Comcast Caps Internet Downloads

Comcast has announced that in October they will officially limit customer downloads to 250 GB a month. It has been rumored before that Comcast has unofficially had download limits before and cut customers off for too much downloading. I think in this age of the Internet and downloadable media, the policy is very short sighted.
Verizon FIOS is my area, but dealing with them is worse than Comcast. At least I have some options. Lots of people don't have options for Internet access.

Viruses In Space

"Computer virus infects International Space Station laptops: A malicious computer virus that steals passwords has been brought on board the International Space Station, NASA has confirmed." As usual, the virus was passed between people sharing files. NASA also said that this was not the first virus in space.
You would think that the screening process was a little more strict to go to space.

Obama, I Really Want To Like Him

In case you missed it, Obama has picked a running mate, Senator from Delaware Joseph Biden. Now this causes me to look at Obama again because I personally like what I have seen of Joe Biden. I have seen him on several news shows and the most memorable are appearances he has made on Bill Maher show on HBO. Everything I have seen and read about him I tend to like. He does have a tendency to put his foot in his mouth, but he also tends to speak more honestly than most politicians that I have seen on TV. Trying to speak honestly in politics will always get you into trouble.
So once again I must think about voting for Obama. If I could only trust someone on some level of politics I would feel so much better about the whole political BS. If McCain can remember how many houses he owns I might vote for him.

Sometimes Things Look Too Real

So do you think this is a real person in this video or a computer drawing?

There May Be A Solid Connection Between Things And Cancer

Beware of moisturisers, Cell phones, electricity, oil, gas, cigarettes, coffee, plastic, smoke, red meat, chemicals, and everything else. Those things may cause cancer. And other things may cause cancer, or they may not.
I'm not making light of cancer. I am making light of the way media talks about possible cancer causing agents. Science knows about a lot of chemicals that can promote cancer growth. Any chance the Media gets to print a snappy headline about some everyday product that may promote cancer growth they jump on that.
At the end of the day, the best way to protect yourself is stay way from known cancer agents, eat a healthy diet, live an active life style, get a yearly physical and have a good laugh at least once a day. If you can laugh at yourself once a month that helps too.

Amazon.com Prime

(Disclaimer: This post is intended to be informative, but I also am part of the Amazon.com associates programs, so I do get credit for any sales when you click these Amazon.com links. If you don't like me, don't follow the links. I do have Amazon.com Prime service. I like it and use it frequently.)

I always liked shopping at Amazon.com. Back in the mid 90's I thought it would be awesome to be able to go to one website and order anything you needed. Amazon at that time sold mostly books. Back then e-commerce was in its infancy, you could not find everything that you wanted, search engines were slow and less accurate and web pages were just text with no video being viewable over slow dial-up modems.

So fast forward to today. Google indexes over 1 billion web pages, every page now seems to contain video and flash animation, and e-commerce is booming. Amazon.com now sells almost everything. But the the biggest down fall of ordering online is shipping costs. Some places cost shipping & handling fees that cost more than the product.

So when gas prices started to rise it made even more sense to shop online, but I hated the high shipping costs. I saw an advertisement about the Amazon.com program where, for a yearly fee, you get free 2 day shipping, and 3.99 for one-day. Being a frequent shopper to the website, I read about it and decided to try it.

Now every deal has its problems. The only two issues I found are:

- The yearly cost is a little high, 80 bucks a year. Amazon.com is offering a free month trial, but make sure that you use the service to get your money out of it.

- The free 2-day shipping only applies to Amazon.com-sold products. These means you still pay shipping with third-party sellers.

This service has been very useful, especially when gas prices were so high this summer. At the highest point in gas prices, it would cost us 10 dollars in gas to go to the local Target, but with free shipping through Amazon.com , we only had to wait a day or two.

No criminal prosecution For Former Justice Department Employees

For those who don't know about the Justice Department selectively hiring people, read here.
The Justice Departments Inspector General and its internal ethics office have found that officials at the Justice Department rejected candidates with possible liberal backgrounds for what were supposed to be non-political jobs and hired conservative Republicans.
If you want to read about the technical stuff, the search they used is talked about here.
The Attorney General has rejected the idea of criminally prosecuting anyone. From one article I read the following;
“Where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute,” he said. “But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime,” he said. As the inspector general’s report acknowledged, the hiring violations were such a case, because the wrongdoing violated federal civil service law, but not criminal law, he said.
Lemony and I argued this question but I will pose it to you. Is it not the definition of crime to violate the law?

