I absolutely love the B-52’s, but I had thought they were part of history, and in my mind they were starting to fade.
Imagine my surprise to find out that, not only did they come out with a new album, but they came out with it back in March!
And I just now found out!
You can believe I immediately zipped over to iTunes and snagged a copy.
Nobody can get me bouncing around like the B-52’s can!
_________
For years and years, and years, I would prefer to use anything but Outlook as my email client. When Google came out with Gmail, I was hooked on that. Still am, actually.
Microsoft made significant improvements with Outlook with version 2003, to the point where I grudgingly liked it, but still only used it when I had to. With version 2007 it actually started growing on me, but still. Why bother? I have Gmail.
Then two things happened. One, Google opened up Gmail to IMAP Access, and two, I stumbled upon Xobni.
Xobni is a Outlook add-in that even Bill Gates loves. What it does is comb through all the emails you have ever sent and received, and puts the pertinent information into a relational database that shows you, in an incredibly useful way, all the vital facts about your day-to-day communications, who is linked with who, who has sent you what, and when, etc. The way they describe it, it turns your own email into a virtual social networking site.
I take a step back from that statement, because I feel they’re just using “social networking” as a buzz term. I can see what they mean, but, no — it’s still just email. But it’s email where it is very easy to find exactly who it was that Bob was talking about when someone needed to modify widget X, or who was it that sent you that invitation to the Shpongle concert two years ago. Or what was the name of that science fiction writer who, uh, so-and-so was talking about… something Ledbetter?
When you have Xobni loaded, you’re three clicks away from the answer.
It is so useful, that I fully expect Microsoft to buy it and make it part of Outlook. Because when you add Xobni to Outlook, it makes Outlook kick email ass, and I have never used any email client that has been such a pleasure to work with.
Right now Xobni is in invitation-only beta, but I have 5 invitations. Let me know if you want one. First come, first serve.
UPDATE: As of May 5, 2008, it has gone into open public beta and can be downloaded without an invitation here: http://www.xobni.com/download
From GroovyGizmo.com
_________
My current rental car is powered by Microsoft.
If that isn’t enough to strike fear into a mortal heart, I don’t know what is.
The first thing I noticed at the airport last week, climbing into this ugly dark gray Ford Fusion, is a big reset button on the dashboard. My eyes trailed down to a logo next to the gearshift, and they immediately bugged out. “Powered by Microsoft.” WTF?
I looked at the reset button. I looked back at the logo. I kept thinking, “So, what, does this car ‘crash’ and give you the Blue Screen of Death?” I could imagine driving down the highway and having the engine, brakes and steering suddenly lock up for no reason, and me desperately jabbing at the reset button and waiting for the car to reboot as it spins out of control and tumbles off the pavement.
Fortunately, the only thing Microsoft powers is the voice activated sync between the car stereo and your Bluetooth enabled phone, and your iPod (or whatever) plugged into a USB port in the center console.
I’d been playing with it all weekend, and this morning was driving to work and decided I wanted to listen to Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf. So I said, per the Microsoft instructions, “Play artist Meatloaf.”
The car made a pleasant tone and a female computer voice responded, “Playing artist Vivaldi.”
What the Hell? How did it get ‘Vivaldi’ out of ‘Meatloaf’? Did it misunderstand me, or did it make a decision?
Do I really want a car that has better musical tastes than I do?
As The Four Seasons began playing, I eyed the reset button, ready to push it. Just in case.
From GroovyGizmo.com
_________
I’ve evolved quite a bit since starting this site.
When I first conceived GroovyMojo, I was recovering from divorce, recovering from the dot.com crash, and working at a fall-back job doing computer support. I was rather lost at the time, and decided I needed to rediscover my path in life.
As I did some introspection of my own passions and interests, and searched for new things to help me on my way, this web site came about. When I first put it together it was an experiment, just to see what I could do. And I put the context ads on it to see if it would support itself. When people asked me, "What’s it about?" I didn’t know how to answer. "Everything, I guess," is what I’d finally say.
