Scientist Says Mind Continues After Brain Dies 11:27 am

d2x has arrived. i'm not going to be a very good housewife for a couple weeks. 10:03 am

Mating Cars. i guess someone really wanted that parking spot. 10:02 am

yay! our copies of d2x were placed on a van in soquel at 8:34am. i wish i knew when they delivered around here. the result being that i will be playing d2x constantly for the next month. hazarding a guess, i'd say that activity around here will be greatly reduced. you never know tho, i may need to take breaks. 09:32 am

i hate my pets. when they die, i'm not replacing them. this morning i was kindly forced to get out of bed by junga who decided that standing on the deck outside our bedroom window and barking at the neighbor doing his gardening was a fun thing to do. after hauling myself out of bed and locking them in the garage, an activity which involved walking round the back of the house in my pj's because he was too busy barking to come when i called him, i went to sit down on the couch and watch tv while i drank my coffee and woke up. the couch had some wet splotches on it. upon further investigation, i realized that one of the cats had peed on a throw pillow. apparently, it was pissed that i took away the regular litter box and just left them with the automatic. one of them likes it, the other obviously does not. i'm just glad that the couch is leather and the pillows washable. and now, i'm off to sit on my febreeze sented couch where i can drink my coffee and contemplate how much i hate my pets. 09:26 am

Chubby Douggy's BBQ. just in case you need another time waster. 09:19 am

today it rained. i wonder if there's something prophetic about it raining in california in june. have to think about that one. 06:41 pm

we gardened this weekend. the trellis was finally erected and the dogs are now confined to the backyard. unless somone leaves the gate unlatched again. *cough* pg&e *cough*. i'm proud to say that the 4' x 3' space near our front door has been planted both with living plants and seeds. the big question now is whether any of it will grow and survive. i also planted about a hundred morning glory seeds around the unsightly shed in the backyard. if we're extremely lucky, it'll be invisible in a month or two. unfortunately, i discovered a major drawback to gardening. getting down on your hands and knees for extended periods of time puts great strain on your butt and thighs. i can't help but wonder, as i ease myself into a chair, "is this what it's gonna be like when i'm 80?" 02:04 pm

admail. *shudder* 01:50 pm

Useit.com Usability Analysis. i certainly agree with all the problems found. i've had trouble finding stuff on the site myself. (it just never occurred to me to point it out.) i'd forego the graphical text tho. 01:34 pm

the rise and fall of the geek

"Geeks--affluent, young, smart, into gaming, overwhelmingly male (but increasingly female), grumpy, idiosyncratic, obsessive oddballs who love and understand technology better than anyone--have seen their beloved net taken over by another generation, another world."

there's a metafilter thread on peoples' favorite games. 12:42 pm

woo! d2x has gone gold and is gonna be released 6/29. 09:59 am

i've decided to take up gardening. since 1/2 our miniscule yard is now taken up by an ugly shed and the other 1/2 is dominated by a huge staircase to the back deck, i've come to the conclusion that a few obscuring plants may be in order. besides, i've got nothing better to do. 09:56 am

it occurred to me that at least one reader has as much time to waste as i do. so, here's the lotto sites that i go to: pogo, jackpot.com, lucksurf, uproar, webmillion, freelotto, easywinning, and webstakes. i told you i had a lot of time on my hands. 09:54 am

the systems perspective. what a concept, starting with people. 09:02 am

i've become addicted to online lotteries. the free ones of course. i have a theory, when you're making plenty of money, you feel no need to play the lottery. you realize that the odds are so slim that it's not worth the effort. when you feel a lack of money, playing the lottery seems like a good thing to do. did you know that the california superlotto jackpot is $88,000,000 this week? 01:09 pm

after 4 months of being in our house, we hadn't gotten a pg&e bill. so, 2 months ago i called them and was told that they were waiting for someone to enter the meter numbers into the system. they assured me that i'd get a bill as soon as that happened. today, i got that bill in the form of a pg&e employee knocking on my door. he wanted to let me know that he was here to shut off the electricity for non-payment. thankfully, he was a very nice guy and didn't turn it off. he said "you guys don't look like the type of people who wouldn't pay their bill". hmmm, i wonder if the s2k in the driveway gave him that impression. his work order said that the address was 617, aka 619. so he suggested i go down to the local office and find out why they were sending bills to a non-existent address.

