Starting Jonathon’s Christmas List

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So far on his list? Gift cards to his favorite electronics store, a Logo flash drive, and a new hard drive. Oh and I think some more memory for one of his ten or so computers. Hmmm pretty sure this is the same list that we had last year, too. Can’t he just ask for a sweater and some dvd’s? And the thing that really sucks is that his birthday is also in December so I have to come up with twice as many gifts. Although for his birthday he might not be getting anything- since he never ended up giving me a birthday present AT ALL this year. Seriously.

Live Chat on Blogs

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Has anyone done/hosted a live chat on their blog before? I am not so much interested in doing it just for my blog readers (because let’s face it, I know I’m not famous) but more as a way for a group of people to talk online. I have no idea how to go about setting it up or anything or if I am too technically challenged for that. I am also looking into doing conference calls that you can set up online.

My Keurig

Filed Under Technology, This Rocks | 5 Comments

I love my new coffee maker. It has revolutionized the way I drink coffee. Really, I like it a lot. Jonathon of course has also decided that HE likes it and he has been warned to stay away from my favorites!

Are you wondering what the heck a Keurig is? It’s a single serving/cup coffee maker. They range from $79 to commercial ones for offices and stuff which cost more like $2500. The “lower end” ones are the greatest thing ever for a home coffee maker. This is mine:

I got it at Sam’s for $129 and it came with the machine, 2 water filters, and 90 K-Cups. So it was a really good deal, because just the machine itself was $149 on the Keurig site. You might want to go check Sam’s if you’re interested.

You pop in a pod (K-cup), choose the cup size by pressing a button, and your cup of coffee is ready in less than 30 seconds. Mine has a 48 ounce water holder so I don’t have to refill it more than once every few days. You can use any coffee cup with it. If I have a huge cup, I make a medium Keurig size cup and then a small one, and it fills it perfectly. I just use the same K-cup for both times because I like weak coffee.

There are all kinds of yummy flavors available like Caramel Apple and Chocolate Crunch and Butter Toffee. Plus, the traditional flavors. I love to mix my coffee flavor with an interesting creamer. They also make hot chocolate and tea K-Cups. I have a mandarin orange spice tea one that I am looking forward to trying. We are going to have a lot of fun coffee shopping. You can get the K-Cups at Bed Bath and Beyond and lots of regular coffee places now, too.

If you don’t want to use the K-cup pods all the time, you can buy a My-K filter. It’s a reusable metal filter and then you can use your own coffee grounds in place of the K-Cups.

It’s even faster than driving through Starbucks and costs about 50 cents per cup instead of $3.85! In fact I think I might have to go make myself another cup now. It’s kind of addictive.

This would have been nice

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As I was looking to find out what cell phones we could upgrade to (for less than about $50, with our two year upgrade) I figured out that it might make more sense to buy a phone NOT through AT&T and get something nicer for less money. I was Googling a bunch of different things and then I ran across this site were you can get cell phone amplifiers. They help you get a better phone signal in different locations. Which would have been really nice when I was in college and spent my summers working way out in the middle of nowhere!

Internet was down

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We had a big fiasco with AT&T this weekend… they were going to hook up our fiber optic service and then decided they couldn’t because we were over 2000 feet away, although they will sell the service as long as you are within 3000 feet… maybe they should come out and check first before signing you up for the service! So then they had to take down our DSL only to find out that they couldn’t set up the new thing. Jonathon had to rig up wireless for us, but it was so painfully slow that I couldn’t even stand getting on the computer except to get directions for a baby shower and to check my email, to check on something I was trying to find on Amazon books (but it took too long to load) and the weather once.

Stupid AT&T

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Our internet has officially been down for three days now. There are brief periods when I can get online… then just as I start doing something I get kicked off again. It’s an outside problem that we can’t do anything about (trust me, because Jonathon fixes computers/networks/etc for a living). AT&T doesn’t really seem to care a whole lot, they won’t tell him what the problem is or what they are doing to try to fix it. The tech yesterday actually suggested that Jonathon look into getting “something called a router.” Um, thanks moron. At first he thought it might have had something to do with taking down screws and leftover stuff from the previous owners home theater sconces because they ran stuff through the wall- then he thought it might have been from having the carpet cleaned because he ran wires under the carpet- yes my husband loves to run wires everywhere- but it was not any of that. Just AT&T’s fault.

So why am I on the internet now? Jonathon has rigged something up in our downstairs and I’m pretty sure I’m not on our network, because he told me not to do any banking… ummm…. anyway I am down here on a Mac (which I hate) laptop (which I hate) sitting at a table in the corner of our downstairs. Where it once again smells like cat pee. But that’s a story for another day.