Remembering Isaac Hayes & Bernie Mac

Being from the generation I am, I know Isaac Hayes mostly from South Park. Probably a shame to know him mostly singing about "Chocolate Salty Balls", and "Simultaneous". He was a very talented man.
Bernie Mac was a comedian that I always enjoyed. He had his own brand of humor that I usually enjoyed. I loved him in the "Ocean 11" movies.

Russia's Iraq?

You may not have noticed between the Olympic news, the Presidential race, bank failings and nelebrity news, but Russia invaded the Former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Since something like 85% of Americans can't find Iraq on a map I doubt most people could tell you where Georgia is, or the history of the former Soviet Republic. The BBC has a map on the bottom of this article if your curious.
What kind of country would invade another for an oil pipeline?

Just trying to keep up, some more pics

We have been busy this last week. Work, kids, house, and friends have been filling our days--and nights, in some cases. Since it has been a week since the last post, I thought I would go through my gigs of photos and post a few.

Here are a couple interesting pictures from this spring. We were at the park when our middle daughter said she had found a fairy mushroom in the tree. I questioned her on what she was referring to and our oldest daughter then said that she had seen it also. So I got up, and to my surprise and amazement there was a slit in the tree...












and when peeking into the slit you could see a glowing white mushroom.

I guess my daughter is right. Fairies do exist.

Dog Days of Summer

I am really not a "dog person", but my parents have the most wonderful Golden Retriever mix who is the sweetest thing. He's been the only pooch ever invited to come into my home.

Unfortunately for the dog, he's beginning to really age now, and the summer weather on top of that has wreaked havoc on his coat (not to mention my mother's vacuum cleaner).

This is what Doobie looked like before the shedding got out of hand. This is a full winter coat:


And here is The Doob after my mother took him to the pet groomer last week. He looks like he's wondering what he did that was so bad. Or maybe he's thinking, "If you wanted a Yellow Lab, maybe that's what you should have got in the first place!":

Remind me never to leave any hair in my mother's drain or anything.

Hey Mom, save the hair next time, and we'll knit him a sweater to hide his shame.

News Rant

Thanks to work and other goings on I have not had any time to post.
I thought I would post a few thoughts on current news. Being a news junkie, I read the news frequently and often have more to say about it than people want to hear.
The first piece of news I read today was about California banning restaurants from using trans fats. This is not the first time that trans fats were banned, but it drives me crazy to see the false attention to the mass population's health and well-being. If the government wanted to protect the health and well-being of the population then there are much more effective things that they could do. Lower the highway speed, provide basic health care, remove chemical carcinogens from food additives, enforce mandatory paid vacations to relieve stress, provide more and better equipped law enforcement, enforce zero-emissions vehicle testing, etc…
Anyway, some of the other news I have been reading was about the mortgage and banking failures in the last few weeks. The largest banks are writing off billions if not trillions of dollars, the Federal Government is closing the mortgage companies that were giving loans, with no verification of incomes, to millions of people. All this just based on greed.
And I couldn’t complain about the news without talking about gas prices. Can someone explain to me why gas prices keep going up with production about the same, and the national oil reserve continues to grow. The biggest problem is not enough refineries in the US. Everyone wants cheap gas, but no one wants a refinery built anywhere near them. The government still taxes gas at crazy levels, still diverts gas to the reserve; the oil companies still make record profits, and Congress is still looking into it.
At least you won’t have to worry about trans fats.

The Dirty Old Lady Post

First, the dirty part. Thanks to my good friend Mitch, for knowing that I'd appreciate this:

And for the old ladies, I give you... doilies. Years ago, when I was a little girl and my father ran an antiques shop, there were always old, yellowing, sometimes badly damaged doilies about the house. I loved to study them and try to figure out just how they were made. I wondered how many hours of work went into each one. My mom didn't knit or crochet, but both crafts always fascinated me. My aunt taught me to knit when I was 12, and my friend Weeblet taught me to crochet a few years ago (thanks, love!). In exchange, I taught her how to knit socks--a skill which she has since achieved well beyond the realm of my own expertise. We began my crochet lessons with granny squares, which I struggled with terribly at first, until one day it wasn't challenging enough, and I decided to realize my childhood dream of making doilies.

These were crocheted in size 10 cotton thread, with a 1.5 mm steel crochet hook, using patterns that I found on the internet.

