Category Archives: Family & Friends

Corporal K and Lil Buzz both inherited my hands. RE: images – The cave paintings are on curved surfaces, so I figured it was fair to distort my hand print to see if it fit. I did not alter the proportions of my print, merely used the “distort” tool on the corners of the image to see if my flat hand scan could reasonably be the same as the 3D cave paintings. Both fit perfectly!

I can’t help thinking our crooked pinky is somehow related to artistic talent. Corporal K is a gifted artist and, as young as he is, Lil Buzz has already done some finger paintings that are so beautiful, they really deserved framing … not just because we’re all deliriously in love with the little guy, but because they actually are good paintings! 🙂

Click to embiggen.

Mama and Baby Buzz almost share a birthday. She didn’t want two cakes in one week, so put her candles on his cake. 🙂 (His are the yellow and orange ones at the bottom.)

Click graphics to embiggen

This is really handy to know.

I am very proud of this project! First image is of the source material the client gave me. The second is the final digital image and the final printed and framed product I created for him.

Posted … yes, POSTED … by Chrissy the Hyphenated!

A couple of days ago, I tried to download the Windows 7 driver for my scanner. It said it would take 4-1/2 hours. Today, it downloaded in 29 seconds.

It also installed and runs properly, but that’s “old news” since we’ve had Mr. T operating beautifully for ages and ages. Or a week or two anyway. Definitely since he got his shiny new Windows 7 upgrade. Ha!

I’ve attached photos to email and done some work organizing Chrissy’s Site Bites. Now … following a cuppa and some personal locker room style pep talk about having a Positive Attitude yada yada … I’m going to try posting. With a photo.

Sorry, not Baby Bunn yet. I have to go to my much neglected AOL email which I took a glance at … 400+ emails … and promptly tucked tail and ran. I think I’m suffering from Post Computer Upgrade Trauma. At least, I HOPE it’s ‘POST’ … sigh.

Holy guacamole! It worked!

Note to self: Do NOT hold breath while waiting for WordPress to upload.

I found this photo in the bazillion and four family pics I hadn’t looked at yet. (We all take pics … family gatherings look like a media photo spray event with all the cameras!) Anyway, it’s something Dearest took … I think at Alexandria Bay in upstate New York. I love it not only because it’s just so darned cute, especially with Daddy Duck looking like he’s laughing! but also because when the girls were in school, Dearest volunteered as often as possible for parent duty on field trips.

Okay. Enough chat. Now comes the acid test. Will this publish ….

First,thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.Never doubt the awesome power of Almighty God.

Yesterday I turned in my fuel card and the office keys.I got up about 3AM,as usual and started looking through the ads online.God led me to open an ad on Craigslist for home delivery of the Chicago Tribune.The hours are about 3:30-6:30,7 days a week.The pay isn’t much less than I was making working 50+ hours doing transport.

I called the number listed to leave a message and a man answered the phone.We talked for about 20 minutes and I assured him of my dedication and committment.He said I was the first response to the ad and I start my new job at 3AM Monday.

Being part time,I can still look for something additional during the day,but having a steady income means we’ll make it.I refuse to believe its anything short of a miracle.

I’ll begin posting my report soon.I started posting on e-bay last night and will put some more up today.Check the link below then click on ‘see other items’ to see how I got my nickname.The coffee tastes better this  morning.God Bless all of you.I’ll be back soon.

Here’s the link:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/120797933284?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649

There are no words to express my heartfelt gratitude at the outpouring of support you’ve shown me here. It means more than you can possibly know. I do have a paypal account and have bought and sold on e-bay since 1999. The cheap Chinese rechargable batteries for my ancient digital camera won’t hold a charge so I have to get new ones today. I have some things in our storage locker to sell and my wife wants me to sell her Chatty Cathy doll in the box and her Betty Boop collection.

The owner’s announcement was so sudden nobody had time to prepare. I stopped at WalMart yesterday and put in an app  asking for the food department,sporting goods or as a greeter. There’s also a government office in town that specializes in placing people over 55. There’s an ad on Craigslist from HomePages.com for an outside sales manager to sell ads. It’s a yellow page-type publication. The e-mail addy to respond to is my youngest daughter,who I don’t see much of. I wasn’t around much when she was young. I wasn’t much of a dad because of the hostility between her mom and me.

