Thursday
January 30, 2003

Having Fun

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Here are a few of my favorite online haunts:

REALTOR.ca
[This is the site I visit to fantasize about living in Toronto again, which is almost every single day during the winter]

Jonathan Cainer's Zodiac Forecasts
[This is where I visit in the morning, when I need a positive spin on things past, present and future.]

Living Local
[This is where I go to see what Canadians are up to, sometimes I even buy things from the businesses listed there.]

Environment Canada Weather
[This is the site I visit every morning, and before every road trip during the winter]

Another birthday has come and gone. I enjoyed thoughtful presents and just enough loving attention to keep me happy. My feet are now warmer in new boots. After viewing The Two Towers, I now look forward to next year's third installment of the Lord of the Rings. Beautiful, heartfelt cards fill my desk with warmth. I received good wishes from those that love me, pleasantries from those that do not.

The best part is that I am another year older. Old is good. The women in my genetic line have not enjoyed particularly long life spans. This fact is not lost on me. Every birthday is welcome; every wrinkle is an achievement. I do old better than I ever did young.

Although the thermostat in the hall reads 68 degrees Fahrenheit, there is a chilly edge to the air. Under these circumstances, Mist is more welcome than usual on my lap. She sits there now, watching my fingers tap away at the keyboard. It may be my imagination, but I think she has been visiting my lap more frequently since the weather has been frigid.

It has been very cold for the last few weeks. Attila works outside; the weather has been a challenge. He has taken good care of himself though, and suffered no frostbite. The weather reports indicate warmer temperatures by the end of the week, thank goodness.

Since Attila spends his days in the great outdoors, he needs outerwear to suit the occasion. His boot ripped a few weeks ago, and although he attempted to repair it, the problem worsened. The boots are expensive, but have lasted over five years, and have given good service.

Yesterday was a day of great discomfort for Attila. When he arrived home, he announced his desire to replace the boots.

The Internet came to the rescue. We searched for local retailers that might sell the specific boots Attila needs. Minutes later he was on the telephone, checking to make sure they had his size in stock. An hour later we were sitting at home in our easy chairs, the new boots standing at attention, ready for service, by the back door.

Details have been taking up my most of my time. Until a few days ago, another domain "hosted" the maggieturner.net site. I finally decided to move the maggieturner.net domain to its own host. Although this is not difficult to do, it does require attention to quite a few small details with registrations, DNS numbers, redirections, and such like.

What I find most challenging are the teeny, tiny details, the ones that suddenly appear like the black fly swarms of June. Everyone knows these details. Everyone but me, that is.

I have always used Apple computers at home. I have a couple of Intel machines here, and I have used UNIX on university servers, but Macintosh has been my native environment. Until now, I have always used a little software program to Telnet into the servers at the university or at the web host. On the old Macintosh computers, this was the only option available.

Now I have OSX. Following my tried and true approach to the Macintosh OS, I looked for a little software program to Telnet into the domain host servers. All I could find on the Apple site was that it was "built-in". Hey, that sounded to me like there would be a quick and easy GUI to handle this process! Not so.

Turns out that one need only drop into Terminal, then type in telnet and the server name. Simple, clean, fast. I should have thought of it, really. The point is, I did not think of it. It is such a small detail that no one at Apple had thought to write it down, put it in print. It is such a small detail that there is no reference to it in the Mac Help files on the computer.

Hours later, a kind hearted Mac-user sent me a one-sentence instruction. I followed it. It worked. Nice guy, no snide remark accompanied his assistance, as is so often the case with these "teeny, tiny detail" situations.

This is a recurring and ironic theme in my life. On the one hand I struggle and succeed in teaching myself complex processes, while on the other hand the project becomes temporarily bottlenecked due to one "simple" detail. I was teaching myself to write access codes for a UNIX Apache server on the one hand, while on the other hand I was unable to think of a way to telnet into the server itself. Sigh.

For the want of a nail...



Top of Page
RECIPES :: Cast

Worldly Distractions

Pink Flowers
Blooms



By the Easy Chair
The Fourth Hand
by John Irving



On the Screen
About a Boy
starring Hugh Grant



Weather
14:02 EST
Temp: -8`C
Humidity: 79%
Wind: S 11 km/h
Barometric: 102.9 kPa

Sunrise 7:42 AM EST
Sunset 5:34 PM EST
 

Page by Page: A Woman's Journal
Photography
Poetry
by Maggie Turner

Canadian Maggie Turner writes and publishes poetry, photography, and a personal journal online. Her work reflects the current way of life in Canada, embracing Canada's past, present, and future in a unique portrayal of everyday life. Maggie's voice is one of the many that actively depict the rich diversity of Canadian culture.

Photography: "a term which comes from the Greek words photos (light) and graphos (drawing). A photograph is made with a camera by exposing film to light in order to create a negative. The negative is then used in the darkroom to print a photograph (positive) onto light-sensitive paper.
Source: University of Arizona Glossary

Poetry: "a form of speech or writing that harmonizes the music of its language with its subject. To read a great poem is to bring out the perfect marriage of its sound and thought in a silent or voiced performance. At least from the time of Aristotle's Poetics, drama was conceived of as a species of poetry."
Source: Creative Studios

Journal: " "Though a journal may be many things - a treasury, a storehouse, a jewelry box, a laboratory, a drafting board, a collector's cabinet, a snapshot album, a history, a travelogue..., a letter to oneself - it has some definable characteristics. It is a record, an entry-book, kept regularly, though not necessarily daily.... Some (entries) will be nearly illegible, written in the dark in the middle of the night.... Not only is it a record for oneself, but of oneself. Every memorable journal, any successful journal, is honest. Nothing sham, phony, false...." (Dorothy Lambert from Ken Macrorie's book, Writing to be Read )
A journal is a way to keep track of your thoughts about what you read... as well as what you did on any given day."
Source: Journal Writing

A Blog is an online journal created by server side software, often hosted by a commercial interest.

"The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger[4] on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.[5][6][7] Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging


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