EraserGirl

While I was sitting here waiting for Snoopy to be delivered by an Animal Control officer who had never been to my house, I had to text her some directions to my house, and it occured to me to add a snap of the map of my house to the cluster of images on my phone that I keep permanently. Over the last few years I have come to depend on the little camera in my smartphone for nearly all my note taking needs. But first I had to UNLEARN myself from the idea of what a note is… Evernote is good for that whack on the side of the head. and I had to start thinking of images as something completely temporary. I may be just snapping an image that in a few days, minutes or hours it will become just a dead post it note headed for the trash can icon.

I am not all that impressed with the camera on the Iphone 3 for creative or permanent work. Once in a while it may take something worth keeping but not when I want it to.
But I do use it to replace my failing memory and a pencil. Why write something down, when I can just take a picture of it? why keep track of that post it note or the back of a business card, or whatever I happened to scribble something on to. (there’s no way for me to escape ending that sentance in a preposition)

It took me the while to make it my FIRST response whenever I get a scrap of information, but now I just shoot it: phone numbers, emails, apppointments, directions…business cards… I snap it and hand the it back to the person, instead of waiting until I find it crumpled up in a wet ball in the laundry. Sometimes I will save the image as a ACTUAL NOTE by forwarding it to Evernote or emailing it to myself.

If I walk by a poster I want to remember, a flyer for a yard sale, concert, lost dog, the hours of operation, a recipe in a book, a book cover or bar code, the model number of a device, the ingredient label on a food item, the shelf tag on a grocery product, the price tag in a store, the label on a piece of clothing, a call number for a library book, and the list goes on. If i need to pick up a specific part at home depot, I am just as likely to either snap a picture of the packaging or call it up on the web and send the screen grab to my phone, so I can just hold it out and see ‘THIS IS WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR.’ Not to mention snapping images of things i can’t quite describe…

I have this piece i have to replace from a bracket of a patio umbrella. i know what it does, but i will need to show it to someone to find out what it is…

Most recently I am shooting my odometer when I get in the truck and get out, thus elminating the need to write down my mileage. With this phone you can snap a ‘print screen’ by hitting the ‘enter’ button and the ‘on/off’ button simultaneously, which I find wicked convenient, I can look up something on the internet while using WIFI and then snap it, and won’t have to burn data plan minutes while I am elsewhere.

A couple of ideas I picked up from hacking sites were : take picture of your parking garage location, i would take it further and shoot your license plate, registration, license, insurance info, utility bill account numbers, and so forth. I am forever sending my license and birth certificate images to people with a W-9 and other forms. There are apps, that let you LOCK images on your phone so they can’t be retrieved by others. I embed them in notes in an Awesome Notes app, and then code lock just that notebook.

There is no music or ringtones and or even games beyond tetris…so there’s a room for more images on mine – the Yankee in me won’t let me upgrade until this one stops working…..over the couple of years i have had it…i’ve kinda figure out which sort of ‘picture’ pictures remain undeleted. Those snapshots people used to carry in their wallet…….you can even snap a photo of another photo if i don’t have it already. Myself, I tend to keep photos of anything i bring up in conversation: photos of rescued animals that are still up for adoption, animals with a good rescue story, pets i have worth talking about, photos of the covers of books I have published and so forth. (my children ha!)

Besides the little map, and the 100 year old picture of my house and a picture of a meet up spot on the river that comes in hand to direct people. A clever photo is well worth 140 characters.

years back… can’t remember how long…i had my gas stove disconnected and i bought a counter top oven (think giant toaster oven) and a hotplate. I was done heating an entire metal box just to cook a small anything. i also didn’t like the idea of a continuously burning pilot light..not to mention i always owe the gas company my soul. Anyway things work out fine with my other methods of cooking food. the mic on top of the fridge pops popcorn and reheats things, and the counter top oven…a model i adore but they no longer make, i keep in good order because i can bake bread, cakes and whole chickens in it nicely. The one thing you CAN’T cook without an actual flame is a piece of steak. at least i can’t..i’d rather not ruin a nice piece of meat by frying it up, so during the few times of the year that i have the overwhelming urge to eat steak… it’s not often but i do live downwind of a steak house…i will usually get it to go.

In the summer there are other reasons to have access to fire…grilling vegetables is one, grilled anything else is another. – chicken, steak, corn on the cob, the odd piece of fish… so every couple of years I buy one of those tabletop – all of the assembly required – gas grills. And when they get too cruddy to overwinter on the porch, i throw them away and buy another the next year…i know that’s frivolous of me..but they aren’t built to last and oven cleaner costs $6.50 a can…so in my mind’s eye….it works out. When i started buying the little suckers they listed at $19 on sale for $15.99 or something…then they inched up to $24 on sale for $19…where they hovered conveniently for 10 years…these last couple of years they have practically disappeared from the shelves replaced with much more elaborate and costly models. when i do find them..such as the back corner of the Walmart they are now $24 no sale price. So last year i didn’t get one.

