Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

The awesome: I deposited my first check via an app on my iPhone today. I love my credit union. This is awesome as the closest branch is approximately 300 miles away. Since I moved to Pennsylvania, I’ve been depositing expense checks and other miscellany in the joint account for the house but I want to move away from that bank (fees, hassle) eventually. (“Eventually” is a promotion from “as quickly as possible” because they gave out tree ornaments in December that you can plant in the Spring. Yes, I’m a sucker.) I’m hoping to get all our accounts at the same financial institution so we can do easy transfers instead of writing checks to ourselves every month.

The irritating: I also had an unplanned upgrade to Mac OS Lion (10.7.2) this week. My system decided it wanted maintenance and I haven’t seen my system disks since we moved sooooo… luckily I had a copy of Lion hanging around. The Internet told me how to build a bootable disk, and, when the repair failed, I installed Lion fresh over Snowleopard. I was promptly reminded why I was procrastinating the upgrade when Photoshop (CS1), Quicken 2007 and Mouseworks (Kensington trackball software) all ceased to function properly. I found a poor substitute for Mouseworks (Trackball Works – fewer features but I could reverse my scroll direction at least). Intuit promises a rewrite of Quicken 2007 for Lion in the Spring (not holding my breath) and I’ll find another image editing program to replace good ol’ Photoshop as I use very little of its vast functionality.

The amusing: My old MacBook Pro (running Tiger, 10.5) valiantly built the boot disk as requested and tried to remind me of its loyalty and love. I keep pricing MacBook Airs, you see. I think it knows. But the MacBook is a 15″ laptop, heavy and unwieldy rather than sleek and sexy like the Air. Most of the portable functionality has already been taken over by the iPad. (Oh, iPad, you are my own true love.) However I do sometimes want true multi-tasking, a real keyboard and proper OS in my portable device. I’m big on procrastination though, so I’ll be waiting to see if Apple announces an iPad 3 this Spring. In the meantime, I’ll be moving Quicken and Photoshop to the MacBook Pro!

The horticultural, which is utterly unrelated to technology but I’m going to make it fit anyway: My little key lime tree bloomed. My tiny olive tree is doing something. The paper whites were pretty even if it was disappointing that only 2 of the bulbs produced flowers… but hey, they were $2.50 at Home Despot…

I took over 5,000 (that’s Five Thousand) photographs last year. Many of them were of Monster Cat, of course. I briefly toyed with the idea of putting together a montage of favorites, either of Tennyson or other subjects, and found myself daunted by the sheer number of photographs to review. Instead, here’s a photograph I never got around to posting.

It’s been a party week with New Year’s Eve at at Thomas & Marion‘s and then a lovely housewarming party at Wendy‘s last night. Serious fun on both occasions.

I waited in line today. Outside of Best Buy. I got there 15 minutes before the store opened and was still 25th or so in line. I wouldn’t even wait in line to get my iPhone, but today I waited in line and was rewarded with a Wii Fit. So far, it’s fun and I’m starting to get the hang of it. Sledding games are totally fun when you can play them with your butt!

I just finished reading my book of the year!* The Conjurer (Martha Beale Mysteries) by Cordelia Frances Biddle. I enjoyed it great deal for several reasons! I only noticed one typo – which either means there weren’t more or I was too engaged in the book to notice. Both options are good signs given the lack of editing running rampant lately. If you’re interested in mid-19th century mystery novels or richly detailed portraits of places in time, I recommend this book! Plus there’s murder, intrigue and psychics all depicted in glorious 1842 detail. Martha Beale, our protagonist, starts the book as a meek and weak girl of the day and gradually and believably grows over the course of the story into a stronger woman without becoming an unbelievable anachronism of the modern woman. I need to pick up the sequel, Deception’s Daughter (Martha Beale Mysteries), because I’m curious to see if Martha will continue to evolve over the course of time.

*Okay, so maybe I got a head start on this one… preloaded a bit of the reading in 2008… but still, hurray!

books, parties, photography, reading, the conjurer, wii, wii fit

UserFriendly provides today’s comic-to-share of the day. So very true. There’s such an addictive quality to Blackberries that sometimes it’s hard to let go.

Which is why I don’t have a Blackberry.

I did get a new phone last week though! I have a new Samsung a737 with orange racing stripes! (The racing stripes make it faster! Okay, the 3G network support makes it faster, not that I use it.) I blew through the last of my roll-over minutes in January and February making a new plan with more minutes necessary. Since this landed me with a new 2 year contract anyway, I took advantage of the opportunity to get a new, mostly-free phone. My old phone was starting to behave badly after almost 2 years of vaguely faithful service, so it was probably time anyway.

I like my new phone. It’s orange. It’s also a slider phone and locks itself (well its keys) appropriately. I think it’s slightly bigger than my old LG flip phone, but not so much that I’ll actually notice. It still fits in my little cell case so I’m happy.

Yes, my criteria for cell phones are very basic. I don’t care if it does six million cool things. I want it to work as a phone and fit in my pocket. The orange racing stripes are a great bonus though.

Eventually, I will get an iPhone. Probably when it has 3G support. (Because I don’t need my phone to surf the web but when I do surf the web from my overpowered phone, I’ll want it to be fast!) There’s no discount on the iPhone when you renew a contract, so I can keep waiting.

