Miscellany

[kyrielle]

I tried to make a quiche-substitute tonight (substitute as in, no animal products, no cheese). One word: ugh. No clue if it was my skills that were lacking, or the recipe, but ugh. On the other hand, the crust part did come out nicely, so...half the recipe is a win, anyway. It's a fairly sturdy crust; I'm tempted to just fill it with tastythings and bake and see what happens. Knowing my luck and skill in the kitchen, though, I might regret that a great deal. Bah. This is the problem with most cooking for me: I do not know enough to pick the recipes. Among Mom's recipes are a good many delicious ones. Quite a few of which are not great for me and thus 'treat only' recipes. Bah.

Mom would probably shake her head, or something. She didn't believe in giving up what you love for your health (she mentioned this once in connection with someone else's diet), as why live longer if you enjoy it so much less? (This didn't apply to cigarettes, as far as I know, as she always said of those that she was addicted and not up for another try at quitting. Not the same thing as 'enjoying' them.) But ... I've got a lot of things I enjoy about life that have nothing to do with food. A lot. And if I can find food that's healthy for me that I like, I figure that's good. Of course, figuring out what is healthy is somewhat of a crap shoot. Some day someone will do the definitive study: living is hazradous to your health. Like we didn't all already know that! But I'm fairly sure, for example, that Mom's pasties (really, I think, Grandma's?) aren't healthy. Tasty, but not healthy. On pretty much any 'healthy diet' path you can think of, come to that. Oh well, we'll see.

After the quiche, I will enjoy tomorrow's Easter dinner all the more, I imagine, though I'd enjoy it just for the company even if no food at all was served.

And I get to go back to Fry's again. I picked up an mp3/wma player that can handle encrypted .wma files, which is what I needed for my library's downloadable audiobooks. Unfortunately, it will play the first part of the file and then spazz out into random sounds. The interesting (to me) thing is that if you play the same file repeatedly, it does not spazz out at the same point each time. Weird...but not really very useful. I will probably exchange it for one of the same model on the hopes that this one has something wrong with it, I suppose. I sort of expect that the next one will have the same problem, mostly because Murphy's Law seems to really like raining on my techie-toy attempts.

Babe is really funny, and cute, and cuddly. And oddly, she has good shorts manners. She put her paws on the fabric, not my bare skin, except once; and that once she was barely kneading with her claws, and when I moved her paw she left it there. This astonishes me mostly because she is not at all careful about her claws when arriving on or departing a lap. I don't know if she would be when shorts are involved - I somehow doubt it - I was on the floor so she wasn't jumping. But it was strange to me that she can be so carelessly pointy most ways, but this one she almost seemed to be actually being nice about.

The landscape maintenance folks we work with have a different idea of reality than I do, I guess. A week ago Friday they told Scott they could recommend a landscape designer if we wanted (funny, that's not what they said last fall - guess it changed!). He replied to that email telling them yes, please. That is still all we've heard. Exactly how long does it take to send us a name and number you presumably already had to hand when making the original statement?? Oh well.

I keep meaning to upload more photos, and not doing so. Not so very happy about that...I want them up, shared, but also preserved, you know?

It's late. I think I should probably head to bed soonish.

Comments

[susandennis]

Ok, enquiring minds need to know what MP3 player you got. I'm sure enjoying my audio library book. Creative Zen V Plus. My library uses OverDrive Media Console which picke up on the Zen automagically. This afternoon I drove and read. Late on, I knitted and read. Tonight I may play computer solitaire and read. Tomorrow I will absolutely walk and read. I thought podcasts were fun but this is really fun.

[kyrielle]

It's a GPX. Off-brand I hadn't heard of, but affordable and did what I needed. I have OverDrive Media Console too. I had no problem getting the files over and it CLEARLY understands the encryption because it can play parts of them, it just apparently is really prone to screwing up.

[susandennis]

I read good things about GPX. You were smart to get it somewhere you could just take it rght back to and get a replacement. I'm impressed by the efficiency of that OverDrive thing.

[kyrielle]

Interesting. I'd never heard of them before.

[mandydax.livejournal.com]

For the encrypted/protected audio files, I had to look for something that would allow me to play iTunes stuff on my Creative Zen. The Zen will work with a lot of DRM software (Napster, Yahoo!Music), but can't understand iTunes m4a and m4b formats. Neil Gaiman pointed out a free audiobook by John Hodgeman, but I couldn't put it on my Zen. So, I went looking and got TuneBite, which plays the songs on my computer at up to 3x speed and up to three at a time, and then records that output into new files that are DRM-free and all tagged like the original files. Depending on the sound card, it may require a feedback cable (basically a stereo minijack cable from the speaker out port to the mic in port), but for $26, I think it was a great deal. I can effectively strip the DRM from my subscription service, too. There's a free trial version which will only translate up to 30 seconds, but will let you see if it will work for you. I hated it when my Zen would eventually say that subscription songs were unplayable because I hadn't synched the DRM. It might be a solution for you without changing players.

[kyrielle]

Except the one I bought is supposed to handle this encryption, and DOES, and starts screwing up partway thru. I hate paying for something I don't get, or keeping defective merchandise to see what else breaks. I just bought it, FOR THIS PURPOSE, for which it fails me.

It goes BACK.

On the other hand, thank you, as your link means I can consider players I would not have otherwise considered, then try TuneBite to get the stuff on them. On the other hand, the idea of having to find where the files are and tediously pull them all out is somewhat disheartening. Hmm.