Deja Vu

Way way back in LJ -ville, we went through a period of time when the network seemed to fail every Sunday. Every Sunday, you'd log in to check your friends list and Frank the goat would arrive to say Sorry No Can Do. It was only mildly annoying because it happened so often, you kind of expected it.

When I first started using the Misfit app, a little more than two years ago, often I would sync and it would fail because their network was down. It's been a long time since that's happened but it's happening again now. It's hard to know how dedicated they are now to the brand - hardware/software - since it was bought out by Fossil. I do hope, that when they die, they announce it and just stop instead of 'network fail' ing us to death. I don't really have a good Plan B now. I like being able to track my swimming and everything else all in one app. Hopefully, someone will come up with a good alternative before Misfit dies dead.

Last night I got a fun baseball treat. It was a home game Tuesday. Normally, for those, in the 3rd inning a former player joins the broadcast booth and spends the next 6 innings saying stupid shit so I have to turn it off or, at least mute the sound. But, last night, he was a no show! And the Mariners won big. Nice and nice.

Yesterday morning, I was really sleepy so I took a nap for an hour. I hate day sleeping but I did feel pretty darned energetic the rest of the day. Into the night. When I couldn't get to sleep and finally when I did, I couldn't stay that way. That's part of the reason I hate naps. I sure don't plan on any today.

Today is house cleaner day. Hopefully she'll be here before 10. Then I will disappear. I need to get the air in my car's tires checked and rebalanced. And then I'm not sure what I will do. Maybe a visit to the Goodwill store. I have library books to return so I'll be doing that for sure.

My tweets

• Tue, 12:16: A backpack in progress. @ The Florentine https://t.co/63Hku70L10
• Wed, 11:23: I love the name of this newspaper @ Uwajimaya Seattle https://t.co/f2Ysg2Ckpb

Continued

One key thing happened before I started working at the little PR agency. I was still at IBM twiddling my thumbs for (very good) pay. It happened one Friday night.

It was 1995 and I was still active on electronic bulletin boards and Prodigy and Compuserve and in my free time, I was playing bridge on OK Bridge (at that time it was an independent server that served up excellent players from around the world). Each of these services required a separate dial in. Thinking back on it now, it was ridiculous. At the time, it was miraculous.

Then, one day, I signed up with something called an Internet Service Provider. Yet another number to dial into. Only this time it offered a bunch of different services. Gopher and IRC and email and web pages. It was very cool.

I subscribed to a magazine (the kind with pages brought to me via the USPS mail carrier once a month) called Internet World. I gobbled up every single word in every single issue. At IBM, I had massive free time but no internet. (I know, a crime, right??)

One Thursday night, I found the latest issue of Internet World in my mail and did not read it. I saved it to take and read at work on Friday. One of the articles was "How my son and I built a web site in a weekend" ... I read it very carefully and took copious notes at work that day. If some dude and his 7 year old could build a website, I sure could. And I had a weekend. Step back.

I did it. Trial and many errors. Many. www.eskimo.com:80/~susan/ I just looked in the wayback machine and they have a version from 1997. It's bad enough. The 1994 version was way worse.

Ok, here, you can see it. There's a midi file that tries to download just hit cancel. Judge, judge, judge away.

There was only one browser that had any kind of range - Netscape. I think if I remember correctly, you had six font sizes to chose from but it was all the same font. There weren't tables yet OR background colors - those came with Netscape 2 (that was a big day). Web pages themselves were very simple to do because there weren't a lot of options. Websites were a bit trickier because there were no tools. But mainly I was clueless. I took a photograph and a floppy disk to the copy shop to get it digitized. The guy asked what format I wanted. I had no idea. He did not know what a web page was. We were a pair. He finally gave me a gif copy and a jpg copy so it worked out. I had that picture on my website forever and even used it for LJ when I first started this journal.

Anyway... by Monday, I had a website and it was fab.

Tuesday, I got a call from the guy who would soon be my boss and he said - I kid you not - "Do you happen to know anything about something called web pages?"

Seriously, Forest Gump ain't got nothing on me.

I left IBM and walked into his office a couple of months later as his Web Advisor. hahahaha

To be continued

Good day

My outing this morning was very successful. The tire place near me was happy to check my tires and refused my $5 until I told him to buy donuts for the break room. Nice to have an alternate to the one in West Seattle. yes, I know I can do it myself. no, I don't want to.

Sending pictures via text on Android (SMS) has always been a problem. Yes there are apps but natively, not so much. Until now. I got a picture the other day and was surprised so today when I needed to send one, I went into the regular (native) app and clicked away until it turned into an SMS app. Yahoo!!! Finally, I'm in with the in crowd.

The picture I needed to send was of my brother's chickens testing out the doorway. He left the hatch door to the ramp open this morning and they had been avoiding it all day until I caught them sticking their beaks out the door. They didn't go out I but they are clearly testing the waters. Those girls are really fun to watch.

Misfit is still broken and I have not gotten one response to my now three different entries. I did see a post on Google + from some poor woman who just got hers and can't get it connected. As frustrated as I am, at least I know how it works when it isn't broken. I'd be killing people if I were her.

As it is, I'm going to give the Fitbit Flex 2 a trial run. Amazon Prime Now is delivering it in a couple of hours. I'm sure I won't like it and will send it back but I really need a distraction.

This morning, I was looking at a new shirt pattern on line. It looked interesting. $13. BUT, it was free with the price of a copy of the SewSew Def Magazine which I've wanted to read but at $10 was hesitant. But, an opportunity to save $3?! I'm in. The magazine had several interesting articles and two free patterns. I downloaded the one I was interested in. It had 25 pages of very detailed instructions. So detailed, in fact, that I was able to figure out who to do proper seam surging on my own machine using a part I'd never known what to do with before! I also learned 3 other very useful things so I went back and bought a year's subscription to this magazine.

I got a poke bowl for dinner tonight and there's a Mariner game on TV. I have a new gadget to play with. Life is good.