it turns out that they set up our gas meter on the 619 account and set up the electric on a 617 account. since they don't bill gas without electric, we never got a bill. and, since the mailman can't deliver to 617 because it doesn't exist, we never got a bill. the only upside is that the $775 refund check that was returned when i tried to cash it, is going to get credited to our new account. with that credit, i don't have to be too too afraid of the pg&e bill when it finally shows up. 01:06 pm

Cannot find intelligence. 12:59 pm

are people really so stupid that they would bid $102.50 on a $100 bill? 04:25 pm

$95,000 Adventure. i wonder if this is why all those junkmail checks now have "this is not a check" stamped on them. 10:14 am

hmmm. so, i'm looking through my referrer logs for the first time in six months, and i notice that i've gotten 50 or so hits from kinked.com. never heard of it. wander on over. at first glance, it's a porn site. why would a porn site link to me? about half way down the page i discover their "toplist". top 10 referrers. eatonweb is number 5, beating out blogger at number 7. ah ha. portal. 03:05 pm

i'm not quite sure whether both jason and i forgetting that today was our 5 year wedding anniversary is a good thing or a bad thing. i don't think either of us would have remembered if my step-mother hadn't called and wished us a happy anniversary. hmmm. makes you wonder. 02:50 pm

i'm not sure what it is that repulses me so much, but uncrustables are not going on my grocery list. 02:23 pm

i find it very disturbing that going shopping (real shopping, not grocery shopping) has elevated my mood so much. then again, maybe i can pass it off as excitement over fitting in size 4 jeans. 18 months ago, i was wearing size 16. but, i'm now convinced that sizes have been getting larger. i weigh 15 lbs more than i did 10 years ago, but i never got into anything smaller than a size 5/6 back then. and kirsty who used to be a size 4 is now buying size 0. 10 years ago there was no such thing as a size 0 and it was pretty damn hard to find a size 2. now the shelves are filled with them. anyway, i have the feeling that my mood was definitely enhanced purely by consuming because when i went to borders and spent my birthday gift certificate my mood improved even more. sad isn't it. 01:39 pm

facemail? it's been predicted for quite awhile, but has anyone actually tried this? for once, i'm actually leery of downloading the player or the email app. something about never trusting activex. also don't have time this morning, i have to go run errands. 09:16 am

sometimes i'm amazed at how easily we tune out 90% of a website. i've been reading rebecca's pocket for years now and i know at one point that i thoroughly explored her site, but for a long time now all i've focused on when i landed there was the weblog. because of my tunnel vision, i was completely oblivious to interesting stuff like what's in rebecca's kitchen? which reminds me, i need to go visit jen's portal again. 06:38 pm

in my quest to become a good cook, i found All Recipes. the best feature being your "recipe box". the second best being the rating system. 05:17 pm

Who Would Buy That? (auction oddities from all over the web). i had no idea that the goodwill had an on-line auction site. 04:39 pm

buy my virginity. you can buy anything on ebay. 04:36 pm

electrotank, the makers of that cool mini-golf game, have launched their site. now you can play 9-ball pool too. 04:22 pm

Simpson's "Doh!" added to online Oxford Dictionary. now that it's officially a word, i don't have to feel bad about how often i use it. 12:04 pm

Oz Prison Bitch Name Generator. since the names tend to be unfit for primetime, i'll not mention what mine was. 03:58 pm

this morning, as i donned my "<"woman">" t-shirt which i so dearly love, i had a brief flash of brilliance. well, maybe brilliance is too strong a word. let's just say i was inspired. i wanted an html tag t-shirt that declared my current state of unemployment. and so i present, garb for the unemployed masses. i love cafepress. there's nothing more satisfying than being able to design yourself a t-shirt and order just one without ever worrying about getting other people to buy them.

