Thanks to my "Updates" on this site, I just received the following news: Don Adams is no longer with us. :( He passed away on Sunday at age 82. Article Not only am I a fan of Inspector Gadget but I also love Get Smart, and have a copy of an album of clips from that show. Adams was one of those actors who, even though he was older than me, I couldn't help be attracted to in his earlier roles. You never like hearing news like this, even though you know the person was advanced in age. I have to go cry now. :(

Last night we experienced a short but violent electrical storm (a house nearby actually burned down when their satellite dish got struck by lightning), so we had to unplug our computers and TV. With no electronics, we turned to alternate forms of entertainment. Namely, a game we call "Kiwicoatl's Revenge." To play Kiwicoatl's Revenge you need: One Pirateer set One small parrot The premise: The fearful feathered serpent Kiwicoatl has flown down from the Great Above, bent on wonton destruction. Can the four opposing fleets retrieve the gold from Treaseure Island and get it back to their home ports safely, or will Kiwicoatl satisfy her hunger for human victims? On other words: we try to play the game while Kiwi runs around on the board grabbing pieces and flinging them off of the table. If she throws a ship off, the crew is declared dead. If she throws a die off, violent storms slow everyone's progress. If she throws both dice or the gold off, the game is over. Jim managed to win more games last night despite his Islamic fleet being the immediate victims of Kiwi's zeal at the outset of every new game. ("Flee, Amir, flee!!") At least we're never bored.

Firstly real quick, I got the pics from our vacation posted; though I had wanted to put captions on each one it was just taking too long so they're just up in clusters. It's the last entry on this page: Stuff We Do ...the main page of which now sports a photo of my brother and I as chubby little kids! ;) Anyways, we went apartment hunting on Saturday, and I hit on something. I've been looking at and moving into apartments ever since graduating college in '97, and it seems that every time I get a new apartment, it's like in the same price range as the last one, but it's BETTER. It'll be bigger, it'll have more amenities. It's crazy. Right now we have a 2 bed / 1 1/2 bath, and we saw apartments yesterday for the same price that were 2 bed / 2 full bath, bigger, with their *own* washer/dryers in the units, walk-in closets, and the fitness rooms open 24 hours a day with no extra fee to access it. In *nicer* neighborhoods, too. I suppose this is better than the opposite, the prices going up and/or the quality going down, but, yeesh! I ought to just move every 6 months and pretty soon maybe I'll have the Most Awesome Apartment Ever. Maybe I can even get one with extra rooms, one for my computer, one for my sewing machine, one for the bird... Oh yeah and maybe my brother can live in the walk-in closet. :lol:

Okay so the screengrabs for DoW are up. I went a little overboard and took 116 - *more* than for House of Bloos! Duchess of Wails Also, if you like the headdesk animation I have for my personal image right now, go ahead and take it but if you use it anywhere credit would be nice. I'm afraid the current filesize is too big for LJ but if you know how to reduce the filesize then go for it. I also have the full-sized (screencap-sized) animation if you want it emailed to you. ~Sparky

What is the point of coming onto a site and complaining about its rules? Why say a site for TV info is "too strict", and that you can't post what you want in the guides? Why even *question* your right to post *anything* on a site that doesn't belong to you, on which you are a guest? Why complain that you can't be the editor for that one particular show, and if you can't be editor you won't contribute at all? What's the point? If you want to create a guide in which you are God and creator, and are free to say ANYTHING you want...what the hell is wrong with just MAKING one yourself? If you make your OWN guide, on your OWN website, you can do ANYTHING you want with it, at any time, and to blazes with anything anyone else says. I have found that my own guides, filled with my own snide comments, are very popular - because people LIKE reading snide comments! People enjoy my website guides, and I find them far more fulfilling than anonymously submitting info on a giant commercial site. Again, posting this here because it would be useless in the forums.

