Taking the Scenic Route

And, a shot of them not killing each other at the computer.  (a rare moment, usually they are fighting for control of the mouse)

The guys working on “Arthur” together at the computer a few days ago.

Tonight Star Wars (#4) was on tv, and unlike the past, where Zane was only mildly interested in it, today he ran into the room and jumped up and down, flapping and giggling with glee. He had completed the entire Star Wars Lego game on Nintendo within the last week or two, so he knows the 4-5-6 stories (New Hope, Empire, and Return of the Jedi) for the most part now. (The Lego version is much sanitized and pretty funny for those of you not familiar with it). After the credits rolled (because he must watch all the credits, but at least he doesn’t want to watch only the credits any more) he asked for “Hoth”. (that ice planed in Empire Strikes Back for the non-geeks). Zach went and dug out our copy and put it in for Zane.

Zach told me later that he actually got a little teary eyed seeing him so excited about it. Gotta love nerds.

Yesterday Zach went to retrieve his work email and it kept dropping after a bit, so he went to the window in hopes of a better connection.  Still didn’t work.  Found out when he went to work that the enire mail server system in North America is down for his company.  So, it wasn’t the connection this time.

However, I have noticed that the internet connection is pretty dang slow compared to what I am used to.  I finally have time to read blogs, but they don’t always come up, and almost every time I go to make a comment (especially on xanga blogs) I get dropped.  To reconnect I have to go through a huge rigamarole and lots of waiting again, so I am just not even going to try and comment any more.  lol. 

The TV is, naturally, almost all in German.  There is one channel that is in English, although I think it comes out of Britian, not America, and is another version of CNN.  Pretty much the only thing being reported right now is the War in Georgia (I think it was part of the former USSR).  There is very little Olympic coverage or non-war coverage, and there is a limit to how much I can listen to about war because it really upsets me.

Therefore, all the Olympic coverage I have seen has been pretty much on mute or very low volume (if my back is turned, so I can hear the difference when they move to another sport and see if it is something I am interested in).  I haven’t seen a single shot of Women’s Gymnastics.  None.  I am a little frustrated.  Watching gymnastics is about the only sport, outside of figure skating, that I enjoy watching, and the enjoyment of both of those sports formed when I was a little girl watching Nadia and Dorthy Hamill.  lol.  (that dates me, doesn’t it).  Finally, this morning (Thursday), I saw a few Men’s Gymnastics routines on the high bar. 

Most of the coverage is on syncronized diving (didn’t know this was an olympic sport), kayaking (didn’t know this was an olympic sport either), swimming, (although they do a lot of the prelims and I miss a lot of the finals with the Americans racing), fencing (not horrible), some sport that takes place on a field  that resembles a soccer field with teams and they use their hands to throw a ball around (I think, I am looking at a small tv at little bitty people), field hockey (I assume…I have never seen field hockey, but they have hockey sticks hitting a ball around a field), judo or karate or something like that, weight lifiting (most boring sport ever),  and some Equestrian stuff.  When the horses move around and jump over things, not so bad, but when they just walk around the ring in a pattern I don’t get what they are doing exactly and I can’t understand the commentary, so it just looks like a horse walking in circles.

I wasn’t too upset about the lack of gymnastics coverage at first because I assumed I could go online and watch it.  There were several places to watch videos online, and, naturally, some great sites from the US that would cover the people I have been following.  I learned something.  Even though I downloaded the Microsoft viewer (something I loathe doing, but it was the only way to view the videos) you can’t view anything on those sites if you are trying to connect from another country.  WHAT THE HECK!?!  I was so mad.  I tried other english speaking countries and they had the same dang policy.  So I will be watching no Olympics in English this time around.  Well, maybe the closing ceremony because we get home that day, but since TV will not be a priority, I will probably miss those too.

I just want to strangle the person who was supposed to get us the Rosetta Stone software and didn’t.  Arg!  Maybe I would understand a little more then, but you can’t really follow tv with a phrase book because they talk too fast.

For a short bit it is amusing to see American shows dubbed over because the voices are different.  In some instances, enough different to be comical to me.  I only watch about 3 minutes to hear the voices and then move on, but it is amusing for a bit.  Some of the shows I have seen:  NCIS (Abbi’s voice, in particular, is really wrong), CSI (the main redhead guy has such a distinctive voice that that one is funny to me too), Spongebob (rofl), Higglytown Heroes (annoying in any language), Rosanne (I could almost follow that one because I have seen so many of them), House (wrong, wrong, wrong), and a few other shows I recognized, but have never watched. 

