Category Archives: Technology

Oct5

A Meandering Potpourri of Thoughts, or, Becoming More Like Jesus VERY Slowly.

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What shall I write about now? I published a post on Sunday that I really liked, and I haven’t been able to figure out what to write about ever since because my mind has been blank. Usually I can come up with at least some kind of inkling, but not this time. So maybe I’ll just meander a bit until I can come up with a topic.

So this is me meandering…

Things are getting better with Charlotte. She seems to be warming up to me, though it’s in a somewhat oppositional fashion, if that makes any sense. She plays around my feet by clawing them, which hurts like crazy, so I have to tell her to stop. I don’t want to do that, but her claws are so sharp that I can’t stand it if I allow her to keep using them on me.

I haven’t worked on my cross stitch for several days, and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I didn’t see McT this week. He and his wife went up north on a sort of mini-vacation. I’m supposed to see him again tomorrow, so maybe that’ll kickstart my cross stitch again.

Above is Charlotte’s current favorite toy. Originally it was a mask that I cut from a tee shirt at the beginning of the quarantine because I didn’t have any other masks. She likes to drag it from room to room.

I’m thinking I should post a progress pic here as well. I haven’t posted an update photo in a very long time, so maybe it’s time to do that. I have made a fair amount of headway on it since my last progress pic, though I’m still working on the same part of the sampler ~ the bottom right corner. It’s just that I’ve moved in a bit from the absolute corner. Of course I have to take a photo of it first, strangely enough. You can’t post a photo if you don‘t have a photo to post.


This is my Pandemic sampler from Long Dog Samplers, WIP #8, and I’m making slow but steady progress. I’m still working on the bottom right corner, but I’m moving towards the bottom left corner slowly but surely. The link for this sampler is, https://www.longdogsampler.com/product/pandemic/

That’s all I can think of at the moment. It took me a VERY long time to figure out how to get the photo of my cross stitch into this post, something like two hours or more. That amount of time seems pretty ridiculous to me, but it took at least that long. Thankfully it finally got done, and it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself, after an immense amount of frustration and praying and silent yelling (my housekeeper is cleaning my apartment at present, so I can’t yell out loud. Harrumph! The things we do for propriety’s sake!)

We can all draw close to him with the veil removed from our faces. And with no veil we all become like mirrors who brightly reflect the glory of the Lord Jesus. We are being transfigured into his very image as we move from one brighter level of glory to another. And this glorious transfiguration comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. ~ 2 Corinthians 3:18, The Passion Translation.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Corinthians%203:17-18&version=TPT

Above is the link to the Bible Gateway website where you can access the verse from The Passion Translation that I used. Becoming more like Jesus is a process. It has to be that way, because doing it all at once would be too painful and difficult. I mean, think how it would be to grow from a baby into an adult in one single day. That would be impossible.

In order for your bones to make that kind of transformation you’d have to add more bone, a LOT more bone, all at once. It might be easier if you broke the bone in half and just added a big segment in between the two broken halves. But then healing would take a long time, and it would be quite painful.

It’s something to think about anyway, and something I might explore further in another post.

Jul13

To Publish Or Not to Publish, That Is the Question.

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I haven’t been able to write much in awhile. I’ve been working on a post, but it’s too long, and I can’t figure out how to shorten it. I’m trying to decide if I should publish it as is and let you all read it, and hope you won’t be bored. The problem is, it contains details that I feel are important in telling the story that I’m trying to tell. I know I’ve published long posts before, but this one is longer than most.

So this post is going to be about whether I should publish the other post. Silly, I know, but that’s where I’m at. And in the process of making my decision, I may meander around a bit here, because sometimes that’s how I think. So if some of what I write here sounds irrelevant, it will only sound that way.