Well I have an idea for something that would help out a lot around here, but I'm not going to post it on the Ideas board because 1) it's probably not possible 2) they wouldn't do it anyways because apparently this issue isn't important to them and 3) apparently there are users who don't think people *should* post ideas on the IDEAS forum... :roll: Anyways, I was thinking about how, on a Mu* (that's a real-time chat, used for roleplay and stuff usually), a staffer can make a general announcement to everyone that's currently on (I think the command is @wall, though that isn't important here). And everyone that's on, no matter what section of the Mu* they're on, sees the announcement, such as "The Mu* will be going down for five minutes in half an hour for maintenence" or whatever. So, how about a link that appears at the top of the page, every page, probably, that says ANNOUNCEMENT(S) or something, and people can click it when they come on (if it's even there, maybe it would vanish if there were no announcements) and you get a popup, like our preferences popup, that will display messages that are date/time stamped, from Snide or whoever, saying "We have disabled the blogs to help increase site speed while we work on blah-blah". If the staff are so irritated about a million topics being started on the Support board about the same thing, this would help. And people wouldn't *have* to wade through a bunch of forum topics trying to find the one pertaining to their problem (because most people just *don't* bother to look); I mean, God forbid a *staff* member post in one of the existing threads when the problem *STARTS* rather than hours later, or when its been cleared up... I dunno, I just think that would be fantastic. It would help out the users and the Staff could communicate with us without actually having to post in a public place, as they don't seem to like that much. And hey, they could even use that window for all kinds of stuff, like birthday announcements for Staff - hell, whatever they want! An essay on Waltmor's favorite episode of the Brady Bunch! I don't care! As long as site updates are in there too!

I actually saw my snake, Duchess, last night. You'd think I'd see my own pet more often but Duchess is very shy, and is afraid of people, so she hides all day and only comes out at night. Sometimes I can see her by the dim light of her blacklight heatlamp, slithering around in there. And she's actually a very vocal snake: she hisses quite a bit, and no, it's not an upper respitory infection wheeze, which I have heard and can identify. She just hisses. So I hear her all the time but never see her. But last night I decided to get up and thaw out a mouse for her since she was so active (that usually means she'll eat) and she was stretched out across the tank. So I actually got to see her. She didn't even hide while I opened the tank up later and put the mouse in. She was probably just too terrified to move or something but who cares. She's really pretty, wish I could see her more often. In the morning the mouse was still there...again. :roll: I wish I could make her understand that the little boogers aren't *free* or anything. My left hip hurts. There's nothing like a botched insulin injection to wake you up in the morning. I'm still in pain...and that was *yesterday's* injection. :? Yeah. Never accidentally twist the needle a little bit and go, "Oh, I can do the injection anyways, it'll be fine!" Like my new banner? Lol I found that screencap lurking on my computer last night. Speaking of computers I had to admit my stupidity to a total stranger yesterday. I needed to order another removable media drive for my computer - the same one I had ordered several months ago. But I couldn't identify the correct one on the company website, so I had to call them up and ask them to look me up and just put me down for "the same thing I ordered last time." I felt like such a major moron. But at least the thing was on sale! And I am like, one sentance away from finishing a fanfic. I so hate that. Oh and somebody shoot me, I caught myself contemplating taking another editorless guide yesterday. :shock:

Well last night I caved and made a DeviantArt account. Nothing up yet but a journal entry explaining my intentions. :) DeviantArt link

Hiccy Burp Camp Keep A Good Mac Down Imposter's Home For Imaginary Friends (Or whatever it's called...) Enjoy. ;)

...on an insurance policy, anyways (yes I type insurance policies for a living if you didn't know). So I have to do the vesting lines, which means listing the owners and describing their relationship - such as husband and wife as joint tenants, or a married man as his sole and seperate property. The policy in front of me now lists two guys and "as registered domestic partners". I've been on this job more than a year and half and this is the first time I've seen this. I just think it's awesome and I'm probably way more excited than I should be but darnit, that's just awesome.