CDZA took the lyrics from Fresh Prince of Bel Air and ran them through Google translator to see what happened with the lyrics.
I love stuff like this.
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Fog in the fields
The weather was perfect at the barn. We had a nice quiet ride (more on that in another post). At the end of the evening, the fog settled over the pasture. Evenings in Tennessee always looked like this, but it isn’t something I see very often in North Carolina.
The way “real programmers” do things…
Because I’ve been in conversations about emacs versus ed versus VI versus VIM vs pico… and have laughed at how everyone had some tweak that they could use to do anything. Regular expressions rule!
First day’s goals met
Some how 500 words or so seems like such an easy goal. And I did it. I wrote 620 words tonight on Ride Softly. I could go more, but I find myself shifting out of the lyrical writing style and more into a technical writer voice. I’m stopping for the night.
Yay! I did it! One night down, 49 more to go.
I think I can do this.
Posted in Fiction, Writing
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Ruby Slippered Sisterhood Winter Writing Festival
One of the ladies in my writers’ group at work belongs to the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood. She let us know about their Winter Writing Festival, and it sounded like a perfect opportunity. I’ve been wanting to get back into writing more fiction. I miss it. I’ve felt blocked but by stress and too many other things going on. The truth is, I don’t need to go home and watch TV. I should go home, eat dinner (in a less frantic manner), meditate, and then write. Sounds like a much more enjoyable evening, overall.
I just signed up for the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood’s Winter Writing Festival. Basically, for 50 days you have to write enough to earn 50 points. Each person sets their goals for how they will earn points.
I have these current projects: Lady in the Tree (novel), Shadow Wolf Company (novel), Ride Softy (short story), Perseus and the Pegasi (short story), and Warhammer Fantasy role playing gaming module scenarios. My goal is to get into the habit of daily fiction writing, so I will earn points by:
- Writing 500 words per day (with Saturdays off) for fiction or RPG content: 1 point
- Sprints: 1 point
- Deep edit of 5-10 pages: 1 point
Big rewards:
- Finishing Ride Softly (short story): 5 points
- Finishing outline for Lady in the Tree: 5 points
- Revising outline for Shadow Wolf Company: 5 points
- Finishing a play-through of new RPG content: 5 points
At the end of the time, I would like to have two stort stories to send off or several chapters.
Posted in Fiction, Gaming, Writing
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Random reboots fixed?
For the past several months, I’ve had a disconcerting issue with my iMac. The iMac randomly tries to log me out. My old Mac Mini, which has been retired to the household media server, never had this problem.
Googling the symptoms resulted in a mixed bag of possible causes: failing hard drive, faulty memory chips, logic board problems, etc. I looked on the Application > Utilities > Console application for any log files that might indicate a sudden quit, logout, or restart command. Nothing. At least nothing consistent or obvious. Tech Tool Pro did detect some serious hard drive issues. According to Google, the symptoms my iMac had could be caused by a malfunctioning hard drive.
Back in November, I received an email from Apple stating that my iMac model was suspected of having a faulty Seagate hard drive and Apple would replace it for free. The hard drive replacement was scheduled over the holidays so I could get my Mac back and then restore the data using the Time Machine backups. (That is another story all together.) If the random reboots and logouts were caused by hard drive issues, then replacing the hard drive should theoretically fix the problem.
I got my system back a few days ago, restored the primary partition using Time Machine flawlessly. However, the second partition with my working data didn’t restore cleanly. I kept getting permission errors. I’ve spent the past two days manually restoring files from the Time Machine backup files. It’s now back to normal. Except my old 1TB Time Machine drive didn’t have enough space to complete a backup. I wasn’t willing to delete the only backup I have, so I bought a new 2 TB Time Machine drive today.
The bacukp has been running for over two hours so far. Twice, I’ve come back to check on the backup and have found that the system had tried to log me out and quit running applications. (Luckily I learned that leaving Safari open with multiple tabs prevents a log out because Safari prompts if you really want to quit the application.)
I did some more searching and discovered a setting I didn’t know about from a posted question and answer on the Apple Support Communities. The System Preferences > Security panel has an option that says “Log out after 60 minutes of inactivity.” This option is checked by default. I’ve unchecked the option now.
System preferences in 10.6
I’m leaving the system on over night (to hopefully complete the backup) and then will post whether or not the system tries to log me out again.
Well-behaved Note 2
A few weeks ago, I traded in my old Note 2 for a new one due to issues with the micro SD card and not receiving phone calls. Kinda hard to have a phone that doesn’t function as a phone. It’s been right about three weeks since I traded in the other phone and everything seems to be going fine. I haven’t had any issues with the memory card and all of my phone calls appear to come through (both incoming and outgoing).
