• UTOSC 2009 | (Afford|Scal|Reli)Ability – Home

These are my presentations:

• UTOSC 2009 | Open Source Basics: What are you a bunch of hippies?
• UTOSC 2009 | Intermediate GIMP: Face Swapping
• UTOSC 2009 | Advanced GIMP: The Digital Diet

This is the first time I’ve done a presentation like this since my student teaching so many years ago, so I’m feeling pretty nervous and excited all at the same time. If you are in the Utah area on October 10th, please drop by the Utah Open Source Conference and give me a boost of morale. I’ll probably need it!

She can reach the light switches and open door knobs now. She feels so very independent, even though she’s just a little girl.

Happy birthday, Pick Me!

May you have many more!

I write this weblog for myself, but that doesn’t mean I’m not curious about you. Recently, Ward Jenkins had a Blurkers Rejoice entry on his blog and I thought it was a good idea:

• The Ward-O-Matic – Blurkers Rejoice!

Blurker (BLUR-kur): n. 1. One who reads many blogs but leaves no evidence of themselves such as comments behind; a silent observer of blogs. 2. One who reads many blogs but has no blog of their own; a blog-watcher or blog voyeur.

I’m interested in you, so please stop blurking just for today and leave me a comment telling me a little about you.

• Why do you visit my blog? For the writing and stories? The photography? For the links to weird stuff?

• Who are you? What profession are you in? Are you a boy or a girl? What do you do for fun?

• How did you find my blog? Link? Another blog? The Quotations Page? Starling Fitness? Doing a search on Google?

Just for today, leave me a comment and tell me just a little bit about yourself. I’m actually very curious about you because you come and read my words every day and I never know who you are.

The previous design was a three column layout that didn’t give me much room to post pictures. Plus, I was getting a little sick of the tiny lettering and other minor formatting problems that Pick Me! didn’t have compared to our other weblogs. Mike and I sat down and I pointed and grunted while he designed this great layout!

Check out my new Archives. Instead of listing EVERY SINGLE MONTH I’ve ever written posts, it lists the years that I have been writing. You can access a more detailed archives by clicking on any month. Mike did that! Excellent work!

I’m smiling now! Happy, happy! Joy, joy!

I looked on WordPress’s website for information about listing the archives in chronological order. This is the answer I found:

Coming in a bit late, but I was able to get ascending monthly archives in WP 1.2 by appending:

&order=ASC

…to the rewrite rules in .htaccess that call index.php with the archive parameters. With my particular permalink configuration, my new rewrite rule is:

RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/?([0-9]{1,2})?/?([0-9]{1,2})?/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?([0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&name=$4&order=ASC&page=$5 [QSA]

Does that help any?

It doesn’t make any sense to me. Is this something that’s really hard to do or is it easy and I just need to learn it for myself?

Love, Laura 01-13-05 Michael Moncur to Laura Moncur

I can do it for you – remind me later. (It’s very easy, but I don’t think you have access to the file.)

Love you.

01-26-05 Michael Moncur to Laura Moncur

I finally got around to doing this. Check it out.

Right now the categories AND the monthly archives are in chrono order. Let me know if you want it otherwise. I think it makes the categories look bad except for Looking for Christ, but that’s just my opinion.

01-26-05 Laura Moncur to Michael

It looks great! Thanks so much! That’s exactly how I wanted it. If there is anyone who is obsessive and wants to read everything, this is how it should be set up, which makes me happy. Otherwise, the casual reader will never see those categories.

Thank you for doing this for me. I really appreciate it.

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Who knew that there were so many different ways to say those words? So many variations of those same words have brought tons of people to my site with my entry about the Weight Watchers Core List. If you haven’t seen the comments that have shown up there, you might want to check out that entry again.

