- Green Christmas

- DEATH TO FROSTY!!
Well someone seems to be on my side for Christmas. To all those who wanted a white christmas, SUCK IT! Just kidding, but it shouldn't surprise anyone that I'm ecstatically happy to have a Christmas above freezing. Everyone have a very Merry (and soggy) Christmas!!!
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- Snow

Think that maybe Michigan could be getting back at me for missing all the snow last year? This picture was taken prior to the last 4 or so inches that fell today. Know what the weather in TN is? A daily high of about 40-45 and a few flurries in the early morning. Argh.

- Faded Memories

My year in TN will be one of the experiences in life that I'm very grateful for. It's going on 5 months that I've been back and it's already starting to seem like a faded memory. I knew it would be hard when the snow started to come. So far it doesn't look like it's going to be an easy winter. I have to admit, last year when looking at the weather channel and seeing MI at 15º and in TN we were at 50º, it made me feel a bit superior. It was a good feeling. I look back on it with positive feelings. It's ironic that I think I even talked to my MI friends more when I was 500 miles away. More ironic is that my husband feels the same way about his family - the people we moved back here to be closer to. It's funny that you can be so much closer and feel even further away.

- On a brighter note...

-
What is a Cat?
1. Cats do what they want.
2. They rarely listen to you.
3. They're totally unpredictable.
4. When you want to play, they want to be alone.
5. When you want to be alone, they want to play.
6. They expect you to cater to their every whim.
7. They're moody.
8. They leave hair everywhere.
CONCLUSION: They're tiny women in little fur coats.

What is a Dog?
1. Dogs spend all day sprawled on the most comfortable piece of furniture in the house.
2. They can hear a package of food opening half a block away, but don't hear you when you're in the same room.
3. They can look dumb and lovable all at the same time.
4. They growl when they are not happy.
5. When you want to play, they want to play.
6. When you want to be alone, they want to play.
7. They leave their toys everywhere.
8. They do disgusting things with their mouths and then try to give you a kiss.
9. They go right for your crotch as soon as they meet you.
CONCLUSION: They're tiny men in little fur coats.
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- Thanksgiving

- Happy Thanksgiving All!
Holidays are always hard when you've lost someone especially close to you. I lost my mother a year ago. It doesn't get much easier as time goes on. It really doesn't help that Thanksgiving falls on her birthday this year. It's a day to share with family and loved ones and be joyful and remember the things we're thankful for. While for me, it's a sad day and I'd rather be wishing my mom a happy 56th birthday, I am however grateful that I have my in-laws to spend it with.
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- Ascii

- Typorganizm
from
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- CMA's

I love watching the CMA's every year. It was really cool last year to know they were happening in the same state that I was watching them in. I may not be in TN this year, but they should still be. The COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS just don't belong in New York. That's like putting the Miss USA Pageant on CMT - why do they do weird shit like that? It just doesn't belong.

- Best Buy

- STUPID ASS HOLES. If you have a Best Buy credit card or ever get one, be VERY careful of when you make your payments. If you make it too early, they'll count it for the prior month and then say you didn't make a payment for the current month and then charge you a $35 late fee. Like I said, STUPID F*CKING ASS HOLES!! And they don't give a crap when you tell them that you will be doing business elsewhere in the future if they don't fix it. I swear to you all right now, I will never spend another penny at a Best Buy.

Update 11/11/05 5:29PM - I called Best Buy again in a slightly better mood and feeling more assertive rather than aggressive and insisted on speaking to a supervisor. As it turns out, a payment I made on 9/6 threw my whole payment schedule off (by ONE day). It would've had to clear on 9/7 or after to be counted for September. So after politely arguing with the supervisor for about 5 minutes, he agreed to remove the final late fee. I'm still not happy with them, but I do feel much better now.
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- Building a PC

- PCbuild page that I started when I build my computer. Now if I can just get my 2nd work of art to work, all will be good - I think I have a bad processor - waiting for a new one to come in so I can find out. If it's not that, I may just pull my hair out - I've tried everything else.
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- New Blog Script

Finally got my blog moved over to this new script. I decided to put Blogger to rest and use one that works solely from my webspace. So far so good... and no giant gaps between text (right?). Please let me know if you see anything weird - I try to keep this looking right for the average screen resolution.

