Aparently I have 601 entries. I didn't realize the minor milestone until this entry. I guess I'm not fully back into the swing of actually making entries.

In unrelated news, happy birthday (slightly belated) to Helen.

I like this week. There was no traffic at all, and I'd like to suggest that 50% of people stay home from work on any given week, because it cuts down my commute by a few minutes and then I don't worry about traffic and such. Of course there seemed to be more police running radar then usual, I think this is a rather sketchy end of the month kind of thing to do.

Its the 3rd night of hanukkah. This is exciting. Tonight was the official getting of the sirius night, even though its actually been installed for a few weeks. You know, its hard to keep things in their packages when you'd rather it was just happily running.

Cable prices are going up. Its like getting nickle and dimed to death, each of the 5 or so things (basic cable, DVR service, internet) go up by a bit, and suddenly they snuck in a $5 increase in the overall bill. I think this is the impetus to get rid of the extra digital box in the living room. It doesn't make sense to have both that and the dvr and pay extra for it, when all the shows that are worth watching are on the dvr. Maybe this is an advertisement for streaming? Life would be easier if one box did everything. And if it was made by linksys/cisco, so it'd stack on the pile of blue boxes. I wonder if the cisco acquisition of scientific atlanta will support the linksys stack profile... It only took them what, 20 years to realize a 17" wide rack width cable box is a good thing, not some stupid 14" wide thing that you can't put anywhere?

Ohh well, enough ranting. I have to go relax now and enjoy the weather (its above freezing, which isn't worth mentioning, except i mentioned it was cold, so now i need to balance that out)

I guess in honor of it officially being winter, the temperature has actually gone above freezing. this is quite handy on many fronts. Not the least of which is that I haven't fully gotten all summer washer fluid out through the piping of the car (i filled up the tank with winter a few weeks ago) so the rear wiper wouldn't spray when it was below freezing. I hope In the 5 or 6 sprays on the way home today I cleared that up. Of course its not going to be below freezing again during the day for at least 4 or 5 days, so I guess I won't actually know.

Its also nicer that its warm, so when I stop for gas in the morning because I forgot to get it last night I don't free while pumping. And then I get coffee. I think this is a scam to get me to buy coffee at the gas station. Of course I'd probably buy more coffee if their cups had lids that sealed, so I didn't need to use a 24 oz cup with 16 oz of coffee in it and still worry that a little bit will slosh out. Donut connection (and wegmans for that matter) have much better cups. Anyway, its thursday, which means one more day of work. for those of us that have to work. i think the plan is to get out early, but we'll see. I'm jealous of certain spouses of mine that have tomorrow off. hrmph.

I realized, that sometimes toothpicks aren't the correct size for all tooth-picking needs. Sometimes, you need something smaller. I suppose you could also need something bigger, but for that you could probably use the eraser end of a pencil. In any case, smaller would be helpful, so you could have toothpicks say half the diameter of a normal one. Unfortunately on further examination of this theory, I realized they already exist. Usually referred to as splinters. I think the great idea was defeated before it even started.

In other news, Cingular is releasing push to talk. I'm not sure this is useful, though I suppose it proves that a good idea doesn't sit still for very long, and after verizon did it, it was bound to spread. I still maintain I'd prefer better coverage and cheaper plans then business oriented features, but obviously enough people like the 2 way thing to do the 2 way thing everywhere. Hopefully they'll have it on some nicer phones - but doesn't it defeat the coolness of your razr if you're standing in the middle of the bread aisle yelling at your phone if you should get white or wheat?

So I'm trying to be good. Its thursday. That's exciting, mostly because its almost friday. Actually thats not the main point. Its the usual, though last meeting of the thursday class, (they were only 5 weeks of class) but the cooking class is on dairy stuff this week. Handy, because you know, if you're going ethnic, there's only a certain amount of brisket you may want to learn how to make at any given point. I'd rather expand to fun stuff like, well i'm not sure, I guess that's why I need to go to the class. I heard rumor of flan. We'll see what actually occurs.

I went to erie yesterday for work. It was fun. However I didn't get to stop by wegs. It was sad. The whole drive and not even a good sandwich. We had to stop at burger king because we were in a hurry. Such is life I suppose, and I shouldn't complain about a free lunch.

In other news, I still need to deciide if I should get a snow blower, fix the one we have, or just ignore the problem. For small history, I attemped to fix the plastic side that was broken by pop-riveting on a new piece of plastic. After buying a riveter (harbor frieght, so cheap) and then realizing the rivets were too short, then buying correct rivets (lowes, not as cheap) it finally sorta worked. Until the new plastic was too weak, so it just ripped after 2 tests. Of course I did that when it wasn't 25 degrees out, so I'm less inclined to attempt to actually fix it, with the correct part ($35 or so last time I checked). But lately, now shoveling and just driving over it has been working well, so there's less incentive to do anything about the problem.

I'm a slacker. ok. lets move on.

It took like an hour to get home, because it snowed like 6" after they said it would snow last night, and it didn't but then it did today. Stupid weather people. Enough of that. At least I could listen to 80's radio on the brisk drive at 12mph on a 4 lane highway. Yay Sirius and its handy channel 8.

So I found this interesting tidbit in the Times today:
And marketers say the trend toward using the word "holiday" instead of "Christmas" is indicative of more than a desire to include non-Christians in a sales pitch. Products with the word "Christmas" often lose value after Dec. 25, while generic holiday themes with snowflakes and candy canes can sell well into January.

Its always good to know non-christians don't run the world, capitalists do. Now if only pumpkin spice coffee creamer actually tasted good, I might be enticed to continue to buy it into January.

I suppose that's about it for the moment, I'll try to be less slacking. I notice the more time I spend at work the less time I feel like randomly browsing websites, even if I'm not doing that at work, so maybe I'll feel more interested in keeping this up to date. Not that I've been getting up with enough time to do it in the morning, but that's what evenings are for I think. Lets see how long that theory lasts.