I admit, I felt frantic because I was so far behind on blog reading. I still haven’t been commenting because I suck at using a laptop and I click and drag and scroll as little as possible. I am behind on reading posts on my mom board. I haven’t responded to quite a few emails. BUT now that I have caught up with most things in my Google Reader, I feel like it has taken the edge off. I’ve gotten my fix. Isn’t that sad? The good news is, in the last two days without (much) internet, I have cleaned the kitchen, bathrooms, my office, done laundry, ironed, returned something to T@rget, called the carpet cleaning company to discuss the cat pee smell… oh what I could get done if I would stay off the internet on a regular basis!

I want free music

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I found a program where I thought I could get free music downloads (legally) and I was so excited to try it out. The program is called MP3 Rocket and there is a free download version.

I signed up for the free download version and made sure that I wasn’t getting any viruses or spyware. Once I was using the software I discovered that it’s pretty much the same software as Limewire so you can find almost anything you want- software, music, movies, etc. Here’s the catch- the software is legal to use, but the downloads themselves are illegal because you don’t have the rights to the files unless you own the physical copy of the material. Jonathon had to come in and help me and explain it all to me. The other problem is that you are downloading files from other people’s computers, so there is a huge potential to get viruses. Basically, if the person who hosts the file has a virus, you are downloading their virus too. Not a chance I want to take.

I was so clueless as to what I was doing because the program promotes “free legal software” blah blah blah, but what you are doing with the software is not legal. Big disappointment to me. I am so cheap and just wanted free music. So if anyone knows a program like Napster where you can pay a small fee a month I would be willing to try it. I just want something where they don’t steal the music back after you quit the program

Something dorky

Filed Under Daddy, Technology | 4 Comments

Jonathon is doing something really dorky in our storage room. He is linking like five or six laptops together and says they will run as one big computer. He is adding more laptop memory and also doing something about a server. I am not sure what his goal is here (he already has his own server) but it is currently overtaking our storage room. Does anyone else’s husband get one weird project kicks like this, which will ultimately accomplish basically nothing?

Good deals- can this get anymore random?

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Just found a website with good deals on Cat5E (Category 5 enhanced) cables.  Sometimes when I get stuff super mega cheap I resell it on eBay… only that won’t be happening anymore. Kinda like my ban on Wal-Mart, I am banning myself from selling on eBay. They are too greedy. Anyway off on a tangent and need to post some pics of Bailey…

Here it is!

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http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8249736&st=lcd+tv&type=product&id=1169512288959

Also we are selling our old entertainment center for $50 if anyone wants it. We bought it at Target a few years ago for $199 or something like that. Seriously, here’s what it looks like (well actually we’ve dusted it since this picture was taken) and it’s yours if you can come pick it up and take it away! It’s in good condition.

Email me for details: tara (at) twolinesonastick (dot) com

Service with a smile

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Check out this comment I got about my Google Reader post:

You might have accidentally collapsed the left-hand navigation area. You can un-collapse it by clicking on the little right-facing triangle on the left edge of the window or by pressing the “u” key.

Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer

And she was right. Pressing “u” fixed it! Thanks!

(Now if it was that easy to find furniture to match our recliner downstairs).

Google Reader issues

Filed Under Input Needed, Technology | 3 Comments

For some reason I can’t add any new feeds to my Google Reader. You know how normally you click “Add” or “Add Subscription” or something like that? It’s not there anymore. I am not normally this dumb with internet stuff but I am totally lost.

Just kidding

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We forgot to bring our memory card for our digital camera when we went to Oklahoma. We took pics on the video camera and I mistakenly thought there was an SD card in it for the pics, and I could just take it out and put them on the computer. But apparently the pictures are saved to the hard drive in the camera so Jonathon is going to have to help me get them off of there.

But I made sure to take pictures of their tacky decorating and Haitian artwork and Seagull lighting in their house. Also here is something suspicious- their toilet seat is wooden. Didn’t people quit using wooden cutting boards for a reason? Like bacteria? Well I can only imagine how much pee bacteria is in the toilet seat at their house.

Today we are going to my parents house for Christmas so we will have tons of pics from today as well.

Unlocked Phone?

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Jonathon was telling me the other day about a friend of his, Bernard, who got an unlocked phone. Apparently, you can get a phone like this and then use it on different networks. Like Bernard has Sprint and Cingular… and people call a different number (I think) for each network but they both work on the same phone. I don’t know if they work concurrently or if you have to switch back and forth. I thought that was interesting.