fox

cmshaw gave me a virtual tree!  Thanks, C!

That's not too bad.

I mean NOTHING.

You are all charged with entertaining me, please.

Got home in only 45 minutes last night, despite icky rain.  Answered some e-mail and things and then went to bed about 11:30.  Slept until 9ish.  Awake now, and still exhausted and bordering on cranky.  Lots of things to do to straighten out the home today, and I don't want to do any of them.  I just want to curl up and go back to sleep, but I can't fall asleep again.  Maybe if I took some sudafed I'd feel less groggy.

So okay, raise your hand if you want me to send you a card toward the end of next month. Poll is visible only to me. I can't promise that if you don't fill in the poll, you won't get a card; but I can promise that if you do fill in the poll, you will.

[Poll #869985]

I have too many e-mail addresses!  Some of which cost me money, which I find just silly.  So.  Phasing out at least one of them -- if you have an earthlink.net e-mail address for me (where the address is my last name followed by my first and middle initials), please change it in your records to the gmail address I've been using instead.  (firstname dot middle-initial dot lastname at gmail dot com.)

Thankyew!  And, jgesteve, I will certainly be happy to do the same switchover from empiredc.com to my other gmail address -- let me know with enough lead time and I can be empiredc-free whenever you want to kill that domain name.  :-)

I have two one Vox invites.  Anyone want to stake a claim to your username over there who hasn't managed to do it yet?

All gone!

1.  I have no fewer than five types of currency in my room at the moment.  (USD, GBP, Euros, Canadian dollars, and Hong Kong dollars.  I say 'no fewer than' because I suppose it's possible I might have a stray yen or ruble or franc -- of any sort -- or krone -- ditto -- hanging around.)

2.  Did you all know the only proof of US citizenship you need to enter the Bahamas is a US passport that has been valid within the past five years?  I was poking around trying -- nothing like leaving it to the last minute -- to confirm that I won't need a visa to go to Ireland (I won't), and the State Department has a list of requirements for Americans traveling abroad.  Passport or not, how long the passport needs to be valid, visa or not, immunizations, HIV tests, onward or return tickets, sufficient funds, proof of hotel reservations, etc., etc.  And here's the Bahamas:  "Proof of U.S. citizenship, i.e., a passport (if you are using an expired passport it cannot be expired more than 5 years) or original or certified copy of a birth certificate with a photo ID, and onward/return ticket required for stay of up to 8 months."  Plenty of other countries allow entry without a passport if the traveler presents some other proof of citizenship, as here -- birth certificate, etc. -- but no place else allows travel on expired documents.  Expired documents!  Doesn't anyone else think there's a great story to be told around that?

So okay.  Wireless network in my parents' house.  I've worked out how to get it to quit bouncing me all the time, but I'm still having connectivity issues, and I think the trouble has to do with interference from other networks.  I've got my config set up to automatically connect to The Following Networks In This Order Of Preference, which includes my parents' network, and like the one at the curling club and my friends' place in Florida -- so those other ones are obviously not available here, so it should just connect to the one in the house and be done with it.  But there are these two other networks that keep popping up as available, which I don't mind as long as I can ignore them, but once in a while -- and usually in the evenings -- one or the other of them will force a connection with it and I have to go in and physically remove them from the 'automatically connect' list to reconnect to my own.

Does anyone know a way I can specifically block a network I don't have any interest in connecting to?  (I have obviously unticked the box for 'automatically connect to non-preferred networks'. It hasn't worked.)  Help!

Am in the process of installing Open Office.  Will then install Thunderbird, and will shortly thereafter be MS-free (except for the fact that, you know, the platform is still WinXP).

Feel very pleased with self for this.

May.  MAY.

Wasn't it just March Christmas last summer 1989?

Checkout time was noon, so now I'm in the hotel lobby waiting for the cab that will take me to the train that will take me to the T that will take me to the house that Jack built airport.  Actually I'm in the breakfast room, where there are tables I can work at -- but there's also a TV, and the receptionist just put Days of Our Lives on, and oh my god.  Not only is the cast the same as it was fifteen years ago, but they look the same.  One guy has a sort of grizzled beard where it used to be dark.  Otherwise, nothing has changed.  ack.

So okay, does anyone know why, although I'm running the most recent Firefox with the popup blocker on, I keep getting popups?  Anyone?  A little help here?