Happy 21^st Birthday, oneeyedcat !

Birthday Stars

Tell the Birthday Stars computer when you were born, and it will look for a star that is your age in light years away from Earth. This means that the light we’re seeing from that star today actually left the star around when you were born, and has taken your entire life to reach Earth.

mine… do yer own, one-eye!

Last night’s fortune cookie –

I dig the Chinese lessons, even if the fortune seems more like a booty-kiss than a portent.

GrayPumpkin telephoned yesterday, while I was out gallivanting with Dan. Hopefully I’ll get a call back again this afternoon… it’s been a while since we caught up and gabbed.

Geraldo is still a reporter on Fox news? I thought they booted him for his desert shenanigans a year ago. I don’t actively watch Fox, seeing him on was a fluke of channel-surfing. It’s beyond me why a right-wing slanted network would keep him.

L.A. Story on the tube now. I could watch that movie a thousand times. You can really tell when Steve Martin is on his game, or just coasting for dollars. L.A. Story just presses so many of the right buttons with me. Music by Enya, Prophetic Traffic signs, something witty or touching in every line, well timed… and a beautiful love story.

Murray the Martial Arts Monkey

Downloaded Aeroplayer.. now I can listen to (.ogg) Livejournal phone posts via the palm. (and play mp3s in the background… much nicer than the default player.

In 2000, parents using a voucher for disabled children to send a child to the Dyslexia Research Institute did not have to supplement the state’s $4,700 check — state law prohibited the practice.

Four years later, thanks to a change in the law in 2001 done at the behest of the politically connected private school, those same parents will have to spend nearly $5,000 of their own money — almost matching the value of the $5,100 voucher — to get the same education.

The net effect: Low-income parents, whom the McKay voucher program was created to help, will now have to pay almost as much out of pocket this autumn as they would have before the voucher program was created, with the school’s administrators reaping most of the windfall from the voucher payment, former parents and teachers charge. “Tuition costs may rise for parents using vouchers”.

Continue reading 6659 Sunday, Sunday. →

Lunch out with Danny was nice, if brief. There was a nifty sugar / sweet-n-lo / splenda / equal dispenser reminiscent of the spaceship from heavy metal (or Number 2’s chair in chrome)

Action shot for the non-epileptic (or Epi’s who are just askin’ for it.)

Lunch out with Danny was nice, if brief. There was a nifty sugar / sweet-n-lo / splenda / equal dispenser reminiscent of the spaceship from heavy metal (or Number 2’s chair in chrome)

Action shot for the non-epileptic (or Epi’s who are just askin’ for it.)

Last WiFi nerd thing.. I can hotsync without cables! Yippeeskippie! I can also share my handheld as a silly mp3 server or web cam, too. Newtcam goes mobile! Maybe there’ll be some live action shots from the vet, next time we travel.

Saw landlord today… he was in Chicago that whole time… I thought he was eaten by lions or something.

Bro seems a lot more racist and culturally blame-y these days. Another side of that “it’s everyone’s fault but mine” attitude. I’ll do what I can to help turn his opinions around.

Going out to lunch with ol’ Danny-boy. He got a gift certificate to Houston’s, so it’s his treat. Works for me! More later on, dear journal.
lebowski meme

I more often than not first only see “Stan” when the name “Satan” is shown in print. Something about my brain causes a skip over the first A.

Random cool discovery, some office in my building has an open wireless router. I can compose mail and surf all over South Florida now.. walking up and down Las Olas I found no less than a dozen hot spots, most were passworded, but several let me just surf away.

Best location is Picasso Joe’s… sit down, have a milkshake or whatnot, people watch, and still have your internet morphine on a handy-dandy mobile IV. The open ones are usually default linksys, MSHOME or whatever comes with the package they invested in. Surfing for free beats paying $.10 a minute with a big, blunt object.

I did notice that constantly scanning for connections burned about 20% of my battery in about half an hour, otherwise, the new gizmo is pretty fuel-efficient. A nice thing about the browser is that I can download and cache stuff for reading later… so even if I did do a by the minute plan, I could log on, slurp down my friends page in LJ, as well as a few news locations I hit daily (all as an automated macro, not manually, unless I wanted to) and have stuff to read offline for a long while. I’m very impressed with how nice my lj and homepage look on the browser. It runs flash and java well, and cookies aren’t a problem. wireless tech has improved a great deal since I last fooled with it on a PDA.