My links page is on a new script now too - I haven't finished adding all the links that I want to, but if you want to, feel free to join and add cool links.

- PHP Problems

Don't know if anybody's noticed, but some of my photo gallery and my guestbook no longer work. I don't know what happened, other than my webhost updated their PHP engine and screwed up all my crap. I don't know if I'll have a guestbook in the future - no one signs those things anymore anyway. But I'm working on fixing my photo galleries. My kids (animals) is up and running now http://www.geminidreamz.com/animals.

Update (10/30/05 6:38PM): Shotglasses are fixed, and the guestbook is working - lost my old entries, but what were there? two?

- How many cars...?

-
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- Poor Kitty

About 2 weeks ago, I took my dog to the vet for shots and a checkup. I followed the next week with two of my cats (the third isn't due for a checkup yet). My big kitty, Merlin, seems to have really bad teeth. I knew he was missing the little ones in front - a vet pointed that out a couple years ago. Seems now that it's gotten much worse. I took him back in today for a cleaning and they had to extract 5 teeth. They say that a cat can manage without teeth, but that seems like it'd be a rough life. It looks like poor Merlin will have to find out - the vet says that he's likely to lose the rest over the next couple years. At least he tested negative for things that cause problems like that like feline leukemia and stuff. Poor kitty.

- Googling Yourself

When's the last time you Googled yourself? Really? I was sitting here a little bored and relized I hadn't Googled myself in quite some time and couldn't remember ever Googling my maiden name... just wanted to see what was out there on the net in my name. I found a very interesting Mary Hanna who wrote an article (ironically) about Googling herself (click here). You should try it - ya never know what's out there unless you look.

- Motivation - (it kinda worked)

Hey, whaddya know... it kinda worked - I bitched at myself on my blog for all to read (yeah, as if anyone did yet) and I got a couple things done today. Oh, and I should really mention that I planted my tulip bulbs yesterday (there's nothing I hate worse than yardwork). So anyways, today I cleaned out the room across the hall so I can start painting it. And, I finally made some updates to Lunargeek - not a lot, just a few needed tweeks. Now I just have to finish the page I started devoted to building my new PC (which has been done for what? like a month now)... baby steps.

- Motivation

-
Why is it so friggin hard to get motivated? I've got so much stuff I could be getting done and I'm sitting here blogging about nothing. I'm so proud of myself that I finally finished a book that took my friends mere days to get though (I'm not proud to say that it took me a couple months). I have a huge pile of filing that needs to be done - my files need to be overhauled since the move from TN. What I considered my favorite TV show for the past few years (Charmed) I'm about 7 or 8 episodes behind on - I never even finished watching last season. Yeah, I'm thinking admitting to the world how pathetic I am might kick me in the ass and make me get something done... (as if)... I need to clean out the room across the hall because I've decided to move my office in there (it's bigger)... but it needs to be painted and that's a big job in itself... and my hubby seems to be lacking motivation too.... our hallways could've been done long ago, but they're not even close... some of it's primed, some of it's not... at least it's sanded - that's the trouble with the room I'll be moving my office to - it needs to be sanded... ick, I hate having paint dust all over... and I hate trying to get Dan to do another project besides the ones he still hasn't finished... and I just DON'T sand.... it's kinda that styrofoam effect (if you know me, you have probably seen/heard me cringe in the presence of styrofoam). Damn, I'm longwinded tonight...
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- Update: FavoriteSync

After running FavoriteSync for a couple weeks, it now tells me that I have to update my account or "donate" to their program. Sorry, rarely is a program good enough for me to actually spend money on it. I thought it might help to sync to my own server instead of theirs, but the program won't connect to my server. It was nice while it lasted. I found another really simple (and free) Firefox extension that will export my bookmarks to favorites. Favorites are easy to backup, so I'll deal with that.
Speaking of spending money on programs... the last program I bought (yeah, really spent money on) was Roboform. It's available on the torrent system, but really... can you trust a hacked version of a password manager? I'm not that naive. And the program was worth it - I'd be lost without it. It's free until you get too many passwords stored in it, then it warns you for a while before it actually stops working. It was at that point that I decided that I really needed to buy it.
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- Hard Drive Hell...

