This past Saturday night, Sarah and I walked with Lexie, Chad, and Carter Haskell, Courtney and Carter, Julie Bartholet and Luke, and a whole lot of other people for the MS Walk 2006 at Legoland in Carlsbad. Our team name was "Earthlings" and we raised just shy of $1300 in donations. We've got some additional donations trickling in as well, but what an amazing success! All of this was raised just last week!
Thanks go out to the following who have donated in one form or another: cyndi, brad, julie, suzie, tj, denise, dave, luke, ryan ann, mark, dooma, rex, steve, ryan, earth products, lydia, pete, emma, holly, kristy, lexie’s mom, jeff, elena, chad, laura, sean, and nicole.
If you still want to donate, you can do so online at my MS Walk webpage or just contact me and we'll work something out. Thanks again!!!
Sarah and I walked for MS!
Dan Brown must be having a good laugh
From Boing Boing: Weird booms across the US:
Among bloggers and Web-based conspiracy theorists, one of the leading explanations for the San Diego disturbance is that the military is testing a top-secret spy plane called the Aurora, which supposedly can travel several times the speed of sound.“Sir, I've never even heard of that plane before,” an Air Force spokeswoman in Virginia responded when asked about the possibility.
Having just read that part of his latest book, Deception Point, I know that the Aurora is from Dan Brown's imagination. It's easy to want to believe it, but, c'mon, with gas prices the way they are?!?
Wiki helps rationalize allofmp3.com
AllOfMP3.com - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The link above shows the most objective overview I've found for the lowest cost "legal" music downloading site I know of. Granted I haven't looked hard beyond this site, but I haven't felt the need when I can buy an album for under $2.
The library isn't the most contemporary nor is it very deep but it is constantly growing every day and I've been happy to find some older releases easily on the cheap.
I have used their "Allofmp3 Explorer" software and it works well enough without adware, though I don't necessarily recommend it. I just haven't had any bad experiences with it.
They offer a variety of encoding options and they use lossless source data. Having the option on the fly makes sense to me as I sometimes get lazy and think a lower bitrate file will suffice for lower fidelity uses, but I've never really used that feature. In contrast, if I want to adjust my import specs in iTunes, it's at least "Prefs > Advanced tab > Importing > dropdown menu". allofmp3 gives more immediate access to those same options -- I like.
Check it out. If the library doesn't suit you, it seems like an easy toss to the Bit Bucket In The Sky, but as a quick, inexpensive, and legal alternative to other sites, it works for me.
Let's talk about grace...
This video entitled "How indian people drive" kicks ass. I think this originally came from Boing Boing, but that's all the credit I'm giving. The people in this video are the real heroes.
Update
Yes, I've been that busy.
Last week of March: prepping to vaca for a week. That included three days supporting the office on my own as Brad and Chris went up to Reno. Reno goes live this Monday, 4/18/06, so zero hour was fast approching. Also, settling everything else for my absence filled the rest of the time. And then there was packing...
April 1 to 9: Paradise Found! More on that later.
Week of April 10: "We now return you to your busy life which is already in progress." Last week to prep Reno, last week to prep next season's order form, decompress from Paradise, ween off of napping, reclimatize to SoCal weather, scramble to find day care for Sarah, spend Monday night with Sarah, part time day care on Tuesday at work, spend Tuesday night with Sarah, migrate to a new Thinkpad X60 at work, capitalize of new wide screen LCDs at work, install a cat door for Hsiao, miss a doctor's appointment, officially become single again, unpack, laundry, realize the work week is a day short, and spend a great day with Sarah on Friday (details to follow). I think that covers the big points.
Now, some details on Friday. It was a triple espresso morning since I caught up on some Oblivion play the night before. I agreed to pick up Sarah at 8:30, so it was a pretty regular start to the morning. Sarah and I went to the office to play some ping pong and we we all over the place! So fun. Sarah watched some video in my office afterwards while I hooked up my old Xbox to the component inputs on my new Dell 24" LCD for potential PIP game play during work hours (we'll see about that!). I also did some substatial clean up in the office and that felt real good.
It was raining as we left. We headed to Target to get presents for Adam. Sarah picked up a Phlat Ball and a little Bionicle toy. I got immersed in Hot Wheels G5 cars and I have a grand plan to send a little thing to Eric as a reminder of Calvin. A speedball for Sarah's punching passion and a Magic 8 Ball for work finished the bill. Ran into a preschool friend of sarah's at the register so there's a potential play date. That girl was surprisingly silly in a Sarah kind of way! How interesting.
Target didn't have ping pong stuff, so I got some things at Sports Authority for Adam there along with a rash guard for my next surf trip.
Then it was time for many U-turns in downtown Encinitas as I hurt deeply discovering that the hammock place close, slowly came to the conclusion that lunch downtown wasn't going to happen, realized that my memory for finding the Encinitas Art Council office when i've never been there wouldn't work, and learned that you can't easily get to the 101 from that funky barn-like store's parking lot on the east end of E Street(?).
Wendy's for lunch should tie me over for a couple months. Down to home for a well deserved 2.5 hour nap
Hsiao woke me up with some incessant knocking of his cat door, thus I write this purge at 5:30 in the morning. And now, on to something else. Hopefully this catches you all up just a little.
p.s. Props to Celeste for picking me up from LAX with an abundance of High Quality snacks on Sunday night. Also, deep honor comes from Brad's invitation to his wedding. That's about as good a reason to consider St Louis for a visit, dontcha think?