The battery on my laptop died, so I had to purchase a new computer. I got a really fancy new iPad. It has a separate keyboard, and a huge hard drive, At first I didn’t think I’d be able to retrieve anything from my laptop, but God has been resurrecting the battery at different times, so when that happens, I get the things I want and send them to myself in assorted emails. It’s been working quite well. There were a number of Long Dog Sampler charts that I had saved on my hard drive, that I needed, so I was able to send those to myself, plus some of the things I need so I can finish the sampler I’m working on (it’s called Pandemic, and it’s also a Long Dog Sampler design).

There were a whole lot of photos I’d saved that I really wanted, so I’ve been able to get a lot of them as well. I’m still not done, but I’m making progress. In addition, there were a number of papers I had written for various classes that I didn’t want to lose, and I was also able to retrieve them.

Another thing I’ve discovered I can do is that while my laptop is functional I can go through and justify the margins of all the posts that I wrote since I started using the iPad. This is because I haven’t figured out how to justify the margins in WordPress for the iPad ~ at least not yet. Hopefully I will before too long, because I hate unjustified margins. They look so sloppy to me.

It’s been a lot of fun getting all the stuff transferred from the old to the new, and I’m grateful to God for making my laptop available so I can do it. It’s a time-consuming task, but an enjoyable one.

At some point in the near future I’ll post a pic of my cross stitch that I’m working on. I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. It’s a huge project, probably the biggest piece I’ve ever made, but I think it will be beautiful once it’s finished.

I think I’m going to publish that post as is with only a little more editing.

See? Meandering around in my thoughts while I’m writing about seemingly irrelevant stuff helped me decide! Thank you, Jesus! And thank you, everyone for being patient with me as I figure it out. I love you all!

Jan30

More On Trying WordPress’s New Format. And I’ve Decided I Don’t Like It…

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I just discovered that maybe I can justify my margins. I hope so! I don’t like writing without them, though it’s funny, because neat and tidy margins in my writing are just about the only time you’ll find neatness in any area of my life. I’m an absolutely terrible housekeeper, so, unless I’ve managed to retain a housekeeper, and she’s coming once every two weeks, my bedroom floor is always lumpy and crunchy, and I always have no silverware ~ except for the two or three spoons and forks that I wash every couple of days, and my livingroom and diningroom always have papers and old mail scattered all over the place. My kitchen is always a huge mess, and so is my car, except for the driver’s seat.

The only places that are even remotely clean are the bathroom and Lily’s litterbox.

It seems that my hope for justified margins were nothing more than a pipe-dream. There’s a setting for it, but it doesn’t work.

RATS!!

And I tried to go back to the old format, what WordPress calls the “Classic Editor”, but was unsuccessful. I’ll have to figure out a way to do that, because I really, really don’t like this new way.

Two Days Later… Whenever that might be.

I finally figured out how to get back to the Classic Editor. Yippee!! 

So I’m back to the Classic Editor, and I’m going to STAY THERE!! 

God is SOOO GOOD!! 

Jan14

Saying Yes to Christ’s Return

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I’m feeling incredibly frustrated because I’m doing all these crazy things, and I don’t understand why I’m doing them, but I don’t seem to be able to stop. If I could understand why, then maybe I could make myself stop doing it. At least that’s how it feels anyway.

So what am I doing that feels so crazy? Well, for one thing, I can’t seem to make myself go to bed before 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning, and sometimes even later. And I’ve become obsessed with this TV show called Say Yes to the Dress on The Learning Channel (TLC). It’s a show devoted to women who are engaged to be married, and their search for the perfect wedding dress. The whole show takes place at Kleinfeld Bridal, a store located in New York City.

The reason my obsession with this TV show feels crazy is because I’m not engaged, nor am I dating anyone. I have no interest in getting married, and I have no desire to find someone to date so I can marry him. Marriage is the farthest thing from my mind. It always has been and probably always will be.

So why do I feel compelled to watch this show when I have no one to wear a wedding dress for?

