Que será, será,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see
Que será, será
What will be, will be.

When I was young, I fell in love
I asked my sweetheart what lies ahead
Will we have rainbows, day after day
Here’s what my sweetheart said.

Que será, será,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see
Que será, será
What will be, will be.

Now I have children of my own
They ask their mother, what will I be
Will I be handsome, will I be rich
I tell them tenderly.

Que será, será,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see
Que será será
What will be, will be.

It was still working, but I couldn’t change anything…until I contacted you. That’s when you apparently deleted everything. EVERYTHING. My business has been offline thanks to DNS going away. I really appreciate that. Can you hear my sarcasm?! I am looking for a new host. You once were awesome but you have made it pretty clear that the new management hates it’s customers and would prefer to just lose all it’s business.

As if leaving all of my sites offline for three days wasn’t enough, you had to go do this too. I can take a hint. I have a lot of choice words for you, none of which I am going to post online, yet.

So here is my ramble – it’s got a fabulous 5 megapixel camera with a dual led flash (I loved the camera and features),  32 gigs of internal storage. 1 gig of application memory, up to 16 GB of additional storage with a microSD card, a slide out keyboard (you can use an onscreen one in lieu of or in addition to) , a huge touch screen interface, all the bells and whistles of an iPhone, and it runs Linux. LINUX. Maemo 5 to be exact. This is the phone for the hackers and geeks.

Want to add whatever applications and functionality that you want? You can. Want to use an app style store? You can (Ovi Store). Want to SSH in or out of your phone? Yeah, you can. Want to dual boot your phone with Android? Go right ahead! Want to compile code? Not a problem.  Want to hack your phone without violating a terms of service or add functionality without being sneaky about it? You can (maybe not on AT&T, I hear that they like to force phones to comply with approved install sources for apps).

The downfall is that the product needs more developers. Everyone seems to be forgetting about the platform and going gaga over Android and iPhone. It’s a shame really because this is just so much better. This is freedom. Are you a Linux developer? Get a crackin’ and push some of your eye candy this way!

What else can I say about this little gem? It’s from Nokia – which holds a lot of weight for me. I do love Nokia – I like the ability (even on my little candy bar XpressMusic) to add jar file apps. The platform is stable and the hardware is tough and reliable.

Other things I loved about the hardware:

• TV out
• Non-proprietary headphone jack
• Easy peasy setup of Exchange, Gmail and Flickr
• No tears for lost address books – popped in my SIM and off I went
• Ability to add icons for not just apps but contacts right on the home screen
• FM transmitter – played my tunes & podcasts through my radio with no additional hardware
• Bluetooth
• GPS
• Wifi and 3G
• Widgets (and anything else you want) on the home screen (four of them!!)
• Dashboard interface to see what you have running on all your screens
• System notifications are superb.
• “Lens cap” for the camera – the sliding cap activates and deactivates the camera without needing to push any buttons.
• Skype works amazingly well
• Ogg support

Get one. You’ll fall in love with it. Want to read more? Check out the review at Engadget.

Photo by Ethan Hurd

When our oldest was in 8^th grade the public school he attended sent home forms for career paths – maybe a dozen choices – and told us to plan his course schedule for the next 4 years according to our chosen pigeon hole. How he was supposed to plan for a career when his life thus far had been exposed to so little at thirteen years of age. In junior high I despised history thinking it to be the driest and least interesting thing I could ever be forced to study. Up until high school I had only been exposed to state approved American and Missouri State history lessons and frankly, it was terrible. By the time I entered college I discovered ancient and modern world histories and well written American history. That exposure turned me around on history forever. I may not have plans to become a historian but who knew how inspiring history could be.

People reinvent themselves as they go through life. I like to visualize people as katamari and we are just rolling around picking things up and letting things stick to us. As we grow we are exposed to more knowledge from schools, people we encounter and our own personal explorations. Reinvention is a natural process in our personal evolution. The information we have defines the choices we make.