Recently my storage drive crashed on me. My most tech-savvy friend told me that it was likely because I was not running a big enough power supply in my new computer. I know that this person knows what they're talking about, so I ran out and bought a new power supply. Ok, one problem solved. Well, I still needed a new storage drive... so I've been getting the idea that SATA is faster/neater than the old IDE drives, so I bought myself a 100gb SATA drive and came home and installed it as my storage drive. It ran very nicely and sparked the thought that I should buy another one for my primary drive - speed rules, ya know. So I attempted this... remember fighting with Windows 95 or 98 trying to get it to recognize your hardware and trying to get it to play nicely with your drivers? Yeah well, when it comes to SATA drives, Win XP is no better. I updated my BIOS and it recognized the drives just fine... well, BIOS and Windows are two different things. So try as I might, I couldn't get the system to boot to one of these SATA drives. So now I'm running my 60gb IDE hard drive as my Windows drive and I have two 100gb SATA storage drives. I guess this is the way it will be until Longhorn (um.. I mean Vista). Damn Microsoft!

- Optical Illusions

- http://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/illusion.html

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- Flash Fun

- http://www.hurtwood.demon.co.uk/Fun/copter.swf.

And do you believe this one? I'm tempted to ask a kid... Anyone got a 3-5 year old? See what they see here...http://www.ebaumsworld.com/dirtymindtest.html.

Like Calvin & Hobbes? Check out their Snow Art Gallery.
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- Damn Good Website: FavoriteSync

I set up my new computer (well, I'm in the process of it - and I haven't updated my documentary on Lunargeek), and I really want to do the smart geeky thing and use Firefox. I'm going to try not to intstall Maxthon, and I sure as hell won't use IE if I can help it. Well, I found a program that will sync your favorites from IE (which are much easier to backup) and your bookmarks from Firefox. More than that, it syncs with a web server which is really cool - I'll never lose my favorites and I can access them from anywhere. Now, I don't actually know if you have to have Firefox installed to use the web sync, but you can always install Firefox and still use your current browser (if you want to) just to have the web sync function. The site is FavoriteSync.

If you want to use Firefox, it's best with a few select extensions... Tab Mix is essential! Look through that site for anything else that interests you. Firefox is highly customizable.
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- Building a PC

I've decided to build my first custom computer. Most of my parts have arrived, and I'll be documenting the process at http://www.lunargeek.com/PCbuild. I've learned quite a bit already in researching which parts to buy. This is really exciting (yeah, I know, I'm a total GEEK!)

- IQ

- Quick and Dirty IQ Test

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- Pastafarianism

- Flying Spaghetti Monster. Also here.

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- Daylight Saving Time

-
Can we say MAJOR PAIN IN THE ASS? Think of all the devices you own that change time automatically - like VCR's and things... now they're going to be changing weeks off. F*CKERS!
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- The New Old...

I'm back where I started, yet it's all changed. When you leave people, places, and things behind, they tend to change while you're gone. I talked to a guy I worked with just over a year ago and so much has changed there that it would be depressing to go back. Friends that used to be available to hang all the time are busier now. Did I really expect them not to find other things to do while I was gone? I don't know. When I left, I had no intention of returning other than to visit.

Being up in a county that I don't know very well makes me feel like I'm still 500 miles away and trying to find my way - not to mention trying to find myself... will I eventually find myself back where I started in the first place? Who knows? Perhaps I'm not even findable... or maybe I'm just not ready to be found...

- Well, I'm here...

Actually Davison is very nice. If it wasn't for the damned humidity, I could almost forget I'm in Michigan. My neighbors are really nice. I already fixed someone's computer. Stores are within 5-10 minutes away and it's not nearly as congested as Auburn Hills/Pontiac. I still find myself crushing a "soda" can once in a while - a habit that will die hard. Now if the lovely phone company would hook up my friggin phone, I'd be in business. At least I've had internet for a few days... the cable guy was a bit of a moron, but he did manage to get it turned on (after about 3 hours).

