tales of spinning, school, and life as a lonely girl.

computer advice; halp.

2009-01-18T08:57:00.000-05:00

sometimes i wonder if i'm making the best decisions.

my mom is giving me her old computer, which is a dell dimension 8300 from 2002. no one uses it, and i need a second comp for geeky purposes. (so i can run a private maple story server for my buddies. yes, i know.)

i kinda want to buy some more memory for that comp since it's only a 512, but it's like $50 per 1gb stick and you can only install it in pairs, which = $100 for an old ass computer.

i can get a blazing fucking fast desktop tower (since i have 2 monitors already) for like $400. should i even buy the memory or just wait till i get my tax money back and just buy a new laptop? i really hate that you can't get a new computer anymore that isn't running vista, though. i'm having a problem deciding what to do. help?

it's cold, i hate some of my kids, and it's cold.

2009-01-15T15:21:00.000-05:00

it's frigging freezing today. the weather forecast for tomorrow, according to my firefox weatherbug, is "igloo."

my heat works like shit so i'm sitting here under a blanket. i came home from school today (my room is a cozy 55-60 degrees during the school day; we're not allowed to change the temperature so we have to cover the box in wet paper towels to trick the heat into coming on) and just passed out on the couch under a ton of blankets. i'm getting in bed early tonight just so i can be warm.

we're officially halfway through the year, and though it's not as crappy as last year, i'm pretty tired of the stupid kids. how many times can you get kicked out of class and still think it's cool? at any point do you stop to think that you're just an asshole? i can totally understand where those teachers who don't teach are coming from ... how nice must it be to just run off 100 copies of some worksheets every day, sit at your desk, and tell the kids to shut up and figure it out?

anyway, i was working on a yarn yesterday but i'm way too cold to continue tonight. i'm so happy we have a 3 day weekend! i will greatly appreciate this personal time.

what's going on in my yarn life ...

2009-01-13T20:47:00.000-05:00

IMG_1151
Originally uploaded by kittenlogic

i dyed a ton of fiber on sunday, then finished up the last batches last night. i like to do two of each, because if i dye something i love, i have a hard time putting it up for sale. this way, i know that there's at least one left for me :-)

i wish i had more time. i really want to spin, but i have so much school stuff to worry about that i'm having a hard time scheduling it in. i DO have a 3 day weekend this week, though, so i guess i'll take advantage of it.

anyway, those ridiculous pink/purple/orange batts are made from some of that fiber that holly sent me a while ago. 75% wool and 25% alpaca. i love love love the way it spins. so hairy and wonderful, like romney. the hard-to-see lime/purple/teal batts underneath those are 50/50 wool/alpaca. i'm excited to work on those!

i need a longer dayyyyyyyy. oh, and more money. because i don't have ANY.

geek talk: blog crosspoting problems solved.

2009-01-10T17:06:00.000-05:00

jessica has decided to move to blogger. that's cool, because you can syndicate your blogger posts to LJ, and people who don't feel like using a newsreader can still read your posts from their friends page.

this made me remember the frustrating amount of time i was spending trying to find a suitable crossposting client. when the greymatter blog program was discovered to have major, serious security holes, i sort of abandoned my blog on faithinpoison.com for LJ. i did use blogger for a while, but it's not the same, and posts coming from blogger to LJ looked like poop to me. i do like blogger, but i love LJ. everything i want is in one spot. there's really no substitute for it. it's frustrating, though, that people seem to use either one or the other and not both. it's too much trouble to post here and there again, reformatting everything. nonsense.

so i've been tooling around in semagic, because i've always used it to post to LJ, and i was like wtf, why are there blogger posting options? so i configured the shit and tested it, and it posts to my blogger blog. and what's this setting i never noticed in the journal menu? i can post to multiple journals now?? have i always been able to do this!?!?

so problem solved. now i feel like my domain has a purpose again, instead of just sitting there costing too much money.

and if you knew about this capability this whole time, i kinda hate you, but it's not your fault since i haven't written about it since sometime last year.

testing again.

2009-01-10T16:46:00.000-05:00

testing one more time; permissions were wrong.

maybe i'll start bloggin again.

2009-01-10T16:42:00.001-05:00

test test, to see if this shit will crosspost.

aha!

