Received Grandpa's SS Form

I got the social security form that I had requested a while back for my grandfather. I don't think that it's anything new, other than his signature and handwriting. It does, however, give a more solid source to things I already obtained from other sources. For example, his birth date, parents' names, and place of birth as he told them himself, as opposed to from my dad's (his son's) birth certificate.

Still waiting on his death certificate however.

Photo blogging: No Checks Accepted

ChecksAccepted.jpg
Originally uploaded by Sarolite.

We love our mechanic, he's been good to us and our cars. But his wall is confusing. Left to right, it reads: "We welcome your check," "Your check is welcome," and then "No checks accepted." Good thing we're not the check-writing type!

That crazy weather! (And lizards, and stores!)

It rained today. Also known as free car wash day. I'm sure glad I bought new windshield wipers for the Explorer this month!

I went to PetCo to get food for the lizards. I got lost trying to go there last week, even though I've gone there once before. However, this time I asked the internet how to get there. I got the food, and also bought them a new house. I've been trying to get a good setup in their tank for a while. I want them to have seperate hiding places, because sometimes one of them goes in the house and the other one stays outside all day. You're technically supposed to have one more hide than you have lizards, but there wasn't room for two medium sized hides and I didn't think they'd even fit in the small sized ones. Today they had a new type I hadn't seen before. It's kind of like the magnetic two-part one, except without the outside part and for half the price. It looks like this (click will take you to PetCo product information page):



I scraped away some sand from beneath it because it has a floor and the old house didn't. Well, one of the lizards got so distracted digging around the mound of sand that it didn't take much notice of the house. The other one looked at the house confused for a while

Finally, I picked up the more docile one and put him down with his head just outside one of the three doors. He got the hint and looked inside. He went in up to his hind legs then backed out and kept digging.

I picked up the other one and put her outside another door. She went in, walked straight through, out the other door, and back around to the one she started at. When he saw that the other lizard made a big circle, that got the other one's interest. While they were exploring the house, I was also putting food into the dish, so they didn't poke around for too long before they decided to eat.

I put a VHS tape on the other side of the glass so they feel a little more secure in there for now, but I'll probably remove it when they're more comfortable. I'm also going to see if I have another hide in my lizard tank cleaning kit (a medium kritter keeper I put them in when I clean the tank, it stores lizard supplies when not cleaning) that will fit in the tank now. There may actually be room for a second one of these against the long side of the glass, then we'd be color coordinated (I've never seen this particular color, I even looked for a coordinating small hide while I was at the store today)! I wouldn't want to put another one of the same on the opposite short side because that's the food and water side. You don't want the food and water on top of the heater.

As I'm writing this, they've now discovered that they can climb on top of the house. I may need to start putting the lid on, because on their hind legs they may now reach the top of the tank. (They have a tendancy to do that, get up on their hind legs and make like they're going to climb up the walls. In fact, one of them's doing it now, but from the bottom level and not standing on the furniture. They'll learn eventually, I'd imagine.)

Oh, and today on the way back from PetCo I discovered Smart and Final. Go me! I went there and got some stuff instead of going to the grocery store on the way home. =)

Photo blogging: Elevator

Elevator.jpg
Originally uploaded by Sarolite.

As seen on an elevator in a parking structure in Burbank.

Shall we go right, or right?

Windows: Make recovery CD

WindozeCD.jpg
Originally uploaded by Sarolite.

This may be hard to read, it's a cell phone picture of a laptop screen. Not mine, but my aunt and uncle's new laptop that I was setting up for them (you know, downloading open source software in Spanish, etc). The powers that be (such as Microsoft and/or Compaq) are saving themselves a couple of pennies these days by not including CDs for new computers. The OS is hidden somewhere in some logical partition that supposedly won't go bad. You know, in theory. But they do recommend that you make a CD just in case. The text of the applet they pop up to do it, for those who don't have super-human eyesight: Number of DVD(DL)s required: 1 Number of DVDs required: 2 Number of CDs required: 12
Of course, all responsible Windows users who want to have a recovery disc should have dual-layer dvd burning capabilities. Can you imagine restoring Windows XP from 12 CDs?

Photo blogging: Draco

Draco.jpg
Originally uploaded by Sarolite.

I have a series of pictures that I'm going to post here over the next several days. Things that have accumulated on my cell phone.

