Thank you to every one who called/commented/emailed me to ask how Winston was and to offer advice on how to take care of him. It meant a lot. I won’t lie, I love all three of them, but Winston leads in the favorites by a nose, I have no clue why.

Just to update everyone, his last vomiting was around 7 PM CST on Wednesday night, and per vet’s instructions, I kept him off food and water until this morning, and then it was just small amounts. He’s been a bit lethargic today, but with bursts of energy. Right now he is wrestling with Teddy and Patrick and he instigated it, so I take that as a good sign. I will be bringing him back to full food and water on Friday, but while being monitored.

The stress of last night was added to by an ice storm and my being the only one home. So taking them out was an adventure as I had to do it on leads because their usual place is the backyard and that involves going down a flight of wooden stairs. Patrick got out there once while I was checking it and, yep, he flew down the stairs. (he’s fine)

So again, thank you everyone, it meant a lot!

I have stuff I want to blog about, but just can’t be bothered tonight. Winston isn’t feeling well and has, thus far, vomited 10 times. I have talked to the vet, and I am following his suggestions (no food or water tonight, maybe some Pepto Bismal if it continues. Add on top of that we’re having an ice/snow storm, it’s just not a very “blogging” type evening.

I haven’t moaned about the new Transformers movie lately, mainly because no new pain pictures have popped up on the web. That all changed yesterday. Ladies and gentleman, may I present Skorponok…

Click for a larger view of the pain

Maybe it’s the angle of the shot? Maybe it’s the fact the soldiers look like they are running away from cheesy special effects? Maybe they realize they are in a pile-of-crap movie and are running to save their careers? Whatever it is, this movie looks god awful…yet I will still probably see it *sigh*

While I know everyone here is just DYING to read my blog from their PDAs or mobiles, I have finally gone and installed a plugin that allows you to do just that! Thanks to Jo from joscafe.com for the heads up! I looked at it in my PDA and I was impressed with how smoothly it does run!

I left my new Dell on all weekend so I could log in to it remotely to check up on things. I come in today, close all my programs, go to restart and….

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

Of course Dell didn’t send me a boot disk, and I forgot to make one, so they are having to send me a restore disc. Even after that, I may have to reinstall XP…joy of joys. Have I mentioned lately how I can’t wait to switch over to a Mac?

As you all know, I’ve been dieting this year, and thus far I’ve lost in the neighborhood of 50 lbs, 3 pants sizes and who knows what other things. It’s been a good year for getting in shape. But, now come the holidays. I’m hoping I can hold out and not backslide too badly, but then…then there is the devil in a cup. Once a year Dairy Queen brings out my arch-enemy…my Kryptonite…they bring out…THE PUMPKIN PIE BLIZZARD!

Now, don’t knock it until you try it. They use graham crackers for the “pie crust”, put in some orange flavoring with the ice cream, spray on whip cream, and sprinkle on some nutmeg….yummmmmmmmmmmm. But alas, my pumpkiny friend is leaving me for another year as DQ only has it for November each year. Which probably adds to my enjoyment as I wait all year for it.

So, if you have access to a DQ, swing by before the end of the month and join in my pumpkin appreciation!

From my post last year:

With time running out, it’s time to discuss my recommendations for the traditional Christmas movies I always watch.

A Christmas Carol - Patrick Stewart is a classically trained actor and he brings a powerful tone to the role of Scrooge. A fantastic version of this classic tale of Christmas spirit.

A Christmas Story - Set in the 1940’s does nothing to diminish the fun or relevance of this movie. Every kid has had that “dream” gift on their Christmas list that it seemed no one wanted you to have. Fun, cute and so many quotable lines. “You’ll shoot your eye out” if you miss this one!