- Wasting Time

At this point, I shouldn't really be playing with downloading music and crap, right? I've got to be ready to move in a couple days. I need to back up my PC and move onto the laptop and pack all of my peripherals as carefully as possible...AAAAHH!! If I never have to pack another friggin box, I can die a happy woman. Ok, I'm done bitching....

First of all, thanks to Sarah for recommending "Fire Me, Please". It's very good as far as reality shows go. It's one of the more original ones out right now, so I'm impressed.

Now, a tech tip... if you've hopped on the torrent train, you might have found it slightly annoying to have to download full albums to get the songs you're interested in. When you're looking for torrents, search for "Promo Radio" in Isohunt. These are the promo cds that get shipped to radio stations (I assume). There's one for each month for each genre (I've easily found a bunch of current country songs this way). Good Luck!

Oh, and if you're into downloading movies that are still in theatres and get them in .rar files that extract to bin/cue files, a good player to watch them straight in the bin/cue format is VideoLAN (or VLC) player. That player will play practically anything - even can connect to shoutcast stations.
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- Michigan - what's good about it?

So less than 3 weeks until my move and I'm trying to think of what's good about Michigan... my cousin who lives in GA claims that you can only get good pizza in the north. Sorry, but the best pizza I've ever had is Papa Johns Barbeque Chicken & Bacon, and yes, that's here in TN. I'll for sure be giving the local Papa John's a try when we get into MI. When I think of pizza, I think of breadsticks. And since I started thinking of breadsticks, I haven't been able to stop thinking about cheesedip - not just any cheese dip, but McPhee's cheese dip. There's not another place I know that makes bar cheese like that. I make some decent cheese dip, but it really doesn't compare. Anyone know anyone that works or has worked at McPhee's? What's in that stuff?

Ok, so the best things in MI are McPhee's bar cheese, Cooks Ice Cream.... what else? I can find Western Dressing up there - not that I'm a big salad eater... The sales tax is less... why am I drawing a blank?

- Hit Me Baby One More Time

Anybody watch this show? I think it's really good. It's a little depressing to see how old some of these stars have gotten, but it's very entertaining none-the-less. One of my favorite songs of all time is "As I Lay Me Down" by Sophie B Hawkins. She was on tonite's episode - she sang her hit "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" and did a decent job, but when she sang a current hit, she butchered it. I was really disappointed. Never thought I'd vote for Wang Chung over Sophie. Howard Jones was the best tonight I thought, but Irene Cara won. Oh well.

- Surreal

-
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. It's a bittersweet decision. I'm going back home. Home to the snow, construction, midwestern attitudes, and bottle deposits. If I had been born in TN (or anywhere else in the south), it would be my home. I however was not that lucky, so home to me and my other half is up where my poor dog has to freeze his thing off to take a pee for 6 months of the year. Just a warning... don't expect me to stop complaining for a while... even though I know that this is for the best and is where we belong. I don't regret moving to TN. It's something I had to do sometime in my life. I suppose I got it out of my system, but I'm not going to pretend that this isn't a difficult decision.
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- PureText

I get recipes (among many other things) in a daily RSS feed. My recipe folder was getting a bit large and I finally got around to printing recipe cards... the way I do it is by copying the recipe information into my own format in Microsoft Publisher. To do that, you have to remove all formatting or it pastes as a really messed up table. It's really irritating to have to paste into Notepad, then re-copy and paste into Publisher. If you use Firefox and Thunderbird, there's a nice extension that adds a right-click option for copying plain text, but IE of course isn't that advanced. I went on a search and found a really nifty (tiny) program called PureText. It sits in your systray and when you copy text, just click that before pasting - or use the keyboard shortcut. It saved me a huge amount of time doing these recipe cards.

- Movies

About once a year a movie comes out that I get excited about (no, I'm not talking about Starwars... I'm a geek, but puhleeze). I really like when they make TV shows that I used to love into movies (not spoofs like they did with The Brady Bunch). I was rather disappointed with Garfield - it was cute, but just lacked originality in story line. Bewitched (the movie) comes out next month. I'm hoping for the best. I saw the trailer for the first time tonight when I watching The Apprentice finale (yeah Kendra! - even though I was rooting for Tana until the last couple weeks).

