These purple flowers with the yellow centers are very common this year.
Author: Elaine
Weblog spam
I am so bummed. I just found spam in the comments of one of my posts. I deleted it, of course. It just goes to show you don’t have to have a high-traffic weblog to get spam. I suppose I will have to track down the articles I have been seeing about how to defeat comment spam.
Happy Apple Farm
Florence, Colorado
Picking berries
Two friends called this morning and asked me if I wanted to go to Happy Apple Farm in Penrose, Colorado. I had never picked raspberries before. The bushes had been picked over, but I managed to find a pint of extremely ripe berries. They were so ripe that I immediately brought them home and made a raspberry cobbler, now baking in the oven.
I don’t believe I’ve ever made a cobber before, either. To judge from the ingredients, it was first made by someone who didn’t have the patience to make a pie.
Walking the dogs
I lost Dudley for a heart stopping three to five minutes today. I have been letting him off the lead for most of our walks recently. He usually stays within six to ten feet of me except for when he will stop to sniff out the neighborhood news. However, he saw some birds flying up from a thicket when we were nearly home, and took off in pursuit. I couldn’t even hear him crashing through the trees. I wasn’t wearing appropriate clothing for bushwhacking, so I had just about decided to go back home and change into jeans when he came running down the trail to find me.
I haven’t been walking nearly as much as I should to meet my goal of thirty minutes a day. Lody has been a little lame, and hasn’t been keeping up very well. I have been afraid I would lose her if I kept marching along at my normal pace, so today I left her home and just took Dudley. I don’t think she minds, as long as I managed to keep her from noticing that I am taking Dudley. I slipped out with him while she was occupied with her breakfast.
Missing True Type
If you notice a slight difference here, it is because I decided to change my default serif font in the CSS to Times Roman because the existing choices sucked when I looked at my weblog using Mozilla under LInux. How odd that True Type fonts, the thing I liked most about Windows 3.1, is the thing I miss the most under Linux.
Otherwise I don’t miss much, though it would be nice to get my Palm synchronizing with Linux, and to be able to use the scanner. Since the scanner, flash drive, and digital camera are all USB, I figured that getting the flash drive and digital camera to work would imply that the scanner should work as well, but no….. Linux obstinately refuses to see anything as a scanner but a video card that I didn’t even know this computer had.
Response time differences between my old Windows 98 system and Linux are a bit hard to figure. Some things seem to go more quickly, and some things more slowly. This machine is fairly robust for a Windows 98 system because Jack bought it for multimedia applications. However, it is at the low end of what is supported for graphical applications with Redhat 9 Linux. I am starting to fantasize about putting in more RAM memory, but that way lies madness. I keep reminding myself that this is a five year old machine.
I love having access to a Unix type shell again. I had used a shell product called Take Command under Windows for year, but it had some limitations due to the funkiness of DOS.
A hint of autumn color
The deciduous trees are starting to turn color now. In a week or so, the hills will be covered with gold and bronze.
Hoom Maps
Since I use Mapquest and Yahoomaps a lot, and am also a Tolkien fan, I enjoyed this satire called Hoom! Maps and Walking Directions .
Advice for guys
Here is some advice for guys: how to be banned from grocery shopping. I didn’t know they needed lessons. I thought it had something to do with the Y-chromosome.
Sunrise
Sunrise, this morning. Only Linux utilities were used in getting this image from my camera and ready for my website: gphoto (a bit funky, probably became of my camera dock, but it works), gThumb, and Gimp.