I just wanted to touch upon the fact that ever since I bought this 1920×1080 widescreen 23″ LCD monitor, my RAW photos look very nice on the monitor. That’s what high-resolution does for you. (Although I’m still not a big fan of LCD monitors in general…just saying…)

The downside is I now have a harder time telling if a crunched down photo, for website sharing, is going to look ok on a monitor with much lesser resolution. I can, of course, still set the monitor to lower resolution settings. But with LCD’s, any resolution that isn’t the “native resolution” means everything starts to look like fuzzy crud, so it’s useless for determining whether a photo looks ok in a lower resolution or not. Does this matter? No, not usually. But it preys on my mind at times, simply because that’s the way my obsessive mind works. Another, unrelated problem is that my website, when fully expanded, now looks a bit silly. Since I have the pages set up to “expand/contract” elastically depending on what size your browser window currently is, at full 1920 screen -and assuming your browser/pc recognizes my ‘elastic’ way of doing things - the center text/post area is now humongous. Either you have lots of empty white space, or you have to move your head a lot to read the long horizontal lines of text. It is a bit overwhelming.

And yet, I am too lazy to go into things and create a fixed page format size. Even if I assume everyone has at least 1280 horizontal resolution these days, fixed page-styles have their own set of issues that I dislike. Still…the main problem is I’m simply too lazy and can’t be bothered to geek on my hardly-used blog software these days. Sorry. If you have large, widescreen monitor as well, you can always do what I do…scrunch your browser window to about half desktop size. After all, what’s the point of having such a large desktop size if you aren’t going to multitask with some windows on one side of the screen and other windows on the other side? Hmm?

The first big rainstorm has hit the West Coast, the leftover remains of some tropical storm. It’s been rainy and windy all day. It’s also made me realize hubby never got around to clearing out the small sections of rain gutter this summer, since there’s one spot in the back of the house that has become a near-waterfall.

Anyway…the rocks we put down in the front yard, combined with the falling maple leaves, made for a pretty picture.

…at least for me.

The Boston Red Sox made it into the division playoffs as the wildcard, but were swept by the LA Angels. Closer Papbelbon gave up the runs in the third game, turning what seemed to be a series-extending win into a heart-crushing loss. Thus ended the 2009 season for the Red Sox…a season filled with many great games, but also full of inconsistent playing, injuries, and various other issues. Sure, I could watch the rest of the playoffs, and I’ll probably check in on the games now and then…but meh. It’s not like I care about the Dodgers or Yankees or even the Phillies (tho I do love Shane Victorino).

And thus, so far this week, around 4pm, I find myself thinking “What do I do with my late afternoon/early evening, there’s no baseball game!” Wah. Winter will be long, and Spring far away.

So, going through an old PC and all it’s ancient files, I came across a very short .avi file of the game KOTOR2. In case you don’t know, I loved that game to death and was completely obsessed with it for a while. The video bit shows Atton, Disciple and my main character all swinging their lightsabers at the same time. Don’t ask me how I managed that, I’m sure it was extensive use of the pause key and at a lot of luck and timing.

Anyway, it amuses me, it’s very short & small (500kb), and I placed in my random-junkyard media gallery here.

These are a couple of pics from when hubby and I went up to San Francisco to spend some time with his sister and brother. Pier 39 has the one area for seals to hang out in, and there were a lot of them that day. The other photo is a random shot of a man and his daughter near a bit of beach, close to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Orb weaver spiders have been taking over our backyard. Yesterday one created their signature oval web between the house and a bush, blocking sideyard access. We left it alone all day, and this morning it was broken and he was gone. Such is the life of a spider.

The photo is actually of another one that’s made its home near our garbage cans. He’s been there a while now. What amuses me is that the spider is actually positioned with it’s head pointed towards the ground…but if you flip the image (which I did), his mandibles etc. look like a face. Arms raised, he’s coming to get you! Hahaha

The other thing I like about the photo is the spinnerets on its behind are very noticeable. Lastly, don’t forget this is a macro crop, they are nowhere near giant sized or anything. ;)

I love cats and always have. So don’t take this the wrong way:

If you live in a city/suburb and have multiple outdoor cats (more than 2 per household) and don’t care that they turn your neighbors yards into stinky, messy litterboxes, I don’t like you.

To be fair, here’s another gripe:

To whomever used 200pounds of small tanbark as decorative yard mulching for this house that we bought, I don’t like you, either.

The front yard has too many dirt areas near the front door and the windows, and the last month I’ve noticed the smell whenever I have the doors/windows open. It stinks and it permeates the house worse than my own cat’s indoor litterbox. I am not happy.

The entire area under front bedroom window was a litterbox, with the tanbark scrunched up in visible little piles of kitty-burying-activity. So I’ve spent some considerable time the past couple weeks trying to turn the front yard into an area that cats will not, generally speaking, want to pee and poop in.

Rocks as a groundcover in one spot. Shoveling most of the befouled tanbark into garbage bags and then more rocks and cheap cement pavers. That will do for a start. But after that, there’s the backyard, with more dirt strips under the back bedroom windows and all around the backyard fencing that need to be dealt with. Perhaps some chicken wire on the ground for those areas, because the backyard would equal at least a few tons of river rocks, and that’s a bit much to deal with. A long and tiring project. I know about the motion-sensor water deterrent thingies, but they might also keep the squirrels away - as well as humans - and while I’m currently really PO’d at neighbor cats, I still love squirrels. Same thing with the ‘get a dog’ ideas. :P

The occasional cat turd/spray is no problem…that’s life in the suburbs. But apparently our yard has become the claimed super-bathroom territory of the (one) neighbor’s 4 or 5 cats, and I’ve had enough. I shouldn’t have to clean up after YOUR pets simply because YOU don’t want to clean litter boxes in your own home and dump your cats outside. And you better believe if I see a cat in the yard, I’m chasing it away with a hose. And maybe a tossed shoe.

I loved the first Overlord game. It’s one of the few games that have a sort of Dungeon Keeper flavor…twisted, silly humor that turns the usual ‘good vs. evil’ in games on it’s head. Plus, it was one of the few games that my husband and I played together, or at least enjoyed hanging out/watching while the other played. So I was happy to hear that a sequel was being made. The demo was released this week and I tried it - it seems like more of the same awesome evil-cute and simple, but enjoyable, gameplay. The demo did its job and made me want more.

Supposedly it should be in stores tomorrow (24th) so I’m ready to get up semi-early and dash over to Best Buy and/or Gamestop to see if they have a copy. Please be there. Please please please. I want to send my little minions out to pillage and plunder and hear their gleeful cheers. It’s so much fun.