Behind the Cypress Tree

Behind the Cypress Tree
Originally uploaded by jessajune

Picture per day photos are behind schedule - I'm mostly taking them, but I wanted to get all my vacation photos up on Flickr before uploading any subsequent pictures. I finally have finished that - and made a set for the Spain pictures. The ones from London are currently on the front page. I'll be filling in past IPPD photos soon.

This particular picture was taken from the top of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, on the Nativity side of the church. That cypress tree you see there is at the top of the front facade on that side of the church. I do not particularly like heights (note: this may be a huge understatement) but it was absolutely worth it for the gorgeous views, and the close up look at the higher portions of the structure.

PSA: Making Up Emails

Public Service Announcement: When you use a fake email to create an account somewhere, you are running the risk that a) you'll forget your password and won't be able to retrieve it and b) that email exists already and the person who owns it might just try to create an account on the same site.

I just had a curious experience when I went to use an online service that I couldn't recall using before, only to find an account for my email already existed. Thinking maybe I'd signed up and forgotten, I requested a password reset, and then logged in and took a look at the profile. Hmmm, yeah, that isn't me.

Now I have access to someone else's profile, and without deliberate malice, I have changed their password so that they can't get back in to the account. The organization uses the email address as a gateway, and if the original creator tries to re-reset their password... the link will go to my email, and they won't be able to follow up.

So that leaves me wondering what I ought to do now. Change the profile info and proceed? Create a new profile with a different email address (not what I'd choose, I use this specific address for a lot of web services and I prefer to keep them all together)? Post a doofy picture and leave strange messages for this person's in-service contacts? At any rate, take a lesson from this unfortunate person, and if you don't want to be bothered with spam, create a separate email for service accounts and never bother to check it, rather than entering a random address and hoping for the best.

Mundane Hallucinations

One day, not long ago, I was tidying the kitchen area (calling the area where I cook in this cottage a "kitchen" is generous to the extreme), and I encountered a box grater, of the sort usually used for shredding cheese. "Odd!" I thought to myself, "I did not think I had one of these anymore, and have been grating my cheese on a tiny micro-plane! This may come in handy later."

Today, I would like to grate some cheese. Can I find this mystical box grater? Of course not. Did I imagine having it in the first place? Possibly. Did I spend 15 minutes looking for it anyway? Yes.

In other, more productive news, I am one row away from finishing my first cowl - I am hoping to get it blocking and take some photographs today. Then I have to come up with another project to take with me to jury duty for the next couple of weeks.

Bobcat!

While I was sitting here at my desk, I swear, a bobcat walked by. I was kind of glancing out my window over the top of my laptop screen, and I thought, "hey, there's that neighbor cat again... he seems bigger than I remembered... and his tail is not as short as I thought... and omg, he is too big to be a housecat.

By then, he had passed the window, so I went to the front door, which is half glass, and there he was, standing on my doorstep, looking off towards the chicken coop. (Don't worry, that thing is STURDY. Dad builds stuff to last.) So I'm standing on one side of the door, and he's standing on the other, pretending that I do not exist. Seriously, not even an ear flicker. He pondered the birds for a moment, then sauntered off down the lawn towards the front.

My cats didn't bat an eyelash - I'm guessing they've seen him before. I rushed off to Wikipedia to confirm that he was indeed a bobcat. The pictures and description confirm it. He was about the size of a small dog (not a toy-sized one, obviously), not large but clearly not cat-sized either. He seemed to be in good health - well groomed, confident.

It was really exciting and made my day!

Oak St. Neighborhood

I said I'd get back to the depression thing... I don't really have the energy for it now, but here's some of what I've been doing today: oakstneighborhood.googlepages.com.

One of the properties that the cemetery district wants to take is where I grew up. The same place I'm living right now, in fact. They've been planning it for a year; we just found out a few weeks ago.

It's really fucking scary, but I think the worst part of it is knowing that the cemetery board meeting minutes (that I used to make up this timeline) are available to the public if you know to go and ask for them. But why would we have known we needed to?

ZOMG LOLIBRARIANS

Ceiling librarian is watching your metadata. No, seriously.

More here.

SLAM!

The stairwell door, it is broken. SLAM! Every time someone walks through it... SLAM!

I had no idea how much traffic went through that door. Until today. SLAM!

It is driving me batshit crazy.

SLAM!