I’ve been preoccupied with why just as obsessively as I’ve been fixated on watching the show, and I can think of a couple of different reasons. For one thing, when a bride comes to Kleinfeld, she always brings an entourage of people to help her find her perfect dress. And the entourage for each bride is different depending on who she is, and the kinds of people she surrounds herself with.

Almost everyone brings one or both parents, plus various and assorted sisters and sisters-in-law, along with ~ sometimes ~ brothers and/or brothers-in-law, and every once in awhile, a fiancé or two. The show is a great example of interpersonal and family dynamics in action. It brings out the best, and in many cases, the worst in relationships between the bride and her friends and/or family.

This show also brings out the worst in me, because I spend a LOT of time yelling at the friends and families of the brides that come to Kleinfeld when they’re on Say Yes to the Dress, as I mentioned that I do in a previous post (I Yell At My Television Set). The reason is that many times the bride becomes dependent on their opinions, to the point that she won’t make a decision unless they approve of her choice. And oftentimes she’s expressed a preference for the particular style of dress she likes, yet her entourage will tell her that what she likes is ugly or stupid, and they’ll then go and find dresses in styles that are completely opposite from her stated preferences. And they’ll tell her that what they’ve picked out for her is what she should be wearing. If she says she doesn’t like their choices, they’ll tell her that she’s wrong, and her “taste sucks,” and other equally derogatory remarks.

My problem with these interactions is that these people who are bossing the bride around act like they’re the ones who will be wearing the dress, but they aren’t. If they were going to be wearing the dress, then it might be appropriate for them to be voicing such strong opinions. As it is, ofttimes they treat the bride like what she wants and needs is irrelevant, when in actuality she’s the most important person there. So I spend a lot of time yelling at them, telling them to stop being so rude to the bride, and telling them that they don’t have to wear the dress so their opinion really doesn’t matter.

 Another possible reason for my interest in Say Yes to the Dress could be that the Bible talks about the church ~ and by inference, its members ~ as being the bride of Christ. Paul, the Apostle mentions it rather clearly in 2 Corinthians,

For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure bride to one husband—Christ. ~ 2 Corinthians 11:2, NLT.

Other translations render the word “pure bride” as “pure virgin”,

For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy, because I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. 2 Corinthians 11:2, NET.

In thinking about this, I don’t see myself as being married to Christ like a Catholic nun, but rather, in terms of anticipating the return of Jesus. Christ told us to watch and be ready for His return in the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in Matthew 25,

At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. 

At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ 

Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ 

‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ 

But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. 

Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ 

But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ 

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. ~ Matthew 25:1-13, NIV.

So I’m to eagerly await the soon return of my Lord. I tell you, I can hardly wait, and my anticipation grows stronger every day. And if that’s why I’m compelled to watch this show, then I say, bring it on!!

E’en so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!! ~ Revelation 22:20.

Jul27

It Wasn’t a Can of Tuna, It Was a Hole Punch!

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I have a crooked smile and a hearty laugh. It’s part of my charm, and it’s the way God made me ~ and God thinks I’m beautiful, so it must be part of what makes me beautiful as well. Additionally, I love to laugh. So when something strikes my funny bone, everyone knows it, because everyone can hear me laughing loud and long.

All that is to say that I was playing June’s Journey earlier, and was working on a hidden object scene that consisted of a desk in a police station. One of the objects I had to find was a hole punch, but the only thing left after all the other objects were gone looked like a can of tuna. As it turned out, it was a hole punch.

A hole punch!

Since when does a hole punch look like a can of tuna??

I started to laugh, and I’m still laughing now, hours later.

I think the reason why I’m making such a big deal of this is because it’s an indication of just how healed I really am.

In the post dated July 16, 2019, and entitled Go To Forgiveness, Go Right To Forgiveness. Don’t Pass Through Guilt, Don’t Go To Condemnation, I wrote about God healing me of serious and long-standing frustration and anger that ofttimes expressed itself in self-abuse. Well, I’m still feeling a deep sense of contentment and abiding joy, and when I play my games ~ all of them ~ and I make a mistake, I’m able to laugh about it, and not feel even a LITTLE BIT of frustration or anger, and there is NO self-abuse.

