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* J A N U A R Y *

7 January 2008 / Monday -- Thanks to Essex Thomas for once again allowing me to use one of his original graphics, Wildflowers in Field, for the banner and separation bars on this page,

My brother instant messaged me about coming over for a visit today but I told him that there is NO room to sit and eat or even talk [except in my small cluttered study] because the cats would be all over the food, their laps and shoulders, which can get somewhat annoying. I did go early this morning to have my toe nails manicured again, since I cannot reach down to do the job myself and they were getting claw like -- for the second time I let them do my finger nails too, since the petit Chinese gal can do a much better job than I can -- for the first time I saw a male with his wife having their feet done.

I have been looking around for a 2008 Appointment Book / Diary, the long kind that sticks up in a shirt pocket, but nobody seems to have them; when I am near an office supply store I shall try there. After fishing around for a 2008 calender to put on the bulletin board on my right, I finally found one at the West Trenton Pharmacy / Inspirational American Sunsets -- kinda kewl and just the right size. What a wonderful neighborhood -- another eviction down the street, with the usual LONG line of stuff they abandoned at the curb in two batches, all coming from the property with the door shut on the left and dragged down from an upper floor -- -- everything from furniture, bags of clothes, some half empty jars of food, mattresses, a smashed computer, large toys and other apartment necessities --

close up of the left pile

I got a bag of costume jewelry in the tackiest handbag I ever saw, child's decorated jeans and other clothes [for the Salvation Army, of course], and THREE blankets that are now in the washing machine for me and / or the cats -- I almost took that pink convertible, which is probably much better on gas than my Honda is [LOL], and I was somewhat tempted to remove all the nice metal handles on the furniture which can always be used for something by somebody [but did not]. I always find it amazing what they simply discard -- one might assume that the people evicted must start over again somewhere -- does unemployment / welfare cover the cost of all the new stuff they have to buy, and taxpayers pay for it all ?? It does not seem equitable somehow, but pandering to the so called poor minority leeches never is.

12 January 2008 / Saturday -- on 8 January I took a cab to pick up the van in West Trenton -- same battery, recharged, and thus far seems to work -- added $20 gas and a thingy of gas treatment since I do not use the van very much. A couple post office runs, took a shower, changed the bed linens in the bedroom and last night slept with the cats who seemed to enjoy the fresh sheets and blanket and slept quietly beside me -- they are sooooo sweet, and warm.

I finally found a 2008 monthly / weekly planner, leather bound, at the Office Depot -- also got two reams of special paper for cards / certificates, a box of 10 x 13" Tyvek mailing envelopes, and a pack of 14.25 x 19.375" bubble mailers for larger books and things. The weather has been well above average, in the 50 degree range. It is probable that I may get myself a birthday cake smothered in butter cream again this year, just to remind myself that another year has somehow flown rapidly by.

14 January 2008 / Monday -- this is my birthday cake, a single layer -- click for larger view -- --

-- Robin / - eCard -- Pam / - eCard -- Care2 / - eCard -- got loads of email and other virtual birthday greetings -- I do not think I received even a single card through the mail -- cheap twits!

It was supposed to snow but did not. I have half the cake eaten already -- yummy.

15 January 2008 / Monday -- the real story behind the above cake is that, when I saw it I was soooo thrilled to get my grubby paws on a delicious looking birthday cake, I neglected to look at the labels -- when I got it home and cut the first monster slice I discovered that it was a chocolate cake, and I have a fond dislike for chocolate cake although I could eat chocolate all day long -- oh, well, just a minor annoyance. So I went to the Italian People's Bakery not far from the apartment and found a double layer Italian Rum birthday cake, which I have not had in several years -- that meant that I had to devour the entire four pound chocolate cake, which I did shortly before 14:10h today. In the meantime I did take a pic of the new cake in the fridge -- click for larger view -- -- after I munch away the last remaining chunk of the Christmas stolen I guess I can start on the rum cake.

Would you believe, it is starting to snow, lightly -- it probably will not amount to much.