come to think of it, i'm surprised no one started a renegade blogger t-shirt store. it would have been relatively easy to swipe the blogger logo and put it on a t-shirt. considering how hard it was to get one and how many people seemed to want them, it could have been a profitable little venture. not very legal, but profitable. it's all moot tho, since ev finally put up a blogger cafepress store. 02:35 pm

i hadn't actually realized that fucked weblog was actually newsworthy. if i'd known that it was such important information, i would have kept a list of all the dead weblogs in my portal instead of just deleting them. sigh. always one step behind the times. via evhead. 04:14 pm

writer's block. brilliant. via zeldman. 04:04 pm

mini-golf, on the other hand, i seem to be exceptionally good at. 03:21 pm

kick-ups just another really annoying flash game. one that i'm exceptionally bad at. the most i could do was 20. 02:38 pm

i just tried out trillian. it's nice for consolidating all the im programs. most notably, i don't have to see ads anymore. but for irc, it kinda sucks. it doesn't have the flexibility of mirc. the first thing i missed was the highlighting feature. in mirc you can change colors and sounds based on keywords. it's very handy, and something i wouldn't want to give up just for the sake of one less program. still, i think i've got a new im client. 11:45 am

Trillian - the ultimate chat program 11:03 am

61" plasma monitor. 10:58 am

Employment 2001 . this is a pretty scary article. having no college degree, the thought that degree snobbery is rising again is very disturbing. but, we all knew that there were a ton of incompetent people out there hired simply because they were the only bodies available. this article doesn't explain all the extremely competent ones who still remember how to hand-code and are still unemployed. thanks sanj. 09:44 am

i've heard of poor rejection letters and i'm used to never hearing back from a company, but an ecard? 10:59 pm

the phantom edit. 10:36 pm

lance has unleashed his latest creation unhip. for those of us who need to be told what's not cool. in "MetaFilter: Too Much Is Enough" he says "I have given up on MetaFilter at least three times, but like a great train wreck involving hundreds dead in a chemical spill that strips the skin off babies and puppies and makes the entire population collectively vomit up blood, I keep coming back to look some more." i can relate to that. 10:28 pm

i'm not sure whether i've hit bottom when i feel the urge to write about the mostly mundane details of my weekend. but hey, it's my life right now and no one's forcing you to read it.

friday was spent getting dog licenses, ordering prescription sunglasses, and picking up a self-cleaning litter box. unfortunately, petsmart was out of the mega deluxe model so i had to settle for the basic. it's a bit too soon to tell how effective it is. mostly because the cats aren't really sure they want to use it. i think it's only been used 3 or 4 times all weekend. but, since the recommended method of forcing them to use it, is to let their old box get all gross and smelly, i think they'll be using it more often.

saturday, maddie was released from quarantine. barely. when the spca guy arrived the dogs went running out front, barking like mad and generally attempting to scare the piss out of him. i was sure he wasn't going to release her after that. stupid dog.

yesterday, i stretched my culinary skills to the limit and attempted to make a sunday roast complete with roast yams and yorkshire pudding. the meat was a little overdone (well instead of medium), but not to the point of being all dry and chewy. all things considered, it was a pretty good first attempt.

hmm. that reminds me, i need to go grocery shopping today. which also means i should probably shower. i'm actually quite proud of myself. despite the general apathy of being unemployed, i still manage to drag myself out of bed by 8:30 or so, take a shower and cook dinner every day. it's only because i'm afraid of becoming one of those housewives answering the door wearing a housecoat and a scarf around my head. then i would have truly hit rock bottom.

finally, the highlight of the weekend. saturday afternoon we discovered a feather on the kitchen floor. the cats climb up and sleep on top of the cabinets above the refrigerator. the feather was on the floor below them. coincidently, i'd heard sammy crunching something up there earlier that day and had wondered how he'd managed to get some dry food up there.

jason decided to climb up and investigate. apparently, sammy had brought in a bird. not very pleasant, but bearable. except for one problem. he had brought in the bird several days before. perhaps even a week. it had been there long enough for the maggots to hatch into flies. i suddenly remembered why letting cats outside can be a bad thing. i'm just glad jason was the one to climb up there and clean it up.

