coterie

coterie co·te·rie [koh-tuh-ree] noun

1. a group of people who associate closely.
2. an exclusive group; clique.
3. a group of prairie dogs occupying a communal burrow.

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I've seen loads of prairie dog towns, but never heard them called a coterie. I've also been around people who acted like adult life was like it was back in high school, with groups of kids forming cliques.* I went to a small town school, so thank goodness there weren't that many cliques, but there were the outliers, the kids who just didn't fit in. I felt like I was on the cusp of both groups, the "in crowd" and the "outsiders". It didn't scar me for life or anything like that, though and if I had it all to do over again, don't think I would have changed a thing...at least not socially.

*Since I've been online I've joined and participated in quite a few message boards and forums and I've found there are cliques in those, too.   They're usually split along political lines, though.  I'm often on the cusp of both those groups, too...not socially conservative enough to be accepted totally by that side and not nearly liberal enough to be accepted by that one, either.  Just like back in school, I'm not much bothered by being on the cusp of both sides.  I'm content with my political views....mainly because they're the best ones. -grin-

Google Error

Not a 404 page, but the link was bad. Not sure why that was, the explanation didn't make much sense; it was at the top of the results on their own search engine, so....

The broken robot reminded me of the one in MSN Groups.  I used to have all of those animations such as the conveyor belt while the file was uploading (and there were some clever animations made from that one) and the shuttered groups graphic.  I lost them all in a hard drive failure of one of my first computers.

snarky

snarky snark·y [snahr-kee] adjective, snark·i·er, snark·i·est.
Chiefly British Slang
testy or irritable; short.

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This is a word I never used until I started participating in MSN Groups, message boards and forums. Then I saw a LOT of snark...and got some of my own.

phrenology

phrenology phre·nol·o·gy[fri-nol-uh-jee, fre-]

noun

A psychological theory or analytical method based on the belief that certain mental faculties and character traits are indicated by the configurations of the skull.

More about phrenology at Wikipedia.

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Phrenology has always interested me (not quite "fascinated"). Seeing the word as today's Word of the Day reminded me of a friend I once had back when MSN Groups were up-and-running. We shared political views, but couldn't have been more different in religion, she being a Wiccan. We were in a chat room once, just the two of us and were discussing our belief systems and I said I wouldn't belittle how she believed, but there were some tenets to paganism that I would never trust, especially in foretelling the future, things such as palm reading.

Well, that upset her and I had to suffer through indignantly told stories of how her grandmother had read palms and how the palms of people she knew had predicted their future - their love life and life span, etc.   I didn't say anything until she ran out of steam and then remarked that palm reading was to science as phrenology was to psychology.  She was "silent" for a while, nothing being typed and I knew she had opened up another window and was researching the term.  After a minute or so, she exited the chat room and that was the end of our cyber-friendship.

Oh well.  I was getting tired of all that "Blessed Be!" crap, anyway.

Snow Accounting For Stupidity

When I was active in MSN Groups, it was fun for the members of the group to gather in the chat room. It was private, restricted to only members of that group and we used to use them for weekly trivia contests, but would also sometimes set a time to meet at least once a week and catch up on what was going on in each other's lives.

I used to pop into the chat room of a group I belonged to and would find a good online friend in there all alone. He was the asst. mgr. of the group and the mgr. insisted he "open" the chat room on specific times of scheduled chat sessions. I never understood why he let her have that much control over him, but I suppose he was lonely and his online interaction was all he had.

The group had several members who would always show up for the chat and I particularly disliked one woman from Boston who would come in and try to dominate the conversation. She was childish and stupid and would often complain if the conversation was moving too fast - apparently she couldn't type fast enough to reply to every other person and it made her angry. Also, if the topic didn't interest her, she would change the subject if she could and if the topic was of anything close to being of an "adult" nature, especially about sex, she would type letters in and hold the key down, looking something like this:

My friend: Man, that movie I watched was pretty dirty for network TV.
Me: You ever see any X-rated films?
Someone Else: Oh yeah, back in college.
My friend: No.
Someone Else #2 My husband tries to get me to watch his dirty movies all the time.
Me: I saw Deep Throat right after it came out.  Was really funny.
The Woman: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXYYYYYYYYYYYTTTTTTTTTTTTPPPPPPPPPP IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMQQQQQQQ
QRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTJJJJJJJJJJJJJLLLLLLLLKKKKKMMMM

The rest of us would stop chatting, then the woman would say "Stop that! You should be ashamed!"

Good grief.

