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Today I went to Wal Mart and they had the sixyty-to-seventy dollar Aiptek Pencam SD listed as the cheaper Aiptek Trio VGA and it was only $29.88! I grabbed one, and it sure did ring up as $29.88. I may go back for more as xmas gifts.

Click here (popup) for shot of price mistake (photo taken w/ my Nokia 3650 camera phone).

UPDATE: If you go to WalMart, I can tell you that at my walmart, this was NOT by the other cheapie cams, not by the older lower-res penams, it’s a couple isles over by the webcams, not by the cameras. Just fyi.

UPDATE: Price comparison adjusted for accuracy 8/30/03.

RFID tags: Big Brother in small packages:
Could we be constantly tracked through our clothes, shoes or even our cash in the future? read article on cnet…

I mean, WHAT is the solution to ensuring that files are backed up SAFELY!?!? I mean, WHAT is the fucking point of having a DOUBLE BACKUP SYSTEM in place if all it does is copy the corrupted files to the two backup drives? Am I supposed to check each file by hand every night? NOT!

I mean, I have gigs and gigs of photography, what if those files all of a sudden got corrupted? Then the backup software would just copy the corrupted files over and I’d be up shits creek!

I thought I was being smart, backing up every night to one drive, then periodically backing up to a yet another drive by hand.

All that effort, and my most important file is now corrupted on a total of three drives.

What’s the fucking point of getting out of bed in the morning!?!?!?!?

I swear to god I have not been this full of anger in a long time. I could punch a hole in the wall easily. But then I’d have to deal w/ fixing it. So much as gone wrong today, the pinnacle of which is that my secret file that I keep all my sensitive information in has become corrupted. Oh, that’s ok, I make occasional copies of it. No, those are corrupted, too. That’s ok, I actually have backup software backup my hard drive every single night. Nope, the copies of that file, and all it’s recent duplicates, are all corrupted on THAT drive, too! That’s ok, I’m SO FUCKING PARANOID that I have a THIRD DRIVE that I manually back up to periodically by drag-n-drop. No…… those files are corrupted TOO! The only common denominator is that I encrypt these files w/ encryption software. This file was fine a couple days ago, yet multiple copies that are MONTHS OLD are now corrupted, too, so it must be the encryption software corrupting the file upon decryption. What makes NO SENSE THOUGH is that I use this software on TWO computers, so what are the odds that BOTH copies of the software on TWO different computers are all of a sudden corrupting files while decrypting!?!?!? IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!

I’ve had 8 million other small things go wrong today too, but this is the worst. Dryer is not drying sheets properly so I have to do them one at a time which is taking FOUR times as long, I have to clean the house alone and company is due in days, family is not listening to me making me feel like I am in some kind of twilight zone where nobody can hear me, the house is a mess, I have no help, I’ve had no energy from stress (brother sick in hospital), browser froze up JUST as I paid for an item so now I have no receipt, pc won’t scandisk, the shirt I bookmarked online to buy is no longer available online OR in the store, and more.

I swear to god I’m glad I don’t own a gun.

I’m having alot of trouble wrapping my head around the fact that we can put a man on the MOON but a 12k text file can’t be fixed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m not sure what’s going on, but now, whenever I email a photo to my Moblog, either from my phone OR from home, it shows up twice! I have to go in and delete the duplicates, which I can’t always do from the road. I can’t figure this out, grrr…… and their “help” thing sux…

UPDATE: It seems to have fixed itself, and others seem to have had the same problem. Weird.

I lose track. It’s Thursday, yeah, that’s right.

It’s storming, guess I won’t be going out afterall. (see Moblog) A homebody held captive by the storm, I am. It rains like this every day in the summer. Sux.

I’m eating spinach. (see Moblog) It’s kinda gross. I mean, I like Spinach Con Queso and chips… spinach IN stuff, spinach ON stuff (like white pizza), but just a bowl of hot spinach in “butter sauce”…. blech. But I’m eating it anyway. I’m health-paranoid right now. … but the stress of worrying is really wearing me down, making me more succeptible to just about anything that comes along. Did you know that you can get RINGWORM from stress??? Who knew!

So, to keep my energy and defenses up, I’m making myself eat vegetables and fruit between meals. Whoppeeeeee!

I am SO SICK of the phone ringing all the time. It’s ALWAYS telemarketers. Yes, we are on the state’s do-not-call list, and we will be on the national one. But we still get a million calls a day. The phone NEVER STOPS! I get up to look at the caller ID and it’s never anyone. I am so sick of it!