2007-04-18T13:43:00.000-04:00

100_2172
Originally uploaded by kittenlogic.

on a lighter note, here's the yarn that came from my dyed batts. there was absolutely no problem spinning them except for a few spots that weren't carded as smoothly as i'd liked, but other than that, this yarn came out fabulous. nice and super thin, and i haven't yet measured the yardage yet, but i know that it's at least 500 yards - probably a good 550.

the color isn't quite what i had expected, even though i still like it a lot. i expected it to be a lot lighter, but it was so thin that it darkened up quite a bit. also, since i was spinning from a batt, i tended to start spinning from the fold because it's quicker and easier and requires less concentration, but that made really weird color blends that weren't so great.

the third thing for next time is to make smaller skeins. this took forever from start to finish, just like pink elephant did. next time i'll either spin two smaller skeins or just sell one set of the batts, or something. i was literally in pain after finishing plying this beast. NEVER AGAIN!

the other photos are on flickr but there's no info yet. i'll do that later. sometime i'll post a little process post, because i know some people are interested in/curious about the whole batt dyeing thing.

17,000 asses.

2007-04-12T14:17:00.000-04:00

aw, shit. kurt vonnegut died.

my favorite quote ever, from Timequake, on the topic of evolution: "No matter what is doing the creating, I have to say that the giraffe and the rhinoceros are ridiculous."

found on LJ

2007-04-10T11:20:00.000-04:00

1. Go to google.com.

2. Click on Maps.

3. Click on Get Directions.

4. From: New York, New York.

5. To: Paris, France.

6. Then, read line #23.

7. Laugh.

8. Repost.

deedeedee

2007-04-04T13:29:00.001-04:00

while i'm being an antisocial ass, i still read LJ daily, and do still have a sense of humor: haha!

but what deserves a wholehearted ROFL is this: first two comments.

ps: is anyone still watching LOST? wtf are we doing? i'm both frightened for and excited about the final season.

oopsie

2007-04-02T02:47:00.000-04:00

if you happen to come upon this thing and it looks totally craptastic, please bear with me. it's because i'm trying to make it match the rest of the site and i fell asleep or something in the middle of changing templates. SRY!

did i mention how BA it is that when you switch to the new blogger you get tags? unless i just hadn't used blogger in so long that tags were implemented without my knowledge. WHATEVER. they're awesome.

edit: you know what's NOT awesome? the fact that i had FINALLY found a program that would crosspost to LJ and blogger, and now that blogger is the "new" blogger, it doesn't work anymore. wtf, seriously. i HATE having to login to two separate sites to copy and paste and reformat the same stuff. ARG! why has no one invented this yet? if they have, why can't i find it!???

65%

2007-03-29T13:44:00.000-04:00

o hay, i updated ur domain

yeah i did that finally, and it's not 100% yet. the ULTIMATE goal is to integrate this blog into the site so that everything looks the same (YOU KNOW i am anal in this way), but as much as it pains me to have them separate i can wait a little bit.

that's really it. i had to sub at the elementary school yesterday, and that was not awesome. they called again for it today and i said no. i'm willing to do a lot of things, but elementary school is not one of them.

i need to do more yarn, but i've been feeling so unmotivated lately. blech.

irritation at life

2007-03-14T02:36:00.000-04:00

i think the thing that annoys me the most about the internet is that i've had this domain for years and years, and i can't just do what i want to do. spam is absolutely out of control, and no matter what is done to combat it, the same douchebags are always thinking up a new way to get around it.

i had to give up on my simple greymatter blog a while ago, and when i went to check why my server had no space left anymore, it was because it was being relentlessly spammed in the comments. WTF!

i mean, in conclusion, i'm going to get fip up and running again with something other than this lame excuse for content, but i just wanted to tell you why i'm so upset. i really miss the people and the contents and the comments and the stuff! i really miss those days. i'm working on it.

i thought i posted this!