First Pictures taken with the new palm… uploaded from there directly to photobucket, via the browser my digi-cam is far superior, but this will do in a pinch. I’ll still take the bulky one on walks, but not to work.

typical, and a surprise, seen on my walk!

Still drained after going over to the Mother’s house yesterday, to visit her, W, and Bro.

Just being around M&W saps my strength and patience. We got along ok, but after a certain point, it’s like the slow, steady erosion of water along the grand canyon building up to a large gorilla rubbing an eraser against my forehead, trying to remove the tattoo of a perfectly square black box that his brother put there only twenty minutes prior.

I wonder how long it’ll take for bro to get fed up with his wireless leash and blow his stack? I fear for him living on his own, but I can’t imagine he can keep his cool for too long in captivity with those guys close by.

I don’t know.. maybe the comparison shopping between where he is now, and where he was a week ago will be incentive enough.

Upside, I can research getting my bail collateral back now…

Best ways to bring me back up: Think about loved ones. Hug the Newt until we fall asleep.

Random Scotto Factoid: I think toe socks are cute.

They got a call from Sandra (Bro’s officer) Mom had to call the phone company and take off the special features, they can have DSL and answering, but the phone needs to be set to answer on 3rd ring. Bro has to work with Wilton and can not leave the house even to go to the pool clubhouse or laundry room. He is only allowed 4 hrs a week for special needs,haircut,dr appt,laundry,etc. no beach,movies,etc, but I can visit him whenever I like… He should be released by noon, M & W are on call to pick him up.

Well, little brain’s internal battery finally wouldn’t hold a charge, so it was time to either spend the entire pda’s value replacing the battery, or to upgrade. I opted for upgrading, because I’ve had a hankering for some features my little device didn’t have. I picked up a Clie’ TH-55, because it was inexpensive, has wifi capacity, and will run all of my old palm software (including stuff I’ve developed for myself. WinCE lives up to the name it spells out. “Wince.”

In addition to wifi, there’s some other goodies built in… the package I got included a 256 meg memory stick, which will hold a **lot** of e-books, or a decent amount of mp3s (I figure 4 hours of regular cd music, up to 24 hours of old-time radio / audio books, depending on the recording quality. Room for more pictures, too. I still have a gallery in there that I’ve built over time. Pictures of Hala, Newtie, and other assorted goodness. I’m also glad I can still doodle, and that this one has a built in camera…camera wasn’t a real selling point, but if it’s good enough, I’ll use it.. if not, I’ll stick with my chunky, junky Olympus… big in my pocket, but takes decent photos.

The device is much sleeker than my old visor, though I still didn’t opt for the cell phone/pda combo because I have an irrational dislike for cell phones, and have a work-related cell I have to carry with me everywhere, anyway.

Side note… are public pay phones becoming scarcer, now that such a large chunk of the population has personal devices? I wonder if they’ll vanish completely over then next decade or two.

In other news, I haven’t seen my landlord for a long time. I was supposed to give him my rent on the last day of the month, and he still hasn’t been around. I’ve been taking in the front house’s mail, and noticed that there are two envelopes from the gas company. I hope he hasn’t gone on vacation or something, and that my hot water will be turned off as a result. I’d also like to pay my bills on time. The check’s made out, just waiting for him to claim it. I never did get a contact phone number for him, and he’s not listed in the book. We’ll see what the future brings… I’m still continuing on my quest for a condo.

Well, I’ve got to get rolling. Until later, dear journal.

Got to play a little CoH with Whims last night.. I wish schedules allowed for Sammy to join in more often, but he suffers from Pacific Rim Syndrome. I need to put him in a time-phase shift condenser for about 2 hours a day, just to hang out.

Fort Lauderdale Beach, right before sunset

Called Mother and the Grandmother yesterday… Gram sounds a lot more scattered since her trip to the hospital.

Have to swing by the ortho after work… a flexion test. I’m pretty bendy, so I think I’ll do well. [update: did just fine, going back in next Monday to see progress]

Big Kahuna cut me more slack yesterday, as well as Saturday.. tossed me another 4 hours to do what I will. I took the opportunity to go on walkabout and just enjoy the outside for a bit.

On-call should be pretty gentle this week. ADP on M,Tu,Th, MA on W,F,Sa. I just have Su. With any luck, maybe I can spend some time with ol’ Danny this week.

planty piccies from my reprieve walk on Sunday