NEVER JET HOT

  I clicked on the link to a video about the untimely and sad death of Billy Mays, as usual it was preceded by a commercial.   At first I was offended by that, is nothing sacred? But then I realized how totally and completely appropriate it was. I only wish it was for something that made me want to run to the phone and order it. I may never feel that way again.  

Heh, "stray at home mom"

Awww... Smile! It's Father's Day! I got Sims 3 from number one son... now trying to set it up to play YouTube videos on the sims TV sets... By the way, this is Louis Prima, not Armstrong.

  We’ve been gradually adding quantity discounts at ThatRestlessMouse.com – My goal was to finish adding all the items to the new “virtual cash register” software, THAT is a big job.   It doesn’t help productivity that I got “Sims 3” for Father’s Day. Those sims are harsh taskmasters, but at least they can somewhat take care of themselves in this version.   In earlier versions of that SIMS series, there would be situations where for some reason the sim would refuse to use the facilities, and would pee in the hall. Good thing they haven’t invented stink-o-vision yet.  

   I haven’t gotten much time to sit and watch TV lately, but what I have seen of the new Verizon Vios service on the TV side, I’m loving it. It blows cable out of the water.   Got a letter from Comcast today, informing me that Verizon is selling it’s fiber optic and telephone land line operations, or some portion thereof, to Frontier communications.   This smells like desperation. Should I be concerned? I remember when Verizon bought our phone line from GTE, nothing bad happened then.   I suppose it might put a few people off of switching to Verizon’s Vios from Comcast, especially with the unfortunate name of the new provider. Frontier? Are they going to come down main street with guns blazing, “This here Internet ain’t big enough for the both of us!”. Are they going to censor my Internet service? “We won’t be havin’ you lookin’ at no dadblame dance-hall girls on our range! ‘specially the o...

  I got to thinking, boy, it’s a real pain in the patootie to run two website, and we are always running into inventory related problems because of it. Also, I am tired of looking at this stupid computer monitor.   So I set up quantity discounts at ThatRestlessMouse.com, and we will be closing the NoveltyTradingPost.com site as soon as I get those discounts punched in.   So if you see discounts on some items but not on others, that’s why; I am also working a lot of overtime at my “drudgery” job, and nobody else around here wants to give the website any love, so it will take maybe a few weeks.   The goal is to be ever-so-slightly cheaper than the “competition” on almost every item. (Let’s not get carried away!)

  6/11/09 We had a guy from Verizon come out today and set us up with Telephone, TV and Internet via Fiber Optics. We all agree, he looks, sounds, and acts exactly like Charlie Sheen. Maybe a slightly less cheerful version of Charlie Sheen, but he has a sort of crappy job.   Anyway, I will probably blog a series of comments about this. I usually try to knock something out right before I leave for my night job, and of course it ends up looking sort of truncated because I’m always running late. It’s a passive-aggressive thang.   So, tip #1 for those installing Fios; immediately set up a “purchase password” under the “Parental Controls” menu, even if you live alone. Charlie says it’s easy to accidentally rent a movie otherwise.      

  I am still planning to get my all of my TV signal over the Internet, as stated earlier here.   In fact, I unplugged the bedroom TV’s “digital conversion box” that Comcast sent me, (It seems to be defective) and we get all of our TV in that room from DVDs, VHS tapes, or Internet sources, mainly the streaming movies that Netflix offers.   Those streaming movies are great, because if you stop and go do something else, even if you shut down the computer, when you come back to the Netflix page, you can start exactly where you left off, or optionally do it the old way, by scene selection.   But that’s not what I came here to talk about. We have signed up with Verizon fiber optic (Fios) service for telephone, TV signal (similar to basic cable) and Internet (basically faster broadband).   I wish I had done more research, I just read where some guy insisted that they leave the copper wire for the old POTS phone service, and Verizon capitula...

