Falling

It looked better in my head. But then, many things do.

Initials Notwithstanding

This was more fun than it should have been. The background was done by yours truly, since they were kind enough to export it as a .png. I don't know if the rings are supposed to represent my ability to telepathically communicate with fish, the signals I'm receiving from extraterrestrials, or me wandering onto a rifle range in the fog. I just know I liked the way it looked, so I went with it. If you click on the link, you too can render your own self-portrait in candy.

Infinity's Teeth

Intergalactic Stacey's post regarding "Tweak Tag" taught me a couple of things. This is what I came up with, and while it's not nearly as nifty as hers are, I kinda like it.

I Love My New Computer

Because it can make things like this. I can actually max out settings in Apophysis. The old one was incapable, and the next step down resulted in very, very long renders. Of course, I couldn't do anything else while it was rendering. But with the new computer, I'm rendering as I'm typing! No lag! No churning noises coming from the CPU! Woohoo!

Oh, and I have no idea what to call this. It is, however, a new favorite. I really, really like the way this came out.

I'm Thirty-Seven. I'm Not Old

No, I haven't been called "old woman", nor have I been called "Dennis". Today does, however, mark the day that I finally fit into the remainder of that particular Monty Python quote. So far, the birthday events have been pretty darn fantastic. I received a case of JAX (regular, not the icky crunchy kind) from my parents. Sent because that particular snack food item cannot be found in Arizona. If you're saying "Why don't you just eat Cheetos?", then go bash yourself in the head with something. Plush or otherwise, as I'm feeling generous. They're not the same, dammit. And you can't truly call yourself a geek without a predilection for a fake cheese puffed-corn snack that turns everything in a ten-foot radius orange. In a slightly larger scale, I finally broke down and got a new computer. Not the break down in the curled-up-in-a-ball-and-weeping-uncontrollably sense, but stopped resisting the notion to buy one. Seeing as I'm on the computer for more hours than most people are awake in a day, every day, it's justified. Plus, my old computer was making a rather un-computerlike noise that I couldn't figure out, so it was better to get a new one than have the other one melt. (I would have had a breakdown, then.) It's a nifty dual-core XPS, and it's ridiculously fast. However, my only option was to have Vista pre-installed. I'm not terribly thrilled with that, but I've decided to give it a chance and see how it goes. Initial impression: meh.
Deb has made me (us) a chocolate cake with chocolate and vanilla frosting, and tomorrow's special meal will consist of a free steak dinner from the fine folks at Black Angus Steakhouse. (I provided that link primarily for the people who read that name too quickly and were shocked by what you misread. You know who you are.)
So, I'm one year closer to 40, one year closer to seeing something like this:

Drano For Our Intertube-webs

Our friendly neighborhood Comcast tech stopped by today. We had an appointment, and he showed at the allotted time, which is a plus. I may have mentioned that our cable internet kept dropping off whenever it rained. Granted, that's not usually a huge problem in Tucson, but it's been pretty rainy lately. No internet connection makes me angry. (What, like I'm going to read a book or something?) Timmy the Tech informed us of something rather alarming... we've got signal loss. Outside, it's an eight, but inside we're getting a zero. I'm assuming that's on a scale of 0-8, but I was not presented with a pie chart or anything. Or a cookie graph. No sort of baked goods-related visual aids whatsoever. When Comcast gives you bad news, they really know how to make it hurt!

In any event, it seems that there's a bent and possibly broken cable outside, so someone else is going to come and work on that tomorrow. I guess the guys who work on the outside cables have bigger trucks or something. They only work with a referral. Timmy did improve our cable TV reception, though, so he actually did do something. Of course, the only reason we have cable TV is so we can get cable internet service, so no great shakes there. Still, it is nice to see the non-Spanish channels without interference. Even if they're just country music and religion. (Two things so very, very near and dear to my heart.) If they can get my cable modem to give me 6 megs per second consistently and without an umbrella like it's supposed to, I'll be happy.