A Day in the Life of An Unemployed Web Designer. this sounds very familiar. especially the part about fruitlessly checking email. just in case. 10:51 am

the end of the world as we know it. while i completely agree that the web is not dead, i don't think anyone ever thought it was. on the other hand, the death of big businesses on the web has a good chance of killing a lot of that independent content and design. people whose days were filled with building the web for big business spent their nights and weekends building the web for themselves and others. the web was something they believed in. with the ending of so many weblogs lately, i would guess that the jobless are no longer devoting their free time. there's too much of it and it's too depressing to create new things. after all, there was never any value to the stuff you were getting paid for, is there really any value to the stuff you were doing for free? 10:46 am

86 Human Skulls Found at Bus Stop. 12:58 pm

i've also really gotten into the sopranos. having not had a tv for the past few years, i only started watching it half way through this season. but kirsty got me a gift certificate for my birthday and i bought the first season. i'm glad i did. it's very hard to pace myself tho, i just want to sit up all night and watch them all straight through. i just wish the other seasons were available too. 12:57 pm

our friend chili lent us the excellent anime series cowboy bebop. we finished them last weekend. i've never been a huge fan of anime, mostly because i never watched it, but cowboy bebop completely changed my view. i highly recommend it. 12:49 pm

New Computer Game Targets Cats 11:55 am

i blew it. 8 months ago when i did graham joyce's site i should have been smart enough to do what Authors On The Web did. what was i thinking. 04:49 pm

i just finished ursula le guin's new tales from earthsea. it was very enjoyable and the promise of another earthsea book is truly exciting. i can't wait. 12:33 pm

Marketing 'Narnia' Without a Christian Lion. i sincerely hope that they don't try to rewrite these books. despite what so many people seem to claim, c.s. lewis did *not* write the narnia books in order to espouse christianity. "lewis told a friend that he would prefer children to enjoy the book for themselves and think about religion when they were older." 12:03 pm

crash test dummies. another article about the fall. it points out that front-end jobs have completely dried up. 11:20 am

tomalak's realm shuts down. i have to say i'm extremely sad. i haven't been reading it much lately, but, then again, i haven't been reading much of anything lately. but lawrence did wonderful research, digging up new links and also pointing out older links on the same topic. i can't remember the number of times that lawrence has sent me a link relevant to something i'd just posted. however, i understand and hope that his prospects beyond the site are as successful as the site itself. 10:37 am

an entirely different perspective on the whole kaycee nicole saga. hmmm.... i wonder if this site would be considered a soap opera. 10:29 am

i was having a conversation with kirsty on friday. she's trying to work through whether becoming a flight attendant would be good for her. but, that's another story. we were talking about how she discussed every major decision over and over with different people (me, friends, parents). although she doesn't necessarily follow everyone's advice, she gets many different viewpoints. the topic then turned to me, and we decided that i did the same thing, i just did it with a limited number of people. namely jason and kirsty. it occurred to me today, that the reverse is true. i actually discuss decisions with the world. i don't get many responses, but that's ok since you're usually only talking things through like that because you need to sort them out and make a decision yourself. that in itself makes it a worthwhile exercise. assuming you don't mind letting the world see how warped you are. but, occasionally i do get a response. inevitably, those responses allow me to look at the problem from a different perspective. and that my friends is the most valuable benefit of exposing oneself.

thank you paula for for reminding me that enjoying the life of a housewife is not something that i need to feel guilty about. despite the societal pressures to think otherwise. 01:58 pm

Cost-cutting move questioned. interesting. especially since so many companies are forcing employees to work shorter weeks. 11:59 am

every few months or so i realize that i'm once again censoring myself. there's always a good reason for it, but rather than being short term, it becomes a habit. usually my censorship is work related. trying to get a job and not wanting to talk too much about the process or what i'm feeling. the trouble is, once i start censoring one thing, i end up not writing at all. it's rather irritating when i realize that i really want to write but i haven't been because i've been censoring myself.