This one is my late kitty Draco (July 2002-~February 2005.). He was very smart, very socialized to humans. I don't think he ever really interacted positively with other animals; he thought he was human. He'd wait for me outside the bathroom door, meet me at the door when I got home even when I worked nights (and got home about 4am), and at least once stole the ham right out of my sandwich while I was eating it. Sometimes, when I got out of bed, he'd go lay down on his back with his head on my pillow! Too cute. =) This picture was taken by me with my husband's phone (long before we got married, of course) and then sent to my phone.

Happy Birthday Angel

Dear Angel, I'm writing this on your first birthday. As I mentioned on an earlier blog post, that perhaps one day you'll read along with this, I have only seen you three times since you were born, the last time being April of 2006. I was invited second-hand (your Grandma Martha told Irma to tell me) to celebrate your birthday at Chuck E Cheese. However, I felt rather un-compelled to go eat food that makes me sick for the privilege of seeing you. (There's nothing wrong with Chuck E Cheese, of course. I used to love going with your Grandma Martha and your mom and your aunt and uncle when everyone was younger. I just can't eat or drink milk products.) It is very clear to me that your mom and dad don't really care to have our family get to know you, and I really felt deep down that it was hypocritical of them to basically say "you can drop by our private celebration if you buy something." It wasn't really a birthday party... in fact, I was told that each person/couple could get their own table and do their own thing basically. I could not bring myself to attend. I'm sorry. I had to do what felt right to me. I feel okay about not getting you something for your birthday because I spent two weeks cross stitching for you before Christmas. Hopefully your mom and dad have the footprints that I stitched for you somewhere in your room... well, I don't even know exactly where you're living now, things are complicated right now. Maybe I'll stitch you something else down the line. I'm still sad... I don't feel guilty... although I feel twinges of it, like there's a part of me that thinks that I should feel guilty for our non-relationship. But it's not my fault. Believe me when I say that I would do whatever was in my power if I thought I could change the situation. Believe me when I say that I've shed almost as many tears for you as for your sister Lexie in this past year. I love you. -Patti

Second post in my series of "constructive criticism" of Linux, titled "More people would switch to Linux if..."

To review, the reasons posted in this post were:

    1.  Pre-install a package manager by default. (This is for noob-friendliness.)
    2.  Get behind communities building "killer apps." (The "why should I switch, what can Linux do that Windows can't" factor.)
    3.  Get behind communities building software replacements. (The "hey, this isn't so different after all" factor.)
    4.  Get software replacements into the hands of Windows users. (On their Windows computers, no less. This is the "hey, this is exactly the same" factor of Gaim, OpenOffice, etc.)
    5.  Do things right. (Accessibility shouldn't break your programs. Your programs shouldn't override OS settings such as sound.)

Now, on to new stuff!

    6.  One marketing person per every 100 technical people. This is a very conservative number if you were a company, but does the Linux community have even that? If so, they're not doing too good a job! General public awareness is just not there.
    7.  Publicize anti-DRM information. Honestly, reading about DRM stuff in Vista is one of the main reasons why I'm not all too interested in test-driving it. If they knew how Windows is helping content owners take over the world, I believe that most people would be very unhappy with the concept and take more interest in Linux. Assuming you've completed number 6, that is.
    8.  Attract commercial software developers, aka "get the gamers." I'm all for free and open software, really I am. If you add up how much I would have spent on commercial photo editing, office, and genealogy software, you'll see why (which is not news to Linux users, of course). However, to gain market share in this industry, you have to get the gamers. To get the gamers, you have to get the games. Blockbuster games come from big companies, not small communities with limited resources spread all over the world. (Muds come from those communities!)
Now, which will come first, the chicken or the egg? Will the gamers switch before there are games, or will the companies make games before there's a Linux-using audience pounding on their doors?
    9.  Standardize software installation and increase compatibility. What happens when you have open source software that is being used by people in multiple distributions? You create packages for each one. What happens if your distribution isn't one that has a package made for it? You download the source and compile it.
What happens if your software is not open source (see above)? You have to either make packages for every distro your users might possibly use, or you have to exclude people. I bought a commercial game for Linux not long ago, and it wouldn't run on my computer because I'm running 64 bit Ubuntu. That sort of thing needs to be resolved before you can go after the gamers.
    10.  Improve Windows emulation. This is also in line with "get the gamers." I recall when I was 13-14 (10 years ago) working on the NeXT operating system (see, I'm a little bit oldskool!), and in fact I participated in a NeXT Users Group. I'm not sure if it was virtualization or emulation, but they had a really nifty Windows widget for running Windows stuff. 10 years later, I'm amazed at how much effort this takes to set up on a modern Linux system.
Again, as with point number 1 about package managers, I acknowledge that it's not hard for people who have been using Linux for a while, but that's the problem. If it's hard for me, the diet coke of nerdyness (a la Dr. Evil), it's going to be hard for the people who are not using Linux because it doesn't run their Windows programs. Maybe if this worked out of the box as well...

