Photos to DVD

A friend asked me to put about 200 photos on a DVD. I knew I would like this project and I agreed. I googled up a program, played with the trial version, was impressed, then bought it. The program is Photo2DVD Studio.

It does a fabulous job although it is a tad slow in the creation (runs perfectly with the end result, though) -- maybe any program dealing with 200 images would take a while to create the first copy.

I love the results so much that I am going to do this for some of my own photo collections. It plays well on my own regular TV DVD player.

White Background?

Many sites now have a basic white background. Is this easier to read for most folks? I know that a simple design is best because it loads quickly and may be less trouble to read. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to redesign this page.

Today is going to be fun. I am making a slideshow DVD for a friend -- of a trip our church youth took. It's been a long time since I did this and I know there are better new programs around.

My Daughter: Talented Chef

My daughter loves to cook. Several nights a week, she makes complete fantastic dinners from scratch including desserts, much to her husband's appreciation (he cooks, too). Recently, she made chicken cordon bleu. I marvel that anyone would like to slave in a kitchen that much (okay, I like to make fancy breakfasts, but not dinners). I am impressed with her talents and use of herbs and spices. I think she could open a restaurant or do a cooking show - she's that good. In this day of fast or frozen convenience foods, "from-scratch" home cooking is rare.

I took her out to Olive Garden today and I told the waitress about her cooking genius. The waitress responded by giving her a book of recipes to keep.

XM Radio, Hard Drives and a Snake

AOL & XM Radio are getting together to provide about 20 of their 120 or so stations. Yay! I love XM Radio and am glad it is getting around.

The Seagate Hard Drive won. Last week we installed a new 300 g Seagate, as you might know. It did not work well, shutting down after a random amount of time from a few minutes to several hours. We considered every alternative, did hours of online research, contacted Seagate (which, by the way, was good about answering our questions) and after much painful experimentation (including getting an entirely new motherboard), we decided the Seagate drive must be bad. Leo Laporte, in his podcast show, said very large hard drives can cause all kinds of problems. He wasn't kidding!

This morning, I walked with Muddy out into the garage when we saw a snake. It was about a foot and half long young garter snake. Dandelion was enjoying pawing at the coiled, mad snake. Muddy stopped in the doorway, full of horrified delight.

My husband is the bug and rodent killer in our house, but I am the snake catcher. As a kid, I had friends with pet snakes that I got to hold -- so I did not develop a special fear of them. I caught this snake and let it go outside. It is probably attracted to our backyard garden and came into the house while it was raining. I hate wild mice -- anything that eats them is okay with me.

Aliases

I saw this on Da Mom's Blog, first. Sure, its a little immature -- but oh well, today is a slow news day and I am busy reading Lynn Kurland's new book, Dreams of Stardust. She's one of the best romance writers there is. I've read all of her books and I wish her a long, healthy writing life.

 

Terry's Aliases

Your movie star name: Ice Cream Virgil

Your fashion designer name is Terry Venice

Your socialite name is Terr Terr The Terrible New York

Your fly girl / guy name is T Mor

Your detective name is Cat Grissom

Your barfly name is Trail Mix None

Your soap opera name is Ann Bayless

Your rock star name is Chocolate Covered Peanuts Light

Your star wars name is Termud Morric

Your punk rock band name is The Happy Mini Double Daffodil

Happy Birthday to Richard

Happy Birthday to the kindest, smartest, sexiest man on earth (that link goes to Muddy and us singing). We ate at the oldest and the most elegant Mexican place in town, El Palacio. Their beans and rice are the best -- they have stayed true to an old recipe when everyone else was busy changing their refried beans into cardboard paste.

Did you know that there was a partial solar eclipse last Friday? We couldn't see it very well up here, but Miami and places further south got a peek at it. Our local newspaper printed this cool photo.

MSN Messenger 7 Fun

Thanks to my friend, Chuck Bobo, I installed the new version of MSN Messenger and brought it up to version 7 which has more fun gimmicky stuff. I also run AIM (Terry Ann2), but MSN is so much better. I highly recommend it.

Chuck says it can be interesting. He talks to several folks with his microphone through MSN Messenger. They can do things to each other like shake the MSN window, playing quick animations, webcam and more. It was amusing.

My MSN Messenger name is terry@matson.info and I filled out a little information on their free associated blog space at http://spaces.msn.com/members/bamablog/. Mostly, it just links to other domains although it was fun to play with a bit.

Samsung Rebate Problem

We purchased a Samsung monitor with a $30 rebate. I'm a veteran rebate redeemer so, as usual, I carefully followed the requirements and mailed in my rebate - then kept the box, forms, etc.

What a shock to get a postcard from Samsung, claiming that I did not turn in a qualifying UPC code! I examined the saved box carefully. There is no other UPC code on it except for the obvious stuck-on shipping label. I took photos of the box and showed them where I cut out the code. The photos showed the model number. I even offered to send them the entire box.

I also included the rebate form, showing that we met the requirements.

This is strange. We've always had a high respect for Samsung and are disappointed by this. Did a clerk lose the code included in my envelope? Did they scan it incorrectly? I think we offered sufficient other proof that we met all of the requirements for our rebate.

I don't know what else to do. It's not worth the cost of a lawyer. I hope my photos and additional letter will help clear this up.