Scarlet Letter

24 hours.

The last 24 hours have been strange. Odd. Almost creepy. Looney.

It all started with a friend-request on MySpace from a guy I went to High School with a long long time ago.

Which seems normal enough, except I don't know this guy. I had to read his profile to figure out that we probably went to HS together, and then I had to get out my yearbook to even place him. I have never in my life spoke to him, and he wasn't in my grade. I still don't know why he wants to add me.

Then on his profile, I found in his friend's list the younger brother of my best friend in HS. Last I remember seeing him, he might have been a freshman in HS. He's now all grown up with 3 kids. I feel so old.

While both of these aren't anything to write home about, a conversation I had tonight with my best friend is.

She and I have (had?) a network of friends, some mutual, and some not, but they all vaguely know each other. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why several of them hated me so much. I knew there were rumors rolling around, but I could never get anyone to tell me what they were.

Anyway, we began talking about these old friends, most of them we are no longer in touch with, and comparing stories. Then she hinted something about that we'd "shared" the same men.

I have to say that made me laugh quite a bit. I'm actually still laughing about it. Its so preposterous that I couldn't help but laugh.

Controlling my laughter for a bit, just to say: "but we haven't shared the same man" I also racked my brain trying to find a man that we had shared or at least had been both physical with. I even tried to comb through those drunken college nights of "wild abandon" and I couldn't come up with anyone.

Turns out, that a couple of her boyfriends had told her while she was dating them that they and I had had sex.

I seriously cannot stop laughing. How she believed them? That I don't know. She said back then she didn't have much self-esteem. Well with boyfriends like that, who can blame her?

Anyway, we got to the bottom of it, and cleared the air. But it seems she had told a couple people in our friend-network, and of course gossip got out.

No wonder people hated me and kept trying to tell her I wasn't really her friend.

Its so far back in past history, that all one can do now is laugh. Though it is finally good to know why I had that scarlet letter.

(I do sorta feel like going to a gathering of our old friends, and wearing a t-shirt stating "No, I did not have sex with that man!" But that would be all to Clinton-esque and I doubt they'd believe me anyway.)

MAC vs Microsoft - Take Two.. And Action!

I love my Mini don't get me wrong. It's not that hard to "figure out" and its been really reliable (though I can't say so much for my internet router).

Unfortunately, the MAC Mini doesn't seem to have all the bells and whistles that I'm used to.

I'm certain I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out where (nor can the MAC-addict hubby). For those of you tech-support people reading this: 1. Yes I've restarted the computer. 2. Yes I have clicked on and read every possible button in the printer setup features in order to find the options I was looking for (so has hubby). 3. Yes I have the most current driver installed.

My printer is awesome. While most of my previous printers have been thorns in my side with little to no features other than color or grayscale options, my current printer is cool. I can print double sided pages, booklets, etc, plus the options of grayscale or color.

I should say I have these options in Windows. In MAC, I can print and thats about it. Ok.. so I can adjust margins and print portrait or landscape.. Whoop de doo.. I cannot print grayscale if I want. There is no option to select grayscale, actually there are very little "options" in the print mode period. If there is color on the page, it prints it. Which means with the webpages that I print out from time to time, I can easily run out of my color in my printer as the color cartriges are at least 1/3 the size of the black. And if the colors on the page that look black, aren't really black but lets say dark blue, or other "color" that might look black but isn't, my color cartriges are going to be used to print it.

So I'm a bit peeved about it all. I am currently using Google Docs to paste links or store documents that I want printed, then I access that page on my Windows computer, load the links/documents, and print them.

Its a lot more work, and I'm still debating on whether the Mini is worth the freaking hassle.

I am btw liking having two computers, as it splits up the work and my Windows computer hasn't been tempermental much at all. Or maybe it sees the MAC Mini, and is on its best behavior.

I'd just like to be able to utilize all the functions of my printer. Right now, I feel like MAC put "idiot guard" on the print features so that all you can do is "click print" to save people from manually messing with their options and thus screwing up their printing. Which might be good for computer idiots and those that completely lack creativity, but for those that actually have a need to use the features that the particular printer was PURCHASED to do, its not very useful at all.

Cholesterol - Women & Children

Proof that sometimes you can't believe everything you read, and sometimes you have to follow the money.

Is there anything in this country that isn't corrupted?

And is everything from the medical community just "guessing"?

Apple Mini

This weekend we went out and purchased an Apple Mini. I was hesitant at first about switching to MACs, well mostly because they're SOOOOO different from Microsofts layouts that I got lost just trying to get them functioning.

Not to mention the previously discussed fear of change.

Anyway, this is my first blog post from the new Mini-Mac and tonight I found a feature of the MAC that will have people tearing it out of my cold dead hands.

See... with MAC's there is this handy-dandy "dashboard" feature, which is mostly just a bunch of gadgets that you can set up, that are on a separate screen... a semi-transparent overlay on top your real screen, when you're not using the computer, or if you just want to check on them.

