In a fit of frustration over hating opening a billion chat clients to chat with friends, and with a bad experience with the free version of Trillian crashing my comp, I was on the prowl for another all-in-one chat program. I happened upon Meebo, and setup was seriously so easy I HAD to try it out.
And my first impression: oh, how I heart thee, Meebo! Nothing to install! A clean, cute interface! Sign in once and get signed in to my accounts on ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, AIM, and GoogleTalk all at once!
A few details that I have yet to iron out, ie. making my display icon uniform across chat clients, making sure Chinese fonts are supported, and figuring out how the chat histories are saved. Nothing major though. I am mucho grateful for the convenience of the service.
They don't seem to support Skype, but methinks I'll be keeping that on for my internet telephony needs anyhoo.
Not yet on my buddy list? If you know me, you can e-mail me with your screen name, and we can waste time / stay up way past our bedtimes together! :P
Some sobering news, which is not often found on a site with as whimsical a name as ihatepink.com ...
I'd just finished hanging out with my "twin sister" April, and then we parted ways, and this is an e-mail I got from her later on:
"I have some bad news to tell you though. You know, on the 26th, after we left you [...] and we as a huge family went out to get dinner at Ocean Palace. Well, when we were done, Mom went to go get the car because grandparents were cold and she didn't want them to walk to the car and she got robbed at gunpoint. Thank God, she is okay. Just a few very minor scrapes that should heal just fine. He did however, steal her entire purse. So David and I spent all of today driving mom to the DMV, banks, everything, to put passcodes and cancel accounts. Man, it was so scary. Apparently when he told Mom to give him her purse she actually said NO. At gunpoint. i have to just fall to my knees and pray and bless God for protecting her.
"Anyway, so I'm telling my girlfriends to be careful. Carry some mace dude."
For those of you who know April's mom, you will be able to envision her standing up to the robber and saying no. Despite how horrifying it must have been and how much trouble she has to go through now, I can't help but smile; undoubtedly, she's got spunk.
Furniture at the iHaTePiNk.com bachelorette pad! Seats 3 adults, or 7 well-behaved stuffed animals. ... See my Tabblo>
I'm trying out different picture-sharing services. I'm using smugmug and am trying Zooomr out, and for some reason never got into the whole Flickr thing. Now I'm trying Tabblo, since I have been wanting to make photo books and their service includes making photo books out of the pics hosted with them (and they give you a free mini photo book for signing up!). However, their blog-sharing thing is pretty uh, fugly. I want to just share the one photo, I don't want all that other junk showing up :( And their interface is confusing to me. Maybe I'm just getting old and am losing the ability to learn these things?!?
Looking forward to spending Dec. 25th with the fam, actually. We're gonna have awesome hotpot at home. I'm already drooling just thinking about it ... Howard, you're missing out! Hmm, I actually miss my booger of a brother (whoa, he's on Wikipedia. Crazy, yo!).
Yes, I passed out last night from a long day and then dinner with my girls.
It's tough having patients that don't understand that even an acupuncturist needs their personal space and time. No, I do not feel bad turning down someone outside my immediate family who asks me to treat them later than 10pm, and even tries to make me feel bad for doing so. ("For medical emergencies, please call 911. Thank you, and have a great day.")
I don't like shopping, and shopping during the holidays is just absurd. Though I'm only buying gifts for the immediate fam this year, it's still pretty stressful. I was at the Galleria this weekend and it was insane. Don't EVEN get me started about Walmart.
I'm trying to hold off on getting me another camera until after Christmas, or even after New Year's. Place your bets now, folks - can I do it?!
(or download the YouTube-logo-less version here, WMV, 39secs, 2.2MB)
----- There are few things I will cry about, and I am determined that the loss of my Rebel XT shall not be one of them. It is, after all, replaceable. I could upgrade to a Rebel XTi, but I have had the chance to play with one, and the miniscule differences don't convince me to get the newer model. Btw, I love the Japanese names of these cameras. :P
(or download the WMV file here, 1min 32secs, 5.6 MB)
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I can never arrive and leave Walmart in less than 15 minutes. I'm always thwarted by trying to find parking or waiting in long-azz checkout lines. Well, today I had it all planned out. Get there, go get my soymilk, go get two photos printed, check out AT the photo center because SURELY no one would be as smart as me and do that, and leave. Could I execute this on at Walmart on a weekend? [dun dun dun dunnnnnn]
Got to the parking lot. Parked in the first spot I saw, start timing. Walked briskly into the store. Dammit, couldn't find closer parking, 3 mins already. Beeline for the soymilk (2 mins). What, where's the soymilk at? It was HERE last time ... oh THERE it is (1.5 mins)! I confidently headed for the photo center (1 min) ... this shouldn't take more than 3 mins and then I'm outta here!
