TOPICS
ON THIS PAGE
<-- Previous Page | Search| Next Page -->
ARCHIVES: July 8-14, 2003
July 14, 2003 - Monday
Butterscotch Rice Krispie Treats
When Mom said to eat cereal for breakfast, I wish she had meant this. It's very
easy to make. Take 1 cup butterscotch chips and 1/2 cup peanut butter and melt
them together. Stir in 3 cups Rice Krispies. Press into an 8" square pan. Cut
when cool. This is a sugar shock, but so good. At least it is made with
vitamin-fortified cereal!
A friend sent this. It's a cute site with special sound effects, fonts and animation: You've Clicked Once Too Often.
July 13, 2003 - Sunday
The sunrise was a pretty pink today (picture taken with my cell phone camera). I almost crossed paths with a young skunk. He was cute, being nearly all black with a little white tip on his tail. Unlike older skunks, he did not seem wary of me and did not raise his tail as soon as he saw me. In fact, he started walking right towards me. My first thought was, "Oh good! Maybe I can take a close-up picture." My second thought was, "Oh no! He's getting within spraying range!" And my third thought was, "H-m-m-m, maybe I had better run the other way." I ended up doing my usual skunk routine, stamping feet and clapping hands to make loud noises so he will leave and he did.
The next animal I saw was a dead water snake. Someone had caught one in the creek and left it in the middle of the walking path. They have done this several times before. I felt so sorry for the snake. He's harmless and I hate to see a poor harmless animal hurt. He also stunk to high heaven. Whoever is doing this is not scaring anyone, just showing us how mean he can be. (photo)
Shortly after that, I saw a pretty little goldfinch sitting in a tree. It was amazing because I had never seen one totally in the wild before -- the only other time was at a bird feeder.
July 12, 2003 - Saturday
|
We rented the movie (which we had seen when it first came out), the pilot and the first episodes. It's a Stargate Day around here. We used to watch Doctor Who and enjoyed Lexx in its early days as well as Farscape. I liked the Star Trek shows more than my husband did. He felt that Star Trek went downhill in the season just finished. There were too many boring psychological profile type shows. I think the writers got exclusive, narrow-minded and caught up in a world of their own, losing touch with what people really want to see in that series. Oh well. The movies were good, at least.
|
 |
Here's some more interesting names -- I am just picking them by names here -- don't know about their content. The first and second ones made me laugh.
I was telling my walking companions about this movie, the good points and what
the critics didn't like (Roger Ebert said it started out great, with a great
premise, then fell apart). They didn't care, they told me. They love Sean
Connery and said it sounded like their kind of movie and made plans to see it!
Gee - I wonder if this movie might survive. It had enough of a plot and great
action. Oh well. I noticed that the audience was a lot older for this than the
audience for Pirates of the Caribbean. Sean Connery versus Johnny Depp.
I learned one thing - my cell phone will not send e-mail within the theater, even though it has full antenna strength. Apparently, sending e-mail is more sensitive to interference than making a phone call or SMS (regular text messages).
July 11, 2003 - Friday
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
|
|
Went to see this movie today (as you may have guessed if watching my Webcam site). I scanned the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, trying to read between the lines to get a sense of the movie. The critics are good to check, but my favorite movie critic is my brother, Michael. I can't always agree with the "professional" critics. Michael knows what I like.
At any rate, my husband and I LOVED this movie! It features fictional characters from the past such as Allan Quartermain (the explorer), Captain Nemo and the Invisible Man who team up for a common cause (saving England from a man who wants to take over the world). I don't want to name all of the characters because finding out who the rest are was half the fun. Think of a cross between "The Dirty Dozen" and "The X-Men." |
The time period is 1899. The movie was one of those shot mostly in the dark. I know some directors like doing things in the dark so they can get more creative with the lighting, although I was glad to see daylight afterwards. Movies that dark are a bit depressing.
We found a kazillion plot holes and illogical events. I didn't care. It left us with a tiny little hint of a sequel at the finish which was not a completely happy ending and if the reviewers are to be believed, it will not make enough money for a sequel, alas.
They had a 2-for-one coupon again -- how could we resist this place on South Parkway near the upcoming Home Depot? I was very impressed. They have much improved. Even my friend, M.L., who is a bigger critic than me liked this place. I take back almost every bad thing I said -- they still don't keep the food as hot as I would like, but it was warm enough. Their salt and pepper shrimp was heaven as was their nice, lightly breaded fried shrimp. The soup was okay although my husband raved over it, saying it was the best he'd ever had anywhere (the hot and sour, that is). The cream cheese wontons were hard and not so good. I didn't care since the shrimp was worth it alone. Original Review
My Egg Drop Soup | Plate of Food | My Husband Peeling Shrimp
|
My sister just got a new digital camera (a Minolta 4-Megapixel) and is e-mailing her photos to her new camera blog at Bonnie's Photos. I like this place -- no popups, very little advertising and its free (so far). While this site was made for cell phone photos, anyone can create their own photo blog for free and e-mail regular photos to the site.
On the right is her newest image. This picture will change every time she e-mails a new photo (just like my link at the top left of this page).
|
Got this from B. who posted in our local newsgroup. This is a good one. Read the small print:
Thanks to a new cell phone and AOL, I am somehow stuck permanently logged onto AIM. First, I called the cell phone company and they gave me several things to try. I did those things. My phone said I was logged off. It lied. I still appear on everyone's buddy list and I was still receiving IMs. Argh!
So I called AOL and they gave me some things to try. Again, nothing work. I talked to 3 different techs over there, all who had ideas that sounded good, but nothing worked. The techs gave up and sent me to a site where I could send an e-mail report (with no hope of reply, alas).
