Crow and Kitten are Friends

this one's a bit long, but I'm a sucker for mixed-species friendships.

cat in a bowl. A Bowl!

i've seen this happen to hamster-balls too.

Sorry, Internet

here's a few videos for your enjoyment. Arrested Development fans should enjoy seeing David Cross as a (agile) cat. :)

yay!

New Line and Peter Jackson settled their lawsuit and have agreed to make The Hobbit and an apparent sequal. Im guessing they're going to split The Hobbit into two movies... I suppose they could make a movie about Gandalf and co. chasing out the Necromancer, aka Sauron, from Mirkwood which happens during the timeline of The Hobbit, but Tolkien didn't really give that much back-story. I'd much rather see something taken out of the Silmarillion :) More about Feanor and the rings would be cool. The return of the elves from Valinor, etc..

guess what....

Chicken Butt!! I thought I was one of a few who found this joke hilarious, I had no idea it had its own tshirt. I have to fight the urge to obnoxiously say 'Chicken Butt!' whenever anyone says 'know what?' or 'guess what?'

another flash project

hi again, I'm still working on projects for the Flash class I'm taking, and to prove it, here's another project. Its a flash presentation of a book we're using in class. The class is almost over, and when it is done I will have finished my portfolio, which I'm making for the final project. I will post a link to that as well, and will get back to posting more blog entries.

a flash project

Here's one of the projects I've worked on in my flash class, a "movie-title credits" animation: Alien Invasion Movie Credits
For some reason it runs slower in IE than in Firefox.

im sorry im sorry ok?

ive been getting some heat for the lack of updates, but i have a good reason, ok? I've been working on a portfolio website to lure some freelance work my way, and ive been busy with projects for an Adobe Flash class I'm taking. I will post again, just be patient :)

Happy Halloween :)

My coworkers and I dressed up as members of the Geek Squad (not too far off...)

Photos from Alabama

As promised here are some photos from my recent trip to Alabama

oops

sorry for the hiatus, i will have some new posts soon, with some pics from my recent trip to alabama

Nation's children better off in the hands of major corporations.

So today Dubya decided that socialized medicine was just too threatening and expensive to allow uninsured children to be covered by the government. Is $35 billion over five years really too much to spend on uninsured children? We're spending that in less than 2 months for the war in Iraq. It's obvious that it isn't Bush being fiscally conservative that makes him resistant to providing health care to uninsured children. He has no problem throwing money at a quagmire. Its just that he doesn't wanna upset all his friends in the insurance industry.

"I believe in private medicine, not the federal government running the health care system. I do want Republicans and Democrats to come together to support a bill that focuses on the poorer children," the president said, adding the government's policy should be to help people find private insurance.

Interesting.. he has no problem with the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program.
"President Bush has often pointed to the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program as a model for health insurance. The FEHB Program is the largest employer-sponsored health insurance program in the Nation, serving more than 8 million Federal employees, annuitants, and their dependents. The U. S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) administers the FEHB Program, which currently offers about 250 health plan choices, providing over $29 billion in health care benefits annually."

The employer being the federal government. Meaning, health insurance ran by the federal government.. This is the same system that provides health insurance to all the members of Congress, and I'm assuming the President and his family, although I have been unable to verify that. (If anyone else is more successful in finding out what insurance dubya gets, i'd love to see it)

"The program gives coverage to parents who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to buy private insurance for their children. Critics have said their concern is that parents might be prompted to drop private coverage for their children to get cheaper coverage under the bill"

So what? Why do children have to be uninsured because their parents aren't poverty stricken but can't afford the outrageous cost of health insurance? Our government is in utter denial over the financial-health of the middle class. Why should an average family have to scrape by in order to pay for their children's health insurance?

Moral of the story: Spending $720million a day to kill Iraqis and put our soldiers in danger is okay. Spending that every 2 months to insure children, regardless of income, just too risky.

it happened!

it really happened, Lorenzo and Melissa were in the Atlantic at the same time! Sadly Lorenzo turned into a deadly hurricane, and sadly Melissa is almost kaput.. but it happened!

hurricanes

We're getting closer to hurricanes Lorenzo and Melissa! Ah I can't wait, I hope they form at the same time...

health care

Finally something I can stand behind Hillary on, Clinton unveils mandatory health care insurance plan. She hasn't yet won my vote, but its a good start. I'm still rooting for Obama.

conspiracy theories abound...

but they are interesting to read. This power-point presentation on the collapse of the 3 World Trade Center buildings makes some good points. Read more on the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth's website.

