Today my beloved husband turns 30 years old. His age is finally starting to catch up to his grey hairs.

I love you, Dale! Happy 30th Birthday!

Usually, Zoë doesn’t have much of an odor to me, though Dale constantly greets her with, “you stink!” and refers to her as Stinky Dog, but yesterday morning while she was out, she rolled in something that left her pretty pungent. Like, ’smell her across the room’ stinky. So I gave in and took the easy route by making an appointment at Petsmart to have her groomed.

This was Zoë’s first trip to the groomer so I was little worried about how she’d handle it. I found out I could pay extra for an ‘express wash’ that would allow me to stay with her through the process. Zoë seemed more intrigued by Faye (the groomer) and the process than scared, which was good. She actively enjoyed the tooth brushing and the toweling, but she really didn’t like the blowdryer.

I used this opportunity to take some photos with the new camera.

Afterwards, she got a silly bandanna that I haven’t bothered to remove yet, and amazingly, she hasn’t chewed it off yet either.

Last week I was bitching and moaning to Dale about wanting to purchase several items, but for one reason or another, they were all out of my grasp. This week, however, I am in possession of a new cell phone, a new digital camera, and the sofa we bought a month ago was delivered this morning. Yay!

My phone was fairly old in cell-phone-years (similar to dog-years) and very lacking in features, apart from being very small. My digital camera was awesome, but very big and bulky, and I wanted something a lot smaller that I could carry around with ease, preferably inside my (small) purse. Since a number of camera phones are out now, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and give that a try.

The phone I picked was the Motorola V400. Interestingly enough, Best Buy was offering it for $100 (after rebates) and a nearby Cingular dealer was offering it for $150 (after rebates). Cingular wouldn’t match the Best Buy offer, but they had the phone in stock so I got it anyway. I was told at the time I signed up that I’d need to subscribe to the Multimedia Messaging addon, so I did. The next day, Dale and I were still having trouble sending MMS emails from the phone, so I called Cingular and was told that I also needed to have the Internet access program (whatever that was called). Hours later, I still couldn’t send photos from my phone, so I gave in and went back to the Cingular retailer. The agent spent about 30 minutes calling around to determine that I only needed to subscribe to MMS and reactivate my MyCingular web account. After that, I was finally able to send photos.

One of the reasons I opted to go with the Motorola v400 was because of its data connectivity capabilities. I’d learned that I could get software from Motorola that would allow me to use a data cable to sync my phone with a program on my PC. Easy phone book management! Well, it turned out to not be so easy after all. And I discovered that out of the 5 or 6 v### models, the v400 was the only one that did not allow you to use the data connectivity to transfer multimedia files. Bah! That meant that any ringtones or photos would have to be emailed to and from my phone. Why only one phone out of a series was denied multimedia transfer, I don’t know. Additionally, the v400’s image quality was only so-so, so I began to shop around some more.

This time, I switched carriers and chose the Nokia 3650. All the reviews I’d read on it rated it highly, except in one area - it’s size. Still, I thought I’d give it a shot since it would combine a camera and phone. It was neater, but I finally decided (after much urging from Dale) that if the majority of photos I’d take would be transferred to PC and edited then uploaded, I’d be better off getting a small, less expensive phone and a new digital camera.

I finally ended up getting a Samsung e105, and I love it. It’s so tiny! It’s even smaller than the Nokia 8210 that I’d been using. And it’s got a few more features and it’s more comfortable and easier to use. It also allows for connectivity with your PC via a data cable, Bluetooth, and IR. Oh, and it’s free, after the rebate. It also leaves enough room in my purse for a small digital camera.

And, after a bit of shopping around, Dale and I really did find a tiny camera! After eyeballing little Canon PowerShots and Sonys, we found a very nice, very small camera made by Casio. We hadn’t even known Casio made digital cameras, but the Exilim series was intruiguing. Tiny, as not much larger than a credit card. We decided on the EX-Z4. It packs 4 megapixels and a 2″ LCD screen into a package that’s less than 3.5″x2.25″x1″! It comes with a nifty little docking station that’s a recharger and USB connection. Dale and I have been having a lot of fun with this camera. I’m very glad we got it in time to take it to Houston this weekend.