"Groovy" means good, and "mojo" means magic. I wanted some good magic in my life. I write science fiction and fantasy, so I actually think about magic quite a bit. I think I’ve come to understand it, the way it really works, and it’s not actually supernatural.
Magic — real magic, not trickery — comes from thought, intention, and deed, all together. The magic part comes from the synergy of the three. Synergy, an over-used buzz word, is the term for the total being greater than the sum of the parts. It a real phenomenon. And that is how I define magic in our mundane world.
You mix a positive attitude, a lot of thought, solid realistic goals, passion, and action, and you get groovy mojo.
Good magic.
Good things start happening because you draw the good things to yourself. Your success builds upon itself, and gets stronger. You achieve goals and set new ones.
I worked myself into better jobs. I achieved my goal of becoming a full time professional writer. Then, as I realized — in a professional sense — what I really enjoyed is creating and maintaining websites, I worked myself into a position where I do that for a huge multinational corporation.
Even better, I’ve found someone who I love without measure, a person that I seemed to be designed for at a molecular level, and she for me as we11. I can’t imagine someone more perfect.
Groovy mojo works. It worked for me. If it can work for me, it can work for anyone. The requirements are that you have to believe, and you have to want it, and you have to be determined to study the ways that you sabotage yourself and develop ways to keep it from happening.
It’s an ongoing process. You don’t set it up, get it going, and step back from it. You have to live it.
That’s why, when I stumbled upon the quote, "Life isn’t about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself," I instantly knew that had to be my mantra, and so I made it the theme of this website.
So now if someone asks me what this website is about, I know what to tell them.
It’s about creating yourself.
_________
This is the freeware that I always load on my computers:
These are my favorite (and most trusted) freeware sources on the web:
This is a live list — check back occasionally because it will be updated. Remember there is a difference between "freeware" and "open source," which means you have to read freeware licenses if you are in a business environment. Lots of this software is only free for personal use, but in an office you’ll be required to pay for a license.
_________
Knock Knock Books brings you the much needed, How To Procrastinate.
From their website: “Are you punctual, productive, and conscientious? Now there’s help. Because work expands to fit the time available, it’s never been easier to do the minimum amount of work in the maximum amount of time. Whether you’re naturally organized, cursed with achievement, or simply obsessive-compulsive, we’ll show you how to stop performing and start procrastinating today. Or tomorrow.”
I wish I’d discovered this book sooner. It would have been on my Christmas wish list.
_________
As far as I’m concerned, iTunes has just been replaced. This is the future of music distribution right here. I stumbled onto Magnatune after hearing one of their artists on an Internet radio station … Claire Fitch … I had to immediately go find her album. They had it on iTunes, but I Googled her for more information, and that is when I found this place.
She has two albums. I picked up both. And after sampling the other artists, I know I’m going to be spending a lot of time here.
Just the fact that they have some amazing music sold me.
But beyond that, check out what Magnatune features:
What more can I say? Magnatunes is just plain groovy.
_________
My younger daughter’s computer bit the dust this week, and so Friday I bought her a new one on eBay.
My winning bid: $20.50
It’s not the absolute best computer in the world but it’s perfectly good for a young teen who’s not into gaming, and it’s better than the one that just died. A Pentium 4 running at 1.6 GHz will work fine syncing with her iPod, doing homework, and playing YouTube videos. I’d found a deal locally on the exact same computer, refurbished, for $200. But on eBay — even after shipping — I paid less than $60.
Inexpensive eBay shopping is a lot like playing a game. There are hundreds of different ways to do it, but this is the way I’ve settled on. It combines the best results with the most fun.
First of all, you need to find items you’re interested in where the auction ends outside of peak bidding times. My favorite time is before 8 AM on a weekday, while a good chunk of the continent is more preoccupied with getting to work on time than bidding against you.