It’s a Wonderful Life - Come on…do I even really need to discuss this one? Is there anyone alive who hasn’t seen this? Actually I did find someone this year…and I promptly pointed her out for the heretic she is. This is one of my all time favorite movies. Jimmy Stewart is amazing.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation - The Vacation movies have been a mixed bag (as has most of Chevy Chase’s career), but this film is so easy to relate to. We all have those dreams of the perfect family Christmas, just to have them dashed and never have them live up to our hopes. Plus, the Cousin Eddie scene in white sweater, with green dickie, scene is worth the entire price of the movie!

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Not only is it a sweet story, and amazing to watch, how can you not love a movie that can make both the Halloween AND Christmas movie lists?

The Original Television Christmas Classics (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer / Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town / Frosty the Snowman / Frosty Returns / The Little Drummer Boy) - I recommend this primiarly for Rudolph, but now you can only get it with all this other stuff. Oh well. What is Christmas without Rudolph? Nothing I tell you!

Santa Claus - The Movie - This movie got ravaged by critics, but it is cute, funny and warm. Deal with it.

You have a fave? Talk about it!

_____________________

For this year, TV Squad posted a handy list that USA Today made, of when most of these, and some others will be aired on TV.

* A Charlie Brown Christmas, ABC, Tuesday Nov. 28 at 8 pm;
* Polar Express, ABC, Friday December 1 at 8 pm;
* Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, ABC, Tuesday December 5 at 8 pm;
* Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, CBS, Friday December 8 at 8 pm;
* Frosty the Snowman, CBS, Friday December 8 at 9 pm;
* Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Jim Carrey version), ABC, Saturday December 9 at 9 pm;
* Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (animated version), ABC, Tuesday December 12 at 8 pm;
* It’s a Wonderful Life, NBC, Saturday December 16 at 8 pm;
* National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, TBS, Sunday December 17 at 8 pm;
* A Christmas Carol (Patrick Stewart version), TNT, Wednesday December 20 at 8 pm;
* A Christmas Story (24-hour marathon), TBS, Sunday December 24 at 8 pm;
* Yule Log, INHD, Monday December 25 at 7 am.

If it’s something like It’s A Wonderful Life, PLEASE don’t watch it on commercial television. It is deserving of your hard earned money being spent on a DVD of it. Same with Christmas Vacation. Christmas Story I don’t mind because it’s a 24-hour marathon, I usually watch it 3 - 4 times through out the time period. Yes…3 - 4 times, I love it that much. And I am adding Love Actually to my list. Not totally Christmas related, but set in that time period and it’s fun to watch.

ETA:No clue how I forgot Miracle on 34th Street! Not once, but for two years! Thanks to Luis for pointing out my oversight! A classic, even if it sometimes feel like a movie-length ad for Macy’s, you don’t care! Not to mention you get to see a stellar performance by a very young Natalie Wood!

As much as I despise Wal-Mart, They were having some decent Black Friday sales this morning, so I headed out…at 4 AM. Why don’t they do these things at 12:01 AM? No no, they have to do them at a time you don’t want to stay up until, but far earlier than most people get up. Oh well, I went. I was after the 1GB thumb drives for $13.87, some 30″ x 52″ towels for $2.50, and the original theatrical cuts of the Star Wars movies for $9.72 each. Only thing I missed out on was some sheets I needed…oh well.

The amusing thing to me was the “land claimers” as I called them. Wal-Mart had brought out everything on pallets, wrapped in plastic, placed them around the store, and promptly at 5 AM, they cut the plastic and let the mayhem start. Well, before that time, people would go stand by the pallet for the item that was their top priority, makes sense, no problem with that. What killed me were the guys who felt the need to lean on the pallet, or fold their arms and rest on the pallet. Sure, that sounds like laziness, but it was the look in their eyes if you came near their pallets that was the funniest thing. It was a mixture of a snarl/threat, like a wolf protecting it’s den. This was their territory, and by golly, you were doomed if you were to come near it.