We're not sheep.. lets at least ask some questions..

"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'" - 1984, George Orwell

cry baby.

Author Robert Draper's book Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush contains some pretty interesting interviews with ol' dubya, in which he admits to crying a lot and seeing ghosts. It also reveals that he plans to make "ridiculous" money giving lectures after he leaves the Whitehouse. Has he heard himself give speeches? Clinton he isn't.

Incidently, the book quotes Cheney talking about the lead-up to the war in Iraq: "When a senior congressional Republican warned Dick Cheney in August 2002 that the U.S. would get mired in Iraq, the vice-president reportedly scoffed.
'It'll be like the American army going through the streets of Paris (in the Second World War),' Cheney said. 'The people will be so happy with their freedoms that we'll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two.'"

Doesn't sound like the Cheney in the video below... more evidence that he's a robot replacement.

Cheney '94: Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire C-SPAN

Cheney gave this interview on C-SPAN shortly after leaving the position of Secretary of Defense for the first Bush Admin.
Why the change of heart? Is VP Cheney an imposter?
he's a robot.

Russian Cat Lady

oh to be the person living below her...

help the iraq.

oh. my. god. watch the host's face when they pan out. (i believe its ac slater)

The Scarn Ultimatum - the Office v3 - Final Cut

photoshoppin

i love photoshop, i do, i use it all the time. maybe im a photoshop addict. using it is just part of my job. anyway.. check out some amazing photoshop retouches of celebrities, iwanexstudio.com. what a difference in the before and afters. some looked better before me thinks.

MST3K - What To Do On A Date

Daily Show Operation Fluffy Bunny

Yes, Iraq is just like an Indiana market in the summer.

YUM

waaaaay better than starbucks' mocha frappuccino. and doesn't sound as stupid as 'frappuccino'.

credit card minimums

today at lunch i encountered an incident regarding 'minimum transaction amounts' that some stores/restaurants require to process a credit card. Usually its no less than $2 or $5. I had heard that they actually can't do that. The situation wasn't resolved very happily on the restaurant's part and it motivated me to google it. (im an eager researcher) Sure enough, it's a violation of the major credit card companies' agreements with the merchants to impose a minimum charge amount.

The Consumerist wrote a very lengthy and complete article regarding this fact. There are links to the credit card companies' merchant agreements that very clearly state that merchants cannot require minimum charges.

Mastercard states: 9.12.3 Minimum/Maximum Transaction Amount Prohibited
A merchant must not require, or post signs indicating that it requires, a minimum or maximum transaction amount to accept a valid MasterCard card.

Visa states: Dollar Minimums and Maximums - Always honor valid Visa cards, in your acceptance category, regardless of the dollar amount of the purchase. Imposing minimum or maximum purchase amounts is a violation.

Discover states: 3.6 Minimum/Maximum Dollar Limits and Other Limits You may not require that any Cardmember make a minimum dollar purchase in order to use a Card and, other than when we have not authorized a Cardmember's transaction, you may not limit the maximum amount that a Cardmember may spend when using a Card.

So there! Maybe the stores need a gentle reminder of the agreement they made with the credit card companies when they started accepting the cards. I understand that there is a fee that the merchant must pay per transaction, and I do try to impose my own limit.. Perhaps the merchants need to band together to lower the per-transaction fees on the smaller amount charges.

wpm

see how fast you can type, labs.jphantom.com/wpm. (hint, you have to correct any mistakes to continue the test)
My best was 110.92 wpm with no mistakes. Ok, really I just wanted to brag...

ugghhh

anyone who knows me knows that I am terrified of snakes. I love animals*, but something about snakes just completely freaks me out. They have no legs! They have sharp sometimes poisonous teeth! They can slither into your house through little holes and you dont even know it until its strangling you with its giant muscular body.. anyway.. More proof that snakes are evil. They can bite you even when they are DEAD. that's not right...

