★ January 11, 2013 ★

What a crazy couple of days it's been! Let's see, I left off with Tuesday. It's Friday already ... wow. OK, & I'm still working & multi-tasking through this already. This has been one incredibly busy week & it's still going. Let's see ... Wednesday I posted here & then went into the AnyTime Organizer & set up ONE item in the schedule just to see what would happen. Glad I only set up the one. It synchronized with my Google & Outlook calendars. Now Google is sending me alarms to my phone daily & Outlook is popping up alarm notifications on my desktop. I did not have any alarm set in AnyTime, but the other 2 did it automatically. I turned off the alarm in Outlook, but now I have to turn it off in Google. Imagine if I had set up EVERY scheduled event at once? All recurring? That would have been insane. OK, the synchronization is bad. Doesn't work all that will if it automatically sets

alarms in the others when I don't have any set in AnyTime. Then I opened Quicken to synchronize my banking for the week. THAT didn't go smoothly either. Quicken is showing that I have almost $20 less in my account than the bank says I have & I cannot for the life of me find the error. Normally they match up perfectly. Then Eve called for a while, then the FD got toned out to an MVA on 546 but I couldn't go

because I was on my way out to pick Josh up from work & got caught in the traffic FROM that accident on my way out. When we got back Kyle made us macaroni & cheese for breakfast, so at least I ate something, but on the WAY back the FD got toned out again to a down tree, but I was too far out of district still to make it back in time. After breakfast I dusted the bathroom lights & bedroom walls, fed the

