This 'n' That

Spring has sprung

The grass has riz

I wonder where

the flowers is?

They're buried under the snow!

So here we are, a week or so into spring, and we're getting walloped with snow.  It's almost 6" deep on the deck and still coming down.  Good day to stay home and catch up on admin and related work.

I went out and shoveled the driveway a little bit ago.  The snow wasn't too deep, but I needed some exercise, and past experience showed that driving over the snow just packs it down and makes it stay longer, usually right where you don't want it.  While I was out there, I discovered that our bear is back. Yesterday, he destroyed our bird feeders and knocked over a candle lantern on our deck.  Last night, he apparently went looking for food under the fiberglass covering for our well pump.  At least he didn't destroy the cover, he just knocked it over.  I'd rather he didn't look for food around here (besides the bird feeder, there's nothing outside, not even trash), but having bears in the vicinity is just part of living in the North Carolina countryside.

The studio is coming along well.  We've painted the walls, trim, doors, and the framework for the ceiling tiles.  The next step is the landlord's: I've asked them to replace the ceiling tiles, since the tiles are all painted yellow.  We'll see if they do; if not, I'll have to pull them down and paint them.  NOT looking forward to that task!  After that, we're going to repaint the floor.  The landlord had it painted right before I moved in, but even though we used drop cloths, the floor is still covered with drips and splats.  Anyway, I want to change the color from medium gray to a medium brown, just to warm things up a bit.  Once that's done, I'll move the remainder of my stuff from storage.  And then I get to start painting!

Meanwhile, back at home, I've done some fiddling with my computers.  I installed the newest version of iPhoto on my Mac, adjusted the settings, and now am able to use this thing called "the cloud" to some basic degree.  I can take a picture with my iPhone and, miraculously, it also appears on my Mac.  I can make an entry on my Mac's calendar and it shows up on my iPhone.  Very cool.  

One thing that was not cool about iPhoto was that, when it imported all my pictures from the old version, it deleted all the associated comments.  That really pissed me off.  It's also slower and hangs up more often.  I won't say it crashes, it just shows the "spinning wheel of death" for a while before suddenly completing the action.  Good thing I have Solitaire installed to keep me busy while I wait.  My guess is that the new software has much more code to chunk through and it just takes longer, especially on my 5-year-old laptop.  Later, I looked at the comments about iPhoto on Apple's own web site and they're horrendous.  People are complaining that their upgrades wiped out all their photos, that iPhoto crashes and burns on a regular basis, and many other complaints.  Janis has asked about upgrading her computer so that she can use the cloud, too, but I'm a bit leery of doing it now.  Just because it worked (more or less) on my computer doesn't mean it'll work on hers, too.

Not only did I "upgrade" my iPhoto, but I also upgraded to the newest version of Photoshop Elements. My old one was, like my laptop, five years old.  It worked fine, but didn't have all the newest bells and whistles.  It's going to take me a while to get moderately capable with this new version.  

That'll do for now.  My dogs are telling me that it's time to go for their ride.  It's funny: part of their daily routine is to ride along on the regular rounds to the dump, post office, grocery store, and whatever else we have to do.  If we don't get on the road by noon, they come looking for us, saying "Hey, get on the stick, time to go do your errands!"  Which is exactly what they're doing now.  So, excuse me, but I have to obey my dogs.