2007-03-08T15:14:00.000-05:00

100_2089
Originally uploaded by kittenlogic.

my neighbors just had a really scary screaming fight, then someone slammed the door, and like LEAPT in the car and SCREECHED away. wtf?

anyway, now for the project. i'm glad that it's like 60 degrees outside again, so there's hardly any use for them, but i made these (the other one is not pictured because it was on my hand) for jessica because she wouldn't stop hinting that she wanted fingerless gloves. i think fingerless gloves are stupid and pointless, but i CAN see the use of a convertible mitten. therefore, that's what she got.

the yarn was noro shinano, the needles were size 6 DPNs, and i used JUST over one ball of the noro on both mittens! like seriously, one ball and 1.5 yards. if i'd saved the tail from the cast on of the first mitten, i would have had enough.

i borrowed from a few patterns to make these, but really had to do a lot of math to get them to work with the yarn. i used a few lines from the peekaboo mittens in the newest magknits to do the opening for the fingers, and the "afterthought" thumb from knitty's fetching because i didn't feel like placing all those markers for a gussetted thumb. i hate a really baggy mitten, which is what the peekaboo mitten sorta looked like. i need to be able to reach and grab and do things. so i popped a little loop on the top of this one, sewed a button on the back so it wouldn't go getting snagged on anything, and there ya go. the loop is simply a knotted circle of yarn that comes out the top of the mitten, so if it rips or something from over use, it's easy to replace. and ... yeah.

100_2095
Originally uploaded by kittenlogic.

these were a REALLY quick knit - i got them done in a night, AFTER i finished all of my research. as you may or may not know, i don't really knit a whole lot, so i was sorta lost when it came to a lot of the techniques. but i mean, it's not really rocket science, and you'll never know unless you try. now i can make a set of these babies without a pattern. they're that easy.

if you're interested in making them, i can post the pattern i came up with. they're surprisingly self-explanatory!

sometimes i outdo myself.

2006-10-29T18:00:00.000-05:00

100_1834
Originally uploaded by kittenlogic.

this thing took me forever. it's just shy of 600 yards of merino, merino/silk, mohair top, and angelina. it was brutal and exhausting, but it might beat the bed of roses yarn as my favorite yarn ever. would you like to go on a yarn adventure? please join me.

i began with the aforementioned fibers. i carded them together to produce these 6 batts. they were a LOT more dense than they appear.

so then i went ahead and split them in half and proceeded to spin them onto two bobbins. this is bobbin #1, all finished.

i thought it looked like a lot more on one bobbin than when i usually ply, so i decided to go ahead and fire up the bulky bobbin for this job. and as it turns out, i needed it like whoa.

i've only ever filled this thing up when i was working with super fluffy coiled yarns. i knew the yardage was going to blow my pants off. here it is in all its finished glory, taking over my little table on the porch.

playing hard to get:

a dime for scale:

this thing took me about 10-12 hours from carding to finished hank. i still don't know if i'm going to sell it because of the price i will be forced to charge. i was considering splitting it into two separate skeins of 300ish yards each, but i'm not sure yet. what i do know is that i'm going to swatch it because i can't live without knowing how it will look knitted up.

and now it's time to do stuff.

makes your eyes go OOOH!

2006-10-18T18:38:00.000-04:00

here's something nice to look at for once instead of a bunch of school blather!

100_1750
Originally uploaded by kittenlogic.

this is a fabulous package i received from auto last week. i sent her some brown stuff i didn't want a while back, and she sends me this in return! i feel like i've been over-gifted. a ton of soft merino handdyed in pinks, burgundy, and wine, and then some batts from the "ugly" pile that i think are pretty awesome. (if you look at the larger sizes in my flickr you can really see the sparkles.) as usual i have no idea what i'm going to do with this. i'm torn between sock weight and coily, bubbly sparkles. hmmm. thanks again, ma'am! :-)

100_1754
Originally uploaded by kittenlogic.

and THIS is another, completely unexpected package from my swap partner from the craftster handspun swap. she felt bad after the swap that i had sent humongous yardage, but it's how much i normally spin because my bobbins hold a lot! she wouldn't have any of that though, so she spun me up another matching skein to go with the original green one she sent me. she also included that ridiculous lollipop with hillbilly teeth, and some glostix. whee!

so happy life! it makes me happy. you know, if you ever want to do a fiber or yarn swap with me, let me know! or don't! it's even more fun when it's a surprise. i will certainly reciprocate.

in other news, i think i've finally got my sleeping schedule figured out. i was having some serious issues, especially last week and the week before. but this week i've been feeling alright, and i'm not exhausted right now, so rock n roll. i had another review today. everything is going positively well! life is good. ♥

it's hard leading a double life.