pets, cleaned the dining room bar, & dusted the living room audio system & my PC. After that I went to work on eBay, but I hit my monthly listing limit for free & now they're charging me PER listing, which drives up the minimum bid of each item to cover the additional eBay fees. I REALLY need to find larger items to sell, because if you're selling a small item for a buck, it ends up being almost $3 minimum bid to cover postage, eBay fees, & PayPal fees. After eBay I checked my horoscope for the week & then showered & got ready to go out for lunch. I left to meet Pete at Taco Bell & when I called him he just happened to be right next to it, so was there in about 1 minute. I figured I'm 15 minutes out, so that's not so bad. I get into McKinney & get stuck at a railroad crossing. (Still multi-tasking while trying to post this) ... There was a freight train PARKED across the road. I had no idea how long it was there or how long it was GOING to be there. I called Pete & said I was going to be a little late (or a lot, I didn't know). When the train finally left, I made it to Taco Bell & had lunch w/ Pete. We left & got onto the service road for 75 & there was a flatbed truck with TWO vans piled on the back that tried to make a right turn onto the service road out of a side street, missed & fell off the edge of the road in a construction zone. One of the vans fell halfway off the flatbed & the whole thing, all 3 vehicles were tilting sideways. There was no way to get around this guy because of the construction. We ended up turning into a driveway for a restaurant & trying to find a back way out. Eventually we found our way out & got around the stuck truck. Made it home finally & watched TV & headed off to bed. During the night the FD got toned out to a mutual aid DUAL structure fire in McKinney. Thursday morning I woke up & was alone in the house. Josh & Pete were at work & Kyle was finally at school again. I loaded up Sims & completed the foyer on Breckenridge (pic 4) & then started a new game in a beautiful home created by Curtis Paradis called Modern House Remodel (pics 2 & 3). I placed this house in Sunset Valley & then created Renesmee, a good computer whiz who is brave, handy, & an animal lover. She wants to be an International Super Spy (Law enforcement special agent branch), & likes fried peanut butter & banana sandwiches, custom music, & the color sea foam. She's a Cancer. Her furry companion is Wolfie. A Siberian Husky who is a shy hunter & playful. I started the game in the fall with a cool 53° at midnight. After joining the law enforcement career, Renesmee met Hank Goddard & they eventually married & had TWINS. Ugh, this makes the game SO much more difficult. Misty Goddard (2nd gen) who is a neurotic slob. She's a Libra who likes rockabilly, fried peanut butter & banana sandwiches, & the color white. Her twin brother is Michael (2nd gen) who is good & hates the outdoors. He's a Leo who likes Egyptian music, fruit parfaits, & the color sea foam. I didn't get to play long & then had to close the game & go pick Josh up from work. This is where Thursday got more aggravating than Wednesday. I knew Josh was going to be grocery shopping after work, so I left a little later than I normally would have. So far so good. I walk out the front door & notice the front yard is flooded. It's been raining a lot, I guess that's normal. Then I notice a fountain coming up out of the ground in the front yard right next to a large oak tree. OK, THAT'S not normal! I knew instantly ... we had a broken water line. Since it's up in our front lawn, the water company won't touch it. It's OUR responsibility. I texted Josh that I was now going to be a little late. I called Pete & told him he had to come home early. Houston, we have a problem. I then tried to shut the water off at the meter, but I couldn't get it to budge. I went next door & asked Gary if he could help. He got it turned off, but he had a rough time getting it to close too, so I didn't feel so bad then for not being able to do it myself. Gary's a pretty big guy (not fat, just tall & powerful). I texted Josh again & said I was on my way finally & that I'd be there in 15-20 minutes. I ALMOST added "barring further disaster", but didn't say it because I didn't want to jinx it. Apparently, THINKING it is enough. I get onto 546 & a pickup truck pulls out in front of the car in front of me. No problem. This Ford Ranger is going slow, only 40 in a 55. Figures. Then the truck drifts off to the right & his 2 right tires are halfway off the roadway. This is a BAD road to do that on, it's a windy country road with a drop off that goes down into a drainage ditch. You DON'T want to fall off this road. He swerves back onto the road. That's 1. Then he does the same thing AGAIN. That's 2. Then he drifts AGAIN to the right, but this time completely off the road! He's fully off the road & heading towards a side street where there's a drainage pipe running under the side street. If he hits that, he's going to be in really bad shape! He swerves hard & comes back up onto the road sideways & swerves back & forth, fishtailing the whole time. I swore he was going to flip & roll. He didn't & thank God no cars were coming towards us at the time. 3 strikes & this guy is having some SERIOUS trouble. I called 911. Since it was still technically only a bad driver, I used my phone instead of my radio. Had he crashed, I would have grabbed my fire radio & radioed it in immediately. While I was on the phone with dispatch, we passed out of my Lowry Crossing district & into McKinney's district. That meant Collin County Dispatch had to patch me through to McKinney Dispatch & I had to go through the whole explanation again. While I was talking to dispatch, he again drifted over & scraped the curb that now exists due to being in a new town that can AFFORD curbs. :) Dispatch said they had an officer on the way. I told them that this guy WOULD crash & soon. When we got to the straight road next to the McKinney Airport, this guy floored it & we hit 70 mph. I told dispatch: "We're now next to the airport & doing 70 mph." We were coming up on a sharp 90° turn. I said "... there's no way this guy is going to make the ... HOLY CRAP! THERE HE GOES! He wrecked." Dispatch now had to change the call from a reckless driver to a MVA. Instead of one officer en route, we now had several officers en route, the FD & an ambulance. I pulled over & stayed on the phone with dispatch. OK, there was this sharp 90° turn ... the guy was doing 70 mph. At the last second he slammed on the brakes, but was already right at the turn. He went straight off the road. There's a drainage ditch right there followed by a field. He hit that drainage ditch at 65 mph & launched into the most impressive Dukes of Hazard style vehicle jump I've ever seen live. He flew through the air for God knows how far, & landed in the mud (it's been raining a lot here) & proceeded to keep going quite far even in the deep mud before finally coming to a stop. Dispatch was asking if he appeared to be injured. I watched closely & finally saw movement in the cab of the truck. He got out & sank deep in the mud. He then started feverishly cleaning his truck. Picking stuff up off the floor on the driver's side & throwing stuff out into the field. He than RAN around the truck & opened the passenger door & started doing the same thing. Yeah, he was fine from what I could tell. When help arrived, we had 3 Collin County Sherrifs, 2 McKinney FD Engines, & a McKinney Ambulance on scene. I gave my statement to the officer & then finally got back on the road to pick Josh up from work (now 1 hour late). BTW, no water here at the house. We tried to fix it ourselves, but the break is under a large oak tree & we need professional help. How are we going to pay for THIS? After trying to repair it ourselves for hours & finding out it's too difficult of a job for us & we need heavy equipment like a backhoe & who knows what else, we started calling plumbers. Every plumber we called either didn't answer the phone & didn't return the call, or said they're booked solid through mid-FEBRUARY! We're in the wrong business. Damn! We found ONE guy who is coming out late this afternoon to look at it & give us an estimate. If he knows he's the only available plumber in the county, he can ask for a yacht as payment. We were all exhausted by the time we stopped trying to fix it. We had to turn the water back on & re-flood the yard long enough to give the pets water & all shower the mud off of us. We turned the water back off, dropped Josh off in Princeton for his days off & then went to David's to buy some TV dinners since cooking with water is out for a while. We had pizza for dinner & then collapsed onto the sofa to watch TV ... completely worn out. I figured today would be better. I'd crawl into the Matrix to unwind until Kyle got home from school. A good 6 hours at LEAST. YAY! I wake up & Pete says "Kyle is home from school" SONOFA! OK, whatever. The FD got toned out to a med call soon after that, but Pete had already left & Kyle is here, so I couldn't go. I tried out the ToDo feature in AnyTime. I like it, it quad prioritizes. 1st by number (1-9), then by letter (A-Z), then by date due, then date entered. Sweet! Creative By Nature Seed Starting Class/Event tomorrow.

