I've been having enough trouble with Internet Explorer on my home computer that I'm planning to download Mozilla Firefox in the next couple of days (i.e., when I have a baseball off day or other chunk of time to do computer maintenance).  I've started using it at work so I can get familiar with it, and I downloaded updates to my office computer today with no problem (and have heard that the initial installation is user friendly), but what about the add-ons?  There are a zillion of 'em listed on the Mozilla home page.  Rumor has it that adding too many will cause the computer to run slowly, etc.

So....all you Firefox users out there, what are your top recommendations for add-ons?  I'd be much obliged.

And I promise I'll make a real post soon.  Things are just hectic and I'm having trouble getting to it.

In other news, per MLB.com, Coco is having a second surgery soon, this time on his other shoulder, and hopefully will be able to play by Opening Day.  Rumor around the Kansas City blogs is that they won't pick him up for next year.  I do hope he heals up and finds a new home somewhere.

In happier news: We won today!  And six Sox made the All-Star roster!  Way to go, guys!

Just a little while until I go to bed and the sun sets on my vacation for real.  It was nice while it lasted.

Kicking things and punching the wall here.  WHY CAN'T I FUCKING GET IT ABOUT SIMPLE TECHNICAL STUFF?

The problem?  I ran across an animated gif that I'd like to use as a icon.  I went to upload it and the file was too large by 6 Kb.  So...over to Picnik I went to take care of that.  I had to go over there a second time to make it less than 100 x 100 pixels.  Fine, no problem, I can handle that....but after I uploaded the icon I discovered that the animation doesn't work.  Googling for explanations and/or instructions was no help.  What am I doing wrong and how can I fix it?  Can someone who is familiar with animated gif files please explain how to get them to work on here?   :::bangs head against wall:::    Thanks in advance. 

Other stuff: I see the very kind responses to my angst-ridden entry from last night, and I'll be back to respond to them later.  Right now I'm getting away from this computer for awhile, not just because I'm massively frustrated but also because I got up early today because I have a bunch of errands to run, so I'd best get to it, I suppose.

4:30 p.m. ETA: Some errands completed, some to be crammed into tomorrow's schedule, because I unfortunately have developed a migraine.  Although the work stress isn't helping, I'm guessing that my whacked-out middle aged hormones are playing a large role (my recent grouchiness is likely related as well), as I'm ready to START, dammit, and am now on day 40.  :::sigh::: 

Off to lie down for a bit and see if I can nip this in the bud.  I've got a week's worth of dishes sitting in and around the sink.  Must.Do.

I thought folks might be interested in seeing where I live (the town, not my uber-ugly humble abode).  The online edition of my local paper had a couple of nice shots in their photo gallery from the recent snow, but for some reason I am unable to embed the pictures despite using the same HTML code from my "cheat sheet" that I've been using all along.  Now THAT is frustrating, but maybe it's just too early in the day for this techodummy to be attempting anything of the sort.  So...I tinyURLed them instead in case anyone wants to look at them.  The "big buildings," which are only modestly big, are the heart of the downtown business district.  There's lots more to Asheville than those, of course...it's a pretty sprawly city, but this at least gives you some idea of my environs.

http://tinyurl.com/bg92ee

http://tinyurl.com/bt429b

Note that the majesty of the mountains in these photos is different than that of my icon because Asheville is at 2200 feet looking up at 4000-5000 footers, and Mount Mitchell (elevation 6684), where the picture of the endless ridges was taken, is looking down at those ridges. Totally different effect, but it's nice to drive around town and see the mountains as a backdrop nevertheless.

Hope y'all enjoy and have a great day!  :::waves:::
 

From time to time I get e-mail inviting me to check out profiles of folks who I know, or perhaps I should say that mostly these are people who I knew them back in my days as an active musician.  I always see their basic profile (picture and all), including how many "friends" they have, with a note attached that is obviously personal.  For example, my old buddy Susan sent me one of these the other day, and part of her note said that she was adding a lot of her pictures from way back when, including some she took of an old flame of mine who died several years ago.  Fine, fair enough, these are obviously legit, and should I ever join Facebook I'd certainly add these folks.

