Mr. H. loves roller coasters.

Mr. H. loves roller coasters. He goes out of his way to go to amusement
parks because he loves the adrenaline rush. For the past few years he's
been trying to get a group together to drive to Ohio to hit all the
coasters on King's Island (I think that's the name of it). Never mind
the fact that that's a really long drive from the Twin Cities, he wants
to go. In the past, he's actually volunteered to ferry ML's and the
Doctor's kids through Six Flags outside of Chicago (he had a blast,
too). So, this one is for him. Enjoy, darling. And know that if ever I
find out that you took part in trying to break this record, the
friendship's off. This
is not safe for gazing upon while you're at work or if you are a person
of strong moral value who does not like to look at pictures of naked
people. (Mom, don't open this one up)

Posted by: Kathy at 11:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 173 words, total size 1 kb.

Mr. H. loves roller coasters.

Mr. H. loves roller coasters. He goes out of his way to go to amusement
parks because he loves the adrenaline rush. For the past few years he's
been trying to get a group together to drive to Ohio to hit all the
coasters on King's Island (I think that's the name of it). Never mind
the fact that that's a really long drive from the Twin Cities, he wants
to go. In the past, he's actually volunteered to ferry ML's and the
Doctor's kids through Six Flags outside of Chicago (he had a blast,
too). So, this one is for him. Enjoy, darling. And know that if ever I
find out that you took part in trying to break this record, the
friendship's off. This
is not safe for gazing upon while you're at work or if you are a person
of strong moral value who does not like to look at pictures of naked
people. (Mom, don't open this one up)

Posted by: Kathy at 11:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 173 words, total size 1 kb.

And yes, I did mean

And yes, I did mean to put the "Majors" in her name. I'm not so out of
it that I didn't know she divorced the Six Million Dollar Man eons ago.
It's a direct tribute to that era of Farrah's hairstyle---she was
married to the guy, she was on Charlie's Angels
and she had the ultimate feathered-do.
The reference all comes together quite nicely, don't you think? Because
you thought of Farrah in her Charlie days, didn't you? I know you did.
Don't lie to me. Anyway, I've been growing my mane out for about a year
now, and since my old do was a nice layered job, the layers have grown
out and, at times, I look like a brunette Farrah.
This morning would be one of those times.
I can't decide whether I like this or not. I suppose, however, I'll
figure it out before I chop off all this freakin'
hair sometime this summer, after it becomes too hot for my poor neck.
(I have exceedingly thick, naturally curly hair---which is its own
frizzy trial on humid days)
I do however feel like sitting down on a sofa with my compadres, in
front of a speaker phone placed prominently on Bosley's desk, and doing
my darndest to solve a crime whilst simultaneously attempting to suss
out just what Charlie looks like.
It's going to be one of those days, folks. Beware.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 244 words, total size 1 kb.

And yes, I did mean

And yes, I did mean to put the "Majors" in her name. I'm not so out of
it that I didn't know she divorced the Six Million Dollar Man eons ago.
It's a direct tribute to that era of Farrah's hairstyle---she was
married to the guy, she was on Charlie's Angels
and she had the ultimate feathered-do.
The reference all comes together quite nicely, don't you think? Because
you thought of Farrah in her Charlie days, didn't you? I know you did.
Don't lie to me. Anyway, I've been growing my mane out for about a year
now, and since my old do was a nice layered job, the layers have grown
out and, at times, I look like a brunette Farrah.
This morning would be one of those times.
I can't decide whether I like this or not. I suppose, however, I'll
figure it out before I chop off all this freakin'
hair sometime this summer, after it becomes too hot for my poor neck.
(I have exceedingly thick, naturally curly hair---which is its own
frizzy trial on humid days)
I do however feel like sitting down on a sofa with my compadres, in
front of a speaker phone placed prominently on Bosley's desk, and doing
my darndest to solve a crime whilst simultaneously attempting to suss
out just what Charlie looks like.
It's going to be one of those days, folks. Beware.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 244 words, total size 1 kb.

...when I tell him this

...when I tell him this frightens me.