After that, my friends I went with and I tried to go to Pancake City to eat before we went to Hastings sale that started at 8 AM. It was about 5:30 at this point and PC had closed for the holiday and would be opening at 6. So, we drove down to Country Kitchen…also closed. So we went back to PC and we sat in the parking lot until they opened. We stayed there until 7:20 and then headed over to Hastings to watch the shocked people who couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t get in yet. They weren’t opening until 8! Oh well, it provided us with amusement.

We got in the line about 7:40, and this is where we encountered our only real ugliness of the morning. At about 7:55 some Mexicans (you’ll see why their ethnic background is important in a moment) pulled in, got out of their car, and walked to the front of the line to talk to a friend. There were three women in front of me who were very displeased by this, but said nothing to them directly. When the doors opened though, they did say they needed to go to the back of the line, and cutting wasn’t fair. They mumbled something about having been there and they had only gone to their car. One of the women called them liars and then added “Instead of going back to your car, how about going back to your own country!”….oh there’s that holiday spirit I love so much.

Now here is the only time I got pissed off. One of the deals was for a 1GB Sandisk Cruzer. Price was $30, after mail-in rebates it was going to be $4.99 plus tax. I walked in, found the rack, the sign was there, I grabbed a Cruzer and the other items I was after, good to go. I go to check out and it turns out it was 2GB I had grabbed and it wasn’t on sale. I asked if they had any more 1GBs, they said no. I asked why they had 2GBs on the sale rack, clearly marked, and mixed in with the 1GBs. The clerk’s reply was “Oh…I guess we messed up. Sorry about that.” That was the extent of it. Now, I’m not one to get whiny, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why they racked non-sale items on the sale shelf, mixed in with the sale item. If you’re going to run a sale, make sure you rack sales items clearly, not mixed in with non-sale items. Idjits.

Over on Amazon today they had 1,000 Xbox 360 Core Systems at an amazing price of $100, normally $299.99. You had to go to a certain page at 11:00 AM PST to login, answer a question, get the gift certificate for it. Well, big surprise, the site was overwhelmed and when I got in at 2 minutes after, the deal was sold out. I shrugged, said “Oh well” and went on with my day.

Well, just for grins, I went back later to see what people were saying on the message boards Amazon had set up. Best.Laughs.EVER! Some of the gems included:

“Link to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.”

“Amazon should drop the price of Xbox 360 due to screw up!”

“Amazon really should have limited these contests to accounts that have been active for over 6 months…”

“Do you think this was a scam?”

“Amazon unfair”

“F*CK AMAZON !!!!!!!!@!@!@!”

Pages and pages of this stuff…it’s HILARIOUS! Everyone knew there would only be 1,000 of the 360s, but yet, they seem to think because they didn’t get one, this was obviously a scam and Amazon should be reported to the Better Business Bureau (note to self:write entry someday about why that is a total waste of time as the BBB is a private organization with no real power) Thankfully this was done online! Can you imagine these same people let loose in the real world in a store? Why, people might get trampled, robbed, shot…oh wait…that was the PS3 launch this week. Silly me. Lots of people claiming they will never shop Amazon again, but yeah, I’m so sure they will live up to that.

By the way…Happy Thanksgiving everyone…doesn’t this sort of mentality from your fellow man just put you in a holiday spirit?

Back in late June or early July, a friend asked me if I would mind voting for the All Star baseball game to help her players get in. Since I could care less who played, I said sure, and used several of my email addresses to vote. Oh man was that ever a mistake!

First off this signed me up for about 5 mailing lists per email address.

1 for her team
1 for the second team I chose as my “second favorite”
1 for MLB itself
1 for Monster.com that co-sponsored the voting
1 for the MLB store

Now I try unsubscribing from them…and I try…and I try…and I try…about 8 times per list now. I click on their unsubscribe buttons, they tell me I’m successful and, yet, they just keep coming! I can not get these stupid emails to quit showing up! I have zero interest in them! I am at a loss as what to do at this point, and it’s gotten so annoying, it’s verging on becoming funny.

