Salt and corrosion

I received a text message today, reminding me to update the vaccination certificate on my phone so it says I've had three vaccinations. I thought it did that automatically, but okay, I'll do that. You'll be shocked - SHOCKED! - to find it didn't go smoothly. I was not feeling up to dealing with that, so I'll try again tomorrow.

The reason I wasn't feeling up to it was that my iMac was playing up, constantly rebooting itself and opening up with a pink and white striped screen. Very pretty, but not really what it's meant to do. Long story short, I think I'm in the market for a desktop computer.

(That reminds me, when I was little, the newspaper used to have a puzzle page with a logic problem on it, and the introduction every week said something about solving it with your "necktop computer". And every week I skipped over it, thinking, well, I don't have one of those. It was years before I worked it out. Clearly I wasn't ready for the puzzle if I couldn't work out the instructions.)

In happier news, look at my new dahlia! It's called Neon Sunset:



February

4. Regardless of your age, what "old person" thing(s) do you do?
I love a good cardigan. I like nice tins of shortbread, particularly if I can re-use the tin to store something afterwards. I have a bag of Werther's Originals in my car's glovebox. I take photos of my dahlias. Honestly, I'm just waiting to age into my old lady-ness.

5. Do you often get the hiccups? If yes, do you have a go-to cure for them?
I wouldn't say "often", but I sometimes get the hiccups after eating. There's no obvious reason why one day and not another. The hiccups themselves are annoyingly squeaky. I sneeze quietly, but I hiccup loudly. Quickly drinking a big glass of water fixes it. I can feel the water pushing through the... air blockage?

6. What's the best Wi-Fi name you've seen?
That's not really a thing round here. My wifi's name is the default name, and all my neighbours are the same (using the default name, I mean, not having the same name as me). Nothing very exciting at all.

There's seaweed on the air tonight, fresh and salty.

I had to choose a professional development thing at work, so I'm doing an Advanced Excel course. It's starting fairly low-key, but I've already learnt something useful: the F4 key toggles absolute and relative references. This is life-changing. Sadly I'm not joking.

I should have written this entry last Tuesday to use this title on Melbourne Cup day. Ah well.

Today I thought it would be fun to do some random reviews throughout the day. I found a website that generated three random times for me, and this is what I was up to at the appointed hour:

10:45 – Reading Fresh magazine after unpacking the groceries – ★ ★ ★
( And it doesn't get any more exciting than that )

That was fun, wasn't it? Perhaps I could do that all week.

Knitting update: I unknitted the row I had to unknit and threaded a lifeline through it in case I had to do it again, and as that's all I did last week it doesn't seem worth photographing it. I had it resting on my knees during the unknitting and threading and I must say it's very warm. If the cardigan doesn't work out it can be an oddly shaped blanket.

Finally, by popular demand (two), I have set up a Goodreads account as todayiamadaisy (of course). Do friend me (or whatever their term for it is) if you'd like. (For new friends here, I should say I am also todayiamadaisy on Pinterest, if you'd care to follow my quest to find the world's worst shoes. Just when I think I've captured them all, another one shows up.)

The fashion spread in today's newspaper supplement was for men's fashion, and featured not one but TWO blazer-and-formal-shorts combinations. That's following the one they suggested a month or so back. No. It's still not happening, Sunday supplement.

Back in spring I planted some seeds in my seedling tray. All sorts of things. Most sprouted, except the eggplants. Only one sad little eggplant seedling popped up. So I tended it and nurtured it and soon it was big enough to be planted out into the garden, where it grew. And grew and grew and grew. It's big. So big. I mean, you could climb this eggplant and find a giant at the top, that's how big it is. It's the biggest eggplant plant I've ever seen.

Today I was looking at it and noticed that it had buds and... they didn't look like eggplants. If anything, they looked a lot like the plants that had been in the next row of the seedling tray. That's right. My eggplant is a sunflower.

My computer's auto-correct has lately taken to auto-correcting my email address from alician to Galician (in fact, I let it do the work just then) when I have to fill in a form. It's very hard to fix, because I will reject the change, so it suggests it again, and I reject it, and then it will change it anyway, just to spite me. Which is irritating.

I have been put in charge of making the non-pudding Christmas dessert this year. Most years I make pavlova, but I thought this year I might do something different. Since outsourcing my Kris Kringle decision worked so well, let's try that again. The two options are:

1. Pistachio and Turkish delight ice cream pudding



2. Brown sugar pavlova with strawberries (or whatever other fruit looked nice) and cream



They're both health foods, obviously.

[Poll #2031285]

Perhaps in 2016 I could make all my major life decisions this way. Then I could write one of those "I did X for a year and this is what I learnt" books about it.