*honestly, I really do love most animals, and value animal life often times more than human.. but i won't budge on the snakes.. they leave me alone and i leave them alone. its a nice compromise.

George Carlin: education and the owners of America

a little subversiveness for your friday morning. george carlin is spot on.

hungry hungry hippo

this is so cute. i plan to post more non-harry potter related entries soon, i promise.

yet more potter

if you don't want to spoil the ending of Deathly Hallows, don't click on the link below.

I mentioned that I was a little disappointed by the way that Deathly Hallows ended so abruptly. JK Rowling did a 90 minute web chat with fans and goes a little more in-depth into the future of the characters following the end of the story. It helps a little... better than the epilogue she included in the book.

Update: another link with more info on the fate of the characters.

harry potter dead or alive.

i finished the final harry potter book around 2am this morning. i always thought the movies were cute, but after the 4th movie, the goblet of fire, my interest in the series was piqued enough that I decided to start reading them. I would not consider myself a potter-devotee, I've only read the final 3 books, but they were a lot of fun. The last book especially, I was so involved in the story and stressed out. I wish the book hadn't ended as abruptly as it did, the majority of the book was full of so much traveling, for it to end the way that it did was just a tiny bit unsatisfying. But I will say no more, no spoiling here. I like endings, like the end of Return of the King, scouring of the shire and all. I think, after being with the characters for so long, I want to stay with them for a little while longer after the final climactic scene and see where they end up. All in all though, the book was very enjoyable and the ending of the series very bittersweet.

oh me.

yet another thing for me to nerd out on. theres been rumors for years, hopefully this means its actually going to happen...

parry hotter

4 days 14 hours and 34 minutes until deathly hallows. i will be annoying about it this week.

quotes

"In the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it." Barack Obama 2/10/07

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1787

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." Mark Twain

might morphin'

I have had way too much fun with Morph Thing.

Check out a few of the other morphs I've done.

photoshopping

I enjoy good photoshopping and Planet Hiltron has some pretty excellent photoshops of celebrities as "real" people. The visitor's gallery is very good as well.

The internet crashed recently. Fortunately I backed up.

music

I occasionally change the album icons in the 'listening' section on the right (which, btw, if you plan on buying something through amazon, click on one of those albums to go to amazon, and I'll get associates credits from your purchase, thanks ;) but they're just albums i've listened to lately and wanted to promote. Here's my iTunes library in PDF format if you'd like to see what I listen to, or would like to check out some good music, look 'em up.

botd #2

I have won BOTD for a second time woo! If only I could use my special BOTD powers for good... let's hope this win isn't as controversial as the last one.. just have to get those vulcans on my side.

google

I realized earlier that I use google a lot, but not as a search engine. It is my spell-checker. I have google set as the default search engine in my browser search toolbar, and anytime i'm not sure about the spelling of a word I type it into the toolbar and google tells me the correct spelling. thanks google!

seti@home

I was picked yesterday for Seti@home's user of the day, and judging by my web logs quite a few people checked Seti@home's website. I was going to post something about it yesterday, but given that I was already bestowed the honor of Seti@home Babe of the Day I didn't want to brag about my latest Seti@home accolade. Now if only my computer would find the alien signal and I could get that recognition... Thank you Seti@home (and i'm assuming its random user of the day generator) for the recognition.

probably the last video for a little while...

click on the Chipmunk to load the video. It's worth it.

Barack Obama on Iraq, Opposition from the Start

Barack Obama YouTube Spotlight

video day

a very creepy ghost video

optical illusion videos

Illusion #1
Illusion #2
Illusion #3

i thought our tv shows were weird..

Johnny Depp appeared on a very strange, or a few very strange Japanese tv shows for the promotion of Pirates of the Caribbean. impressive patience and a very good sport.

more reasons to vote for Barack Obama

In May of 2006 Barack Obama introduced a bill to the Senate that requires oil companies that made at least $1 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2006 to invest at least 1% of the their total reported first quarter 2006 profits into installing E-85 pumps. The bill was referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

In January of 2007 Obama introduced a bill cited as the "Oil SENSE Act" to eliminate unnecessary tax breaks to the oil industry. A version of the bill was passed by House of Representatives in January 2007. The bill was referred to the Committee on Finance.