How can a person know what they want to do if they don’t even know what there is to be done?

For the last few years I have started to take time on at least a weekly basis to reflect on things that are important to me and to shift my goals as required. Learning and self-reliance have always held a golden place at the top of my list.

I have learned:

…that while it’s true that you can catch more flies with honey it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice yourself in the process.

…that I learned more from my parents than I ever thought I possibly could.

…that learning what not to do is sometimes more important than what to do.

…not to be possessive of my ideas if it means that someone is inspired by them, improves them, and builds upon them.

…that it is my responsibility as a member of the human race to be productive and to contribute to my community.

…that no contribution is too small and that greed destroys communities.

…that being a woman doesn’t make me less of a person and having awesome homemaking skills is a strength not a weakness whether male or female.

…change is necessary even if not always welcome.

We are about to embark on a new adventure and I hope that I am able to  share it with you in the same vivid detail that I am about to live it.

Work is insane right now as we prepare for the fall semester. I am in the middle of a VMware infrastructure upgrade and adding new VMware products into the mix at the same time on top of a bunch of other new implimentations. The VMware projects are organized like a house of cards, if one project doesn’t run smoothly it is going to foul up the rest of them.

On the hobby front I have completed my DIY spinning wheel project (will blog about it more thoroughly another time) with only minor tweaks here and there being done.  I have been busy unraveling sweaters and cutting up t-shirts to respin into new and wonderful yarn. I have been trying to par down my pile of clothes to refashion and have completed a few projects that will go up into a new Etsy store. My biggest problem with my creative endeavors is that I always want to keep everything for myself and I am trying to convince myself that while these new finished objects are indeed awesome, I am better off selling them to fund my hobby habit so I can make more awesome things. I have been knitting and crocheting like a fiend too.

On the home front the garden is coming right along but the tomatoes are taking longer to ripen than we have patience for. We are battling the annual guinea pig summer mite outbreak like champs and surviving the seemingly weird weather we have been experiencing this summer in the midwest. I am still progressing with my slow move to a more sustainable life and we are also in the middle of another big home project but that is secret for now. Can’t give everything away yet.

On the family front I have 4 kids to enroll in 4 different schools (stupid yearly enrollment processes), school supplies to buy, school clothes and shoes to purchase and closets to purge.

I have had a couple of people ask me if I have stopped the technology thing and my answer is no. I am still a sysadmin but I do spend a whole lot less time sysadmin’ing at home than I used to. It just hasn’t been my priority but I help out anyone that asks whenever I can. I have gotten past the point in my life where I feel like I have to prove myself and besides, I just have better things to do with my free time than tinker with servers and run up my electric bill. I still keep up, I still support things, I am still reading about new technologies and I am still working on open source causes – I just am not really talking about it all that much.

So there you have it, my latest update. Lots going on in a pretty vague post but you know, I have things to do.

How people justify shopping Big Box

Big Box stores – almost everyone has shopped at one at some point in time. Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Toys ‘R’ Us, you just can’t beat them on their prices. They have so much purchasing power by buying their goods in freakishly huge quantities that they run smaller mom & pop shops right into the ground. The average business cannot even begin to compete with them in most aspects. I hear people say they want to support small business but can’t afford to. This annoys me on many levels because everyone can afford to support local business, they just chose not to & they make excuses to justify their choice. Let’s look at those justifications.

Big Box stores are cheaper.

Not more affordable. I could go into Wal-mart and buy a lamp for $25 or go into the locally run furniture store and buy one for $50 or more. Technically Wal-mart has a lower price but do they have a better product? Additionally, do I really need another lamp or am I just buying one because I can afford to if it is $25.

The terms cheap and affordable are related terms however, do not have the same meaning. If you use them in the correct way, you can start to change the way you think.

Cheap: Low and/or reduced in price; Of poor quality; Of little worth; unfairly powerful.

Affordable: that you have the financial means for.

