A quick blog...

Well in an effort to have a small family day today (Sunday) before I needed to work, all of us decided to go spend my gift certificate at Target from the Raffle early this week ( I won $30 certificate). Well we decided to go over the hill to the Target on Blossom hill road. I picked up a new Nintendo DS game called Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Neat mystery game that uses the DS like a book..neat concept - couldn't resist. But that actually wasn't what I wanted to share.

After picking up the game, we decided to cruise the mall to tire the little one out and I wasn't ready to go home yet. :) We found a Borders...I figured hey..let's go in. As we walked around a book caught my eye. I had to share it. It's c alled In the Company of a Courtesan: A novel. It sounded intriguing. Here was the description:

Renaissance Italy enchants in Dunant's delicious second historical (after The Birth of Venus), as a wily dwarf Bucino Teodoldo recounts fantastic escapades with his mistress, celebrated courtesan Fiammetta Bianchini. Escaping the 1527 sacking of Rome with just the clothes on their backs (and a few swallowed jewels in their bellies), Fiammetta and Bucino seek refuge in Venice. Starved, stinking, her beauty destroyed, Fiammetta despairs—but through cunning, will, Bucino's indefatigable loyalty and the magic of a mysterious blind healer called La Draga, she eventually recovers. Aided by a former adversary, who now needs her as much as she needs him, Fiammetta finds a wealthy patron to establish her in her familiar glory. Through Bucino's sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued narration, Dunant crafts a vivid vision of Venetian life: the weave of politics and religion; the layers of class; the rituals, intrigue, superstitions and betrayals. Dunant's characters—the steely courtesan whose glimpse of true love nearly brings her to ruin; the shrewd and passionate dwarf who turns his abnormalities into triumph; and the healer whose mysterious powers and secrets leave an indelible mark on the duo—are irresistible throughout their shifting fortunes. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

I put this on my amazon wishlist. I nearly croaked at the $14.95 on the stands..but Amazon has it offered by online sellers for $6.45. Am intrigued.

I've become an Access geek??? What the...???

Well I just read an interesting newsletter that had originally been marked as Junk. I subscribed earlier last year to become a Palm OS developer and thus got the tools to mess around with. It's free..soo why not? Something good to learn, right? Well I knew that Palm Source (makers of the Palm OS) had been bought by a company called Access. This newsletter I got this week said the following:

Last October (2006), ACCESS announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, PalmSource, Inc., had begun the process of changing its name to ACCESS. As part of that process, ACCESS is renaming all products that originally had Palm-based names. The first product to be renamed is Palm OS, which is now known as Garnet OS.

So now I am scratching my head. What the (you enter your favorite phrase here). I am curious as to how they think this is a good idea? Palm I thought was a revered name..but I guess now with the hardware and software split, hardware gets to keep the name and software doesn't???? I guess that's how businesses work, right??

I don't know..maybe this will be a good thing as they can branch it out more..give it a look that they don't think will fly with Palm users might or might not be ok with under the Palm name??? Who knows. Anyway...I am still struggling to get the stupid examples to even build and run on my machine. I am sure I've done something wrong. *sigh*. I may have finally found the tutorials that I am looking for a while back but haven't gotten around to trying it again. We'll see.

Anyway...I shall get off my soap box now. Just was surprised.

Dora & the Journey to the Purple Planet

I totally forgot to blog about this! Irene got her first PS2 game! For Christmas, she received from her great-Aunt and Uncle the game called Dora the Explorer: Journey to the Purple Planet. She LOVES it. She got the controls down the first day after playing the Earth section. After that it took her about a week to complete all the planets and send her friends home.

She now asks for playing that more than watching TV (which I'll take any day). I highly recommend it to those looking to get a game system. This game also is available for the Gamecube and subsequently the Wii (in case you're looking for longevity that way). The reviews up on Amazon reflected that kids around 3-4 had large amounts of play time with it while those on the older end of the range (6 or so) got bored with quickly.

Once you've played all the levels the child can go back to any of the planets that he/she likes at any point. Irene currently likes the "Red Planet". She's got a big fascination with Robots lately for some reason, so anything with Robots (be it Dr. Who, Scooby Doo, or Dora) is her type of thing.

