In other news...disco inferno!

Yes, I know. It's been almost 4 months since my last post. And I've done nothing in the way of the 23 things. My things have ... stalled. In my defense, I've been pretty busy. But it's also possible I may have been devoting much of my computer time to Lexulous and WoW. (Have I mentioned how much I LOVE my new laptop? It's got scads of RAM and the most amazing graphics card...) Don't judge me.

However, I am now compelled to blog as something truly bizarre happened to me today.

I set my car on fire.

No, not intentionally. And no, cigarettes, fireworks, O'Leary's cow, and spontaneous human combustion were not involved. Neither was the engine nor the wiring.

The time: 6 p.m., having just left the library.
The place: the intersection of Main & Pines.
The temperature (why yes, I do believe it's relevant): a not so balmy 96 degrees.

There I was, stuck in limbo waiting for a left turn, windows open (I don't air condition 'til it gets over 100), sun beating down, and in the sunbeam I catch what appears to be a lot of dust swirling 'round my passenger seat. (They are harvesting now you know, just check out all the combines etc. trekking back and forth on Highway 27 slowing my Fairfield commute to a crawl.)

I start to roll up the window when I realize the "dust" isn't coming in...it's going OUT.

It is not, in fact, dust. It is smoke. And it's rapidly growing in volume.

The vinyl cup/CD/stuff holder between the two front seats is ON FIRE.

Of course, that's when I finally get a break in traffic.

I zip on over to the pawn shop parking lot driving one handed while beating at the flaming spot with MY OTHER HAND. I wasn't thinking very clearly at that point. The fire, not very big to begin with, is now out, but I dump my water bottle over it anyway 'cause hey, what's a little water damage after all? It's not like I haven't spilled carmel macchiatos over there on numerous occasions.

Then I get out of the car and examine the damage. (My hand, by the way, is fine. It's ashy. So is the seat divider.) Surrounded by cracked and blackened vinyl is a hole the size of a dime. I can see stuffing.

How, you might ask, did this happen? Although the (almost) full moon may be involved, it all comes back to this winter. Remember this winter? The winter of 5 feet of snow in under 24 hours? The winter when two months later, we were still down to two lanes of traffic in a five lane road? The winter of the Ruts of Doom? Yeah, THAT winter. I shook the passenger side mirror right out of the mirror holder going over snow ruts. It was washboard city. I may even have shaken some of my fillings loose. I didn't even know I'd lost it 'til I arrived at the library and went "Hey, where's my mirror?"

I drive a 2005 Ford Escape. With electric mirrors. Ford refuses to replace just the glass--you must replace the entire unit to the tune of almost $400. The unit works just fine, rotating back and forth, angling this way and that. It's just mirrorless. And while I can buy the unit for about $100...I lack the necessary mechanical skills to get into the door frame, remove, replace, and rewire the lot. Even with the help of the Auto Repair Reference Center.

Being cheap, I temporarily replaced the mirror with adhesive mylar I'd purchased from Schucks, intending at some point to either replace the unit or have a glass shop cut me a mirror to fit. (Schucks and Napa, by the way, sell a variety of these self-stick things. Apparently I am not alone in my unwillingness to part with that kind of cash.) Life and cash flow being what they are, I never got around to replacing the mirror.

Apparently all that's been saving me from fiery death these past few months has been unseasonably wet weather. For the most part, I've had my tinted windows rolled up. Today, the windows were down, the angle of the reflected sun was just right, the car was already quite warm having been sitting in the hot sun all day, traffic on Pines was insane and preventing me from making my turn, and, voila--FIRE!

Freak accident.

For the record, I removed the mylar immediately. Co-workers take note: no need to fear I'll be turning the car wash into one great big fireball! And I'll be getting myself to a glass shop immediately following the holiday. Not to mention picking up a vinyl repair kit from my good friends over at Napa.

Sigh.

It's alive, alive!!

It being George, my new laptop. :) Which arrived Monday after some FedEx detours. The mouse and carrying case were also detoured via UPS. The shipping experience with Dell this go-round has been...less than ideal. But I don't care...because I have a new computer! A speedy computer. A pretty computer. (Vista may suck down the Ram, but boy oh boy is it pretty.)

And after far more tweaking than I expected, I'm online! There was a brief moment of panic when I feared my Actiontec modem (which George insists is actually a Texas Instruments RNDIS Adapter) wasn't compatible with Vista...but it seems I have 32 bit, not 64 bit Vista so a quick trip to the library to download a driver and I was good to go. Mostly. Ran into some more trouble...as soon as the driver was installed, George started talking to the web, downloading Windows updates...but me, I couldn't get online. To access my connection I needed a "username & password, provided by my ISP". For the record, Qwest tech support was no help at all...but the Qwest community forums were exceedingly helpful and after following a number of posters' suggestions, lo, I am connected to the internet in my living room. Oh frabjous day. At the moment I'm downloading Windows updates and World of Warcraft updates. (Cue the extremely contented sigh--WoW, I've missed you so.)

