lisaviolet's diary

Saturday, September 19, 2015

craftstuff
11:34 AM - 09/19/2015

The topic: My decals
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Unfortunately, I don't have the right vinyl for the car. The vinyl I have is the removable kind, for indoor use. So, I found a cheap seller on eBay that had free fast shipping for Oracal 651 (not 631). My vinyl should be here today.

But none of the vinyl available flopped my mop for use as Tink's wings. The wings need to be super special. The rest of her looks okay, but I wanted her wings to be shiny and iridescent, like real bug wings. So, I spent a while on the TouchPad the other night looking for something that would fit the bill. I think I found something.

Tinkerbell's wings..... I think this will look pretty awesome. Wouldn't you agree?

And this is supposed to be here today, too! Woohoo!

Me and my adorable little netbook are ready!

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catstuff
11:11 AM - 09/19/2015

The topic: Let’s talk about Charlie for a minute
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Last night, I saw some blood on him. I checked it out and between his left back leg and side, it was a nasty mess. I was able to straighten his leg out to see what was going on and it looked like the text book burst abscess. Great. He was cleaning it a lot and it was late, so I just figured to take a wait and see position.

Well, this morning it was a lot cleaner and a lot bigger. That may have been because his leg was stretched out, pulling the wound apart. I had Brian hold him down while I put some Bacitracin on it (I bought a tube at Costco a while back, less that five dollars, a lot less $$$ than at the vet's office). Then, to help him relax I put a quarter of a .25 Xanax pill into a piece of tuna for him to eat (this Xanax is Mario's prescription, I think I dumped Mario's and Charlie's into the same bottle). I thought if we had to take him to the vet, a little less stress might make him easier to work with.

I checked the medicines in the kitchen cupboard and found some liquid Orbax that was prescribed for Marco back in June. It doesn't expire until 2016 and on the side of the box - "is indicated for the treatment of skin infections (wounds and abscesses) in cats".

Charlie has gotten his first dose of this with no problem. So, hopefully we won't have to rush to the vet's this weekend. He is eating okay and he purrs for me. I was a little concerned how much grooming he was doing at the site of the wound, but watching him more closely, he was cleaning around it. Just a short while ago, I watched him cleaning a back paw. And I have seen him sleeping.

I did a little finger stroking of him, searching for scabs or other wounds. I did find a little scab on his neck. I don't know who he fought with or when. I didn't hear anything and there was no fur strewn over the yard (which usually occurs at the site of a fight). So, I have no idea when this happened.

But I'm hoping we've got the Charlie thing under control.

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geekstuff
10:37 AM - 09/19/2015

The topic: So, it’s Saturday morning
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And I'm online using my little HP Netbook that I got back in 2011. Yesterday, I was wondering if this was any faster than the Dell laptop I got back in 2004 or 2005, so I right clicked on the computer icon on the desktop for each one and wrote down the specs.

The laptop is 1.86 GHz, the netbook is 1.66 GHz, so the laptop processes information more quickly. But the difference is negligible, so that's not a deciding factor. The harddrive (where all the programs and information go, all of those photos, all of the games, all of the things that you absolutely need - or don't - to make life easier when computing) on the laptop is 70GB. On the netbook, it's three times more. 216GB. Netbook wins this round.

Next is RAM. RAM is Random Access Memory and the more of this the better. Everything that runs on your computer uses RAM. I know in some of our older computers that I needed to install more RAM when the virus software was upgraded. The existing RAM that came with the computer wasn't even enough to install the software! And the less RAM you have, the slower things will go. The laptop has 512Mb of RAM. The netbook takes round three with four times as much RAM. 2GB.

So, last night I cleaned off the harddrive on the netbook, getting rid of the Angry Birds games, the QuickBooks software, some pre-installed bloatware, quite a few things that really aren't needed. I uninstalled Chrome (I absolutely hate that they have taken it upon themselves to prevent me from running programs that might be a danger, like the webcams and the weather stuff, excuse me, if I blow up my computer, that's on me, I don't need a net nanny), installed Firefox, updated the virus software (taking the license from the laptop and setting that up on the netbook), used ccleaner to clean up the harddrive, ran the ccleaner registry fixer, got the Silhouette software upgraded to the latest version, installed the Make the Cut software I got a few weeks ago, and updated the eCal software (these three programs are for the cutter).

I looked up how to save my Silhouette library and with the V3 of Designer Studio that was a snap.I didn't realize, though, that all of the work I'd done on the Disney decals last week were saved to a different file on the laptop, so I had to start it up again this morning to transfer those files to the netbook. And I was thrilled when they opened right up when I checked them out.

So far, it appears that this may have been a great idea. The keyboard on the netbook is more friendly, the system is WAY more responsive than on the laptop (waiting, waiting, waiting on the laptop and not even sure if the stuff was loading) is going to help loosen the stress load. Even shutting it down was a chore. It would freeze up when I was working on cutlines and it was very frustrating at times. When it worked, it was good, but it wasn't consistent.

I can use the netbook anywhere, so this is a win-win situation. Yay!

(Allyson, if you were reluctant to try running your cutting software on your netbook, I say go for it!)

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