Big Box stores are contributing to the economic failure of American families.

There it is, I said it. Consumers are nickel and diming their hard earned income away and not even noticing. I am a firm believer in just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. What is it that you want and what is it that you really truly need. American’s are really good at being wasteful like no where else in the world. We have convinced ourselves that the more stuff we have the more successful we are and Big Box stores have no problem telling us that is indeed fact. We need big houses to hold all of our stuff and we need big cars to transport all of our stuff. We spend most of our money credit card payments for this stuff and then buy houses we cannot afford and lease cars that will never be ours. We don’t actually own anything but we are in debt for it all.

We can never have enough, it’s a constant pursuit of material happiness that we think we will find in substandard products. Big Box stores are there to help us in our pursuit of happiness.

What kind of quality do you find in Big Box stores? Not high quality, that is for certain. Pressboard furniture (made of sawdust and glue), cheaply made clothes that fall apart at the seams after a wash or two, toys that don’t least more than a few months of playtime and somehow we decided that this was all acceptable. You get what you pay for and we seem to be ok with that. We repeat the mantra they don’t make things like they used to and head up to Target and buy another one. Here’s the thing, they DO make them like they used to they just don’t sell them where you shop. We are so stuck in the vicious cycle of more stuff we don’t take the time to reflect on it. We have so much stuff we don’t even use that we buy pressboard furniture to store it in. I don’t know how many times I have heard people say they need a bigger house. I tend to ask why and they tell me because they don’t have room for all of  their stuff.

Instead of buying twice as many crummy things we could spend our money on things that have quality, will be a value to us, and that will last or at least give us resale value should we decide to replace it in the future.

Ah, resale value. Now this is the whole reason for my post.

Why buy it used when you can buy it new?

I had a yard sale this weekend with some friends. We priced items very reasonably and only sold items of good quality and we had a hard time even giving the stuff away. One of the things I overheard from a shopper ,”Why pay $3 for a child’s outfit that still *looks* new at a yard sale when they can pay $9 for one that *is* new at Wal-Mart?” It was that that made me write this. I can tell you why I would, because the child will outgrow that outfit in just a few months and I have better things to spend my money on. I buy a like new item for less than half of the new value and I have saved that much money to spend on other things I need or want that have more value to me.

There are many outlets for reselling everyday items including newspapers, flea markets, yard sale, Craigslist, and Ebay. You can find anything somewhere for the right price (and maybe shipping and handling). Obviously the more rare and in demand an item is the higher the cost is driven but, what about everyday necessities? We can factor the value of a used item based on it’s condition then take that number and using basic economic pricipals we learned in primary or secondary education factor in it’s market saturation or availability and adjust the price accordingly. What I have discovered is that current trends are showing that the value of a used item isn’t anything close to what it should be (we are also seeing this with real estate, automobiles, and other things but that’s another post). The majority of consumers are neither educated shoppers nor are they capable of understanding the value of a product – they are only seeing a small piece of the computation. They see a product, compare that product based on price in the Big Box discount stores where they shop and instantly place a value on it.

Example: Hardwood dining table handcrafted and sells new for $1500.00. Listed used but in excellent condition for $500 (considerably less than what they could ask for it but lets say the seller really wants to get rid of it). Consumers view picture (or actual item) and note that while it is in good condition there might be normal and nominal wear and tear so price is mentally calculated as 1/2 of retail costs. Sound reasonable so far? Wait for it. Consumer draws up comparable (to their memory) item, ie, superstore butcher block kitchen table. Retail price anywhere from $150 – $300 for substandard mass produced quality. Consumer instantly comes to the calculations that this previously owned table should be worth $60-$150 and might go as far as to offer such an absurd and unreasonable price to the seller. Seem like a fictional scenario to you? I witnessed this again and again in person last weekend. Item is either sold for an insane price, given away, or ends up in a dumpster because it’s just more trouble than it’s worth – literally.