DW had a friend tell her about some apartment complexes at the old Camp Grant barracks by the Chicago-Rockford airport. The rent is cheaper,but the parking is offstreet,it has pay laundry facilities and there are 16 units per building. We’ve lived in a four-family in a nice neighborhood for over three years and I hate the thought of having to move again. We have an attached 2-car garage(my car has never seen snow) a gas log fireplace and laundry hookups behind doors in the kitchen. We’ll do whatever is necessary,but I don’t look forward to packing up again.

I have a whole life policy with a cashout value of about 8K to borrow against,which I will probably need to. That would give me time to find something. DW will get her first SS check in December,which will help since she still works part-time. The boss says he’ll start the service back up if the state sends him some money,but I can’t imagine him doing that only to start the process over again. I have a feeling he’ll take the money and cut his losses. Time will tell.

Yesterday was gut-wrenching,as I’m sure today will be. Suddenly people with medical appointments arranged and counted on us have no way to get there. A mid-30’s woman named Freddie (really) was beside herself. She had 3 appointments scheduled next week and can’t afford a taxi. She wanted to know if another service would replace us and I told her no. When she asked why I told her to thank the corrupt democrats who shoved billions into public union pensions while slashing medicaid payments.

The hardest was a woman named Colleen,who I’ve been taking to her radiation and chemo treatments for about 4 months. Her cancer is terminal and the doctors have given her a year to live. I’d tell her the stupidest jokes I know and say crazy things to get her to laugh. She said it’s the only time she ever smiles. When I dropped her off,we hugged and both cried a lot. I hope I see her again.

I probably won’t feel the full impact until Monday when I get up and have nowhere to go. There is a long,hard road ahead of me but with Divine Providence and the support of family and wonderful friends like you,I’ll get through this.

I know there’s a lot going on in the world,but my focus right now has to be on getting things taken care of. I’ll post a link when I get some things up on e-bay. As you go through your day,know that you are in my thoughts. I love each and every one of you.

Pistol Pete

As most of you know,I’ve worked as an independent contractor for a transport company that provides rides for medicaid patients the last few years.Yesterday the owner called me into his office and told me we’re shutting down as of Friday.

The state of Illinois is in arrears in their reimbursement payments to us to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.The owners have exhausted their credit with the banks and our suppliers and now its come to the end.They said we could start up again if the state sent us enough to cover payroll,insurance and fuel.

The problem is Illinois is billions in debt due largely to exorbitant pension costs.I doubt paying their small vendors is much of a priority.Like a mobster who owes money to a bookie–its cheaper to kill him than to pay him to  wipe out the debt.

I exhausted what unemployment benefits I had before I got this job two years ago.Since we were not employees,the owners paid no tax,so we have no claim to benefits.I have enough in my savings to last about a month,then I’ll be penniless.My wife has worked part time for years and will be receiving social security probably starting in December.Still not nearly enough to survive.

I’ve done one kind of work all my life and my age and physical condition limits my options.None of our children have spare room and I wouldn’t ask them anyway.I’ve been to every public housing facility in the city and I can’t live like that.

I may be able to pay for my cable and internet access for another month before I go under.After that I just don’t know.

Its been a fun ride,and I loved posting here every day.Unless a miracle happens in the next few weeks,I don’t know.I just don’t know.

God bless and keep you all.

So, first, I named him Mr. T. It says TOSHIBA under the screen, which may have influenced this decision. Or maybe it just made it feel right.

My real reasons are that he’s black, he came loaded with a lot of bling, and he’s got a major attitude about things MY way.

I heard from WordPress FINALLY. Took them long enough. Suggested 3 things to try – empty cache, update Firefox, make sure files are in accepted formats.

I did them all. No joy. Wrote back. Not holding my breath.

Also cannot upload with flash or browser at Webshots or AOL Mail, so maybe I’ll just go splash around help messages at those two and Firefox and Vista, since DUHHHHHHH All of the Above worked Just Fine Thank You when I was running Firefox with XL. Harumph.

Odd thing is … maybe there’s a clue here … I can attach graphics to my gmail. ????

