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Monday, January 22, 2007

All Kinds of Stuff

I'm going to be all over the map on topics, I can see it already. First, I mentioned here that I received Midwest Fiction Writers' Rising Star Award. I finally have a picture of it to share with y'all. Please, bear with me. This is like one of the coolest things ever for me. :-)



I took a variety of angles and lighting to get the shot as clear as possible. The acrylic made it difficult because of the way light reflected off of it.

While I'm showing pictures, here's the picture of the hawk I saw while I was writing a couple of weekends ago. I love hawks; they're so majestic and focused.



This is the fence at the back of my house. He sat there for a really long time, I guess watching for rodents. That was the same day that I saw a herd of deer go through my backyard. Way cool day!

The big news from the weekend is that I have cable internet now! Yea! I finally joined the 21st century. I'll probably have a stroke when I get my cable bill, but for now, I'm loving the hell out of it. I was able to download updates for Windows in a flash and I found the Puma ninja commercials on You Tube! OMG! I was able to watch them on my computer!

After I had my haircut on Saturday, I swung by Circuit City and picked up the modem and the Comcast install kit. I had it hooked up pretty quick too. There were a couple of minor difficulties, like screwing the cable into the cable outlet. I was turning the thing the wrong way, but once I figured that out, it went faster. I think the longest time I spent on anything was on hold with the cable company to make sure I was activated. The guy at the store said to call, but the woman I talked to was like, huh? So that was an unnecessary step, I guess. But I'm up and running now. Yea! Yea! Yea!

I hooked the cable modem up to my desktop computer. Or should I refer to it as the relic? I've been talking about replacing it for at least a year, but I've been trying to wait for the new OS, Windows Vista, to be loaded on the computers and for the bugs to be worked out of it--most of them anyway--before buying one. However, the high speed internet connection makes the computer churn as it tries to keep up. So next step, I guess, is to cave in and buy the new system and then I need to network my house so that I can access the high speed connection on the laptop--which is what I use 99% of the time. I hate the chair in the computer room. It leaves me in pain if I sit in it too long, so I'm not having much opportunity to take advantage of the high speed connection.