Mystery of the Day: The Voynich Manuscript

Here's an interesting little thing I stumbled over today... The Voynich Manuscript is a curious collection of writing thought to have been compiled as early as the 1200s (though some place it later).

One of the many intriguing things about it is that it's written in a language that uses letters no one--not even modern-day cryptologists, can decipher. The symbols don't form any known language, which, in other cases generally doesn't stop fearless code crackers. For some reason, thoguh, this one just doesn't make sense. It's not just a bunch of jibberish, either. It's an organized manuscript, with sections on various things, repeating words, etc. Clearly someone knew what they were writing.

Another interesting thing is the illustrations--They're quite lovely. However, many of the plants depicted are not reconizable by botanists, and appear to be fantastical, while others are clearly identifyable.

Here is a link to the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale, which has high resolution images of many of the pages online.

What's next for the Mushroom House?

I found out that the owner and architect of the infamous Cincinnati "Mushroom House" passed away this year, and the house has gone on the market. I know neighbors have complained about it in the past, and even threatened to buy it to tear it down. I do hope this odd little landmark survives, though. It's right across the street from a great coffee place I sometimes go to, and it's fun to look across at its quirkiness.

A Lovely Little Diversion: Auditorium

We all just have too much time on our hands, right? I mean, the holidays are coming up, and we're just sitting around, completely done with everything we need to do. Not an ounce of stress or busyness.

Really, what we need is a time waster. Yes. Too much time is certainly a problem, but I'm here to help.

Here is a lovely little gem of a game for you. Auditorium is very pretty process that requires you to simply move spheres around to redirect the flow (Of water? Energy? Do not question.) through little blocks of audio levels to activate the sounds they contain. You can increase or decrease the size of the spheres for different effects. The whole thing is rather mesmerizing and meditative.

Mario Kart Love Song

I love nerds who write songs about nerdy things.

Status Update: Fail... (or maybe not)

Remember I was commenting on the Boy's gift, and saying it would be hard to wait until Christmas to give it to him?

Yeah. I failed. I kind of blurted it out yesterday.

On the up-side, the Boy has a fantastic beverage carbonater to play with, and we get to make interesting fizzy drinks!! It came with some oils in tiny spray bottles - lemon, lime, grapefruit, and mandarin orange. Apparently other oils, like cinnamon can be gotten at Sur la Table, which is nearby. We'll have to do some experimenting. I'd like to make our own ginger ale. There's a restaurant in Michigan that makes their own, and so far the recipe eludes me. I believe I inflicted it on some friends a few years ago. Sorry guys!

This time, I may try this recipe instead of a simple syrup with ginger.

Theft of the Magi

Aww. It's so sweet.

Well, Christmas is coming, and I'm a stupidly excited for the season to roll into full swing. It's not so strange that when I worked in retail, I silently raged at the fact that Christmas cards and decor were being sold before Thanksgiving was even here. I was something of a zealot, even.

To my surprise, the first Christmas after I stopped working at the bookstore, I found...well... I enjoyed the season. I realized I actually really like twinkling lights, and the smell of evergreen and cinnamon, and good things baking. I like scarves and hats, and figuring out gifts for various people I love. I like the foods of the season, as well--gingerbread cookies (decorated as our favorite literary characters, according to family tradition. Captain Ahab always featured prominently because whoever made him got to bite his leg off) cranberry bread, butter tarts, savory stuffing, various apple concoctions, hot cocoa, etc...

I've come to the conclusion that, stress of retail during the Holidays aside, the thing that made the difference was not having to listen to forty versions of "Santa Baby" for 9 hours a day, two months straight. More about Christmas music later.

In the mean time, I'm a bit thrilllllled, because I have the Boy's Christmas gift, and it will rock his socks off. He's a tough one to get presents for. It's rare that I'm able to afford anything that he really would just adore, so I'm excited to give this to him. He will love it. That's the best part. And you know the second best part? It was free. God bless folk who keep brand new neat stuff unused in their basement for seven years. You know who you are!

And now to see if I can manage to wait for Christmas to give it to him. Ten bucks says I can't.

A little something to cheer you up...

Hippos don't often top my list of adorable creatures, but this baby pygmy hippo knocked that conclusion on its booty.

Tiny Door

I showed the little door I was working on earlier, and I've finally finished it! I ambitiously wanted to make it so the door could open a crack to see a little bit of the front hall, but that turned out to be too big a challenge for my meagre skills. Ah well. In any case, it is now framed in with MDF carved and painted to look like brick, which gave me a little space to attach the mail box, along with the house number. I would have liked to have added the number of the house where it'll be, but I had neither enough space nor enough numbers. So instead, I made the address 42--which, incidentally, is also the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything. Though it can't be seen all that well, there is a tiny book and an unbrella hanging from the mail box. I figured since the door would be inside a house, a fairy might hang their wet umbrella out there.