This year I did…i told you can’t be trusted with money….and i bought a few small pieces of steak…i wrapped them and tossed them in the freezer to be thawed when the urge gets too great. mostly I grill vidalia onions and corn inside its wrapper and so forth. Nothing better than grilled onion and peppers even without any sort of dead animal flesh to accompany it.

i bought the damn thing 2 days ago when i WANTED the steaks…and the box sat until i had time to assemble the bitch..now i have constructed at least TEN of these fucking things – perhaps more…and can generally do it without the instructions…but what i have noticed is that every year the are different..and every year they are slightly more complicated – not in the design but in the assembly…the handle is still the hand, but now the hand screws also hold up a bracket for the heat diffuser, whereas last time the heat thingy just balanced on something not so complicated. needless to say, i like to cut corners and always end up with extra pieces…hell this year they sent along the name plate and two screws and wingnuts to make sure i attach it.

Now the changes aren’t radical, it still looks the same and does the same job, but certain holes and screws and brackets are moved, changed enlarged etc.. just enough to require full attention..not something you can do drunk, unless you aren’t very hungry.  I suppose the improvements all stem from complaints lodged against the previous models… i mean it IS a small steel box meant to contain FIRE, it is a reasonable assumption that it is HOT to the touch right? I am hoping they do not continue to get much more complicated – my patience for such self serve things, wears thin and my screw-to-washer-to-locknut-to-wingnut dexterity will not likely improve.  If a part rolls away there’s a very good chance I will just continue as best I can with the ones remaining.    I don’t think cleaning or maintaining it for a life long affair is worth the effort they are prime examples of designed obsolence…by next summer what itsn’t carbonized will be sporting rust and so forth.  Or perhaps I should just get the stove reconnected so i can house grill my Vidalias in peace….nah… the gas company can still get stuffed.

Last weekend was a holiday weekend and the Census mandated that we work..especially on Monday…now Sunday and Monday were some beautiful fucking days…bright and shiny, not too hot, nice breeze…and i spent it driving around rich white folks neighborhoods trying to get them to take an innocuous survey. On the whole I did okay…still trying to work quickly if not a lot. With the census, if you drag your ass trying to make the work last longer, they will take your caseload and give some of it away…yielding less money in the long run and that would be bad, I still need to get some utilities paid off. Anyhow I did okay and then Tuesday after getting paid running a shit load of errands but truck broke down …like clockwork… my mechanic who is a very accomodating fella, couldn’t see it until yesterday, so for a couple of days I had the option of starting it with..a screwdriver…and as it happens i STILL have the above screwdriver that i spent many months starting my mustang with in college. It needed an alternator and i didn’t have the money then either. I did some hours on the phone so i didn’t loose too much, but no way in hell was i gonna drive around trying to knock on doors popping my hood every time.

Somehow the universe never fails to know when i am getting a little ahead, then it swims up and bites me in the ass. To be fair, i can certainly bite my own ass as well. As I always do when i get a little bit of money, I went a little mad and treated myself to some new unmentionables and some replacement replacement sunglasses. After destroying my expensive pair I tried a five dollar pair with predictable results. I also blew my money frivolusly on pet and human food. Silly human. Then there is the spate of self indulgent purchases a couple of used books, some thriftstore clothing and so forth. I just can’t be trusted with money. EVen the couponing things blew up, as in all the fuss and nonsense of shopping and scewdrivering the ignition, I lost my fat little wallet filled with coupons.

Two paychecks in and i still haven’t tithed the powers that be. Just concentrating on all the little people I need to pay off. The guy in India who does my OCR work, the new guy in India I am engadging to convert SicPress.com to Ecommerce function, a guy i just remembered i owe $40 bucks to for a couple of decent books. etc.. In my world you always pay off real people first. And the mechanic is real people, so he gets paid off pretty quick.

The last week or so I have been very self pitying. A lot of my friends come to me to FIX things for them..and that’s about the only time I hear from them. Find me the proper paperwork to transport an animal across state lines, do some research on this person we are planning a monument to, do some work on this image for me etc… not that I mind, I do like being able to DO things other people can’t. But it would be nice for to be wanted around for one’s self..but you take what you can get. So the Screwdriver goes back into the glovebox for the next time I need to fix something.