Update: Certain types of calls can still happen in spite of the do-not-call list. Telemarketers for charities and non-profits can still call. Also, say you buy a refrigerator from Sears, then by law Sears can telemarket you for a year after your purchase. (if I understand the rule properly.) Also, we are refinancing our house to take advantage of the current low rates, so all the people we sent applications to are calling several times a day. I hate the phone!

I read a long article about how alot of people are getting rid of land-lines and using the cell phone only, and I guess using cable internet or something. Problem is, then all these leftover telemarketing calls will be ringing all day on the cell! So my home land-line is becoming something of a spam-bucket.

I still have the caffiene shakes.

From Slashdot:

“Bootsy Collins writes “In a brief article, Computer Business Review Online quotes Darl McBride as saying that SCO has been busily identifying Linux end users and is preparing to launch lawsuits against them in order to encourage more such end users to buy licenses from SCO. SCO indicates that they’ll start with a company that uses AIX, Dynix and Linux, so as to ‘settle several legal arguments in one go.’” Not everyone is going to take the SCO approach sitting down; read on for a story on how (among others) Weta Digital and [New Zealand's] Massey University aren’t jumping to say Uncle to SCO.” READ MORE…

I’m shaking from all the caffiene I’ve hadDddddd.

I have not uploaded pix in a while.
Here are some recent pencam pix.

Yeah, friendster sucks. I finally found the “search” feature and it’s awful. I searched for an old high-school gal pal by first and last name. She came up, but there’s no way for me to be sure it’s the SAME one because I’m not allowed to look at her profile! All I can do is ADD her as a friend, but I’m not even sure it’s the right person! GAWD! Who thought up this AWFUL SERVICE!?!?

Another reason not to like friendster:

(image)

At TECHTV.COM of all places, they have Friendster listed as the DOWNLOAD OF THE DAY.

IT’S A WEBSITE, NOT A DOWNLOAD!

THE WORLD IS FILLED WITH MORONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In an AP article about the RIAA, the author says:

“Coleman is a former prosecuter who has used the Web site Napster to download music.”

NAPSTER WAS NOT A WEBSITE! Yes, there was a napster.com, but that’s not where you downloaded music from! Napster was a program, a tool, a network! What is wrong w/ people!?!? I know that not everyone understands this stuff, but if you are getting PAID to write tech articles, get it right!!!!!!

Maybe I’m wrong. But my first impression of Friendster is that it sucks. I mean, you have to invite friends in order to do ANYTHING on that netowrk.

“Invite Friends” = give out your friends private email addresses. NICE.

Ok, ok, they SAY they won’t sell, lease, give out, share, your email address, but suppose the database gets hacked or they change their rules? I would KILL anyone who gave out my private email address to something like friendster. I certainly wouldn’t do that to a friend.

So, since I won’t violate my friend’s privacy, I can’t invite anyone, and since I can’t invite anyone, I can’t DO anything on Friendster.

Yes, *I* have “spam buckets” that I use for stuff like this, but most of my friends/relatives aren’t net-savvy enough to have and use a spam bucket themselves.

Screw it. What WAS good was the old “Six Degrees” website. Anyone remember that one? That site died. Now it seems it’s in some beta-mode of a new incarnation, but nothing like the original, so it’s irrelevant. But at the old Six Degrees, you could SEARCH for people and use a spambucket because nobody HAD to be invited. You COULD invite, but you didn’t have to in order to do anything in the site. I miss the old SixDegrees.com.

fuck, i’m in a bad mood.

To continue my rant from below, I was reading AP news on my internet-enabled cell phone today while eating lunch and came across an ton of idotic errors. Here are just a few of them:

“They also worry about the legislation overwhelming approved by the U.S. House of Representatives last month…..”
Let’s try “overwhelminLY approved” guys! GIMME YOUR PAYCHECK!

Ok, I need to rant.

I am so sick and tired of people getting good money to write articles, write text for the screen on CNN, speak on the radio, and they can’t even exercise the most BASIC grammar rules or professionalism.

I can’t tell you how many times the info-bar at the bottom of CNN has had misspelling. Now, *I* do not claim to be a perfect speller or grammar queen, but I’m not being paid to!

Listening to FM news radio today was painful. Not only does one “correspondant” sound like a 17-year old Brittany-fan, but the other one sounds like she has one foot in the grave and was speaking so slowwwwwwwwly I thought she was having a stroke on the air.