- Widgets

- Kapsules is the program that I'm using for my Widgets... Seems to be some cool Widgets at Konfabulator too. Search Google - you can find a Widget for pretty much anything... don't forget if your running a 500mhz piece of crap, that you really don't need anything running but the bare essentials and Widgets aren't the best idea for you. Make sure you have a good system and plenty of RAM before messing with the cutesy stuff.
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- Unexpected Addition

Ok, well I really didn't plan this... you see, Dan and I are looking into getting a saltwater aquarium - we went browsing at a couple stores yesterday... I also have a couple books (saltwater is a big step for an aquarium hobbyist)... anyways, at Pet Supplies Plus, they have a satellite location for the local animal shelter. So, long story short... we're looking for fish and end up with another cat. This poor little girl had been there for a couple months and was going to be put down and just took right to me. I can't resist a cuddly cat. Yeah, I really do want another dog... eventually... cats are easy - very little training involved and they can stay home when you travel. So, yes, we're crazy and yes, I realize that my dearest friend will probably never want to come visit me now... but I saved the life of one of the sweetest cats I've ever met.... yeah, I'll stop rambling now... This is Lydia - she's about 2 years old and quite petite. I think Tori is slightly bigger than she is already and Tori is still growing.... interestingly enough, Tori is the one being a little bitch this time around. I really didn't expect that.


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- Sinus Hell

I once referred to where I lived in Michigan as Sinus Hell. Well, guess what, I didn't know the first thing about Sinus Hell. Did you know that sinuses can cause a toothache? Me neither. I went to the dentist the other day (for crowns) and asked him about a tooth that had become extremely sensitive to cold just the day before... I figured I pulled out a filling or something. The dentist poked at it and couldn't find a cavity. He said it was likely due to sinuses. Say what? I had to take Peanut to the vet last week too because he hasn't been able to stop hacking and sneezing. Don't get me wrong, I love TN, but don't come down here this time of year without some powerful sinus drugs. I even had to upgrade from Allegra to Zyrtec. Happy Spring All!

- Catdog?

Yeah, that's a cat bed - it even has a pouch for catnip on the bottom. It's not just that one either... he lies in the cat bed under the table in the dining room. Guess that's what happens when you have two cats and one dog - the dog ends up thinking he's a cat too... if he starts meowing, I'll definately have to get another dog.


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- Cleaning for Company

The best way to get your house super clean is to have company over - not people that you have over all the time - like immediate family or good friends... but relatives. For some reason, we feel we need to impress relatives... especially ones we haven't seen in a while or ones that have never been to our house. I'm friggin pooped from all the cleaning and crap that I've done this week. I painted the damn shutters, porch supports and gutter drains. I feel like I need a week's rest already and our company hasn't even gotten here yet. Bleh.

- Tattoos

I finally did it... it's been a year since I got my lovely upside-down moon, so I finally got around to getting it changed a bit... it was done today so it's still irritated - I'll post a better picture once it heals and the colors are true. The white specs are stars - the red is lighter than you see in the picture - it's kind-of a fuschia like a sky scene.... well anyways, it doesn't look upside-down anymore, does it? The guy (dude that goes by PorkChop) said the faces were too dark to cover up without going super dark, so we went this way. Any feedback?


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- Google Ads

Ok, if there's anyone out there that actually reads my blog, do me a favor and click on my Google Ads... I get paid if you click - so CLICK! :-) Especially if there's Yahoo ads or ads about Domain Registration. Have Fun!

- Taste Buds

I'm almost 26 and my taste buds are still "growing up". I was like the world's most finicky eater when I was a kid. I didn't like pizza - among everything else. I found out by accident a few months ago that I like spinach - or spinach dip at least. I've been trying different kinds of fish lately. Last night I had stuffed Salmon. Yummy. I'm sure part of the problem was that I wasn't exposed to many different types of food early in life... but seriously, things I tried even 10 years ago are starting to appeal to me. I've developed quite a taste for Walnuts, Pecans, and Almonds - cooked with sugar then salted - MMMMM! I've always hated any kind of nut. Well, I still don't like Peanuts - but I'm guessing that in another 10 years I will... peanut butter doesn't make me want to retch like it once did.

- Things that suck...

- I think this will be an ongoing post...