warning: stop reading now. i'm going into self-analysis through writing mode.

as many of you realize, i haven't been working for the last 6 months. well, i did a site for my dad (he even paid me!) and i'm working on a small contract right now, but essentially, i've done nothing. searching for a front-end job, first in santa cruz and then in the valley, has been a singularly uneventful activity. while jason was unemployed too, i didn't really do anything. in fact, i was getting quite bored and the stress of no income was good incentive to find a job - no matter how boring.

but. there's always a but. now jason's working we've got enough money coming in to pay almost all the bills. even if i just brought in $1000/mo, we'd be able to pay everything. and if i didn't bring in anything, our creditline would last us for over a year. not that i want to rack up huge credit card debt, but still.

the thing is, i'm enjoying staying at home. i like just having to clean the house, do the grocery shopping, cook dinner. i never ever imagined that i would say that. it was almost as unimaginable as me saying i wanted kids. (thankfully, that hasn't changed.) i have no stress, i have no torturous commute, no long hours. there's very few things that i *have* to do each day. on top of that, jason is enjoying having me home. i think i've heard him say 5 or 6 times in the last week how much he likes coming home to a clean house and an already cooked meal. all he has to do is "pour himself a beer."

so, what all that boils down to, is that i have a very broad range of options right now. i can keep searching for a full-time front-end job, i can try to stay freelance (doing a couple contracts a month would pay the bills). the trouble is, i'm not that excited about the web right now. sure i'm enjoying doing the contract i'm working on, but the drive and obsession is gone. i lost it somewhere in the last year. so, then i start thinking about taking this opportunity to change careers. that puts me back 10 years and i have to ask myself "what do i want to do?" alternatively, i could get some part-time job which pays the bills but isn't exactly stimulating or interesting.

and here i sit, at a crossroads. each one paved in a different material, from gold to dirt. each one with a different landscape to travel through. each one with a different person at the end. (yes i know, that was a particularly lame analogy.) being unable, or unwilling, to choose, i feel stagnant. i also feel guilty because i'm not coming up with a solution or trying particularly hard to move in any one direction. in fact, in some ways it's a good thing for me that front-end jobs are hard to come by. it gives me an easy excuse for not having got a job yet.

so. here i sit censoring myself. censoring because it's not exactly good to tell potential employers that you're not sure you actually want to do the job anymore. censoring because i don't want to make a decision. censoring because i keep hoping that something will come along to make that decision for me.

and that is why it's been so quiet and boring around here lately. excuse me while i go back to scanning the classifieds. 11:30 am

we look up into a sky drained of its color by the encroaching fog. above a formation of pelicans glides along, their two lines forming a perfect v with one exception. a straggler has marred their precision. he banks and turns, catching an updraft and effortlessly floats in circles. taunting us. "see how easy it is." five minutes pass as he lazily drifts, wings completely still, around and around. then, knowing his point has been proved, he turns and follows the rest of the flock up the coast. leaving us. so we can contemplate. to look at the ground to which we are so firmly attached and to dream of the limitless space above. 07:06 pm

the trailer for the final fantasy movie is pretty amazing. 06:53 pm

Why I could never work at a shelter, or why you should spay or neuter your pets
. this almost made me cry. it certainly made me happy that all my pets are fixed.

speaking of pets, our dog maddie bit someone on tuesday. a teenager who was riding his bike very fast through the park (an invitation for maddie to chase him). when she got near, he slammed on his brakes and kicked out at her. he found a cop and caught up to me right before i drove off. so many horrible thoughts of my dog being euthanized were running through my head that i didn't even realize that i should be worried about getting sued. thankfully, the kid's dad was cool and seemed to think it was the kid's fault. it was only a little bite, barely broke the skin, so no medical attention needed.

the cop called the spca. apparently, any time a dog bite punctures the skin, the dog has to be quarantined for 2 weeks. it's only when your dog makes a regular habit of it that they take more severe action. it's home quarantine , but maddie is *not* a happy camper. being confined to the garage and brief excursions to the backyard is making her hyper. 01:54 pm

Shift Magazine 01:25 pm