Mr Gates made a point of dwelling on blogs and said that
although they started in the technical community and have come to be a
broader social phenomenon, businesses can use them too. They had
advantages over more traditional ways of keeping in touch such as
e-mail and websites, he said. E-mail messages could be too imposing or
miss out key people who should be included, said Mr Gates. Websites
were a problem too, he added, because they demand that people visit
them regularly to find out if anything has changed and require regular
updating to avoid going stale. These problems could be solved, said Mr
Gates, by using blogs and Real Simple Syndication (RSS), that lets
people know when a favourite journal is updated. "What blogging and
these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to
communicate," he said. "The ultimate idea is that you should get the
information you want when you want it." {...}Microsoft currently does
not make any individual blogging tools but it is widely expected to
move into this space soon. If it does the move would pitch it into even
sharper competition with Google and others such as AOL.

I don't want Microsquash in this market. I really, really, really
don't. Gates has a habit of throwing money around to gain access to the
pie du jour for his sticky fingers. I don't want him goofing up the
blogging market with his gobs of cash. For months now, I've been
bitching about Blogger. It's a pretty low-tech excursion---or at least
it used to be. But all that's changed in the last two weeks. I adore
Blogger now that they've done the upgrade. I now have permalinks. I
have comments. I have a nifty template, but most of all, I have free
hosting. Blogger is free because they're ad-revenue based. Now I read I
get free photo hosting as
well. I have no idea how long Google's munificence is going to
last---I'm assuming that at some point in time they'll start charging
for all of this stuff, but right now I'm taking it while I can. But if
nerdboy wants into this market, well, that changes things. The husband,
Mr. IT Strategy, tells me this is nothing to worry about. That anything
Microsquash comes up with will mainly be for business apps, and they'll
eventually lose money because other services---Google---are offering
this service for free. He says that I should look at the history of
IM'ing to see what will ultimately happen with blogs. I dunno. What
happens in the meantime and what sort of turmoil will the rest of us
have to suffer through because nerdboy wants to rule the world? {hat
tip: Adam Curry}

Posted by: Kathy at 11:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 471 words, total size 3 kb.

...when I tell him this

...when I tell him this frightens me.

Mr Gates made a point of dwelling on blogs and said that
although they started in the technical community and have come to be a
broader social phenomenon, businesses can use them too. They had
advantages over more traditional ways of keeping in touch such as
e-mail and websites, he said. E-mail messages could be too imposing or
miss out key people who should be included, said Mr Gates. Websites
were a problem too, he added, because they demand that people visit
them regularly to find out if anything has changed and require regular
updating to avoid going stale. These problems could be solved, said Mr
Gates, by using blogs and Real Simple Syndication (RSS), that lets
people know when a favourite journal is updated. "What blogging and
these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to
communicate," he said. "The ultimate idea is that you should get the
information you want when you want it." {...}Microsoft currently does
not make any individual blogging tools but it is widely expected to
move into this space soon. If it does the move would pitch it into even
sharper competition with Google and others such as AOL.

I don't want Microsquash in this market. I really, really, really
don't. Gates has a habit of throwing money around to gain access to the
pie du jour for his sticky fingers. I don't want him goofing up the
blogging market with his gobs of cash. For months now, I've been
bitching about Blogger. It's a pretty low-tech excursion---or at least
it used to be. But all that's changed in the last two weeks. I adore
Blogger now that they've done the upgrade. I now have permalinks. I
have comments. I have a nifty template, but most of all, I have free
hosting. Blogger is free because they're ad-revenue based. Now I read I
get free photo hosting as
well. I have no idea how long Google's munificence is going to
last---I'm assuming that at some point in time they'll start charging
for all of this stuff, but right now I'm taking it while I can. But if
nerdboy wants into this market, well, that changes things. The husband,
Mr. IT Strategy, tells me this is nothing to worry about. That anything
Microsquash comes up with will mainly be for business apps, and they'll
eventually lose money because other services---Google---are offering
this service for free. He says that I should look at the history of
IM'ing to see what will ultimately happen with blogs. I dunno. What
happens in the meantime and what sort of turmoil will the rest of us
have to suffer through because nerdboy wants to rule the world? {hat
tip: Adam Curry}

Posted by: Kathy at 11:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 471 words, total size 3 kb.

There are days when I

There are days when I wonder if, in the human race, there are varying
sizes of brains. I read once that, in the natural kingdom, there can be
different brain sizes within the same species. The example they put
forth was that of squirrels. I wonder if this is true for humans. If
so, Hugo Chavez is in the tiny human brain category.

