SassyBlonde

Hooray!! First blog!

Bought a MiniDisc yesterday for the express purpose of recording my practice sessions (this way I have an accurate representation of what sucks) and found out today that there is no way to directly upload the files to the machine.

*&^$#(*%^&*@%&@#%$&*&%$#@(&%&^%@

I Hate Sony.

Trying the new cell phone out today (new Nextel I95cl color) as far as blogging goes-- let's see if I can post from the phone?

I'm so proud of myself! I set up my photoblog today-- please take a gander!!

ShutterBlonde: The Window on Sassy's World

Many thanks to Kristine at love productions for her fabulous tutorial-- I had the thing up and working in an hour!!

I AM THE WO-MAN. I just beat Diablo II: Lord Of Destruction. **does a happy dance** BOW to my Slayer self.

On Tuesday there's going to be a great episode of Nova on PBS about string theory, hosted by Brian Greene (who, by the way is DISH-Y).

Greene is the author of The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, a really great resource on string theory for those of us who fit the bill as mere armchair physicists. Check out the book and the show if you have a minute.

Woohoo! I finally got my new laptop souped-up and online. Much love for Ebay and AuctionSniper.com, which helped me score this phat machine. Now for a little surfing and website updating... yay!

I am SOOOOO excited-- I just scored a Roomba Discovery at the Hebrew School yard sale!!!!!!!!!!!! As I type it's happily zooming around the room vacuuming everything, even under the couches!!!! Yay-- no more kitty hair on the floor!!

And you can't beat a peppy little circle robot beeping at you in happy tunes to tell you it's done or charging (yes, it plays little musical tunes- dorky, but it makes me laugh-- even our vacuum is a musician).

We'll see how well it cleans-- hubby's a little skeptical, but I figure for $100 I could take the chance, beacuse after all, we could always sell it on eBay for more if we don't like it. (But it's SO CUTE) Whoops- it just bumped my foot, turned around and zoomed away. Teehee-- this is fun.

So SassyBlonde is all moved to her new home on the SuccesfulHosting servers-- what a great company, might I add. Now... what to do about the tacky wallpaper in the kitchen...

Update: To those of you wondering what the hay is going on with the layout-- the DNS is still migrating from the old place... it'll resolve soon. Promise.

Rrrrrrr.... things are funky with the site... rebuilding, restructuring, AAAAAAACK!!! All I wanna do is post, not fix the f'ing thing!!!!!

Finally solved the faulty VCR problem. Chucked it and got a DVR from Comcast on Monday. Rock, rock.

Geeks of the world rejoice! You too can have Princess Leia Buns, and it keeps you ears warm at the same time. Good grief.

Also, have you ever wondered how traffic lights work? Check it out! (This just answered one of my all-time WTF questions... wow, I need to get out of the practice room more.)

Both found over at clicked.

Have problems getting up in the morning like I do? Check this out then:

Most Annoying Alarm Clocks

Surfing around earlier today, I found this little gem of a product- if you're having trouble shopping for that techno-savvy lady in your life, why not get her a Bluetooth-activated sex toy! The tiny bullet is activated by the dirty text messages you send to her phone-- she opens them, and Zip, Boom, Bonjour you're in business! Not to mention that she can have fun all by herself, too. Honestly, the website in s little repulive in terms of description and sales pitch:

Are you one of the many men who agonize over how to pleasure your woman? Don't dismay - you are not alone. The mysteries of female sexual pleasure are often a frustration for men, but The Toy can alleviate that.

It occurs to me that if you're as sad at sex as the How Women Use The Toy page makes out, you' never have a shot in hell of getting one in her pants in the first place. They're preaching to the converted in this case, I think.

Now, at $248, it's a little steep, but hey, it's cheaper and way more fun than that overpriced pair of questionable-origin diamond earrings. And trust me, she'll thank you in the morning.

As a dyed-in-the-wool technogeek, this really tickled me. (Pun intended.)

Okay, so it's not very often that I completely succumb to utter and overwhelming cuteness (except in the case of Chris's and Beth's offspring, who is undeniably one of the cutest kids I've ever seen), but I keep looking at Violet's Nabaztag wifi bunny and completely going over to the dark side-- "Awwww, look how cute!!!!!!!" When I saw the next iteration listed on Engadget's Gift Guide: For Her, I immediately clicked over and lost out to the giggly six-year-old-geek-child in myself. Especially watching the demo video these guys have put together. (Although, let's be clear, now many of you are laughing at the positioning of the microphones. Yeah. Me too. Now all we need is a bunny fart to complete the experience.)