Taken from Obama's senate website: "Throughout his political career, Barack Obama has fought for open and honest government. As an Illinois State Senator, he helped pass the state’s first major ethics reform bill in 25 years. And as a U.S. Senator, he has spearheaded the effort to clean up Washington in the wake of numerous scandals.
In the first two weeks of the 110th Congress, Senator Obama helped lead the Senate to pass the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act, a comprehensive ethics and lobbying reform bill, by a 96-2 vote.
The bill passed by the Senate closely mirrored a bill (S. 230) that Senators Obama and Feingold introduced in January 2007 to establish a “gold standard” for reform. Among the provisions in the Obama-Feingold bill that were adopted by the Senate were: strict bans on receiving gifts and meals from lobbyists; new rules to slow the revolving door between public and private sector service; and an end to the subsidized use of corporate jets.
Most importantly, the Senate-passed bill contained an Obama amendment to require the disclosure of contributions that registered lobbyists “bundle” – that is, collect or arrange – for candidates, leadership PACs, and party committees. The New York Times called this provision “the most sweeping” in the bill, and the Washington Post said: “No single change would add more to public understanding of how money really operates in Washington.” "

Its time for a change in our government. Its time for a president who doesn't have his/her hands in the pockets of the lobbying firms and giant corporatations. Its time for a president who is willing to introduce controversial laws to enact real change. Lets get Hillary out of the media spotlight and support a candidate who is not just another politician in the inner circles of DC.

penny

today is the 1 year anniversary of my adoption of Penny from the local animal shelter. At first I was a bit apprehensive about adopting her on 6/6/06, but she's turned out alright ;)

me and hurricanes

Finally my name is listed on the hurricane name list for 2007, there very well could be a hurricane Melissa this season, but the L name is Lorenzo!! just two letters off my last name. Freaky!!

oh democrats...

The Democrats show us once again that they are all bark, no bite. Come on Democrats, grow a damn backbone and stick to the agenda that helped you win back Congress. Asking for a plan is not an unreasonable request. When I get a loan from the bank, they give me a payment plan and I am expected to follow it. And I'm not asking for $100 billion! This bow-down mentality exactly what is going to cost the Democrats the White House in '08. The Democrats got their original bill passed through both houses, it was Dubya who foiled it. They should have came back with a bill that would have gotten enough votes to override a veto, but still would have called for at least a minimal plan for the war.

Instead of setting schedules for pulling U.S. troops, it appeared the Democratic-run Congress and the Republican White House agreed for the first time to include conditions prodding Baghdad to make better progress toward quelling violence or risk losing around $1.3 billion in U.S. reconstruction aid.

"Prodding" Great. We're going to prod the Iraqi government.

Bush could waive the provision, however.

Suprise suprise. The Democrats are going to try again in July for a troop withdrawal plan but the White House has already called their bluff, so why bother?

Congress has approved about $450 billion to date for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but economists also have been tabulating the long-term costs such as veterans' care.

AEI-Brookings total expected future costs for the Iraq war.

Oh yeah, where's bin Laden?

children of hurin

I finished Children of Hurin last week (im sort of a slow reader) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Although I already knew how it would end b/c there's a shorter version of the story in The Silmarillion, but the extra details in this novel were fun to read. Just two months till Deathly Hallows comes out, yes I have it preordered and it will arrive at my door on July 21st or I get it free (sweet). [exit nerdness stage right]

I made a really good dish last night for dinner, try it out, Artichoke Chicken. I added chopped spinach, and subbed half the mayo for sour cream.

zzz

i am so tired today, gahh. i wonder if seasonal allergies makes a person sleepy. that person being me. usually i care a lot about american idol, but this year I could really care less. Maybe I've just grown out of it... it doesnt seem like this season was very interesting, yah sanjaya had cra-razy hair, but everyone else has been *dull* im sure jordin will win, blah blahgablah. i didn't really feel like posting anything too heavy or political today, so I hope you enjoyed my ramblings.

