1.  Sweet Pea Song, my iMac, is 10 years old, more or less. Unfortunately for Sweet Pea Song and me there are few, if any, updates available for her system, as well as for the applications I use. 2.  She fooled her developers with their planned obsolescence. She continues to be a song of a sweet pea. 3.  Lately I've been tippy tapping on typewriters at garage sales and thrift shops. Will I buy one? 4.  Smith-Corona Coronet. That's the kind of portable blue electric typewriter on which I tippy-tapped during my 20s when I was into writing short stories. It gave out a comforting buzz that complimented the tip tip tip tap tap tip tip tap tap of the keys. 5.  I miss inserting paper into a typewriter, rolling up the paper, pushing the carriage back, hitting the space bar three times, and pressing the keys. Voila. Magic words on paper. 6.  Older Brother gave me the used typewriter in exchange for babysitting two-month-old Eldest Niece so her mom co...

Dear Blogging Friends, Half an hour ago I removed a bunch of spam comments that were put on my blog today. Click. Oh, NOOOOOOOOOOO! I removed the last 100 comments. Aaaaaaaaak! I found instructions for restoring deleted comments that made my eyes roll. Fortunately for me I have copies of most of your wonderful comments in my email box. Alas, not from Birgit, Adam, and others whose comments, for unknown reasons, don't get sent to my email box. So, if you don't see your comments on the more recent posts, you now know why. Please know, I am very, very sorry. Sighingly, Su- sieee ! Mac

Through a Depot Hack Darkly? Remember the phrase through a glass darkly ?  There you go. What's a depot hack? In this instance, a 1925 Ford Model depot hack. That's the handsome mechanical creature through which I took the above picture.  By the way, my objective was to take a photo of the spires of the Methodist church, which is several years older than the vehicle, through the depot hack's window. The reflection of clouds and another 100+ year old building was an added plus. Okay, back to the depot hack. The owner told us that a hack, which body resembles a wagon, was a taxicab and a hack that served passengers at train depots was known as a depot hack. When train depots became known as train stations, the depot hacks eventually went by the name of station wagons. Ohhh! Yup, the Husband's and my mouths dropped in wonder, too. I bet this particular depot hack's owner waits for that moment every time he tells the story. No doubt he has told it a lot. ...

Is it redundant to say vintage typewriters? After all, who sells new typewriters these days? For that matter, has anyone invented a new model recently? A girlfriend and I stumbled across this display of typewriters in Downtown Los Altos, California last week. They all looked spic and span. I don't think my fingers are strong enough to make the keys go clickity clack. We have three, maybe four, portable typewriters in the house. One is an electric, two (or one) are (or is) Brother typewriters from the late 1960s, and one is a very old, but not ancient, clunky typewriter like the ones you see in black and white movies. I bought that in a garage sale, thinking I'd use it. Ha! It needed a lot of cleaning so I put it back in its accompanying case. I have no idea where it is now. I took a typing class in high school, which was one of two classes that I learned skills I still use today. The teacher roamed around the classroom, making sure we did not peek at our hands as...

I just love it when technical things come together. After all, I am a non-techie, regardless of what others may say. Early this morning, or late last night (depending on your point of view), I received an e-mail saying that my domain names had expired and if I wanted to keep them, I need to renew pronto. So, that I did. I decided to forgo the URL for the old blog and purchase a domain name for Don't Be a Hippie . Purchasing su-sieeemac.com was quite a cheap thrill, I tell you what.  su-sieeemac.com? Yep. I figure I can always use the URL for something else down the line, should I ever cease writing Don't Be a Hippie . For once, I'm looking ahead. Anyway, a few minutes ago, I keyed in the right combination of words and numbers to have Don't Be a Hippie appear in the browser when I plug su-sieeemac.com into the appropriate bar. Whooo-hooo! Another cheap thrill. I think I will count this feat as a Doing 60 . The little things count, too, in my book. So, as not...

In several hours I'll be meeting a friend to talk about blogs. Writing them and reading them. She's thinking about dipping her toe into the blog water. She wants to know if she would ever leave her house again should she venture forth. I told her it would be the opposite. She'd be out and about, her ears and eyes continually open for post ideas. Fellow bloggers, what say you? If the friend decides to go for it, she'll be doing it through Wordpress. Until three hours ago, my experience with that blogging platform was zilch, nada, nothing. Three hours ago, I was very hesitant about getting a grasp of the Wordpress blog basics. But, how was I going to give the friend an idea of what she would be getting into, if I didn't find out. There is definitely a difference between Wordpress and Blogger, which I've been using for the last three years. The first thing I noticed was how overwhelming the instructions were to do this and that. But, once I figured how to publish a...