  I got a call from my “night job” employer’s “wellness program” the other day.   I had never called their dial-a-nurse thing nor had I had any other contact with them. Then they called me out of the blue, (on a Sunday!) – Wanted to know if I had questions about Diabetes or any other health issues.   Naturally, I was all "I'm not interested" but somehow we got to talking and I did get some questions answered, but later I started getting a little paranoid about it.   All that is supposed to be between me and my doctor's janitor (I never get to see the actual Dr., it will be no surprise if I find he died in a Turkish prison in 2002) - Whatever happened to HIPPA (patient privacy) laws? I want to control who and why and how for looking at my fascinating medical history, not sure why I care.   They say the Wellness program is run by the insurance company, and since the company is footing the bill it seems reasonable that they ...

LED bicycle wheel lighting from MonkeyLectric; WHY didn’t they have these back when I was a kid? Very cool, and your parents would buy them if you gave them a good “safety” pitch. I sent away for some stripey clip-on straw things from a cereal-box promotion, but that’s only slightly better than a clothespin-and-playing-card setup. I'm getting this if I ever move to an urban environment where it's practical to ride a bike.

I keep hoping my son will learn to weld &/or solder… So he can crank out stuff like this for me to peddle on our website. We used to have a product called “Fork You!” which was exactly what you are thinking of, the dumb things sold like, well, “hotcakes”  

This BlogJet blog posting software has a few little glitches, but I think I will buy a license anyway. Just because it posts to Blogger so FAST. When I post directly at the blogger site it seems to take forever. Maybe they set it up that way to minimize traffic. Seems kinda dumb if so.

My Library at LibraryThing Putting a bunch of my books on LibraryThing.com, the recommendations they come up with (based on my reading habits and ratings) are just awesome. Click on one of the books displayed for more information, some of them I have even written mini-reviews. While Rome burns around me.

 Trying out that blog publishing software, “BlogJet” – I found it’s a LOT easier to use than the blogger.com interface. Unfortunately, it does not support blogger’s version of “tags” (They call them “labels”) – It has some third party system via Technoratty – not my cup of tea.  But then I thought, well, who needs tags anyway? So I dug up my “Custom Google Search Engine” and tweaked it.  So now, if you want to see, perhaps all the posts about Petey D. Dog, just use the green box with the orange border on your left, search for “Petey”. It also searches our webstore, so if you search for “fart” it will show blog posts about farts, and also links to our fart spray, fart “pull my finger” pen, Fart noises CD, etc. Isn’t technology grand?  Furthermore, I am hoping to also have a “tag cloud” that automatically displays popular search terms...

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet . It's a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com  – Here is a gratuitous picture of my dog.  One slight problem I see, it is very easy to knock a picture out of the original perspective. Maybe they plan to fix that. Blogjet included this quote in the sample post; "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination." -- Albert Einstein …Did he really say that? I mean Albert Einstein supposedly died in 1955. He would have been amazed by a Commodore 64.  Yes, this thing has those awful “smilies”. And I will use them profusely.  

I tell ya, I'm losing my mind. Set off for my night job, had to turn around, forgot my stupid ID badge. Like they don't know me. But those are the rules. Then I got to thinking, "Why haven't we sold any of those grab bags at That Restless Mouse? They're a great value at just $3.99! Teresa puts all kinds of stuff in those crazy bags.". As it turns out, apparently I forgot to put that item on the website. Since most of our customers are not mind readers, I reckon this accounts for the lack of sales. So, I reposted the "mystery grab bag", vowing that we would stuff them even more with great fun items. Click here to get yours today!

I am one of the most fickle people around when it comes to Internet sites, tools, and gadgets. I don't even need a reason, I'll jump ship in the blink of an eye. This is why I love this Firefox add-on for managing your bookmarks, Xmarks.com - I hardly use the regular bookmarks, but it puts a little "i" in the address bar, click it when you are at the website of one of the tools you like, and it will provide a short list of VERY similar sites- I know lots of social bookmarking sites have a feature like this, but the key difference is that somehow Xmarks hones in on sites that are very similar. Case in point, I have been using MyHq.com for a portable "one screen" most-used bookmark manager for months, (maybe years!) because I didn't see anything similar- but Xmarks turned me on to MyLinkVault.com - Haven't set it up yet but it looks like it does the same thing but the categories roll up, and it's much easier on the old retinas. They are both fr...

How so, Rat? The only difference is, Ziggy would bring flowers.