Big Box stores have now not only managed to run out the mom and pop stores that provided higher quality and better customer attention but has successfully underminded used resell values. People cannot resell their items and they might very well end up piling up a landfill and I can’t imagine that all these crummy man made materials biodegrade all that well. Even if you aren’t greenminded think of all the potential heirlooms that are lost everyday because the disposable household items won’t hold up to pass to your children much less your grandchildren and beyond. Personally I am proud to have an opportunity to share stories of my grandparents when they were young and newlyweds because the kids asked me about my bedroom set which just so happened to be their very first one after they married. To some it might be an outdated dresser, to me it is memories everytime I give it a fresh coat of paint and a set of shiny new drawer pulls.

Before my train of thought got derailed I was talking about crazy consumer calculations and thought processes but I started testing theories.

The more you get the better the deal.

What is a better deal; 25 cents per item or 4 for a $1? Four is more than one so four for a dollar has to be a better value! I know, just bear with me. Big Box has spent a lot of time convincing us that more is better and it has sunk in. Buy one get one half off sales draw in consumers like no tomorrow. Drug stores regularly have sales of this kind on more expensive shampoos and makeup and I frequently see shelves sold out of these products by Monday evening even though the sale was only announced the day before. This is only 25% off two items but if it was advertised that way it wouldn’t draw in nearly as many sales. The items are already higher priced items to begin with so the profit margin is higher and is the $4 shampoo really a better quality than say a $2 shampoo? Frequently  consumer reports have found that there isn’t a difference in many products except the name, label and resale cost. If you are marketer you get paid to come up with this language that gets the consumers in and spending their hard earned dollars. Kuddos to you for fooling so many of us.

Herding the sheeple

My daughter recently went through a life skills class. They were assigned jobs, incomes, and bank accounts. They were taught to shop, buy homes, and spend money. They are seventh graders and this is one of the last mandatory classes they will ever have on these skills. She was assigned computer programmer and given an annual salary of $25,000 per year (quiet you geeks, I know this is insane) and her friend was given the occupation of physician and paid $300,000 per year. The went into their professions with no student loan debt which in my opinion was already a massive fail and told to find housing. My daughter (lucky girl she listens to me sometimes) decided to room with a friend in an apartment and split living expenses. Needless to say she ended the class with a healthy checkbook. Her doctor friend bought a very expensive home and while she was doing well with her annual salary didn’t have much left over when all her expenses were calculated. The funny (sad) thing is that her friend mocked her for not having all the wonderful things she herself had as a doctor. Good thing she didn’t find out how life can throw a malpractice suit at you and take everything you have.

Really, there was a point to this and the point was, we are failing to educate our future. We are teaching them how to spend but not how to be smart consumers or how to save money. We are teaching them more is better and that quality doesn’t matter but quantitiy is everything. We are hearding a new generation of sheeple off the cliff of dependency and failure. Why should we stop? We need consumers to spend so that we have more stores, bigger profit margins, and fatter bankrolls.

Don’t forget, Big Box isn’t just Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Fry, and other similar shops but includes grocery chains, fast food, and sit down frozen cooked to order chains like Applebee’s and TGI Fridays just to name a few.

I could take this in so many directions I might just write an e-book but until then you get the point. Big Box contributes to waste: consumer over spending, landfill filling, destruction of small community business and more. Is it worth it to have one on all sides of town?

Is the convenience worth the loss?

Do you really need all that stuff?

My podcast had a lot of opinion, don’t get me wrong. I get adamant about what I think sometimes. But the facts, the FACTS need to be released. Opinion should ALWAYS be differentiated from facts and opinion should be based on facts – all of them – every side of the story. I do not support the mainstream media, I think they lie to people and only give the public the facts that they want them to know. They spin stories and leave pertinent information out. The breed ignorance. They are contributing to the dumbing down of my country. Honestly, it makes me want to cry when I think of the mountain of ignorance that we propagate. It is the saddest thing in the world to me. With knowledge people can bring themselves up and improve their situations. Those who aren’t self learners can rely on those that teach. Teachers who spin facts and withhold information should not be allowed to continue to teach. To clarify, by teachers I mean anyone who shares information with others, not necessarily those that are in paid instructional career positions. The propaganda machine sure doesn’t need any more preachers.

