I spend a lot of time online and have done for years and over that time many happy, sad, odd, nasty, fantastic things have happened to me online and off. This blog is about all of that and more.
Hey thanks for checking out my little blog. A bit about me: I'm a web designer for a Catholic Hospital
in Nebraska. I love my job and it's allowed me to learn so much about design and code etc etc. all at their expense, not mine, hehehe.
I have a daughter, she's nearly 12 and the pride of my life. You can check out her website at Sweetiepete.com.
She loves it when people sign her guestbook :) That's enough for this space. If you want to know more, read the blogs! :)
Woohoo, just want to say a quick hi to Gary and welcome him to the wonderful world of instant messaging. Muahahaha. That was another interesting and quite rewarding case of the coolness of the Internet. A couple of years ago, I got to wondering about my biological father, something I've done off and on over the years but never did anything about. Just on a lark, I looked him up via Yahoo's people lookup feature and lo and behold, he was listed. So I gulped and sent an email, promising I wouldn't drag him onto the Springer show for a reunion special and broke the news about who I was. And to my eternal gratefulness, he was wonderful about it. We've been in tough through email ever since and have even met once for dinner, and I look forward to meeting up again at some point.
Anyway, today he's just discovered the virtues of Yahoo messenger and I got to be his first ever instant message. Can I get a big 'Awwwwwwwww'? Thank you.
Well tonight is my daughter's big band performance for this semester. She's really excited about it. The grandparents bought her a really lovely white shirt to wear with her good pants (trousers for UKers - no she will not be playing in her knickers!) and I found a cool pewter clarinet pin for her to wear for luck. I'll give it to her tonight, I can't wait :) Should be a good show. And after it's over, I'll never have to hear the hannukah song again. For some reason she loved it and played it over and over and over. Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely song. But there comes a point when hearing it for the hundredth time in one evening is a bit much.
So while I blog and wait for an email telling me to go ahead with something for the work website (should be coming.. any time now.. yep... any second now...), I'm listening to Virgin's 'burning down the 80s' web station. A station that promised me Duran Duran and the best of groovy 80s alternative tunes by such bands as Devo and Flock of Seagulls and instead I'm getting Loverboy and Poison :( I'm disappointed. If I wanted hair band music I'd look for it. As it is, I'd rather have my cool new wave stuff thanks. But that's the great thing about Internet radio, you can sort of pick and choose what genre you like and not be forced to listen to your local town's top 40 crap (unless you like that sort of thing). Launch.com is pretty nice because you get your own 'station' and rate the songs as they play (and edit your favourite genres and keep that nasty country music off your station). However, I often have problems with the station popup window locking up and forcing me to end the task, which then shuts down any and all browsers I currently have open. Which is a bit annoying. But that could just be this computer, I don't know.
I just have to do a bit of bragging for a sec - the other day after I hooked up my daughter's new (well it's used) computer, we discovered she had no sound. Which means no soundcard. So *deep breath* I took a chance and bought one, cracked open the case and installed it, discovered the CD that came with the card was a piece of junk, downloaded the proper drivers from the internet on my machine, put them on hers and voila, she has sound. I could be a techie :)
I'm watching Good Morning America this morning and they had a human interest story about a man who was in a car accident and his car ended up in a ditch. He was then stuck there, injured with a broken hip for six days and he survived by burning anything in the car that he could tear up and eating from a jar of peanut butter and Taco Bell hot sauce packets. During the interview with him, the paramedics presented him with a bag of sauce packets. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if I'd had to eat those nasty things for six days, I wouldn't want any more of them. I can see it now though, Taco Bell will use this poor guy as their spokesman and he'll become the Jarod of the fast food mexican industry.
There was something else I was going to write about.. what was it... Oh well it's gone now. happens when you get old. Ah well.
I've checked Amazon, Ebay and Walmart and all my pressies should be on their way here by now :) I hope hope hope I can get them all sorted out before christmas. Next year I'll try and do my shopping online in November and avoid the stress. Last night I sorted out the presents for the rest of the family. Though apparently I bought something for my cute little cousin that he's already got, but oh well, now he'll have two. A boy can never have too many stick horses. We were just out shopping around and saw it, and it was adorable. So we bought that, along with the video for Disney's Spirit of the Stallion. We have a definite cowboy theme going on. I dunno, I'm not used to shopping for a boy. Wyatt's got everything already though so it was hard to pick something we didn't think he'd already have.
Enough about shopping. I must be boring the pants off some of you. Sorry, sometimes my fingers just type random thoughts in my head and the best thing to do is just go with it :) So I'll end this blog before you all fall asleep :) Ta ra.
Well again, I've not written in here for a few days. I'm going to have Kat cracking her whip at me soon. Sorry dear :) I've been caught up with Chistmas shopping online. I think this is the first year that I've done almost all of it online. Bless Ebay. I've found quite a few ultra-cool items for my discerning Harry Potter fan through Ebay, such as a Gryffindor scarf just like the ones in the movie. You can't get them in the US (unless you are an Ebayer) because I believe they were only licensed to Marks & Spencer shops in the UK. I also found her a replica of Wizard's Chess used in the first film and a mini-poster signed by seven cast members (including Richard Harris). I like this sort of stuff rather than buying the tat you can get at Walmart and the like. How many plastic figurines can a person really have use for? BUT, speaking of Wally world, at the Walmart website I found a really cool hot chocolate maker by Mr. Coffee :) Cheap too! This is fun! I think the only downside is that I'm having a slight problem keeping track of what is coming from where and where my money's going. I accidentally paid for the scarf twice via Paypal so it took out the funds twice even though the seller refunded one of them. It's taking ages to filter back into my Paypal account so that I can put it back in my bank account. Ah well.
If you're wondering why I'm naming off my daughter's xmas pressies on here, it's because I know she doesn't read this (anyone with sneaky kids will doubt this I'm sure :) ). The reason I know she doesn't is that she finally got her messy room cleaned up to perfection and so I've installed her new computer (sans internet of course) in her room and she is completely absorbed in playing her new Harry Potter game we picked up in Chi-town. Notice I'm not talking about the really cool gift for my sister because I'm not 100% certain she doesn't read this. She could be sneaky, I wouldn't put it past her :)
So Christmas this year will be rather pleasant depsite the much-missed absence of my parents, and now my lovely Aunt. We're keeping it as normal as possible by getting together for xmas eve dinner at the grandparents, which should be nice. I've only got my cousin's family and my grandparents left to shop for now but I think I might actually brave reality and go to the mall for those - have to get that feeling of accomplishment you know :) It just doesn't happen when you hit the Submit button on Ebay because you still have to wait for the package to show up, and you're in anguish hoping it comes before Christmas. So if you read any blogs with me whinging about the postal service, just ignore it.
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