March 9, 2013

Good morning! We slept 10 hours this morning. We needed the sleep, but I sure hope I can get to sleep at a normal hour tonight. Yesterday I talked to Pete for a while on the phone, had a cinnamon roll for breakfast, & then started cleaning the house. I cleaned the bathroom sink, neatened my nightstand, dusted the dining room blinds, cleaned one of the shelves in the freezer (which led to a short break as I finished the last slice of Pepperidge Farm 3-Layer Chocolate Cake, cataloged & sorted one of my inbox items into the PC & onto the bookshelf, was going to hose off the front porch but ended up prioritizing mopping the entryway instead, dusted my office wall decor, fed the pets, & swept the utility room. By the time I was done the mailman had come & gone, so I got the mail & then went to work on eBay. PayPal is causing me all kinds of trouble right now & as I type this I'm on hold with them to get this all straightened out. I owe 3 people money on eBay ... I have money in my PayPal account AND in my checking account (they're linked), but because I ran out of credit on BillMeLater (also linked), it refuses to pay ANYONE. It should have a backup plan, which according to BillMeLater, it should automatically look to pay out of PayPal &/or my checking account ... which would make sense. Something's wrong. I tried calling yesterday but got tired of being on hold. Today I'll just leave it until my battery dies I guess. I wish they at least had some cool music to listen to instead of a looping PayPal ad. I'm already a customer ... they don't need to sell me on their service. Sheesh! Anyway, even eBay was screwed up yesterday. Normally when you put in an ISBN#, it pulls up ALL the info including a pic of your item & you just fill in the price you're asking. Not yesterday ... something was not working right & it couldn't find a single ISBN that I put in. I ended up having to do things the old-fashioned way ... input ALL the info myself & then scanning the item, cropping the pic, uploading the pic ... needless to say I didn't get much listed yesterday. After doubling my time on eBay trying to figure out how to pay people (never could get it fixed ... once you link BillMeLater (with a simple single click of a HUGE button in your face), you can never UNlink it without calling them & being on hold for an hour & even then they try to talk you out of it). Once all that was over I logged onto facebook & relaxed with some funny pics that friends posted, took my game turns, & then asked Kyle if he could run the mower in the back yard over the leech lines where the grass was getting a little tall already. He had trouble starting the mower (you can't leave the throttle all the way down & start it cold, you need to give it at least a LITTLE throttle. He finally got it to keep running & ran the mower into the back, engaged the blades, rolled about a foot & the sound was SO loud that it echoed off of several houses. A while back he had taken some of my tie-down straps out of my truck for some reason, used them to drag a huge tree branch, then LEFT THEM in the back yard! I saw them a couple weeks later & gave him shit for it, but apparently he never picked them up! DAMNIT! Now he ran them over with the mower & they are tangled in the blades of the mower. Nylon straps with metal hook ends ... not only are the tie-downs destroyed, but who knows how much damage was done to the mower! The blades won't even engage anymore. DAMNIT! STOP TAKING THINGS OUT OF MY TRUCK & *IF* YOU DO, PUT THEM BACK WHEN YOU'RE DONE! Additionally ... make sure the yard is CLEAR OF DEBRIS before you mow! I was there to see the whole thing happen because I was out with the dogs at the time. That's it ... I need comfort food. Pete was on his way home so I called him & asked him if he wanted to meet at Sicily's. He had my truck & it took me forever to get out of the driveway because I have no idea how his car works. He had all the interior lights OFF. The overhead lights don't come on when you open the door, the dash lights don't come on when you start the vehicle ... so there I sat, car running, in the dark, trying to find ANYTHING. After adjusting the seat & mirrors I finally found the switch yo turn on the dash lights ... finally made it out of the driveway! I love my truck, it's autopilot to drive my truck ... but this car, I felt like a brand new driver. It's SO different! My truck, fire trucks, ANY truck ... no problem, but apparently a tiny little Honda Civic really screws me up. How odd! After a wonderful dinner at Sicily's & the FD getting toned out to a down power line while I was out of district, we came home & watched one of Pete's "How the universe works"-type of shows while I quilt crocheted, I put that away & then we watched the Closer & headed to bed EARLY (for us). We slept 10 hours which we needed, I took the dogs out & here I am. Finally got that PayPal mess straightened out a few minutes ago. BillMeLater was the PRIMARY funding on the account & it never went past that (it should though). Now PayPal is the primary & BillMeLater is the secondary. Now the next time I call them, it will be to figure out if we can make my checking account the THIRD on there, so if I have no money in PayPal & BillMeLater is full, it should go NEXT to my checking account for the money. Not sure if they can add a 3rd to the que, but we'll see. Spring ahead 1 hour tonight at 2:a.