"I like toedles"

So here's Oskar, a miniscule box turtle we now have (thanks Tif!). He's a bit sluggish because of the season, but it looks like he's doing just fine so far, in his little vivarium. He likes to wander into his water dish and hang out there occasionally, and he's made a nice little burrow in one corner, under the shredded coconut husk we lined the vivarium with. Eventually, I'd like to make it more like this, with growing plants and all that.

In the mean time, he's making my head explode from cuteness!

Take On Me: Literal Video Version

I've loved this song and the video since the eighties... And this made me laugh really hard for some reason.

Those are some damson fine plums!

I had the blessing of more home grown fruit just now--Tif brought over (what I believe qualifies as a "freaking TON" of) tiny Damson Plums. They're the size of large grapes, and are delightfully tart and sweet.

*rubs hands together* Now, to figure out what to do with them! Any suggestions?

In the mean time, here is a tried, true, and very simple pasta sauce recipe that is probably our favorite at the moment:

bell peppers (we like the small red, orange and yellow ones)
onion
garlic
oregano
basil
cream
parmesan or romano
salt and pepper
Though this time we skipped it, you can add just about any meat to this if you desire - shrimp works beautifully, as does chicken.

Fry up the chopped peppers and onion in a bit of olive oil. Let them brown just a bit and stir in the garlic to cook as well.
Add some cream or milk
Add the spices, but don't over do it--the peppers have a lovely flavor on their own
Allow the peppers to simmer away covered for a while, and when you're about 15 minutes from dinner, take the top off, and let the sauce reduce and thicken.
Add some cheese (again--not a lot needed) and stir through before adding to your favorite pasta. We used a whole wheat ravioli from Costco that has no business being as good as it is.

I threw in some baby bella mushrooms last night (they were close to turning so I needed to use 'em up), but we unanimously decided that the flavor fought too much with the peppers, and that the bellas deserved their own sauce. It was still good though.

Follow up: Chardewardon

The cooling did turn out to be the secret! One of the compiled Chardewardon/snowe glasses went into the fridge overnight, and today at lunch, it was much better than last night--everything had firmed up nicely, and the flavors were even better. The snowe in the middle section fell just a bit because it was sandwiched in there, but otherwise, it was perfect.

Note to self: Next time leave plenty of time to refrigerate!

Chardewardon

Tonight we experimented with pears and such and the following is the result:



It's a...well, parfait? Fool? Whatever one would call a layered dessert--made with pear chardewardon (at Doc's suggestion--thanks!) and snowe with a pizzelle stuck in the top. The chardewardon was yummy, though I'd like to give it more time to cool next time. It reminded me quite a bit of a really hearty home made applesauce in flavor, though the texture was more custard-like. The cinnamon and ginger were really nice and the whole thing was pretty fragrant. The pears I used had some discolorations, as home-grown fruit often does, so I used a bit of red wine as well as white in which to boil them. It made it a bit of a deeper color. I'd like to see what colors would happen with different types of pears. I'd also like to try this with Harrow Delight pears, which are supposed to be quite smooth when ripe.

The snowe--as usual--was delicious, and it demanded a closeup.

Hie Thee Hence!

As some may have noticed, there are a couple new blogs in the "Random Blogs" List. One is the Medieval Cookery blog, the fantastic companion blog the medieval cooking website. There's lots of interesting information there.

Speaking of cooking, I recently came into possession of a bunch of home-grown pears (thanks Tif!) and I'm debating between using them for a pear tart (which is about what you'd expect - spicy, sweet, and in a pie shell) or Peeres in Confyt (which is poached pears in a sweet wine and ginger syrup--I've also seen it include juniper berries, which sounds kind of fascinating, though I have none to use). I'm leaning toward the second, partly since I'm abyssmal at making pie and tart shells.

Another blog--only one that deals with the wretched failures of cuisine, rather than triumphs--is the Cake Wrecks blog, which cleverly displays the most awful and ridiculous of cakes. Hilarity ensues.

It's September 19th yet again.

ARRR!

Blessed be Electricity

Hurricane Ike made itself known in Cincinnati on Sunday in the form of some insane wind. There wasn't really any rain, but the wind tore piles of leaves off the trees, and brought branches and trees down everywhere, including on top of a neighbor's poor car, crushing it pretty thoroughly. Power went out, and shortly thereafter, the wind dropped-- as did the temperature to a comfy 70. So that's where we've been for the past couple days. All things considered, it was not a bad time at all, though everything in the fridge will need to be replaced. The temperature was lovely, and the time was quiet and relaxing. We got a bunch of reading done, and I worked on a couple craft projects. People were out chatting and clearing branches off lawns, and even the neighbor with the crushed car was in pretty good spirits.

The project du jour was a tiny door to the Little Country. A fairy door, if you will. The plan is to secretly have it installed in the home of a niece and nephew for Christmas. I've assembled everything, and now I just have to add shingles and frame it with basswood, making it possible for the door to open a crack to show a coat rack and a bit of hallway. I have a tiny umbrella and scarf, along with a miniscule key that fits the lock. Em and I are debating giving Mini M the tiny key for Christmas, (maybe on a bracelet?) and telling her it probably goes to a little door. She'd find the door herself. Since it's going to be a Christmas door, I've made a tiny wreath for it out of paper twisted around a little copper wire, snipped and painted. More photos to come as things get finished.