So anyway, I wanted to share information. Not because I had a sponsor, but because I wanted people to know and understand the important issues. I want people to be empowered! In fact, the only sponsors I had were in a battering system because a good friend of mine was able to hook me up with bandwidth or hosting space. I refused to spam my audience and website visitors with useless ads. Advertisements should be targeted and useful. Every podcast in the world seems to have that retarded Go To Meeting sponsor. Oh get over it and move on. Ack. Useless.

The work on the podcast was immense. Even tho my co-host took on the hours long editing responsibilities there was still the research and prep. Hours upon hours every day of finding stories and howtos then researching them to ensure I was providing accurate and useful information to my listeners. Then the emails and the IMs started coming in. I will not turn down someone who wants help nor will I turn down the opportunity for debate. I do love to talk, even if it is just email. Just forget Twitter, I think I am offending people because I miss their DMs, @s and other things they say.

I still have a day job. Oh, and I have four kids, seven pets, one husband, and ton of laundry and housework, and the list goes on and on household wise. I also garden in the summer because I try to be as self-sufficient as I can so I can avoid to mainstream garbage as well as teach my family valuable skills for the future. See, here we are back to teaching again.

Taking a look at the hobbies I have knitting, crochet, sewing, painting, crafts, refinishing furniture, upcycling thrift store finds… Here is even more teaching, I write howtos for all these things and have shared my knowledge of knitting and crochet and sewing to as many people as will listen. I am trying to build a stash of completed projects to list for sale at Etsy and I have people interested in my designs. Once again I have these hobbies so that I can try to be more self-sufficient. I sew my kids clothes, I mend them, I make my own, and I turn one person’s trash into my very own unique treasure.

Gee, I am rambling again.

Anyway, I miss podcasting. It would be freaking peachy if I had a producer, and editor, a sales manager for all the stupid monetising that needs to be done, and so on. I want to teach dang it. What would I teach/podcast about? No clue. It’s really rather complicated. How in the world do I combine all of these things which I love dearly and think everyone should know how to do into one show. How can I possibly talk tech and crafty things into one weekly show that both sides of the spectrum would listen to? Did I mention my day job and my house of noisy kids? I can only record at odd late night weekend times so that makes it even more difficult to add co-hosts or join other shows. Bah!

I am at a loss. Any ideas are welcome because I have no idea how to pull it off. I just want to teach.

P.S. I am a serious grammar freak and this post breaks more rules than I care to count. Please forgive me and realize that this is raw. So unlike me but oh so necessary.

Look for a geeky craft tutorial coming next week. Sorry to tell you that you have to wait one more week for it but it is a gift for someone’s birthday and if I post it before they get it they will know what it is. :)

It has really been stinky because I haven’t been able to do any task for very long without being in excruciating pain. By the time I get off work after sitting at a desk all day I don’t want to start typing at home. I can’t knit for long and projects that shouldn’t take more than a few days are going to take a few months. I am honestly about to go stir crazy.

This week the neurologist ran nerve tests and said I have damaged nerves in both arms. They are thinking a virus attacked them. I am being scheduled for an MRI just to be sure.

Anyway, I hate talking about my “private life” but I don’t know how much longer this is going to carry on. Wearing arm braces  (like they have for carpal tunnel) on both arms has been pretty helpful. Yesterday was a good day for my arms, today not so much. It is really getting exhausting and I am missing things that I should be doing so I thought I would explain my absence.