21 January 2008 / Monday -- on the 19th I got perhaps a last holiday card from Rev. Sizemore in Tennessee [one that he printed] -- curiously, although I was home, the brain dead postal idiot left me a YOU WERE NOT HOME card for a package from my brother -- hummmm -- could it contain more birthday stuff? Today is a holiday, so I shall have to call the post office tomorrow and beg them to deliver the package, incidently, a job they actually get paid to do!

the first and only birthday card also appeared a couple days earlier, from Marion in Florida -- so I guess it is time to show everybody my usual window card display that will be up until Christmas 2008 -- -- see if you can find yours -- on the left is the little Christmas tree with a Santa in it that has been sitting there for several years. The snow lasted about three hours and was gone that morning after the sun appeared. The rum cake was fluffy -- between the two cake layers was a pudding like filling with cherries -- gawd was it enjoyable and lasted two days longer than that chocolate monstrosity

27 January 2008 / Sunday -- since the last update I cleaned the kitchen, changed the bed linens, filled the Honda with gas at $2.859 / gallon, and yesterday, went to Sam's Club to stock up on food for me and the felines.

on the 25th I went to the post office to deliver to myself the package that my brother sent over a week ago and the postal idiots refused to deliver -- I was a lot more diplomatic than I usually am with them and only briefly mentioned that I WAS home when someone left the card saying I was not. Here is a view of the large - ish package -- -- it even had PERISHABLE written on it, but what do they care -- PRIORITY mail, which is supposed to be delivered in 2 - 3 days -- gawd, from a town south of me [it takes me about an hour to get there by car], not from Hawaii or Guam or Poland! OK, let us see what is inside -- -- all kinds of yummy stuff -- four boxes of chocolates, a tin of lemon butter cookies, a small gift basket of jellies and cookies, a bottle of wine, a container of home baked chocolate chip cookies [my favorites], half of which are already devoured] -- here is a close up view -- -- on the bottom right you will notice two of the four New Jersey Lottery Holiday Gift Packs, each containing six lottery tickets, and an envelope in which was a donation to the cause. I scraped three strips, a total of eighteen tickets, and won absolutely nothing, which was not a major surprise -- the fourth set of tickets started out with a $2 Bonus Number win, then a $2 winning ticket -> $2 ticket -> $2 Bonus -> $2 winning ticket again, while the last one had nothing other than TRY AGAIN -- I find it curious that all five wins were consecutive on the same strip of tickets. So my birthday was not a complete loss after all, matter of fact, at Sam's I got a two layer birthday cake with buttercream icing because it looked sooooo yummy and I really did not yet have that kind of cake, which is what I was looking for in the first place. Hopefully later today I will take a photo of it to add in my next update -- you would not believe how difficult it is for me not to start eating it already -- it is hormongous and should last me 2 or 3 days! Thanks a lot Bill for making this olde coot's special day a lot more memorable and like the olde times way back when.

Here is what you have been waiting for -- -- and me too! I have to snack a little first, some stuffed peppers, after which I sink my fangs into this sinful temptation

* F E B R U A R Y *

9 February 2008 / Saturday -- MAJOR PROBLEM -- the iMac crashed -- ALL my files are gone -- the last time the iMac booted I did a backup of all the files on an external drive -- in desperation I switched to my older eMac, the last one made, and did a transfer of files to it from the backup -- unfortunately, ALL of my web site files were switched in reverse, meaning that all I have now are the 2006 files up to March of that year. I did get my eBay files transferred correctly from the external backup drive, which was a blessing.

I tried everything imaginable to get the iMac working again, to no avail -- so it now just sits in front of me taking up space. On 2 February I called Ron on the phone, who knows Macs backwards and forwards -- he suggested several things, none of which worked.

On Thursday, 7 February, Donna, an official Mac tech guru I know from online [she lives in Princeton, New Jersey -- this is the first time I actually met her], stopped over to see what she could do with the iMac -- again, she tried everything but the gadget refused to boot past the apple logo and rotating lines -- she said it may be one of the drives or perhaps the motherboard, but since it is not under warranty, it would cost a fortune to have it repaired by Apple, which would not get all the files that were on it back. I am virtually devastated, as can be imagined. Since 2006 I added hundreds of photo files as well as new web site pages on various domains, PLUS I reorganized the folders in which the files are kept to make them easier to find -- and should I mention the MANY new photos / scans which were waiting to be added to the web sites -- none of that is now available to me.

