Whew! It’s been a very intense week around this blog, going through our infertility story, so I owe you some very shallow, non-taxing, and most importantly QUICK quick takes!
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, via Wikimedia Commons”]
We’ve been reading a book called Sky Boys to Alex, which is about the building of the Empire State Building. Alex wanted to know if it was real, so we went online to look at pictures of the building, and in t he process I found this story about the day, late in WW2, when a plane flew into the Empire State Building. I’d never heard this, and I thought it was incredibly interesting.
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This week we had Julianna’s yearly IEP meeting. It was pretty funny to see the common tag her team tacked on to 75% of her goals: “at teacher’s prompting.” Apparently she can identify colors and shapes, wash her hands and hang her coat and backpack–if she feels like it. Most of her educational goals for the next year of preschool involve her doing as she’s told! 🙂
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I never know these days what I’m going to find when I sit down at the computer after an absence of an hour (or ten minutes). Particularly when I’ve heard little fingers playing with the keyboard, I tend to come running. One of these days a child is going to send a stream of gibberish to an agent or an editor. I’m absolutely sure of it.
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Speaking of…two nights ago I came out to the computer after doing dishes to find that the navigation bar and start menu had been mysteriously translocated to a VERTICAL bar to the right of the screen. I grr’ed at Nicholas until–ready for this?–Alex came over and said, “I was scrolling down and that just happened.”
“WHY were you messing with it?” I demanded.
“I don’t know, I wanted to see what it looked like!” he said.
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As long as I’m on this roll…More than once, I’ve discovered it on a “full-screen” mode, whereby all navigation menus have VANISHED, including the X that used to close the open program. One time, I found the monitor picture turned 90 degrees. This leads me to two burning questions: How do they do this stuff???? and more importantly, Why in the name of all that is holy are these options even THERE????
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But in justice, I must confess that not all computer screwups are my kids’ fault. Two days ago, I received my editor’s comments on the first draft of my Lent book, and I opened them up and started reading through them. I saved her document, and I started revising, and I saved the revised document. Well, yesterday I opened Word and discovered that neither document was on the drop-down “recent documents” list. Which led to a search of increasing panic, ending in the horrifying realization that I had saved them in the temporary files. And after a panicked call to my Facebook friends, I was forced to admit that I had lost all of yesterday’s work.
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Well, on a more pleasant subject, one of our former choir members, who left to join the Dominicans, is back in town this weekend to preach at Newman. So we get to have him over for dinner on Sunday, along with my parents, who are coming in to celebrate Julianna’s 4th birthday early. We have a very busy Saturday planned and I don’t know how I’m going to get a cake done. I think I’ll have to do it today, actually, and freeze it. The littles will be happy about that–they love to mix (and lick fingers)…
Kathleen M. Basi 
HAHAHAHA!!! I can definitely identify with little fingers at the keyboard, having experienced everything you’ve mentioned! 3-year-old Mia also has a habit of trying to delete files by dragging them over to the recycling bin!
She thinks it’s a game teaching her to “throw trash away”. 😛
Joe always salvages the poor abused files somehow.
And Juliana’s stubborn independence sounds just about right! Who wants to hang up their coat, anyhow?
Oh…. just this morning, the phone rings while I’m brushing my teeth. Mia answers, and comes running upstairs screaming, “It’s Grandma! It’s Grandma!”
… Except that it wasn’t Grandma; it was a man. 😛
That’s hilarious!
As far as how to move the task bar, all you do is click, drag, and drop. To rotate the view, I think you use the settings menu, and as far as the full screen option, if memory serves me correctly, if you hover up in the top right corner you should get the option to go back to normal.
That settles it, Ruth. I need your phone #. You are officially my go-to problem solver of all things computer. 🙂
I’m somewhat computer savvy, and I might be able to answer your questions:
“How do they do this stuff????”
For full-screen mode, you just need to write up window code that doesn’t have toolbars or a titlebar. For rotating the monitor, some graphics cards have that mode built in. It’s usually used on laptops so you can rotate the screen, allowing you to hold (and read) it like a book. Not very useful for anything larger than a netbook, though.
Happy early birthday to Julianna!
That reminds me of my youngest sister who has rather severe cerebral palsy. She isn’t able to walk or stand up, but is perfectly capable of speaking and singing in English AND Mandarin AND a provincial dialect of Chinese, has a photographic memory, and crystal comprehension – unless a therapist or a physician is working with her. One asked mom if she was able to eat solid foods. They think my poor mother is delusional – she has decided to just start recording things to show the – like my sister wheeling herself to the front of the church and singing Silent Night in mandarin at Christmas time.
The dreaded saving files in the temporary folder…I have done it more than once and then promptly banged my head on the table after I realized what I have done. I ended up putting a sticky note on my monitor reminding me not to do it anymore!