It was then I would usually exit the chat room, along with some of the others, leaving my poor cyber-friend all alone with the puritan nutjob. I'd pop in again later and if she was gone, I'd hang around. Sometimes she'd suddenly appear on the screen again, prob. hoping to catch us talking about something naughty. I saw her chew out some women who were talking about the problems of finding a bra that fit. "DON'T TALK ABOUT THAT IN FRONT OF THE MEN!!!!!!" she "shouted" in all-caps.

One time, my pal asked me if we'd had any snow. He lived in Kansas, about two hundred miles north of me. I told him not as much as they had received, only a dusting. The woman was in the room and weather wasn't a taboo subject, but she certainly didn't want anyone else talking about THEIR weather.

"We had a smegma of snow." she announced. "Made the streets a little slick." I sat there for a few seconds, rubbed my eyes, wondering if I had really seen what I thought I had seen. She rambled on some more, but I interrupted her.

"A 'smegma'?" I asked. "Yes," she replied. "That's the word we use for 'light dusting' up here in Boston." I could almost hear her saying that in her holier-than-thou, superior manner. I couldn't let it go.

"You sure about that?" I asked. "Yes." she sniffed, probably thinking I was some ignorant Texan fool.

Now, you may or may not know what Smegma is, but if not, follow that link to the Wikipedia article and you'll see what it is....and how much delight I took in telling her what smegma really was. Yup, I'm sure it made the streets slick.

Funny GIFs

Photobucket has been sending me "You should see these!" types of emails lately; I've used the service for a long time, since MSN Groups, but Blogger lets me add photos using Picassa, so I don't use it much anymore except when I want to put an animated graphic (GIF) into a post. (I guess I "use" it every day because that's where the graphics for the month images at the top of the page are hosted)

I followed a link in the email to see this: Animated_GIFs I would link to the slide show, but there are over 400 graphics and even with my fairly fast connection, the animations wouldn't load fast enough until it was cycling through to the next one. There are some funny ones, worth a look!

(Did you know GIF isn't pronounced "gif" but rather as "jif", with a "J"?  So says the creator of them, but there are people arguing that he's wrong.)

What Religion is Your Bra?

This joke came in a weekly newsletter I get and I started to post the text version and while looking for some bra clip art to accompany it (not a very good selection; I thought maybe a Madonna pointed type would be funny to go along with the joke)I found the video.

It reminded me of when this was posted somewhere in an MSN Group - the joke was semi-funny, but the comments under it were even funnier. Several of us made additions to the list and they were better than the original ones. I didn't save the comments (or if I did, that was several computers and failed hard drives ago) but maybe we can get some more contributions.

One of my entries was the Pentecostal bra with two pockets - one for the snake and another for the strychnine.

OK, not all the comments were funny.

I Know Judo & Karate

And quite a few other dangerous words.

You Are Capoeira

You are lively, fun, and open to new experiences. You love to travel and discover new things. You are joyous and prone to celebrate. You are the type of person who likes to work hard and play even harder. In life, you are intuitive and street smart. You understand others well and are able to predict their next moves. And while you can see what others are up to, few know what your plans are. You like to play it coy. In a battle, you try to outsmart your opponent before you get outsmarted first. It's all about trickery and listening to your gut. You like to have a worthy opponent. It's fun to battle if someone comes close to matching you in wits, cunning, and strategy.

What Martial Art Are You?

This won't mean much to anyone but my old MSN Groups friends, but I was familiar with Capoeira because "Topher", the one-time manager of the help group Community Feedback was a devotee of that particular martial art. After he mentioned it in a post, I researched and read about it. After Groups went belly-up, I ran across the word again somewhere and did a combination search for that and Tophers real first name, Christopher, and found several profiles of him.  That's been a couple of computers ago and several years, so I don't remember the particulars.  Other than his penchant for sucking up to "AC" and "KT", he was a pretty good guy.  He never banned me, so that's my criteria for "pretty good". -grin-

Both Sides Now - Joni Mitchell

I saw an article about origami the other day and it reminded me of an old friend from MSN Groups, Brad (in Kentucky).  I've been thinking of him a lot here lately and remembered he once said Joni Mitchell was his favorite musical artist.   So, here's thinking of you, Binky.  R.I.P.

whinge

From the Dictionary.com Word of the Day

whinge [hwinj, winj] verb (used without object), whinged, whing·ing.
British and Australian Informal.
to complain; whine.

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This is a word I picked up from my British friends in MSN Groups. I had never heard it until seeing them use it, but in the context, it was easy to understand the meaning.   It's a great word and I use it now instead of the ubiquitous "You want some cheese to go with that whine?"

