Points Off, Symbiotic Three-way

Points off on this managed community. The battery in the thermostat died the first week I was in the new apt. This afternoon, I got the first piercing chirp from one of the smoke detectors, warning of low battery. The cat napping in my lap was not amused.

Discovering strange biological bedfellows talks of a clever three-way symbiotic situation.

I need to go up to the house but I'm resisting. I hate going back there. I'm not that thrilled with the walk either I guess. From what I could determine from email, Brother's busy until Thursday which is when he wants to go see the lawyer as she requested to finish estate paperwork.

Freaky Fish! And Other Things.

Frill Shark

In other news there's a local trial of a woman having murdered her husband. Her defense lawyer her flashing breasts at a party was part of her grieving process.

I am still moving out. Sort of. I'm at the house sorting. I slept on the floor.

(Congratulations to Jen Hudson on her Oscar nomination.)

Golden Globes

Congratulations, Helen Mirren. Won "Best Actress" both for "Elizabeth I" and "The Queen."



Jennifer Hudson, from American Idol 3, adds a another trophy for her role in "Dreamgirls." She won the film critic's award and now adds a "Golden Globe."

iPhone vs. neonode N1m

The N1m is a three-in-one device like iPhone. It too has no physical keypad, does web browsing, phone and media playback.

N1m is not elegant. The virtual keypad is the usual phone style 3 x 4 number-letter layout while iPhone uses QWERTY like a regular keyboard.

Neonode's N1m is smaller in height, width and weight but far thicker at 21 mm vs 11.6 mm. That smaller height and width also mean it has a smaller screen (176 x 220 pixels) compared to iPhone (320 x 480 pixels).

The 1GB N1m supports more media types because you can play DiVX, WMV, MPEG while the 4 or 8 GB iPhones only seems to support iPod-ready video. The built-in cam of N1m is listed as 1 megapixel, Apple iPhone's is 2 megapixels.

What about cost? The N1m is €532,00 (approx US$692.55) while iPhone US$499 for the 4GB version, US$599 for 8GB.

So, looking at the most near true analog to the iPhone, the Apple product is bigger where it matters in storage, screen & cam resolutions yet less expensive!

I won't be buying either one, since they are far more than I need in a cell phone and iPhone comes with that nasty "2 yr contract" attached. That said, iPhone is a tremendously exciting product demo which suggests great technology trickling down to common disposable devices over the next five years. I suspect the OS X used by iPhone is the coming 10.5 Leopard, not 10.4 Tiger, since Leopard will have scalable user interface elements and Core Animation, a technology mentioned as part of iPhone in the keynote address.

iPhone specs
neonode N1m specs

Blog Running Behind...

I found a place, I can move this weekend. I have detailed entries being worked on in the 'drafts'.

Same Crud, Different Year?

Nice to see online communities still have tin horn dictators. Must be the nature of the species. Oh well.

I had planned to do some "serious" blogging but I had a headache and felt more than a little 'off' so I delayed. I'm doing a bit better now, with some food ingested. Let me hand out sick-bags just in case. Basically I was thinking over my youthful dreams and breeding and so forth.

When I was in high school, I was interested in adopting a "hard to place" older child. Sure, in grade school as adolescence was just getting underway I fantasized about procreating. Yes, seriously. Not simply a copulating act but with purpose of actual impregnation. Later as I great through puberty and so forth I never really had an impulse to marry. And interest in siring my own flesh and blood dissipated.

I'm about twice as old now, or rapidly shall be. It's only natural I suppose I'd revisit such topics. Now's a good time especially with the radical difference my day to day life will have this year. Other than myself, it'll all be different. (Heaven help me!)

OK, back to the parental thing. I heard a call on Dr. Laura from a 13 yr old asking how he can make his estranged father love him. Of course, he can't because the sperm donor is a distant, disinterested person. She advised the boy to focus on the love around him from mom, step-dad, etc. and feel bad for his bio-dad for what he's missing and may one day regret. Anyway, the call was gut wrenching. I felt very paternal and compassionate, while silently cursing guys like his bio-dad. Anyway, it rekindled old passions of a desire to mentor, do foster care, adopt or something.

In recent weeks I'd wrestled with the absence of biological grandkids. Of course, with my parents now gone, they couldn't meet their hypothetical biological grandkids. So much pressure would be off if Brother had married a healthy, fertile woman. In the ten-plus months since Mother passed I've been thinking over different things she said, trying to put together the puzzle pieces. I had decided to talk to her about these things but put it off as I figured I had all year long and could wait till she got over the pneumonia she'd been diagnosed with.

