Consider: The first computer my family had (that I was around for, anyway) was a Commodore 64, so named because it had, I believe, 64 MB of RAM*. It didn't have a CD drive, it didn't even have a floppy drive until later, it had a cassette tape drive.

I'm sitting on my couch with my laptop computer (laptop computer! switch gears for a moment and listen to that phrase with your 1985 ears), posting on the internet, with no cables connecting to my computer except the power cable, and that one's optional. See? I just unplugged it. Computing with no wires!

Seriously, the future is here, and has been for a while now. No flying cars yet, but wheee! (And Pay By Touch at the local grocery store. How cool is that, that you can pay for groceries using a fingerprint?? Unfortunately the pay-by-touch company went out of business, but it was sweet while it lasted.)

*****

Yes, if you couldn't guess by the above, I bought a wireless router tonight so I can get wireless access at home. Wheee!


* I have been corrected. It was 64 KB!

I'm going to the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention. Are you?

Following up on the previous post: It looks like maybe I can donate blood again after all! I was looking for the answer to a different question about blood donation, and stumbled across this information: the limit for time spent in Europe isn't the six months I was told, but five years! (I don't doubt the information I had, I think the rule changed in the meantime--it's been several years.)

(Aw man, now I gotta go donate blood, and I don't like needles. But I'll do it, because it's one of those things that's good to do.)

This article was a bit unnerving to read. It seems there are fewer and fewer people eligible to donate blood (and of course not everyone who is eligible is a regular donor).

If you can donate blood, please think about doing so. I'm no longer eligible because I've spent a total of over 6 months in Europe. :-( (I mean, yay for time spent in Europe, but boo for not getting to donate anymore. They said that they may change that requirement at some point in the future, but at this point they're playing it safe because they don't know enough yet about how mad cow disease is transmitted.)

My inbox today is full of emails from people trying to make sure everyone they know is safe, and letting others know that they (the senders) are safe too.

In the midst of all that is an email from JC Penney titled "What's the Huge Deal?" They're trying to say that their back-to-school sale is a huge deal, but their timing, well, it could have been better.

So, there's an email going around the past few days. If you get this one, it will say it's an e-card from a family member, or an e-card from a friend. When you open the email, there will be a nice little message saying if you can't view the card, please click on this link. DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK. If you click on the link, it will give you a virus.

A real e-card will tell you who it's from; the subject line would say something like "An e-card from Liza," rather than just "An e-card from a family member."

If you're thinking about buying Quicken Deluxe 2007, check this out!

I had Quicken before, loved it, reformatted my computer and discovered I didn't have the Quicken install disk because I'd downloaded the software and never made a disk, so I'm buying it again. Because I'm cheap sometimes, I shopped around and found a helluva deal:

Staples has Quicken Deluxe 2007 on sale for $49.99, $10 off the normal price. There may not be a Staples near you (there isn't one near me), but the offer is good for ordering off their website too. With shipping the price comes back to almost what you'd pay if you walked into a store and bought it at normal price. BUT...

There's a $30 rebate, which brings the total price down to $19.99, or about 1/3 the usual price! And I am REALLY impressed with the rebate process so far. I placed my order on the website, and the confirmation page gave me all the information I'd need for the rebate, plus a link to the rebate page. My rebate is already in process.

The offer's good through tomorrow, 6/23.

I checked this out on Snopes.com, it's real:

( E-Card Holiday Virus Packs Ugly Punch )

Shakespeare in the Park is doing Measure for Measure various times this summer. Tonight and next Saturday night Uptown-on-Calhoun Morris is doing an opening act for them, and I'm part of it! Come see. Tonight's is at Minnehaha Falls, we're on at 6:30; details on the website linked above.

Where we can barely make a truce with our paper napkin. And prefer the dark side of her inferiority complex. And boogie the dark side of her sandwich.

Yep, this too was in my inbox. Isn't it cool?

They're sending me poetry under the guise of spam now:

When you see near industrial complex, it means that warranty about daydreams.Francisca and I took insurance agent around (with scythe related to, behind espadrille.A few ribbons, and debutante around tomato) to arrive at a state of grand piano
decomposable diurnal i'm kivu vorticity

Any class action suit can mourn near buzzard, but it takes a real paycheck to beyond nation.
godfrey boswell agribusiness tenfold bondage


This really truly came to my inbox, with an HTML link to a pharmacy website. Isn't it neat?

From the calendar my mom gave me for Christmas (Forgotten English, by Jefrey Kacirk):

Tuesday, 16 March
banting: Doing banting, reducing superflous fat by living on [a] meat diet, and abstaining from beer, farinaceous food, and vegetables, according to the method adopted by William Banting.... The word was introduced in about 1864.
--Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898

Death of William Banting (1797-1878),
corpulent London undertaker and cabinetmaker, who developed a successful weight-reduction regime for himself. In 1863 he published a pamphlet describing how he had lost forty-six pounds and twelve inches of girth by abstaining from most foods except meat. Many Victorians read his prescription, but few followed it - preferring to lace up their corsets instead. Nonetheless, the term became synonymous with weight loss and dieting. Inspired by Banting, H.S. Leigh's Carols of Cockayne (1869) included this ditty:

If you wish to grow thinner, diminish your dinner,
And take to light claret instead of pale ale;
Look down with an utter contempt upon butter,
And never touch bread till it's toasted or stale.