BUT...today I got an e-mail that said "Sarah (last name) has added you as a friend on Facebook!"  Rather than profile info, I see only links to Facebook URLs.  Yes, this is someone who I used to know VERY well, as we played in a band together for several years.  However, I'm not ON Facebook, so how the hell could she add me?  I'm assuming that this is spam mail.  Am I correct?

Thanks in advance for helpful replies...

I've been busy.  It amazes me how hard it was to get cracking on my to-do list during the off days this week.  I did manage to do a tiny bit every evening.  I got enough sleep during the week (AMAZING!) but was still incredibly tired last night, probably because I mostly buckled down at work.  Thanks to the energy boost from our WIN (yeah!!!) I stayed up late and slept REALLY late this morning, so here I am at 3:00, having just finished "breakfast." Now I get to try to accomplish something, anything, between now and the game.  Tomorrow will be a marathon of things like belated birthday shopping, e-mail replies, and the decluttering I sorely need to begin.

Something to look forward to, other than more wins for us.  I have an order from CafePress on the way, namely this: clothing.cafepress.com/item/hot-coco-hooded-sweatshirt/302573446 plus a matching coffee mug.  Couldn't resist.  And if anyone can tell me how to make that URL link have text like an LJ cut (I'm in Rich Text format at the moment), I'd be much obliged.  I can't figure out how to make it work, and the LJ FAQ section is useless as usual.  Sorry for the technodummyness.  One of these days I'll try again at HTML, much as I hate it, but right now I don't have time.

I did see the multiple taggings by my f-list on that question meme, and I promise to get around to it in the very near future.

Off to my next task...

ETA: Looking through the pictures from last night's game, I was really struck by something that I hadn't noticed before.  It's probably just the playoff scruff, but ESPECIALLY from the side, Jason Bay looks very much like a guy who was a "long-distance occasional friend with benefits" of mine during the first few years after I moved to North Carolina.  They have very similar profiles, and the same sort of deep set light eyes, and the facial expression is pretty close as well...you know, the sort of deadpan expressionless look (not that I don't love JayBay, but that really IS how he comes across, at least to me).  I haven't seen my old buddy Jim in quite a few years, but that realization both startled me and made me chuckle a bit...

Just wanted to throw this question out there: Is anyone else having a problem where other people's replies to their journal comments don't ping their e-mail account of choice?  I'm pretty sure this is the case for me over the last few hours.  I just did a test reply to my own comment in my most recent journal entry, and nothing has shown up in my AOL mail yet.

I don't know if LJ is having issues or if somehow my settings got changed, and I can't figure out exactly what needs to be changed if that's the case.  So...HELP?

In other news, I got my driver's license renewed this morning (my new picture is utterly horrible), after which work went reasonably smoothly. I'm slowly but surely making a dent in the backlog, and things should ease up temporarily next week. Of course, once the two impeding retirements occur (after the 19th), if The Powers That Be don't replace at least one of them, things will get really crazy.

Speaking of crazy, my boss (you know, the one from hell) answered an e-mail from me today with a wink.... ;) ..... at the end of her sentence.  She's even older than me, totally no-nonsense and serious, and I was absolutely baffled when I saw that.  It also made me laugh.

Other than that, I've spent the whole evening fooling around on line, mostly Sox-related stuff.  I'm too tired to do more than that, and am going to bed very soon.  I do think it's time to call Circuit City, who sold me this computer, to see if they can take a look at it and figure out why pages are loading so slowly when I'm on line.  Other things on the computer (pictures, documents and such) are fine. The Internet connection is actually where it's supposed to be...the techie at the ISP said it may have something to do with conflicting software, which I don't pretend to know the first thing about, so I suppose I'll take advantage of my 5-year warranty and see if they can help me.  I shouldn't be getting DSL speed (at best) with a 5 Mb connection.

Ugh, I'm rambling.  Again, if anyone has any ideas about why I'm suddenly not getting e-mails when folks reply to my comments, please let me know.

Just want to know for future reference...how do I "steal" other people's userpics?  I ;earned how to make my own, albeit in rudimentary form (will learn the finer points later), but someone on my f-list suggested "stealing."   I've seen a few journals that are central clearinghouses for such, but I can't find instructions in the LJ FAQ...so am at a loss (once again) until someone explains this to me.  Thanks in advance for bearing with my technical stupidity.