CS3 now on eBay

My eBay auction of Adobe Creative Suite 3 is up on eBay

Check out the listing

save yourself some money and buy it from me! :) sorry international readers, I don't think I can ship the software internationally, don't want to violate any unforseen trade rules or whatever.

creative suite 3

In the next week or so I will receive the full version of Adobe Creative Suite 3, Design Premium, which I won in a contest (im so lucky). I will be auctioning it on eBay, so if you're planning on buying it, and would like to get it a little cheaper, keep checking back, I'll post a link to the auction as soon as I put it on eBay.

Happy may day

As we celebrate May Day let us not forget that this is also the anniversary of the end of military combat in Iraq. Since Bush declared 'Mission Accomplished' on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln four years ago, Iraq has enjoyed peace and prosperity as it has steadily rebuilt its goverment and infrastructure. Oh crap, none of that has happened.

A report came out yesterday from the U.S. State Department that global terrorism increased more than 25% in 2006.

"The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more." - Bush four years ago today

"Incidents in Iraq accounted for nearly half of the 14,000 attacks and about two-thirds of the more than 20,000 fatalities worldwide. The number of deaths blamed on attacks increased by about 40 percent.
The spike comes from the eruption of sectarian killings and bombings that followed the February 2006 bombing of the al-Askariya mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra, according to Frank Urbancic, the State Department's acting counterterrorism coordinator.
That attack, blamed on al Qaeda in Iraq, destroyed a revered Shiite Muslim shrine and led to a wave of reprisals between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite communities." CNN.com today

War in Iraq Far from Being Over

BOTD

Apparently I was named the Seti@home Babe of the Day back in March 2005. Had I known I would have thanked the nerds who voted for me, even the Asst. Chief Science Officer of Vulcan Studies Moderator who debated my win b/c I wasn't actively using Seti@home. For the record, it was starting to burn into my screen, which defeated the purpose of using it as a screensaver. It crashed a lot too, which on a mac, is truely a rare ocurrence.

Looks ain't everything....! >:-/

:)

table tops, table frames, time tables

So the House passed the war funding bill last night, which included a requirement that a time-table must be set for pulling out of Iraq. Now its the Senate's turn to debate. Bush has made it very clear that he plans to veto this bill as long as it contains the time-table requirement. God forbid there should be any sort of a plan to fix this mess we've created! Yes, we should get out of Iraq, eventually it will happen and its time to start figuring out how that will work.
Bush is just being a spoiled little baby, crying over the fact that he's being forced to end this war. He's not done playing yet... he still has enough little plastic army men in the sandbox to continue his game, all he needs is the money to keep the game going, and the big bad Congress is getting in his way. waaah. He will not even consider talking to Congress if it means they're going to try to talk him into this crazy scheme.

more videos

ya know, I think I'm gonna miss the funny videos of bush when his term is (finally) over...
Top 10 George W Bush Moments
Great Moments in Presidental Speeches

awwwwwww

If you haven't yet received the video of the otters holding hands in your inbox, watch it now, it is way too cute. Another cute, well emailed video, The Landlord

uhmmm

yeah, so I was the only nerd who freaked out over Children of Hurin. there were plenty of copies at my local barnes and nobles.

at long last

i feel like its been a few ages since I first read that another Tolkien book, The Children of Hurin was going to be released. Finally, the wait is over. Had I been smart I would've pre-ordered it as I did the new harry potter book, but hopefully my local book store will have a copy of it today. now I just have to wait until July 21st for the deathly hallows. god im such a nerd.