Follow up: The Bag of Bags

Remember that project from a LONG time ago that I was poking at?

Let's just pretend I finished this bag several months ago, shall we? Here is--as my sister, H.A., dubbed it--the bag of bags! I crocheted it out of a bunch of Kroger plastic grocery bags we'd accumulated, and from donations from friends as well. The lighter tan bags are from Michigan Krogers, and the darker ones are Ohio Krogers. The white stripe is a couple of Hillers bags. It turned out to be surprisingly sturdy and flexible, in part because the method I had of making the "yarn" for them uses a double layer of plastic.

Bags of bags seem to be popping up everywhere, and I love it! Not only is it environmentally friendly, but people are taking up needlecrafts, and that can only be a good thing!

Here it is, stuffed with tea towels.

Nerdfest 2008 Photos

Here's our lovely accommodation. It really was perfect for getting away from the craziness of the convention at the end of the day. Mmm... Jacuuzi tubs.



Indianapolis is a beautiful town. It had some interesting buildings, and it was clean and well laid-out. The conference center was right smack dab in the midst of everything. The older building is a playhouse. Maybe we can see a play next year when we go.




Tomas the Lapidary was milling away on various lovely pieces of jewelry. He was good fun to talk to, and I always love watching craft like that. He does historical pieces. This was a copper headpiece for a bride-to-be.



Ed, Alex and some aviator dude talk to Andy K. about Japanese/English translation. Andy and company's book is the first Japanese RPG to be published in English.



Rebecca Guay makes really neat Wyeth-inspired paintings. She also did a couple lectures.



A lot of the fun was not of the type you take photos of--lectures and interesting chats with people from around the world, etc. One definitely photoable and fun part about Gen Con was the cosplayers. Sure, there were a few people in outfits that they reaaally shouldn't have left the house in, but for the most part, it was good fun, and there were some really well done ones. Star Wars seemed to dominate a bit, probably because Peter Mayhew was there. There were also at least three Captain Jack Sparrows walking around.

Boba Fett and Obi Wan totally hang out when they're off-duty. They're best buds. Seriously.



Darth Vader spent the whole time complaining about convention center food. "I find your lack of cheesy pretzels disturbing." Fun fact: Vader looks about ten feet tall only because the storm trooper was about five foot one. Also, YES. This is a storm trooper in a kilt behind them. Heh!



Speaking of costumes, this lady has maybe the most perfect original series Star Trek costume ever. Simple, but perfect. As for the gentleman--the costume was great, but I'm not sure where it was from. The bag says Torchwood, but isn't that a sci-fi series? He looks rather steampunk, or old west. Huh. Does anyone know?



The Empire is recruiting them young---This adorable storm trooper almost made my head explode. He took off his helmet because he was drinking a juice box. Hey-that's not against regulations!



This girl is cosplaying a character from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. It's a pretty decent costume, but I don't think she put all that much work into it.

Happy "Earth Didn't End" Day!

So the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland has been successfully fired off without everything in existence blinking out.

Way to go, scientists! *thumbs up*

Just a Nip

It's that time of year again--drag out the slow cooker, and prepare for yummy meals that require pretty much no work.

Today's experiment in kitchen puttering involved two large parsnips and a bunch of carrots.

Appetizing, right? Not really. I admit it. However, the finished product was really satisfying and yummy.

As a result of my recent fascination with medieval cookery and the like, I determined to try using parsnips in a dish, since I'd never even bought one. Here's what went down:

Into my slow cooker, I dumped-
2 parsnips, cubed small
a bunch of baby carrots
chicken stock
a good chunk of ginger, grated into mush
a goodly amount of grated nutmeg
cream
salt & pepper

I turned the slow cooker on around noon and let things simmer away on low until I remembered them in the later afternoon, when I dumped it into the food processor and blended well. I served with these nice little wheat biscuits I got from IKEA.

The result was a hearty soup with lots of interesting flavors. It's got a very mild sweetness and tangyness to it, because of the parsnips and carrots respectively. You can smell the nutmeg. We agreed that it deserved a place on the "Will Cook Again" list. The soup itself was satisfying enough to be a meal unto itself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I realize this soup looks suspiciously like a certain butternut squash soup posted previously, but about the only resemblance is the color. Swear.

Snowe, Redux

Aha! Remember that (not exactly) recipe for Snowe I posted a couple days ago? Well, the Medieval Cookery website actually relates a much more detailed recipe:

Source [Gloning, 16th cent. A Proper Neue Book of Cokery]: To make dyschefull of Snowe: Take a pottel of swete thycke creame and the whytes of eyghte egges, and beate them altogether wyth a spone, then putte them in youre creame and a saucerful of Rosewater, and a dyshe full of Suger wyth all, then take a stick and make it cleane, and than cutte it in the ende foure squsre, and therwith beate all the aforesayde thynges together, and as ever it ryseth takeit of and put it into a Collaunder, this done take one apple and set it in the myddes of it, and a thick bushe of Rosemary, and set it in the myddes of the platter, then cast your Snowe uppon the Rosemary and fyll your platter therwith. And yf you have wafers cast some in wyth all and thus serve them forthe.