Anyway, thanks for still stopping by and making comments on posts. I am glad you haven’t forgotten about me. Hopefully I will be 100% again soon. :)

“terry jones” sent me a message this morning. Of course said user hasn’t bothered to fill out any information on their profile. What a coward and a miserable excuse for a human to use Change.org or any other group they don’t agree with to attack people while they hide behind anonymity. Here’s the message (copied in it’s entirety with misspellings and all):

Your not real
It is so amusing to see people try to fool the rest of the world that they care about anyone else besides themselves and at the same time be such an advocate of such the contradictory cause such as the killing of a baby while its in the womb. You expose yourself as such fake person when doing so. Its just a way for you to try to fool people into thinking your a good person. Most people see right through it, so quit wasting your time,your unwittingly embarrasing yourself. You should just be honest with yourself and others and quit the fake posturing of being an empathetic, caring person and just admit to being a woman that has the sad ability to kill her own baby. No different than Casey Anthony. Abortion may always have to be legal but it will always be seen as nothing but the ultimate act of shame and selfishness shamefull. And that will never change. “Scout leader”, hah ! , gimme a break. What a phony. This is not the kind of change and hope this site is about. Get lost.

So please, if you are going to send me utter crap like this and spout off please do several things:

1) Use proper grammar and spelling. I can’t take you seriously if you can’t even spell.
2) Don’t try to talk big but hide behind the Internet. It just makes you look like a loser. At least create a fake profile and make an effort.
3) Don’t accuse me of something when you know nothing. I support reproductive rights but until you read this post you wouldn’t have known. The Women’s Rights cause is for equal pay, sexual discrimination, exploitation, and a load of other stuff. All of those things are near and dear to my heart.
4) Realize your pathetic private messages won’t scare me or change my mind, they will only make me more of an advocate toward my chosen cause.

So “terry jones“, feel free to get lost. Oh, and start using spell check.

Just taking a moment to breathe in the creativity.

See other mom’s Wordless Wednesday posts at 5 Minutes for Mom

The Ferocious Man Scarf

I finished several fiber projects this weekend but my pride would have to be this scarf I made for my DH per his request. It is based on 200 by John Brinegar (free pattern). I made it a tad bigger since my DH wanted a scarf that was “bigger than the Doctor Who scarf” that his friend is always waving about. Leave it to men to have scarf envy. It was easy to make and was a great project to do while watching TV on a cold day.

John Brinegar has quite a few patterns on his site, so check them out. I will be making more and already have some queued up.

Crochet makes you look feirce. See? :)

Crying by Onion at Flickr

While watching American Idol last night we heard a big crash, then another, and another – all coming from the loft above. Before we could even question what the cause of the sound was we heard the Princess (our 4 year old daughter) screaming and more crashing sounds. Adrenaline kicked in and I went into super mommy mode, launching myself over the pet gate on the stairs and up the stairs three at a time. Princess was curled into a little ball under what used to be part of the desk and screaming like there was no tomorrow.

This desk had a fixed keyboard tray that jutted out a bit further than the rest of the desk and it had come loose from the desk while she was leaning on it. I have told the children not to lean on it however, it was a cheap Wal-Mart design that didn’t have room for the mouse on the tray. There really wasn’t any way to reach the mouse if you are 4 years old without leaning across the keyboard tray.

When it collapsed she fell forward into the desk and then toppled down into the space that used to be the tray. The repeated crashes were the keyboard, the mouse, the speakers being yanked from behind when the keyboard cord came ripping out, stacks of CD-Roms crashing to the floor and so on. She managed to escape the incident with only one small bruise on her upper arm but I felt terrible when she kept screaming she was sorry between sobs.

It gave me the chance for the talk I have with all the kids but this was Princess’ first one. “I am not mad at you for the desk breaking and you are not in trouble. I tell you not to lean on the tray because it isn’t strong enough and might break. I know that if it breaks you might get hurt and I don’t want you to get hurt.” Princess’ older sister and brothers were very concerned for her and even one of the cats came tearing upstairs to see what the commotion was all about. This was an excellent time for the a talk when a lesson can apply in real time, especially when there are no major injuries.