Imagine this- I pop a Windows CD into my cd drive, such as a computer game with simulated people that shall go nameless. ;) The computer recognizes that there's an autorun that points to an exe. It asks me, do you want to auto-run this exe? Yes, I say, run it. The computer then opens a virtual machine and displays it as a new desktop on my taskbar, with a big arrow pointing to it saying your program is ready here. Score! No more longings for Windows now!

That's all for now, I'll be back when I have another 5 or so!

P.S. I think that these things need to be done pretty soon to get a big jump on Windows. There's a window of opportunity coming up with Vista's release, because of several things: necessity of hardware upgrades, cost of hardware/OS/software upgrades, and Vista DRM. Once people swallow the cost, have the "Vista compatible" hardware, and live within DRM rules (not thinking that they'll get more stringent with time), they'll be more resistant to change than in the window of time when they're making the change from XP to Vista.  

Medical update

Yesterday's doctor's appointment, I talked to the doctor about my back pain, food issues (as in, I'm allergic to food, not just milk products lately), and needing a refill for my thyroid medication but possibly needing to up the dosage (as per my last doctor). I left with two prescriptions (thyroid medicine and one for my stomach), a bit less blood, and an appointment to review bloodwork next Monday. The nurse took my blood in the office and they drive it in to Quest Diagnostics instead of sending all the patients there. Pretty cool, in my opinion. Overall, very positive experience. I like the new doctor, he's sharp, well versed, and honest. The nurse and assistants were very pleasant, upbeat (of course, I was the second appointment of the day so they weren't tired yet!), and professional. It came up in conversation with the nurse that she'd been working there for 20+ years, which I found rather reassuring. Can't have a private practice for 20+ years if your patients don't like you! Did I mention I'm driving to Burbank for the priviledge of having a primary care doctor who got his MD in the USA? Worth the 20 minute drive? Yes.

School update

I’m officially enrolled in a Spanish for Spanish Speakers class. I took a Spanish class at Cal State 10 years ago, so the credits won’t count toward graduation, but this is a skill that I’ve been lacking. It’s more appropriate for me than the other class I took, which was a general Spanish class. Spanish for Spanish Speakers, on the other hand, focuses on grammar, spelling, and presumably more advanced vocabulary.

My class and parking permit are already paid. Next week, I’m going to start the financial aid process for next fall, take proficiency exams in math and/or English (although I took English 101 and 102 already at CSULA, so they should give me an okay for higher English classes already), pick up the parking sticker, and hopefully talk to a counselor about graduation requirements and what’s covered by my transfer credits.

By the time I’m done with this semester’s “for fun” Spanish class, I should be ready (counseling, financial aid, etc) for a normal course load with classes that’ll actually help me graduate. Based on what I can see in the catalog, things look good. =)

Charles wants to go to school now too, even though he’d rather do a bunch of tech classes than do everything and get a degree. =P

See more progress on: finish my degree

Happy Birthday Alexis

Today would have been Lexie's second birthday. (My sister Martha's granddaughter who died of SIDS in 2005.) We went to the cemetery today, my other sister (Irma) and me. Dad's not a fan of cemeteries, mom decided to lunch with her friends instead, Martha was at work, and the kids aren't speaking to us. Ah well, probably better that way. We took her some flowers and birthday balloons. This year we didn't sing "Happy Birthday" though. I cleaned up her stone with some water and a washcloth, arranged the flowers, and arranged some other things that were still there from Christmas. They're really developing that area now, there are several small statues in the grotto area that weren't there before, the stone arrangement in front of the grotto now has a working fountain arrangement. It's lovely really, just a faint trickling noise as water flows from within three of the stones. On the way back to the car, I looked around at the new arrivals as I usually do. I saw a few stones that were completely covered in mud. It made me sad, so I stopped and cleaned them before we went home. That made me feel better. I think there's one I missed a few rows away, but I only caught a glimpse as I was walking to the car and I was out of water in my water bottles already (I brought a spray bottle and a squirt bottle, worked very well). I didn't cry this year, not at the cemetery anyway (I cried in the car on the way to pick Irma up at her house). Just a lot of reflection. I pictured her at two years old, having a birthday party... What made me more sad than that is the fact that it reminded me of Angel. I literally have seen him three times: when we went to visit the week after he was born in January of 2006, my uncle's anniversary in March, and my dad's birthday in April. He's going to be a year old later this month, and Cyndi doesn't want anyone from our family to see him. She even covered him up and ran off when she bumped into Irma's husband in the alley not long ago. I know that she knows it hurts us... *sigh* Cyndi and Martha dropped Angel off at my parents' house a few weeks ago, supposedly to let my mom and dad spend time with him. It was really so they could go to the gym to get in the jacuzzi. Well, my parents didn't mind keeping an eye on him, but they had to call Martha's cell phone and tell them to come back because he didn't recognize them anymore and wouldn't stop crying. I don't know what to do, so I just let it go. I can't force the issue, nor do I really want to. I'll just keep visiting Lexie, they can't keep her from us... Hopefully Angel takes some interest in our family when he's old enough to know better, but it seems unlikely at this time.