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

I woke up to the sad story of his death on npr, and somehow I always knew it would be in that manner that I would learn of his death. It was morbid to think of his death and how i would learn of it long before it happened, but I was always hoping to get the chance one day to see him in person before he died. As he was not one to shy away from talking about his own and our own mortality, it was always in the back of my mind that I had a limited amount of time to see him. Unfortunately I never got the chance. It would have been nice, his books played such a major role in the shaping of my adolescent mind, I wish I could have thanked him. I did send him a letter once, but who knows if he got it.
I was never much of a student, I didn't like assignments, especially reading assignments. Don't get me wrong, I love to read, but being assigned something to read left a bad taste in my mouth. So when I was assigned Slaughterhouse-Five my sophomore year of highschool I put the book in my backpack and didn't crack it open. I would listen to what my classmates were discussing about the book and I thought "what the hell kind of book is this? space-travel, time-travel, nazis, and WWII?" It was not easy to follow the discussions. As fate would have it, I forgot to turn in the book when the assigment was over. A few months later, after the burden of being assigned the book was gone, I started to read it. I was hooked. I couldn't stop reading his books, one after another I went through his entire collection of works. He had such an amazing imagination and sense of humor, it changed my perception of the world more profoundly than anything else in my life.
I am so proud that he was from Indiana. My state isn't known for much more than the Indy 500 and the Colts, so I thought it was fantastic that someone whom I admired so much was born, and grew up, less than an hour away. He always wrote fondly about the midwest, dedicating an essay to the midwest titled "To Be A Native Middle-Westerner".
While I am so sad that he has passed, I'm confident that he is actually just unstuck in time and is currently experiencing a very pleasant part of his life. Perhaps he's wrestling with a dog.

The Chicago Tribune's obit
CNN's obit
Cold Turkey a recent essay by Vonnegut on the current state of things.

"He has stalled finishing his highly anticipated novel If God Were Alive Today - or so he claims. 'I've given up on it ... It won't happen. ... The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people's discharges and stuff. And my feeling was, 'Please, I've done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?' That's what I feel right now. I've written books. Lots of them. Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now?'"

Kurt Vonnegut went home. So it goes.

Boston photos

I have a few photos of Boston as promised. I wish I had taken more but the weather wasn't very permitting (it was sooo coold) http://picasaweb.google.com/melorenzen/Boston

support the right candidate

Donate to Barack Obama's campaign.

"This campaign is about building a different kind of politics. We don't take money from lobbyists or political action committees, and we're going to build a broad base of individual donors to ensure that this campaign answers to no one but the people. That starts with you."

Put the right candidate into office, one that will fight for us, not special interests.

dubya makes some funnies

Watch the video, its linked in the first few paragraphs. Had Bush been this funny during his first term and a half, maybe I would've liked him more. naaaaah. But honestly, he is pretty funny.

upcoming trip = photos

i'm going to boston next week for a conference, so of course I will take photos. probably not of the conference itself, but of boston. unless of course the conference is very photogenic... i'm currently working on my very first video podcast for work. it has nothing to do with me, and is really only interesting to people who are into brand marketing, but I will post a link to it when it is done b/c i am proud of it ;)

anger.

This has to be one of the sickest, meanest things I've ever read about. what monsterous thing to do. I hope they find whoever did it and put them in jail for life. I put animal murders right there with human murders. i wish our judicial system did too. this poor girl will be scarred for life.

time for the feds to light(en) up

The federal government decided to prosecute dying people who smoke pot to alleviate their pain and stay alive. yet cigarette smoking kills more than 400,000 people every year and cigarettes are still legal. what sense does that make?

a hypocrite?

Clinton wasn't the only high ranking politician having an affair during his presidency. Newt Gingrich admitted that he was having an affair while he was pushing for Clinton's impeachment. Is he a hypocrite? As he argues in his interview, he was impeaching Clinton for lying under oath, not for having an affair. As Salon.com reported back in 1998, Gingrich's history of affairs isn't anything new. But it does seem hypocritical that he was trying to impeach Clinton for lying about something that Gingrich himself said he would've lied about given the need.

"We had oral sex," Manning revealed. "[Gingrich] prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" She added that Gingrich threatened her: "If you ever tell anybody about this, I'll say you're lying."

not news

fox news shows why it should not be allowed to be called a news network...
Fox News attacks Barack Obama

How childish can they get? "Oh no! His name is unusual and sounds like the name of someone else that is evil! He must be evil too!" Give me a break. He was named after his father. Kudos to him for using Barack as his professional name. He's still a million-billion-kagillion times more qualified to be president than dumbya. I'm currently reading his memoir 'Dreams from my Father' and its really great. If he weren't already a succesful lawyer and politician, he could easily have a career as an author.

he's easy to talk to

have a chat with God

telemarketers

this almost makes me regret signing up for the don't-call-list
How to screw with a telemarketer

currently supporting...

