We are finally iPopified

One happy iPod family (OK, so the kids don't actually own them - yet). Get your picture made here.

Urban Dictionary: Nanogasm

This just came up on my Google Desktop Word-a-Day. How apropos!! I just love the iPod Nano, I may just have a Nanogasm!!

TEN things I love about my job

OK, I've been too down on my job so here is a positive list to remind myself how great it is.

1. 14 minutes from home: I simply can't beat that unless I take a 85% paycut and work at Hannaford's. Plus this allows me to bring Adam to Gymnastics.
2. Excellent pay: It is worth being a manager for this pay.
3. C#: What a beautiful language.
4. UI: There is nothing that I enjoy more in programming than making awesome user inteface.
5. Good boss: He is nice as can be and leaves me alone (although I don't think he quite appreciates what I do yet).
6. Tom: He brought me in and continues to be a top notch friend (when he is around). Plus he is good to work with.
7. The gym: You can't beat $7/month and 7 minutes from work.
8. Shopping: Tax free shopping in NH is about 10-15 min away.
9. $5 chair massages 3 times a month.
10. Cube next to the window with a view of the sunset.

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: Google's Private Lives - Technology Review

This article proposes a scary situation. I love Google Desktop 2.0, but am now wary of the next version. Being (relatively) computer savvy, I would never disclose anything private. Still, it is starting to reek of the ever growing evil Microsoft empire. (OK, without MS, I would be out of computer programming skills.).

But as an aside on Google, I once got an email from them asking me for my resume. The guy said that they were always looking for bright people and saw that I was a SW engineer from my blog (woohoo, this is after many months of not having my email address public). I sent it along, but did not hear back from them. Then I saw this photoessay about them: http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2006/inside_google/. It looks like the employees probably live there 24/7.

Germ paranoia

My father taught me when I was a girl that to avoid germs in public bathrooms, after washing your hands, you took a paper towel to grab the door knob or handle, prop the door open with your foot and then throw the paper towel out in the trash before exiting. Of course, you could only do this if the door/trash were properly situated. At work, I've seen yet another trick. You leave the water running (wasteful), dry your hands and then use another paper towel to turn off the faucet. Two separate people have done this, which I find fascinating, either they learned this trick from one another, or this is something I've never run across in 39 years. I don't think this is so effective because if you turn off the faucet with your wet hands, the new germs you get would probably be scrubbed away when you used the paper towel (I'm hoping). Then again, there are two swinging doors to this bathroom so you can't do the prop the door trick. At least from what I've heard, women are much better about washing their hands after using the toilet than men.

My brush with low-speed internet

In an effort to save money because of Doug's job, I went about trimming all the excesses. On thing that got hit was high-speed internet. I figured that I didn't work from home anymore so the 3Mbs internet access at $40/month for entertainment purposes only was just a luxury. Saving $10/month isn't much but it's something. Of course I also have Vonage, so I made sure that I still had enough bandwidth to support the switch. Since the phone adapter sits in front of my router, I assumed that it would take the necessary bandwidth before any computing tasks. My Vonage was set to 50 kbs, and the upload speed difference between the 3Mbs and 384 kbs service was 256 kbs to 128 kbs. Since that was well over the 50 kbs I needed for Vonage, I took the jump.

OK, so it was a short jump. I don't think we even lasted a week. Web surfing wasn't so bad, but then I noticed that downloading my requisite podcasts every night sometimes took more than an hour!! Then the straw that broke the camel's back was the phone call that Doug got while a podcast was downloading. He said that the audio kept cutting out. Then tonight, he had another call and I couldn't even IM without breaking up the signal. I immediately called Charter to reinstate my 3Mbs service. Another luxury becomes necessity.

2/24 - Shortly after that, we received another phone call and it came in loud and clear and I didn't have to ask Adam to stop playing Gem Shop. OK, this sounds pretty lame, but if I did have to ask him to stop, there would have been excessive whining afterwards, which would have ruined this important call!