I just wanted to warn everyone, don’t ever vote in anything like this!

Shari over at My So-Called Japanese Life has a great post today about the rudeness she and her husband encounter in Tokyo shops and out on the street. She thought this might be exclusive to Tokyo, but alas, it’s not. Let me quote the comment I left her, and then I will build upon it:

Again, afraid this isn’t a Japan only thing. My FAVORITE (and mind you, I live in a town of 17,000) is the person who will be going down a grocery aisle, will see something on the other side that interests them, will then stand in the middle of the aisle so they can keep one hand on their cart, grab the item from the other side…AND THEN WILL READ THE LABEL WITHOUT MOVING! In a Japanese store this would be an easy feat, in an American market, we’re talking some major real estate to accomplish this! They know you’re there, they don’t care!

Now something that is pretty small town-centric is the passing cars syndrome. Let’s say you’re on a side street and two cars are passing each other where the drivers know each other. Why, doesn’t that seem to be a good time to stop right there and chat driver window to driver window? I mean, it IS only a side street, and surely the person behind you is patient enough for two old friends to exchange a few words!

To clarify the grocery cart scenario more, that means their cart is on one side of the aisle, they leave a hand on it, they stand in the middle of the aisle and hold the item they are reading out at a distance, infringing on the other lane of traffic for the aisle. And unless you say “Excuse me”, and just barrel through, they have no clue you are there…yeah, right. You always get the “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.” Mmhmm…sure.

I think this is just indicative of people becoming more and more self-centered. For some reason people everywhere are getting the idea that they are the most important thing out there and everyone else can wait on them. As sad as it is to say, I am kind of glad Shari brought this up because it shows it’s not just in the USA that people are getting more and more self-absorbed. At least we know it’s not just us.

It seems Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox TV parent company, News Corp, has pulled the plug on the OJ Simpson book and TV special. What a concept!

“I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project,” Murdoch said in a statement. “We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown-Simpson.”

I know I yell about censorship all the time, and how you have the ultimate power with a click of your remote, but when there are children involved…this was/is just wrong. There are people who would be directly affected by this ugly little “hypothetical” situation, and I don’t feel their pain was ever considered until people pointed out just how tasteless this whole thing was from the very inception. Glad to see taste finally won out.

In August 2000 I bought a pair of Bose earphones, the original Quiet Comforts, after listening to a pair a friend owned. In August of 2003, I noticed some whiting around the ear section, and I was getting a hum in one earphone. I called up Bose and they said they could repair them, or, since the Quiet Comfort 2 model was out, they could offer me a half-price trade-in on the QC1’s. I opted for the upgrade.

Flash forward to October of this year, and I went to put on my QC2’s and…*snap*, the inner slide popped out, leaving the earphone at an unwearable angle. I called Bose the next day to see about getting them serviced, but knowing full well I was out of warranty. I explained the situation to the, surprisingly, American phone agent. He told me how to send them back, and I asked how much servicing would cost, he told me “I think we’ll just take care of this for you.” Cue me being slack jawed. Sure, maybe they knew they had a problem, but I still thought it was pretty cool of them considering how long I had the phones. But, cue me being even more shocked when I didn’t get my original set back, but instead a brand new pair! Now THAT is caring about your customer!

I just felt I should share a good customer service experience after the disaster of the HP service the other day.

So, besides the laptop drama I wrote about yesterday, that wasn’t my only tech headache this week. My lovely 27″ Sony Trinitron of nearly 7 years decided to completely blackout 3 times in one night this week. When it did come back on the colors would be either out of whack or blue lines running through it. If you haven’t noticed, TVs are kind of important to me. Whether it be TV shows, DVDs, or video games, I kinda need a TV!

