clipped from www.instructables.com Paper Wallet by theRIAAon Oct 4, 2006in craft rating157 this wallet should easily hold tons of cash, 4 esily accessible creditcards, and 2-4 more "locked" creditcards

Some rock videos with a cowboy theme (one was released in 1990, but hey, I love the song, so I pushed the envelope), some New Wave and some Freestyle dance. Pick your poison and enjoy!

I love watches and have a nice collection well made, attractive watches, but none of them cost me more than $200 (even if they retailed for more and I got them on sale), although I would pay more than double that if I found a really special time piece, but that's about max for my budget. Today I made the "mistake" of asking my neighbor about the watch she wears daily. I have admired it for months, as it's in line with my

taste and similar to some pieces I own and I thought I might consider getting one like it. I went shopping with her and her husband's cousin the other day at Neiman Marcus, Saks, J. Crew, Max Studio, Crate & Barrel and her cousin had the same watch on, so I decided to "go for it" and ask about it.

Anyway, I should have known better. First, I should have known what it was and recognized it, second I should have realized that it couldn't have been an ordinary watch if she was wearing it. It happened to be a $19,000 Cartier Tankissimee 18K White Gold Watch (no diamonds), which is one of the most expensive watches they make. (She was very humble about it, as she is generally is when people ooh and ah about her multi karat Tiffany wedding ring and band and wedding pictures on her mantle with her in her custom made Vera Wang wedding dress, yada, yada. She certainly has fabulous taste, not everyone with money does, and she's a lovely person to go along with the package.) So much for me buying one. Oh well, c'est la vie. Mind you, I pretty much qualify as the "trailer trash" of my 'hood (and I'm fine with that) as I don't sport any of these kinds of pricey goods, I have no rich daddy, no "sugar daddy", no pedigree or people of "high social standing" in my background, I don't send my children to $10,000/child summer camp and I don't drive a status car. Even if I had the means to do so, I think I could find a lot better, more philanthropic things to do with that kind of jing. That's not a judgment on her or anyone else where I live, it's just how I am.

On the flip side, it can be fun to indulge in the latest trends or upscale inspired pieces at times, especially if "the price is right" so to that end, I am recommending Eve's Addiction, which has been featured on TV and other places for it's well made, designer and Hollywood inspired sterling silver replica jewelry at a fraction of the price tag. If you like replica's of the trendy jewelry adorning A-list stars, this sight is for you. If you like replica's of high end jewelry pieces inspired by Tiffany and others, again, this sight is for you. I have my eye on a couple of things, I let you know how I like them when I get them. Happy Shopping!

This was in my email box this AM, and since Mother's Day is Sunday, I thought this was fitting to post:

Your Clothes:

1st baby: You begin wearing maternity
clothes as soon as your OB/GYN confirms your pregnancy.

2nd baby: You wear your regular clothes
for as long as possible.

3rd baby: Your maternity clothes ARE
your regular clothes.

______________________________________________________

Preparing for the Birth:

1st baby: You practice your breathing
religiously.

2nd baby: You don't bother because you
remember that last time, breathing didn't do a thing for you.

3rd baby: You ask for an epidural in
your eighth month.

______________________________________________________

The Layette:

1st baby: You pre-wash newborn's
clothes, colour-coordinate them, and fold them neatly in the baby's
little bureau.

2nd baby: You check to make sure that
the clothes are clean and discard only the ones with the darkest stains.

3rd baby: Boys can wear pink, can't
they?

______________________________________________________

Worries:

1st baby: At the first sign of
distress-a whimper, a frown-you pick up the baby.

2nd baby: You pick the baby up when her
wails threaten to wake your firstborn.

3rd baby: You teach your three-year-old
how to rewind the mechanical swing.

____________________________________________________

Pacifier:

1st baby: If the pacifier falls on the
floor, you put it away until you can go home and wash and boil it.

2nd baby: When the pacifier falls on the
floor, you squirt it off with some juice from the baby's bottle.

3rd baby: You wipe it off on your shirt
and pop it back in.

______________________________________________________

Diapering:

1st baby: You change your baby's diapers
every hour, whether they need it or not.

2nd baby: You change their diaper every
two to three hours, if needed.

3rd baby: You try to change their diaper
before others start to complain about the smell or you see it sagging to
their knees.

______________________________________________________

Activities:

1st baby: You take your infant to Baby
Gymnastics, Baby Swing, and Baby Story Hour.

2nd baby: You take your infant to Baby
Gymnastics.

