Domestic Geek

I saw some tweets last week about the Google Pac-Man game they had on their homepage to honor the 30th anniversary of the game. Many people were lamenting how much time they had wasted playing it. Fortunately for our company, our department is not allowed to use the Internet during the work day for non-work activities (we have to log in to a firewall to get to the Internet and those logs are reviewed frequently). Other companies were not so lucky. Apparently, more then 4.8 million work hours were wasted by people playing the game.

I'm sitting here enjoying a strawberry banana smoothie that Marcus made in our new blender. He's been looking for ways to get more fruit into his diet and he found a smoothie recipe he liked on cooks.com. After he procured the ingredients, he asked me if we had a blender. We did, but sadly, it's the one I bought back in college (sometime between 1984-1986). The poor thing didn't have much power when it was new and smoothie making was definitely a strain for it. The final straw was the sparking it made. Every time Marcus used it, I crossed my fingers that it wouldn't start the kitchen on fire.

Sunday, we went to Bed, Bath & Beyond armed with my 20% Off coupon that I got in the mail. He had already done his research before we went and he wanted a Cuisinart Blender/Food Processor combo (he hates my old food processor and wants to toss it). We picked the BFP-10CH PowerBlend Duet™ model because it had an additional $20 mail-in rebate. $60 after coupon and rebate isn't too shabby a deal!

Tonight was the first chance we had to try it out. Worked like a dream! Can't wait until summer when I can make watermelon smoothies. Yum!

I finally caved today and bought myself my first eBook. I vowed a few months back that if a digital edition of something I wanted was available, I wasn't going to bother getting the hard copy of it. I'm tired of the dust they collect and the space they take up. I felt like doing to some light, cheesy reading, so I purchased the next book I had yet to read in the knitting mystery series by Maggie Sefton, Fleece Navidad (I'd put one of those Amazon Associates links up like I used to, but I can't thanks to the feud between the state of Colorado and Amazon). The books in this series are corny and predictable, but they're basically set in Ft. Collins and I like reading them.

I downloaded the Kindle app for my iPhone and the application for my Macbook and I'm all set. Reading on the iPhone is a little rough, but will do in a pinch. I totally enjoyed reading with my Macbook in bed. I do that while surfing blogs all the time anyway. Someday, when I've got the funds to get one, I'll enjoy reading on an iPad.

I hope that more reading material becomes available digitally (magazines, etc.). I know some people just love the feel of turning pages, but I'll gladly give that up to rid myself of the clutter.

As seen on the CBSnews.com: Mo Rocca eats some crow and learns to knit.

Here's a mish-mash of stuff that I've been wanting to share so I can close some of my Firefox tabs.

Bugknits. This woman's work is awesome! Althea Crome creates the most amazing colowork sweaters in miniature. (Yes, the sweater is being shown on fingers).



I love the vintage dish towel I saw on the Cherry Hill Cottage blog (Beware! It's one of those sites with autoplay music). It's the one with the crocheted chicken edging. I wish I could find a pattern for those. They are adorable!

I want to get this playhouse for Flash from the BinkyBunny.com site. It's not that expensive, so if she doesn't use it, I wouldn't be out that much money.

I want to make this cute owl hat.

I love these charts for Harry Potter blank squares. Maybe I'll make myself a Severus pillow.

There, that will close a few tabs (especially the danged autoplay music one).

As I sit here weeding out old blog posts (paid links to stuff I don't/won't use again are being purged as well as duplicate or unnecessary posts), I realized that I've been doing this for almost NINE YEARS. Wow. Time flies.

I started blogging back when I was going to school. Between that and a full-time job, the only way I could let family & friends know what was up was to post to a blog. Ultimately, it's become the chronicle of my life and I'm saddened at the holes I find where I couldn't bring myself to write about what was happening at the time.

I'm glad my blogging mojo is back. I've sure missed this place. Now to get her all fixed up and pretty.

I'm in the middle of trying to organize my blogrolls so I can delete my old blogs and I'm finding a horrible trend that is really irking me. NO DATES ON BLOG POSTS! Not as bad, but still annoying, is it has a month and day, but no year.

I know a lot of people don't know anything about coding and just put up themes (especially Wordpress) that they like, but how can a visitor tell if your content is fresh or relevant when it has no date stamp whatsoever. I don't want to keep visiting blogs that haven't updated in over a year. Help a person out here.

My solution has been thus — delete the link. If you don't care enough about your readers to put out accurate information, I'm not going to bother to read it.

I'm already not happy with how our state is being governed. I knew that stupid tax bill they just put into effect went too far, but then I got this email today:

Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to "voluntarily" collect Colorado sales tax -- a course we won't take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado's new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill.

Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.

We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.


Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

I didn't make any money from being an Amazon associate, but it was nice to have that possible income stream at my disposal. I also used associate links in my blog posts for products or books I liked.

I wish I could say that putting Republicans back in charge would change things, but it won't. All current politicians are power-hungry and corrupt. Things are only going to change when we, the people, start taking responsibility and start taking control of our lives back. The economic troubles (caused by government interference), the unfair tax system, the out of control regulations...we're being micro-manged to the point of strangling the principles on which this nation was built — freedom, personal responsibility, liberty. You know, the original colonists fought back against England for less tan we're being put through now. Wake up, people. The government is not the solution nor can they help with your problems. All they do is compound problems and keep people down. I'm tired of it.