Appetites:

✩✩ Best of the iPad - App Store Rewind✩✩
"It makes even the trickiest recipes seem easy" - Bon Appétit
Our cooking classes are now in HD on the new iPad.
Includes over 48 free cooking classes to get your started.
Special thanks to Calphalon.
This is the first ever step-by-step video cooking app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Every step of a recipe is broken down into bite size videos to make learning a new dish easy. Come cook along with popular chefs on Appetites.
Appetites brings you 90 cooking classes and 14 chefs with more on the way. To download a step-by-step cooking class to your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, simply tap on a video recipe that has a blue Download ribbon or purchase additional video recipes in the app.
★★ 2012 Webby Award Honoree ★★
★★ iPad App of the Week - February 24, 2011 ★★
★★ App Store Essentials- Apps for Foodies ★★
★★ Winner - Best of Show at Macworld ★★
★★ San Francisco Chronicle - App of the Week ★★
✩ Praise for Appetites ✩
SF Weekly: "Interactive Cooking Show for your iPad...It gives the traditional cookbook or food blog a personal appeal — demonstrating each step in a way that allows cooks to learn at their own pace"
Gizmodo: "A convincing take on the the cookbook of the future"
geeksugar.com: "this is one of the best [cooking apps] I've seen"
AppStorm: "10 out of 10, this one is a real gem. Our absolute favorite app from Macworld"
Booksprung: "Appetites cookbook app is how enhanced ebooks
should work"
Our chefs:
Christina Ross [Patisseraw.com]
Stuart O'Keeffe
Manouschka Guerrier [SingleServingBytes.com]
Rachael Hutchings [La Fuji Mama]
Gabi Moskowitz [BrokeAss Gourmet]
Nick Kindelsperger & Blake Royer [The Paupered Chef]
Stephanie Hua [Lick My Spoon]
Gaby Dalkin [What's Gaby Cooking?]
Adrianna Adarme & Caroline Kilpatrick [A Cozy Kitchen]
Matt Armendariz [Matt Bites]

Articles:

Articles is a beautiful Wikipedia reader for your iPhone and iPod touch.
Just enter a search term and let Articles find the Wikipedia entry you are looking for. Use the integrated maps feature to learn about interesting places and historic events around your current location, or anywhere else in the world. Or simply shake your device and let Articles find an entry for you. Mark interesting entries you want to read in the future and search text in the currently open document.
★ Apple Design Award 2010 Winner
★ App of the Week in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom and many other countries
★ Best Reference App at the 2010 and 2011 Best App Ever Awards
★ O'Reilly App Smackdown: Best App for Wikipedia
"Wikipedia is free on the web, right? Why spend even a couple bucks to wrap it in an app. The answer is interface. You can do far more, far more easily, with a native app than you can do with a web page." – Rene Ritchie, iMore
"There are a bunch of dedicated Wikipedia iPhone apps, and there are several I like. But I like Articles best. It’s fast, it looks great (including the formatting of articles), and it has a very clever MobileSafari-inspired UI." – John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Tips & Tricks:
- Double-tap (and hold) on the article to display the Chapter Index control.
- Tap the status bar to scroll back to the search bar.
- Pinch the article view to increase or decrease the text size.
- Tap-and-hold a link to open an article in a new page.
- Shake your device to open a random article.
- Tap and hold on text to copy and paste article content.
- Tap and hold on links and images to reveal more actions.
- Tap and hold the Toolbar to start customizing all items.
- Pull down the article view to lock or unlock the current screen orientation.