LOS ANGELES - ABC is attempting to rescue once-hot "Lost" by ending the show — in 2010. Bowing to the fact that convention isn't working for the drama about plane-crash survivors on a surreal island, the network is taking the unusual step of turning "Lost" into a limited-run series.

It will run for three shorter and uninterrupted seasons until its "highly anticipated and shocking finale" in the 2009-10 season, ABC said Monday.

The series, which saw its ratings drop this season amid complaints about scheduling, an increasingly meandering plot and unpopular new characters, still must prove itself to disenchanted viewers to survive. 

"Due to the unique nature of the series, we knew it would require an end date to keep the integrity and strength of the show consistent throughout and to give the audience the payoff they deserve," ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson said in a statement.

Typically, networks milk a series until it runs dry of ratings and then drop the ax.

Last January, "Lost" producers said they were talking with the network about setting an end date.

Executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have agreed to remain with the show, now in its third season, through the end, ABC said. Lindelof created the show with J.J. Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber.

"We always envisioned `Lost' as a show with a beginning, middle and end," Lindelof and Cuse said in a statement. "By officially announcing exactly when that ending will be, the audience will now have the security of knowing that the story will play out as we've intended."

A total of 48 episodes will air over the next three seasons, with 16 episodes running without a break each season in the style of Fox's "24." That will take care of viewer complaints about reruns that left them dangling.

ABC's effort to make this a two-part season for "Lost" by pausing midway to make room for another show, the quickly canceled "Day Break," also proved a flop. Serial dramas with complex plots, like "Lost" or CBS' "Jericho," have found it difficult to regain viewers after a break.

The average number of episodes for a series is 22, which isn't enough to stretch through an entire season without reruns or a hiatus.

"Lost" once drew an impressive 20 million-plus viewers as it helped raise ABC from ratings purgatory, gained cultural-phenomenon status and won the 2005 Emmy for best drama.

But in its third season "Lost" took a nose dive, with recent episodes drawing 12 million or fewer viewers. A time-slot change, to 10 p.m. EDT Wednesday, which put it up against CBS' "CSI: NY," was a factor.

Viewership numbers also don't reflect how many people save the shows on their digital video recorders to watch more than 24 hours later, and "Lost" gains viewers when the DVR audience is taken into account.

[via Yahoo! News]

Since I just ordered these brown and cotton candy Cleo Crocs:

and desperately (I knew I should have ordered them weeks ago, when my first impulse was to do so!) want these Crocs Sassari Wedges, which are so hot they are sold out everywhere except one upscale store, which is gouging for them, I thought the article below would be appropriate. ;) I like to cause disruption everywhere I go... :P

Plastic clogs disrupt machinery in Swedish hospital

Associated Press
Thursday April 19, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Crocs of the type that may be banned in a Swedish hospital. Photograph: David Silverman/Getty
 

A Swedish hospital wants to ban its staff from wearing Crocs plastic clogs, saying they generate static electricity that can knock out medical equipment.

Blekinge hospital in southern Sweden suspects the slip-on shoes, made by US firm Crocs Inc, are to blame for at least three incidents in which respirators and other machines malfunctioned. The mishaps caused no injuries.

Hospital spokesman Bjorn Lofqvist said staff wearing the clogs could turn into "a cloud of lighting" because of the static electricity.

He said there were similar problems with other shoes not designed for hospital use, but the popularity of the Crocs had raised the issue to a new level.

"It's been a problem for many years, but now there are so many people that have them," he said, adding that officials were discussing whether the shoes should be banned throughout the hospital or just in certain sections.

A spokeswoman for Pforce AB, the Forsberg-controlled company that imports Crocs to Sweden, said the company was performing tests on the shoes.

"We take this very seriously," she said, adding that the shoes were very useful for hospital staff. "They are good to work in and have a shock absorption that really helps people who do strenuous work."

A few weeks ago, I went into a well known chain of office supply stores to pick up some printer ink and some odds and ends since I have a business account, and happened to see a "special" clearance item that caught my eye. I usually don't shop at office supply chains for the best price or for anything for my computer, but again, having business account there means is a convenience and it's not directly coming out of my pocket. Anyway, they were practically giving away a discontinued or to me a "throw away" external USB [Lite-On who rebadges for many companies, including SONY] DVD-RW with Dual Layer recording technology (I happened to want an external drive with LightScribe, but the price was right on this one) for $39, including tax, so I figured, "What the heck?" and went for it. I really only need it to burn an occasional DVD and to back up larger files from my back up drive (yeah, I'm paranoid, my good stuff goes in a fire safe box) and to archive older material for which a CD is too small. (Who would have thought an external DVD-RW would be cheaper than dirt, literally, a couple years ago?)