My conclusion is that despite what I'd said, Mother was convinced I'm gay. I might draw that out later how I conclude this but it's not important to this entry. So with that conclusion I've wondered if maybe it is correct. Well, as I considered my passed fanciful desires, it ultimately it doesn't matter since it really didn't involve anything in the way of a relationship regardless of gender. It really only had a cornerstone of single parenthood.

By now you know the SIL and Brother have adopted three kids. Two are final and have been for a few years. The infant, whom Mother met days before she passed on, hasn't been finalized. That was a key motivator to the change in housing arrangements. They needed four bedrooms and I, the cat and her fish need considerably fewer.

OK, I'm wandering all over a bit. I'm tired. The cat is waiting for me to come to bed, it's almost 7:30am. Focusing a bit... I'm less interested in "solving" any kind of sexuality question than I am in addressing the running theme of having no life partner in my past visions of a future. I might have an answer. I'm not ready to blog about it yet, however. And, no, it has little to do with commitment concerns. I'd commit to almost anything. I'm silly that way. I have seen, objectively, that I'd benefit from having someone to help me avoid certain pitfalls like being too nice, overly generous, or too free with spotting others some funds.

So, anyway, on levels that matter to me I feel that one person seems like a potential keeper. I'm intrigued. Sure it's a guy but really I haven't had meaningful contact with anything else in years. I could be in a partnership arrangement if it's with someone I trust, with whom I know I'll have a mutual relationship of looking out for one another. When it gets down to it, what else is there? If you have to be suspicious, forget it. I've been there. I thought I had something like that with my uni girlfriend but that wasn't true leading me to regret the ongoing nature of our intimate physical relationship and ultimately cease it and deciding to cut bait.

Last week I heard the end of an hour of Dr. Laura where a wife was calling to say she'd been wedded 17 years and when she wasn't sure the marriage would last early on, she aborted their first child. It was a child she didn't tell her husband they were expecting. She had lately decided to be "totally honest" with him and told her husband. She was upset at his horror and was calling for advice (Dr. Laura said never, ever speak of it again). Things like that scare the hell out of me. It's actually a scenario (a potential spouse aborting child secretly) I'd wondered about through the years. I'm nuts like that.

So, ok. I'll just leave this entry as is. I'm sure it'll stir something. I hope. Maybe? No guests invading today means plenty of rest. Sunday we hunt for new accommodations.

Here We Go Again!

It's likely been more than a year but I got another wrong delivery of... Yes, dear... it's HAY!



The O.C. is canceled, finale plays Feb 22. in the States. Show was good in season one and became unwatchable with its constant return to clichés of Ryan using his fists and swirling around the drain that was Mischa Barton's character.

Ramblings

First off, I've recently seen Elephant a film by Gus Van Sant. It's good, obviously strongly 'inspired' by the Columbine high school shooting in the U.S. in the '90s. I had no idea what it was about when I watched it. Anyway, it was unlike another Gus film, "My Own Private Idaho," which I saw maybe last year (or '05?) about 10-15 years after friends suggested I'd "get something out of it." Well I thought MOPI was a piece of pretentious wank. There's probably a blog entry. So out of three films from that director I've liked "Good Will Hunting" and "Elephant." I think I'll stop while I'm ahead.

It's a bit like Ang Lee. "Ice Storm" was intriguing. I stopped and watched it one day flipping around and saw Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline, then Elijah Wood so I was thinking, "Ok, what is this film?" When it was time for him to do "Hulk" I was excited. That film was a total disaster. Then I'm hearing about "Brokeback Mountain" and grudgingly watched it. I hated it; there wasn't any romance in my mind. It maddeningly pissed me off--I saw the first "encounter" as rape with all else coloured by that reaction. Bored and trying to fall asleep I rewatched it this week and it didn't piss me off like the first time but the sheep are still the best part of the film. The cinematography still makes me want to move to Wyom... err Canada. I still haven't unwrapped the shrink-wrap on Crouching Tiger. I can't say I trust Ang Lee as a director.

My candy bar wrapper smelled like cigars. :( That's probably why it was on sale for 60 cents (from 89). I got those stupid corn cereals again. I argued with myself in the store but decided food was food. Well, I've had two bowls maybe three or four. Well, I don't know. Doesn't matter. I'm annoyed. Wasn't what I wanted but it was what the store had. Or fake Cheerios. I got those too along with chili, peanut butter and raviolis. I'm hooked on the raviolis. I did not feel good on my walk. Not sure why. I felt out of shape which is a bit ridiculous considering it isn't any further than gammaneighbor's new place. I think I felt better walking back with a backpack full of canned goods. I did get annoyed with those loitering outside the stores smoking like chimneys. Ugh!

I slept just 2 hrs after a 22 waking period and don't get why.

Well, the series *was* set in the 21st century.



Read about the "dolphin boat" at the Daily Mail.