The Brits have some great slang words;  oh, I doubt I'll ever start calling the trunk of a car "the boot" or refer to my galoshes as "rubbers" and I much prefer "ass" to "arse", but they do have some good insults - one of my favorites is "wanker". 

"Quit yer whinging, ya wanker."

Rare Error

One of the very few errors I've had here on Blogger. I've had this blog for over five years and I haven't had more than five errors in all that time. Back in MSN Groups, I could get five errors in a day, even that many in an hour. Facebook is better, but they have more glitches than I think I want to tolerate.

Oddly enough, I got it the other day when posting this.

Formerly Favorite Font

Comic Sans used to be my font of choice when I was in MSN Groups.  I used it as the default font in this blog when I started and even wrote a post about it.

As is with nearly all these quizzes, I like to think most of the results really do apply to me. The "people appreciate you best in small doses" is probably true, too. That's OK; I feel that way about most people, myself.

You Are Comic Sans

You are a nothing but a big goofball. You're quite playful and fun! You're widely known for your zany personality and your vivacious attitude. To say that you stand out in a crowd would be a definite understatement. Remember that you are overwhelming at times and that people appreciate you best in small doses.

What Font Are You?

Rare Error

This popped up earlier when I was trying to edit a post; it's very rare to get Blogger errors, one of the first I've had in a long, long time.  Blogger is so much better than MSN Groups, where I quickly learned to copy any post before hitting "send" because sometimes they'd go off into the ozone, never to return.  That's happened only a couple of times here in my blog.

I do get HTML errors in posts, but they have a feature that allows you to ignore it.  It "fixes" any tags not closed for you, though.

I love Blogger, wish I had discovered it earlier. 

Storage: Then and Now

I recently added another external hard drive to my computer system, one with 2TB storage. Of course, it's not two full terrabytes, because of the odd way manufacturers measure a KB as compared to what the actual size of a KB (decimal vs. binary) There's also the file system to consider, which takes away from the expected total, then the recovery partition on my computer hard drive has to be taken into account.

That said, I was sitting here marveling at how much cheaper hard drives and external storage have become, as well as the relatively huge sizes of them. My first computer was advertised as having 13.1 GB of storage and I never really came close to maxing it out before the computer bit the dust. Oh, I had come "close" a few times, but then I went through and deleted duplicate files and many of the animated GIF files I had transferred from disks to upload to my MSN Groups and not deleting them after the upload.

When that first hard drive failed, I lost everything. I didn't have much "real" music saved to my computer, mostly midi files, thousands and thousands of them, plus photos I had taken and had transferred from film to digital as well as the first photos taken w/ my first digital camera. I was upset, to say the least. That's when I started researching external hard drives. I had saved a few photographs to floppy disks, but they were limited in their capacity, even by the standards back then. My next computers all had CD burning capabilities and I saved many files to disk, but they too were limited.

Around that same time I also upgraded my internet connection from dial-up to DSL and I found myself saving more and more things, such as free songs from Amazon, YouTube videos and all sorts of downloadable games. With the increased broadband came storage concerns; I was running out of room for things and it didn't help that I was transferring music from CDs to my computer for my mp3 jukebox.

So, with my last computer, I also bought a 1TB external drive. When the 'puter bit the dust (not "dead", it just needs a new power supply) at least I had saved all my music and digital photographs. This computer has a 1TB hard drive (actually 914GB what with the recovery space and file system) so that meant I had nearly 2TB of storage.

About a month or so ago, I became a little alarmed after seeing that I had used over 3/4 of my external hard drive's space.  I decided I needed to do something.  I d/l a duplicate file finder and let it go to work. I found thousands of duplicate tunes (the main problem was how I had put music into different genre folders as well as dupes via Amazon, downloading free tunes I had forgotten I had already downloaded) I was also copying folders I use in a monthly "work" folder and not replacing the older folders w/ the new ones. (What can I say? I'm an anal retentive pack rat, albeit a disorganized one.)

I managed to find over 35GB of dupes until I became too bleary eyed to check each file to see which duplicates I wanted to delete. 35GB! In a few hours I had deleted nearly three times as much file space as my first computer had total in storage!  I've probably got another 5-10GB of files I can delete.

What's funny is my first computer having just around 3% (if my math is correct) of the storage I have now, but being more concerned now with how many files I am able to keep! Here's a screen shot of my current storage, both computer hard drive and external drives. (Click for larger view)

I'm Thinking

Of this oldie but goody.