My email hasn't been working all week. Receiving, yes. Sending, no. Lots of messages about the outgoing server not recognising my address. So I have spent a lot of time this week — a LOT of time — fiddling with the settings. I am not an expert in these matters, but I think I'm reasonably competent, and I am generally good at following instructions, at the very least, but I had no luck. I found four different pages on my ISP's help site, listing four different incoming and outgoing server settings, and no dates on them to work out if any were obsolete. Honestly, Bigpond, you would try the patience of a saint.

So then I tried calling their help line, but it took me a long time to find a number. When I did eventually find a contacts page, the options were different numbers for: damage to infrastructure, accounts and billing, mobile phones, pre-paid services, broadband, home phones, T-hub (no idea), T-box (set-top box) or Foxtel (pay TV). Which of those would look after email, do you think? I chose the broadband number. I'll never know if I made the right decision, though, because I had been on hold for half an hour, even though my call was important to them, when my mother came to visit and I decided to hang up.

My mother and I went for a walk, and when we got back, she got out her iPad so I could show her how to email a photo she had taken. Except it wouldn't send. The server does not recognise this address. 'It's never done that before,' she said accusingly. 'What have you done to it?' Nothing, mother. Only... it's using my wifi and having the same problem I am. The problem's not the email settings, is it? It's the modem.

So I turned my modem off and on, and now it's all fixed.

Next time: my mother's stool identification chart story!

Hello, f-list. I am writing this on my NEW COMPUTER. So that's exciting.

I have had my old computer for only slightly less time than I've had this LiveJournal, which is, I think, slightly too long. It's had a few upgrades and has given sterling service over the years, but I have been nursing it through for a while now. If I wanted to open a browser window, for example, I would click the icon, then leave the room for a minute, and it might be ready when I got back. If I double-clicked an email, it would take hours to open. Well, maybe not hours. Five seconds, though. It's funny what you get used to, and what you are prepared to put up with when you're too lazy to fix it. And I kept thinking of all the things I would have to do: transfer the address book and the emails and the iTunes library and, and, and...

Anyway, things came to a head when my printer cartridge ran out. I've had that printer for nearly twenty years and it's still going strong, only the cartridges are harder and harder to get. They're not in the shops any more; they have to be ordered in specially with much commenting from the shop assistant about how ancient they are, as if I had asked to buy a typewriter ribbon. So I used the last one I had in stock, and thought, well, that's the end of an era. And if I'm getting a new printer, I should do the computer at the same time. And what do you know? Setting up a new computer didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. The address book and emails are done, iTunes is done, Grisbi (personal finance software) is done (AND it's a new version, much better than the old one, so... bonus!). I also set up my new wi-fi modem. I know! So much work. I had to have a lie down after all that.

No, I didn't. I had some gardening to do. I also bought some seed potatoes. Low-carb potatoes! Forget about the Higgs bosun. Low-carb potatoes are surely the greatest wonder of modern science. I hope they're good. I also bought some oca (New Zealand yams) to plant with them. Aren't they pretty?



While I am posting photos, every month I make the paper calendar from Scout Creative. July's cat-in-a-pool was easy, but June's boat! Gosh, that was hard work. It wouldn't stay together at all. It's certainly not sea-worthy. I was so proud of my achievement, I was reluctant to throw it out, but I really don't need a ramshackle paper yacht with a June 2012 calendar printed on the sail, so I thought maybe a photo of it for posterity would suffice.



It's meant to be red, rather than pink, but my toner cartridge was already on the way out when I printed that.

Now it's back to work. I've still got my documents and photos and such to transfer, and then I've got to try and remember all my passwords for things like Evernote and Dropbox. Fun times.

There was a headline today, Five face court for Sydney shooting. That sounds like an Enid Blyton book gone horribly wrong, doesn't it?

I did a good deed today. I was in a stationery shop and a lady customer old enough to be my grandmother said to the shop assistant old enough to be my mother, 'Do you have iTunes?'

The shop assistant said, 'Ooh, sorry, no, I don't think so. I've never heard of it. What is it?'

The customer said, 'Oh, well, you see, it's my grandson's birthday and his mother told me that iTunes would be a good present for him. It's a computer thing. He's into all that technology stuff.'

So the shop assistant frowned in a puzzled sort of way and said, 'We only have paper and ink cartridges and all that. Tell you what, go to Multicomm next door, they sell that sort of thing.'

She thanked the shop assistant and the shop assistant said she was sorry she couldn't be more helpful, and the customer headed out, looking a bit nervous at the thought of Multicomm, because it's not a name that sounds particularly welcoming to people who don't know much about technology (which is unfortunate, because we buy stuff from them at work and they're quite nice*).

I debated whether to stick my oar in, as they say, and helpful won over reticent, so as she passed me I said I'd heard the conversation and that her grandson probably wants an iTunes gift voucher that he can use to buy music online. She said, 'Ooh, really?', so I told her to go to Target and ask the staff member at the entrance where the iTunes cards are because the display is only a couple of metres away from they stand. She was so grateful, f-list, I thought she was going to hug me.





