Raising Helen

Just saw this -- my first Netflix movie which got here 2 days after I ordered it. Netflix has a two-week free trial that I am using right now. The way this works is, for a monthly fee of $9.99, I get one movie sent to me. Before that, I go online at the Netflix main site to sign up and make a list of the movies I want to see and the order I want to see them in.

Then Netflix sends me the first one on the list. I keep it as long as I want, then send it back in a prepaid mailer. They will immediately send the next movie on my list. Since this is coming from a city only 100 miles away, the turnover is pretty fast. It looks like this could be MUCH cheaper than renting from a video store -- and more convenient for not having to go further than my mailbox to return the movie.

I like my first experience and I -- finally -- got to see "Raising Helen". Kate Hudson is a beauty and fun to watch. She seems like a truly cheerful person. I enjoyed the movie -- except I wish the romantic angle was a little stronger and there was not such a strong overtone of sadness about her sister's death. Her boyfriend was not a big help and did not work miracles in her behalf. He was almost an afterthought.

Renting Movies

Finally, I am devoting more time to catching up on movies I wanted to see, but never got around to it (what better to do on wet, cold wintry days?). I went to the local Blockbusters and rented two movies for about $10, then I discovered Netflix - movies mailed to my home for $10 a month and in unlimited choices and amounts -- -- plus I never have to drive anywhere to return them. Sheesh, there's no competition -- so I joined Netflix and am waiting for my first selection to arrive. They say the movies are mailed very quickly. I expect my first one today or tomorrow.

Recently, I saw Corpse Bride and Just Like Heaven. Funny in Corpse Bride how the living world was dark and gray and the world of the dead was colorful and more fun. Two nice brides in the movie, both deserving a happy ending, but only one really has a happy ending - kind of sad, but still a great movie.

Just Like Heaven is a sweet sentimental romance with a nice happily-ever-after ending - my kind of feel-good movie.

Food & Font Finds

I read the RSS of a recipes site on my Google homepage and found this good recipe for "Simple Salsa."

Found a new font -- so good. Its title is Chocolate so I HAD to have it.

MyGlitterRomance.com

This is a source of cute sparkly graphics. I like these and plan to make my own "glitter" effects for making sparkling little things. I have yet to work out an animated sparkling method for the little stuff - that I like yet.

Google Homepage Widgets and Fun

I had forgotten about how we can personalize our Google home page until I was reading about it in SimplyCute. I have neglected my Google news page. It's really very useful with the news feeds on it, widgets, gmail, etc., and I am going to fix it up and add it to my homepage list in Firefox. (Love how Firefox will load several sites at once as a homepage.)

Speaking of Aggravations

Speaking of aggravations, our Internet connection is going out every day. We already had the cable company over to check and they found nothing wrong. We think our cable modem has gone bad. If its not one thing, its another. I am now trying our son-in-law's old cable modem and it seems to have solved the problem. Yay!

It's going to be a nice cozy day tomorrow. We are icing up from the sleet that fell today. Roads are closing. Many churches are cancelling meetings tomorrow. I guess it will be a day for hot cocoa and snuggling.

Computer Aggravations

I have somehow gotten a damaged dll file. Skype will no longer work because it says it cannot load olepro32.dll  - groan! Since installing a new spyware program, I am getting all kinds of grief, even though it seems to be catching more spyware than anything else I've ever had (highly recommended in a computer magazine is SpyCatcher).

I am half tempted to uninstall it -- but then again, the list of spyware it is finding is tremendous and includes a keylogger, etc., that none of the other spyware and virus programs on my system have noticed and I am running Microsoft's program and a host of others. Of course, SpyCatcher could be reading things wrong, but no online searches seem to indicate this might be a false positive -- and what about the other spy programs it is catching? I don't think they all could be false.

Add to that, my computer just crashes itself at the oddest moments and now I have a strange olepro32.dll file. Strange in that:

• Skype says it can not load this file. Reinstalling Skype does not help.

• Windows Explorer (the file manager) does not show this file in the directory where it sits (even when all hidden and protected files are set to show).

• Booting in Safe Mode and then running the file manager works. The file shows up in the list and can be moved, deleted, etc.

• Downloading and replacing it with the same file does not work -- which makes it seem like this is a registry problem. Did it get unregistered during one of my daily computer crashes? And why does it not appear in regular mode in the file manager? Checking the properties show it is not supposed to be hidden - and again, all of my files are visible right now, even the protected system files.
  

I have searched Microsoft Help and Google and can not find a solution without having to pay a fee to site that might or night not have the answer. I guess I may be stuck rolling back my system a few days. ::sigh::

(Note: After spending half the night, and rolling back Windows a few days to no avail, I discovered that it was SpyCatcher. Both SpywareDoctor and SpyCatcher were ranked at the top by major computer magazines, but both do too much - in messing up good programs as well. It was too high a price to pay, so I removed it.)

Template Kingdom

Want some great ideas for web site template? I spent much time today at Template Kingdom. They sell web designs (and claim that each one is sold only once, keeping it unique), but just looking through these gives great ideas to follow.

P.S. On the lefy is my avatar for today. I started a new ethnic group over there - "The Winged Persons Society." Maybe it should have been "Winged Persons with Cats."