2006-09-26T18:50:00.000-04:00

100_1734
Originally uploaded by kittenlogic.

it's hard having teaching things to post about and crafty stuff to post about. i would make a whole other journal but if i end up going to grad school after i'm done with this i'm only going to need it for 3 months and that's wasteful. so as i've said before, if you're not logged in viewing LJ posts, you're missing the ones about student teaching. i'll post about that after this one.

so anyway. when i was at NJ sheep and fiber i bought this huge ball of ashland bay brand fiber. i think it's merino and mohair, because it's too coarse and fuzzy to be silk. i really haven't had time to dye, since i've had to go home every weekend for this or that, so i thought it would be nice to have something that would provide instant gratification. what you see above is a wonderful fingering-sport weight yarn which will become winter socks for my tootsies. i kinda like knitting socks a lot. i thought i'd never want to do it, but it's really satisfying to shape them and watch them come together. plus, knitting makes me sleepy, so i do it before bed and sleep happy.

before student teaching started i was thinking to myself, "wow, it would suck to get sick while i'm doing this." and of course, my third week in, i'm sick. the kids are so filthy! they're just sneezing all over the place, not covering their mouths or anything like 5 year olds. gross. so like 50% of the teachers are sick and we've just been passing it around. however, i picked up some airborne because the ladies have been RAVING about it, and sho nuff, it's working. this, decongestants, and theraflu have helped me kick this thing pretty quickly. the grapefruit flavor tastes like straight up ass, but what do you want?

in gaming news, i picked up harvest moon ds the other day, and it's alright. it's exactly like the other versions. it's fun though, and addictive, but it really just made me want to play a wonderful life again. i'm in the 3rd year of that one, i think, and started a new game because i'm doing so well in my original one that i don't want to get really into it until i have adequate time. is anyone else into virtual farming or is it just me?

finally, boon and i went to ihop last weekend. i got this:

oh man. that should be illegal. let's not beat around the bush here. that thing is a donut. it is not french toast. it is a donut stuffed with sweet cream cheese, topped off with strawberries, powdered sugar, and whipped cream. i ate my heart attack and enjoyed every bite. luckily there are only 2 ihops that i know of, and they're both pretty far away.

a guy just pulled up in the parking lot, and when he opened his car door you could hear that he was BLASTING hootie and the blowfish. i think he knew how lame it was because he turned the radio down immediately.

that's all! what's up with YOU?

hmmm

2006-09-21T22:15:00.000-04:00

teaching has been interesting. i can't really go into it further. there are so many things to worry about and consider, so many things that make it so hard to do simple things. it's weird how poor a district can be and you don't even realize it.

i spun up this sock yarn last night and it's already dry and so nice, and i want to cast on now but i don't want to have this many UFOs floating around. i have ... 4 or 5 i think? and i know that's not many for a seasoned knitter, but it's too many for me.

before and after.

that's all i got! my bedtime's 10:00, you know. i'm late.

le sigh

2006-09-09T11:56:00.000-04:00

i just started student teaching on thursday, and haven't done much since there were half days and everything was all weird.

i can't write about it here, but if you want to know what goes on and you have an LJ, add me there so you can have access to the friends-only details. it'll probably be a ton of complaining and stressing, but that's what student teaching is about, right?

i'm watching fast times at ridgemont high. again. my tum is achey so i'm just chillin out. i have knitting to do but i left my needles at home - i ended up buying a different yarn than the pattern called for, so the needles i have are far too large to work with.

boon n i are probably going to panera for dinner. mmmmmm. panera. while we're up there i'm going to pick up some size 0s. i can't wait to swatch. sorry, can't tell you what it's for. it's a secret.

2006-09-05T17:20:00.000-04:00

ah, good afternoon.

