. $199 for a few emails and texts that resulted in bad advice from them. Sheesh. Glad I won.
And if you haven’t been keeping up with the Perils of Pauline UPS lost a package that had an invoice in it and some other paperwork worth $1500. Not a good thing, then the company I sent it to decided they had found it, JUST KIDDING, they didn’t find it, now I have to TRY and explain this to UPS. We have duplicates now but being minus $1500 for a month hurts rather badly right now.

Oh, now get this, I can’t talk to UPS all representatives are busy and my cell keeps cutting out.  So I’m emailing.  They ask for a reference number I don’t have so I go to one of their emails to see if I could find it.  THE EMAILS ARE NOT FROM UPS.  There’s a virus or trojan in them, never found it before because I never opened their attachements, avast caught it right away but sheeesssh……So if you get an email from UPS that says you mailed a package, and it wasn’t delivered?  Maybe you should just delete it.

I am the poisonwood bible, coo coo caachooo, like as in I am the Walrus coo coo caachooo (I’m already bummed enough being the poisonwood bible don’t tell me I have the words wrong?)

I was checking out new blogs (we call it making friends and gaining knowledge here, not wasting time!! ) I found on The Quiet Life this handy dandy little quiz below and I tried it.   Lou from New Zeland whose blog it is got to be Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird.  I thought oh gosh golly gee, maybe I can be Scout too (see old pixie haircut picture @ the end, circa early 80s, weren’t the girls cute?) or someone almost as cool?  I am the Poisonwood Bible and it is right in that I see many many viewpoints, devils advocate BUT…….useless perspectives?  They do not know they are talking about the most stubborn logical person on earth? Or do they?  And a Belgian Waffle?  That is ok, the rest is?????

You’re The Poisonwood Bible!

by Barbara Kingsolver

Deeply rooted in a religious background, you have since become both
isolated and schizophrenic. You were naively sure that your actions would help people,
but of course they were resistant to your message and ultimately disaster ensued. Since
you can see so many sides of the same issue, you are both wise beyond your years and
tied to worthless perspectives. If you were a type of waffle, it would be
Belgian.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

The idea in a nutshell. Avatar the movie is causing depression among people who have seen it. Of course some think it’s just made up by the media On the forums though people are taking time to talk about it (surprise surprise) so maybe there is somehthing to it?  If they are really depressed they should seek help perhaps on the depression forums?  Supposedly the depression is caused by the inability to live in the made up (but utopian) world of Pandora which seems unusually real during the film because of the 3-D effect.

Ahhhh maybe I have this like  overactive imagination (isn’t it amazing how midwesterners picked up valley-speak?)  but I often get depressed slightly after reading a really really good book.  In the case of Stephen King it’s not because the world isn’t that way…..it’s because I”ve enjoyed the experience and been transported for awhile.  I’d say this is probably what these people are feeling after watching Avatar.

BTW the movie cost $1.4 billion and took years to make.  I hope it does well for Mr. Camerons sake.  I’m not much into science fiction or horror (I thought the Exorsist was hilarious) but I might be tempted to see this to see what all the fuss is about.

The Blind Side still has my vote for a great movie though.    I’ve always like Sandra Bullock and while the movie is a bit cheesy from what I”ve seen, there is nothing wrong with a little Pollyanna in our world, especially not right now!