Like I said I can’t be trusted with the slightest hint of money.   Because I am happy with the guy I have in India who is doing some OCR work for me…and I have another guy lined up to work on my website, when i get the money together.  He wants to start working now, but i really need to dedicated the next few checks to the utility companies.  The website doesn’t have to be finished until the end of the summer.  But he gave me a good price and we have a plan, so I feel good about it.  I got cocky.  I have this CHORE that I have been putting off for AGES….  at some point last year Amazon started listing the Cafepress items and then instead of making $40 bucks a year, i’m now making about $200 bucks a year.  Not a bad improvement considering i have done nothing much.  A couple of times a year maybe I add a bunch more designs to the Cafepress site.  They are almost all just copyright free line art.  But I have slacked off at improvments such as adding appropriate tags and adding the new products available to my old images.   So i got a little behind.  And the chore seems boring and overwhelming to me.   So I actually put out a craigslist ad for someone to do this FOR me.  Like I said, I can’t be trusted.   And I got about a 10 responses in the first 12 hours…then i WOKE UP and pulled the add.  Because I am basically being an asshole.   I was fishing for someone who would do it for LESS money than i would do it for.   The American’s, LIKE ME,  can’t really afford to work for less than $12 an hour, even I insist on $10 (which is more than i make as a substitute teacher)  - So what the fuck am i looking for?  someone who wants to do it as a favor? so that I can make more money?   I am such as ass.

At the moment I have three books that need finishing one with 70 more pages of images to restore, and two that need proofing.  The cookbook indexing is kicking my ass….i NEED to do those things..and there is no assurance i will make $200 a year from them.  But for some reason i have avoided this other chore for nearly a year.  I have finally added it to my TO DO LIST – If i will pay someone else $10 an hour, then I really need to do it myself.   Unlike what I am asking Sumit to do in India…he’s working on part of the books that takes me away from finishing them.   I am actually ahead by paying him to do the OCR part of the work, then i can do the proofing and indexing without getting sick of looking at the text and start making mistakes.

The Cafepress crap on the other hand is infinitely tedious.  Basically take an image and add it to a bunch more products, but i need to keep track of which ones i have done and which ones I haven’t.  Even though some of the designs have never sold at all.   I will probably take a good look at the designs and remove some of them, maybe…i think i get 500 images with my Cafepress account…but if i am improving sales, then i should look at upgrading the account…which will have to wait until i upgrade the products.   It’s all part and parcel to that theory I had at the first of the year about improving the level of PASSIVE money coming into the house.

Like I said I can’t be trusted with money, i can’t even be trusted with the idea of potential money. I blew up Saturday with the Census, and it was gorgeous outside…all day, all i wanted to do was put my boat in the water. So by Sunday Morning I finally did. The river was low and the barrel was high…it’s been out there for a decade or so…there’s another one and some tires and a LOT of other trash from like 2005 floods…but the barrel and I had a date. This time I went out with a shovel and some pegboard sheets to stand on in the mud. I an hour it was mine…HA! and no one else in the city seems to give a shit. I don’t care..i got it done. i do love my boat. I bought it new oars..i need to figure out how to install the oarlocks. so basically I am blowing money on things like oars, and oarlocks and keyboards and monitors… i need a new chair. that’s unarguable.

yet I spent a couple of hours scouring the internet for a waterproof backpack…because i am sick to my ass of my gear sitting on the bottom of my boat and getting all wet and stinky. Yes i have DRY BAGS..which if you can imagine are like sausage casings, they are designed for serious dunkable and floatable wet like kayaking…..not messy wet like idiot people like me who bring trash OUT of the river and into the boat with me…who DOES THAT? insane people..people who don’t deserve nice things..and hear i am planning to find a dive shop to find a decent backpack, approximately 40-50 dollars, to keep the little bits of gear from getting all icky…and it wasn’t until i was cleaning my porch when i realized i already HAD a clear plastic waterproof backpack that i use for carrying my cat trapping gear. and It cost me all of $15 back in September. DUH. I’m such a idjit. And it’s not hard to find another. I washed this one in a hot shower to get the plastic to relax back into its original shape, and it will do just fine for my lunch, my straw hat, my binoculars, my camera, my first aid kit, my knife etc…. it should work just fine until it dies, and i can easily order another one, which i just did from Sears..which shockingly calculates shipping cost on weight! wow…shipping $3 love it….i still need one for the cat trapping gear…the plastic bags let you know immediately what you need to add to the bag…and it’s easily washable.

So basically here i was looking for a high end solution to a low tech problem. that is NOT me. I am usually the 1st to look for a LOW tech solution to my problems. I should have been looking to wrap my backpack in a 15 cent trash bag before i’d even shop for a $50 backpack. like I said I can’t be trusted with money.