* Styrofoam
* Ladybugs / Fruit Flies / Pretty much all insects
* Daylight Savings Time
* Gas Prices
* Mornings
* Yearly Female Exams
* Crowds
* Traffic Jams
* Commercials
* Poorly Timed Traffic Lights
* Dusting / Mopping / Windows
* Green Beans
* Rye Bread - the "turds" in Rye Bread
* Stupid People
* People who don't have email (aka: Stupid People)
* Shareware that I can't find a crack for
* Reruns
* Old Appliances
* People who tailgate
* Telemarketers
* Junk Mail
* Waiting / Standing in line
* Politics
* Faulty Hardware

I'll keep thinking on this - feel free to comment with your things that suck.
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- Daylight Savings Time

Ok, file this one under "Things That Suck"... what is daylight savings time other than a royal pain in the ass? One of the reasons that I love my atomic clocks - I don't have to manually set them every six months. I want to change all the clocks in my house to atomic ones... and I have a lot of clocks. Now they're thinking of making it two months longer - well how does that work with the devices that are programmed to change automatically - like my VCR's? I basically thought that savings time was for farmers 60+ years ago. I didn't realize it served any practical purpose today... I guess I'm wrong, but I still think it sucks. Fox News Article.

- Win Customize

- bootskin and my logon screen with these free programs. WindowBlinds is not free, but if you're reading this, you're probably smart enough to know where to get it. Stardock makes lots of progs to customize your Windows experience. Just a sidenote, I started playing with these progs because my monitor is slowly dying. It's a lot easier to read with a dark background and white text. I had to go back to 1024x768 resolution. I'm trying to wait as long as I can before buying a new one. Yeah, I know, my eyesight is bad enough and this certainly isn't helping....
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- The Screensavers (formerly)

-
Can't they leave well enough alone? Better name -"The Screensavers" or "Attack of the Show"? If this show gets more gamer oriented, I'm going to be major pissed. The whole network is all about gamers - it used to be about geeks.
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- Teeth Dreams (kinda gross)

Ever have that dream where your teeth are falling out? I think most people have at some point. Imagine that dream being somewhat of a reality... I have this temporary crown that I've had since the middle of last year. I have to wait for my new insurance year to start in May before I can get my permanent crown. It was fine for several months, but over the weekend it came loose. I've re-glued my tooth 3 or 4 times in the past couple days. Just imagine what it does for those teeth dreams - EWW! I'm going to the dentist today for some good glue! :-)

- RDRAM Sucks!

I find it extremely aggravating that I bought my PC the year or so that Dell was stupid. They thought RDRam was going to be the standard or something, but now it's not even in production. The stuff is kinda rare and friggin expensive. What I have to spend to upgrade my RAM would just about buy me a new PC. Everytime someone asks me about buying a new PC, I tell them to buy a Dell. My next computer will be a Dell. They should just friggin give me a new motherboard or something so I can use normal RAM. Argh.

- Life before the internet?

Do you remember life before the internet? Have you ever realized that we're the last generation that will remember life before the internet? I remember being extremely bored as a child and teen. It's hard to grasp that concept now. I don't get bored. I sometimes have a hard time deciding what I want to do or getting myself motivated to do something, but I can always find something to do. I was a senior in high school when I first surfed the internet. How weird is that?

- Tim & Nelly?

Here's one... I like a lot of crossover music - like hearing Shania on the pop stations, etc... that's cool. But seriously, what the hell was Tim McGraw thinking doing a song with Nelly? And now they're winning awards for it? Come on! I like how Jay Leno spoke of it in his monologue tonight - "What do you get when you add country and rap? CRAP!" Honestly, the song is not bad, but on CMT? It's NOT country!

- The Screensavers

I've been watching The Screensavers on G4TechTV quite a bit. My favorite segment is Sarah's Damn Good Download and Damn Good Website. One of my favorites is the Internet Archive. It has shots of old versions of websites. You can see what the first years of Yahoo and Google looked like. But what tripped me out was that it has little sites like mine. It doesn't save the actual site's images and since I've apparently revamped my web file system since '03, my site shows up as a bunch of red x's for the pics. But still, it has a html file of my original website. That's actually kinda spooky.
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