amberica | Recent Entries

I don't remember where I first saw these links, but I wanted to share them because I keep them bookmarked and they are kind of cool.

This one is FlyLady's Crisis Cleaning 101. It's super awesome if you want to get the house cleaned FAST - like for unexpected company or something. It reminds me a lot of what we always called "Blitzing" the house in my family. I don't know why we use that term, but I've already taught it to Jon! "Let's blitz the house before we go out shopping this morning!" Yeah!

And this one is just a neat daily routine for keeping the house clean. I actually don't think it's that great of an article, but it's kind of a neat idea, and can be tailored to however you want to do it. I try to do a lot of these types of things just whenever I think of it while I'm moving around the house. It's fun.

Oh wow. I'm so pleased right now. I just got the song Sister Golden Hair in my head (if you don't know this song, you are missing out big time. It's by the 70s band America. They are awesome. Go listen to it), and I decided to see if I could find the chords for it and IT IS SO EASY AND IT SOUNDS SO GOOD. I feel so good right now. I am so eternally grateful that Jon gave me this guitar for my birthday.

And now I go to transpose the same chords over to ukulele. ^_^

Current Mood: accomplished

I got an email from Judy at The Knitter to tell me that the Peacock Feathers shawl pattern is finally in stock! I sent my PayPal payment right away and hope to get it by next week!

The Girl Scout Cookies arrived today! I had ordered 3 boxes - Thin Mints, Samoas, and Tagalongs. Mmmmm.

More couch legs arrived in the mail today from Slumberland. More WRONG couch legs. I swear. I think I should send the whole couch back for a replacement. Seems like it would be easier than trying to describe to the "Service" people on the phone what I need.

I have some fish in the oven right now so I'll be making another entry a little later about a funny incident at work today.

Wow, I was so busy all weekend I didn't get a chance to keep track of how awesome it was, but I want to do it now so that I don't forget.

( My weekend )

While today has been pretty quiet at work, I've had 2 or 3 phone calls, and maybe 2 or 3 people stop into my office with questions & stuff... this is FAR more than I'm used to. Usually my phone never rings, and I get maybe 3 visits a week from people who need something from me.

What really is bothering me is that each time someone stopped in today, even if it was just dropping off an expense report and having a little smalltalk, I had a mini panic attack EVERY SINGLE TIME. Like just 10 minutes ago, someone came in and was asking about why the department P-card wasn't working when they tried to make a purchase with it yesterday. I didn't know why. I'd made a purchase with it this afternoon with no problem, so I know it wasn't over limit. But my arms and legs are just tingling, I can feel my heart thumping and I have a ringing in my ears and kind of a tunnel-vision thing going on. This has happened every single time I got a visit or a phone call today.

I wonder why.

I just realized I never shared what I did on V-Day! Probably because it was pretty mundane. But just for kicks and giggles I'll do a quick recap here.

( Read more... )

I just read this really interesting article and I wanted to put it here 1) so I don't forget about it, and 2) so I can share it with my friends and readers!

The Married Male Mind

I have started seeing Johari windows floating around the blogosphere in the last couple weeks, so I thought I'd try it out for myself. They've been around for quite a while, but I'd never heard of them until a week or two ago.

It's an interesting concept - you are presented with a grid of adjectives, and you select 5 or 6 of them that you think best describe you. Then other people select 5 or 6 words from the same grid that THEY think best describe you. Eventually you find out what you and your friends agree on about your characteristics, what others think describes you even if you don't think it does, and what you think about yourself that doesn't occur to anyone else.

The Johari window uses more positive adjectives, and the Nohari window uses the antonyms of those words - it's a darker version, and I found it more difficult. I wanted to select more than just 5 or 6 words, so I had to really think hard and try to be as objective and realistic as possible.

Anyway, here we go - who wants to Johari me? :)

My Johari

My Nohari

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find; Use what's actually next to you.

The sentence:
"Once the data source is defined, adding it to the page is a simple matter of dragging the source from the catalog to the page."

The book I found it in:
Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2003 Solutions
by Scot P. Hillier

Wow. That was stupid.

Me: sometimes i like to talk like caveman

Me: caveman talk fun

Bill says: hahaha it's okay, I still skip around my house late at night somedays

Me: heehee

Bill: Sometimes I think it's strange to be happy since I know so many screwups who drink their lives away. But then I shrug and continue on skipping. ;)

Please participate. I can't think for myself.

~~What should I knit next?~~

Thank you to all who participated. The survey is now closed.

Lest anyone think I am being a whiner, I'm going to wax on a bit more about the stupid password situation.

I just counted. I have AT LEAST 23 seperate accounts (this is just for work, only) that are required to each have a DIFFERENT password. Think about this. I am expected to keep track of 23 different "Strong Passwords" without writing them down.

As I mentioned last time, most of these passwords require at least 8 digits, captial and lower case letters, numbers, special characters, no characters that are next to each other on the keyboard (like asdf) OR consecutive (like abc or 123), no repeating characters, no 1337 (leet speak) abbreviations, no actual WORDS or parts of words, and the passwords must begin and end with a letter.

HOWEVER!

Some of these passwords can ONLY be alpha-numeric, and do not allow "special characters", but still need to be "strong." And others yet can ONLY be numeric! And some can only be 4-6 characters, although most still have to be a minimum of 8 characters.

Let me repeat - I have AT LEAST 23 accounts to keep track of with all this. Possibly more that I've forgotten about. Tell me this is realistic. Just try. You're wrong.