Night clouds? Nope. I took this picture of clouds in the middle of the day. This morning I was playing with Photoshop, and this is what happened when I used the auto color adjustment button on the original photo. Amazing, huh? If made me wonder if Photoshop stripped out the blue color because the blue really isn't there in the sky. We see a blue sky during the day because of the way light waves rush through the atmosphere. Something like that. For the actual explanation, click here . Anyway, I thought it was rather cool how the clouds looked in a darkish sky. Here's what the original photo looked like when I used the Auto Contrast adjustment button.  Clarity of blue. And, here's the original photo untouched by Photoshop voodoo magic. By the way, don't the clouds look like two people dancing or maybe two people having a gab fest? All this musing about blue skies got me yearning to hear  Willie Nelson's rendition of Irving Berlin's Blue Skies . I thought you wou...

I'm feeling pretty smart and down right proud of myself right now. I managed to create a new web site for my professional self without a single bit of swearing. Yep, that's a very good accomplishment for me. I'm also happy with the way it looks with its baby-blue background, which I didn't think I would like at first.  Ya, pat, pat, pat.  Some people think I'm a smarty-pants techie, but that's only because I know the things they don't know. I honestly don't know a lot of technical stuff. Don't ask me to write or analyze HTML because I have no idea what that is about. But, if you tell me to go find a specific piece of code, delete it, and insert another piece of code, which you've given me, I can do that. Once I've done it, I shall promptly forget what I just looked for and how to repeat the step. That, dear readers, is how I went about creating a web site out of a Blogger blog template. Every time I wanted to make a change to the template, su...

Sigh.   I finally decided to buy domain names for my blogs. A Yay! short lived, but still a Yay! The last two days I've been doing trial-by-error tech stuff to get things to work. I've also been learning too many technical terms, such as CNAME and domain management something-or-other, which fortunately will turn into haze once I've accomplished what I want done. The positive, so far, with this blog: I managed to get its domain name to direct itself here. Really not an easy task since I went with a domain register not yet recognized by Blogger. And, I'm not a technical person, no matter what others will say about me. The negative: All comments made by you, dear readers, before today went missing. I know: What the heck? !  It turns out that's a common thing when switching to a domain URL on Blogger. All I can do is wait until Blogger fixes the bug. At least this is just a very minor irritating glitch in the universe of living.  So, please know, dear readers, your com...

You know what? I haven't been around for three days now. Today, the husband and I are driving back home from Eureka, where I'm sure we had a blast partying at the husband's cousin's wedding last night. So, yep. I wrote this post several days ago and scheduled it to automatically publish when I said so. It's very simple to do on Blogger. Here's how: Write your post.  Click on Post Options at the bottom of the composition box.   Go to Post date and time in the third column. Click on Scheduled at . In the first box, enter the date on which you want your post to be published. In the second box, enter the time. Finally, press PUBLISH POST.

I can do simple things in Photoshop. Resize photos.  Sharpen images. Fix color and brightness.  Easy stuff. I can kinda smooth away scratches on photos. For instance, here's a before and after photo of the mama and the baby older brother. Original photo  I'm sure a Photoshop expert could make the photo finer, but I'm happy with my results. If I need or want to do something harder, such as stitch up a bunch of shots into a panorama, I ask the husband. When I can't remember how to do a certain skill, I ask him to teach me again. And again. Fortunately, the husband is patient. Another thing I love about him. Here's an example of one of my stitched-up panoramas: If I had been more patient, I may have been able to match the brightness of all the shots. Maybe. By the way that's Monterey Bay in the distance. All in all, I use about 1/19 of what is possible to do in Photoshop. Hmmm, I had planned this post to be short, and really to focus on what is coming up next...

I tend to make what I call a tacky potato salad. That means I put in one ingredient too many. Before I added the whatever ingredient, my potato salad would have the right balance of flavor and presentation. And then, bam! In goes that "let me try this" ingredient and now the salad tastes and looks a bit strange. In other words, my potato salad becomes one that you'd like because you acquired the taste to eat it. Visual reference. Think of adding a clown collar to your job interview outfit. My tacky potato salad is my metaphor for when I overdo things. I may have made a potato salad out of my blog design today when I added a signature to my post below. Or not. Doesn't matter really if it does. I enjoy eating my tacky potato salad. Most times. If you're interested in creating a personal signature, check out My Live Signature .  By the way, fellow Blogathoner Tracy Doerr is featuring an interview series of the Word Count Blogathon participants at her blog Tracy Doerr...

I learned this about myself today: I NEED access to the Internet. If you heard a whine in that, then I probably was being a whimpering witch. It's 3:08 p.m.  as I'm writing this sentence. I haven't been on the Internet for 14 hours. I had big plans for today. I was going to submit my first article to Demand Studios, do research for a writing sample, and update my Web site. OK, maybe not the last bit, but I would have found out what freelance writing jobs are available by now. I also would've been to Facebook a few times to catch up with with friends as well as play a few games of Bejeweled Blitz and Jungle Jewels to keep my hands busy as I thunk out thoughts.  Not to say there may be an e-mail message from a publisher wanting me to do a project for it. Sigh. At this moment the husband is setting up the new DSL modem that we bought an hour ago. To help him along, I stay quiet and out of the way until he wants my assistance. Oh, wait. He just asked, "What shall I do...