Sheer Folly - an ATTEMPT at a Monday Update

Folly, in that I would normally have posted this early Monday morning on MULTIPLY, except that it was to be AWOL for a few hours, which (and maybe I'm just paranoid) is suspicious after last week's announcement that they will be closing down the social/blogging aspect of their service... So then I attempted to go post directly to my Blogger blog (which mirrors the Multiply one) - but to no avail - I cannot get photos INTO the posts, which is about half of my post, now, innit? This whole thing just makes me ill - the beauty of Multiply was two-fold; 1) a community approach, so my circle of friends would be in on the updates with the convenience of the Inbox (and e-mails of those new posts, for those of you who were still on the mailing list), and 2) the ability to have all of my photos stored and accessible to be able to add to my blog posts, OR to just skim through. Though when I lost access to MY high-res versions when they introduced the Premium (paid) subscription, I wasn't as happy as I was before. But still, you could see them by clicking on them in the posts, so not a total loss.... And $20 for the paid subscription wasn't too bad a deal, really, all things considered. But apparently, Multiply-run-from-Indonesia wasn't satisfied as it was when it was run from Boca Raton, so....

So now, I will be forced to re-build. I have some research to do, and compare what's out there with what I have with Blogger. Supposedly I have photo storage with Picasa through Blogger, and I actually uploaded a couple of photos - but could NOT get them to go INTO the post. Picasa is one that I have seen but am not that familiar with; I AM familiar with Photobucket, which I do NOT like, and I also have seen Flickr, which might be my most viable option for long-term, high volume photo storage. I just have to make the time to sit down and try to determine what features I MUST have, and what is easy to use and doesn't have a crappy interface (my main hatred of Photobucket is the interface - it's ugly, IMO - and if I want an ugly interface, well, I have Oracle all day long for that :) or maybe :( ). Anywho, we'll see what shakes out. I guess the main folly here is just me posting yet another update, which I will then have to figure how to migrate somewhere else (as though I don't already have 900 pages cut & pasted from here into Word - not including ANY of the comments and not including reviews or album thumbnails).

So, I guess before this disappears again, I should probably get the stitching bits in, so I can hopefully get them saved. First off, Part 2 of the L*K Very Scary Mystery arrived on Wednesday (I think), and while I didn't get it out but once, I DID get a few stitches into it. This is going to be really cool, and it h as one of my favorite sayings in it - but you'll either have to go find one done that far, or check back - somewhere, sometime, depending on when this blog move happens - to see it :) Here's the bit I did:

Since this didn't arrive before Tuesday night at the IHOP, I worked on Bone Cheeks, and am plowing away on the bottom half, with lots of color :) This really is a fun little stitch!

And lastly, I continued to make SIGNIFICANT progress on Lady & Unicorn. Considering I hadn't gotten it out until last Wednesday, technically, I only worked on it for 11 days, and I think I have well over 1/3 of Page 7 completed. Now why couldn't I have done that on the last 6 pages? Oh yeah, CONFETTI HELL. Here is where I left it for last week's update:

And here it is now (the orange threads are the page boundaries):

I do have a page coming up in the next row that probably WILL kill me - it's the cloth that covers the table under this instrument, and it has a zillion round motifs in a group of colors - the page, just glancing at the symbols, looks an absolute mess :( SO if I can pump myself up with the pages between now & then, it might help me get through that one. Yikes... The Unicorn page is right after that one, though, I think, and since he has less than 40 symbols in him (give or take) that will be a well-deserved breather :) Here's the model photo, you should be able to figure out roughly what page I'm referring to:

In other news, I FINALLY got the irises all divided. It took m e 5 hours on Saturday, bent over and elbow-deep in the dirt, to get them all uprooted, bad & old bits cut off and pitched. I have a HEAP of tubers in the garage, giving them a few days to let the wounds harden up some. We need to re-build the beds while I have them all out - the termites made lunch out of my landscape timbers. I also had a lengthy argument with the &%$@(#)$*^ pampas grass that took over the one end of the original bed - I had to cut it back, with small cutters, in order to get TO the bed - and have the cuts to show for it. Everywhere. I hate that stuff, and wish now we hadn't planted it. Time to figure out how to get that massive thing OUT of there, though I expect all of my lizards will be mad at me. Too bad, I'm tired of it.

That's the news, I better quit here while I am ahead (I hope). I will be looking into where/how/when this blog migration will happen; losing the "unlimited" photo hosting is going to be the biggest bite - I really don't want to have to go back to Webshots and link stuff in.... Thanks, Multiply, for leaving us hanging out to dry - I can't wait to see what "help" they plan to provide for us to successfully move stuff. Pretend I'm a DBA - been there, done that, am STILL paying the price....