Well I unpacked it, hooked up the power and the USB cord. Then I fired it up and XP automatically assigned drivers and we were all good, right? Launched Nero and got ready to burn baby burn. No burned disc, but I was burning. Yeah, el cheapo drive-o couldn't work that easily or flawlessly, right? Right. So due to Murphy's Law, I kept getting error messages saying the drive couldn't handle the media, even though the media was correct and other such nonsense. It wasn't the price of the drive though, it was the fact that sometimes XP has problems with external USB drives when it assigns drive letters.

I had Alcohol 120% on my machine at one point, which had assigned several virtual drives, which may not have been recovered on removing it. I don't know if XP assigned/mapped it to one of those old drives, but the drive wasn't showing up anywhere except when I went into Control Panel>System>Device Manager>DVD/CD-ROM Drives. The only way to hopefully rectify the situation was to go into XP's Disk Management by typing diskmgmt.msc at the run command prompt. If the drive shows up there, as mine did, the fix is to rename it. Mine was originally drive L. I right clicked the drive letter and highlighted "change drive letter or path". From the drop down box of available drive letters, I took the easy road and chose Z, knowing for sure it had never been used. Then I right clicked "properties" and ticked the hardware tab. I highlighted the Lite On drive and right clicked "properties" once again and then went under the "Volumes" tab and clicked the "Populate" button.  After saving out of all that, I was good to go. My drive was now showing up in Explorer. I dragged and dropped the drive shortcut onto my desktop (being a USB device, it doesn't show up under "My Computer") and this time, my throw away external drive worked "like butta" and I'm still in the process of slashin' and burning the excess fat from my internal hard drives...and except that I don't have my light scribe, I'm happy as a clam.

Most of us here who blog regularly and use other internet services probably find this incomprehensible, but I've met plenty of these people, even ones that are not senior citizens. I couldn't imagine my life without the 'net and if my connection goes down (rarely) I go into cardiac arrest. If I forget my cell, I turn right around to get it, I don't feel comfortable without it. What about you?

Nearly 50 Percent of Americans Have Little Use for Internet and Cell Phones, Survey Finds

Monday, May 07, 2007

NEW YORK —  A broad survey about the technology people have, how they use it, and what they think about it shatters assumptions and reveals where companies might be able to expand their audiences.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that adult Americans are broadly divided into three groups: 31 percent are elite technology users, 20 percent are moderate users and the remainder have little or no usage of the Internet or cell phones.

But Americans are divided within each group, according to a Pew analysis of 2006 data released Sunday.

• Take this quiz and find out what kind of tech-user you are.

The high-tech elites, for instance, are almost evenly split into:

— "Omnivores," [I bet most of you reading this fall into that catagory?] who fully embrace technology and express themselves creatively through blogs and personal Web pages.

— "Connectors," who see the Internet and cell phones as communications tools.

— "Productivity enhancers," who consider technology as largely ways to better keep up with their jobs and daily lives.

— "Lackluster veterans," those who use technology frequently but aren't thrilled by it.

John Horrigan, Pew's associate director, said he started the survey believing that the more gadgets people have, the more they are likely to embrace technology and use so-called Web 2.0 applications for generating and sharing content with the world.

"Once we got done, we were surprised to find the tensions within groups of users with information technology," Horrigan said.

Many longtime Internet users, the lackluster veterans, remain stuck in the decade-old technologies they started with, Horrigan said. That a quarter of high-tech elites fall into this category, he said, shows untapped potential for companies that can design next-generation applications to pique this group's interest.

The moderate users were also evenly divided into "mobile centrics," those who primarily use the cell phone for voice, text messaging and even games, and "connected but hassled," those who have used technology but find it burdensome.

Mobile companies, he said, can target the mobile centrics with premium services, especially once faster wireless networks become available.

The Pew study found 15 percent of all Americans have neither a cell phone nor an Internet connection. Another 15 percent use some technology and are satisfied with what it currently does for them, while 11 percent use it intermittently and find connectivity annoying.

Eight percent — mostly women in the early 50s — occasionally use technology and might use more given more experience. They tend to still be on dial-up access and represent potential high-speed customers "with the right constellation of services offered," Horrigan said.

The telephone study of 4,001 U.S. adults, including 2,822 Internet users, was conducted Feb. 15 to April 6, 2006, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

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