Well, that clarifies everything! Heh. Actually, this page includes a modern version, with measurements, instructions, and all.

Gen Con Highlights, Day Three

1. We played in a scheduled session of the game, Hot War, with Malcolm Craig, the writer and designer. The game is another semi-historical one, set in post nuclear war London, after the Cold War of the fifties "went hot" and nuclear bombs were detonated in various areas. The mechanics of the game are really interesting. It revolves around relationships to determine conflict resolution--whether it be a heated discussion between characters, or an all out melee. Relationships and goals affect how many dice you're able to roll against who or whatever is opposing. Narration is not only done by the GM, but there are also opportunities for other players to either smooth the way or throw a wrench into the works by adding bits to the story. It's fairly simple once you get the concept down. Malcolm was incredibly fun as a GM. Wonderful Scottish accent aside, he was clearly excited about running the game, and it translated into all of us having a great time, with some surprising twists.

2. I got to meet and chat with Emily Care Boss, the designer of some really interesting relational storytelling games. Did some walking around the dealer hall, chatted with a bunch of nice folks.

2. The Brazilian Steakhouse in downtown Indianapolis. Words cannot describe. I was practically full after the amazing salad bar. Yes... I coupled the words "salad bar" with "amazing." On purpose. Not to mention the meat, meat, and more meat, they brought from table to table. There's a little card by your plate, and green means, "descend upon me with various wonderful meats!" while red means, "Oh God... Please let me digest. *whimper*" It really was as much entertainment as it was a meal. Next year we will fast the day before we go.

Gen Con Highlights, Day Two

1. Played through a Godlike module headed up by Shane Ivey, who is the publisher of the book, and the co-writer of that particular adventure. Godlike is a game set toward the end of World War II, and is essentially a history narrative game, with the added interest of both The Nazis and the Allies having "talents," or super powered people at their disposal. This creates a whole slew of interesting conflict resolution options.

For example, in the campaign we've just begun with Alex, the character I came up with not only is proficient with hand to hand combat, but she has the ability to rust metal. All the metal in her vicinity slowly rusts, and if she concentrates, she's able to create an accelerated blast of effect in a wide diameter that causes metal to turn to dust in seconds. This is a very handy skill, however, some thought has to go into using it, since it will affect her own party as well, leaving them without weapons etc.

The scenario with Shane was load of fun, and the characters actually not only all survived, but we accomplished our objective.

2. Indie publishing and writing seminars. Excellent---we spent all morning listening to interesting people who've written interesting things. I believe some of the separate seminars will be podcast online. If so, I'll like it for those of you who are interested.

3. Indie Game Awards. It's really neat to become familiar with the faces of people who've written things I've been thrilled about. The awards were short, sweet, and informal. Reign won Best Game of the year, and The Blossoms are Falling took home several nods as well. The Blossoms... is a supplementary setting for Burning Wheel (one of the most beautifully packaged books, in my opinion). It's set in Heian era Japan (794-1189).

4. Lots of chatting with the Indie folks over at the Small Press area. Some really fantastic and very interesting people.

5. A tiny two year old storm trooper pushing his own stroller, while his mom walked along beside. He was alternately dragging and gnawing on his blaster. My head almost exploded from the cuteness. Pictures to come.

Gen Con the First: A Day One Rundown

This being our first experience with Gen Con, the world's biggest gaming convention, we thought we'd take it pretty easy the first day. We're staying in a lovely little B&B/inn just a few minutes from the convention center and several hotels participating in the convention. It's an arts and crafts era mansion that's been divided up into rooms, and ours has a charmingly high bed and ceilings, with tall windows overlooking the garden. It wasn't exactly what we'd planned on, but everything else was booked--with 27,000 geeks coming to town at once, that's hardly surprising. It was a happy accident, which we may consider doing again.

Gen Con Day One Highlights:

1. It is very weird to suddenly be surrounded by thousands of people with the same interests. As we walked from the parking garage, I had a growing odd feeling until I suddenly realized that we were surrounded entirely by nerds. Ahh. My people!

2. Is that Chewbacca I see? Why yes. It IS Chewbacca. Or at least, it was the very imposingly tall Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in the orginal Star Wars movies. Interestingly, his hair looks pretty much like Chewbacca's hairdo.

