Saddam Hussein

Good Riddance.

Sirius-licious

One terrific xmas gift! I don't know how I lived with FM Radio for as long as I have. What I really like about it:

No Commercials - Always a big selling point for satellite radio, but rightfully so. I hate commercials.

BackSpin - Old Skool Rap Radio! Ever get the strange urge to listen to some Kriss Kross? Ice-T? DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince? Now you can!

LCD Display - A beautiful display and quite functional as well. It displays the current song and artist, so you don't have to play the "remember the chorus-find the station's website-lookup online programming" game.

Uncensored - There's an entire new world of hip-hop songs that I had no idea what the lyrics to were.

Comedy Channels - Sometimes I'm just in the mood for some standup while I'm sitting.

One brazillion channels - How many are in a brazillion?

Free Online Account - This xmas holidays, it was wonderful to be able to log into my online account and stream sirius radio over the internet. Made for great background listening at our house and the in-laws'.

10 Channel Presets - Ok, I could do this on my regular FM tuner, but not without pushing the AM/FM button. And with one brazillion channels to choose from, I found it oddly difficult to commit a channel to a button without carefully considering my other options.

80's Station/60's Station - 'nuf said!

Pause/Rewind - A little record button would be the icing on the cake!

Cheesecakes!

I've been doing a lot of cooking and baking lately. Cheesecakes are my latest creations. Last week, I made an Amaretto cheesecake, which sounds great but the crust called for chocolate wafers which turned chewy when I cut a piece to try. Last night, I made a keylime cheesecake, which turned out awesome! My next task is to tackle a real NY-style cheesecake which takes more creamed cheese, sweetened condensed milk, more eggs and vanilla.

Wilco

It's strange. Their song "Jesus" conjurs strong memories of a period of time a few years ago, but nothing very specific at all. I like songs that do that for me.

GMail Nightmare

I've been using GMail for a couple years now and have ALL of my professional and personal email forwarded there. This morning I find the following on my browser:

We’re currently performing some unexpected maintenance on your account. While we can’t predict exactly how long it will take, we’re working as quickly as we can to restore access to your email--apologies for the inconvenience.

If you have questions, please contact us at gmail-maintenance@google.com.


I have never felt so disconnected. It's been unavailable for 10 hours now and I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out. I've read horror stories of users being without access for as long as 2 weeks!

Fireworks!

This is a cartoon-come-true!

A fireworks factory explodes: