happiness is

happiness is a well-fitted bra.

5 love notes

vice guide to everything

Don't go to a doctor unless you have to crawl there. Operating at home is fun and easy. Never go to the dentist, either. And never take antibiotics. They are a crutch and they prevent your immune system from figuring out, and subsequently conquering, whatever the disease is. Never take your pet to the vet. If it's sick, let it die. It's the natural thing to do.

the vice guide to everything

[via]

0 love notes

hot topic

movable type 3.1 released with some great new features along with the developers contest plugin pack and a professional network, something that im not quite clear on. it all looks pretty spiffy, though.

0 love notes

do you know?

did you know that the sky is blue?
and there are clouds hanging in said blue sky?
clouds that are white?
clouds that are not filled with ashy smoke?

and did you know that the sun is yellow?
not orange or red, but yellow?
and it is so bright that you can hardly look at it, let alone tell that it is a perfect sphere?

did you know that the smoke has cleared?
do you know how long it will last?

0 love notes

in the groove

when im nervous, i tend to not breathe out. i breathe in fine and dandy, but i forget to expel the carbon dioxide. thirty seconds later, i have a diaphragm full of air and cannot figure out what to do with it.

my diaphragm full of air causes me to speak faster and slightly higher pitched until i remember to take a few seconds to breathe out.

oh. you mean im supposed to breathe in and then back out again? i can so do that.

which is usually when i hit my groove.

the problem with a super short presentation in front of a whole bunch of people i dont know is that i barely have enough time to get over my nervousness and into the groove of being the center of attention.

moral of the story: talk longer.

2 love notes

presentation

i have to do this presentation for work tonight, and i dont really want to do it, but it does mean that i get to leave the office early. and at least i have a friend going with me, and the presentation will be ridiculously high-school-presentation short, and there should be chocolate.

so, really, it should be fine.
fine.
really.

0 love notes

special

it takes one special of a mood to make me cry at without a paddle.

1 love notes

just download it

me: "we need to upgrade that computer to xp pro because blah blah blah. Local Company has it for $X and Other Local Company has it for $Y, while Online Company has it for $Z plus $A shipping. when can we get this?"

boss: "is that something we could just download?"

me: "um..."

5 love notes

speak up poster contest

shove it up your em space

and other good posters at the speak up poster contest. i wonder if i could get away with hanging that one in my office.

probably not.

1 love notes

writing tip

'quick' writing 'tip': if you are using 'words' and 'phrases' in a 'non-traditional' or 'illustrative' way in order to make a 'point', you do not 'need' to place them 'in' quotes.

that is 'all.'

8 love notes

screen grab

screen grab confab
too fun - check out mine.

what are you working on right now?

0 love notes

cracker snatcher

im fed up with people eating my food in the refrigerator at work, so i have started labeling my packages:

• there are starving children in africa - exercise your freedom and buy your own milk
• every time you eat some of my food, a kitten dies
• laced with strychnine - proceed with extreme caution
• big brother is watching
• no you di'nt

0 love notes

yackety schmackety

"blah blah blah ... city council blah blah ... guaranteeed to vote for me ... yadda yadda ... im so cool ... blah blah blah ... weather sure is ... me me me me ... bye."

i hate when my dad calls.

4 love notes

super mario 3

nick at authenticgeek has a new design up based on super mario 3 that is the greatest thing in the whole wide world.

super mario 3 is one of the few video games where i kick ass. i played it growing up and can still remember all of the tricks, including how to go through entire levels with the super speed on and not stop once. i have mad mario skillz that will never project into any gaming system newer than the snes.

i bought a super nintendo at a garage sale this weekend for $20 and it came with 15 or so games. granted, there are some huge duds like aladdin, cool spot, and ghouls n' ghosts (i cant even get past the first screen in that one - wtf?), but it also came with gems like donkey kong 2, super mario 1 and 2, and zelda.

i am having all sorts of fun playing a gaming system where i dont stare at my feet or the ceiling for thirty seconds until i die.

this kind of fun and nostalgia is definitely worth $20.

12 love notes

silver lining

but look at the bright side: even though it may have a spiffy foot-pedal-operated sink, i still managed to avoid using the port-a-potty all day long.

thats what i call an accomplishment.

1 love notes

borked

the sewer is still down.
the phone system is borked.
the boss drank all my milk and ate all my pizza thinking the office bought it.

im at work, though im not exactly sure why.
at least its quiet around here.

0 love notes

who knew

who knew it would have been so easy.
so very easy.
too easy, perhaps?

2 love notes

not mine, i swear

OKAY.
just so we are all on the same page.
the 'weblog' at http://rhapsodic.drunkmenworkhere.org/ is not my website.

it is a fun little excersise i set up back in december, and it has been auto-updating itself... by which i mean, i do not write any of the content over there. a computer robot does that entire site. not me.

just so we are perfectly clear, http://rhapsodic.drunkmenworkhere.org/ is NOT MY SITE.

addendum: i deleted the site over there. forgot that i could do that. now if you try the fake weblog, you get an article "On Fornication And Genetics in The Breedster Age". niiice.

1 love notes

propaganda master

nomad: anyway, you totally rock and I don't care who knows it.
Valette: rock on
Valette: tell the world
nomad: I'll be your propaganda master.
Valette: sweet - ive been looking for one of those

1 love notes

i get around

ive heard it said that it wouldn't be right to leave your best girl home on a saturday friday night.

and yet, here i am.

2 love notes

good and bad

the flood is still present at the office, and the water and sewer have been turned off so as to fix the problem.

the good news is that the office is closed today, and i was able to sleep in and dream of an orange hotel.

the bad news is that i need to do a ton of dishes today, and this has given me the perfect opportunity to do so.

0 love notes

the great flood

there are currently 3 inches of standing water in the office basement. all of the electrical systems and servers were fine until someone flushed the toilet upstairs.

just like two years ago, the water zapped our phone system and came within inches of our main server.

you would have thought we would have learned, eh?

addendum: looks like the clear flood water is slowly being replaced by dirty crappy water, so we were all sent home. what am i going to do this afternoon?

1 love notes

what not to do

DO NOT

• wear pretty undies whilst bike riding. this includes anything with sequins, tassles, fuzzies, stategically placed holes, and g-strings. trust me on this one.
• try to get philosophical with co-workers. it just opens the gate for Every God-Given Pat Answer you could never hope to know, and you will be left with a dazed look and a desire for chocolate covered cake doughnuts.
• think i can read your mind. im pretty sure we have been over this one many times.

3 love notes

new one

i havent seen this kind of virus email before:

Dear user mistress@rhapsodic.org,

Your email account has been used to send a large amount of unsolicited commercial e-mail during the last week.
Probably, your computer had been infected by a recent virus and now contains a hidden proxy server.

We recommend you to follow our instructions in the attached text file in order to keep your computer safe.

Sincerely yours,
rhapsodic.org user support team.

i was almost convinced until i read "in the attached text file" and saw that it was from my user support team. i need to pay them better.

1 love notes

one moment please

why are people so scared of voicemail and/or answering machines?

do they really think that giving their message to a live person will increase the probablilty of their message being received and returned in a timely manner?

do they not realize that receptionists and secretaries are, in fact, human and able to misplace, forget, misinterpret, or for any other reason fail to deliver their message? do they not realize that receptionists may not see the person for which their message is intended?

oh, youd like to just leave your name an number and your whole life story?
let me transfer you to voicemail.
one moment please.

4 love notes

dropcash

dropcash is a new service that combines the power of paypal and typekey into a lean, mean, fundraising machine.

it will no doubt be the favorite of camwhores everywhere (you listening, steve?).

but meanwhile, lets take the opportunity to buy valette an ipod, shall we?

0 love notes

gender and rss

we did a little experiment here at rhapsodic.org to find out how gender balanced we are in our blog reading preferences.

the 'elsewhere' list on the sidebar is comprised of our top desert island blogs. meaning: if stranded on a desert island for some length of time only to discover that by the grace of God the heavens open up and reveal a wifi hot spot in the top branch of the palm tree, those would be the first blogs to check.

the list fluctuates somewhat, but not by much.

in the current list of 14 there are 6 blogs written and maintained by women, and 8 blogs written and maintained by men. while i was suprised to find that the list represented almost as many females as males, it is only a small representation of blogs i check on periodically.

then i turned to my rss feeds on bloglines, and found the following:

• linklogs - 16.7% female; 66.6% male; 16.7% group
• photologs - 33.3% female; 61.1% male; 5.6% unknown
• other blogs - 10.3% female; 70.7% male; 19% group
• total - 22.2% female; 59.0% male; 17.1% group

it would seem that the blogs with which i create a personal connection are maintained equally by men and women. but the blogs i half-heartedly read are mostly maintained by men.

how does your list stack up?

4 love notes

105

the thermometer outside my apartment building door is currently reading 105.

this is the middle of august.
we should be having a lot of rain.
tons of rain.

instead we have more high temeratures and more smoke filled air.

4 love notes

this is progress

after my one week of championship shin splinting, i have now been on a strict bike-to-work-and-bike-home-unless-you-pass-out regimine that has been working out quite well.

yesterday i took my morning 15 minute ride before church, and then took another 20 minute ride that afternoon. during that afternoon ride, i realized that, hey, [1] my butt isn't hurting on this wee seat any more, [2] this is sorta-kina-maybe a bit of fun, and [3] i still get hit on, but on a bike i can escape faster.

this is progress, people.

and yet something tells me some people get much more out of excercise than i do.

2 love notes

all i want

all i want
all i need
is to be able
to figure out
how much
your product
will cost me

all i want
is for you
to provide
information
on your website
about shipping fees
without requiring
my credit card

telling me
shipping to alaska
costs more
does not suffice

all i need
is to buy some toner
and maybe your
website will
not get
my business

9 love notes

state fair pictures

i finally got up the rest of my pictures from the tanana valley state fair.

i had a great time both days that i went.
how can you not love the state fair?

0 love notes

gmail restored

almost two months after i lost my gmail address, i finally got it back with a lot of help from lynne. and it doesnt look like someone hacked into my account, either. and all google had to say was, 'We apologize for the delayed response.'

what i want to know, is after my plea for a favor, why only joat sent an email for me?

come on, people.
i asked you to use the word 'yo' and everything!

i have three invites. if you want one, find some way to contact me (its not difficult to find), but make sure you use the word 'yo' when asking for it, and i might forgive you for not doing me that favor.

6 love notes

state fair rides

tanana valley state fair amusement rides gallery.

0 love notes

the list

in the half hour since i have been home, my husband has coughed up:

• three lungs
• a bird
• a motorcycle cover
• two bars of homemade soap
• a handfull of spleens (too many to count)
• our missing apartment key
• a squeeky ball for the dog
• and the kitchen sink

2 love notes

mirror project

three new mirror project submissions, the first of which guest stars my husband.

1 love notes

sleep to dream

all this getting-up-to-excercise bullocks is really getting in the way of my dreaming.

0 love notes

kennel in the car with diamonds

our landlords are re-caulking our bathtub and shower today. i had only a few options in taking care of lacey:

• stay home and distract her from barking all day
• take the day off from work and take her... away from the building... somewhere
• pawn her off onto one of my friends for the day, the friend with the fun cats that refuse to play with her
• take her to work and deal with her barking and running around
• drug her and leave her in my car in her kennel

she is currently sitting in my lap staring oh-so-intently out the window, but at the end of my lunch break she will most likely head back to the kennel in the car.

im a mean mommy, i know, but no babysitter can beat a tranquilizer.

1 love notes

multimap

get thee on multimap thus commandeth the Lord God

[via]

2 love notes

blacklist

<3 mt-blacklist

0 love notes

bike for a mini

i could bike down to my local geek store after work and buy myself a mini ipod in the shiny color of my choice for cheaper than i could buy it online (including shipping).

im pretty tempted to do just that, until i realize that if i bike the ten minutes down there, i will have to bike another twenty minutes home.

and that would be insane.

0 love notes

bittorrent

What do people -- and by "people," I mean human beings, not geeks -- want to use BitTorrent for? To download public-domain video of congressional testimony from C-SPAN, of course. They utterly and completely do not care about what goes into accomplishing that. They want: a progress bar. Tell them how far along the download is. That's it. Nothing else. If you want to do it right, integrate BitTorrent into Mozilla and don't distinguish BT downloads from any other kind. Because, seriously, nobody cares. Astonishing thought here: Hide the complexity.

whats wrong with BitTorrent

2 love notes

bang bang

bang bang he shot me down
bang bang i hit the ground
bang bang that awful sound
bang bang
my baby shot me down

1 love notes

where have all the themes gone

notice anything missing on the mozilla firefox theme download page?
like screenshots?

how am i supposed to know if i like a theme? do i need to download all 36 themes before i find something i like? and it looks like the themes page at texturizer.net is completely devoid of themes.

at least its extensions page still works - the one at mozilla.org blows hairy donkey balls.

1 love notes

cheeky monkey

i bought two bicycles at a garage sale this weekend for pretty cheap: one for b and one for me. they are probably the low-quality wholesale warehouse types, but they are in really good condition.

yesterday morning damon and i rode for 20 minutes and i could hardly walk afterwards. i rode to work this morning and i want to know whos bright idea it was to put two bony sits bones on my butt, because they totally get in the way on that dinky pea-sized seat. at least my shins arent splinting.

and now it looks like someone may have stolen b's bike from the front of our apartment while damon was there this afternoon.

how can people be so cheeky?

2 love notes

down with socks

you people and your socks.
forcing them on all of society.
please just say no.

0 love notes

bastardizations of my first name

five bastardizations of my first name

1. Colette
2. Violet
3. Val
4. Valet
5. Babette

3 love notes

napoleon dynamite

VOTE FOR
PEDRO

heck yes!

0 love notes

back in a few

my brother is in town, so things may be quiet around here for a few days.

smellyalater.

0 love notes

26 things

my 26 things (see also).

im letting the pictures stand without verbiage this year. i dont know if that is a good decision or a bad decision, but it is the decision i have made. you can hover over the pictures for the theme of each.

0 love notes

the end of music

the end of music: the fifteen worst tracks in your own personal collection.

do i ever have some doozies. i think my mix would be easier to do because i married a man with some... interesting (shall we say) musical tastes. boys to men? tony rich project? backstreet boys? i married you?

and you bet i am going to blame him for the hampster dance mp3.

[via]

1 love notes

oceanfront property

i rearranged the sidebars to give the fragments section better real estate.
is anyone reading those?

8 love notes

popup killer test

test the strength of your popup blocker with this popup killer test. it was actually pretty fun to go through, and my copy of firefox 0.8 (a little behind, i know) failed tests 12, 13, and 21.

[via]

0 love notes

spider-man crayons

Now this...this is green! In fact, it's called "Green!" It's grass, it's stems, it's everything you need it to be. It is heroic Jedi lightsaber number three.

spider-man reviews crayons: much funnier than it ought to be.

[via]

0 love notes

cant do it

while i may have the dangerously curvy body, super sharp wit, and exceedingly good looks of a super heroine, i cannot, in fact, read your mind.

2 love notes

peasants quest

peasants quest: get medieval revenge on trogdor for burninating your cottage (or cheat, whatever).

[via]

1 love notes

four letters

ever so slightly related: if you knew your mother was reading your blog (hi mom! *waves*), would you edit out swear words you might otherwise use?

10 love notes

bourne supremacy

the bourne supremacy gave me the biggest headache ive had in quite a while.

apparently the director decided to pinch pennies on the cinematography and gave all of the camera workers hand-held panasonics from the 80s.

every single scene was jiggly and constantly moving. i wanted to grab the camera guy by his ears and scream into his face STAND THE FUCK STILL. could they not spring for at least one of those steadycam things? how about a quick tutorial on the camera focus ring?

i understand that they wanted to give the viewer a sense of being right in the middle of stuff with bourne, being in the car when he smashed it all to hell, but the only thing they gave me was that splitting headache.

and dont even think about closing your eyes, expecting to be able to follow alone with sound only: half of the movie is in russian or german and subtitled appropriately.

it had a good story, but was not worth spending the night submerged in the bath tub with a steady aspirin drip.

1 love notes

not by the baja

why alaska is so far away.

[via]

2 love notes

life is pain

looks like on my fifth day of jogging after umpteen years of decidedly not-jogging, i have shin splints. i had to walk the entire thing thing this morning i was in so much pain.

maybe some better shoes or some arch supports will help?

6 love notes

tibbar tibbar

rabbit rabbit

0 love notes