I thank God for that.

I am SOOO GRATEFUL to God for that!!

So when I was working on the scene with the policeman’s desk, and it said I had to find a hole punch ~ and the only thing left was what, for all the world, looked like a can of tuna, and then it turned out to be a hole punch, all I could do was giggle, where, in the past I would have gotten frustrated and angry at myself. I would have called myself stupid, and an idiot, and then I would have hit myself several times ~ HARD. 

You have no idea how amazing and wonderful it is to be free of that, and to be able to giggle and laugh at a mistake. To be able to see the humor in a mistake is something I’ve never been able to do before, and I thank God for that freedom.

And it still looks like a can of tuna!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Jun6

Hurray for a Working Computer!

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My computer was completely non-functional for about two weeks, so I had to do everything on my iPad. It wasn’t much fun, I can tell you. Writing on an iPad is very difficult to do if you don’t have an external keyboard, which I don’t, and as consequence I haven’t been able to post anything here for most of that time. I’ve decided the iPad isn’t good for anything but playing games, and maybe making art if you can figure out how to use the apps.

Part of the problem was that it took my computer guy two weeks to figure out what was wrong. As it turned out, the problem was a simple, yet profound fix. Something, I forget what, had come loose inside the casing of the computer, and as a result, I couldn’t even boot up properly. Everytime I turned it on all I got was a blinking file folder with a question mark in the middle of it.

I thought I was going to have to buy a new computer, and after pricing them out, it would have cost me almost $4000 to get a new Mac with the specifications that I needed. I’m very grateful to God for saving me $4000!

But finally, Tuesday, they figured it out and fixed it. Praise God! And now I have it back, fully functioning. I can post here and play games and listen to Scripture and go online, and just EVERYTHING!! I can also pay my bills, thank God.

You don’t realize how much you need something, and how grateful you are that you have it, until you have to go without it for awhile.

It’s a good lesson in gratitude that I must remember to keep on practicing!

Feb26

Everything And Nothing All At The Same Time…

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This will probably be a hodgepodge of everything and nothing all at the same time. I’m having a terrible time with hitting myself, and I’m trying not to, but failing miserably.

Kim suggested a new web browser, called Brave, that promises ultra-secure browsing on the internet, plus freedom from ads, and I’ve tried it. I like it, but it’s SOOO ultra-secure that I can’t use any of the websites I usually use, because Brave blocks JavaScript, whatever that is, from being enabled, and if JavaScript isn’t enabled then the website won’t load, and you can’t do anything with it. And that includes this blog. So until I figure out the ins and outs and the technicalities of Brave, I’m going to be stuck using Safari.

And for now, I’ll have to post this as is, because I have to write about something that’s much more pressing, but I don’t want to just toss this out and forget about it. I can come back later and add more to it as the Spirit leads, and as I feel like it.

Jun4

Technical Issues Notwithstanding, Writing About the Cool Stuff Again.

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I hate it when I’m trying to write a blog post, but regardless of what I do, the website won’t save. I’ve prayed ~ bound the devil ~ prayed again ~ repented ~ prayed some more ~ yelled at God ~ repented for yelling at God ~ yelled at the devil ~ repented just in case ~ prayed yet again ~ bound the devil again in case the first time didn’t work ~ and prayed again for the umpteenth time. I’ve been at this for over two days, all to no avail. It’s become an exercise in futility.

This is SOOO FRUSTRATING!!! 

Here’s an update. I finally sent an email complaint to what WordPress.com calls their “Happiness Engineers” (seriously? Happiness Engineers?), and then came back here, at which point I decided to try saving what I’d written thus far. And of course it saved immediately. I hate when that happens. Now, when their lovely Happiness Engineers come and check out my complaint, it’ll look like I was making it up. SOOO frustrating!! It’s the same principle as when your car is making some kind of horrendous noise, so you take it to the mechanic, but once you get there, the noise is gone, and the mechanic looks at you like you’ve lost your mind.

