runaway!

our cat ran away tonight. we went for an hour long walk and came home to find the front door wide open. two panicked geeks running around yelling lily for 30 min - not a pretty picture. pt took off on his electric bike and i paced up and down the sidewalk meowing. she finally came home (snaps) and is now lounging lazily in the egg chair. she seems pensive at the moment, musing on her recent adventure no doubt. she's also annoyed that i feel compelled to reach out and pet her every two seconds. kids with fur are still kids. b.

top 3 reasons

i joined sanriotown. 1. i get an @hellokitty.com mail account 2. best windows wallpaper ever! 3. next time i go to japan i get 15% off my admission to harmonyland. b.

out and about.

john's going to the big easy. chris is in des moines. (t-10 days to gnomedex) dave's in the bay area. thousands of ducks in new england. pt is going to japan. i'm on the couch in my swell pj's, wishing i rocked like halley. b.

piggy bank.

i bought a piggy bank on saturday. i then took a backpack of coins from the basement to my local fred meyer in order to feed them to the coinstar machine. let me back up a little bit. when my husband (then fiancee) moved in last year, we put all of his boxes of odds and ends in the basement. where they have sat and continue to sit. we can't get rid of any of it mind you because it's a veritable treasure trove of finds (something amazing gets discovered on a weekly basis). at any rate, one of the items i noticed early on was a haggard green jansport backpack that weighed a ton. "oh that - full of coins - don't bother with it - would take forever to roll 'em up, etc etc)." sitting on the couch this weekend it occured to me to dig up a wheely cart (remnant of my german pocket pc user group trip last spring), strap the backpack to it and strongarm my way up the stairs, through the kitchen and out to the car. 47 minutes later i'm standing in the lobby of the fred meyer finishing up my last handful of coins, hands black, and oodles of european currency in a pool at my feet. seconds later out pops a piece of paper saying $334.00. yowza. we had $334 hanging out in our basement for over a year. it's like christmas in july. now i actually have the money to pay for the new gizmo i've had my eye on. oh and the piggy bank. i encourage everyone to give it a go. b.

rip van goza.

2 days. 40 hrs of sleep. weekend. b.

bad bad b.

haven't linked out in awhile - check out my blog roll to the left for folks who have way more interesting things to say than i do. b.

sassy.

i am so s.a.s.s.y (short attention span syndrome yo). i realize i haven't wondered about martha's emotional state, or whether or not there really were any wmds in iraq in over a week. now i'm obsessing about bad boy baseball players batting mascots and mr. brothers: did he or didn't he. i need to join a support group for people who watch too much msnbc and cnn. i'm only able to focus on any given topic in 82 second chunks. b.

direct marketing.

does it really work? i've never bought anything ANYTHNG as a result of an unsolicited telephone call, letter, or e-mail. so i'm wondering why do so many companies (including mine) do it? there has to be somebody buying - some success as a result of this type of activity - or they would stop right? b.

pirates!

oh my gosh! i'm going to get effusive here so please forgive. just got home from seeing pirates of the carribean, not since the apple dumpling gang and escape from witch mountain have i been so happy with a disney (not cartoon) movie! i felt like i was 12 again - i laughed - i screamed - i cheered - i happily kissed my 9 bucks goodbye. i won't go into details since i hate folks who give away movie stuff right after opening night. but i can say this has been a summer of movies for me - and this one tops the list.... beth's summer movie list (rated on a scale of how many time i looked at my watch, the less the better), to be honest it's been a good summer so far ~ with only a couple of misses. at any rate even more props to POC for being #1 in my book. matrix reloaded - 2 italian job - 1 down with love - 7+ charlies angels full throttle - 3 hulk - too many to remember capturing the friedmans - 1 terminator three - 0 (but thought about it once) 28 days later - 1 pirates of the carribean - 0 b.

sf shopping list.

pair of shoes from luichiny. paul frank sunglasses hello kitty watch book from sfmoma journal from chronicle books yak pak bag and wallet coach bookmark like a label junkie high on the pure stuff. b.

msfto.

i realized today that the media covers microsoft with the same interest as they cover j. lo. wow. i guess i can say i'm still bethg from the block or something like that. b.

funk rut.

i am in a serious funk rut. b.

golden rule

the first rule of blogging should be: remember, no matter how small the number, people will read your blog. i took an unexpected quick trip to san francisco this weekend and it didn't occur to me to call up a couple good friends i know who live there. i figured we'd be so busy with the activities around the wedding we had come down for we wouldn't have time to see anyone. at any rate i did kill some time on the first day by writing an entry and posting to my photo blog and didn't think anything of it. needless to say both my pals contacted me to say hey we didn't know you were going to be here you should have called. it then occurred to me that i 1. should have given my friends a buzz. and 2. should not operate under the assumption that i'm the only one who reads what i write. b.

hotel wifi

staying at the w in san francisco. and there's wifi in the bar. so i'm on my hp 2215 pocket pc with an ambicom card. and yes this is something i do on vacation... b.

tech hell

i just had the worst 48 hours of technology. more later. b.

see it.

random evening out and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. b.