Then I come home and read an article on a tech mag where the author says:

“I really wanted to see the connection site map of this place – it actually feels like a real place – but it probably looks like a 3D weather forecasting model or the cure for DNA.”

THE CURE FOR DNA!?!?!? Who needs to be CURED OF DNA!?!?!? I want this bitch’s job, man! What a FUCKING RETARD!!!!!!!

I am so sick of ignorant people making money in professions that (should/used to) require education and professionalism! Christ!

If this bitch was joking, then she’s even more retarted than if she meant it.

I hate thinking up subject lines.

All this stress w/ sick brother, I am exhausted, so I end up napping, the result being I’m not tired enough to go to bed at reasonable hour. Then, even when I do get tired, I don’t want to go to bed cuz I lay there worrying.

I’ve been surfing for decent i n d i a n
p o l y p h o n i c ……r i g t o n e s for my phone. (don’t want google searchers to come here looking for them when I don’t have them.)

Searching for poly ringt’s is impossible, let alone hard-to-find stuff.

I find that most sites are fake sites, w/ just keywords and links to crap that either doesn’t work or is not available to buyers in the US.

I have downloaded a ton of great mp3′s, if only I could c o n v e r t them to midi, then I could get them to my phone.

I am tired, but I don’t want to go to bed and lay there worrying. Why do I do this to myself.

Cool, I was wondering how the country looked from outter space before and during the blackout. Slashdot has it.

UPDATE: A comparison on one page.

I would have liked to get my high-speed internet from my small, local ISP, but noOOOOooo… “FCC Abandons Linesharing, Kills DSL Competition” This stinks, as I’d like to support the little guy, plus, the local ISP I like is a friend, and a really active guy who is fighting for online privacy, fighting spam, etc. Oh well.

I happened upon this at the Tech TV website: The list of Kazaa users (and ISP’s) that the RIAA want to target/sue. I asked M why these people even have user ID’s, because when I use Kazaa it just says “user@kazaa”, and supposedly it’s because we use Kazaa Lite.

At least right now, if you go to textamerica.com, the editor’s picks are people moblogging in NYC other affected cities during the big blackout.

Also, someone started a Blackout Moblog at blackout.textamerica.com. People in the blackout areas can send photos from their phone to blackout.814@tamw.com to post their photos.

Interactive cute kitty.

Sometimes I wish I started this blog another way, on blogger or something, and not used my real nickname. Sometimes I want to blog about things that I just can’t, they can only be written in a journal. My family, I’ve been upset about some stuff re. my family and my family history.

whoa, just found out about all those blackouts! Ny, detroit, parts of new jersey, toronto, ottowa, cleveland, geez!

Update: I’m watching msnbc on tv and they say that a power outage in a new york power plant caused a “casscading effect on the grid”. Think about the people stuck in elevators w/ no A/C, stuck in subways w/ no word as to what caused this, scared, wondering if 9-11 is going on all over again “up there” and they have no idea.

I locked myself out of the house twice in 4 days. I wait in garage for M to come let me in. See moblog.

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Nala posted an interesting thing about disposeable DVD’s. It’s a good read, and an important one if you care about the environment.

I shoulda whipped out the camera phone. I went to the pharmacy counter @ the grocery store today and the two pharm techs that work there are SO SHORT they can’t see over the counter/shelf in the middle to see if customers are there. You just see the tops of their heads. And they never think to look to see if they have customers. You just stand there, then eventually yell “hello?!”. Just these two heads in the distance, the tops only, floating around… oblivious. (I’m short too, so don’t send me hate-mail.)

Must.. stop… blogging… about… hello… kitty… stuff…

What’s on Tivo today? Should be:
Days Of Our Lives
Crossing Over with John Edward
Beyond with James Van Praagh
Dr. Phil
Friends reruns
Will & Grace reruns

Tonight will be the typical Thursday night NBC lineup. Scrubs is the best, I wonder if it’s on tonight.

Funny T-shirts from that page I keep linking to that sells all that weird hello kitty stuff. T-shirts like “I want to be Japanese”, “Beware of perverts”, “It is forbidden to urninate here”, “I am a pervert”, etc.

Update: Plus this wild-looking computer mouse.

Update 2: I was sure I blogged this before, but I can’t find it: a Hello Kitty Vibrator! No, NOW I’ve seen it all!

I can’t stand it I’m laughing so hard!
[hello kitty toilet paper]