It looks like the problem is solved. I did get a response from the Happiness Engineers, however, and they said that, based on past cases, this usually means there’s a problem with the connection between my browser and the wordpress servers, and I should try clearing my browser’s cache, and I should also unplug my modem/router for a few seconds to flush its DNS cache. The problem seems to have resolved itself without doing those things; however, I’m going to do them anyway.

So now I’m back to blather and whatever, what with the problem that motivated this post getting resolved. Plus, now I can get back to writing about the stuff I REALLY want to write about.

Cool.

A further update, over a year later: it turns out that WordPress has a desktop app, which I downloaded. And if I do my blogging on the desktop app, all the problems I had on the internet version of WordPress with saving, etc., just go away.

What a relief!

Sep19

A Game That’s Not a Game

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I’ve been playing this online game called TrainStation on Facebook for a long time, probably a year or more. I spend too much time playing it, and I’ve had a feeling for awhile now that the Lord doesn’t want me to play it anymore. I’ve tried a number of times to stop playing it to no avail.

One time I managed to stop for a little over a week because I unfriended all the Facebook friends that were playing it with me, but I felt so uncomfortable that I ended up going back to it. I shouldn’t have allowed the physical feeling to rule over me like that, but I did.

I’ve begun to realize that I’m addicted to it, which may have been why I felt uncomfortable when I stopped playing for that week. Not a good thing!

The reason I like playing it is because it’s fun and relaxing. There’s no violence and I don’t spend any money on it. It’s just quiet fun that’s relaxing. I’ll admit there are a few times where I get frustrated because the screen moves unnecessarily in full-screen mode as my finger brushes against the trackpad when it’s not supposed to~something I can’t help. But that’s the only problem I have with it and it’s more of a technical issue with the trackpad and my straying fingers than a problem with the game.

I’m going to post what I’ve written thus far because something happened with Mom yesterday that I need to write about. Once I’m done with that I’ll come back and work more on this.

Life can be SOOO interesting at times!

July 24, 2019

This update is almost four years later. For the most part, I’m no longer playing TrainStation, but I am playing four other computer games. However, I don’t spend as much time playing them as I did while I was playing TrainStation. Additionally, the frustration I used to experience as I played any game is no longer a problem, thank God. The self-abuse is gone, hallelujah!

The fact that the self-abuse is gone is probably the biggest change, and the most welcome. Self-abuse has haunted me for many, many years, and I have longed to be free of it. I’m so grateful to God for setting me free from this besetting sin!!

Jul17

Of Unsolved Mysteries and Old Blog Posts

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Here I am writing another post. I’ve discovered that I have to write a post, and finish and publish it pretty much all in one sitting, because if I take much longer than that the draft gets lost somewhere in cyberspace. I have yet to figure out where my unfinished drafts are on wordpress.com, and it’s not a little frustrating, because I have at least two drafts waiting for me if only I could find them!

So with that mystery as yet unsolved, I write on…

From time to time I plan on taking a post from my old blog and using it here. I can’t post there anymore because Google shut it down, but I don’t want those entries to go to waste. So, as appropriate based on topic, I’ll use old posts as is or altered, depending once again on topic. There were a number of key posts; for instance, the letter I wrote to Harry, which was quite therapeutic, by the way.

And then there’s the one I wrote about Lily. I had started a new post here about Lily and had planned on using the post from the old blog as part of the new entry here, but before I could do that I got distracted, and ended up losing the new post before I could publish it. So now it’s one of those drafts that’s floating around out in cyberspace and I have no idea where it is or how to find it, and I’m so frustrated! Harrumph!!

Sooo…

I’ll just have to keep on writing and posting, and trying to do it quickly enough that my posts don’t get lost! I’m also going to keep on looking for those lost drafts.

That’s all for now…