Complete with Matching Cell Phones

Mood: delighted

My cell phone ran out of minutes and it struck me that Bella and I could both save money by adding a line for me to her account with AT&T. So last night, that's just what we did! As a result, we now have matching, flip-top cell phones. They're really quite cute... erm, I mean, small. They have the cool polyphonic ring tones and color screens. When Bella calls me, it plays the wedding march. Family calls and I get to hear "Clocks" by Coldplay. Meanwhile, Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" plays when friends call. Work-related calls are announced by the "brrring-brrring" telephone ring, and for everyone else I hear the retro "brrrrrrrrrrrrring" telephone ring. The latter of which I actually like a lot. So far, I've had problems downloading pics to use as wallpaper on my phone. I get a 406-Not Allowed error. Oh well. For the time being I have a nice animation of a Dutch windmill in a field of tulips. (Tulips are my favorite flower, and I once planted a small flower bed of them. Fun.)

All of this is really to say that I now have a new phone number. If you should be calling me, you know how to get a hold of me to ask me for the new number. Ha!

I was all excited that I could now make a lot more audio posts using my free nights and weekends, but the audblog service is down for maintenance. And, I think I still need to have them fix my account. Bah!

Better Idea?

Mood: tired, but in a good way

Whew! Just rode my bike home from work. Most of the way was pretty easy, lots of coasting. But that last bit, up Pierce, is always painful, though it doesn't look menacing in the least. I did pretty well, though. I'm proud of myself. Took a much-needed cold drink at the water fountain graciously provided at the SDA church.

Anyway, I'm thinking I should just break down and have Daryl download the file for me. I really don't feel like spending 58 hours downloading. (And that would just be the trial version!) I may have Bella take me to Best Buy to take a look at the boxed edition.

Speaking of Bella--my beautiful Bella!--we've talked about her adding a line on to her wireless account and then we could split the costs. My phone is having major problems--turning itself off randomly, not to mention the 25/10 cents per minute deal isn't as great as I first thought. I rarely use enough minutes to get to the 10 cents per minute rate. So maybe we can go see what kind of a deal we could get.

Anyway, I need to take a shower so I will be fresh-and-clean for Bella. Meanwhile, just for the heck of it, I will continue the Linux download....

Killing Microsoft (?)

Mood: devilish

The more I read about Linux--not to mention the more my computer crashes--the more I want to wipe out Windows from my computer and use only Linux. Now that I am not doing much of anything productive on my computer, I have all the time in the world to learn a new operating system. (You may remember a long while back when I tried installing Red Hat Linux, but decided I didn't have time to learn it; I was running my business at that point.)

My brother, Daryl, running a dual-boot system with Windows and SuSE Linux, suggested that SuSE Linux is much easier than Red Hat. So, as a sort of trial run, I am downloading the Live CD of it. By "live", it just means that I can boot my computer from the CD and Linux will run from it. (Rather than going through the task of defragmenting, repartitioning and installing. Not to mention backing up all of my music [20+ CDR's] and data with a slow, external CD burner.) The download only has 58 hours left! Woo... hoo...

The Hollies vs. The Beatles

Mood: concerned

Okay. I can hear everyone now, but I must say it like it is. I think early-Hollies were better than early-Beatles. There. I've said it. May the hate mail commense.

But this, dear readers, is not the subject of my concern. I am concerned about one of my co-workers, Bianca. Yesterday, she called in asking for the day off because of a family emergency. She sounded near tears, but I assured her it was not a problem for us. I just hope she's in a stable enough state to work today. But I will offer to let her go home early. I am beginning to see what can happen with only three people working in the store. (And that's not per day. There are THREE employees. Period.)

Pip is doing well. He's happy eating the fruit flies. He's extremely jumpy when he sees me. I suspect that that will always be the case. Small frogs aren't exactly cuddling pets. But I love him anyway....

After a long period of not having any meal worms, I have been giving Ibby worms on a daily basis again. When I hand-feed them to him, he reverts to a baby, making a cute squawking sound, crouching, and fluttering his wings. Then he proceeds to snatch the meal worm right out of my hand as soon as it gets close enough to the cage. Oh, I got a parakeet playground for Ibby (and the budgies), but he's scared of it. So I'm getting him used to it by putting worms on it. Occasionally I just grab him and set him on the perch, but he immediately flies off onto my shoulder. It's wonderful that he can fly again, now that his primary feathers have grown back.

A couple days ago, I bought a new bike. I rode it to work yesterday. It was very tiring riding that three or four miles. Yes, I'm outta shape. But not for long! As instructed by Bella, I had to buy a helmet to go with it. So I figured if I have to wear a helmet, it might as well be a cool one. It's black with blue flames on it. Need I say more?!? There's a nice little room in our store that is perfect for storing it out of the sight of customers. Vince, my other co-worker, didn't even see it!