Wouldn't you know it?

We've had television for about 24 hours and I've already lost the remote!

A new way to get rich quick

I found this amusing: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0111072wynn1.html

Steve Wynn purchased a Picasso painting for $48.4million, accidentally poked a hole in it, and is trying to get $54million from his insurance company. Plus he still gets to keep the painting... which he can probably still sell for at least $48.4million...

Now, to find a way to capitalize on this plan without having $48.4million in initial capital... (Something that appreciates rather than depreciating like cars. What would an insurance company pay 111.5% of the purchase price for that I can afford that would still be usable after the damages? Hmmm.)     

Made a checklist for microfilm request

I've made a spreadsheet of film/fiche that I want to request to be sent to a local Family History Center for viewing and hopefully printing. The spreadsheet has the date, names, and batch numbers. It's sorted by batch number and then date for easy searching when I get the film.

I haven't been to the FHC yet, but I wanted to have some idea what I want to request when I get there!

At this point, what I'm looking for is:

Marriages from Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Church in Guadalajara, Jalisco- Batch M607022. 9 records.
My paternal great-great-grandparents' wedding, as well as people I presume to be three of his siblings and one of hers (and their spouses of course). The only other people with familiar surnames that I found in that batch are the surname of one of the people one of the proposed siblings married. That makes these four people (and four spouses by extension) the siblings-in-law of my great-great-grandmother's sister. I'm going to print them out while I'm there for my "for future research" file to search more extended family in the future. I'm all for growing collateral lines and spreading my tree outward as well as upward (or backward, as you may look at it).

Christenings from San Pedro Tlaquepaque Church in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco- Batch C603265. 6 records.
Christening of my paternal great-grandmother (child of the couple above), as well as three siblings christened within 5 years (christening records have parents on them, so this is as confirmed as it can be before I get to the FHC). Also one other person with their surname, and another with their mother's maiden name (possibly cousins).

Christenings from San Franciscio, Tamazula De Gordiano, in Jalisco- Batch C023470. 4 records.
Three Tejeda men had children within two years of each other christened at the same church, one of those children being my great-grandfather. Two of the fathers I've got records for showing them as having the same parents, so I've got two of my great-grandfather's cousins for sure. The fourth child has the same church, surname, and very close in date so that's another "file for future research" record.

Christenings from Tamazula De Gordiano, in Jalisco- Batch C603759. 6 records.
Presumably a compilation of different churches from this town? This has the same four records above, but I'm going to look them up in both because one lists one surname and the other lists two surnames. There may be other differences. Additionally, this file also has two other people with the same surname, as the second surname (mother's maiden name). I think it quite likely that this could be children of the sisters of the group of brothers above.

I'll try to get to the FHC next week and order the film. (I also have to go to the school for a parking pass and assessment test, but I haven't been feeling well the past few days. Hopefully I can get both of these things done next week.)

Watching television instead of reading it!

We signed up for a "broadcast basic" package for $12/month that'll get us the channels that in some parts of the county you get with rabbit ears. (2-13, plus some foreign language channels, Discovery, National Geographic, and CNN.) The guy's coming out tomorrow between 10am and noon, and the building's pre-wired, so there'll be plenty of time for me to watch my 1pm soap opera! I've been reading it every day for many months now, this will be nice. Charles and I discussed the fact that we rent a lot of movies... in fact, sometimes more than once in a week. It's entirely possible that watching the better shows and movie selection on the "standard cable" package (with 36 additional channels, including History, HGTV, USA, Comedy Central, A&E, and TV Land) might in fact be cheaper for us than continuing our movie rental binge. We'll have to see if getting the broadcast basic slows down our rental intake. It's one of those delicate balances, you know. If we still rent a lot of movies, that means we really like feature movies from the video store even with tv, but if it does slow us down a lot that means we don't need standard cable and will be content with broadcast basic. "We should upgrade to basic cable" is somewhere in between. See how complicated life is? =)

Vampire.gif

Vampire.gif
Originally uploaded by Sarolite.