The wifi calling issues still come up. Periodically the phone disconnects from wifi calling with an invalid certificate error. Reconnecting wifi calling corrects this issue most of the time. It’s annoying. I’ve told my friends to leave me a message and I’ll call them back. When wifi calling doesn’t work, I don’t get a notice that I’ve missed a call. Leaving a message is the only reliable way to make sure I call back.
I’ve been very pleased with the camera’s responsiveness and image quality. While the larger phone size makes it harder to keep the phone still (low light pictures are prone to blurriness), I’ve still been able to compensate by taking multiple images. The G2 was so slow to focus and write an image after it was taken. The Notes’ camera is responsive and snappy. The video quality has also been very good. Now I just have to post some of the images I’ve taken.
Overall, I’m very glad that I have the Note 2 and not the Galaxy S III (which is also a nice phone). I can type on both of the screens, but the features in the Note 2 fit better with what I want to do. I’m slowly learning more about the feature set. The S Pen is something I still play with. I’ve used it for drawing and editing some images. I’ve also used it for note taking, although I can type faster than the S Pen keeps up (with worse accuracy though). I have a feeling the S Pen and it’s associated applications are something you have to figure out how (and if) they fit into how each person uses the device. There are a lot of capabilities I like theoretically but haven’t put into practice yet. Those items will end up in other blog posts.
Catching up on posts…
It’s been a while since I did much posting here. I had a huge backlog of saved posts and things I had wanted to write about and haven’t yet. If you see a sudden flurry of blog posts that are dated in November, that’s why.
I’ve finished most of the posts about the new phone. The most exciting thing I have to write about are the three dressage lessons Kasane and I have taken with our new instructor (who luckily boards at our barn). She’s amazing. Kasane and I are making progress. Ride on little dressage pony! The write ups for the lessons will be longer than I can finish tonight. It’s 2:30 AM and I’m going to bed.
Posted in General, Horses
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Squeaky hates flashes
Playing with the camera on the Note 2 to check the storage card. Squeaky wasn’t amused. The good thing is that the card seems to be working okay again.
Strange SD card behavior on the Note 2
I was dressed for the gym and went to load Zombies Run. The playlist option was missing half of the play lists. WinAmp showed only two locally saved playlists and no music. A few days ago, the phone was randomly mounting and unmounting the microSD card. The vibration notice going off on Friday morning was enough to unmount the SD card.
Tonight, the storage menu showed that there wasn’t an SD card mounted. Pressing Mount under the Storage settings didn’t do anything, removing the card and reinserting didn’t do anything. Rebooting the phone numerous times had no effect. Instead of going to the gym (no music, no zombies!), I went to Target to look for an SD card.
I purchased an inexpensive USB microSD card reader and a replacement 32 GB class 10 microSD card (just in case mine was hosed). Luckily my old card was readable by the USB reader. I backed off all of the data and then reinserted the card into the phone and voila! the storage menu mounted the card. The important thing is that I got the my photos and data off of the card.
I’ll return the new card tomorrow since my old card appears to be working fine.
Replaced the Note 2
So, during the day, the phone repeated the same issues I’d had earlier with wifi calling. Even after doing a hard reset, I didn’t get any calls. I tested the wifi calling during work today by attempting to send text messages. None of the text messages went through. I tried calling my desktop phone at different times. I tried calling myself once an hour or more during the day from my work phone and using Skype. I think only one of the calls came through. I could call out on my phone easier than I could receive a call. It was very inconsistent. The phone had to be monitored and reset frequently to keep wifi calling active (with a blue icon).
Tonight after work, I asked several friends to call me to see if their calls would come through. Phone calls from friends on Verizon and AT&T phones went to voicemail without ringing. Calls from my mom on Sprint came through. These calls were placed when I was using the cellular network and not wifi calling. (Other people on Samsung phones have reported similar problems on the T-Mo support forums.)
This was unacceptable. You can’t use a phone that doesn’t function as a phone. So. I reset the phone again so my data was wiped from it and returned the phone to the T-Mobile store.
The guy who helped me was the same guy who had sold me the original model. He’s a geeky sort, very nice, and enthused to find someone else who is excited about technology (and who asks intelligent questions). I told him about the problems I had on the phone and that tech support had already authorized the phone replacement (especially since I am still within the two week buyer’s remorse period where I can return the phone no questions asked). He remembered me as the lady with the blog. I told him I had documented the problems on my Note 2 and would be posting it on my blog here.
He replaced the Note 2 with a new model and replaced the sim card just in case there was a problem with it. He also put in a service check for the towers in my area. He was very nice and said that he would have happily replaced the phone up to a month after I’d purchased it. Great guy.
So. I have a spiffy new phone that seems to be working properly and has been reloaded with the call logs from my old phone. The strange thing is that the call log shows all of the missed calls that went directly to voicemail.
Follow up on Samsung Galaxy Note 2
I went to the T-Mobile store tonight to ask for some any support options on the Note 2. The staff at the story didn’t have a wifi network to use to test the phone, so they let me use the store phone to call T-Mo tech support. When you call tech support for a cell phone, you aren’t supposed to call using the phone you need to troubleshoot. Since I only have my cell phone, using the store’s phone was a convenient option.
