The Ark - a Humane Society

Yesterday, my daughter and I visited a local humane society, The Ark. They take such good care of their animals. We talked to the staff, met the founder and, the fun part: we got to play with the animals. They have some very beautiful animals here.

I saw a dog with the saddest eyes I had ever seen. She was part border collie. Her eyes were half blue and half brown - in each eye - so unusual. They said she was abandoned along a highway, pregnant. She had 10 puppies, all of which they found homes for. I wish I had thought to take a picture of her to show you. She is just astoundingly beautiful.

How Good is Your Virus-Checker?

I was listening to my favorite Podcast from Leo Laporte today. He mentioned a nice site called Virus Bulletin. One caller had complained that his commercial virus checker from Symantec did not detect the same virus that a free program, AVG, did detect.

Leo said that all virus checkers are not the same and to go to Virus Bulletin to see which ones are the best. I use a free one for AOL members (McAfee) - it works offline from AOL, too, and does a great job. Here's a dirent link to the comparative reviews.

Leo did not speak well of programs like Norton. While Norton does a fine job, he says, it takes up way too much memory and slows down your computer.

Seven New Deadly Sins

... Read this in yesterday's paper: a poll showed that the classic seven deadly sins (sloth, gluttony, envy, anger, pride, lust and greed) have changed in peoples' opinions. They now say the worst sins are cruelty, adultery, selfishness, bigotry, dishonesty, hypocrisy and greed (yep, they kept greed).

I saw a wonderful representation of the classic seven sins in a Toscano catalog (I love their stuff). The artist got this right -- looking closely at each face really shows the emotions. I wish I had somewhere to hang these. On the other hand, they are pretty ugly. I'd need a mansion with a large garden and a back wall -- ha ha. Still, the sculptor did a fantastic job. This picture does not do it justice.

Tweaking - Tweaking - Tweaking - Whew!

Upgrading from Windows 2000 to XP has been a job. I almost did a clean install, but my 2000 registry is in good shape and I have kept my system pretty clean, I think. I know a clean install is good -- but I was feeling lazy about reinstalling everything.

XP is running fine - but I have to rest my sound preferences (I never did like the logon and logoff sounds or half of the other sounds out there such as when a menu pops up or down.) I tried MSN Messenger and it installed an entirely new copy that I had to reregister (gee, AIM was fine as is - no changes had to be made).

My microphone was turned off during the upgrade so I had to turn that back on. I have a router and had to deal with the firewall in XP (Service Pack 2 which has it already on). Reinstalling a virus checker was required -- and there are more little changes to be made.

On the good side, I LOVE the onscreen fonts. They look much, much better with that ClearType setting turned on. I bet most XP users would prefer to have this setting turned on.

Frog Legs for the First Time

I tried fried frog legs for the first time. I figured that I could eat anything that was deep fried (and this is the south, where deep-frying reigns). Guess what?! They really DO taste like chicken -- a kind of spicy chicken.

New Hard Drive Pain

We installed a new hard drive today. I took apart the case and reassembled it, while my husband did the physical installation. We found a very good price on them with rebates -- 300 G for $139 or so after all the rebates at CompUSA.

Installing the beast was not so easy, though. I must have taken apart and reassembled this computer a dozen times. It seems like something always goes wrong whenever we install hardware. We had a time figuring out the jumper configuration, discovering a broken cable, discovering a weak power supply, etc. It was almost trial and error.

Then we finally upgraded from Windows 2000 to XP. Fortunately, upgrading was fairly easy since I keep my registry in good shape. I am glad today is over, though. Whew.

Things That Do Not Make Sense

NewScientist.com reports on thirteen things that do not make sense. If you can read through this entire article, you deserve an A in science class. At least, it shows that there are indeed unexplainable events in the world.

(P.S. Yesterday, we decided to eat Mexican. We ate at our favorite Mexican plance, Guadalaja Jalisco on South Parkway in Huntsville. They have the best salsa, chips and quesadillas in town.)

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2005!

Here's a list of Irish jokes: http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/24118.html.

Several of my 8th great grandparents were Irish so I am going to wear green today. (Sure, the line doesn't come into the family until the 1600's but how many people even KNOW where their ancestors were from in the 1600's?!!)

My daughter and I are eating out today. I guess the question is: do we go somewhere Irish and enjoy the crowd and the day or do we avoid anything Irish and enjoy quicker service? I like both possibilities so my daughter, Jenny, will have to decide.

I am going to find several green things to photograph today, I think. (Whatever we do, I'll post pictures on the photo blog today.) Hope you have a good, green day today, too.

20 Ways to Say No

Here are some ways to say "no" to requests of your time. I can think of a couple of people who never turn anyone down. They have very little time or else they don't always show up when they said they would. Alternately, I can think of people who almost always turn someone down. I bet they show up when they promise to, though.

At least these ways are tactful --> 20 Ways to Say No.