So here I am with a permanent AIM log on. I will try calling the cell phone company again today. Surely someone can break the connection. I don't think it would be that hard. I bet if I stopped paying my bills, the connection would stop - ha! Until I get things worked out, I set my preferences to keep the AIM name off of everyone's buddy list.
A couple of friends wondered why I was "online" all night long. <sigh>
July 10, 2003 - Thursday
Thanks to the TextAmerica folks who provide a free space to store my Webcam images, as of today, they have a piece of Java code where we can display the latest image on our own sites. Yay!! Double yay! I will be playing around with this for the next few minutes and finding the best spot to place it.
Now, on this page, you can see the most recent picture take with my Samsung V205 cell phone. I can send to this page anywhere my cell phone works. This is wonderful!
|
|
I added a better looking picture for yesterday's entry so it could be seen that "soylent green" was really a good meal. See Pesto Sauce. Also, here is a picture of one corner of my kitchen -- real uncluttered. Right. |
Agh, there are so many times that T-Mobile tells me I can't use the Internet with my phone. It makes picture blogging an aggravation. I guess there are times when things are "down for maintenance" and other times who-knows-what. That's cell phone service for ya. I am glad I have it, but I hope someday it is vastly improved.
All of a sudden I am getting a good number of hits from Popdex.com. I am listed 5th on their site for a Harry Potter category, so I am going to provide a link to my review for a few days at the top of this page. Welcome to Harry Potter fans! For future reference, my review is here --> Harry Potter 5th Book Review. Scroll up and down the page to see several Harry Potter entries.
July 9, 2003 - Wednesday
Pirates of the Caribbean Movie
|
|
Great movie! Johnny Depp dressed up as a swaggering pirate was amazing to watch. He steals every scene. The background music almost overpowered the movie -- I say almost because it was GOOD! Many dark, scary scenes and some violence make this too much for very young audiences. My only complaint was with the female star. Her artificially puffed lips made it look like she was grimacing or in mouth pain half the time.
I saw two people with cell phones, sending e-mail photos. (I turned off my phone when the previews started.) One person was holding their phone up high to catch the antenna. Another guy had the nerve to stand up, turn around to face the audience and took a flash picture of us all! I was right behind him. He got my whole face. And I was sitting near the front. Who knows what the folks behind us were doing.
Pictures taken with my cell phone --> My Popcorn or the Theater.
|
I am having a blast photographing everything in sight and posting it to My Webcam (sort of) site. The picture quality is pitiful - I wish T-Mobile had a cell phone camera with better abilities out there. I guess eventually it will happen. I try to post a picture from my "real" camera over there occasionally so it is not completely junky.
The Leoville blog uses this. He wrote some kind of perl script so that the most recent picture posted in his photo blog area appears on his main blog. I wish I knew how to do that. I can plug in and adjust Java scripts, but I am not sure how to plug in a perl script. I guess that's because the Java scripts I've seen do a lot of hand-holding (very clear instructions included). I also wish I had his camera -- his photos are a LOT clearer.
My husband grew basil this year. He harvested it last night and I made Pesto sauce. I've seen several recipes with slightly differing amounts, but this one works fine over cooked pasta. The picture shows the frozen cubes, er, chunks. I froze them in muffin tins. It does not look too appealing (reminds me of soylent green), but one cube of this sure tastes good over a cup of hot pasta.
Pesto Sauce
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
3 oz. (about 3 cups lightly packed) fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Parmesan cheese
Put the garlic, nuts and salt in a food processor and grind for about 1o seconds. Add basil and pulse about 10 times. Add oil and run a few seconds more. Pour the sauce into ice cube trays and freeze. When completely frozen, store them in a sealed plastic bag. Boil enough pasta to make a cup or two and put one of these cubes on the hot, drained noodles. Stir until cube has melted. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Delicious!
July 8, 2003 - Tuesday
That's what you get for publicizing a Java script that calls to your own site. Everyone uses it and then your bandwidth is shot. (See Geckos on the Page.) The geckos may be extinct.
Huntsville built a berm along our neighborhood to help prevent Aldridge Creek from flooding our neighborhood again (we were flooded in June 1999 along with many other residents). Okay, well, that was nice, but they brought in some sod to cover the berm. The first batch of sod got installed nicely, but the next batch made us wonder what was going on. The sod was bundled in a large roll and left to sit by the road for days. When the city got around to laying it, the grass was dead.
They went ahead and put it on the berm. We walk past a nice brown, dead-grass covered berm every day. The grass did not ever turn green. (I should add that they came out and threw some seed over the dead grass. We are beginning to see a few green shoots come up.) What happened, Huntsville? You pay for sod, then let it die, pay for someone to plant it anyway, then pay for grass seed and pay for someone to plant that, too. Yup, wise use of tax dollars.
I've been looking at T-Mobile's offerings in person after going through the online specs. They have 4 camera phones. It came down to the two best. The biggest, clunkiest-looking phone takes the best pictures (Nokia 3650) and has a movie mode. It just doesn't look small enough to carry around in a jeans pocket. Both Nokia display phones in the store rattled, making me wonder how well they hold up.
The next best is Samsung V205. It has a brighter screen and folds to a convenient compact size. The pictures are smaller, I think -- only 352 by 288 pixels. If you have big hands, the buttons will be harder to use. The display is easier to read, though, and it comes with 2 batteries, so you can keep a spare handy. It looks slicker. It got my vote.
None of these beat a regular digital camera -- the price to pay for convenience and immediacy is lower picture quality, I guess. At least you can send a picture or e-mail while walking around, not having to set up a notebook, etc.
Continued on the NEXT PAGE -->
<--
Previous
Page |
Topic List for this Page | Back to Top
|
Next Page -->