You hit a key, and woosh the dashboard goes up and you can check things like weather, dictionary, address book, time, stocks, or whatever. The dashboard also shows when you log into your machine or when you come out of screen saver. It disappears with one click on the screen as well, which makes it easy to use.

Now most of that doesn't sound that fabu-lous, and those features aren't really all that.

What I do love is the post-its that it lets you put up on the dashboard. Post-its with grocery lists, notes of things to do, reminders.. Now when I'm in the middle of doing something on the computer and I remember "Oh yes, tomorrow I should go do" I can click to the dashboard, make a post-it and remind myself.

The other feature, is this widget (thats what they call all these fancy-pants dashboard things) that imports your google calendar into it. So you can see at a glance any meetings you have for the day or scheduled errands, doctors appts, etc. (now if only my phone would sync with Google Calendar). So far I haven't done much of anything with it but put in a few reminders, but I'm imagining much much more.

8am Breakfast
9am Gym
10-12pm Errands
12-1pm Lunch
1-4pm Get cracking on that novel. jk
5pm Put on Superhero suit & Save World
6pm Cook
7pm Serve Dinner
8-11pm Relax & Watch TV (Superhero's have to have their downtime)
11pm Sleep

Yes, I am easily amused. :)

I hate my Computer

Warning: Temper Tantrum

For months, years.. I can't remember how long actually. My computer has been ticking me off.

When I first got it, it was amazing. Then things went down hill.

It had memory errors, so we switched out the memory. It worked fine for a while.

It had internet issues, we switched routers. It didn't help much.

It blew up! (seriously, I had black soot all over my office to prove it)

So we replaced all the insides, and reused the case.

I still had issues. Ok thats an understatement. I've had nothing BUT issues since.

The stupid thing won't boot up without the original CD in the freaking CD drive, even though it doesn't run off the CD while its working, just needs it there like a freaking safety blanket. We've tried to figure out why, but it hasn't been that big of a deal.

Then it would suddenly need rebooting for no apparent reason. I'd get some "failure" message, then it would start a countdown to reboot. If I tried to save anything during this countdown, the file would be corrupted beyond repair. I did figure out how to stop the countdown, but the computer wouldn't let me do anything anyway so I still had to reboot.

On top of this, it wouldn't stay connected to the internet and acted like it hated the router. Which we finally discovered was because the freaking router which is supposed to do wireless and cable connections both, would switch between the two cutting out one or both of the services for no apparent reason. So we shut off the wireless feature on it, and its been behaving 90% better. I only have to reboot the router and cable modem every 3 days, vs every 3 hours.

Hubby checked the thing several times for hacking and found nothing. My computer has been checked for viruses, and does a full scan.. I mean FULL FREAKING SCAN every night.

I also have to restart the computer about every 2 days.

Now I could understand this better if I did something highly taxing on the computer like active games that require a lot of memory and CPU. But the most I do, is have 2-3 documents open, a few webpages, and a couple IM programs.

We've souped up the computer with lots of memory, a fast good quality CPU, and a SATA drive. You would think that it could handle it?

Now today's lovely problem!

Datarat posted a link to a You-Tube video about something that Ayn Rand wrote.

I really really wanted to watch this video. I also wanted to watch a couple other You-Tube Ayn Rand videos. Which I can do, if I could be satisfied with only watching the first minute of each video.

Instead, I get interested in it. I'm waiting at the edge of my seat for the next words, and it stops. I tried it both in FireFox and IE and neither will freaking show me the video, though FireFox does show me more of the video than IE but thats hardly any consolation.

When hubby gets home, I think we're going to have a talk about getting that Apple Mini we've been discussing.

I really hate change, and having to learn how MACs work is not going to be easy for me (or for my hubby as I am going to bitch about it), but I have to do something.

I just want the damn computer to work. It shouldn't be rocket science.

Email Mysteries

Most of the spam email that I recieve is advertisements for "male enhancement" or how I can click this link to get laid.

Occaisionally I'll get a spam email with some kind of gibberish in it where nothing in it actually makes sense. It looks like it might be a story, but its like tearing a page of a book in half length-wise and trying to make out the story from partial sentences.

And then... There is today's spam mail.

I honestly can't wait til the next one. They are very interesting in a spooky, who-the-hell-comes-up-with-this-and-why kind of way.

The first one:

"Subject: Helen, the mother of great Constantine, nor yet Saint Philip's daughters were like these" (so far normal spam babel, then I read the one sentence contents.)

"For purposes of this Section, a series of related events shall constitute a single material breach."

Kinda creepy. To me it reads like some kind of sci-fi horoscope. What does it mean? What events? What breach? OMG am I in trouble? Crap, while I was playing games did I accidently hack into mission control?

The second one is from Vit Loftus, which is a very strange name and reminds me of a sci-fi alien character or something. And after reading the creepy material breech spam, I'm a little on edge. The message simply states:

"I forbid you to tell the boy anything."