This won't mean anything except to those of us who used to frequent the now-defunct MSN Groups. The post titles were in response to a woman making a post in the off-topic board "I'm Thinking of Changing My Nickname". As you can see, *some* of us thought the topic was hilarious and decided to poke a little fun at her. What was even funnier than the responses was her indignation at the rather gentle ribbing.

I don't remember who gorgeous was, but I do remember SPIRITDAVID and his spats with the CF management team, always good for a chuckle.  I also remember RVSnowbird, an older man who lived in an RV and was looking for female companionship.  I remember that last about Snowbird because he had specific criteria, very strict, with weight limits and the woman had to be several years younger than himself.  (I figured he needed someone younger than himself and in better health to take over driving duties and the weight limit?  Maybe his RV had poor springs, who knows?)  Brad, or "Binky" is no longer with us now, he was a great guy.  I don't know what happened to Quinduno, either, but he probably blew a gasket if he kept up with his vendetta against authority.

Happy Groundhog & Garazon Day!

A"bump" since I'm too busy celebrating Groundhog Day to actually put up a new post about it.

 

(have to use a graphic because Blogger won't let me put in those special characters) means "grin" in IM chat or forum posts, but it in this case it also stands for "Garazon", one of my best and long-time online pals. The G for grin was first used by our mutual friend, Brad and I guess Garazon and I picked it up around the same time. It became a "nickname for the nickname" for me with Garazon and that's how I started abbreviating his screen name.

Garazon and I "met" in MSN Groups, but started to become good friends when he made a flashy Halloween page for his group, complete with embedded midi sound file and some other special effects. Making a page was one of my goals when I first got online and I was determined to learn how to do it, so I started asking Garazon all sorts of questions. I'm sure he grew weary of me bothering him, but he should have been flattered if he had only known how hard it was...and still is...for me to ask for assistance. 

I hope we don't ever lose touch, but even if we do, I'll always remember Garazon because of our time in Groups and that he once said Groundhog Day was one of his favorite holidays. I don't remember exactly WHY he said it was, but I thought that was very funny and every year since we met a dozen years ago in Groups, I always think of him on this day.

The 1993 Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day is also one of my favorite flicks and I try to watch it whenever it's on. I link to IMDb often when I post about movies, but sometimes I get so annoyed when reading posts about my favorite movies; the site is full of argumentative and insulting posts.  I can understand contention when discussing politics and religion, but movies?  Good Grief.  It gets extremely nasty when a movie contains plot elements of either of those two subjects and sometimes people try to interject one or the other into the discussion when there's no reason to do so.

Anyway...just heard on the news that the groundhog saw his shadow and there will be six more weeks of bad weather.  That doesn't mean much here in the Texas Panhandle; it was a beautiful, fairly warm day yesterday but this evening is supposed to bring freezing temps and rain and possibly snow. 

No, Thanks

I already have a set.

Couldn't sleep, so I got up to check my reader and noticed a new posting from WikiHow, my subscription to their "How to of the Day" feed. I had to laugh because it looked like they were talking about either obtaining some incredible intestinal fortitude or making something that could only be made on an expensive and advanced lathe or milling machine.

There was another similar post from WikiHow that hit my reader while I was clearing out the rest of the posts - this one was about making Brass Ball cocktails.  The article was blank, as was the original one and I noticed that it had already been edited a dozen times.  That's the trouble with the Wiki sites, namely that anybody can edit them.  "I know that's true, I just read it on Wiki!" "Oh yeah, that's not a good source."  "Well, I know it's true because I just wrote it!"

Back when I was active in MSN Groups, the help group "Community Feedback" had a Wiki listing.  They had a description that went like this: "Community Feedback is dedicated to giving help to MSN Group managers." along with a bunch of other self-congratulatory crapola.  I used to go in and put "dubious" in front of "help" in the sentence. Petty of me, I know (some might say infantile or even passive-aggressive), but I loved to annoy them.  It was cheap entertainment.

Speaking of brass balls, I watched one of my favorite History Channel programs Saturday morning: "Heavy Metal".  The show is about all things military, but my favorites are when they highlight ships, tanks and airplanes. This program was about the B-17, one of the best U.S.bombers of WWII. One segment detailed the heavy losses incurred during the raids on the Schweinfurt ball bearing plants.