Google Toolbar Features

testing the "blog this" button on the new google tool bar. Google Toolbar Features b.

stone cold creamery.

so i go to check out the new ice cream shop down the s treat, and i realize it's just like a place that used to be at green lake called marble top creamery, upon investigation i find this two year old story. i guess i would have described the ice cream parlor franchise business as anything other than cut throat. go figure. b.

cffa rating.

watching "spike" (tm) tv tonight because we have ren and stimpy back. iguess i prefer television for men over television for women. at any rate take a minute to noodle on the acronym above. a somewhat apropo descriptor for some of my favorite shows. b.

that said.

i wasn't to tired to moblog/photoblog this weekend. pictures being posted to my textamerica blog shortly. b.

wedding.

one of my best friend's was married yesterday. i was the matron of honor and as you can see it took a toll on my blogging. much to write about, but need a day or so to recover from three days of non-stop tulle, kids, and shoes that hurt. (oh - and it was an amazing wedding btw). b.

can't sleep.

my outlook web access is down and i keep checking to see if it's back up. i'm convinced the minute i go to bed it will be back on line. i have serious problems people. b.

howard.

hung out with howard rheingold this morning. he was brought in to speak to a group of us on campus.jpg by marc smith. i had a blast. one thing howard said that really hit a home run with me is: community isn't built or launched by a company... wise words. b.

asleep at the wheel.

how could i have missed this?? b.

capturing the friedmans.

liked it. don't want to say too much in case you decide to go see it, but i can say left me asking many questions after. noodling on the current state of law enforcement and the legal system. thinking the concepts of guilt and innocence aren't as finite as we may think. b.

the television network for men.

not sure i get the new tnn's new newness. television for men? hmm. i also never quite hopped on the we, oxygen or lifetime television for women trains either. so if we break down the average american man and woman according to the programming of these two networks, here's what we get: the american man likes: sports, baywatch, miami vice and paid programming. the american woman likes: docudramas, felicity, mad about you, and paid programming. b.

bad summer blockbuster.

don't see it. don't see it. it's two hours of your life you'll never get back. on the scale of 2001's tombraider to 2002's minority report, i put it somewhere in between, and that is why i stand firm that you'd be better off not seeing it. in the words of one five year old i know, "i can't remember if i liked it, i fell asleep". b.

trafficgauge.

it arrived! i realize i'm opening myself up to a certain amount of ridicule by getting one of these, but if you know me, you know i'm obsessed with traffic. it's completely a control issue mind you, but at least i recognize my problem (which is always the first step). oh and i blame it all on scoble. so how do i plan to use it? first, i'm going to carry it in my purse (one of the many advantages to being a woman) because i like to know the traffic before i get to my car. i can make on the spot decisions about when i need to wrap things up and get on the road vs. when i should just hunker down and continue tackling my inbox. i also take detours sometimes and this little gizmo can guide me on the fly. finally for those of you readers who are local to the redmond/believe/seattle area you know what it means to say "i'm going to hang on the east side until traffic clears". with my trusty trafficgauge i can wander through barnes and noble or grab a coffee and stay tuned to when the roads are commuter friendly. control is an illusion. i'm still going to face crappy traffic every other day, but i'm feeling better and better about having a little doohickey to keep me company. b.

t-9ypo

my new term. it's used to describe what occurs when using t9 and you neglect to scroll to the proper word. for example the first word for 46 is in rather than go as seen in my latest photo blog entry. b.

banzai.

the countdown has begun... b.

compromise.

today i'll go see the 7 pm of hulk with you at the cinerama if tomorrow you'll go see the 7 pm of capturing the friedmans with me at the harvard exit. b.

comments.

coming soon to a bdot blog near you. looking at halo scan at the mo. b.

recipe.

update 2: it's a streaming issue, looked up the error code and seems others have had the same problem. if you're curious to see the movie, right click on the link and choose save target as... the file is 455 kb. update: v. strange. users are reporting that they get an error when clicking on the movie link, but when they dismiss the error and click play it works. investigating now... one part digital phone cam, one part movie maker 2, one part on the road all the time = moving walkway b.

hotspots.

brought clay shirky out to speak at an event in redmond during fall of 2001. he spoke of something very similar to this. cool to see it in action. b.

tabgeek.