I'm getting excited, is that the word, very interested, maybe thats the right way to put it, for the 2008 presidential elections. Mainly because it means that Dubya will be GONE, but the current selection of primary candidates is actually pretty interesting. (I'm waiting for Dick Gephardt to announce his intentions to run and add some typical blandness to the race.)
I am happy that a woman is running for the nomination. I am not happy that its Hilary Clinton. I don't know exactly what it is, but I find her very unappealing. Maybe its because she does not seem sincere. She hasn't seemed sincere since she ran for Senate in New York. Why New York? Was it just because it seemed like the easiest race to win? I've read that she has done good things for NY as a senator, but still..
Barack Obama is a candidate I can get excited about. Yes he's only a 1 term senator, but he's at least lived in the state he was a senator for over 20 years. According to his website,

Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.
[...]In the Illinois State Senate, this meant working with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

Yes! Good!
He has admitted to doing drugs. He didn't sugar coat it, ignore it, deny it, pretend he didn't inhale. He actually admitted to it. Like a decent person, not a politician.
For one thing, he said, "When I was a kid, I inhaled." "That was the point," Obama told an audience of magazine editors.
Obama had written in his first book, "Dreams From My Father" (1995), before entering politics, that he had used marijuana and cocaine ("maybe a little blow"). He said he had not tried heroin because he did not like the pusher who was trying to sell it to him.

He openly criticizes the war, which anymore isn't too unheard of, but he's been saying it all along,
"I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war."
-Barack Obama Anti-War Rally, Chicago 2002

Senator Obama in his first term as a senator has co-sponsored some very important legislation with some very senior and respected senators, including Indiana's Richard Lugar. Republicans are willing to work with him too.
Senator Obama introduced legislation with Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) to require 2 billion gallons of alternative diesels, such as biodiesel, to be produced domestically by 2015. Obama also sponsored legislation requiring oil companies, that made at least $1 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2006 to invest at least 1 percent of the their total reported first quarter 2006 profits into installing E85 pumps.
Senator Obama worked with Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) to introduce the American Fuels Act that would increase the domestic production, distribution, and use of biofuels, including expanded manufacture of flexible fuel vehicles, tax credits for biofuels, and a nationwide distribution infrastructure.
Senator Obama and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), launched a Government Accountability Office investigation of large oil companies to see if they are fighting the installation of alternative fuel pumps. That investigation will be completed in April 2007.

More will come.

way too cute

awwwww. its too bad the tiger will eventually grow up and wanna eat that little orangutan

i'm feeling web retro

a few of the classics
Hamster Dance
All Your Base
and who could forget Mahir

added 3/2/07: I can't believe I left this guy out

a realization

i realized last night that most likely if anyone had bookmarked my site they had it pointed to /pm/weblog.php, not just my domain name. I apologize for forwarding my domain without any heads up.

a new blogger

as you may have noticed, this looks slightly different. just a few things, mainly the horizontal blogger bar at the top. I tried to make it work with godaddy, but I had a problem importing the mysql database for my blog onto their server, and despite repeated attempts to get it to work, it didn't. So I went with blogger. its free, so thats even better. I will try to get as many of my old entries on here as I can. I have archived my old site, and hopefully I will be able to stick it somewhere. But in the meantime, if you just have to read my old entries, you can find them on the web archive from last june. My goal is to at least get a years worth of old entries on this new version of my site. member accounts are no longer necessary, but unfortunately I couldn't keep the old comments. its actually easier for me to post new entries than with my old blogging software, so maybe i'll actually post more frequently, who knows!

changes

if you deeply scour my blog over the next few weeks you’ll notice a lot of the photos are gone. I’m in the process of cleaning out some of the albums that are just taking up space. I’m planning to switch to blogger and I’m going to archive the current blog entries on another server that doesn’t have a very high quota. I’m going to eventually put some of the photo albums back online through google’s web album. But I’m not sure how long that will take. Probably not very long because its set up very nicely with picasa.