In his latest jibe against the U.S. leader, the outspoken
left-wing Venezuelan president urged Bush to use his planned visit to
the Vatican on June 4 to announce the withdrawal of U.S. troops from
Iraq.
"Even though he's not a Catholic ... he should ask God's forgiveness at
the Vatican ... go down on his knees in front of the Pope and ask for
the forgiveness of the world, not just the Iraqi people," Chavez told a
news conference Friday in Caracas.

{Insert hand going to forehead. SLAP!}

Posted by: Kathy at 11:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 161 words, total size 1 kb.

There are days when I

There are days when I wonder if, in the human race, there are varying
sizes of brains. I read once that, in the natural kingdom, there can be
different brain sizes within the same species. The example they put
forth was that of squirrels. I wonder if this is true for humans. If
so, Hugo Chavez is in the tiny human brain category.

In his latest jibe against the U.S. leader, the outspoken
left-wing Venezuelan president urged Bush to use his planned visit to
the Vatican on June 4 to announce the withdrawal of U.S. troops from
Iraq.
"Even though he's not a Catholic ... he should ask God's forgiveness at
the Vatican ... go down on his knees in front of the Pope and ask for
the forgiveness of the world, not just the Iraqi people," Chavez told a
news conference Friday in Caracas.

{Insert hand going to forehead. SLAP!}

Posted by: Kathy at 11:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 161 words, total size 1 kb.

Don't you just love it

Don't you just love it when you turn on your computer in the morning
and it decides to tell you that it can't open your settings because there's some corrupted memory file and it would prefer to open up an entirely new user in XP?

You just love it when that happens, right? To use Caribou speak: it's not a problem, it's a challenge!
Screw that. My former employers were always a little too chipper.
The husband is being the diligent master of all things computer-y right
now and is trying to reconstruct Wee Bastard to where it was last
night. He says he's about 95% there, but some of my stuff has to go.
That's fine---he's picking and choosing stuff that I haven't used in a
while---like the BMW Film Player I had to download when I wanted to
watch all those "Driver" films. After all, one of them was
Frankenheimer's last piece of work. That was important in more ways
than just the obvious time killing ones. But it has to go. Sigh. That's
fine. I'll live without it, I'm sure.
This happens at least once a year. Wee Bastard, a Compaq Armada laptop,
is a great computer most of the time---ever since we put XP on it. It
hasn't really deserved its name since 2001, but before that...well, it
wasn't pleasant. You see, Wee Bastard is one of those laptops the
husband kept because the company he was consulting for had decided not
to pay him. It was originally purchased in Kuwait City. It came with an
Arabic/English keyboard and a bastardized Arabic Enabled version of
Windows 98, which sucked bullets. I'd be working in Word, typing away,
and all of a sudden, I'd look up and there would be a whole page full
of Arabic characters. This of course, says nothing about how freaking
unstable the thing was...it was constantly crashing, and more so than a
regular version of 98. So, really, I've been fighting my own war with
the Arabs for the past couple of years, only they've gotten to me in
sneaky ways.
Ah, the husband tells me that I need to vamoose from his
computer---Gandalf---and go back to my own. Sigh. Thank goodness. It's
up, but we have to do maintenence this weekend. Relief. I was really
afraid there. When your computer decides it would really rather don a
Che T-shirt and become a full fledged member of the Rebellion, thank
you ever so much---you begin to worry.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 425 words, total size 2 kb.

Don't you just love it

Don't you just love it when you turn on your computer in the morning
and it decides to tell you that it can't open your settings because there's some corrupted memory file and it would prefer to open up an entirely new user in XP?

