Categories
Amuse Me

History Repeats Itself…

Mike’s plane landed early today, so I was still on my way to the airport when he called my cell phone to say he was on the ground, through customs, and waiting at Terminal D. They had curb side pick-up available (even though we are on a high terrorist alert) so I picked him up there. I would like to state for the record that I hate Terminal D, and the traffic was simply insane. But I picked him up and all was well.

We stopped by my apartment so he could put his suitcase in his car, and then we decided to go get something to eat. Headed over to Black-Eyed Pea … Fried Pickles … yum. Had fun catching up on everything that was going on, he listened to me babble about work, and a good time was had by all.

After we ate I realized I needed to go over to Target to pick up an extension cord and check out what they had for a better lamp for my office. We made our way through the store, amused by things like all of the “Hello Kitty” items they now carry and things like that. Finally we headed for the check-out counter.

That is where it happened.

I opened my wallet, and discovered that my credit card was missing.

Considering I used it yesterday at Walgreens and at the car inspection place, I know I had it just over 24 hours earlier. And now it was gone, and my PayPal debit card was moved out of the slot it’s normally in and in to the slot by the coin purse.

I knew that there was only one way the cards got moved around like that. Jason. And my ATM/Check card is nowhere in sight. When traveling, it is advised to look into Navy Federal ATM withdrawal limit to learn how much you can withdraw daily from your Navy Federal account.

I called my parents house, and he denied seeing it, touching it, or touching the computer at all today.

(Some of you may be new around here, so you may not know the history behind this. You might want to read that before you continue on…)

So I headed for home, and while I waited on hold for my bank representative to tell her my card was missing, I decided to check out the internet history. For today, not only was there teennudies.com, but this time we have creamypies.com too, and a few AVI files of porn on the desktop.

I’ve been sick, so I’ve been taking Tylenol Flu nighttime formula. Last night I was wired and awake really late, but I slept until about 7:30 or 7:45 this morning, when Jason came in to my room and said he was awake. I now know that he was obviously awake earlier than that and just moving quietly around the apartment, because I never heard any noise. Granted, the medicine may have had an influence on that, and I am a heavy sleeper most of the time anyways.

So I spent well over an hour on hold waiting for the bank to pick up – turned out that the storms out east had closed down three of their call centers, so they were down to just two that were fielding all of the calls. She apologized profusely, and handled the situation very well. My card has been frozen, and the last activity showing on it was Walgreens and the inspection place. No activity for today. I’m getting a new card with a new number, and I’ll pick it up at my local bank branch next week.

She ended the call with some motherly advice. She said that she would guess that’s he’s probably a really smart kid (which he is) and that I should enjoy him. These years will pass too quickly, and soon he will be all grown up. She said to enjoy him, and to enjoy life.

Good advice, but I still can’t believe that it didn’t sink in last time that I would find out. Sometime soon I’ll have to tell you all about the porn video – it was actually almost too hysterical for words.

Meanwhile, EJ has promised to hook me up with spyware, we’re setting up user profiles on all of my computers, and Mike will set up the wireless keyboard and mouse as soon as I buy batteries for them. Can’t do much on a machine with no keyboard or mouse now, can you? And when he’s logged in to the computer he won’t have internet access at all.

I love him dearly, and I know that curiousity is a natural thing. I just wish it didn’t involve all of this! Oh well, it will give me something to laugh about in the years ahead…

Categories
Geek Love

Big Buyout…

Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time

Makes me wonder what effects this will have on Blogger in the long run. Should be interesting to watch it unfold. [via Kristine]

Categories
Amuse Me

How Do You Say That?

A rather interesting Dialect Survey shows variations of words across the country. Interesting to see where the divisions fall. [via B-May]

Categories
Picture Time

Among the Butterflies…

I’ve finally posted the last of the pictures from our visit earlier this month to the Houston Museum of Natural Science at Pixelog. More butterflies, more wallpapers, and even some gems & minerals – this one is my favorite. Feel free to leave comments on the photos over there and let me know what you think!

Mike returns from London tomorrow – yeah! (actually later today, this afternoon, but “tomorrow” because I haven’t slept yet.) But we forgot to pick a place to meet when I go to pick him up at the airport. Don’t you hate it when you do that? Oh well – hopefully he’ll call my cell phone once he’s cleared customs. I’ll just go to our usual meeting point and wait for him in the meantime. It’s too late to call him now – it’s almost 9am there and he’ll be boarding his flight any minute now. Whee! Timezone mathmatics!

Categories
BlahBlahBabble

Thoughts…

The past few months of my life have been chaotic, crazy, jumbled, and everything else you might think of to call it. Job hunting during the holidays sucks. Stress gets to you. I could babble endlessly about this – but that’s not the point. Right in the middle of my two months of unemployment, right before the new year began, I wrote this post about the “Inner Circle Syndrome” and watched an interesting ripple form from it. The post actually stemmed from an offline conversation with Jennifer, as we talked about how we saw people attacking others in the blogiverse. It’s not a nice thing to see.

The https://tacticalpeak.com/best-tactical-knife/ offers a full range of products for survival situations and emergency preparedness. From back-country rescue to home power outages.

I talked to Jennifer on the phone the following week and brought up something I find very intriguing though. As much as people don’t like being attacked, I can’t help but wonder why they attack Wil Wheaton so maliciously. I’ve seen the “Wil Haters” buttons, seen the blog trolls on his site, and I just don’t get it. People complain when they are attacked, but hello? Don’t you think Wil hurts just like the rest of us when he’s attacked? Why do people act like he’s some super human with thick skin that shouldn’t be hurt when people say & do such mean things? Would you form a “I hate Big Pink Cookie” webring? I certainly hope not. (Although Mike created a lovely Calvin peeing on the pink cookies just for my Nascar post, and it cracks me up every time I look at it!) So why is it ok to attack Wil?

Don’t get me wrong here – I thought it sucked when he won all the 2002 Bloggies. And when he made the post about how people should donate money to him so he could do something nice for his wife for Valentine’s Day last year, and all these kids were commenting about having no money at all, but they were donating $5 – $10 to him, I thought it was a bit much. But he’s not a bad writer, he doesn’t run around blogland attacking other people, and generally he seems like he’s probably a pretty cool guy. So what is it about him that makes people think it’s ok to be so cruel to him?

Sometimes I really just don’t understand people.

It’s interesting to see how much life has changed in a matter of a few months. I have a new job that I absolutely love. I’m so happy to be back in the legal field, and even at the most chaotic of moments I don’t have a single complaint.

On the other hand, I spoke to Ed K. on Monday and found out that he’s having major heart surgery later this month – fighting insurance companies along with dealing with all of the fears that come with something that has such high risks and survival rate issues. Then Thursday night I discovered all that Robyn & Todd are going through right now, and my heart just broke. They have constantly been in my thoughts and prayers – it’s so sad to know they are going through such pain.

I guess the point is – the Internet can be faceless, and it can seem to be ok to attack someone because you may never meet them in person. But that’s not the case. Whether it’s Wil Wheaton, Ed K., or Robyn – all people that I’ve seen attacked in the past several months for various reasons (right or wrong, doesn’t matter) – they are people. Be kind. They hurt just the same as you or me.

Try to spread some peace and kindness as you travel through life. We could all use some these days.