Did you know according to the latest Gallup poll, football is the nation's #1 contact sport? Marriage is 2nd. -Johnny Carson 1974

Dolphin Browser:

Download Dolphin for the best iPhone web browser experience. Dolphin's free iPhone browser has tons of exclusive features.
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★ Over 10,000,000 total downloads
★ #2 on CNET’s 100
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★★★★★ Dolphin Browser's Gestures and sidebars make web surfing fast, intuitive and fun while on the go. - USA Today
★★★★★ “…it’s a great, simple browser that feels more at home on a touchscreen device than pretty much anything else you’ll try. - Lifehacker
New Features:
1. Drag and Drop: Easily customize your speed dial
2. Tab Sync: Option to remove synced devices from other device list
3. Gesture: Now just click the "+" button to create a new gesture easily
4. Tab: Jump to home page when you close your last open tab in Tab bar
5. Updates: Automatic checking for updates
6. Various stability and performance improvements
Features:
★ Dolphin Sonar – Dolphin listens and lets you use your voice to search on the Internet, share on your favorite social networks, bookmark your favorite website, navigate and more.
*Currently Dolphin Sonar only supports English.
★ Webzine - Fast loading, without ads; Webzine simplifies the way you read your favorite news, blogs and websites.
★ Gesture - Let your inner artist out and create a personal symbol to access the websites you use the most.
★ One-click share via Twitter/Facebook - Taking the work out of being social.
★ Speed Dial - Visit your favorite sites on the go with one touch.
★ SideBars - Make the best of mobile interface via Dolphin SideBar.
★ MenuBar - The fastest way to customize, share and find information on your iPhone web browser.

Fill out your next expense report with tally marks instead of numbers.

For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there's 1 striking at the root. We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude & behavior & get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes & behaviors flow.

How can you tell a chili bean from a green bean?

The chilly one wears a jacket.

In the United Kingdom, it's legal for a pregnant woman to pee anywhere she wants. Even in a policeman's helmet if she so chooses.

Most popular pigs of all time top 10:

1. Babe in the movie of the same name
2. Piglet, Winnie the Pooh's friend
3. Olivia, from the books by Ian Falconer
4. Pigling Bland, from the Beatrix Potter book The Tale of Pigling Bland
5. The 3 Little Pigs
6. Wilbur, from Charlotte's Web
7. Hamm, the piggy bank in Toy Story
8. Plopper/Spider-Pig/Harry Plopper, from The Simpsons Movie
9. Peppa Pig
10. Miss Piggy, from The Muppet Show

Oldest joke in the world is a fart joke from 1900 BC Sumeria. It goes like this: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

Paradigms are inseparable from character.

PopBooth:

EATURED IN: The New York Times, TechCrunch, Gigaom & more!
PopBooth is a photo booth app that sends REAL photo strips in the mail. Create fun photo booth photos and then post to Facebook, send by email, or send a REAL photo strip in the mail.
★★★★★ FEATURES ★★★★★
- Step into the PopBooth and snap 4 shots using the front facing camera
- Apply filters: normal, black & white, colorz, 1985, hipster & more
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People are using PopBooth:
- With their kids
- At events
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- What creative use will you come up with?
Send your first PopBooth in less than 2 minutes. Download this app now and share a beautiful PopBooth with your family & friends.
PopBooth is brought to you by Sincerely Inc, the makers of the popular Postagram postcard app.
❤ ❤ Each PopBooth photo strip is backed by the Sincerely.com Guarantee: If your PopBooth gets lost in the mail, damaged or you are otherwise not happy, we will send another PopBooth free or return your money. We take full responsibility from the time you click "order" until you are holding a beautiful PopBooth in your hand.

Respond to "Good morning" with "Nope."

Robert Dole addressed a crowd of senior citizens down in Florida. Now, I dometimes get the feeling that politicians will say anything to get a vote. He promised the senior citizens that he's in favor of mandatory prison sentences for children who never call. -Johnny Carson 1976

Taskrabbit.com connects people who need help completing projects with vendors.

Van der Sloot admits to Peru murder (2012):

On this day in 2012, Joran van der Sloot, a longtime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba, pleads guilty to the murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores, in Lima, Peru. Flores was killed on May 30, 2010, exactly five years to the day after Holloway went missing while on a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island.

