The BUGS are after me! Got stung by a bee 3x yesterday and then this morning, a spider bit me twice in the same damn place the bee bit me! Think the spider was lurking in the towel I use, so that after my shower, he was ready to chomp and chomp he did. Now I have a nice hot swollen arm in 2 places - will follow up here to let you know when it falls off! I'm donning the bubble suit today!

Have you signed up on the Do Not Call List? If you don't want telemarketers bugging you at home, make sure you click on that link and sign up now. Time is fast running out.

If by chance you're in need of a nice small laser printer, the Samsung ML1710 is available for sale with a $70 rebate through 8/31/2003. You can get it for $100 (after the rebate) and free shipping at Office Depot. This is quite the bargain if you need a laser printer. Just thought I'd pass that along. And you can save an additional 2% if you go through Ebates.com to reach the Office Depot site ( you do use Ebates, don't you? - free money - I've gotten back $200 already).

Fistfuls of Dollars"Still, even the government of a superpower can't simultaneously offer tax cuts equal to 15 percent of revenue, provide all its retirees with prescription drugs and single-handedly take on the world's evildoers — single-handedly because we've alienated our allies. In fact, given the size of our budget deficit, it's not clear that we can afford to do even one of these things. Someday, when the grown-ups are back in charge, they'll have quite a mess to clean up. "

Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it? Democrats unite! :)

And You thought Living in the Burbs was better than Downtown,huh? Well, maybe not, according to this article. It should also come as no surprise that Europe has this figured out much better than we do, something our European guests often comment on when they come to America. What do you think about this?

Been holding off on buying a digital camera because they're too expensive? Well Gateway has jumped in now and is selling a 4mp, 3x optical zoom camera for $199. Unbelievable. If you don't have a digital camera, that would surely tempt me.

"The company will aim for more experienced camera buyers with its Gateway DC-M40 and Gateway DC-M50, a pair of larger cameras that deliver 4-megapixel and 5-megapixel resolutions and offer 3x optical zoom lenses at prices of $199 and $299, respectively"

Think Blogger is back to working again as are the comment lines. (see Wed - August 27 to see how to use those ).

Lots of problems with the ol' blog today. Not sure if it is Blogger, the comments line server or what. Guess it will work itself out in time.

Was watching the 2003 World Track Championships today on TV - a guy won the 50K walk (about 30 miles) with an average time of 6:38 per mile. Hell, I couldn't even RUN 1 mile in 6:38 - heck I'd be lucky to break 8 minutes probably. Some of these guys make it look easy like one of the GODS of track and field - Hicham el Guerrouj of Morrocco. He loafed in his qualifying heat for the 5000 meters - he is trying to combine this with the 1500 meters at the World Championships (he has already won the Gold Medal in the 1500) - something that has not been accomplished since Paavo Nurmi in the 1924 Olympic Games. One comment made during the telecast was that, when interviewed about the effects of running at lower altitudes vs the 8,000 foot altitudes he trains at, he suggested it was akin to having a garden hose shoved down your throat with pure oxygen being pumped in. Needless to say, that is a slight advantage over your fellow runners who train at lower altitudes.

If you're interested in the World Track Championships, they're airing on ESPN2 afternoons and then on ABC this weekend.

For a nice overview of the latest in technology gadgets check out the link to the right called Circuits. It's one of the best general technology newsletters I've seen on the Net. Gives you some good advice when buying new techno toys and covers a wide range of topics. You can even get it's newsletter delivered into your email box - bet you're drooling on that thought,huh? What can I say....

For those of you heading off to college, you might find this article on Palm Pilots (or Pocket PC's) interesting. Gee, if I would have had one of these in college, it would have enabled me to have much more free time for the serious part of college - getting hammered nightly! LOL

If you do think about purchasing a Palm and you do any traveling, then you might want to look at this one. Now this is cool - of course, it would be cooler with built-in wi-fi and a built in phone, but that would probably cost a tad more....

