Lynne Simpson

Yet another reason to love XM

Lynne — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:06:54 +0000

Heard this song on the way home today. YouTube also has the original Scorpions video for Send Me An Angel, but this montage from Final Fantasy is prettier, I think. :-)

A nice Thanksgiving story

Lynne — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:49:43 +0000

Excerpt: “I asked her what she would like, what her kids like, and then I felt really bad because she said she only wanted eggs and milk,” Saenz said. “I felt really bad because I know when somebody only asks you for eggs and milk, they are in a really bad situation.”

Wrong Number Miracle

Still here, just busy

Lynne — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:29:11 +0000

I have three major deadlines at work between now and mid-January, so I’m barely even checking email these days. And our oldest cat — a great granddaddy of a tomcat at 17.5+ years old — came down with pneumonia two weeks ago. For a week, we were force-feeding him beef baby food by smearing it on his poor little nose. In the last couple of days, he’s started to act like himself again — making his usual watch-cat rounds, playing with his toys, and eating without having to be forced. He may be out of the woods, but I won’t rest easy until he’s been acting like himself for at least a month.

*Maybe* I’ll get some writing done this weekend after the big holiday rush settles down. :-)

Jon Stewart slays me…

Lynne — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:27:53 +0000

If you’re not familiar with Glenn Beck’s insanity, some parts of this may not make sense, but OMG… I am yet again blown away by Stewart’s genius.

Important stuff

Lynne — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:14:21 +0000

There were six deaths in my county alone from the floods in Georgia this week. Every one of them died from drowning when their cars were swept off the road. In some of the cases, maybe the water came from out of nowhere and they didn’t actually drive into standing water. We probably won’t ever know. But driving into water, particularly at night, is one of the most dangerous things you can do. Even if the water is shallow, the road structure may have been compromised, and at best you’ll get stuck on a chunk of collapsed asphalt. You could break an axle or flip your car. Or you could find out that the water is a lot deeper than it looked, and before you know it, your car is out of sight of the road in ten feet of water and sinking fast.

Here are a couple of articles that describe ways to escape a sinking car:

What To Do If Your Car Plunges Into Water

Escape A Sinking Car

In some of the situations in our county this week, maybe escaping from the car wouldn’t have helped. Maybe the water was too fast, and they would have died anyway. But to have a fighting chance, you’ve got to get out of the car, and to do that, you have to stay calm. Oh, and you need to be wearing a seatbelt so you’re less likely to hit your head and be knocked unconscious when your car hits the water.

And another thing — if you don’t know how to swim, learn. You don’t have to master any fancy strokes. Dog paddling and treading water are fine. The most important thing is getting comfortable enough in water that you don’t freak out.

It’s been a rough week for a lot of people. We were very fortunate in that neither of our houses suffered any damage and we were in a relatively safe area. I seem to have this knack for buying houses that are halfway down a hill. If your house is on top of the hill, you get hit with a lot more wind, and if it’s too far down, you may have flooding problems. The basement here is about thirty feet above the lake, and that was a good thing when the pond upstream broke loose and sent a wall of water rushing down into our subdivision.

Overall, John and I have been incredibly lucky. We have to brush our teeth in bottled water for another week, but at least we can take showers and flush toilets. As of this morning, half the county didn’t have water at all.

Health care reform, NOW.

Lynne — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:39:43 +0000

I still hate reality TV, but…

Lynne — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:27:42 +0000

…damned if Design Star isn’t addictive as all get out.

Worse, I found myself listening to Britney Spears’ Gimme More on BPM this morning and actually, umm, liking it.

I fear for my sanity. :-) Or as John would say, “Who are you and what have you done with my wife?”

One of the best things about a staycation…

Lynne — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:56:41 +0000

…is that you can catch up on movies you’ve been meaning to watch for a long time. Last Christmas, my sister bought us a copy of the BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. She’s a HUGE Pride and Prejudice fan like John and I are, and she has been after us for months to finally take the time to watch N&S.

What a treasure! I’ve read parts of the book, and now I’m going to have to read the whole thing. The clip below is from the end of the first of four episodes.

I wish I could tell you, Edith, how lonely I am, how cold
and harsh it is here. Everywhere there is conflict and
unkindness. I think God has forsaken this place.
I believe I’ve seen hell. And it’s white. It’s snow white.

Apropos of Nothing: Note To Self

Lynne — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:17:57 +0000

Y’know, if the HGTV people are coming over to shoot a bunch of footage in that kitchen you refer to as your pride and joy, you may want to wipe the enormous streaks off your stainless steel fridge. Stuff like that is particularly glaring in high def. :-) I thought it was a trick of the light at first, but that merciless ol’ camera just kept panning by this woman’s fridge in all its streaky glory.

In other words, I’ve gotten addicted to HGTV, particularly House Hunters International. It started when I hurt my back the other week and all I could do for several days was lie flat on the bed and watch HGTV. Until I got an overdose of it, I never realized how addictive those shows can be, and now I’m hooked, drat it!

It’s much easier to watch someone else tear out walls than to do it myself. Maybe that’s it. :-)

WordPress as a knowledge base for writers

Lynne — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:57:01 +0000

I think all writers have this problem to some degree. You scribble a reminder to yourself to research burial customs in Regency England. You come up with a great scene while you’re eating breakfast in a restaurant and jot down as much as you can on the back of envelopes and scraps of paper. You find yourself with a stack of a dozen spiral bound notebooks, with notes about different stories in each.

And later, when you’re sitting down at your computer to, oh, actually write, you can’t find any of it, or at least not that one thing you really need right now.

I am much, much more organized than this in my day job. I have to be, considering the mountains of code and documentation that flow past my eyeballs on any given week. If I can’t find stuff easily, I end up in a world of trouble.

So I needed a tool that met these requirements:

Readily accessible from almost anywhere
Full text searchable
Regularly backed up so nothing gets lost

Duh. WordPress.

I set myself up a private, password-protected blog, buried way down in a subdirectory on one of my domains. It isn’t visible on the Internet unless you know exactly where to look, and you have to enter the password to read anything.

I can even post from my cell phone, so no more envelope scribbles. (The Centro has a keyboard built in, which makes typing notes a lot easier.)

I’ve been using WordPress for more than three years now, and I can’t believe it has taken me this long to realize how handy it is for managing notes.