You just love it when that happens, right? To use Caribou speak: it's not a problem, it's a challenge!
Screw that. My former employers were always a little too chipper.
The husband is being the diligent master of all things computer-y right
now and is trying to reconstruct Wee Bastard to where it was last
night. He says he's about 95% there, but some of my stuff has to go.
That's fine---he's picking and choosing stuff that I haven't used in a
while---like the BMW Film Player I had to download when I wanted to
watch all those "Driver" films. After all, one of them was
Frankenheimer's last piece of work. That was important in more ways
than just the obvious time killing ones. But it has to go. Sigh. That's
fine. I'll live without it, I'm sure.
This happens at least once a year. Wee Bastard, a Compaq Armada laptop,
is a great computer most of the time---ever since we put XP on it. It
hasn't really deserved its name since 2001, but before that...well, it
wasn't pleasant. You see, Wee Bastard is one of those laptops the
husband kept because the company he was consulting for had decided not
to pay him. It was originally purchased in Kuwait City. It came with an
Arabic/English keyboard and a bastardized Arabic Enabled version of
Windows 98, which sucked bullets. I'd be working in Word, typing away,
and all of a sudden, I'd look up and there would be a whole page full
of Arabic characters. This of course, says nothing about how freaking
unstable the thing was...it was constantly crashing, and more so than a
regular version of 98. So, really, I've been fighting my own war with
the Arabs for the past couple of years, only they've gotten to me in
sneaky ways.
Ah, the husband tells me that I need to vamoose from his
computer---Gandalf---and go back to my own. Sigh. Thank goodness. It's
up, but we have to do maintenence this weekend. Relief. I was really
afraid there. When your computer decides it would really rather don a
Che T-shirt and become a full fledged member of the Rebellion, thank
you ever so much---you begin to worry.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 425 words, total size 2 kb.

--- More Silly Germans! I

--- More Silly Germans!

I forsee a whole new set of hook-up questions being asked as a result of this survey.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

--- More Silly Germans! I

--- More Silly Germans!

I forsee a whole new set of hook-up questions being asked as a result of this survey.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

--- Silly Germans! BERLIN (Reuters)

--- Silly Germans!

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government's plans to levy fines on companies that fail to hire trainees will also be
applied to legal German brothels, Der Spiegel news magazine reported Sunday.

Brothels failing to employ a certain number of apprentices will not be exempted from the financial penalties that
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government wants to introduce on all companies later this year, the magazine said.

The legislation drafted by the Social Democrats and their Greens coalition partners will fine companies that do not have
one apprentice for every 15 workers.

I'm not touching this one with a ten foot pole.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 113 words, total size 1 kb.

--- Silly Germans! BERLIN (Reuters)

--- Silly Germans!

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government's plans to levy fines on companies that fail to hire trainees will also be
applied to legal German brothels, Der Spiegel news magazine reported Sunday.

Brothels failing to employ a certain number of apprentices will not be exempted from the financial penalties that
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government wants to introduce on all companies later this year, the magazine said.

The legislation drafted by the Social Democrats and their Greens coalition partners will fine companies that do not have
one apprentice for every 15 workers.

I'm not touching this one with a ten foot pole.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 113 words, total size 1 kb.

--- Ah, Hippie Hollow. My

--- Ah, Hippie Hollow.
My sister and brother and their respective families live on Lake
Travis, so I'm pretty familiar with the area they're talking about.
I've been visiting Travis since I was ten years old and ultimately it's
where I would like to spend the rest of my days. It's gorgeous there.
(If you'd like to see what some of the area looks like, click here
and take a peek around. That's my sister and brother in law's company.)
Travis is a huge man made lake---it was created by damming off the
eastern branch of the Colorado river--- but because of the hilly
terrain in the area, there isn't a huge amount of beach area. In most
spots on Travis, you jump in and the bottom is sixty-five feet straight
down. You never touch. The terrain creates negative odds on there being
beaches at all, but Hippie Hollow is one of the few. So, not only is it
noteworthy to float by a beach on Travis, the fact one of the few is a
nudist beach makes it all the more interesting.
We've boated by Hippie Hollow, and I can testify that it is quite the
scene. Perhaps my nephew put it best when, at age five, he screamed, "MOMMY! MOMMY! Why is that man standing over there with his wiener hanging out?"

From the mouths of babes.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 239 words, total size 1 kb.

--- Ah, Hippie Hollow. My

--- Ah, Hippie Hollow.
My sister and brother and their respective families live on Lake
Travis, so I'm pretty familiar with the area they're talking about.
I've been visiting Travis since I was ten years old and ultimately it's
where I would like to spend the rest of my days. It's gorgeous there.
(If you'd like to see what some of the area looks like, click here
and take a peek around. That's my sister and brother in law's company.)
Travis is a huge man made lake---it was created by damming off the
eastern branch of the Colorado river--- but because of the hilly
terrain in the area, there isn't a huge amount of beach area. In most
spots on Travis, you jump in and the bottom is sixty-five feet straight
down. You never touch. The terrain creates negative odds on there being
beaches at all, but Hippie Hollow is one of the few. So, not only is it
noteworthy to float by a beach on Travis, the fact one of the few is a
nudist beach makes it all the more interesting.
We've boated by Hippie Hollow, and I can testify that it is quite the
scene. Perhaps my nephew put it best when, at age five, he screamed, "MOMMY! MOMMY! Why is that man standing over there with his wiener hanging out?"