Finally, our new couch arrived, and it’s HUGE! It didn’t seem so big in the store, but the new couch takes up as much wall space as our old couch, an end table, and the bookcase being used as an aquarium stand. It’s large enough for four men to sit on it together and not feel like their sexuality is being threatened.

Our coffee table looks warped in that photo, but it’s not. It’s an optical illusion caused by the couch, which is angled out on the ends. It’s really a sectional, two love seats, and only the backs of the middle two sections sit flush against the wall. We love it!

Well, I think our consumer rampage is done for a bit. Hopefully what we’ve gotten will be enough to keep us amused for a while.

Happy Birthday, Genevieve!!

I usually just delete mails sent to me about virus and hoax warnings, but this one was brief enough that I paused to read it, and got a good laugh.

From: xxxxx
Date: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 16:32:22
To: xxxxxx
Subject: Important! Hoax!

I hate hoax e-mail warnings, but this one is important.

If a someone comes to your front door and says they are conducting a
survey, and asks you to show them your naked butt…
DO NOT show them your naked butt!

THIS IS A SCAM,
they only want to see your naked butt!

… I wish I’d gotten this yesterday… I feel so stupid

Mere hours after completed the recode of my site, I sat down, created a new design, and added it to the new skin chooser. (See the link at the top of the sidebar?)

Go ahead and check out “puddles” and let me know what you think.

I’ll be updating some of my old designs as well as creating some new ones. This should be fun! Or, I’ll make myself absolutely crazy. Either way, the results will be interesting.

I’ve spent the last two and a half days doing a minor redesign and major back-end recode of this site. Front-end changes include a new background, new sidebar content, and new sidebar look. Back-end changes include a massive code clean-up and redoing my templates in preparation of making this a skinnable site.

I’ve also poured over sites like MT-Plugins (I LOVE the Plugin Manager!), Domesticat, Moveable Type’s documentation and forums (and I upgraded to the latest version), and Scriptygoddess.

Another invaluable resource has been my husband, Dale, who helped me resolve a number of issues and put up with my bitching.

As usual, things may still be quirky, so if you come across something that seems broken, please let me know!

In addition to the foot accidents of last night, I managed to break a flourescent blacklight and bruise my thigh, knee, and thumb. I was a walking disaster. I’m not even sure how I got the three bruises. I know that I was helping Dale bolt together a day bed and my thumb hurt. I looked and saw a small dark smudge on the side of my left thumb. At that point I wasn’t sure if it was dirt or a bruise. By the time I went to bed, the mark had turned into a pea-sized purple smudge. Now, it’s more like a peanut-sized purple smudge, and it hurts.

I took a picture of my thumb, but Dale says posting it would be gross. So now I’m cranky that I can’t show off my bruise.

Dale and I have abused my toes tonight. While Dale was unloading groceries, I stopped him and gave him a big hug. He was holding three cans of kidney beans in one hand and lost his grip and dropped one. Onto the third and fourth toes of my right foot. Surprisingly it didn’t hurt that much. I think I was more scared than shocked.

Later, I was rearranging the craft room. I tried to pull a heavily-laden office chair towards me, and it skipped across the carpeting and onto my toes. This time I hit the second and third toes of my right foot.

My poor toes aren’t very happy with me right now.

Fellow monkey junkie, Aaron, sent me this story about the upcoming Year of the Monkey and how it’s being welcomed by hords of Chinese women buying monkey underwear.

I wish I had a set of funky monkey panties!

Genevieve rocks!

For Christmas, she gave me a set of yummy scented candles and a pair of monkey socks! They’ve covered in dancing monkeys and say, “How funky is your monkey?” See for yourself!

I decided to start off the new year with a big change. I’d been sick and tired of my hair for quite a while, but Dale didn’t want me to change a thing. Finally, he gave in and let me cut my hair. I opted to do something useful with my hair and donated the cut hair to Locks of Love. Ten inches is the minimum length for a LoLove donation. I think my hair ended up 11″ or 12″ shorter. It’s taken a couple of weeks, but I’m finally getting used to it.

It should be noted that Halcyon, of Cocky Bastard, was the inspiration for the Locks of Love donation.

