Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Saget Night, Part Deux
I'm going for the gold!
Labels: Modern Life
------------------------------------------------
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Blast from the Past
Remember when cable was affordable? And pretended to cater to families?
Labels: Cute Overlord, Disney, Modern Life
------------------------------------------------
Friday, March 28, 2008
High Noon - Garage Style!
I can now finally see the floor in my garage. And I have successfully cornered, caught, and moved the most fearless mouse in the world - whom I had been enjoying sharing several Mexican Standoff with in recent days. He had built himself a comfortable love nest out of a package or ornamental grass and was ready to raise a family. I moved his house to a lee in a rock about four miles from here, and gave him a few days rations to boot.
Labels: Art, Modern Life
------------------------------------------------
Monday, March 24, 2008
Slowly Twisting in the Wind
Here's one of Kristin and my favorite songs from college. We used to just find it funny, but now it's taken on a whole new meaning.
She set your goldfish free
And now she's sighing
Blew out your pilot light
And made a wish
She doesn't have to have
Her dB's record back now
But there's not a lot of things
That she'll take back
She wants to see you again
She wants to see you again
Slowly twisting
In the wind
Twisting twisting
In the wind
She's not your satellite
She doesn't miss you
So turn off your smoke machine
And Marshall stack
She doesn't have to have
Her Young Fresh Fellows tape back now
But there's not a lot of things
That she'll take back
She wants to see you again
She wants to see you again
Slowly twisting
In the wind
Twisting twisting
In the wind
She wants to see you again
She wants to see you again
Slowly twisting
In the wind
Twisting twisting
In the wind
Labels: Anti-Fun, Modern Life
------------------------------------------------
1 Cents Added:
It's so easy to choose high quality [url=http://www.euroreplicawatches.com/]replica watches[/url] online: [url=http://www.euroreplicawatches.com/mens-swiss-watches-rolex/]Rolex replica[/url], [url=http://www.euroreplicawatches.com/mens-swiss-watches-breitling/]Breitling replica[/url], Chanel replica or any other watch from the widest variety of models and brands.
By 
, at 11:06 PM
You Will Be Assimilated
When emailing an organizational chart today I was asked if I was sure about my spelling:
Labels: Modern Life, Star Trek
------------------------------------------------
Thursday, March 06, 2008
The Goin To Bed Book, Revisited
Sometimes all it takes is a fresh pair of eyes.The kids absolutely love Sandra Boynton. And one of their favorite books is The Going to Bed Book.
In this book, a group of assorted animals on a cruise get ready for bed, putting on pajamas, brushing teeth, and finally, going on deck to exercise in the moonlight. Parents are often puzzled by the sequence of events of the book - shouldn't exercise come before bathing?
Our friend Michael came over for dinner a few months ago and the kids asked him to read the book. We got to the puzzling passage and explained the confusion about their nonsensical regimen.
Michael smiled a wicked little grin and said "Maybe it's that kind of excercise."
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge indeed. Now every line of that book comes off as a double entendre. I can't read it without cracking up., and now for all the wrong reasons.
Labels: Modern Life, My Literary 2 Cents
------------------------------------------------
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Publix bags
I really dig Publix's canvas bags. Sturdy, deep, and reliable, you can pile in about as many groceries as are traditionally put in three or four plastic bags (or, in the case of the overly zealous baggers, possibly 10 or 20). We've bought enough to cover our grocery shopping needs, and have one set per car.Lately, though, I started to notice a disturbing trend. At some Publixes, the canvas bag has been replaced with a smaller bag that is made of reconstituted plastics. It's touted as being reusable like the canvas, but can't hold as much and isn't as sturdy - Kira was using one to take her books from the house to car, and going less than fifteen feet on the concrete caused the bag to tear.
The recycled plastic bag costs about a third of the retail for the canvas bag, so I imagine the move to them is due to lack of customer interest in the other.
Sadly. the new bags are made in China. Which means, if they are made of recycled plastic, that the plastic probably was made in China, shipped to the United States, shipped back, and then made into the bags.
The canvas bags? They are apparently sewn by blind people in the United States.
It doesn't look like the canvas bags are being phased out right now, so I would assume this is to offer an alternative product to see which the consumer prefers.
Labels: It's Not Easy Being Green, Modern Life, Unbridled Hope for the Future
------------------------------------------------
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Elance changes
Elance has once again changed their rules, and not for the better.Originally, elance had a simple subscription service. You paid a yearly fee, and then you were able to bid on all projects that were posted to the site in your category. As elance grew, this system led to upwards of a hundred bids per project. In an attempt to cut down on the number of bids and make the process easier for buyers, elance changed their terms of service to limit the number of bids based on the subscription level of a provider. Although more restrictive, this new process had some of the effect they had intended and things seemed to stabilize.
Not anymore. Facing another crunch, elance has selected to change the bid system to connects, and severely restrict the number of connects that come with a subscription. Now, instead of having 240 bids per month, we have 15 connects. Fifteen.
It gets better. If a project has a higher budget, it costs more connects to bid. So a $1000 dollar project costs a provider 3 connects instead of 1.
Mnd you, spending the connect does not mean you win the project, It means you have bid to win. elance's bid to award ration still sits at around 5-10% for design, so you can see that the odds of a provider winning a project are rather slim if one goes with the fifteen connects.
Oh, you can have more connects. For a low, low cost of .50 cents per connect.
By the way, if you have more than one subscription, such as one in graphic and one in web, you still only get fifteen, not thirty.
I think the net result of this move will allow the largest earners to continue business as they have, as with a larger revenue stream they will be able to continue to purchase additional connects. But for the smaller provider, it means lean times, having to pick and choose from the smallest projects, trying to conserve their connects and spread them out for the better chance of winning the project. No sense only making five bids on heavily competitive projects than fifteen on the projects that fall through the cracks.
The jury is still out if this will be a boon for elance or just create a new set of unforeseen troubles for the company. But it definitely means leaner times for a lot of freelancers that relied on elance to fill in the margins of the work schedule.
Labels: Anti-Fun, Got a Permit for Breathing, Modern Life
------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Honey, Carol Ann's on the Line
Something got into by phone and it went bad. It just started to go and off again at random, and play its annoying little ditty each and every time it felt like it. Convinced it was possessed by some naughty little gremlins, I decided to take it to one of the local vendors to get it fixed. And I made a good call, too – the repair person was none other a witch herself, and although she was unable to clean my phone, she was able to transfer its soul (ie all those saved numbers) into another phone.
It just goes to show that the maxim about magic and technology is still alive and well today. So much so, in fact, that I have determined that the next time time my computer crashes, I’m calling these guys:
Labels: Modern Life
------------------------------------------------