if they issued such a thing, i would be a card carrying certified tabgeek. i seriously love this thing. martin had sent me a mail asking if i knew of some cool apps for the tablet pc as he has had an acer for a couple of weeks. i pointed him to these sites, a few of which are blogs. tablet pc buzz what is new tablet pc talk marcus' tablet pc radio weblog loren's blog tabula pc i wrote about it briefly last week, but i'll elaborate.... my three new favorite things to do wtih my tablet are: 1. download a movie from movielink.com and watch it in full screen on the airplane with my tablet resting on a pillow on the tray table... i have five right now all lined up waiting to be watched as i head into the second half of my summer "chat with microsoft" tour. 2. "print" anything i would normally print onto paper into windows journal or the franklin covey tablet planner. whether it's a long article, or it's a set of driving (in my case walking) directions from a hotel to the nearest starbucks, or a confirmation page for something i've ordered on (or won on ebay) it's great to have these items stored up for reference on and offline. 3. ink instant messenging. now that the msn messenger 6.0 beta is public i am having a blast playing around with the new features, including sending ink messenges to anyone else using it. i also received my first ink message from loren yesterday and it knocked my socks off! more, more. more!! going to cruise the sites above for some new things to do.... b.

ironic.

i have the power to alter the climate. or the gods are giggling. either way the day after we bought our new air conditioner and standing fans, it was mid-60's, cloudy, with a chance of rain. b.

blog futures.

i have been asked no less than three times in the past two days what i think the future of blogs/blogging will be. my answer: it will be something more and more people do. i could see there being a time when having "publish to web" or "blog this" is as common in an application's drop down menu as print or save. there will be a time that when someone new is born into the world, they'll be assigned their muti-gig place on the web and told to go forth and publish. all manners of expression will be posted and saved on the web expanding the universe of links and cross-links making the websphere larger and larger as the world community then becomes closer and closer. i'm already corresponding with folks around the globe as a result of both maintaining my blog and following others; peple i may never see in person, but i feel i know just as well as those who i spend time with each day. as always, i'll be staying tuned for great things to come. b.

mvp.

why mvps rock. i love technology, but i definitely have a lot of catching up to do in terms of being technological. my blog has been a great way to learn basic html and working with components for the web. i was stymied at how to get a blogroll up and running on my site; and even though i found blogrolling.com extremely helpful and the actual roll easy to create, it was getting it into my blog template that had me flummoxed. last week i had dinner in hartford with three microsoft mvps: david berry, kathleen anderson, and ron chamberlin. both david and kathleen are frontpage mvps, and it dawned on me half way through dinner that they could probably help me with my little problem. david explained that it was actually pretty easy, just save a page from my blog and open it in frontpage, put the cursor in the wysiwyg page where i want the blogroll positioned and then click on code to see where in the template to paste the script from the blogrolling.com service. took me a little while to get it just right in terms of column widths, etc. but it felt great to do it myself (with a little help from my friends). b.

product support.

speaking of my new camcorder/digicam. there was an issue playing .asf files in windows media player 9; basically no matter how long the video it would cut off somewhere between 3 - 4 minutes. a quick web search revealed that there was someone who had posted the same issue on the microsoft.public.windowsxp.video newsgroup. i went back into wmp9 and was able to click for more information in the error message. once i had the error code, i did a search for that code and found a patch had been released back in april that fixed the issue. installed the patch, and voila - all was right with the world. then it was a matter of posting the pointer to the patch back in the newsgroup, and seeing a happy poster also get the fix. b.

new toy.

picked up one of these on sunday. much better demo/expo can be found here. going to import some video i shot today into movie maker 2 and see what i can do. my inner spielberg is screaming to get out. b.

air conditioner.

working in the tech industry sometimes blinds you to the innovations happening in other industries. with the temperature in seattle being between 80 -90 degrees for the last couple of weeks, we finally broke down and decided to invest in an air conditioner. we also picked up a couple of fans in order to help circulate the cooler air coming in. the pleasant surprise is that the air conditioner is really quiet (a nice hum), has a timer, temp control switch, and a remote control (figure it would come in handy to turn it off in the middle of the night from a prone position). needless to say "in window" air conditioners have evolved since the big, bulky ones of my dorm room days (knoxville, tn is pretty brutal in the summer). the fans, however, are what really caught my imagination. they not only stand up straight, but each one has a little green "eye" that let's you know it's operational and as it slowly sways back and forth i feel like a couple of extras from battlestar galactica have stumbled into my living room. not the cylons mind you, but a couple of cute little bots who were on the good side of the galaxy. the big box fan that drowns out all noise within a 2 mile radius has retired to the basement... b.

soul twin.

kitty blog. b.

traffic again.

image complements of snipping tool. oh - and when i left the office most of the green spots were red and black. bad. bad. bad. b.

blog break.

sometimes you just need a couple of days. btwn east coast jet lag, oodles of laundry, and a pile of bills.... b.