090506f
Originally uploaded by kittenlogic.

i woke up first thing this morning and finished plying this yarn. it is the most incredible thing i have ever made with these two hands. it might not look like anything special, but it was a labor of love. dyeing merino/silk mill ends (which are a MESS to work with), carding them and recarding them, spinning the singles painfully thin, then finally plying them.

i have no idea the yardage on this thing, but after it was washed, it went from being about fingering weight to sport, but that's totally okay. i am going to list it for a lot. it would make incredibly soft/gorgeous socks, and if no one wants to buy it i will gladly keep it.

i have some more yarn work to do today, then HOPEFULLY i can get out to the yarn store tomorrow. this is a new one, and i'm really excited about going because if the stock is as good as they advertise, i will have a lot of fun knitting ahead of me. ooh! as i was looking for their address i found that there's another one relatively close by. decisions, decisions! it really all depends on what i get done here today, because both getting my personal update finished and running some more errands are a lot more important than browsing yarn.

i had so much to write about last night, then i decided to wait until i finished this yarn so i could post the picture and now i can't remember anything i was going to say. well. it's been raining since i woke up this morning - note i did say "morning," as my waking hours are slowly changing - and it's so cool outside that it's almost cold. i needed a sweatshirt when i went to the post office earlier. perfect for some tea and comfort. OH MY GOODNESS. i almsot forgot. comfort!? looksie:

that is the definition of yum. it is a betty crocker hot fudge cake. the best part is that you only have to add water! good for me, because i don't like to eat or use eggs really. there's a chocolate drizzle for the top, then when you cut into it, fudge drips out of the middle. my only regret is that i had no ice cream to put on it, but that might have ruined the pure chocolate sensation.

dinner's going into the oven. seeya! ♥

2006-09-03T14:38:00.000-04:00

HAHAHAHAHA WTF

oh MAN! i CAN'T believe i lost this auction!!!

HAHAIHSIFHQOIRUP(@U#O*@)*%$)*!~!@!@SLKFDSFK

please look.
oh man.

OMG

2006-09-03T00:10:00.000-04:00

when my parents go away on the weekends to work on the other house, pumpkin becomes THE most annoying cat in the universe. so annoying that it really takes all of your self control not to bash his head in. and seriously? i would never hurt an animal, ever. i like cats more than i like babies. but he is just SO irritating. i think he has like, separation anxiety or something when my mom goes away, because he's her little baby. and usually he's really sweet and adorable. but when she's not here, he's jumping on the table trying to eat our food, he's jumping on our computers, he's walking all over everything we're doing. and if you put him on the floor or something, he'll get right back up. you can put him on the floor 15 times, and he'll get back up 15 times. GOD. i just want to lock him in a room when my mom isn't here.

ANYWAY, what i was really posting for was for you to see this:

i originally found it on cuteoverload. they have an LJ feed that i never need to subscribe to. this makes my brain freeze and my heart melt with cuteness. i can't see it too many times or i'll die. enjoy.

2006-09-02T14:23:00.000-04:00

where is my home?

there was some kind of nonsensical accident today when i was taking ben to work. it just made me realize that no matter how much i like this area, i will never move back to central NJ. i won't go farther north than i am now. i really like it up here, and there are new schools opening up, but that's a horrible thing because it just means that our population is growing.

the road is a small road that was never very heavily trafficked, but all of the stupid yuppies who move in here from new york and north jersey drive their SUVs way too quickly and inattentively and make it dangerous for those of us who actually know how to navigate the area. of course, the accident was between an SUV and a horse trailer. i hope there were no horses in it at the time. whatever happened was bad enough that the small two lane road was closed completely, and 4 ambulances were called. i sat for a half hour waiting to get to my road, which was maybe 500 yards away, but there was no passage.

as irritating as the accident was, it got worse. because i turned around and went to go home through a development that i knew connected to a road near my house. as i drove through street after street of houses i couldn't tell apart, becoming more and more lost, i just grew so angry. why here? why new jersey? i know that these people exist elsewhere, but i just can't understand why swarms of them had to settle here and make everything so crappy for everyone else. sure, some of them aren't bad. but when there's a noticeable difference between traffic, manners (personal and while driving), congestion, and accidents from this year to even 3-4 years ago? i think it's fairly safe to make this generalization.

what can i do? they're driving me from my home and i have no choice but to go. i can't wait to come back in 10 years - who knows, even 5 - to see that all of the horse and vegetable farms and trees have been cleared out and smoothed down to make way for 100s of grossly overpriced McMansions complete with mr. and mrs. gas guzzlers.

on a lighter note, is it lame that a walk to remember is making me tear up a bit?