In May 2010, Van der Sloot, who was born in the Netherlands in 1987 and raised in Dutch-speaking Aruba, was in the Peruvian capital for a poker tournament. He met Flores, a college student and daughter of a prominent Peruvian businessman, at a Lima casino. The two were seen entering Van der Sloot’s room at Hotel TAC around 5 a.m. on May 30. Approximately four hours later, surveillance video captured Van der Sloot leaving the room alone and carrying his bags. After Flores’ family reported her missing, she was found dead in the hotel room on June 2, beaten and with a broken neck. Her money and credit cards were missing.

After Peruvian officials reviewed the hotel surveillance video, Van der Sloot emerged as the prime suspect in the murder investigation. Police believed he had fled in Flores’ car and later abandoned it in another part of Lima, before traveling south to Chile. On June 3, Van der Sloot was arrested in Chile, and deported to Peru soon afterward. On June 7, the Dutchman admitted to Peruvian authorities he had killed Flores during an argument after she used his computer without permission (authorities suggested she might have discovered he was linked to the Holloway case). Van der Sloot stated he beat and strangled Flores then suffocated her with his shirt. The Dutchman later retracted this confession, saying he was frightened and confused when he made it.

On the day Van der Sloot was arrested in South America, U.S. authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with a plot to extort $250,000 from Holloway’s family in exchange for revealing the location of her remains. Holloway, an 18-year-old from Mountain Brook, Alabama, was last seen leaving an Aruban bar and restaurant with Van der Sloot and two of his friends in the early hours of May 30, 2005. Her disappearance generated widespread media coverage in the United States. Despite an extensive search, Holloway’s body was never found. Van der Sloot was arrested twice in Aruba in conjunction with her disappearance but never charged.

On January 11, 2012, Van der Sloot, who has been behind bars in Peru since his June 2010 arrest, pleaded guilty in a Lima courtroom to Flores’ murder. He also confessed to robbing her. His lawyer contended the Dutchman killed Flores due to “extreme psychological trauma” after being accused in Holloway’s disappearance. On January 13, two days after his guilty plea, a three-judge panel sentenced Van der Sloot to 28 years in prison and ordered him to pay $75,000 in reparation to Flores’ family.

One day before Van der Sloot was sentenced in Peru, a judge in Birmingham, Alabama, signed an order declaring Natalee Holloway legally dead (although her case remains unsolved). The judge made the ruling at the request of Holloway’s father, so that he could settle his daughter’s estate.

Ways to cook an egg top 10:

1. Over Easy (my favorite!)
2. Sunny Side Up
3. Hard Boiled
4. Soft Boiled
5. Basted
6. Over Hard
7. Poached
8. Steam Basted
9. Shirred (a.k.a. Baked Eggs)
10. Scrambled

World's cheapest car debuts in India (2008):

On this day in 2008, at the New Delhi Auto Expo in India, Tata Motors debuts the Nano, billing it as the world's cheapest car: The anticipated price tag is around $2,500. Tata, India's largest automaker, called the four-door, bubble-shaped mini-vehicle (it was just 5 feet wide and 10 feet long) the "People's Car" and declared that it would be a vehicle for families who previously hadn't been able to afford a car. (At the time, it wasn't uncommon to see an entire family precariously packed onto a single motorbike.)

The Nano was originally scheduled to go on sale in October 2008; however, production delays arose because of a land dispute in West Bengal, where the car's production plant was being built. The company opted to move its production facilities to another part of India and the Nano officially went on sale across the country in April 2009. The basic model carried a starting price of approximately $2,000 (not including taxes) and came without a radio, air conditioning, airbags, power steering or power windows. It had a body made of plastic and sheet metal and a 32-horsepower, 624cc two-cylinder rear-mounted engine, and it could reach speeds of 65 miles per hour. In another nod to cost-cutting, the car had just one windshield wiper.

Tata received more than 203,000 pre-orders for the Nano--a strong number, especially considering that at the time there were only about nine cars for every 1,000 people in India. However, because Tata was only able to produce an initial run of 100,000 Nanos, the cars' first owners were chosen by lottery. The Nano was initially sold only in India, although Tata said it eventually intended to launch the car in other parts of the world.

Tata Motors is part of the Tata Group, one of India's largest and oldest business conglomerates. And Tata does not just make inexpensive cars: In March 2008, the company purchased the venerable British brands Jaguar and Land Rover from the Ford Motor Company for $2.3 billion.