The blog comment line I refer to in the post below is temporarily disabled - should be back up shortly (i presume!).

(update - spoke with the guy whose server runs this comments section - due to heavy load (obviously not from comments on my site! LOL , he is in the process of moving his comments site to a new server. Hopefully will be back up soon, so you can deluge this page with comments. That was your intention, correct? Thought so.

Just a reminder - if you would like to comment on any post, simply click the link below each post which says "0 comments" (since nobody has yet commented!). It will open up a new window where you can leave a comment or ask a question. Also, if you have just come to the blog, the blog started on August 10th, but I only show 7 days at a time, so that it loads faster. If you want to start at the beginning of the blog, then you need to click on the Archives Link in the right column for whichever week you want. That will pull up all the posts since the beginning.

Wall on the Pacific Crest Trail Check out the feet on this guy at the end of the trail (pic at bottom of page). Janet and I met him briefly while hiking the trail in '95 and have written back and forth on occasion. He has just set a new record for completing all 2600 miles of the PCT in 83 days! That's 31 miles a day - good god almighty!

From a part of his journal, "Ray called around noon today from Hat Creek Resort, doing well, still lots of snow. After leaving Echo Lake Ray had three days worth of food and was headed in to a light snowstorm. He got stuck on Dick's Pass and froze his butt off that night. He ended up with four inches of snow on the tent and had to wear every stitch of clothing he had and still he spent the night shivering. He decided to skip his food resupply at Sierra City and had to stretch three days of food to five. With all the snow Ray found himself VERY lost on several occassions. With food running low he had to push on hard to Belden doing three 40+ mile days in a row. " Ray figures he consumes about 8000 calories a day. In a somewhat typical re-supply he might buy two entire boxes of Hershey's chocolate bars, 10 quarts of powdered milk, two jars of peanut butter, sardines, deviled ham, raisins, 10 milky way bars, 10 Clif bars, 20 granola bars, some Tiger bars, tang, oreo cookies, Wheat Thins and Cheezits. This would be for about three and a half days

Hey how about a grass fed Ostrich burger stuffed with blueberries? Man, till you've had one of those, you just don't know what good eating is! Somehow, I don't think ol' Doc Mercola's diet is gonna go mainstream any day soon.

Here's something a friend passed along to me today. Something that those of us who are work obsessed (not me, baby!), should keep in mind.

#The Story of the Five Balls
Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is like a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls-family, health, friends, integrity-are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginning of balance in your life.

Finishing today a quite interesting book on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. How many of you would have guessed that it was heavily contributed to by a madman in an insane asylum in England? Truly so. If you like reading and words, this will engross you. It's amazing what goes into just putting 1 word into the dictionary. It is more amazing that a madman contibuted countless words and quotations to it for 20 continuous years. If you get the chance , check out The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester.

If you're interested in the dictionary, you can view it online by going to the OED web site. They have a nice free tour of how the online dictionary works. (You have to suscribe to use the actuall full online version though). If you want it on CD ROM, you can get it that way, too. Requires 1.1 Gigs of Hard Drive space to run it off the CD, if you install it completely to your hard drive, it will take 1.7 Gigs of space. And it's a mere $295.00! If you just want to access it online, you will be happy to hear that a 12 month (minimum length of time) subscription is also a mere $295.00! If you want the 20 volume printed version, it's a mere $895 + $60 shipping. (and that's a special price to celebrate the dictionary's 75th anniversary this year - price good till 12/31/2003, so better snap one up now!). (The dictionary project was actually begun in 1857, but wasn't first published until 1928)

You can view a "word of the day" for free. The one today is "knitting" and can be viewed here. It is amazing how people collected all these various instances of how these words were used and then submitted them to Oxford to be sorted,analyzed, filed, collated,etc.,etc. They had people all over the world reading all kinds of books and then submitting these entries. Easy to understand why it took them 70 years to make it a reality.

A Lesson in Giving A wonderful short story. It's not about how much you have, it's about what you have inside.