So, I figured if I was going to buy a TV, it was time to upgrade to High Def. I don’t heave a High Def DirecTV dish, but may some day down the road, so why not get the TV set for it now? I did some research on plasma vs. LCD and opted to go with LCD due to the burn in problems on the screen I’ve heard about. I’m going for a slightly bigger screen, 32″, and widescreen presentation. In the end, I ended up going with Consumer Reports top rated model in this category, the Toshiba REGZA 32HL66 32″ LCD HDTV (pay no attention to the price, that’s not what I paid for it).

So, expect some info about HDTVs next week, that you will have no real interest in knowing, as the TV will be here on Monday.

I have a Compaq Presario V2000 Laptop I bought in October of 2005. At the time I purchased, for $349.99, a 3 year warranty extension that included accidental damage such as liquid spills and express repair. Before anyone bitches me out for buying an extended warranty, I only do it on laptops due to the nature of the product. That’s just far too much stuff crammed in to a little space.

So, when I got the care package, it told me to register by postcard within 10 days, which I did. I remember commenting at the time how silly that was since they could so easily claim they never got it….yeah…darn my guessing that would happen. Flash forward to November 16th, 2006, my laptop starts shutting down randomly due to over-heating, the fan had stopped working. I called it in, the tech was very helpful, but informed me my factory warranty expired on October 2nd, and he had no record of the extended warranty. He took pity on me, helped me, discovered the BIOS was having problems and said it needed to go in for repairs, but that couldn’t be arranged until the warranty situation was fixed. No problem, told him I would do it and he said to call back and arrange for it to be picked up. I headed up to the warehouse at 2 AM to get the warranty stuff faxed in and came home, went to bed.

I got to work at 9:30 AM and there was an email telling me they needed more info…thus begun my 8 hours of hell. Ok, took care of the warranty about 2 hours in to it, and then I had to call in to set up the laptop being shipped back. Oh dear lord this was hell. I could hardly ever get to a hardware tech, and when I did, it was either A)”Let’s try some more troubleshooting” B)could hardly speak English and C)”Our phone systems are down”. Yes, all the calls were going to India. The couldn’t speak English one…oh that was amazing. I was in my 6th hour and was getting angrier by the moment, and I admit, I got a little nasty, but I was quite frankly tired of talking to people in India!

Me “I need to arrange to send back my laptop for repair. The fan stopped working and it was traced down to the BIOS.”
Him “Your computer is not booting?”
Me “It’s booting, but it’s randomly shutting down due to overheating.”
Him “Your motherboard is broken?”
Me “…”
Him “We can work on that for you sir.”
Me “You know…perhaps you really shouldn’t be in a phone related job.”

By this point, I had to step outside for a few minutes as I was about to throw my phone across the office. Even the last one, who FINALLY got the job done gave me grief.

Me “I really need to send this back in and I have been working on this for 8 hours now!”
Him “I am sorry for that sir. Are you in front of the computer?”
Me “No. I have no reason to be.”
Him “Oh, well we could try some more troubleshooting and…”
Me “DEAR GOD! I paid $350 for an 8 hour circle jerk! Now will you just give up and let me send this damned thing in for repairs?!?”
Him “…yes sir.”

Quite frankly I have loved HP products…up until today. The hoops I had to go through to activate my warranty were amazing. If you can see I bought the warranty with the laptop, why not just activate?!?

This day just sucked! Oh! And express repair? I won’t have my laptop back for about 2 weeks and they will be totally formatting the drive so I get to re-install everything when it comes back…lucky me! Avoid HP/Compaq, and yes, I’ve learned my lesson, no more extended warranties!

I have been so flabbergasted by the news of OJ Simpson’s book and TV appearance that I had to take some time to ponder it.

What, in the name of blue blazes were Regan Books and Fox TV thinking?!? A “hypothetical” look at how he would have killed Nicole and Ron if he had done it?!? As if these families haven’t suffered enough! And what about the children OJ had with Nicole? “Hey kids! Gather round here how daddy killed mommy…’hypothetically’ that is!”