We saw Doodlebops!

Well, Irene made it to her first concert ever... :) We went to see Doodlebops. The one draw back: it was a 1pm show. Now for those of you that aren't aware, I will explain. Irene still takes naps (most of the time). So we were a bit nervous about the fact that the concert was right when her nap was supposed to be. Attempting to find a way to get her to sleep in the car was not a certain one. Momma thought: oh! well we'll tire her out by running a couple of errands to the store etc and then come home and then having her ride her bike around! Right??? yeah...umm..right. Believe it or not we did do that..but when we went to get in the car..she still didn't nap *sigh*. Momma napped..but Irene didn't (btw: Dadda drove in case you were wondering).

We get there and find that there is a sharks game, a Scientology convention, Doodlebops and a Volleyball competition going on all at the same time. Momma started getting very nervous and biting poor Dadda's head off. But he got smart!!! "Here, I'll drop you and Irene off. Go find the seats and get her settled. I will find a parking spot and meet you there." Momma, seeing logic in this, pulled Irene out of the car and headed towards the San Jose Civic Auditorium.

We got close and Irene began to freak out at all the people. Momma didn't flinch. She picked up Irene, settled her on the hip and took her inside. We found (naturally) more people. Irene squirmed down and had an amazed look on her face. Kids were everywhere. Suddenly, Irene zeros in on one thing - the flashy wavy wand with a flag on top. Who was Momma to argue? one toy right? How much could it be? (I know...you're saying you poor sap..what are you thinking???). Anyway $20 later for the one wand we make it through the main doors on the main floor. Irene walks through with absolute wonder and a little bit of "freaked out" running across her face. Mickey Mouse club house music was playing and Bus Driver Bob was on the stage entertaining the kids for a bit. She stopped dead in her tracks looking at the sea of people. The fear that Momma had dreaded was beginning to appear. Momma bends down and attempts to distract her. Nothin' doin' . She's in partial freaked out mode now..not willing to move anywhere. Then she spots other children going up to find seats. She decides she wants a seat too. Momma is pleased - we're making progress :)

To the amazement of all, Momma and Irene make it to their seats and Irene is showing serious excitement at this point. Freak out is gone and she is happy - wand in hand (I'll try to get a pic for you). Dadda arrives soon after. The last part of the puzzle was her buddie Brooke (from school). The two of them couldn't stop talking about the Doodlebops all week! Short version: Brooke's parents thought they were supposed to be at HP Pavillion when in reality, it was at San Jose Civic Auditorium. They made it about 5 minutes after the show started. We were so pleased. :D

The show was nice, simple, and fun. The girls were absolutely thrilled. Momma took Irene to the front to try to dance, but there were so may "bodies" that Momma couldn't cope and we stopped at the outskirts. Irene of course got very very upset and it was now an hour later than nap time would have started. So the two started to join together. Needless to say, we decided to stay in our seats from then on. Brooke's mom took the picks because Momma was lame and forgot her camera :p. So when I get links to post, I will do so.

So how about that for a nice long post??? :P

I learned something new...

Well I learned something. Awhile ago I switched to Google as my home page. It's all wonderfully customized. In doing more customization tonight, I realized that Google has an RSS reader called Google Reader. It's quite cool. I was able to add stuff here on blogspot and others on 360.yahoo.com. Both read quite well and I added the reader gadget to my home page on google too... :) It's quite neat. Anyway..the new thing I learned tonight...had to share.

*cough cough* *sneeze* blowing away the dust

My god...it's been forever since I posted!!! Last time was Thanksgiving!! *sigh* Well it's going to be a short one today because as some folks know, when time crunch occurs everyone seems to wig out and want to stress others out with it. My latest you ask? Let's try having somone upstairs looking for me and says he can't find me only to let managers know this without even trying to oh..let's say send an email first. *ripping hair out*

Anyway nuf said for the moment. Just had to get that out. Busy as all snot over here. Almost as insane as when we try to ship everything all at once..early..oh..wait..isn't that what we're doing??? *rolling eyes*. We need some emoticons here