For the past two days I’ve tried out LifeStream, an aggregator for your various feeds like Netflix, Twitter, etc. I like it. I’m going to keep it. It’ll be more “this is my life” than my blog has been in well over a year; I started making fewer posts, and the ones I made were mostly philosophical, rather than what I’m actually doing. So by reading what I’m queuing on Netflix, what I’m saying on Twitter, what I’m posting to Flickr, what I’m bookmarking on Delicious, etc., you’ll be able to see what’s actually going on in my life. Honestly, a lot of what I do is recorded online in these ways, so I think it’ll be cool.

My other cool thing is that I got an Xbox 360. It was on eBay for $75 but I didn’t realize that it didn’t come with…well, anything. After buying the A/V cable, power cable, hard drive, etc. it turned out to be a lot more expensive, not to mention the $70 for a used wireless adapter (we don’t have wired networking in the house). Fortunately a friend loaned me a couple of controllers and some games; I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto IV mostly. It’s so many light-years ahead of my old PS2! I love the Xbox. I ordered Civilization Revolution from eBay because I love playing Civ IV on the PC so I figure I’ll try the Xbox version. I have also played Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise a little, but I have a really hard time because the instructions are SO tiny and hard to see! It’s all lots of fun though. And I watched streaming Netflix on it last night, too!

So, earlier today, Brent Spiner was talking about auctioning off his 400th Tweet. Instead, he posted a Groucho Marx quote. Then:
“You can never go wrong with a good Groucho line. But, I will be auctioning the 500th. Best offer I got-$10. Not nearly enough.”

When I saw this, I posted:
@brentspiner I’ll give you $100 if you’ll tweet me and say hi…but you’ll have to give me your address to send you the money

Literally one minute later, he said:
@etoile Very generous…for an opening bid. Let me think about the parameters. I’ll let everyone know what you’re bidding on soon.

So…I think I might owe Brent Spiner $100. Ha!

Also, one friend immediately said:
@etoile You are a fucking genius.

And a moment later, another friend:
@etoile omg you win!

So that was kinda awesome.

Whew, I am never getting back into paid posts again. I used to have PR6 on my main site and it was very nice. But because of my affiliation with certain sites that pay for you to post things, I got a smackdown from Google and I went down to PR3. I’m now back to PR5 and I’m going to try to hold onto it. I’ve never done much to mess with my PageRank, but I’m pleased that it’s back up to PR5. I still have text ads on the sidebar because they occasionally bring in a nice $40-70 check (depending on how many advertisers I have there) plus the MusicMP3.ru ad gets me $40 in credit at that site per month…I can buy all the mp3’s I want, ha! Anyway, today was a homework-free day, and it felt pretty good. We went shopping and I got some awesome jeans, I finally discovered Lane Bryant’s color-coding of pants! They had “buy one, get one free” stuff, and I got a totally awesome $35 shirt that I absolutely love for free. It was a nice day even though it was cold and rainy.

I haven’t posted much lately, I have just been so busy with school! But I wanted to talk about my new gadget. I got a 32GB iPod Touch and it is so cool. I was thinking it might be a way to see if I wanted an iPhone, but now I see that there are too many flaws for me to ever consider making an iPhone my only phone – no highlighting, no copy and paste?! I still love my Blackberry but the Touch is just plain cool. So far my favorite apps are TwitterFon (I tried all the different Twitter apps), BrightKite, and Pandora. Of course I wish it could do stuff without needing to be on wifi, especially for those three apps, but I have wifi at school and at home so I can use it most of the time. It’s so cool!

I have already gotten helpful tips from many people through Twitter, but if anyone reading this has favorite apps they think I should get, let me know! (I would especially love to know about free games that make use of the accelerometer.)

So I’ve got the Blackberry back. It turns out the old one did not survive enough for data transfer; I tried hooking it up and the computer registered it as new hardware, but then the Desktop Manager refused to see it as connected. The latest backup I had was July 29th so I restored that one and at least I got most of my address book back. Thank goodness I’ve been using a Gmail account as my primary mobile address, so all of my emails are automatically backed up! I got the new Otterbox case installed right away, and I have a few bubbles but I’m not going to mess with them until I need to open up the case for some other reason. The membrane is a little hard to get used to, I’ve been making occasional typos on the keyboard, but it turns out “you can use your trackball through the membrane” means “there’s a little hole in the membrane so you’re using the trackball directly” which works fine. I don’t remember all the programs I had on the old one, but I can download them as I realize I don’t have them! The only one that might be an issue is Geocache Navigator, because I think that one is tied to your device’s PIN and mine is different now. I emailed them yesterday but I haven’t gotten a response yet.

FYI folks, I will not be accessible by mobile phone for a few days. My Blackberry Curve just got run over by a car. I was getting out of my car and I heard it fall but I didn’t see where it went. Spent 10 minutes looking all over. Then spotted it…in the middle of the street. Where cars had been whizzing by for 10 minutes. It definitely didn’t survive. I am still in shock. So yeah, I won’t have a phone for a few days. Just ordered a new one on eBay but it will take at least a couple of days to get here. What a pain in the ass accident.

Not that anybody should actually care, but I got the red skin. Only 5 people liked that, and 12 people preferred the pink one, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted elegant this time around. kdlb, gretchen_marie, serijules, and sunnydale47 all gave great reasons for choosing the pink one, and my wife preferred that one too. But I said “okay, I’ll get the pink one” and then proceeded to look back at some other ones. :A: said, “why don’t you get the one YOU want instead of what everybody else wants?” So red it was. Who knows, I’ll probably hate it and get a pink one, or try to put the old one back on again. (The reason for getting the new one is supposedly because the old one didn’t transfer perfectly to the new housing…I would say about 35% because it didn’t transfer right and 65% because I just want a new one.)

Of course, if DecalGirl had made this or this or even this into a Curve skin, it wouldn’t have been an issue. I just wanted something pink AND elegant, but they didn’t have it. I might even have gone with this for simplicity’s sake. It was $8.17 vs. $21 for a fully custom MyTego skin, so…yeah. It is what it is.

What in the flying monkey fuck is this?!

This is from Taylor Gifts. Are they freaking insane?! I’m buying the Banana Saver through Amazon even though it’ll be 44 cents more, because that’s a ridiculous policy.

Edit: My wife woke up to go to the bathroom and I told her about this outrageous charge. She yelled at me for ordering a Banana Saver that I don’t need, so I canceled it. But still! *shakes tiny fist*

I joined Second Life back in 2005 or so. For a while I didn’t have a computer that could do it at all so I only played at friends’ houses. Then I had a computer that could do it, but not well, so I got frustrated and gave up on it. Now I’m back, thanks to aleja, and I’m getting more involved! (This is only in the last few days, even.) In fact, I just bought a home. Yup, I’m now a Second Life homeowner, paying RL cash for a virtual plot of land. Oh well, it’s not much. I did always kind of want a home…I was a total vagrant before. Anyway, here are some pictures of my renewed second life.
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I am making a real quick post from my new phone. To my amazement, AT&T actually came through with an unlock code – I thought for sure they wouldn’t. But they did! Unfortunately I had already given up on them and ordered another Curve, already unlocked, with the intention of returning this one. The seller said they were willing to mutually withdraw, but then checked their records and saw it was too late – it had already been shipped. Fortunately :A: isn’t killing me over it, she knows I’ll sell the other one when it gets here. Anyway, new phone! Ta-daaaaa.