100 years ago in America, the 1st crossword puzzle was printed in the N.Y. World newspaper.

Christopher Wallace—a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.—is killed in Los Angeles (1997):

If all publicity is good publicity, then New York-based Bad Boy Entertainment and Los Angeles-based Death Row Records got better publicity than they ever could have purchased as a result of the feud that broke out between the two companies in the mid-1990s. As the artists associated with the two hip-hop record labels traded taunts and insults on their records and onstage, the hip-hop press covered every twist and turn, and soon the mainstream media were breathlessly declaring a so-called "bi-coastal rap war." The rivalry was incredibly good for business. It propelled Sean "Puffy" Combs's Bad Boy Entertainment and Marion "Suge" Knight's Death Row Records into the spotlight, selling millions upon millions of both labels' records in the process. But the "East Coast vs. West Coast" beef also took the lives of two of hip-hop's biggest stars: Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. "The Notorious B.I.G." After dominating the hip-hop industry during years of record growth in the mid-1990s, that feud finally came to an end with the shooting death of Wallace on a crowded Los Angeles street on March 9, 1997.

Christopher Wallace was a Brooklyn-based rapper whose 1994 album, Ready to Die, was largely responsible for making Bad Boy Records a success. On the night he was killed, Wallace was riding in the passenger seat of a GMC Suburban when a Toyota Land Cruiser pulled up alongside him at corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. The driver of the Land Cruiser opened fire on Wallace, fatally wounding him before speeding away. Dozens of eyewitness accounts allowed the Los Angeles Police Department to develop a detailed reconstruction of the shooting and a composite sketch of the gunman, but Wallace's murder remains unsolved more than a decade later.

It was widely speculated that Wallace's killing was in some way related to the similar killing of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas some seven months earlier in similar physical circumstances. While no evidence has ever come to light of Wallace's involvement in Shakur's death, Shakur had publicly accused Wallace of involvement in a 1994 attempt on his life—an accusation that greatly escalated the East Coast-West Coast feud and made Wallace and Shakur into its most prominent participants.

In the months following Christopher Wallace's death, the East Coast-West Coast feud may have faded away, but fan interest in its participants has not. Wallace's second and most successful studio album, Life After Death, was released less than three weeks after he died, and "new" material by both Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. continues to be released posthumously more than 10 years after both artists' passing.

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In 2011, a runner at the Toronto Marathon became the oldest person ever to finish a race of that distance. He was:

(a) 72

(b) 86

(c) 91

(d) 100

Answer: (d). Fauja Singh, a durable cenenarian, set a world record by crossing the finish line in 8 hours, 25 minutes, & 16 seconds. 9 younger whippersnappers finished after him.

I've found many organizations that develop as many as 3 of the natural dimensions - they may have good service criteria, good economic criteria, & good human relations criteria, but they're not really committed to identifying, developing, utilizing, & recognizing the talent of people. And if these psychological forces are missing, the style will be a benevolent autocracy & the resulting culture will reflect different forms of collective resistance, adversarialism, excessive turnover, & other deep, chronic cultural problems.

Keep your shirt off for a half an hour while in your office.

Mary has been the most popular girl's name worldwide since records have been kept.

Most popular 1st names for girls in the U.S. 100 years ago top 10:

1. Mary
2. Helen
3. Dorothy
4. Margaret
5. Ruth
6. Mildred
7. Anna
8. Elizabeth (YAY! :))
9. Frances (My grandmother's name)
10. Marie

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This weekend begins daylight savings time ... I always love it when they tell you to do it. They say, "Set your clock ahead 1 hour this weekend.: They say, "Do it at 2:a in the morning." Now, you know what I like to do every year when we do this? At 1 minute to 2, I call Domino's Pizza. Set the clock ahead 1 hour, get a free pizza. Just like that.

Venetian general Enrico Dandolo didn't let small things like blindness or old age ever stop him. In the early 1200s, he led the assault on Constantinople as a completely blind 90-year old.