Before:

After:

For about 8 years now, I’ve maintained a web site for my highschool alumni. It has almost 1500 members spanning about 60 years. In the time I’ve run this site, I’ve ended up suspending about half a dozen people and banning 2. I think that’s pretty amazing. It’s even more amazing if you know that a handful of those members hate each other and fight almost constantly. I get weekly complaints about the same few members. I have to go in and lock threads or delete them on occasion. I have to soothe ruffled feathers and send combatants to different rooms. Just the other day, I was likened to the playground monitor overseeing a bunch of kids at recess, and that’s what it often feels like.

I don’t get paid for this. I do this on my own time and pay for it out of my own pocket. I do it because I love my highschool and the community that surrounds it. The people on the message board feel the same way, even those that make me want to tear out my hair, otherwise they wouldn’t be part of the site. At least, that’s what I like to believe.

I’ve tried very hard to be unbiased in my dealings with people on the message boards. I only know about a dozen members personally, and that’s because I went to school with them. Most of the people who are continual sources of trouble are from the 60’s through the 80s, well before I got to highschool. So any opinions I have about individuals is based solely on the message board; how they act and how others react to them. Against my better judgment, I’ve let some people remain members, even though they’re so often the center of a digital shitstorm and MY life would be easier if they were gone. And still, I get slammed with the “biased” label every time I do or don’t take action when a situation arises.

For about the last four years, the board was fairly self-regulatated. There would be big flare-ups, but they’d usually happen every three months or so. Since this fall, tensions seem to have risen a few notches, and I’m dealing with issues on an almost weekly basis. I’m tired of being forced to make a decision, knowing that no matter what I do, I’ll shortly have an email from someone complaining about it and calling me unfair and biased.

Dale hates the message board because of the amount of stress it causes me. He keeps telling me that I should just shut it down. I recently told my friend, Kathie, about the latest incident, and she said I should just ban them all.

The same few people keep causing problems, and I don’t know what to do. I really don’t want to ban people, but I’m near the breaking point. I warned them all before Christmas that if things continued to escalate, I’d shut down the message board, and I desperately don’t want to do that.

Where do I draw the line? When do I give in and started telling people they can’t be part of this community? When do I decide that the problems of the community outweigh its purpose? When do I decide it’s just not worth it anymore?

On a lighter note, when I checked my computer yesterday evening, I discovered that one of my cats had IM’d a friend of mine.

[05:18 PM] Pamela: 900000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000ikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuiku
ikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuiku
ikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikuikikikikikikikik

With seven suspects, it’s unlikely I’ll ever find out who did it.

What’s a quick way to get a three day suspension from school without involving drugs, guns, profanity, fighting, or even rule-breaking? Simple. Show your classmates a bit of coding that your father taught you.

Carl Grimmer, a 13 year old, used a bit of DOS programming to send a one word instant message to every computer in his school. The word was ‘hey.’ Carl didn’t threaten or harass anyone. He didn’t use profanity. And, the school admits they don’t even have a written policy covering what Carl did, yet he ended up suspended from school for three days.

Rather than explaining to the boy what they perceived to be wrong with what he’d done, the administration is sending the message that kids should be wary of showing off what they learn. Who knows what will get them into trouble? The principal is hoping to make an example out of him. I think what the principal and Carl’s overreacting computer teacher did was make themselves look like computer-ignorant peasants chasing after knowledge and curiosity with pitchforks and torches.

When I got to work yesterday, I ended up parking next to this truck. This afternoon, my coworkers and I went out to look at it again and had a good laugh.

In November 2003, Michael Jackson was lambasted for dangling his youngest child over the balcony of his hotel room. He apologized for his actions, calling it a “terrible mistake” and stating that he’d gotten “caught up in the … moment.”

On January 2, 2004, Steve Irwin, best known as the “Crocodile Hunter” clutched his month-old son in one arm while dangling a chicken carcass in front of a live crocodile. The performance, dubbed “Bob’s ‘croc feeding debut,’” took part in front of a packed audience that included the baby’s mother (who apparently consented to her child’s participation in the show).

I won’t even try to make excuses for Michael Jackson. He did endanger his child, if unintentionally. What’s bothering me now is that Steve Irwin also placed his child in danger, quite willingly and deliberately and even used it as a media event, but his actions are being treated as no more than “Crocodile Hunter” wackiness. Granted, the Irwin story is quite brief, but that’s just another indication that there’s little concern over the potential danger to his son.

At this point, I’m glad that even if I had a child, there’s very little chance he’d ever come in contact with either of those loons.