I really meant it when I said that there are no excuses. When you email telling me that you live too far away from a Weight Watchers place to go to the meetings, I’m going to send you to Weight Watchers Online. When you say you can’t afford it, we’re going to have a discussion about the simple things that you spend your money on every day that you can forego for Weight Watchers. That’s what commitment is about. It’s about doing whatever you have to do to get to your goal.

If you start throwing excuses at me, all it tells me is that you’re not ready to start this journey. If that’s the case, don’t bother. Enjoy yourself. Eat whatever you want without guilt. Give yourself permission to have whatever you want whenever you want it and stop beating yourself up about it. For some, that has also been the path to healthy eating. Read Margaret Cho’s blog entry about her road to sensible eating. Maybe the Fuck It Diet is your destiny.

swarm of dragonflies, mythology of dragonflies, what do dragonflies symbolize, what does a dragonfly symbolize, meaning of dragonflies, dragonflies swarm, dragonflies symbolize, dragonflies and omens, dragonflies mythology, dragonflies omens, dragonfly symbolize, what dragonflies symbolize

I guess late summer brings dragonflies into the lives of those who need to see them. Last year’s entry about Dragonflies has collected a number of visitors and a few comments that you might want to read. For every comment that says, “ur site sux,” I remind myself of the rare comments that come by that make me feel like I am here writing for a reason:

I am a very aggressive driver and am always speeding on the road. I had a fender bender last week while speeding out of my neiborhood. I was on my way to a weekend vacation and when I got to my destination I noticed a dead dragonfly on the front bumper. I knocked it off and forgot about it, but when I returned from my vacation, I noticed another one dead in basically the same spot. It was wierd so i looked it up. What i believe now according to your article is that speeding is a bad bad habit that I need to change or there is going to be some sad news. This may just be some strange belief, but i will take it as a sign. Thank you for your research.

Comment by Doretha — 9/21/2004 @ 10:45 pm

sabrina martin

Four people were looking for Sabrina Martin and found me talking smack. That was my fear. I worried that I had said something derogatory about Sabrina Martin. I write every day, so it’s really easy for me to forget what I have said. When I saw her name come up in the search strings, I worried that I had said something catty. Here’s what I said, “I wanted to be like Sabrina Martin in fifth grade. She wore really tight pants and the guys liked her a lot. I wanted to wear tennis shoes like hers so bad that I saved up the money to buy some. My mom was surprised that I would rather buy tennis shoes than Barbies and offered to buy them for me. They cost $9.95 at Gibson’s Discount Stores. They were blue and white.” So much for being catty.

I feel like I did a disservice to her. I know the blog entry wasn’t about her, but I didn’t really say enough about her for someone to really know what she was like. I feel like I should write a whole entry about her. She had this funny thing she could do with her eyes. They would move back and forth so quickly they looked like they were vibrating. She was funny as hell. I could always depend on her to crack me up. Her parents lived in the Academy Park neighborhood, just like Dylan. I could point at the house she used to live in today. It was a big, yellow split-level with a big M on the screen door.

Sophomore year, she was a cheerleader. Junior and Senior year, she was a Chate (drill team). She dated Kava Afu, the star football player that took Kearns to State. She hardly ever partied at Sceverenia’s house. It was very rare that I saw her there, even though she was so very popular that she was always invited. I guess she just preferred quiet time with Kava to the loud and potentially dangerous parties that Scev’s parties usually ended up being.

I saw her about five years ago when I was a real estate agent. At the time, she was married with five children. She had been a single mom for a long time and she seemed happy to be married. Later, I learned that she was divorced again. I hoped that she was happy.

Last time I saw her was about a year ago. She was on a blind date with her mechanic. He took her to Port O’Call. I don’t know whose idea it was, but she seemed to be having fun. She told me that I looked very thin and I was so grateful to her for being nice.