After the program was over, it made me think of ball bearings and different situations in my life involving them. One time when I was a driller on a rig I had a bearing out of the drawworks and was about to replace a couple of the small ball bearings when one of the guys who worked for me accidentally kicked it and sent them rolling everywhere.  We were down for quite a while until I could scavenge enough to replace the ones that we couldn't find.  Wasn't my fault, but guess who got the butt-chewing?  I passed it along, of course.

Thinking of the rigs - and ball bearings -  reminded me of a joke about a govt. man sent out to test the intelligence of rig workers.  He started the tests out with a roughneck, giving him three steel balls and told him to do something with them. The govt. man turned his back, but when he turned around again, the roughneck was gone.  He looked around, but couldn't find him.

Getting another three balls from his briefcase, the govt. man went to the roughneck's immediate boss, the driller, gave him the three balls and told him to do something with them.  The driller looked at the balls for a while, scratched his head and then put two balls side-by-side, then balanced one atop the bottom two.  It was a fairly difficult and ingenious feat, so the driller got a good score.

The govt. man looked around for the roughneck, but still couldn't find him so he then gave the three balls to the driller's boss, the tool pusher.  The pusher looked at the balls for just a little while, then stacked one on top of each other, nearly impossible to do...but that was why he was the tool pusher.  He got a great score from the govt. man.

About that time, the roughneck came ambling up.  "Where are those balls?" asked the govt. man. "What balls?" replied the roughneck. "Those three balls I gave you an hour ago!" exclaimed the exasperated govt. man.

"Oh, THOSE three balls." the roughneck sheepishly said. "Well," he went on "I lost one...broke another..."

"But the other one's here in my lunch box!"

New Blogger Feature

Those of you who use Blogger might already know this, but Blogger has a new feature that I've just noticed.  The reason I just noticed is because after I publish a post, it takes me to a page that gives me the option of viewing the post or the blog.  (same thing, really, because viewing the blog will show you the post at the top, while viewing the post just shows the post)

There's also a small box giving hints or announcing a new feature that's just been rolled out. I noticed the other day that Blogger now offers up "stand-alone pages", which I'm thinking means we can put most any feature Blogger offers on a page and then link to it in the side nav-bar.  I'll have to go look, but I believe it says we can have up to 20 of these type pages.

I remember when it was announced that MSN Groups were closing and in a thread in Community Feedback people were discussing the alternatives. I had just discovered Blogger and mentioned that while it had pros and cons, I liked how one could add third-party content and embed videos and use some basic javascript.  One person replied to my post and said that blogs were too "egocentric".   Good grief, as if a person's Group wasn't egocentric? (some more than others, granted)

Anyway, I'm off to take a look at this new feature.  There are probably other new features I've missed.  There are a few I cannot use since I use a custom template, but I don't really care about at least one, having people "rate" my posts.   I don't think my ego could handle the criticism. -bg-

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist \TSYT-guyst; ZYT-guyst\ , noun;

1.[Often capitalized] The spirit of the time; the general intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any period of time.

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I've loved this word since I first saw it used in a sentence and had to go look it up to see what it meant. I actually considered using it for an MSN Group back when I was involved there, but "Zeitgeist" was already taken. (and annoyingly, the group was empty and not being used). After finding that out, I wanted to use some sort of alliteration such as "Zany Zeitgeist" but that was just a bit too cutesy.

I never did create a group using the word, though, because I wanted it to be a discussion group that adhered to the definition, namely current events and the politics of the day. After seeing how busy the successful groups were in that category, I changed my mind. I foresaw the hard thing wasn't just going to be keeping up with the news of the day, but also having to patrol the group, monitoring each and every post to keep it within the MSN Code of Conduct. I predicted it would quickly turn from fun to work - or at least a hassle - and MSN provided enough of that.

Persistent Posting Problems

I've been getting an error msg. when trying to post over this last weekend and earlier today. The Blogger Status page said this:

We're aware of isolated access issues in certain regions within the US. We're investigating this now and will follow-up as soon as we have more information to share

Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

It's now got this additional update:

Update, 12:30 PST: This is now fixed.

Cool, not that I was agonizing over it. MSN Groups taught me patience, along with quite a bit of other stuff, some about HTML and a lot about people.

Blogger has so little downtime, I can't remember ever being more than a little bit perturbed with it. I came close earlier when replying to a post and got the error msg., but what I typed went through. I've almost gotten out of the habit of copying any post before I hit send like we had to in Groups. I participate in a few forums that use the IntenseDebate software and they've been buggy at times, so I was still copying my text just in case.

Nice day here, starting to warm up some. I really need to get out and mow later.

Still, before I send: Ctrl-A, then Ctrl-C.