2006-09-01T20:21:00.000-04:00

what have i done!?

looks like a nice, unassuming sock, right? look closer.

this sock could be a board game. i'd call it "holes and ladders." for some reason my gauge completely changed after the heel. i started knitting it SUPER loosely, i don't know why. i was just being a jackass for some reason. so this one looks like crap! i saw how it was turning out and thought, you know? i'm not even going to bother ripping it because it's for me and i don't even care.

it's a handpainted sock yarn i bought from etsy seller ruby297, and it's fabulously soft and pretty. i should have used smaller needles, but i used 3s. like i said, it was a perfect choice until after the heel. whatev.

i have some yarn that was a custom for me, so when i get ready to start on that one i'm actually going to be very serious about it. till next time, socks.

it is freezing in this house! i'm so happy that it's actually cold. in the summer. it's cold enough here in the basement for me to want to turn on the stove. mmmmmm. can't wait till winter. mittens and scarves and love.

2006-09-01T13:18:00.000-04:00

i'd like to talk about this some more.

by "this," i mean multiblog. i mentioned in the last post that i was looking around for quite some time to find a client that would allow me to easily cross post from LJ (livejournal) to blogger. i found some things, but they all varied and ultimately were not what i wanted.

first there was a client called crosspost, which seemed really interesting and promising, but wouldn't even install on my computer. actually, it did install amongst errors, then wouldn't OPEN once "successfully" installed. this program claimed that you could cross post between almost any of the popular blogging services. it would have been great to try it out! but nothing.

second, i tried something called elicit, which received a really encouraging writeup on another site. it's a BMS or "blog management system," through which you can conveniently and easily register and update all of your blogs. it has all of these exciting features like a blog post calendar, content editor, and integration with sites like wikipedia, flickr, google, and del.icio.us. well, all that sounds great. except, the UI of the program is anything but intuitive. i was able to muddle around in it a bit, but when i'm looking for a program that will allow me to quickly and easily update my blogs, i'm looking for something like, instantly. i don't want to have to consult the help file within 5 minutes of looking at the thing. actually, i don't want to have to consult the help file at all, unless i'm trying to do something really crazy.

so, that seemed to be about it as far as programs go. there were probably a lot more, but i really didn't have the patience to sit around and search through all of the nonsense for them. i found a link to a site called peopleaggregator, which i'm not even going to link to because i didn't understand what the hell it was. supposedly you also have the capability of managing all of your blogs, photos, videos, music, and everything in this community setting. but i just wanted to be able to manage my blogs. talk about asking for too much! because you can't DO that directly through the site. you have to go to this OTHER site, called outputthis.org, register for that too, and hope that it will link back up with the original site. dude. fuck that. no, seriously. why all of this work? i just. want. to manage. my blogs.

i went to the shareware site and download.com, and nothing there really tickled my fancy. i just want something like semagic, and i want that something to post to other blogs.

and that is when i arrived at multiblog. it's not the prettiest program, but it does what it needs to do. it has the capability of posting moods and music, which is nice, because as i said before, LJ's capabilities are really what i'm interested in. i wish it could conveniently post images and links like semagic does, but i suppose i should stop comparing it to that program. you can preview your posts before posting, and there are two post buttons. one for posting, and one for posting and publishing. since blogger cannot accept titles, this is convenient to me, because i have the regular post button set to LJ, and the p&p button set to blogger, which enables me to quickly add some header tags which will "fake" a title for my blogger post before posting. not bad.

what i also like is that if i put in an LJ tag such as < lj user= blah >, it will post to LJ correctly, but not to blogger. that's great if i'm posting an LJ exclusive post. but if i go in and set up names in my address book, a simple code can be substituted which will post the lj user tag and a regular html link to whichever one will accept it. that is very nice, because back in the day when i was using the movable type to LJ crosspost plugin, typing out long LJ links to users became really old.

so what i'm saying here is that multiblog is pretty nice, but it does have some shortcomings. i've only been using it for about 24 hours, but at the sweet $5 registration price, i'll probably pay for it and hang onto it. there are some things that multiblog could add to make it absolutely perfect, but i can wait to see where it goes.