From the mouths of babes.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 239 words, total size 1 kb.

--- And here I thought

--- And here I thought Libya was bad.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Sudan won an uncontested election on
Tuesday to the United Nations' main human rights watchdog, prompting
the United States to walk out because of alleged ethnic cleansing in
the country's Darfur region. Sudan's delegate immediately shot back
that the U.S. delegation was "shedding crocodile tears" and turning a
blind eye to atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq against
civilians as well as against prisoners.

The UN has no credibilty left. None. Whatsoever.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 95 words, total size 1 kb.

--- And here I thought

--- And here I thought Libya was bad.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Sudan won an uncontested election on
Tuesday to the United Nations' main human rights watchdog, prompting
the United States to walk out because of alleged ethnic cleansing in
the country's Darfur region. Sudan's delegate immediately shot back
that the U.S. delegation was "shedding crocodile tears" and turning a
blind eye to atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq against
civilians as well as against prisoners.

The UN has no credibilty left. None. Whatsoever.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 95 words, total size 1 kb.

Blogger needs to improve their

Blogger needs to improve their communication skills. Which is ironic,
don't you think, for a company that specializes in blogs?

Sometime yesterday afternoon, Blogger switched all the domain names on what seems to be all
the Blogger Blogs. If you found your way here via Google, take a peek
up at the domain name and realize that they've ditched the 'www'
routing. In the past you could either put in the 'www' or you could
leave it out---but either way you'd get here. Blogger apparently is
pushing for uniformity. You'll need to redo your bookmarks for this
site and any other Blogger Blogs you visit.
So, this is fine and dandy and I don't really have any issues with it. I
JUST WOULD HAVE APPRECIATED BEING TOLD ABOUT IT BEFORE THEY DID IT SO I
COULD HAVE WARNED MY READERS AND SIMULTANEOUSLY NOT WASTED HOURS LAST
NIGHT WONDERING WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON BECAUSE THE HUSBAND COULD
SEE THE SITE BUT I COULDN'T.

I don't think a little post on the log-in page would have been too much to ask, do you?

Update: It does make me feel strangely normal, though. Blogger
never tells you about this stuff until it's over with, if they bother
telling you about it at all. It's somewhat comforting in a weird sort
of way. Update 2: An observant commentator over at INDC Journal notes that it's BLOGSPOT
blogs that are affected and not all Blogger Blogs. I'd completely
forgotten that you could pay Blogger to host your site---hence those
people aren't affected. Forgive me for spreading lies, lies and more
damn lies!

Posted by: Kathy at 09:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 279 words, total size 2 kb.

Blogger needs to improve their

Blogger needs to improve their communication skills. Which is ironic,
don't you think, for a company that specializes in blogs?

Sometime yesterday afternoon, Blogger switched all the domain names on what seems to be all
the Blogger Blogs. If you found your way here via Google, take a peek
up at the domain name and realize that they've ditched the 'www'
routing. In the past you could either put in the 'www' or you could
leave it out---but either way you'd get here. Blogger apparently is
pushing for uniformity. You'll need to redo your bookmarks for this
site and any other Blogger Blogs you visit.
So, this is fine and dandy and I don't really have any issues with it. I
JUST WOULD HAVE APPRECIATED BEING TOLD ABOUT IT BEFORE THEY DID IT SO I
COULD HAVE WARNED MY READERS AND SIMULTANEOUSLY NOT WASTED HOURS LAST
NIGHT WONDERING WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON BECAUSE THE HUSBAND COULD
SEE THE SITE BUT I COULDN'T.

I don't think a little post on the log-in page would have been too much to ask, do you?

Update: It does make me feel strangely normal, though. Blogger
never tells you about this stuff until it's over with, if they bother
telling you about it at all. It's somewhat comforting in a weird sort
of way. Update 2: An observant commentator over at INDC Journal notes that it's BLOGSPOT
blogs that are affected and not all Blogger Blogs. I'd completely
forgotten that you could pay Blogger to host your site---hence those
people aren't affected. Forgive me for spreading lies, lies and more
damn lies!

Posted by: Kathy at 09:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 279 words, total size 2 kb.