In other news, it was almost 70 degrees out today. With the sun hitting my windows and the door closed, it hit 78 degrees in my office this afternoon. Fun stuff for early March. I’m not going to get winter this winter, am I?

smartphones, iphone, user friendly, weather, heat, cell phones

Academy Awards
I didn’t actually watch the Oscars last night but I did catch Scorsese’s acceptance in Italian… which induced very entertaining dreams in Italian. I’m not even sure which award he was accepting at that point. This morning I browsed the results over at CNN. I loved The Departed so I’m delighted it took so many awards. Pan’s Labyrinth also deserved all the awards it got and more. Little Miss Sunshine, a film I never would have seen if it hadn’t been for slyppi, had a good showing too. I think Abigail Breslin should have been awarded the best supporting actress Oscar, having only heard about Jennifer Hudson’s performance in Dreamgirls (which was described to me as amazing except when she wasn’t talking or singing – apparently she showed no ability to react). Breslin was just amazing in every way.

Apple and Cisco and iPhones! Oh my!
Last week it was announced that Apple and Cisco will share the iPhone name. All lawsuits connected to the iPhone name dispute have been dismissed and both companies are quietly going about their business. Very quietly… like there aren’t any exciting details leaking out about the deal beyond, “Under the deal, they will also work together in the areas of security, consumer and business communications.” (BBC News) This agreement was just in time for them to debut the iPhone commercial during the Acadamy Awards though no actual product name is mentioned. It’s a cute commercial and says absolutely nothing about the product except that it’s coming in June. The montage of movie clips of famous actors and actresses answering phones is fun, with a final “Hello” harkening back to the original Mac commercial just in case you missed the implication of all those other hellos.

Weekend and SNOW!
It snowed here last night! Another couple of inches fell to cover over the greening areas of the lawn. Unfortunately this week is likely to be too warm for the snow to stick around long. It actually started snowing mid-afternoon sometime. I was driving back from visiting lisaf in NY. As soon as I crossed into PA the sleet started. Within 10 miles it had turned to snow. By the time I got home it was seriously snowing!

The weekend was good. We wore ourselves out romping around NYC Saturday. I didn’t spend nearly as much money as I feared I might. LUSH and Crumpler were my weaknesses, but I knew that going in. I did get a new camera bag (which was the whole pretense of going to Crumpler in the first place) but I also got an awesome green handbag too. Not that I carry handbags, but this one is GREEN! LUSH was… an adventure in impulse shopping. We ate good food, drank good wine then spent the evening being lazy (which was good since we were whole-heartedly exhausted). Sunday involved really tasty breakfast food and driving home (which was tiring before I hit exciting driving conditions).

academy awards, apple, cisco, iphone, movies, nyc, oscars, snow, travel, weekend

Grey-leaved Euryops

Originally uploaded by cce_photography.

Another shot from Longwood Gardens. One of the fun things about low light and dark gray afternoon is that you can get some striking contrasts in your composition. I did not expect this photograph to come out as well as it did. I love how intense the yellow is and how deep and dark the background became. I also like the sense of depth and depth of field – the front flower is in focus while the two behind are beyond the focal point, the third slightly blurrier than the second. Perhaps I’m too hooked on having my focal depth as tiny as possible.

I sent in my membership to the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society today. The Philadelphia Flower Show is coming up. I went 2 years ago but skipped it last year. When I was living up North, the Boston Flower Show was a luxurious escape from Winter. Down here, the winter is much milder (more so this year) so the escape isn’t quite as necessary. Maybe by the first weekend in March there will be 3 feet of snow on the ground! A girl can dream, can’t she?

This morning, amidst a snow squal, a Nostalgia Electrics CCP509 Full-Size Popper arrived on the doorstep. Much glee all in one moment! (My birthday is Monday so there was little doubt that the sudden appearance of a popcorn popper was indeed a sign from the Birthday Gods. Oh, and the Fop clearly loves me.) I have, in fact, always wanted one and never been able to justify buying one. (A small part of me suspects that the Fop bought me a difficult to pack-up-and-move appliance in order to make it more difficult to move North.)

The snow was just a passing flurry. I am currently comforting myself with a bowl of freshly popped theater popcorn from the Fop-assembled popper. It’s Really Good Popcorn too. Crispy, crunchy, hot and yummy! Currently, the popper lives in the dining room making it convenient to the kitchen and the 3-prong outlets therein. It’s not like there’s much else for furniture in there anyway!

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Irony of the day: You can use iTunes to feed podcasts to your Zune. (This solution automates something you’d otherwise have to do rather arduously by hand. Apple likes to make things easier for all its users, even those stuck on Windows with a less-than-full-featured music player solution.)

snow, weather, popcorn, popcorn popper, zune, itunes, apple, philadelphia flower show, longwood gardens, flowers, photography, photographs, irony

Kumquat for your thoughts?

Originally uploaded by cce_photography.
Longwood Gardens has a huge conservatory that, were we having winter weather, would provide a haven from the cold and ice of winter. Despite the lack of winter, I ventured over on a gray, Sunday afternoon. It was delightful – and who can resist kumquat trees? The trees are almost as cute as the fruits themselves!

For want of actual original content, I present my “open tab”, aka things that made me giggle:

• Hovercat over at Two Lumps – if you don’t read Two Lumps, you should.
• Proverbial Lions at Questionable Content – witty obnoxiousness 5 days a week.
• PvP Online goes to the coffeehouse – PvP is not as geek as it sounds, I promise.
• I stumbled on John Scalzi’s blog, I don’t even recall how or when, but I keep reading it for many reasons including for his delightful randomness and updates from the feline front.
• Finally, Shakespeare’s Den has lots of random stuff, including the Avenging Unicorn Play Set (as seen on Life After Coffee), Poor Yorick Skull, and a Darwin Little Thinker doll.
• Okay, one last thing: If you missed it, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead is out on DVD and available from Amazon.com.

blogs, citrus, comics, dvd, fruit, kumquats, photographs, photography, random, rosencrantz and guildenstern, toys