According to the "Which Big Lebowski character are you?" quiz:

Why don't you check it out? Or we cut off your Johnson!

Current Mood: pleased

All our passwords expire every 90 days. This is a problem for several reasons.

Coming up with a "strong password" is HARD!

A strong password must have at least 1 capital letter, at least 1 lower case, at least 1 number, and at least 1 "special character" - plus they must be at least 8 characters long and must begin and end with a letter. And you may not have any dictionary words in them (English, technical, or other language), or any part or your name.

All accounts must have different passwords

I have a LOT of accounts just for work alone!

We are not allowed to write down our passwords anywhere, nor may we keep them in a file on our computers.

A STRONG PASSWORD MUST BE IMPOSSIBLE TO REMEMBER, MUST NOT BE WRITTEN DOWN, AND MUST BE CHANGED EVERY 3 MONTHS IN CASE YOU START REMEMBERING IT.

It's so weird. It sounds like a Dilbert cartoon, but it's real. Actually, it IS a Dilbert Cartoon. To wit:

Image hosting by Photobucket

Current Mood: annoyed

I have spent the last month or so just feeling cranky and out of place in my job, like I should be somewhere else, doing something completely different. I had been looking forward to my monthly 1-1 meeting with my boss so I could talk to him about this.

Then, here comes the meeting (today) and all I can do is gurgle and squee about how excited I am about the new office, how much I love html, and how happy I am in my position! ACK!! What the heck turned me into Pollyanna for chrissake?!? Gah. But now I actually do feel better. It's so weird. I think putting on a good attitude can actually make you FEEL better. Well, I know that's true. There have been brain scan studies done that prove just smiling can trigger the "happy" centers in your brain. It's like feeling happiness creating a smile on your face, only in reverse! And it works! I guess the same goes for speaking and acting in an optimistic and happy manner. Really. Since my surly dark days as a surly dark teenager, I have learned to act more happy and optimistic, and I really do FEEL more happy and optimistic! It's so great! Like, free magic happiness and satisfaction with life! Even forcing myself to see the bright side of things, say stuff like, "At least it wasn't XYZ - could be worse!" - has really helped me develop a more positive general attitude towards life.

Anyway, I did tell my boss that I hate hate HATE Windows SharePoint Services. At least I got that off my chest. He knows I hate it. Everyone hates it. But it feels good to say it out loud to the boss. ^_^

I got to bed a little later than usual last night - it was after 10pm! My hands have been really dry and icky, so I slathered the hell out of them with Burt's Bees Hand Salve, which is great, greasy stuff, but it makes my hands... well, greasy! Since I was kind of tired, the first thing I thought of doing was the thing I did - I grabbed some clean socks and pulled them over my greasy, aromatic paws.

And you know what?

It worked pretty well.

Next time around, I will get some nice cotton gloves for this purpose. Or maybe I could knit some... but I don't like knitting with cotton, and I am still a little intimidated by gloves - all those fingers! Meh. I'll end up doing them sooner or later. Just not right now. :)

I totally forgot to do my monthly status report on my DivaCup! This entry isn't too graphic, so I'm not going to bother limiting it to Female-Only readers.( Read more... )

It has occurred to me that I don't update my LiveJournal as much as I used to... part of this has to do with how much I have going on at work, and whether I can find a few minutes to take a break and do some blogging... but MOSTLY I think it's because I've got mostly knitting-related stuff that I want to blog about, and that usually ends up in my Knitting Blog.

It's getting a little weird how much I knit, and think about knitting, and read about knitting, and talk about knitting, and write about knitting. I don't know if I'm technically addicted to my hobby, but I'm definitely WAY into it. Way way WAY into it.

I am proud that I'm not one of those people with a ridiculously huge "stash" of yarn, and I don't have a ton of UFOs all over the place. I still try to buy yarn once I have a specific pattern in mind for it. And I try to find good deals. If it's not on sale, or cheap to begin with, I'd just as soon skip it. It's not a hobby that I'd spend just ANY amount of money on. For me, spending unnecessary amounts of money is NOT fun. And hobbies are supposed to be FUN. Thank god for KnitPicks. Hah.

So I guess this is just another knitting-related post, but I'm not putting it in my knitting blog because I think the EXISTENCE of my knitting blog implies that I am rather obsessed with knitting.

"Hey man, watch it! Careful with that arm, there!"

"Yeah, I'm lifting 2 pieces of paper."

"Whoa."

"Yeah. Pretty soon I might be up to lifting... three?"

Profile

amberica

2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jan. 15th, 2026 09:19 am

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	amberica
Your haiku:	seasonings they just rule my world i will have to keep track of them all
Username:

Created by Grahame

Left Brain, Right Brain

My Psychic Hokey-Pokey

Recent Entries

Housecleaning

Sister Golden Hair

All kinds of stuff

Awesome weekend

My Haiku (I think I'll call it "Seasonings")

What's wrong with me? - Part II

Valentine's Day

Men, Women, Housework, and Sex

Johari / Nohari

Really stupid meme

Me talk like caveman / Bill wax philosophic

A survey for anyone who wants to participate

More about Passwords

Dude!! Yes! I'm The Dude!

The password dilemma

What's wrong with me??

Socks on my hands

DivaCup - 5th Cycle

Can you call it an addiction if it doesn't HURT anybody?

Overheard in the hall a few feet from my office