The absolutely LAST RESORT is to download ALL of the files that are on the web site servers -- it is a roundabout way of doing it, BUT VERY time consuming -- it took several hours for all 4,826 text and pic files from Kardas.net to get to this eMac, and now that I have them I have to look at EACH ONE to see if I have it already in the old 2006 stuff, and also REORGANIZE them all as I had already done this year! It is extremely time consuming and could take months to have everything as it was before the dumbass iMac crash. The iMac was faster and had a larger screen, which made things a lot easier to do.

Since the last update I watched two DVD movies, and was going to add that info here -- sorry, I am way too upset right now, PLUS, when I changed the bed linens on 7 February the oldest male snuck out into the center of the apartment and started major fights with the three younger males I have there -- as I attempted to separate them, the old male started clawing and biting my left hand, which has been swollen since then -- it is stiff and I cannot even use it to lift anything or type on the keyboard. Dumb me, of course. The younger ones went into hiding for a day, but are now back to normal -- I rolled out that down single bed substitute I mentioned previously, and slept on the floor with them, which helped gain their confidence again, thank God.

16 February 2008 / Saturday -- after I added the last update I went to the Emergency Room at Saint Frances Medical Center to see what they could do about my swollen left hand. Several doctors looked at it and wanted me to stay there three or four days for observation, which of course I could NOT do. To make a seven + hour story short, they took blood tests [they were all positive, which sort of surprised me] and gave me an IV of antibiotic and a prescription for tablets of the same to take twice a day for a week -- today is the last day. As I sat there between quicky visits by the always changing doctors / nurses, I watched Fox News on the TV on the wall -- could not hear too much because they had the sound set at half way, but saw the often erroneous news banners announching primary election / state caucus results in a couple states -- it is just a good thing I do not have a working TV at home or I would be watching it constantly and not getting anything else done! They toldd me to return to the ER on Monday, 11 February to recheck the progress on my hand -- since it looked better thna it did two days before, they released me again. These are the three innocent young male Sphynx I was protecting from the grumpy older male [who is perfectly loving with the females and me in the bedroom when I am in there, as if nothing ever happened] -- YOUNGINS -- resting in one of their favorite nests two days after the attack -- this is my left hand three days after the event -- HAND -- the two prominent bite marks are on the upper right and between my index and middle fingers, both of which became infected.

I downloaded the 1,656 files from the AppleBytes.info server so I can start REorganizing the files eventually. I have MUCH to do yet for Kardas.net but am taking my time about it.

Valentines Day stuff -- Me / -- a Cold Love Day -- Me / - a Cold Greeting -- Flin / - eCard -- Celsia / eCard -- Me / - a Cyber Greeting -- Bertie / - eCard --

Yesterday I took the first car load of things to donate to the Salvation Army -- for last year I have eight donation sheets which I already typed out via this eMac and printed for tax purposes. I know, I have to change the countdown counter, but first have to find an Easter image to accompany it, so bear with me -- I may have it done by Easter.

* M A R C H *

7 March 2008 / Friday -- on 18 February I had a local roofer repair the downspouts on the house and garages -- they constantly leaked badly -- we had a lot of rain in the last two weeks and now only a small part on the end of the garage leaks -- I called the guy but he has not come back to finish the job totally. I watched Live Free or Die Hard on the eMac, a great movie if you like action flicks -- it was a treat to see the Mac guy from the Apple computer commercials, Justin Long,. in a staring role as a computer hacker. I ordered a new room air filter for my study -- -- because I put the one that was in here in the bedroom with the cats. Speaking of cats, Fran, a friend who helped me place cats for adoption in the past did me a favor and placed FOUR of my Sphynx -- as much as I loved them I simply had to make that decision -- that means I shall have a LOT less work cleaning out litter boxes, not to mention the litter cost for SIX litter boxes as well as the cost of feeding them all. All the remaining kittys are now in the kitchen and bedroom, with more place to play and only four litter containers total -- they settled in quickly to their new quarters with their new roommates. Now the center of the apartment is cat free and I can keep my study door open.

