• Today I am down to 161 pounds. I started 2006 at 187.5 pounds. That’s progress, but I still have a while to go.
• I now know three people who have the Sidekick 3. I am not one of them, and I only ever see one in person but he doesn’t usually have his with him then. I don’t think I’ll be wanting one anytime soon.
• I decided to put away my iPod until the new battery and/or the AC adapter arrive. I was going to try updating the firmware because that sometimes helps with battery life, but I didn’t remember that you have to plug it into the wall to complete the firmware update. So it’s a brick till I get the AC adapter, I guess…argh!
• It is so frustrating not to pick at my new tattoo. I want to poke it and move it around and play with it. I think if I got another design on me I would want an ILY handshape.
• I decided to revamp the way skins are presented on my site. Instead of having a skin listing in the sidebar, I now have a skin selection page complete with screenshots. I also put up a single AdBrite ad; so far I have earned 53 cents from it but that’s just from network ads - I don’t think anybody will actually buy an ad on my site. But hey, 53 cents is more than I ever got from AdSense. I don’t like advertising in general, so I may get rid of it eventually, but we’ll see.
• My car was reluctant to start Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, so I took it in last night. It had also been balky about changing gears (it’s an automatic) but that apparently isn’t the transmission or anything else - they said it was just running the A/C that changes the load on the engine. They said the starter might be going bad but it would have been $350 so I said I would wait, and the guy admitted that was actually fine. Turns out I was overdue for my inspection (oops) and in order to pass I needed two new tires. Tires plus inspection plus oil change (that was overdue too) totaled about $215, not bad.

I’m very mood-swingy today. Alternating desires - to hug everybody and to hide in a corner. I took my meds, so I’m not sure what’s up.

I have bought a few accessories for my iPod. First is a pink silicone-shell case, which I got for $3 including shipping. I also got the wall adapter for the Firewire cable, plus a spare Firewire cable, for $11.98. See, it turns out that the 3G doesn’t charge over USB, period…even with a dock. I should have figured that one out before buying…oh well. With the adapter and spare cable I can charge it at home, and the cable Levi gave me does work for syncing, so I will just have to do those things separately. The third thing I bought was a replacement battery for $13.50, because I only got a couple of hours of playback from the iPod yesterday. The battery is near the end of its life, so I knew this might be necessary…hopefully the kit won’t be too hard to manage. I’ve heard it’s not bad. So the total for my 3G iPod and all accessories and shipping is $105.87…which I can handle.

Or maybe not, depending on what is wrong with my car. After I picked up the cable from Levi, the car wouldn’t start. I finally tried enough times and it started, so I was on my way. But then this morning it was reluctant to start again. So I’ll be dropping it off at Saturn tonight; it’s about 1400 miles overdue for regular service but I have no idea if that’s the problem. I have a coupon to get my oil changed at Saturn (I usually go to Jiffy Lube) so hopefully that will fix the issue without being super-expensive.

This weekend I biked 19 miles around Manhattan, got my second paw print at Fine Line Tattoo, did not get to meet Alan Cumming, had a treat from Coldstone Creamery because I’d biked so damn hard, and walked two miles from the tattoo shop to my friend’s house. Not in that order, of course, although the biking did come before the tattooing. I was pleased with how little the tattoo hurt, probably because the artist was very nice and kept me chatting the whole time. When I got home, my iPod had finally arrived, albeit with a Firewire cable instead of a USB cable like it was supposed to have. Fortunately Levi, who lives near me, has a spare cable; his is for an iPod mini but this website seems to indicate that a mini cable will be compatible with a 3G iPod; we’ll see…meanwhile I do have a Firewire port at work so the iPod is charging. If the cable Levi has isn’t compatible I will probably just pick up a Firewire PCMCIA card on eBay.

I’ve caved. I want an iPod. Originally I swore I wouldn’t even use iTunes, much less an iPod. I now use iTunes. My current big MP3 player is a 40GB Polaroid Juke Jam, and to be honest the user interface is pretty bad, so I don’t use it. My mom got me an iRiver with (I think) 128MB storage a little while back; I ended up trading it to firesign3000 for a Dreamcast, which I pretty much only use to play Seaman (which actually belongs to entelein!) and Space Channel 5. Then my dad got a 512MB iPod Shuffle for me, and I started using it for podcasts and occasionally music, both through iTunes. I like it. And iPod has to be #1 for a reason. I want an iPod.

So I’m lurking on eBay, trying to find one for a decent price. I think I want at least third-generation, and I think I want at least 15GB of storage…but fourth-generation would be better, and so would 20GB of storage…and a color screen, of course. I really want to score one for a semi-decent price, but I’m not sure how much luck I’m going to have. Does anybody reading this have an iPod they would like to sell? I’m officially in the market for one!

Edit: I just bought a 3G with 15GB and a dock for $66 on eBay, plus $12 shipping. Yay!

The first DVD player A and I ever had was a Toshiba SD-2109 that perigee gave us several years ago. A couple of weeks ago, it finally kicked the bucket - it wouldn’t respond to the remote control anymore. We tried using the PS2 (a gift from perigee, actually), but it’s been having drive problems for a while. It can usually still play games, but it was balky with DVDs, so it was time for a new DVD player. Before buying one, we asked A’s dad if he had one he wasn’t using anymore - and he did. So I’ve just installed a Panasonic DVD-F61A in our bedroom. It’s a 5-DVD changer, not sure what we’ll use that part of it for, but it works with the remote, and it’s shiny, and I’m glad it was a snap to install. (Well, once I realized my father-in-law had given us the wrong cable - it was audio only - but I used the A/V cable from the old DVD player and it’s all happy.)