3. We met and chatted with Luke Crane, the creator of our current indie game favorite: Burning Wheel. This is something that's true throughout the con--several times today we walked up to a booth to find that the person selling the game is actually the person who designed and wrote it. Surprisingly, designers and writers are more than willing to spend time chatting with you about things--not just hawking their wares, but chatting about what types of games you're interested in, their current favorites, etc. Other interesting chats with game designers included Ron Edwards (the father of indie gaming) who actually ran a demo for 4 of us to show us Spione, his recent project. It's a WWII game set in Berlin that uses playing cards to advance the story. We also had a chance to chat with Robert Bohl, who designed the game Misspent Youth, which we picked up.

4. This kind of goes along with #3 in terms of the sheer amount of interesting people we talked to. We ran into some of the guys from a favorite podcast, and had a chance to hang out with a couple of the guys who did translation and publishing for some of the first Japanese RPGs ever released in English.

5. Rebecca Guay. She was there. I waved. I love her art.

6. Indianapolis. It's a really lovely city. Lots of neat parks and squares, very clean, interesting architechture. It's been a pleasure to bumble around in it.

7. Tomas the Lapidary. He was not only selling a whole lot of very beautiful metal and stone jewelry, but he had his grinder right there and was making pieces. We got talking and it was really interesting to learn a little bit about working with copper. Fun human interest story: He was working on a headpiece for a woman who'd requested something to wear for her wedding--it was beautiful, incidentally. She'd expected it to take a few months, so it was a bit of a shock when he told her to come back in a couple hours for it. He was brushing and buffing it when I saw it, and I happened to be there when the bride-to-be stopped back. He'd exceeded her expectations so much that she burst into tears. He patted her with his big leather-gloved hand. It was very sweet.

A+ Number One Highlight of Day One was the lecture on Medieval Food Preservation by Daniel Meyers. It was absolutely fascinating stuff--the man was a veritable encyclopedia of information, and the lecture ended up with a huge question and answer session that yielded all kinds of interesting tidbits. I jotted down several recipes and ideas he mentioned. As if going to the lecture wasn't good enough, we ran into him as we were wandering toward the car, and got talking some more about medieval cookery and recipes. The topic wandered all over Western Europe as we stood on a street corner, and eventually the three of us ended up wandering into a cushy hotel lobby and ordering drinks, and talking. It turns out he and his wife and family live fairly near us, and he's going to have us over and teach us some more hearty medieval recipes! He was a really great guy. I'm kind of ridiculously excited to have made such a neat friend who's such a well of knowledge.

A recipe to round the night out:

Snowe (no exact measurements, I'm afraid)

Whipping cream
egg whites
sugar
rose water--not the tiny perfume kind, the bigger bottles

Apparently if you add the egg whites to the cream, whip it, and add the sugar and rose water, it's just divine. As I was scribbling the recipe down, Ed started to ask if we were going to try making it. I nodded vigorously.

Out and About

We had a pleasant evening out the other night, with dinner at Pappadeaux and a movie. For those in the Northern Cincy area who have a hankering for really solid seafood/Cajun cuisine and an interesting atmosphere, I recommend Pappadeaux.

Whoever designed the inside of the place really did a great job--it was like stepping into a converted dock side warehouse in a town that was a cross of Hilton Head and New Orleans. The light was low, but not too low, and the kitchen was cleverly designed to look like a fish market. The patio looked like it would have been a really nice place to eat too, if it hadn't been so hot out. Lots of stonework, brick, and fountains.

We started with crispy alligator with creole sauce and the boudin, both of which were a hit, though the boudin was a little odd to look at. Since it's natural casing sausage stuffed with dirty rice and other things, it's not firm like a regular sausage. Which makes it sort of...floppy. Or flaccid, if you will. Moving on. Despite the look, it turned out to be excellent.

Dinner was a combination of various things that involved softshell crab, which was super delicious. It was a bit of an afterthought, too. You can add one to your meal for an extra $4.95, and it turned out to be my favorite part (not to belittle the rest of the meal). We ended up with just a ton of food, so we had leftovers for lunch the next day.

In which I rave about Joss Whedon:

So I recommend you go immediately to view the first installment of Joss Whedon's latest internet project: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which was released today.

The next two installments will be July 17th and 19th, and I believe it will only be available to be viewed online until the 25th, so act now!

...Hello?

I love my window feeder.

Happy Fourth of July, American pals! I hope there's are lots of fun BBQs and fireworks for everyone. It's a little rainy here, but hopefully it will clear up by tonight.

Mariemont is set to celebrate its second year with "big-time" professional fireworks, so assuming it isn't pushed back to tomorrow, we'll walk over to the park for the carillon concert and "ooo" and "ahh" along with everyone. Or if we're super-lazy, then we'll just sit on the patio and watch them like we did last year.

Big in Japan. And Texas. (and in my house)

Bravo to El Paso, Texas for being cool enough to surprise Tom Waits onstage and present him with a key to the city.

Apparently, during the show, Mr. Waits had just finished pounding away at the piano when a uniformed officer of the El Paso Police department walked onstage to announce the presentation from an El Paso council woman, who came onstage and presented a nicely mounted key to the city to Good Ol' Tom as the crowd roared in applause. Despite the surprise, Mr. Waits kept his characteristic quick wit, thanking the city and saying,

"Apparently this fits every lock in El Paso. If you find me in your living room in my underwear, we have an understanding."