The eMac was really slow, which annoyed me no end -- I had been looking on eBay for a first model 20" G5 iMac that still could boot my old legacy apps in Classic mode -- I found a couple but they were in the $1,000 range PLUS shipping, which was a tad too much for my tight budget -- at the same time I was in contact with Mark, the CEO of the company that hosts this web site -- interestingly enough he had just what I was looking for -- -- and for several hundred dollar less which included shipping, so I quickly told him I was VERY interested -- it arrived today from Las Vegas and I immediately took it up to the kitchen to take a pic -- naturally, the cats were just as enthused about the new arrival as I was -- -- it is noticeably larger than the old one -- -- the old iMac is in front of the new one while the eMac is on the left -- it took me a while to get it minimally set up with my most important old files and applications -- the first thing I am doing with it is writing this update so my readers will not think I croaked or something. YES, I finally changed the countdown counter to Easter, as you can see below.

Some new 20" PowerPC G5 iMac specs --

operating system Mac OSX4.0 same as the old one

speed of 2GHz [I think the old one was 2.1 GHz]

memory of 2GB [GB = giga bytes], twice as much as on the old one

hard drive = 250 GB [I think it is the same as the old one]

screen height x width -- 27 cm x 43.5 cm [old one was 23 x 36.8 cm]

It is like new, no scratches or anything else that I can see -- it came with all the original documentation and two boot disks -- the keyboard is also newish and a Microsoft mouse -- it has a built in modem, something the newer models do NOT have. I now have MUCH more space to work with several open screens than I did on the eMac. Mark even sent me the setup in a slightly different iMac box from one of the later models that had the iSight camera built in -- those did not have a built in modem. Mark's graphic artists / web designers have used Apple iMacs since they first came out, but he is eventually upgrading them all with the latest and greatest. Thanks, Mark, you made me a very happy camper again.

14 March 2008 / Friday -- a couple days ago I discovered a really kewl web site that allows you to put a photo of yourself or anything else on one of many famous magazine covers -- of course I had to try it, so I looked for some recent cat pics and added two different ones, both on Pet Fancy covers -- once completed you can click on the option to have your photos voted on by viewers, which I did -- would you mind taking a minute to view the voting page and give my two kittys a positive vote, please

above is Kamiel [that is a Flemish name], my first and oldest Sphynx male, born on 3 October 1994

the second trial

is of Triangle [named after the light colored triangle on his forehead], another male, born on 17 April 2007

he may appear somewhat out of focus on the web site because the photo I used was too small and when it was enlarged to fill the cover it got slightly blurry --= the above pic was my first trial and I was lucky to have saved the photo. After you vote, you will find the link to make your own mag cover, so try it and have some fun doing it

Here is another shot of my new first generation G5 Imac -- -- sitting on my desktop and being used to reply to a post on an AOL board -- notice how easily three different open Internet screens fit and can be individually manipulated on the twenty inch flat panel monitor. Several people have told me that this G5 model does NOT natively boot into OSX9 / Classic mode -- BUT the second DVD that came with this iMac contains the Classic environment, you can use the preferences to allow it to boot automatically AFTER OSX4.0 does, as seen in this screen shot

and if you click that triangle on the left the entire classic startup window is visible below that image, thus it DOES boot automatically -- the later models do not permit using Classic, which I think is a MAJOR mistake by Steve Jobs -- now he is catering to the Windows crowd and completely overlooking the millions of long time Mac users such as I -- the so called Boot Camp, which allows PC users to work with all their shitty bug ridden and hacker prone Microsoft software needed a LOT more contrived / complicated programming than had he simply allowed Classic to continue [and I personally told him that in an email many Moons ago -- no reply from him, of course -- he can be such a bitch, as many of his coworkers / associates have known for years -- he does put on a fabulous show, though, at his MacWorld and other special keynote addresses / travelling medicine shows -- some geniuses are like that I guess]

Now back to cats again -- yesterday Blinky had two kittens -- I knew she would because she was getting fat, but I did not know when -- -- she had them in the box I put on the bed for her, but she later made a nest in the covers, so I suspish I will have to be extra careful when I get into bed, which may not be until this afternoon since I still have some eBay packages to get together and take to the post office this morning UNLESS I fall asleep in this comfy high back desk chair! We shall see -- oh, yes, Olga is extra fat too, so I assume she will have another batch any day now

23 March 2008 / Easter Sunday -- Marge sent me the following which I think is most appropriate to commemorate the significance of this blessed holiday -- HE IS RISEN !!