There was a lady already at the instant photo printout station, selecting photos. I helped her complete the checkout process - oh noooo - FORTY-ONE PHOTOS!!!!
Exasperation! Fine. So I waited, cursing all the while to myself. At least I was able to place my order while her photos were printing ("PRINT FASTER DAMMIT!!!!" as if visualizing this would speed up the per-print time). Her order took like 7 mins.
OK. "Gimme my photos you stupid machine ... I already placed my order ... what's taking so long?!" I wanted to bang on the machine but restrained myself. Nope, there's a 1 minute waiting time so that people's orders don't get mixed up. Oh how thoughtful. But not on this day when I was in a rush to get outta there!
Checkout. Three items (I picked up some batteries while waiting for the lady and they were right there in front of my face), I got my cash out to speed things up. She scanned item one - beep, scanned item two - beep, scanned item three (the photos) - no worky, scanned item three again, nope, scanned it again, still no luck, keyed in the code, code invalid, keyed it in again more carefully, nope, scanned it again while waving the barcode scanner around at different distances and angles - beep. 4 mins. AUGGGHHH!
Walking (almost running) back out. Darned slow people on their carts walking so slowly, soaking in all the Xmas marketing. Almost got run over by an old lady and her shopping cart by darting out from between the displays too fast. Made it back out to my car in 4 mins probably. Driving to destination. OK slowpokes outta my wayyyyyyyyyy ... got there just in time. Whew. Too stressful though. Will never do Walmart-on-a-limited-time-schedule again. Ugh. Cuz this was Walmart, the Two Weekends before Xmas edition. Yuck.
PS - "ISO HI" mode on my Canon SD600 is gross. SO noisy.
OK. In order to avoid having tons of Mr. Thumbheads screeching at you all at once, I'm succumbing to YouTube for playback here. But you may download my lovely file here if you wish. (WMV, 4.3 MB, 1min 10secs)
Heading out to a "company" party, so I'm posting this a little earlier today. Seems like this weekend is an unofficial national company party weekend. :P
So if you haven't noticed, this is actually a "clone" of iHaTePiNk.com. I'm trying out a cool little program called Windows Live Writer (combined with the Blog This for FireFox extension) which is supposed to help me post to various spaces efficiently. If the layout looks a little wonky, just head back over to the mothership at iHaTePiNk.com, eh?
Hey, geek feedback question: are the videos starting automatically when you load up your page? Cuz I don't want them to. I tried to turn "Autostart" off so I can post multiple videos on here without having them all come up screeching, "ON THE NTH DAY OF XMAS MY TRUE LOVE GAVE TO MEEEEE!!!!" in nonharmonious rounds. Somehow I don't think that would go over well with co-workers of my working readers ... er, I don't think it could benefit anyone, really. Autostart was successfully suppressed in my FireFox 2 and IE 6, and I'm on WinXP Home. Please post your OS and browser version and let me know!
Just doing my part to prevent deafness and tinnitus (aka ringing in the ears) before you all come running to me for acupuncture treatment. :)
Me: Your mom told me she was renewing her vows after 50 years of marriage, and that you kids were footing the bill for everything! How sweet and generous of you guys! Daughter: Oh, it's really very little compared to how much they've given us. Me: *Snif!*
Stuff like this truly warms me from the inside out.
T: "Ma, are you proud and/or happy to be my mum?" T's Mum: "Yes, dear! I am! And I hope that in all of my future lives, I can continue to be your mum." Me (to myself): "Aww snif!" T: "Awww. But but but ... what if I end up being a dog?" T's Mum: "Then I hope that I can be your doggy mum." T: "Awwwww. But but but ... what if I end up being a pine tree?" T's Mum: "Then I hope that I can be a pine tree first, years ahead of you, so I can drop the pine cone that will become you and have you grow up right next to me, under my branches, so I can shade and protect you." Me (and I'm sure I was not alone): "*AWWW SNIF!!!!!!*"
T, 2 months ago, holding strong despite her body's protests.
T, 2 days ago, with her rightfully proud and loving mum, as she tells us of the above dialogue between them.