First tier tech support didn’t offer much help. Her suggestions of rebooting the phone, turning off and on wifi, and reconnecting to the calling network were things I had already tried. She passed me along to second level support. This T-Mo tech support guy said to try changing the phone’s calling preferences under Advanced in Wifi Calling Settings > Set Connection Preference options to Wifi Only (which disables the cellular calling — and means you have to manually revert back to cellular network when leaving wifi coverage). Otherwise, I could perform a hardware reset on the phone to restore it to factory defaults. Once I did that, I’d need to see if the problems persist.
If the phone keeps misbehaving, then I’ll return it for a new one of the same model on Friday.
Wifi calling issue on Note 2
Searching for articles on problems with using T-Mobile’s wifi calling on the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Note 2 returns multiple results, including an enlightening good discussion on the XDA forum. The phone doesn’t keep a consistent connection to the wifi calling service. I get an ERR Connection Refused, invalid certificate, and other errors. Some times the phone has trouble staying on the wifi network even though the phone is sitting on my desk. This issue started two days ago.
Wifi calling problems come up periodically. There were some days when it never seemed to work properly on my G2 either. I’d get connection errors, invalid certificate errors, and times when the phone just couldn’t seem to connect to the wifi calling services. Rebooting would usually correct those issues. The G2 also suffered from the same wifi signal fluctuation: I could watch the wifi calling ready mode blue icon turn red while the phone sat on my desk.
It’s hard to trouble shoot the problem right now because the wifi network in my building is being revamped. All of the routers are being replaced and the placement density of the routers is being increased. I’ve watched the signal strength rotate in intensity with the Note 2 simply sitting on my desk. I’ve connected to two different networks (one open and one secured) and had the same issue with signal strength fading in and out. The weird thing about this problem is that it’s inconsistent. Sometimes the calling works fine. Other times, I’ve had the phone say “wifi calling ready” and tried sending a text message or calling out using my phone (or calling it) and the calls have not connected. Other times it works immediately. I can’t find any consistent factors between it.
I also tried turning off the wifi signal power saver mode that is activated on the phone by default. I did that last night and watched the phone this morning. The signal strength really got messed up after I did that. I rebooted the phone and it seems to be behaving. Go figure. I don’t understand.
When I read on the T-Mobile support forums about the dropped wifi calls, several posts said that T-Mobile has been aware of the issue on the Galaxy S3 since August and is supposed to be working on a fix (we’ll see if that happens). I should probably see if the Note 2 uses the same chipset for wifi as the S3. That would explain a lot.
T-Mo and AT&T are supposed to be releasing a OTA update for the Note 2 that will enable multitasking and multi-window use on the device “sometime soon”. Verizon has already released the update. Hopefully T-Mo’s update will include a fix for the wifi calling bug.
I have two weeks from the day I purchased the phone to return it if I choose to. This Friday is the last day I can return the Note 2 on the buyer’s remorse program. If the wifi calling issue keeps up, I’ll probably ask for a Note 2 replacement instead of going with a different phone model. The only two phones I could easily type on are the S3 or the Note 2.
Fantasy Flight Games sale
Fantasy Flight is having a sale on a lot of their stuff — including the Warhammer FRP material. Many of the WFRP books and supplements are 50% or more off. I will probably take advantage of the sale and fill in any supplements I don’t have.
Equine insurance
Equine insurance is almost as much fun as people insurance. Almost, but not quite. Don’t get me wrong: I’m very glad I have insurance on Kasane. When Isis needed colic surgery, the only way I was able to afford it was because of the insurance.
Here’s the catch: Once you make a claim for an issue like lameness, for example, there will be an exclusion on the policy the following year stating that any lameness on that leg will not be covered. By the end of her coverage years, Isis had exclusions for any claims related to laminitis, tendonitis on the front right, gastro-intestinal issues, etc. Basically if she injured her neck, that would have been covered — once. The riders were on her policy the entire time I had her. None of the exclusions were ever removed. It was like collecting badges or something.
Kasane has two exclusions, one for an old injury from when she was 2 and another from last year’s stifle injury. I was getting a quote from a second insurance company (hoping to get some of the exclusions removed) and really thought that the stifle injury was years ago because it feels like it’s been that long. Nope. This time last year, Kasane was lame.
Even if I change insurance companies, the exclusions will probably still be there. What I’m hoping is that in a year or two the exclusions will be able to be removed. On my old policies, no exclusions were ever removed. That gets frustrating when a one-time lameness on the back right fetlock (ankle) means that any claims made against that entire back right leg related to lameness will not be covered.
I can’t believe it’s only been a year since Kasane had those issues. We have come so far in our riding this year, last year felt like ages and ages ago.