The only thing we have watched more than 3 minutes of was Star Trek:  First Contact because we knew the dialoge well enough that we didn’t need to understand them, plus, we could almost understand them because we knew the English version well enough to hear the language similarities and could pick up on actual words. I bet if they showed Star Wars. Star Trek and Little House on the Prairie back to back a few times I could figure out the language because I have so many of them practically memorized.  (ok…I realize, that particualar combination is wierd, but that would be me)

I got an umbrella yesterday so that I am not stuck in the room every day because it seems to rain all of the time. I will probably still stay inside in the morning, posting, sipping coffee and tea, reading, etc, but after lunch I will go walk around the town a bit more. I feel a little better now so I want to go do something. (the stitches are now all out of my mouth. The final one let go this morning and my mouth feels much better. Still a little tender, but not horrible anymore)

The blog move has been slower going than anticipated because I am sick. I thought I was getting better, but Sunday night when I (tried) to go to bed, I started coughing and coughing and coughing. I don’t think I got more than an hour of sleep the whole night. Monday was no better, and I just got back from the doctor with an Rx for an upper respiratory infection and ear infection. Yeah me.

On the new blog, I transferred over the posts, but none of the titles stuck, so I have gradually been going through them and putting a title on them. Zach got an image loader set up for me in the last day or so, but my brain is so foggy I haven’t been able to retain the new information, so I haven’t used it for a post yet. I am getting a backlog of pictures though. lol. Hopefully tonight I can start getting some of the new posts up. We also need to put an email subscription button. There is an RSS feed button, but I prefer getting emails to RSS feeds because I am an old fart and don’t feel like figuring out how to do the RSS feed. lol

We did find a program to upload xanga onto wordpress. Worked well, except for these points:

It didn’t upload the titles with the posts, just put the date of the post there instead.
Made everything public, including both private and protected posts. Ugh. I had to go through all of my posts an put the relevant ones back on private (ya know, because most people don’t really want to hear the status of my menstrual cycle or my workout/weight information…and I don’t particularly feel like sharing it publically either).
And, as of right now, all the pictures are hotlinked to xanga. lol. I need to fix that before I tell xanga that I don’t want their stinkin’ subscription any more.
Although it transferred all of the comments, it didn’t keep the name of the person making the comment.
You are welcome to take a peek, but there aren’t really any new posts yet (hoping that will change tonight or in the next few days): http://www.takingscenicroute.com/

Until I get a subscription method set up over there and the photos all transferred, I will keep this blog going.

Trying to figure out wordpress. I’ll set this up and then figure out how to move my xanga posts over here.

Here is a blockquote to look at

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So how was it?

I am feeling slightly better today, so it might have just been allergies.  I hope it is just allergies because the last thing we need right now is for Zach to get sick.

The hard drive on Zach’s computer bit the dust.  This is a very bad thing since his lesson plans were on that computer.  However, the good news is that we had to get a laptop earlier this semester for him to do his thesis, so all of his thesis stuff is on the working computer.  Suddenly, getting that laptop seems like the best decision we have made in a while, even though it was something we couldn’t really afford at the time. 

My children will be well exfoliated by the end of the day.  I pulled the top off of the sand and water table today and added just a bit of water to it.  Zora has been in and out all day playing in it, but she keeps getting upset that she has sand on her and comes to me to help her wipe it off.  I get her cleaned off, and three minutes later she is out there again.  Rinse and Repeat…literally.  Zane joins her occasionally, and then I hear yelling as they fight over toys.  ugh. 

Today I found out that the house that burned to the ground in a neighboring town (the family is fine, but the dog didn’t make it out) belonged to an online acquaintance.  They lost everything.  They haven’t had an easy couple of years anyway and I am so sad for them.  It has been weighing on my mind all day.

I have been annoyed with them for a while now.  The automatic “subscription” sort of annoys me, because they give you no warning when they are going to withdraw funds, but I can tolerate that.  From my understanding, it is a nightmare to get them to stop taking payments if you cancel your subscription, which I am not looking forward to.

The constant “upgrades” that screw with the layout are getting annoying.  Those “minis” are annoying.  The way you get the messages now in you email, and instead of taking you to all the comments, it just takes you to the one comment in the email is annoying.  But the dealbreaker for me is the hideous “home page” then have now forced me to go to.  Instead of just a modified version of what the public sees, with more buttons/options, it now takes me to a whole different screen that I find really hard to navigate and find anything on.  It looks like my space now.  There is a reason I don’t have myspace…I hate it. 

One of the things that attracted me to xanga in the first place was the ability to hardcode a layout to the way you like it.  With the “upgrades” I keep getting messages that it won’t accept any deviant code, and nag messages asking “don’t you want to use one of our fancy new layouts?” Uh, NO.  If I did, I would.  I don’t.  I am paying for this, leave me the heck alone!

Looking at getting wordpress and putting it on our private domain.  It will be a bit because I seem to have lost the ability to code on my own because I haven’t really used it in recent years and need Zach’s help to get it up and going again.  Ugh.  I used to be a guru at this stuff, but I am about 6 years behind now.  lol.  I have to lower myself to using a WSYWIG and it just drives me nuts.