This was also an excellent reminder for me of how much my children mean to me and how devastated I would be if something really serious happened to them. As parents we make rules to protect our children and sometimes we forget that the rule we made is to protect them – thinking how much that piece of furniture cost us and shifting the focus to the material item instead. When we should be explaining that we don’t want them leaning on a keyboard tray because they could get hurt, we may be sending the message that we don’t want them leaning on the keyboard tray because it will tear up the desk. While I want to impart to my children that they should take care of their belongings, I don’t want them to place more value on belongings than on people or heaven forbid, make them think I care more about a desk than I do about them. The emphasis in the lesson should be on their well-being and when everyone is healthy and money is tight, we don’t always think about (we are only human after all) where we are placing the emphasis, taking for granted that our children understand.

In the end we had lots of cuddle time the rest of the evening (giving my rapid pulse a chance to slow down). The desk is currently off limits and non-functional and the kids are upset that they can’t use the computer. As for a replacement, hopefully I will find a more practical and sturdy desk at Goodwill in the next few days.

The army of monsters for the children…

monster & wrist warmers…

and another set of both…

Last set of both wrist warmers and a monster…

Littlest one with a knit hat & a cuddly monster…

A few pictures of one of the lap quilts…

And a few pics of the shopping totes…

A simple navy quilt for another Grandma…

and last but not least, my knitted flower hat with crochet trim.

There are more but I forgot to take pictures of them.

I have been busy and am still knitting and sewing requested items. :)

Here is where I am:

Wrap: Complete! I got hung up making this so it put me several weeks behind schedule. I don’t like to start things until I finish something else (not that I always follow my own rule).

Baby hats: One down, one started.
Estimated time for completion: One hour.

Two sets of arm warmers: Not started yet.
Estimated time for completion: Four hours or less.

One hat: Not started yet.
Estimated time for completion: One hour.

One scarf: Not started yet.
Estimated time for completion: One evening.

One water bottle cozy: not started yet.
Estimated time for completion: One hour.

Two lap quilts: both started.
Estimated time for completion: One week each.

Unfortunately I will be up late into the night the few nights before Christmas because I still haven’t decided exactly what I am making the kids. I am thinking a doll (simple pattern) for the littlest one, the oldest girl wants mittens (I might sew them out of fleece since I am terrible with thumbs), a hat for the youngest boy, and a brimmed knit hat for the oldest boy. Last year it was just me and back to back reruns of Amadeus into the wee hours of Christmas morning while I made two fleece no-sew blankets.

Don’t let not being crafty stop you from giving and getting handmade. Take a pledge to buy handmade whenever possible. Etsy is full of wonderful items!

It was a little before this time that I discovered I wouldn’t be able to be a part of the Twitter stream as I had previously thought. My SMS to web and web to SMS wasn’t working. “Perhaps the gateway is down,” was the response from T-Mobile customer service. SMS to and from other phones worked fine. Thank goodness for the mobile Twitter page although I couldn’t keep up with tweets very well through that.

After hanging out in line for a while we learned that the wristband didn’t really mean anything but the color of our flier determined when we would get in. Everyone that did not preorder had a white flier and would be going last regardless of when they picked it up. My extra trip to Barnes and Noble earlier that afternoon to get a wristband and flier meant nothing in our placement as people just now arriving were getting the same thing. The people with red fliers were the first in and they were the ones that preordered and picked up their fliers very early in the day. Next up were the yellow fliers (also preorders) then blue fliers; the preorders that didn’t appear till the line had formed. Our white flier guaranteed us last.

Barnes and Noble staff did a good job separating the reds and yellows and getting them into the store in a timely manner. The ugliness didn’t start until they decided the one long line of blues and whites should be reshuffled. Basically they told everyone near the front of the line with a white paper to move to the back of the line. The people with white papers in the middle then got to be in the front of the white paper line. This was really aggravating because we had been there standing for much longer than some.