This amuses me. =)

Things I'd like to invent

I'd like to see an applet for my Palm PDA that allows me to backup to my SD card. My Zire 31 has 14MB onboard, and I have a 1GB SD card that's got 883.5MB free after music and applications. My PDA recently (while I was at my parents' for the weekend for our trip to Sea World) reset itself and I wouldn't be able to get my information back on it until I got home. (I lost some anyway though.) Wouldn't it be nifty if I could back up my contacts/calendar/etc to my card? Edit: My husband's Sony Clie can do this. It's one of the things I doubt would work if I beamed it to my Zire. It needs to be a palm applet, not a Clie utility.

2007

Looking back on what I said at the end of 2005:

• I said we'd have a couch by the end of 2006, and we cut it close! We got our couches on Christmas Eve.
• I was planning to go back to school, but it didn't work out. A definite will-do for 2007, however.
• I wanted to get my health taken care of more. I was working on this until we lost our benefits, and am now working on that again.
• Charles's OSER project I predicted would take off in 2006. We got more buy-in and name recognition through some public speaking engagements, but progress on the project itself has slowed.
• I predicted we'd pay off our Capital One card. We did, then maxed it out and paid it off again a few times, as our financial situation changed. We're doing well at managing our credit, in my opinion.
• I planned to fix up the Explorer. We did finally fix the power windows, because it got broken into and we figured we might as well replace the window motors at the same time as the glass. We didn't get an audio upgrade, however.

In 2006:

• January
• My niece's second baby, Angel, was born.
• Henoc, my co-worker of many years, got married.
• We went to the Queen Mary.
• February
• I got in a car accident in the Explorer.
• We went to SCALE, where my husband spoke and we manned a booth for his OSER project.
• I started getting into genealogical information I didn't get from my relatives.
• March
• I went to the National Aquatic Conference and level 1 of the National Aquatic Management School. I met some really awesome people there, from New York state, Philadelphia PA, and Albuquerque NM.
• My uncle Jorge (my dad's brother) and his wife Lupe celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
• April
• Our Explorer got broken into at the parking lot of my work. Grrr. They stole my swim/carry-on bag that Charles got me for Valentine's day of 2005, clearly thinking it was a purse.
• We went on a FamilyLife marriage retreat in Valencia, which was awesome.
• May
• I was making the long drive from Oxnard to Loma Linda to teach with my friend Jenny again.
• I started scanning my mom's pictures. I still have many more to go!
• We went to Castaic Lake for Memorial Day.
• I got my new laptop.
• June
• I had my birthday in June. =)
• Busy, busy, busy at work. I was running the 50m x 25y x 7-14ft pool at VAC, with a crew of 17, the other manager got the rest of the guards and all the shallow water.
• July
• Much of the same.
• August
• My work hosted the girl's Junior Olympics.
• I quit my job.
• September
• We moved to North Hollywood.
• October
• We got new furniture and joined the YMCA. (Unrelated, I'm just saving space!)
• November
• My parents, sisters, and myself went to Sea World. Following that, Charles and I went a couple of times.
• Thanksgiving, of course. (Which at my parents' house was canceled two days before and then un-canceled at 11am that day.)
• December
• My sister had surgery in San Diego, where we spent a week living at the hospital.
• We got our insurance cards.
• My godparents came to visit, I hadn't seen them since March of 2005.
• Christmas, again canceled and then un-canceled at my parents'. At Charles's parents, Christmas as usual!

Goals/predictions (not resolutions, goals are better) for 2007:

• Charles and I will both take some college courses, but neither of us go full time (or even half-time).
• I will continue to work on my health.
• We will finish paying my parents, and probably pay the car off when we have enough saved to write them a check.
• Charles will probably become "full time" or a "project hire" at Disney.
• We will finally build our media server.
• I may one day finish scanning mom's pictures...
• I will attempt to acquire evidence for all of the dates and relationships already in my genealogical database while continuing to add more.
• I plan to take a trip to Minnesota in May for a good friend's college graduation.
• I will try to find a good (but not too-expensive) cooking class some time in 2007, so I can make more foods at home. =)

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Happy new year!