First, I never heard from Wil Wheaton, which makes me kind of sad. Everyone was so encouraging that I wrote to him with hope, but so far no joy - oh well. What I really wanted to write about, though, is stickers.

• First: political bumper stickers. I participated in my friend Ryan’s Political Bumpers project around the time of the 2004 presidential election, so I got very interested in political-sticker-spotting. What I’ve been noticing recently, though, is that people still have those stickers on their cars. I’ve always thought political stickers, like tattoo’s of your current squeeze’s name, are a bad idea because they will grow out of date. But it seems that around here, at least, political stickers have turned into declarations of the car owner’s ideology. I have found that I now equate “Bush/Cheney” stickers with “I’m the NRA - And I Vote” stickers, Jesus fish, and so forth. Likewise, any “Kerry/Edwards” stickers are equivalent to Darwin fish and other left-wing ideas. The Bush/Cheney stickers have the added air of “nyah nyah” while the Kerry/Edwards stickers have an added air of…disappointment, I guess, or maybe “you suck!”
• Second: cell phone stickers, or “skins.” When I had a clunky old Nokia 3390, I had removable faceplates. I ditched the original gold one early on and used Hello Kitty faceplates for the rest of the phone’s life. But now that I have a Sidekick, I no longer get removable faceplates, so my device is very bland and gray. It’s possible to buy colored rubber “bumpers” to replace some of the buttons of the Sidekick II, and it’s possible to spend hundreds of dollars to have tiny crystals put all over your phone, but I wasn’t really interested in either one. Instead I designed a skin at My Tego. The back is going to have a picture of A all over it, and the front is going to have abstract rainbow stuff. (I also tried out Starry Night, The Scream, and Hello Kitty fronts, but I decided to go with the abstract one. It’s going to be slightly tricky to get the skin on properly, but I’m looking forward to having a fancier phone!

Holy crap! My new phone is here! ALREADY!

My Sidekick has been slowly falling apart for a couple of months. It did great for a long time, no nicks or scratches or broken parts even though I dropped it a few times. Finally, a couple of months ago, the scroll wheel quit scrolling. Then a tiny scratch appeared on the screen. A couple of weeks ago, the scroll wheel stopped clicking, too. This was a pain, but I could still use all functions, so that was okay. Finally, two days ago, the Back button fell off; it had been loose from earlier drops, and I was fiddling with it (like a loose tooth) and it came off. I was able to scotch-tape it back on so the button still functioned, but I knew the end was coming.

I needed a replacement - there was no chance I would go back to my wimpy Nokia 3390. (I keep it as an emergency phone.) I asked around online and checked out eBay, and called T-Mobile to ask how much it would cost to upgrade. They said that with a two-year contract I could have it for $140, because I’ve been with them for three and a half years. I was leery at first because I’ve been out of contract for a long time, but then I realized: I’m not going anywhere anyway. I like my Sidekick, I’ve been happy with T-Mobile for a long time, and I have no desire to switch. I talked it over with A and she said $140 seemed reasonable for the upgrade.

So yesterday morning on my way to work I called Customer Care and said I wanted the offer they had given me yesterday, which had been noted in my account. I went through the contract agreement process, decided to hold off on insurance, and chose free seven-day shipping rather than paying $15 for three-day shipping.

It’s here. Already. I have heard people say how long it took them to get their Sidekick, how warranty exchanges took forever…not for me. It’s here! I have a Sidekick II! It has a built-in camera with twice the resolution of the Sidekick I’s plug-in camera! It will have a working scroll wheel! All I have to do is swap my SIM card and activate! Once I get the firmware update, I will have Javascript and I can choose my own wallpaper! The letters won’t rub off the keys! Eeeeeeee!

Health: My health and its insurance continue to be a major pain in the ass. More runaround with Medco and my doctor’s office, but this time the receptionist is planning to put a one-month prescription in the mail to me to hold me over until we get things sorted out. The reason she is mailing it is because she apparently forgot to leave it taped to the door on her way out on Friday, resulting in me driving all the way out there for nothing.

Also, I have to get blood drawn, which I am not keen on because even though I’m not afraid of the needle I still end up passing out most of the time. But I’ve never had my cholesterol tested so I really do need to get the blood drawn. I just hope I can find the damn prescription again.

Car: It’s been making knocking noises since the beginning of the month. I am finally taking it in. It sounds like something is just loose underneath, so hopefully it will be a simple fix, but with my luck it will cost a pretty penny anyway.

GPS: A’s parents gave me a Garmin Legend for my birthday! Unfortunately my laptop didn’t have a serial port, so last night on eBay I purchased a USB-to-serial cable for under $10 including shipping. Hopefully it will actually work. Now I can play around with geocaching, whee! And since the satellites are up in the sky, it actually works in my house, compared to my cell phone, whose transmitter is earthbound and who doesn’t work down in my little valley.

I have vague feelings of being out of control, and my anxiety is a little higher than normal. I don’t like it.

Okay, I just have to show off one of my gifts from yesterday. Those of you that understand ASL can click here; those of you that don’t can peek at the translation below.
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The teacher here has a computer that she uses for real-time demonstrations. The way we are positioned, the terp can see that clearly, and it is also displayed on the big screens for the class. But most of the material is presented in Powerpoint, across two screens (different slides), and she controls it with a fancy big touchscreen monitor with a pen, which we can’t see. I was chatting with her about it, and I asked if it was possible to have a secondary display from hers, so we could see what’s on the big screens behind us. She said it should be possible to set up a second monitor! She said she’d mention it to management. I doubt anything will happen this week but it would make life easier for all interpreters at Learning Tree sites if they could have that copy of the instructor’s screen to follow along with the Powerpoint. Even if I never do this again, if I hear that such a system has been devised, I will be quite pleased.