In between tearing hair, gnashing teeth and lamenting loss of readership here … I’m busy busy busy organizing and transferring my files. My word but I have a LOT of graphics. And they are none too organized.

I’ve been really anal (as is my wont) about the stuff I produce, like my Chrissy’s Site Bites. Those are organized and back up in multiple formats – disk, external hard drive, and active hard drive in the BUP Directory. Ditto family photos and emails, which are all sorted and stored by date.

My contacts were a mess, but I got them beat into submission, ha ha. Take THAT, you email lists!

The problem I’m beating on now is my picture collection. It’s my go to resource for photoshopping, but it’s suffered from the same problem the contacts had. I was storing stuff by where I was using it, not by what it was, so it’s all over the place with some stuff duplicated while others is split. (E.g., Palin, Obama etc. photos are in 3 or 4 diff places.)

Plus I’ve got piles of graphics in formats I don’t or, in some cases, can’t use anymore. sigh

So picture me here with my two puters and a thumb drive, working my little fingerprints flat, sorting, copying, deleting, reformatting and just generally trying as hard as I can to get back to WORK here helping all y’all save the nation.

Before I get back tuit, I want to share one thing.

I grew up in a home where nothing was saved. I had to beg my mother (literally) to at least let the newspaper stay in the house until the next one had arrived. (She kept tossing it the instant SHE finished reading it. Harumph.) Then I married a man who grew up in a home where nothing was ever thrown away and brought that proclivity into our home. The combination of being very accustomed to hyper neatness and living with an unrepentant … no, make that PROUD Pack Rat … made me nuts.

Over the years, I’ve struggled to find some reasonable middle ground and have come up with some guidelines that seem to work whether you’re organizing your garage, shed, attic, basement, family photos, or computer files.

1. If you have a thing, your organizational system should tell you where to put it.

2. If you want a thing, your organizational system should tell you where to find it.

3. While things are stored, your system should protect your loved ones and your property from harm.

4. Where things are stored should reflect the frequency with which you need to access them.

I still can’t post graphics, so will have to be content with just a link for this:

http://undeleter.net/

Bookmark it or at the least keep it in mind for the next time you or someone you know experiences the soul-sinking disaster of accidentally deleting important computer files … even from the Recycle Bin. Ouch.

Dearest has his entire business on his computer. Not just the bookkeeping, but the whole business. Over the week-end, he got it into his head to organize his computer in anticipation of getting a new external hard drive to back stuff up.

He copy-pasted some stuff, then went back and deleted the originals. And then he went into his Recycle Bin and deleted THAT.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad idea!  He had over-zealously deleted more than he’d copy-pasted and for reasons that escape me, Tech Guy told him the files were really and truly gone.

Two years worth of AutoCAD files he’d made for clients.

Gone.

Well, pshaw, says I.  All those technowizards on t.v., like my personal fave Abby on NCIS, are always saying how a deleted file isn’t truly deleted until the computer WRITES OVER IT.

If you use a military grade deleter that writes over everything 7 times, it is REALLY gone forever and ever. But just clicking “Empty Recycle” does nothing more than mark the files as “free space” the puter can use for saving new stuff. So long as you do NOT save anything to that area, your files are still there.

So I tells Dearest, I says … “Dearest, google File Recovery Utilities.”

And Dearest actually did it, which is a sign of how truly desperate he was, since usually he will take the word of any Y-chromosome over mine. Harumph.

(I also learned decades ago to NEVER point out a good parking place, no matter how big or close to our destination it might be, because my pointing at it put the kiss of DEATH on it. He’d park in Timbuktoo to avoid using a spot I pointed to. But that’s another story. Oh wait. No it’s not. I just told it.)

So long story long … I can’t tell any other kind … Dearest found many such utilities and all of them offer to give you a Lookie Loo at what they can find amongst your lost files, then tell you how $$ to activate the program so you can actually recover said files.

He tried a few before finding the one I linked above, which found ALL of his files (the others only found some), and it was SO CHEAP to buy, especially compared to the value of what had been lost.

Happy ending … Dearest has his files back and moi is feeling Very C___ … oh goodness, can I say it? Nahhhhh.