The beauty of loops

The lovely and enigmatic Imogen Heap demonstrates stupid amounts of skill in creating and using loops mid song. The same sort of technique can be seen in Andrew Bird's video below.

I have no idea how she multitasks like she does--knowing where each track is, fading things in and out, recording new loops and making sure everything stays synced... it makes my head spin.

Incidentally, this song is a brilliant expression of how it feels to get together with family over holidays. We love each other, but we drive each other crazy sometimes.

Of Customer Service Nightmares

Actually, if you get NO customer service at all, does that count as a nightmare? It's maybe more like insomnia. Hmm.

Well, the Culprit Company of the Day is Gamefly.

I would first like to say that the idea of Gamefly is great. You make a list of video games you're interested in playing, and then they send you a couple at a time with return paid envelopes and you send back and get the next ones on your list, etc etc. It's basically Netflix for games. Except that Netflix is both competent and reachable. If nothing goes wrong, Gamefly is just fine, but the moment there's a glitch...good luck.

Now is the winter of my discontent:

A couple years ago, we subscribed to Gamefly and were completely satisfied. It didn't even matter that they had a longer turnaround than Netflix. No biggie. We got the games we wanted, and everything was dandy.

It was after a hiatus in our membership that things went sour. I signed up again with an email address I'd created specifically for Gamefly. We have the benefit of being able to create as many subdomains for our email as we want. When I sign up for a site, I use the site's name in the email address I enter, ie: gamefly@myname... etc. that way, if I begin getting spam, I know exactly who sold me. Handy!

Well, shortly after reopening our account with the new address, I suddenly began receiving vast quantities of spam to that address. What does that tell me? My email information is not safe with Gamefly. If my email is not safe, what more of my personal information is not safe?

I know there isn't anything I can do about this but make emails coming to that address bounce. Gamefly would just deny that information was compromised or sold. Whatever. I moved on. Spamfilter, activate!

I was only mildly perterbed about the email thing until recently, when I needed to actually contact customer service about a login error I'm getting. Here's the scoop:

I submitted a query through the "Contact" page on the Gamefly site. I waited. And I waited. Though it said I would receive a reply within 24 hours... a week later, I hadn't heard anything--not even an email saying my question was recieved.

So I looked through the Gamefly site for another way to contact them. What did I find? NADA. "We are an internet company, so we deal with customers through email" the site says. What bullshit. There are only about a million internet companies that also provide phone customer services. There's not a phone number posted anywhere on the website. The only other option is to send an email to customer service, which I did. Again, no confirmation that anything had been received.

Finally, I got frustrated and Googled for a customer service number I knew HAD to exist. What I found was a plethora of people relating their fruitless attempts to get in touch with the company, along with one lone super-secret phone number.

(888) 986-6400, for those interested.

I called it, and got a message from a chipper woman saying that customer service is open for a whopping four hours a day on weekdays (9-1 PT), and that she recommends customers try emailing or "live chat" customer help on the website.

At the time I called, it should have been 9:30 PT, so I have no idea what was up with that.

There was a grain of hope, though--live chat support on the website? I might just get my answer after all! Sadly, my hopes were dashed when I went to the website and found... absolutely no evidence that there is any kind of chat or live supprt at all.

At this point, I was ready to gnaw off my own arm. This elusiveness is usually characteristic of fly-by-night scam companies that take your money and then make it impossible to contact them. If we hadn't actually received games from Gamefly the past, I would have been worried that's what I was dealing with.

Again, I searched the web, and this time, I found that by pressing "5" during the chipper woman's message, I would be rerouted to voicemail. Otherwise they disconnect you at the end of the message. Should you have to do all this spy work and secret handshakes and codes in order to talk to a real person at a company? My inclincation is NO. Not unless it's the "Super-Secret Spy Nonexistant Fun Espionage Club" you're calling. Then it might make sense.

Though I was tempted to leave an expletive laced tirade, I instead left a polite request for a call back (as the message told me to do). A few days later, still nothing.

So here were my attempts thus far to get a response over the past couple weeks:

2 submissions though the Gamefly website
2 emails to the support email address
numberous calls to the secret customer service number
1 voicemail message left at said number

That's a lot of trying to get in touch, don't you think? The happy (?) ending to this story is that I FINALLY got a hold of someone on the phone today, and the issue was fixed in about 2 minutes. That's two weeks it took to fix a two minute issue.

Nice. *golf clap*

The Other Side of the OH.

Well, I'll be gosh-swoggled! Apparently there is actually more to this state than flat farmland and Cincinnati.

This past week I went on a getaway to Southeastern Ohio (about an hour and a half due east), and found that, geography-wise, it was far more interesting than I'd imagined. One arm of the Appalacians extends into that area, and due to a massive meteor impact age upon age ago, there are plenty of gorges, cliffs and caves to explore.