This Easter has been kinda the same old thing with me -- I have been trying to put a LOT of new things on eBay over the last several weeks and have had to scan hundreds of things for the descriptions to make them tempting enough to bid on -- my normal sleep hours are messed up because I usually do all this work when I wake up in the early afternoon, then list them after midnight, after which I have something for dinner in the wee hours of the morning. This year I have gotten relatively few eCards or email greetings [probably about eight or so] and only one normal card from my brother, as usual -- I do not send out Easter cards. It has been warming up slightly this week but quite windy -- at least we did not experience serious flooding / snow storms as they have been having in other cities and in England.

Easter stuff -- Misty / -- Bunny -- Cheryl / - Easter Egg Dying Contest -- Me / - Strange Bunny -- Sharon / Easter Egg -- Sherry / - eCard -- Bertie / - eCard -- Me / -- eCard -- Thom / -- Eggs --

* M A Y *

4 May 2008 / Sunday -- I cannot believe that I did not post anything for an entire month -- but then again, today I changed the calendar page beside my desk from April to May -- that only took me four days to do! During the German carnivals before Easter they always have colorful parade floats depicting events that seem noteworthy, including world politics -- this one -- -- is interestiing. Some brief notes on activities since my last update -- took Ziggy, my oldest male Sphynx to the vets because he still has the same bony appearance he has had in the three years since he last saw him -- he gave me an antibiotic, but it did not seem to have any effect, the same as the last time. The kitty eats well, jumps up on the kitchen counter when I open a can of food for them or am making dinner, purrrrs and everything else, but he is a bag of bones -- he never takes his eyes off me when I am in the kitchen. On 26 March Olga had a cute light colored kitten, so there are now three kittens bouncing around on my bed. Went to Sam's Club once to stock up on goodies -- otherwise I just spent waking hours [between snoozes, of course] getting a bunch of new stuff on eBay, and rushing to pack and send things out BEFORE the post office raises rates AGAIN in a couple days.

9 May 2008 / Friday -- I moved all of the Pope mass at Yankee Stadium material to a new commemorative page --

I may have mentioned previously that I had been having problems with my old HP ScanJet 3500C scanner for several months and everything shows up initially as either red / yellow / blue -- when I REscan several times, the actual colors MAY appear, but lately all I get is totally unusable images -- I guess it is time to get a new scanner -- this one is at least five years old and has produced thousands of scans thus far for my web sites and eBay -- yesterday I went to Sam's Club looking for the scanner they had online, the Mustek A3 -- NO, it was not on the shelves, you had to order it online. Then I drove over to Best Buy -- they had a couple scanner models, but not the one I preferred from Consumer Reports online -- then on to WalMart, not a scanner in sight -- all they had were multi purpose printer / scanners but all I wanted was a simple scanner.

Getting slightly discouraged I went across the road to Target, but they had NO scanners -- I saw a Kohl's at the end of that section of mall, but they did not carry computers or accessories. OK, back to Best Buy -- I picked out one of the two scanners they had in stock -- the one I may have wanted, the Epson Perfection V500 was sitting on the shelf, their last one, but they would not sell it to me. Sooooo, I wound up purchasing a Canon CanoScan LiDE 600F, which I also saw on the Consumer Reports page, although it was not my first choice. It comes with a separate slide / 35mm film scanner, is noticeably more compact than my old one, PLUS uses a USB plug to the iMac as the only power source -- the old one needed another cable connection for a power supply -- you can see the box it came in in the following link --

some of its technical info is the following -- YES, it also works on a Mac --

I believe it uses LED light, which is extremely bright, needing less power / conserves energy as compared with the previous generation of scanners -- I did a couple scans with it and am satisfied with the results, so I am now back in business scanning things for this web site and my eBay offerings. Hey, even the three new kittys seem to like the box it came in --

Countdown to Mother's Day

God Bless !

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