I iron the blues that make the whole world sing.

Some residual nomenclature bugs me.

"White Sale" is when stores put towels and sheets on special. I have never owned a white sheet or towel. I don't think I've used a white towel except in a hotel. No one buys white towels for their homes. Maybe there will be a backlash and people will start buying white again because it's "different" and "no one" uses it.

Also, "linen closet". Why is it called that? I have owned two things that were made from linen. One was a tablecloth, the other was an ill-fitting shirt that went to charity last year. No one keeps tablecloths in the linen closet. Dwellings large enough or old enough to have linen closets do not have them near the dining room, but usually upstairs near the bedrooms. So I accept "table linen" as a valid phrase. But even people who are unspeakably rich do not buy sheets made from linen. It's not nice when compared to 1200 threadcount Egyptian cotton. We should stop calling the linen closet the linen closet.

And. If we're going to keep one of those terms, shouldn't they match? Shouldn't stores have "linen sales" or people have a "whites closet"?

Then I could tell my SO to get some sheets from the blues closet, because I'm contrary and all my good sheets are blue.

Some success and some progress needed on re-wheeling my Luddite carriage

I sort of want to show you my iPod holder. But it would require a lot of Blur™ because I have it attached by giant binder clip to a drawer of my filing cabinet which is plastered with my magnet collection holding ads and bumper stickers and notes. It is much more definitive about my RealLife than I would feel comfortable sharing. Still, it's like way cool that I have something that holds both the featherweight Nano and my studio-grade headphones.

I ordered some books. Managed to get a 4 for 3 deal from Amazon and free shipping means it's just over $21. Also put some stuff on hold with the library. My to-be-read pile hovered near zero for years and only lately have I been able to find enough stuff to keep up with the demand. A lot of it has sucked. One of the blogs I started reading a few months ago does not distinguish between new books that are good and new books which are bad. All their "reviews" look the same. Although it is a useful source for new book announcements, I think I might unsubscribe just so I never run across something as stupid as City of Bones.

Does anyone have any recommendations on task managing software? What about version control? I am a casual user, but I find that my brain fights with itself and I need to be able to revert to previous versions and to track changes, in case I work on a story during a zombie day without realizing it. For the task managing software, I could use to be prompted about regular tasks on a consistent basis (my car needs washing, and as far as I can tell, it's needed washing for 15 months without me doing anything about it.) I also need to track sub-string ideas for on-going interests. Like if I find a plot bunny or write a snippet of something, there needs to be an organized place to store it for expansion or inspiration. I have a number of knitting projects and at any point in time I can remember at most one of them. I have 3 active projects and they all need some specialized attention but when I look at the bag with the project in it, I can't remember what it is that I should be doing about it. Consequently nothing gets done. And I need an alarm for my computer. I want it to interrupt me at 10:30pm so I can shut down and go to bed.

And can someone give me a pointer to something that explains iPod playlist generation? I'm flummoxed. My iPod is full of crud I don't really want to listen to (Carl Orff is not a personal favorite.) Although I can skip ahead manually (and this information is supposed to help it choose in the future) I find that to be rather annoying to do all the time. I have competing needs for music. If I'm looking for background stuff while I'm writing or reading, it helps a lot for it to be instrumental. But if I'm playing a game or doing something non-verbal, I prefer the standard pop music. Having it mix them is the most atrocious experience. Additional extra credit given if someone can explain where the library flag for "never sync this to iPod" is. Christmas music should not be included in a random mix.

Eragon, Fragon, Gragon, hragon... hey that one sounds like it should be in Beowulf!

I am watching the movie Eragon. It was on TV and my TiVo recorded it as a suggestion. The movie is awful.

I blame the source material because the book was atrocious. I talked to a number of people whose children loved it. I thought about it and I understand why. It's because Eragon is pieced together piece by piece from pretty much every other popular fantasy work in the English language. If you had not read LOTR or seen Star Wars or Harry Potter or McCaffreys' Pern or read any of the other things everyone's heard of (there were even elements from the Robin Hobb books, especially watching the characters walk for several weeks and when they arrive, nothing happens) it might seem really interesting and satisfying. To me it read like plagiarism.

The movie uses the same horse scenes and similar settings to LOTR, with the angsty closeups of Luke mourning Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen. So the movie feels like a parody.

I know I struggle with noticing when things are supposed to be funny. Most of the intentionally funny stuff seems just cruel to me since it focuses on isolating and excluding people who don't fit in, but I have a really good sense of the absurd. Jeremy Irons's character in Eragon, (I keep typing Eragorn... heh.) whose name is something like "Bum", sounds like a cross between Gandalf and Obi-Wan Kenobi. It must be intended to be hilarious, right? There's an in-joke that the children just don't get? This was supposed to be the Hot Shots of fantasy films, right? I keep suspecting they didn't know they were making fun of themselves. If it wasn't intended to be a parody, there should be a lot of people complaining about copyright infringement.