* And certainly better than they used to be when they had different owners and a different name. My old workplace used them for IT servicing and I have hideous memories of my computer being fixed by a man in a dirty t-shirt with tomato sauce and pastry flakes on it. Ugh.**
** To be fair, I hate tomato sauce and find the smell of it disgusting. But I think that guy was gross even by non-tomato-sauce-hating standards.

Do you know how much of my life I have wasted changing the colour of every second row of an Excel spreadsheet to make it easier to look at when printed? Minutes. Minutes of it, that's how much. Probably nearly an hour by now.

Yesterday in my advanced Excel course, I learnt how to do it automatically. It was just tossed out there as a thing we might find useful. Useful? I'll say. ( And if it's any use to anyone else... )

The change to daylight saving hours has really knocked me out this year. Over a week now and I still haven't adjusted. I keep thinking it's too early to go to bed at night and then it's too early to wake up in the morning. And I keep writing the month as 11, not 10. So I'm all over the place. All out of time.

What else? Oh, I've finally unsubscribed from the Note from the Universe. I'd imagined that the final straw would be something preposterous, but in the end, it hasn't been preposterous enough. Just twee. It was yet another 'you are awesomeness personified, Alicia' message that got me in the end. I read something about that over the weekend, how positive affirmations don't work for some people. And by some people, I mean me. It's all very well saying that I'm awesome, but if I don't believe it, it's just words. Or worse, sarcasm. So yes, give me absurdities, Universe, but don't patronise me.

Quickbooks, why won't you let me format a remittance advice? Why do you hate me?
 
This remittance advice thing is so annoying. When I pay someone, Quickbooks creates a remittance advice, which is all very helpful of it, except it includes the contact details of the office on the other side of the state. I can change those details in the company information, but that would just shift the problem onto my counterpart in that office. For other forms, such as invoices, Quickbooks lets us create templates so we can include whatever information we want, but for remittance advices, it's what Quickbooks says we can have and that's final.
 
It's been a low-level irritant for months now, but this morning the other office received a phone call from someone I'd paid and the message was emailed to three people in the other office before one of them realised it was meant for me. After that, I thought I’d better see if I could find a solution. And do you know, I couldn't. Quickbooks forums are full of people wanting to customise their remittance advices, as far back as 2002, to no avail.
 
In the end, I opened a Word document and typed If you have any queries about this payment, please contact... in the footer. I’ve printed 100 copies and I’ll print all my remittances advices on them from now on. That took a minute, after wasting half the afternoon. Grrr.

I saw the end of the Nigella episode on before the news the other night. She was making something with golden syrup in it, but, she said, don't worry if you don't have golden syrup in the house. 'Just use dark golden syrup instead.' Thanks for that, Nigella, you've been a huge help.

I don't remember what she was making, but I was inspired by seeing the golden syrup to make Mary Woolley Pudding for dinner with my mother and her partner. 'We're having Mary Woolley Pudding,' I said, and my mother said, 'First catch your Mary Woolley,' as she always does because that joke never gets old. Mary Woolley Pudding is a simple steamed pudding flavoured with golden syrup. It's called Mary Woolley Pudding after one of my grandmother's old friends who gave her the recipe. My grandmother was scrupulous about recording who gave her recipes. Her old exercise book is filled with recipes for things like Betty's Biscuits. I don't know why she chose to title this one Mary Woolley Pudding, no possessive, but she did and so that's what we call it. It is a good pudding.

Mary Woolley's family also thought it was a good pudding. So much that they ate it for breakfast and thought this completely normal, and one of the Woolley children caused Mary no end of embarrassment after perusing the breakfast menu of a posh Melbourne hotel in the 1960s and bellowing to his mother on the other side of the room, 'Mum! They don't have pudding!' Shocked society matrons had fan themselves in horror.

'But we,' said my mother, concluding her tale, 'were never allowed to eat it for breakfast.' Not that she's bitter about that.

This week I have been busy preparing for an audit. Audit number two of four for the year, because of our merger. Necessary as per constitutional and contractual obligations, but I am a bit over them. Although I am enormously pleased when I print off a report for, say, tax withheld from wages, and it adds up to exactly what it says it should on the balance sheet. It is the most satisfying feeling in the world.*

Tonight is the last night of my ( Photoshop course )

Finally, the teacher said that she was talking to the professional photographer who teaches the How To Use Your SLR Camera course and he showed her some amazing things in Photoshop. Like, he opens a nice photo and makes some adjustments and it becomes an even nicer photo! Which is what I wanted to learn, basically. So, um, two stars out of five for this course.



* That may be an exaggeration.
** Except for one of my mother's friends, who tried to delete a Word document but somehow deleted Word itself instead. She was beyond help, although I did reinstall Word for her and make her promise to only delete things from My Documents.