I find an item I want, I decide how much I’m willing to pay for it (including shipping) and I bid accordingly. But I don’t bid up front, I wait until the last second.
Some people call this “sniping” a bid and they will hate you for it. I can live with that. Especially if I end up getting a good deal.
I bring up the same auction in two separate windows. In one, I place my bid amount … bidding the highest amount I’m willing to go … but I haven’t clicked the button to make the bid final. The button that commits you to the bid.
In the other window I view the item during the last few minutes of the auction, clicking refresh to watch the time left and how the bidding is going. Sometimes there is a lot of activity right at the very end of the bid which will put it completely out of your price range.
So, the clock ticks down, and there’s maybe 15 seconds left until the auction is over. In the case of this computer, the highest bid is still a very low $18.50. I’ve set my bid amount to $45 in the other window, and when it reaches the 15 second mark I pop over to that other window and click the button to actually place my bid. My bid pops up in the last several seconds of the auction, not giving anyone enough time to raise their bids against it.
Someone else bid a maximum of $20.00. Since my maximum bid was $45, I easily beat that person’s $20 — raising the incremental bid to $20.50 in my favor.
So, I won.
If I had bid my $45 even minutes in advance, it would have given others time to bid against me and keep raising their bid until theirs went higher than mine. Before I started bidding this way, I always seemed to lose an auction by pennies. Why? Because someone else was sniping against me.
Now, there is always a chance that — using this auction as an example — someone else had already bid an amount higher than mine. So the guy who originally bid $18.50, say his highest bid amount was $100, then my bid would have gone in at the last minute but still lost, and he would have won the auction at $45.50.
If that happens, laugh and shrug it off, and go to the next item. If there’s anything you can count on with eBay, there is always the next item. And it is most definitely a game.
Do you have a favorite method in your own eBay madness?
UPDATE: The computer arrived in perfect condition, I set it up, loaded the operating system and software, and then copied over all the information I managed to save from her old dying computer. It runs fast, and she’s very happy with it. I’m now thinking about buying one for myself!
_________
How it starts out with me, I get blind spots. Like early today I was writing a beer review and was having problems seeing what I had just typed. It gave me a sudden sinking feeling, and I wondered, Is this a migraine coming on?
I struggled with typing for a few more minutes, and then realized, yes, I’m having lots of problems seeing the words on the screen.
This is THE WARNING. When I get THE WARNING it means I have about 50 to 75 minutes before THE PAIN.
The moment I get this warning I drop everything and go take medicine. Fortunately I’ve found the generic OTC migraine pills work just fine, and the Wal-Mart generic Equate Headache Relief (which is the equivalent of Excedrin® Migraine) is dirt cheap. They consist of Acetaminophen, Aspirin, and Caffeine. If I don’t have those pills, I found taking a Tylenol combined with Advil and some coffee will work the same.
They take about 50 minutes to take effect. So if I get those pills in me immediately, they will head off the migraine pain, and all I have to deal with are the other symptoms (sleepiness, reduced mental abilities, and nausea).
So, do you get migraines? How do you deal with them?
_________
This is a great way to start a early morning, and it’s healthy too! All you need is:
Make your oatmeal as usual, any kind you’d like, regular or instant. When it’s done, stir in the granola of your choice, and add the Very Vanilla Silk soy milk.
Lactose free, warm, and yummy!
_________
groovy lists:
Food Poisonous to Dogs
Top Free Blogging Hosts
Groovy Freeware
Firefox Add-on Mojo
highest-traffic articles:
Last Longer for Her
Kiss Therapy
Backup Video DVD Disks
Dumping and Dumped
Eating Awareness
Do It Yourself Divorce
Brand Loyalty Sickness
Bird Flu
Sleep Apnea
Game Theory
GroovyMojo.com is proudly powered by
WordPress.
Published by GroovyMojo Media.