I wonder where she is now. She looked so healthy at Port O’Call that I suspected that single life might actually be better for her than married life. I touch her life so rarely now, that I truly feel that I couldn’t give a full account of her personality. Where are you, babe? I looked your name up in the phone book and there’s a Sabrina Martin in Kaysville. Is that you? I hope you’re happy and healthy. Sending good karma your way, if you believe in that sort of thing…

I have been so grateful for this creative outlet. Being able to publish my writing daily has helped my creativity to soar. Instead of draining me, I feel like I have more ideas now than I did last year at this time. When I started this blog, I had so many stories about my past to tell and I still haven’t told all of them. When I started this blog, I had a small arsenal of fiction to post online and I still haven’t shown all of them. When I started this blog, I had so many ideas about life in general and I still haven’t written all of them. I still feel like I could type all day long.

Thank you. Every single one of you that read my site every day, THANK YOU! I know you’re there. I see the stats. I watch the referrers. I look at the sites that hit me the most. Thank you for reading my work and coming back regularly. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for your emails. Thank you for your support.

When Mike and I had our first anniversary, his Grandma Tippets gave us a package of toilet paper. She said the first anniversary is paper and handed it to us distractedly. If you’re thinking about an anniversary present for me, I just want you all to know that the best toilet paper in the world is Charmin Ultra.

My readership is up to an average of 149 unique readers a day. I hit as high as 375 last month, which was strange. The day that I hit 375, I didn’t write anything particularly interesting or controversial. It was the fifth of August and I wrote about Recycled Buildings. It’s so strange what seems to attract people. I haven’t been able to track it.

who started the gallery stroll on pierpont avenue

I found the website for the Gallery Stroll, but it didn’t have any information on the history of the event. I emailed Laura Durham regarding this question and she was so nice to direct me to an article that she wrote about the Gallery Stroll: Twenty Years and Still Strolling. All the history about the event is right there for everyone to read. Apparently, it was a group of people who started the Gallery Stroll, not just one founder.

balancing on bosu

There are tons of sites out there wanting to tell you to buy a Bosu Ball, but few of them have given you exercises to do or even a realistic review of using one in a class at a gym. My entry is on page five of the Google search and I swear it’s the first one listed that comes from someone who ISN’T trying to sell you one. Don’t buy one. Go run around the block a few times. It’s cheaper and burns more calories.

patron saint of obesity

People all over the world are still wondering to whom they supplicate in the battle of the bulge. Since my entry about the patron saint of obesity, not much has changed. At The Catholic Community Forum someone actually asked who the patron saint of obesity would be. The person in charge recommended St. Thomas Aquinas because he was fat. Another one also recommended St. Thomas Aquinas. Sorry guys, I’m not going to ask a fat man to help me get thin and healthy. I’m still pinning my hopes on St. John Climacus.

amanda moncur, brad moncur, dee moncur

I don’t know any of these people. Sorry. Try finding them using Yahoo! People. I used them when I did my 15 year class reunion and they were pretty helpful. Good luck!

i2workout, create your own ifit workouts, treadmill workout ifit program download free

I know a lot of you are finding this program through me. I2Workout is a great program, but I honestly haven’t used it for over a month. I have been playing Dance Dance Revolution almost every day for my exercise. I still go to the gym to workout with weights and to take that Trekking class every Tuesday: once a week for 24 Hour Fitness and once a week for Xcel. That’s what I need to do to make those memberships pay off. Between those gym visits and my DDR obsession, I haven’t played with my treadmill or i2Workout for a long time. I should feel guilty, but I’m enjoying DDR too much.

biography of phillipe starck

I don’t have the biography of Philippe Starck, but his website does. It’s a convoluted and poorly programmed website that uses too much Flash, so I can’t link directly to the biography. First, choose English, then move your mouse to the left-hand part of the screen. It will say Starck, but once you move your mouse over it, it will change to a huge list of unorganized things about the designer. One of the things on the list (3/4 of the way down) is the word, “Biography.” If you click that, all you will see is a quote and a picture. You need to scroll down to find the “Next” button. Only then, will you find the beginning of the wordy biography of Philippe Starck. For a designer, his website is poorly designed. Peh…