I receive notifications via my AOL e-mail of replies to my LJ comments and entries so I can keep track of stuff.  With the game over, I have time to catch up, so that's what I was just doing.  Amidst the replies were a couple from folks at baseball_abbey, where I'm just barely getting my feet wet and haven't even made an official intro post yet.  As usual, I went with the option to "reply at webpage," and to my horror, it wasn't there anymore.  WTF?  Now, I did read enough posts there over the last several days to have figured out that there was some grumbling about the Sox-heavy bias of the member list, but hey, I thought it had also been made clear by several of said Sox fans that we wanted everyone else to post and that the community was for all who passed muster and wished to be there.  There was even a formal birthday list having the finishing touches put on it -- I know that because I posted a comment just yesterday to tell the mods what my real first name is.  So...WTF?  Is there just a glitch in the page or did something really awful happen that caused the mods (who I didn't even know yet) to bail out?  If someone could enlighten me I'd be much, much obliged.  And if the community really is gone...well, I hate that.  I was really looking forward to getting into it more deeply.  It was so highly recommended by my entire f-list, and that's why I joined.  So...sad face here.

About our dear red-stockinged darlings, more sad face, although I was of course delighted that Manny finally ended his HR drought and Josh pitched well today.  Other than that, I was ready to strangle Oki, and I wish our guys would kindly *do something* when we have the bases loaded.  That said, may we go out and KICK BUTT in TB and New York!  I'll get to see two of the NY games on TV here...plus I get to see the first game vs Minnesota that Monday, the final day of my much-anticipated four-day weekend that I am taking in an effort to retain (or maybe I should say reclaim?) my sanity.  Just found out that my Yankees partisan cousin up in NY will be attending the Sunday night game, so we'll get to compare notes although, as I've mentioned before, she has no idea...(rubbing hands together with evil grin)...guess I'll just have to take careful game notes and then put my actress hat on if and when the subject of that game comes up between us.

On a happier note, I'm proud of myself, y'all.  I just linked a page within a comment over at Piney's journal, with a lot of help from some instructions that nj sent me a few months ago.  And I've got some free time tonight, so with that same set of instructions, I am going to attempt to make my first icon.  While I'm eating dinner I'm going to go through the 600+ Sox-related pics on my computer and try to figure out which one I want to use first.

Off to fix that dinner now.

So why am I thankful, even though my back is extra cranky today?  Because if I hadn't awakened in so much pain that I had to reschedule my 1:00 haircut appointment, I almost certainly would have missed Manny hitting #501.  Seems like sometimes things happen for a reason...

Thank you, Josh, for a well-pitched game.   And congratulations on reaching 1000 Ks.  Special kudos are also in order to Youk for yet another HR.  He's on a tear with those things.  Things went pretty smoothly all around during this game, unlike last night.  And, much to my pleasure, while I was writing the final score on my printout of the season schedule I realized that Sunday's and Monday's games will be on TV here!  So I have something to look forward to...

One thing that I would appreciate at some point in the future would be assistance in doing things with pictures on this journal.  I don't even know how to make a userpic.  Is that the same thing as an icon?  And I see lots of game photos embedded right into people's journal entries.   And macros with captions -- what fun!  I don't know how to do any of that.  I would be so entirely eternally grateful for help with any and all of these things.

Not much more to say at the moment.  I have plenty of ideas for anecdotes and stories that I'd like to share when I have time and am a bit more awake and focused.

Sweet dreams to all!

Well...I can see that I haven't gotten the hang of this thing yet!  I just spent an entire hour writing an entry about my day, about how much I enjoyed the game, and sharing a random memory from 20+ years ago, back when I was young and crazy.  Since I'm very tired right now, I decided to spell check it, just in case.  I suppose I should have looked all the way down the page to see if there was a "return to entry" button, but I didn't.  Instead I hit the back button...and lost the entire thing!  I suppose I can console myself with the thought that the trials and tribulations of my job probably wouldn't have been interesting to anyone but me, nor would a story about the smell of strawberry shampoo triggering a memory about a relationship that wasn't.  And as my entire friends list knows, tonight's game was great!  So with that, as it's past my bedtime, I'm going to wait until another day to try a full-length entry!