The Ripe Wheat Doily (15" across), a gift for my mother-in-law:

Another view:

The Petite Pineapple Doily (8" across), which was my very first doily:

I dedicate this post to my Grandma, my absolute favorite Dirty Old Lady.

And to my furry pal Osiris, who apparently thinks he is a doily, too:

Mama Got A Brand New Ride

After my 1999 Windstar (which I'd bought used, in 2004) gave us a scare at Hershey Park, we decided to make haste in getting the new vehicle we've been talking about for a year now.

I'm not much of a sentimental gal, but I really loved that Windstar. I maintained it well, and in return, it was really good to me. The model did have a reputation for having problems with the transmission, but we never had any trouble. It never left me stranded anywhere. It was comfortable, reliable, and fun to drive. ("Fun", for me, in this case, meaning "comfortable and reliable".) Oh, and clean! That was our first vehicle with leather seats, and led us to resolve to never back to cloth. "Clean" is a real priority for me.

Although I've always preferred to buy used, not only out of financial necessity, but also a sort of sense of responsibility (call it a Charlie Brown Complex, but somebody has to love the gently-used vehicles), Wort didn't have to twist my arm too terribly to get me to consider a new vehicle, in this case. It just made sense for us at this point. After perusing Toyota Siennas online, we walked into the dealership today knowing exactly what we---er, I wanted. The kids and I bade our sad farewells to our nearly-denarian, four-wheeled friend; to whom I had never bestowed a moniker, but who shall be hereafter known as "Old Reliable" (it almost doesn't seem right to not have a eulogy); and off we went, into the showroom.

In aiming to convey to the salesman exactly what features I wanted, I had to bite my tongue against a rant about the general "obnoxiousisity" of having DVD players in minivans (I'm aghast!), especially since it was part of the package in the model I was eyeing. (Imagine my horror when the guy tried to sell me on the point that the kids can play PS2 while on the road!)

The whole process was pretty straightforward: "I want to see that one." "OK, I'm ready to test drive it." "Yep, I'll take it."

I'm sure we'll even use the damn DVD player, and I bet we'll even like it. So stick a fork in me.

It rides smoothly. It has bells! It has whistles. It has an auxillary jack for my iPod. It has Bluetooth. No kitchen sink, but I can sure fit one in the cargo area. And best of all, it doesn't leak radiator fluid everywhere I go. w00-h00t!

It's dark outside now, so I didn't take any pictures of my actual car. Here is the closest image that I could swipe off of a website, but mine has a contrasting trim (which, somehow, is important for you to know):

The website I swiped this one from describes the dash as "bland" (for shame! It's clean, I tell you). This one seems to show a navigational system, a feature which did not come with my own vehicle:

A car review website described the interior as being "cavernous", which lends great appeal for soccer moms and serial killers alike (neither of which am I, by the by, but the space is nice all the same). Oh, and the hideaway seats are push-button automatic, so we can grow older more gracefully, without setting our backs out trying to move seats. It even has at least six different kinds of hooks, for hanging garments, handbags, trash bags, cargo nets, and grocery bags, and securing bungee cords; perfect for a veritable "bag lady" like me (can you hear Wort laughing?):

The middle seats can be reconfigured to make a bench, which will be fun to try. It might make access to the third row seat easier. Here, they are shown as I received them, although I didn't seem to get the "teddy bear trim package". (Oh, bother!):

Thanks, Wort, for my totally posh "Mom-mobile". Hey, maybe I can pick you up sometime... (Baby, take a ride in my coupe, you make me wanna... shoop.)

Hershey Park and Car Issues

So, I have put a little extra time in at work and decided to spend some time with my family and take them to Hershey Park for a day. We got there a little early to see the tour ride. When we get there I see two trails of liquid coming out of the 10 year old car: one is water from the air conditioner, the other is coolant. A lot of it. As anyone knows, a broken car can make any trip suck. Long story short: we called our mechanic, who suggested Stop Leak wich we picked up, and we made the best of the day. Got home with no issues. All and all, it was still a good day with the family.
At the park we did few rides, but it was a VERY hot day so we took it easy and spent about an hour at the arcade to let the kids cool off. Lemony's favorite thing to do at amusement parks is the roller coasters. I don't like them, but I will do them. The kids don't like them a lot, but once they get in the mood, they like the kiddie coasters. The one ride we all enjoy is the log flume. Thanks to my waterproof Olympus camera, I present to you: our log flume ride.

Kids Lego Movie

Our youngest daughter made this video.