Apple charges for first iTunes 'podcast novel' - vnunet.com

I was a big fan of Earthcore (and still haven't finished Ancestor yet), even though Sci Fi/Horror isn't really my genre. Although I would never read or buy books like this, it makes for great listening on long drives. I'm glad Scott can make some money this way on his tremendous efforts in writing and narration. I'm even happier that his new books will appear as FREE podcasts first for those of us already on the bandwagon.

iPopMyPhoto runaround

The folks at http://ipopmyphoto.com/samples.adp wouldn't do this collage of photos which would have been called "iAdam iJump" for the regular price of $19.95. They said it is really 5 photos to be done. I even offered twice the money. I ended up using a family photo of 4 people to try to get my money's worth. Then again, the collage is fantastic the way it is, after I clean up the edges a bit.

Blind Access Journal: Google's Inaccessible Account Creation Process!

I finally got around to removing my word verification box after hearing how it prevents blind users from opening accounts and posting comments. Google (and hence Blogger) does not provide an audio alternative for this. Please sign the petition to change this.

Dova's masterpiece

They say that you don't take as many photographs of your second child as your first. I find the opposite to be true. I take more than twice the number of pictures of both kids than from when Adam was her age. Last November I took an all time high of 276 pictures and movies. It could be that my digital camera was new when Adam was a baby (bought just for his arrival!) and I hadn't switched over from the "don't waste film" mentality.

Then again I noticed that poor Dova has not appeared in the blog since last September!! Here she is showcasing her painting she and Daddy made at the Hands-On Art Museum in Shirley, MA.

Jewel Mania

It all started last year when I got my latest cell phone. It was the first one that had a color display and it came with a demo version of Bejeweled (lasts about 2 minutes). I had heard of this game and how it was really good and addicting, so I gave it a whirl. At first I thought it was kind of dumb, but it didn't take long till I was hooked. I found Bejeweled 2 online at Yahoo! Games, which was fine for when I was on a computer, but I wanted to be able to play it anywhere, so I went on a quest to get it on my Palm. Pop Cap really did a good job of making sure that people actually paid for the game and I wasn't about to shell out $20 for it!! The phone version is a bit more clunky, because you had to move about the board with those tiny cursor keys and my screen is only 1.25" square, so not really worth having to pay $6.99 for. But alas, I finally gave into my addiction and actually paid for the phone version. I actually had to enable the pay-per-use internet access for the phone to do it. So in all it, it probably cost me $8 (so much for stingy me!!). Still, it was cheaper than the Palm version and I could take it with me.

So after becoming a pro at Bejeweled, I tried out Jewel Quest. At first the new twist of having to "clear" a board by making moves was really challenging. But finally I became a master and then it became too repetitive and boring with the same old screens. Although Bejeweled 2 is quite repetitive as well, there is something mesmerizing and thrilling about those shiny gems and "swirly" ones. Now Adam has become addicted to Bejeweled 2 as well. He comes home after school asking to play it, and even can play the version on my phone. He will even give up dessert to play it instead!!

And lately, is has been Gem Shop for me. It removed the single space move and straight line restrictions and added a few fun twists. I played it until 1 am last night, but at least I stopped when I won the game!!

(2/17/06 - oops I totally mispublished this post to 2005 a couple weeks ago)

My new glasses

After 9 years, I finally got a new pair of glasses. I love the funky frames, but Adam says he likes my old ones better. The boy is just resistant to change. I also love the swiveling LCD display on my Canon S2 IS for this self-portrait, but still it doesn't help me look less goofy.

Email runaround

I really hope I win the Powerball lottery so that I can quit this company that treats its employees like 5 year olds. After switching my email from hotmail to gmail, so that I can forward to work, they end up blocking it so I have no more email. For a while, I tried forwarding my gmail to hotmail, where I can still see the headers in outlook express, but that just got tiresome. Besides, having duplicate emails and deleting them is just a pain. Now I am paranoid that it was because I posted 6 month and counting from work and someone read it as it went over.

This week, I also got an email from the IT guy asking what all these programs that were loaded on the computer and whether we had licences for them. And what do I use TweakUI for? He claimed he was not trying to babysit me. So I know there is quite a bit of snooping going on. Ugh.