Apr

This week’s TOT topic is to list 10 personal quirks, traditions & superstitions. My first thought was … wow, just 10?!! But actually, this one doesn’t flow for me – “traditions” seems to imply nice, (quasi-normal), reassuring, etc. ways to mark the passing of time in a way that (I hope) is meaningful to our family. “Quirks” and “superstitions” are something QUITE different … ranging from odd little things I do to keep myself calm to borderline-certifiable things I do to (try) to manage my world (and, sometimes, the world of others). Given that it’s April and not November, plus the inclusion of the word “personal” in the topic, leads me to think that the latter meaning is the one intended by the post. I’m not a very superstitious person, but I do have a lot of quirks! Such as…

1. I have to sleep on the side of the bed furthest from the door.
2. I don’t fill my car up with gas at night unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary.
3. I DESPISE having people ask me questions or otherwise expect me to make decisions first thing in the morning – just NOT a morning person.
4. I go WAY over the top in terms of celebrating the kids’ birthdays – the offshoot of having a December birthday myself (I think I only had 2 birthday parties my entire life). Oh, and I tend to plan them WAY ahead of time … in fact, I have a pretty good framework for how the bar/bat mitzvahs are going to go, and they are 5 and 6 years away, respectively!!!
5. I love sports, and if we’re not home I often TiVo Titans games or Vanderbilt & Kentucky basketball games. BUT (this is the weird part), once I know the outcome, I can’t watch the game. So if someone tells me the final score before I see it, I just don’t watch it at all.
6. I love having my toenails painted, but NOT my fingernails – somehow fingernail polish seems tacky to me. (for me, not judgments about others)
7. When I play cards, I put the low cards on the left and the high cards on the right … it completely MYSTIFIES me why EVERYONE doesn’t do it this way!
8. I love sundried tomatoes, and also eat ketchup, tomato sauce, etc., BUT … I absolutely DESPISE whole tomatoes. It’s a texture thing, totally and completely grosses me out.
9. I can’t spell the word “bureaucracy” to save my life – truly, I misspell it EVERY time I type it. If there weren’t spell-check, I wouldn’t have been able to type it correctly for this sentence.
10. Okay those are the only weirdnesses I can think of right now, though I am sure there are many, many more!!!

  

Apr

Tax day is a great day to think about comedies! I had trouble narrowing to 10, so I cheated and had a 5-way tie for 10th place (also known as a top 14):

1. A Fish Called Wanda
2. The Bird Cage
3. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
4. Animal House
5. National Lampoon’s Vacation
6. Private Benjamin
7. The Money Pit
8. Office Space
9. Home Alone
10.a. Back to the Future
10.b. When Harry Met Sally
10.c. Shrek
10.d. Good Morning Vietnam
10.e. There’s Something About Mary

  

Apr

Being a big fan of free speech and all…still, pretty repulsive stuff Very hard call. I do really feel, though, like we have to protect the rights of people to say even repulsive things. Hell, W says repulsive constantly, and no one censors that sorry…well, I digress.

  

Apr

Got this email from Samara’s teacher a few minutes ago – totally made my day!

Leslie,
I wanted to let you know that Samara participated two times today in different discussions! I was very proud of her and wish you could have seen her. I think her seeing us talk this morning really encouraged her to speak up! I just wanted to let you know so maybe it could brighten your afternoon! Have a wonderful evening!

Thanks for all your support, Lauren

We have come up with a new system to reward her for talking in class. Eli, we have to reward for things like not getting sent to the principal’s office. Samara, totally different beast.

  

Apr

The iTunes music store is now the largest music retailer in the US, beating out WalMart, which used to hold that honor.

That’s pretty amazing if you think about it. Go Apple! This makes me really happy (and not just because I hate WalMart with a passion). It means Apple has leverage against the damn record companies trying to screw everything up. Remember that it was the RIAA that insisted on the ridiculous DRM restrictions on the original iTunes songs that Apple has been criticized for, and it is the RIAA that is now leaning on Apple trying to get them to raise prices on the songs. Even in the face of rampant illegal downloading, iTunes works – you’d think those industry execs would get a clue and stop being so idiotic.

As much as I love iTunes, I do hope they keep expanding the catalog. They are great on current (mainstream) stuff (though Craig’s son Aaron tells me not to so much on things like prog rock), but still have some glaring omissions – like The Beatles catalog, for one. I’m not such a huge Beatles fan myself, but it would be nice to have available.

Another couple of things I wish they would fix:
1. The GENRES – OMG, these are ridiculously off most of the time. So bad that they’re useless. And, even worse than just having bad genres, when you import a song into iTunes from another source, iTunes will only find the artwork for you if the genre matches the one they have listed. This is personally very annoying to me, since I like to have the album artwork for my songs.
2. Recommendations – iTunes could really boost this feature. They seem to make recommendations for new artists, etc. based on genres and artist-matching, but there are lots of shareware options (like Goombah, iLike, and The Filter which have moved nicely in this direction.
3. Playlists – Although the iTunes Essentials lists do a good job in this domain, there is, again, a lot of shareware available for building playlists based on the songs you already own. This is important for me, as I have over 12,000 songs already, and it’s growing all the time. But you know most of those 12,000 go unplayed, because they’re not in playlists. Programs like nexTune, beaTunes & Tangerine (which analyze your library based on BPM), and SonicSwap (based on a social networking paradigm) do a great job with this. If anyone knows of other programs of this type, let me know!
4. Fields in iTunes – I have already harped on the genres tags, but iTunes also just needs a uniform field for users to put notes of whatever type they want – right now the “comment” & “description” tabs are overlapping, and there are rumors that Apple will be doing something with them in the future, though it’s not clear what. ALSO, it would be really useful if the “category” field, or something like it, could display for you what playlists a song is in. Then you could make an easy playlist of songs that aren’t in any playlists, so you’d know which ones to target.

That’s all I can think of for now. Doubt anyone from Apple will see this anyway!

  

Apr

I am a planner, so I have a running list of dream house projects – this week’s topic was not difficult for me at all! Well, limiting to 10 was…

1. Build onto the back to create a giant master bedroom, master bath, and kitchen.
2. Build out the attic so we have a full second floor upstairs.
3. Big screen LCD HDTVs in the living room, rec room, and our bedroom.
4. Hardwood floors in every room but the kitchen and bathrooms (replace tile in those rooms).
5. Granite countertops.
6. Oil-rubbed bronze appliances throughout the kitchen.
7. A huge wood play set outside for the kids, complete with climbing wall.
8. A 25-foot (or whatever the maximum allowable by law is) fence shielding us from the neighbors.
9. Gorgeous (but low-maintenance) landscaping throughout the yard.
10. A fabulous solid wood front door with stained glass inserts, complete with sidelights and a glass arch over it.

Sigh…mostly wishful thinking, but hopefully not all of it! Now gotta come down out of the clouds and go teach a class!

  

Apr

iPhone Goes International with Iridium

For a moment, I was thinking … wow, I am totally going to wait until this new version comes out to buy this phone!!!

Great job, Tidbits!