BTW, for anyone contemplating the joys of "upgrading" to Windows Vista...I highly recommend the book HACKING VISTA by Steve Sinchak. I checked it out of my local library and am loving it so much, I'm probably going to have to break down and buy my own copy. I'm not quite brave enough to alter the registry settings (yet!) but the book is filled with all sorts of simple tweaks designed to make Vista more friendly for the beginning computer user and to make it a bit more...compatible with other software. Vista does not play well with others, no matter what Bill Gates might say differently.

So very soon I should be back on track with the "things" and working on rolling my own search engine. And tackling my online book discussion duties with Eliza Dresang's Jane Addams award contenders. I am so very, very behind. I'd forgotten what a "joy" getting a new PC was. Stay tuned...

Wailey, wailey, wailey.

Have just received notice from Dell that they've shipped my new laptop & mouse! Huzzah! Mouse will arrive earlier than expected (Hooray!) on the 13th. Laptop ... will arrive later than expected (Horrors!) on the 17th. Countdown to George has been re-set accordingly. Cue the pained sighs. And not a few sniffles. Maybe even a tear or two.

Tiny Titans: Welcome to the Treehouse

Those of you who know me in RL have heard my superhero rant before--big industry (I'm talking about you, Hollywood!) promotes its superhero summer blockbusters to young children (buy the happy meal toy! the lunch box! the coloring book! the pajamas!) when the material really isn't age-appropriate. I find myself regularly explaining to parents of preschoolers that no, there really isn't anything about Batman on our shelves that's likely to appeal to their 3-year old in terms of content, illustrations, or length of text, no matter whether or not the child has already seen the movie. Ditto for the 6, 7 & 8-year olds. (Yeah, there's another rant in there about taking them to the movie in the first place, but I'll spare you that for the moment.) While there've been a few beginning reader series over the years that have helped fill the kid-friendly superhero void a bit, they go out of print, and when they go, they go fast. Thankfully, we're seeing some new offerings these days. The Big Two (DC and Marvel) have recently been publishing more kid-friendly superhero comics and even (gasp!) chapter-books. And I'm here today to tell you about my new favorite from DC:


Collecting issues #1-8 of Tiny Titans, TINY TITANS: WELCOME TO THE TREEHOUSE (ISBN 9781401220785) is a must-have superhero title for young children. Written by Art Baltazar & Franco (Patrick the Wolf Boy!) with art by Baltazar, it's an exceedingly cute and funny look at the teen titans as young children. They've got the powers, costumes, and personalities their later teen and adult selves would evidence but all of the emo, the angst, and the age-inappropriate baggage has been removed. This is a truly kid-friendly, all-ages title that shows the young sidekicks/super-hero wannabes attending elementary school (their teachers are all super-villains, though the most villainous thing they do is assign homework), exploring the Batcave (watch out for the penguins!), reveling in their first crush, making new friends, finding the perfect pet, and doing "battle" with their future nemeses on the playground. The humor here (horrible knock-knocks and all) is sure to appeal to anyone 4th grade on down but there are also some serious issues being addressed. Raven, Rose, and Robin all struggle to find their own identities and disassociate themselves with their sometimes embarrassing parental figures (Trigun, The Terminator, and Batman, respectively.) Cassie learns the hard way to be true to her self and to not let her peers dictate her sense of fashion. And Starfire gets a close-up look at what it means to be a two-faced friend.

Things, meanwhile, that made me howl with utter glee:

*Alfred putting the intrepid explorers, penguins and all, into the time-out corner.

*"Tiny Titans versus the Fearsome Five : The Winners Get to Use the Swings!"

*Aqua Lad's pet fish, Fluffy.

*The "How many Beast Boy Alpacas Can You Count? (Hint: They're the Green Ones)" activity page.

*Cyborg as Easy-Bake Oven

There's a lot here to appeal to adult fans of the Titans and a number of in-jokes that may go over the heads of anyone unfamiliar with the older-audience fare, Principal "They call him The Terminator" Slade, for example. As such, Tiny Titans is good clean fun for the whole family. Go check it out now!

Flickr! It's not just for fun anymore!

True story from the stacks: I actually used some of my newly discovered learning 2.0 tools assisting a customer this weekend. The gentleman in question wanted to upload a picture of himself to his yahoo profile and had no idea where to begin. No problem--I'd done that very thing whilst playing about with avatars. Next, he wanted to edit his picture. Not so easily accomplished on the library's software stations with a read-only CD...so I suggested he create a Flickr account, upload his pictures there, and set about tweaking them to his heart's content using picnik. Not only could he easily manipulate and save the changes there, his photos would be accessible to him from anywhere with web access. Although his computer time was up, he seemed v. intrigued--another convert to web 2.0!