I decided that paying for web hosting is pretty silly given my frequency of posting and the fact that I don’t have money to through around. I still like to post when the mood strikes, and I promise I will try to be better about posting more often. I will keep my domain name, its only $13 a year and I’ve had it for so long. I’ll just have it point to my blog on blogger.

scratch that. i decided to go with godaddy.com. its only $3.99 a month. the server i was going to archive my site on doesn’t have mysql support. d’oh. so hopefully no noticable changes will be made.

marley

r.i.p. Marley

Marley Barley Lorenzen 1999-2007

Yesterday I had to make one of the toughest decisions of my life and put poor Marley to sleep. He suffered from feline stomatitis, and it had finally taken its toll. The course of treatments for his disease were no longer effective and I couldn’t watch him suffer anymore. We tried teeth extractions but after he nearly died and had to be resuscitated from the anesthesia during a teeth cleaning, I decided that it wasn’t a viable route. Due to complications from the stomatitis, he was not digesting his food properly and was losing weight. Last week he stopped eating the liquified diet that he had been on for a long time. With the help of my friends, family and my vet I came to the conclusion that he could no longer live a normal life and it wasn’t fair for him to be in pain and starving anymore.

He was a very sweet and innocent little guy, and he will be sorely missed by Penny, Cali and especially me.

a few posts I’ve written about Marley’s struggles over the years:

Wed Mar 01, 2006

Marley had an accident in the house Sunday night and broke his tail :( it had to be amputated and now all that is left is a little stub.

He had a very sweet tail and liked to wrap it around my leg whenever he stood next to me. We’ll miss Marley’s tail, but at least the rest of him is okay.

courtesy of the way back machine:

Mar. 11 2003 Here is a recent picture of Marley (asleep). He’s doing great, and is already eating all of the hard cat food in his bowl, as well as Cali’s.

Feb. 26 2003 Marley had to get 4 teeth taken out instead of 2, and has now earned the nickname ‘toothless’. It’s sweet.

Feb. 19 2003 My cat Marley has to get two teeth pulled on Monday. He has feline stomatitis. Luckily he tested clean for all the viruses that typically are the cause of this disease, so its just a matter of getting it treated once and for all.

superbowl extravaganza

greatest halftime show .ever. Prince should do the superbowl every year. A flaming stage, flying doves, PURPLE RAIN. YES.
One of my favorite superbowl commercials, the budweiser commercial with the dog almost made me cry, that dog was so cute.
The Careerbuilder commercials were genius.

r.i.p.

Molly Ivins, 1944-2007

"The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy” July 2006

The Texas Observer has a list of some of her more recent columns. if anything read her last column, Enough is Enough

similarities

the similarities between our government’s handling of Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are becoming more and more clear. Is there anything that our government can manage correctly? According to the report, the State Department paid $43.8 million to contractor DynCorp International for the residential camp for police training personnel outside of Baghdad’s Adnan Palace grounds that has stood empty for months. sounds like... Layers of bureaucracy prevented some of the basic emergency procedures from working quickly. For instance, much of the aid for Katrina sat idle because no one knew where it was. However, the fault lies largely at the very senior levels. Michael Brown, the director who later resigned, was unqualified for his job and is known to have lied on his resume... All of these are vital steps to ensuring an effective response, but FEMA also needs good partners in the local and state governments. The agency has been criticized for having hundreds of empty trailers that still have not been distributed. FEMA has been hindered by local governments who refuse to rescind restrictions on placement of the trailers. Louisiana is infamous for having one of the most corrupt and least efficient government systems in the union, and this incapacitates FEMA’s post-disaster management. if neither our federal or state goverments can govern us correctly, who do we call?

hosting

It seems like every few years I end up changing host providers.. my prepaid service with my current provider is up in March, and while laughingsquid has been an excellent host, there are better plans for less money. They recently changed from allowing prepayment of several months at a time, for which they gave a discount in services, to charging monthly. to be honest it doesnt really make much financial sense for me to be paying for this site. I think I've made $9.00 in the past year that I've had the google ad on the right side of the page. oh well..
I'm looking for a free host now, the domain will stay the same, but if anyone knows of any good free-hosting providers please let me know. I will resort to blogspot if I need, but I’d rather not. I won't close this site, I really enjoy it, but I need some hosting options :)