We rented a "lodge" on Highland Nature Sanctuary that was actually an old farm house from the turn of the century. It was still filled with neat antiques and had most excellent wrap around porches and lots of nooks, comfy chairs, and hammocks to settle down with a book. Interestingly, though I am a veritable mosquito magnet, there were actually not many out in the woods at all.

Behind the lodge was a hiking trail that takes you down into the gorge, and along the cliff face by the river down there. It was pretty darn lovely. The preservation society has been buying up land in the area to protect caves and rock formations and such, and they've only recently begun renting out Ravenwood and Beechcliff lodges. Incidentally, people, these places are ridiculously cheap. If you dig on the website, you can find individual prices.



This has not very much to do with anything, but I find it really amusing that this turkey was hitting on a chicken. He was doing all his puffing and prancing, and she just kept rolling her eyes.



The other cool thing about the area, for those of us interested in decaying historical buildings, is that there are a plethora of tiny towns that are basically just a stoplight with abandoned general stores and houses right up by Rt 50 as you drive through. It's pretty fascinating to see, and I wish my camera hadn't run out of juice. Chillicothe in particular is not such a small town, but it's a prime example of that really interesting crumbling beauty. The downtown is like a ghost town--there aren't many for sale signs, but many of the beautiful high ceiling-ed buildings on and around the main street are empty, and unused. One such is an old opera house, that I had to restrain myself from breaking into to look around. You can just picture the old motorcars on the cobbled roads when the place was actually Ohio's capitol--bustling with people, all coming to that part of the state for business, or theraputic mineral soaks and tours through newly discovered caves and Hopewell Indian mounds.

I'm kind of tempted to look at real estate prices in Chillicothe--not because I'd want to move there, but just because I'm curious how much one those great old houses would run in a place like that.

The Bag of Bags

A while ago I developed a fascination within my crafting habits of creating something new out of itself. That sounds a little confusing, I realize, but let me give a couple examples that may clarify.

The "making things out of the same things" kick was first inspired by this vaguely creepy site wherein a lady takes the leftover fur from client's pet groomings, and spin it into yarn. How quirky would it be to make a dog a sweater out of its own fur? That's the sort of thing I'm talking about.

With the bundles of fur gleaned from the cats when warm weather finally hit, I hand-spun about 6 feet of yarn, which I fashioned into another, smaller cat for them to play with. They had a weird fascination with it, like a toddler looking at pictures of themselves--not quite sure what it is, but it's so familiar.... they adored playing with their little offspring so much that it got destroyed before I thought take a picture.

Then last month I stumbled over this instructable, which was the perfect realization of the "making things out of the same things" idea, only more sensible and less involving cat hair (which is always a plus). Instead, it involves using all those plastic grocery bags most of us have stowed away someplace and creating a sturdy, reusable grocery bag out of them.

I was lucky enough to have sisters in town at the time I decided to go about rolling and cutting up bags to make the "yarn" for the project, and Em helped by making neat plastic circles. No matter how I've tried since then, mine are ragged and wonky in comparison. :(

Ah well. In any case, here's the progress on the bag. It's not all that lovely, admittedly, but I think it'll be a handy thing, and though our community has a vigorous plastic bag recycling program, it's nice to repurpose them permanently instead.

I'm also entertained that everyone who's come to visit lately has bestowed upon me a bag or two. In the last picture, you can see the strata of various places. There are darker bags from Ohio Kroger, a line of white from a random Hillers bag I'd saved from Michigan, and then the lighter yellow of Michigan Krogers.

I also have some Target bags I'm looking forward to using on a separate bag. I think a red and white bag would be much easier on the eyes than this one.

I'll post more as the bag evolves. I'm (supposedly) crocheting it, but I'm an awful crocheter, and I don't work on it as often as I ought to.

A Kitschy Gem From Back When

The other night we were fortunate enough to be introduced to the super-sleek-sixties-spy thriller that is Mario Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK! (Or simply Diabolk). (Many thanks, Alex!) Holy crow, was it fun... It's full of interesting camera work involving reflections and odd angles, bizzare secret lairs, fabulous costumes, and the cherry on this psychadelic sundae is a luscious soundtrack done by the illustrious Ennio Morricone. (the song above is "Driving Decoys")

Apparently the original masters of the soundtrack were lost in a fire in the 70s, but someone over at YouTube has their hands on some of the songs. Don't forget to take in the trailer.

The Boy was pointing out just how much Austin Powers owes to this movie in particular. Only this stuff is serious. Dead serious. Dun-dun-dunnn!

You little whippersnapper, you!

Fair warning: those who are squeamish about bugs should turn back now.

I was warned by neighbors and friends a couple weeks ago that this season would be the year the cicada emerge. Sure enough, not a week later, abandoned cicada shells began appearing stuck to everything, along with their sluggish former inhabitants, crowding onto trees and bushes.

Anyone who's seen Neon Genesis Evangelion knows the sounds of summer in Tokyo 3: the never-ending drone of cicadas. It makes the air feel heavy and muggy, even if it's a fairly nice day out. I'm not sure if the cicadas depicted in the anime are of the seventeen year variety, but the ones we have here in Cincinnati apparently are.