Then the line cutting started. I guess I am a little naive because I was disappointed to find that the majority of folks cheating in line were the older folks with the white hair and the suburban housewife looking folks. I had an older lady yell at me that she had been there for 2 hours (compared to my 5) and how dare I cut in line (he had been making her way with her husband through the line one group a a time for a while). After I asked her how long she had been there and retorted with my time she demanded that I prove I had an “exclusive while paper and blue wristband”. Understand, there was a table with white papers and wristbands about 10 feet from us that they were still handing out to late arrivals. Eventually I lost the will to hold my spot in line and just let her pass. Sometimes it just isn’t worth it.

I want to add that there were more cool people than mean ones. I had some lovely chats with fellow line waiters about the movies and the books. Over all it was a lot of fun to be part of a community like that for a little bit. This is the first time I have ever stood in line for anything.

Once inside the store the line moved crazy fast and it didn’t take long to get to the counter. My friend purchased two copies of the book and a set of audio CDs. They had plenty in the stock so there was no limit to the amount you wanted to purchase. I resisted buying one on the spot since I had already ordered one.
So, here I sit seeing tweets from people that are done reading and wishing I had bought a copy after all that line waiting because mine still hasn’t been delivered. Apparently I am not alone as there are also quite a few tweets from people wondering where their order is.

NOTE: At a little after 1:00 AM CDT my SMS to and from web miraculously came back to life and it appears all my crazy Tweets went through along with my SMS “test” messages. Even though T-Mobile doesn’t typically queue undeliverable SMS messages, the appeared to have done so last night. Sorry to those that got a storm of messages from me. The conspiracy theorist inside me wonders if the gateway was “down” to avoid issues with the spoilers and lawsuits. The technologist in me wants to think that so many people were Twittering or using other SMS type services last night that the gateways just couldn’t handle it. I think the latter theory is cooler. =)

Royalty rates for webcasters have been drastically increased by a recent ruling and are due to go into effect on July 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!). If the increased rates remain unchanged, the majority of webcasters will go bankrupt and silent on this date. Internet radio needs your help!

The Internet Radio Equality Act has recently been introduced in both the House and Senate to save the Internet radio industry. Please call your senators and your representative to ask them to co-sponsor the Internet Radio Equality Act.

Click here to read more about the SaveNetRadio Coalition…

Listen below to a few public service announcements about the issue:

[audio:http://linuxchic.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/Montage_PSA_001.mp3]

[audio:http://linuxchic.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/SaveNetRadio_PSA-One_(Produced).mp3]

I love my commute. There is an occassion a few times a month when I wish I could get home faster but overall I like my drive to and from work. It takes me an average of 30 minutes to get in every morning and about 45 minutes to get home every night if there are no accidents to slow me down. I use the time to listen to podcasts and to make mental lists. I use the time to make plans about my websites and blogs. It is my “ramp up to work” time and “wind down” from work time.

I gripe a lot at discourteous annoying drivers, crazy out of control drivers and slow people who make my commute last longer than it should. I dump all my stress and aggressions out through those expletive filled outbursts within the safety of my car and arrive to my destination ready for what lies ahead.

For the last three years I had lived in a rural area and had a five minute commute to pretty much anywhere in town. I hated it. I love the city with it’s congested roads and interstates and how it forces me to spend time alone in my car. I love my daily commute. I hope I never have to carpool, I would hate to lose my “me time”.

Sorry it has been a few weeks since I started this series. I have been synchronizing my posts between Vox and Linuxchic.net and I think I need to separate them again. Linuxchic.net will go back to being mostly techie, with the exception of a few posts series such as this one and Vox will be for mostly other types of posts. I am also going to stop the Twitter updates from my blog because frankly, I don’t think it follows Twitter etiquette  to tell the whole world every time I link to a story I like.  If you want to follow me on Twitter and read where I am, what I am eating, and other random things I might be doing, visit my Twitter page and add me. I also feed my Twitter updates to Jaiku.