What boy? Crap, I don't know what boy, but rest assured if I see said boy, I won't be telling anything I swear. Don't kill my doggie, I swear I won't tell.

(Now just to figure out what it is that I'm supposed to know.)

Are you the government's whore?

Scary.

You know those secret plots we hear about that our government is secretly tracking us… etc.

What if they are true?

According to a recent article on JunkFood Science talks about mandatory medical record keeping that the federal government is insisting on implementing.

Honestly, this is the problem with federal income tax. It gives the federal government too much power over the states, as that is how the federal government is getting these mandatory programs to go over. States are “voluntarily” switching to these recording measures, because if they don’t, there will be no more federal funds.

Scary Snippets from the JunkFood Science article:

“For example, mandatory electronic reporting of glycosylated hemoglobin (A1c) values by laboratories to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene was recently enacted in New York City. The mandatory program is without patient’s knowledge or informed consent, nor are people free to opt out, according to World Net Daily. Add to that, we’ve already had glimpses of how this information can and is being used by government officials. Pennsylvania’s new plan to manage “chronic illnesses, as described in a recent post, includes identifying and tracking those with diabetes first and putting them under state disease management.”

“A number of states, including Maine and Colorado, have introduced legislation making all Medicaid and food assistance recipients, and state employees, who are deemed overweight be required to undergo weight loss interventions, including “behavior modification” and prescription drugs.”

While most of the article is about HIV testing no longer being anonymous, its these two things that really got me freaking. So, not only are we required to pay taxes for these very programs, but when we get to the point of actually needing them, we may have to jump through hoops like a show dog in order to get the benefits.

And while it sounds all well and good to make people take care of themselves, maintain their health conditions, etc., what happened to personal rights?

Should you ever happen to need help/assistance, your body is no longer yours, but lots of bureaucrats now own your body. It's a whole new version of selling your body for bucks. Except these bucks, are our own.

God forbid we ever implement a socialized medicine program (government health insurance).

Bucket O Possum

Right now as I type this, on my back porch there is an opossum. It is trapped in a large galvanized metal bucket with chicken wire on the top. It is being haphazardly guarded by my dog, though I don't think it'll escape anyway.

The poor little thing is a baby opossum and is extremely cute. Then it bares it's teeth and you start to see what it would look like full grown.. Fortunately though it is just a little baby, it might be 5lbs when wet.

My husband used to always want to go to this Mexican eatery in town because once under the outside decking he saw a baby opossum. So I thought I'd keep it here until he gets home.

Even though when I called him to tell him that it was in the back yard and if I left it alone the dog would kill it. He told me to let the dog kill it.

Of course when I reminded him of the baby opossum he used to adore at the Mexican restaurant, and asked him if he would sit back and watch our dog kill it. He replied: "No, but YOU'RE the one watching the dog kill it, not me." (I shouldn't really type the names I calling him in my head.)

I tried calling a pest removal place. They couldn't come out and get it today, and I sure wasn't going to leave the poor thing out there to be mauled to death by our dog. Our dog won't eat it btw. She just likes to play with things until they're dead and no more fun. I'm sorry but watching my 45lbs. normally very sweet hearted dog (at least with people she is) maul to death a poor little rather defenseless opossum, is not on my list of things to watch today. Nor would it be on my list of things to watch ever.

I was advised by many to just dump the thing in the neighbors yard. Which would be fine, if I could be sure it would stay there. But see, opossum's don't understand fences as boundaries, so with the dog's water outside and my hopefully soon-to-be producing garden, I really don't want an opossum to be around to seal my veggies (like I don't have enough competition with the squirrels). Not to mention that the opossum's like to run around at night and cause my dog (and the other neighborhood dogs)to bark incessantly.

So the poor opossum is sitting terrified in a bucket, safe, waiting for my husband to come home so we can drive out to an uninhabited area and release it. That way my husband gets to share in my experiences today. :) Thats what he gets for trying to put the death of an innocent baby creature on my head!

Online Comics - Schlock Mercenary

I should not poke around my friend's sites when I'm bored. (repeat 100 times)

Because when I'm bored, I find things that I'm interested in. Which means more things to take up my time. And most times these things are not really valuable uses of time, but things that entertain me.

So.. I was poking around on Datarat's website and I found Schlock Mercenary Online Comic Strip.

Now most days, I would follow the link. Read the one strip on it. Not get interested and move on.

But this time, I was bored.

I was bored and since my friend has referred to this comic strip several times, I think that it must be something really cool. So I decide to read several days of this comic. Which was a big mistake.

See.. I went back and read about a month of this comic strip. And when I ended on today's strip, I got mad. I wanted MORE! Unfortunately now I have to wait til tomorrow for more.

I really hate waiting.

Global Warming caused by Law Changes

This has to be the most hilarious thing I've read in ages. I actually have my friend Datarat to thank for alerting me to this.

While I'm not a big fan of the scare of supposed global warming, this article was way too funny to pass up.

It seems according to one Arkansas lady that lawmakers are plotting and making laws to cause this global warming.