Cicada deposit their eggs into the bark of trees and such places, and when they hatch, the larvae burrow into the ground, where they percolate for seventeen years (some varieties for 3-5 years) before emerging, molting, mating, and singing frantically before dying. What a life: Laze around for most of it, then have a huge party before you croak.

Since they're relatively cute (as bugs go), and don't bite or sting, the neighborhood kids have been having a heyday collecting them. I see little herds of kids wandering the neighborhood with jars.



The most interesting thing about this whole event is the constant sound of them. It's been cool this season, so they didn't begin chirping until one particularly warm day. From inside the house, I thought someone must be running a whippersnapper outside, but when the apparent yard work went on for hours, I stepped out on the patio to realize it was actually the cicadas. Most of them are higher up in the trees, so it's not as if there are massive drifts of bugs everywhere, but man--judging by the noise they make, there are millions of them out there.

The sound of it just rolls and swells, coming from everywhere at once. It's really something.

But in a couple weeks, they will all have done their procreative duties, and will die, leaving the task of deafening the neighborhood in the very capable hands (or wings) of the next generation.

It's been ridiculously gorgeous out lately--sunny and around 60 degrees. Now I realize that a lot of people don't count 60 as being gorgeous (Fools, I tell you!), but I'd be content is this lasted all summer long.

We had a bit of an outing today with Tif's dogs in attendance--through the railroad tunnel, down to the community garden and along the river a bit. Things we saw:

I think this field is planted with winter wheat. It's very green and very pretty. Back by the river is a whole field of wild shallots with mulberry trees bordering it. Hmm... for some reason, I think I'll be going back with a basket later in the summer.

Add one to the pile...

Having folk from out of town visiting got me in the frame of mind to explore Cincinnati once again. It was a busy winter, and we'd stopped going on adventures as often as we were. It was downright lovely to explore with some of my sisters and their tiny ones this week. (Thanks so much for the visit, you guys!)

Here's a nifty blog someone did that not only gives some fun ideas of interesting things and places in Cincinnati, it has beautiful photography as well. It just recently stopped updating, but the archives are well worth sifting through.

Proof of Keenness

And as a follow-up to the below post, here's one of my favorite songs from the hardworking Mr. Bird at the moment.

Making Noggin cooler, one cameo at a time.

Hurrah for someone at Noggin liking good music! :)

I have a crush on Andrew Bird. He whistles like...uh, an angel. If angels whistled.

Der Hollow Book

Well, I've painted the outside of the hollow book/box, and it looks a bit more "booky" than it did. I do need to find a thin belt of some kind to hold it closed, since the little magnet inside doesn't do the job all that well, particularly if I'll be carrying art supplies around in it and such. I'm picturing a book strap like the kids used to carry books home from school back in the "olden days." I'll probably have to make one if I can't find one to repurpose. Ah well. It's a little sloppy, but I think if I have another go at it, I'll know more what I'm doing, and will be able to make a better one. At $1.99 a pop for the plain box, it's not so bad. I'm also considering trying covering it with leather on the outside--if I can find a leather thin enough, and an epoxy strong enough. That's for another day, though.

Charlie bit my finger - again !

Just thought I'd add to the plethora of adorable kid videos that seem to be going around...

That Charlie. He thinks the whole thing is just hilarious!

Clicking the Classics

I recently discovered Digital Classics, which is a library of "over a hundred literary masterpieces, digitized, and bound in the finest electronic leather." They have a "reader" that pops up, and you're able to view the pages as you would with a normal book, and click on the corners to turn backward and forward.

Though I do prefer a paper copy of a book in my hands, this was a pleasant way to ingest a little classic that was perfect for this time of year--Frances Hodgeson Burnett's The Secret Garden. What a perfect thing to read this time of year, when everything is becoming green and growing. Despite some of the melodrama (people making exultant exclamations!! All the time!!) of the time, the book was sweet and as charming as I'd remembered it, and I do recommend it.

If I were reading it to a child, I might consider skipping some of the bits about India, as the view of "primitive natives" at the time it was written doesn't fit in with the world these days. That, or take a couple minutes to discuss with the child about the time it was written.

These little things don't stop the book from being wonderful and magical, and one I loved dearly as a child. Speaking of books, I'm making over a cheapie little book-shaped wooden box from a craft store, and hopefully it will turn out to look at least somewhat like an actual book.

I've used an exacto to cut fine lines on the edges of the box, and have used a dry brush to paint on some gold for the edges of the "pages." Hopefully they'll eventually look like actual, weathered pages by the time I'm done with the outside.

I'm also "imprinting" the top of the book with a design I've blatantly stolen from a gorgeous 1910 copy of Oliver Wendell Holmes' Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. It's a beautiful book--even the inside cover pages are gorgeous. In any case, I'm trying to engrave that same sort of design into this book, though I'm not sure what the title will be, yet.