There are no words for just how disgusting I find this whole concept. Both Regan Books and Fox television should be ashamed they have anything to do with this, and I, for one, plan on boycotting both of these items. It disgusts me enough I would consider boycotting anything to do with either of these companies now. And anyone who buys advertising spots during the television show should also have their heads examined.

Shame on any and all associated with this show. I know I have railed against the AFA for their bearing down pressure on what they view as slights against Christianity, but this is about two very gruesome murders! (I know…I’ve seen the crime scene photos some years ago…it wasn’t pretty) This whole thing just turns my stomach.

You know I sure was more excited about all the new video game systems like a year ago? So why not now? General lack of funds for all the new systems…over-pricing of systems (sorry, but $600 for a PS3, if I’m lucky, is just flippin’ insane)…too many games for the older systems I still haven’t finished…and any number of small technical aspects that just annoy me.

When I unpack a PS3, why should I have to immediately install an update? Why at launch time is it not fully backward compatiable, and is actually failing on some of the PS2’s most famous titles?

Is it just Sony annoying me? Nope! Nintendo decided it was a good idea before the Wii even launched to tell everyone “Oh hey, there will be an upgraded model next year with DVD playback capabilities, but please go ahead and buy this one because we all know you are silly little fanboys!” Never mind you have to put a stupid sensor in front of your TV, beyond the game system, to make the bizarre Wiimote work. (the device in front of the TV is circled in red below)

Then comes the question of the Xbox 360…a year old and no price drop? Thanks Microsoft!

About 2 weeks ago I did some Super Nintendo shopping on eBay for grins…I spent $.49 on an Animaniacs game and $9.99 on an unopened copy of Super Return of the Jedi. Think I will stick with the systems I have for now, thanks!

Everyone seems to know about the major network shows, but while watching some of the off brand cable shows today, I thought I would share some of my faves with you all. These aren’t shows I watch religiously, but if they’re on, and I’m bored, I’ll stop and turn them on for background noise. (Roy - yes, I know what you are going to say, yes LOST is now in my Blockbuster queue for the holidays :-p)

American Chopper - One of the better known shows on the Discovery Channel, this series follows the antics of the Tuttle family who run Orange County Choppers. Yes they are loud, yes they are abrasive, and yes they really are just kind of like cake decorators, but they’re good at it and are fun to watch.

Flip This House - Shown on A&E, this show is about realtors who purchase rundown houses, fix them up, and turn them around for a profit as quickly as possible. Why this show interests me, I’m not sure, but it does.

Gene Simmons Family Jewels - Pretty obviously scripted reality show about Gene Simmons of the rock band KISS On A&E. Show is worth it just for the rest of his family, especially his kids, Nick and Sophie.

Ghost Hunters - I am fascinated about paranormal phenomenon IF I think it’s true. This show, featuring The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), on the Sci Fi Channel sure seems like the real deal, plus the team is entertaining. Their 6-hour live event on Halloween night from the Stanley Hotel, the basis for The Shining, was quite interesting.

Good Eats - Airing on the Food Network, I am sure Alton Brown has an amazing research staff, but what this show teaches you about food just can’t be beat.

John Ratzenberger’s Made In America - John Ratzenberg, whom played Cliff on the hit show Cheers, travels America on, oddly enough, the Travel Channel. He visits odd little factories to tell you about items that are still produced here in the USA. Actually quite fascinating, for instance I just learned today that Everlast boxing equipment is made only 45 miles away from my house!

All of these shows are the TV equivalent of “comfort food”, entertaining, but not the healthiest for you.

The official release date for the Zune is the 14th, but some stores have let it slip out early. And pictured above, you can see how well that’s going for some people. Some folks are theorizing that this is due to the fact your Zune needs to talk to the Zune website at some point to set up your Zune Tag, but not allowing you to install at all seems silly to me. What if, heaven forbid, you buy a Zune and you don’t have an internet connection? You won’t be allowed to use your new gadget? How silly is that? Another point in favor of the iPod.