So, I hope you all have been having a good week this past week... sorry I haven't been around to comment. My computer network had a full-scale Exorcist-style possession going on. There was pea soup everywhere.

Now that I've reconnected and replaced the offending parts, I'll be back and posting in a jiffy. And commenting. More soon, and shout-outs to Red, my newest reader!

I would just like to say, for those who have not yet heard this rant, that I HATE Windows Vista.

It is Windows for Supermodels, like I told The Muse the day after I got my new desktop out of the box.

Why? Because, after all, it's pretty. So pretty. The interface, on first glance, is gorgeous. Fading windows, glassy see-through title bars, cute little desktop widgets. But then you ask it to do something and it goes all "No, I do not theenk you are fabulous enough to do this, yes?" on your ass. And it wont talk to other computers because they are so last-OS. Not to mention it picks fights with its former BFFs the printer, the scanner, and the wireless keyboard because they interfaced with its hardware system behind its back. And then miraculously announces to the press via a startup screen that that's all behind it now, until it sees them at work and chucks a shoe.

Seriously, I have enough drama in my life already. Bill Gates is going to hell for this, I'm certain.

For the love of God, I think I've actually gotten rid of the spyware that's been holding me hostage. &^%Q$#%^$@!

Poor eviscerated laptop. *sigh*

I swear to GOD sometimes all I want is a job where I actually get paid for all this work!!!!!!! I've been wrestling Javascript and CSS and ASP all day today, on my "day off", and I'm going to chuck this damn computer at the wall, I swear to God. The worst part is, all of the changes I've been working on are largely back-end, so no one can really see them. It just makes everything play nice together.

*sigh*

And all I really want to do is finish my knitting pattern (more about that later).

*re-sigh*

I don't know about you guys, but I've always wished I knew more about the stars. You know, constellations and star names and such-- being able to point out Sirius and the Big Dipper and Orion (well, even I know that one-- if you can't find Orion and you live anywhere near where I do, as in on the same continent, something's very, very wrong with you.)

Solonor indirectly reminded me of one of my favorite bits of software today-- Stellarium. It's not hyperbole when I tell you this is one of my favorite programs EVER. BAR NONE.

Stellarium can draw you an up-to-date, up-to-the-second map of the starscape from anywhere on Earth. That's a catalogue of over 210 million stars at your fingertips, guys. (Squee!!) It even changes by the second to reflect actual changes you can see in your backyard. Because, after all, if ou have a laptop you can take it outside and use the program in its red mode to preserve your night vision (I love that they thought of that!!)

For those of us who are constellation-challenged, it can show you their outlines, and it will even overlay artwork so you can see what the shape is supposed to be. If, by chance you come from some other culture, well, it probably has your constellations too. When I was in China I used it to plot the Chinese constellations in Beijing, Wuhan and Shanghai so I could look out my window and find them. (Yeah, in Shanghai and Beijing that was pretty much useless. Light pollution as far as the curve of the Earth could take you.)

And those are just the most amateur features. There's lots of super-geeky stuff you can do on there. Me? I'm just happy to see my stars. (Since I can't Print Screen a graphic for you, you'll have to get your own.)

In case you're wondering where I've disappeared to this past week, it's because of rebuilding this site. Still working, but it'll be done soon. I hope. For the love.

LiveSnarking the debate on Twitter in fifteen. Tune in-- it's gonna be good.

There's gonna be some hot LiveSnark action at Chez Sassy tonight-- check out my Twitter feed, and The Muse's and some others will be joining in. Bring it!

People, it's no secret that Google was a way with all things computer. And now, they're not only saving us time, money, and bandwidth, they're now saving us more embarrassment as well with their Mail Goggles feature for GMail.

This nifty little function stymies your ability to send drunken emails by making you do math. Not that I have an insane need for this sort of thing, being erudite and wise beyond my BAC (*snort*) but I have definitely sent an drunken email in my time and seriously people, I would have loved to have someone stop me with multiplication and division. Fabulous.

All righty peeps. It's time for one last LiveSnark before we warm up those fingers for the voting booth-- Chez Sassy will be rockin' it at 9pm over on Twitter. For more fun, follow The Muse, watch the Current feed, and follow along on the CSPAN Debate Hub (complete with interactive timeline!) And as always, download the rules from DebateDrink before we start, and follow @DebateDrink on Twitter for drinking cues.



Oh, and as always, there will be a food theme if you're one of the lucky participants here in our living room: The Homemade Ice Cream Sundaes of Sweet Victory. Flavor candidates: Cheesecake, Sour Cream Strawberry, Fresh Mint Chocolate, Guinness Chocolate, and Lavender Honey. Moderator: Apple Bread Pudding. Awesome.