I finally accrued enough MyPoints points to cash in for a good reward. I just ordered a $25 gift card from Target. I figure this will be easy to use as we can get any sort of household items we need there.
I signed up for MyPoints mainly for BzzAgent, as they hand out some of the points when you hand in BzzReports. Then MyPoints sends out emails with ads to click on or surveys to fill out to get points as well. I clicked on emails when I had time, and over time I have collected up some points which I got to redeem. Pretty painless way to get a small gift - and right now I can really some $$$.
I finally have a good lead on a job, but the company said they are waiting to have their customer sign a deal. I sure hope this deal actually comes through. Eek.
4th Try Is a Charm for this yarn. I had started three other scarves and ripped them out because they just didn't look good or weren't a simple knitting pattern I could zone out with. I needed something easy to knit and this pattern is repetitive and I can totally zen out while knitting.
Cast on 21 K3 P1 end with a K1
repeat until you are done.
It’s finished and I love it. I used one whole skein and a little bit of a second skein that I had left over from a dumpling bag. It is long enough - squishy, warm and fuzzy. LOVE!
The pattern is called Farrow Rib Scarf by Melissa Matthay and Sheryl Thies from the "Little Box of Scarves" book. I used US size 10½ straight needles. These were one size I did not have in my huge grandma needle stash so I bought some cheapy Boye needles on sale at Joann. I actually find I prefer the cheap metal needles over bamboo, circulars, and other fancier ones. I don't clack when I knit. I do hold the needles perpendicular to each other and the right needle in my waist. Thus I prefer straights.
The yarn is a lovely chunky weight with long color changes. It is designed by Kaffe Fasset and called Rowan Colourscape Chunky. I used about 1.2 skeins = 210.0 yards (192.0m) and it was purchased last year at Cast-On Cottage & Needlepoint Garden in Roswell, Georgia.
It is long enough - squishy, warm and fuzzy. LOVE!
I just saw the funniest Trojan commercial during the basketball game. Hysterical. Especially since I have been reading that condom sales are one of the few economic sectors doing well this year. (Yes we know why - can't afford to do anything except stay home and do the naughty!)
Earth Hour 2009 is tomorrow at 8:30 PM your time zone. Turn off all your non essential lights and electric items. Save a few pennies and lets see how much we can achieve when we all work together.
Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and
businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message
had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people
switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate
Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and
the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all stood in darkness.
Mike and them (as they put it down South) are coming for a Spring Break visit in April. They had frequent flyer rewards points they needed to cash in on before they expired so they are taking all the cheap trips. Stef's brother in San Diego (no need to hunt around for a hotel) and likewise us in Atlanta. Yes, free room and board and a fellow depressed unemployed person to hang out with. Woo hoo.
I am really excited to see the kids play together and get to hang out. My boys just LOVE their cousins - they totally look up to the older girls and love to hang out with them. I am sure we will be having some cheap fun in Atlanta for the week. The weather should be nice this time of year - all the trees are blooming and its very pretty and green.
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron, and she wrote a program
for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine; she is considered the first
computer programmer.
In honor of Ada Lovelace day on March 24th over 1500 bloggers and others have
pledged to write about a woman in technology that they admire. We feel that it is important for all of us to have female role models to admire in the technical fields. I have chosen to write about Mae Jemison, NASA
astronaut.
Mae Jemison
was the first African American woman to go into space.She grew up in Chicago, Illinois where her father was a roofer and her mother a
teacher.She studied Chemical Engineering
in college with a double major as well in African American Studies.She then attended Medical school, and was a
practicing physician in California
before she went back to school to study engineering with the goal to joining
the space program.
One can only imagine her drive to succeed – she gave up a successful medical
career to join the space program.She
applied to the NASA Astronaut program twice, after the selection process was
delayed by the Challenger disaster.
Do you have that level of ambition and drive in your life to keep trying and
never rest on your laurels? I don't! I admire that very much.
Here are some other facts and accomplishments:
As an undergraduate she worked at a Cambodian refugee
camp in
Thailand
After she worked as a doctor she joined the
Peace Corps and was the Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia.
She became the first African American woman ever
admitted into the astronaut training program.
September 12, 1992, Jemison flew into space with
six other astronauts aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47 becoming the first African American woman in space.
She founded the Jemison Group, a company that
seeks to research, develop, and market advanced technologies.
I think it is totally cool that Michelle Obama broke ground on the new Presidential Kitchen garden (all organic) on the White House grounds. Good job. They are also setting up a beehive.
Crops to be planted in the coming weeks on the 1,100-square-foot,
L-shaped patch near the fountain on the South Lawn include spinach,
broccoli, various lettuces, kale and collard greens, assorted herbs and blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.
Yep - the first African American President is digging up the White House lawn and planting collard greens. Rock on, man.
They also set up a swing set for the kids near the Oval Office.
I am watching the official video to Warwick Avenue by the singer Duffy. What a beautiful song - I just love it. And the video is amazing. They show one big long cut scene and you can see the tears welling up in her eyes and rolling down her face. She is not only an amazing singer, but a good actress, too.
Remember back when my house was hit by lightning. Twice. Yeah, that was me. Wiped out my entire hard drive. Anyway, I had been backing up my computer files with Cobian backup 8 which is a free open source product that is easy to use to schedule backup jobs. For example I had it set to back up the contents of my one external hard drive to to the other external hard drive weekly. I then used the external to save all my data files such as the family pictures.
Well... I finally got around to extracting the zip files from my backup and restoring all the data that had been wiped out in the disaster. I spend the afternoon restoring 14 4 GB chunks of data. (I had broken it up that way to be able to fit on DVDs, although it was on one external hard drive. It worked like a charm and was very easy to do, if a bit repetitive on my part.
Now I am going to re-organize and set up a new backup job so that the next time something like this should happen (knock on wood it doesn't) I will sure to have good fresh backups.
I am not 0n Twitter. I just don't feel that pithy. I do have some Twitter feeds I check out however and I routinely consider setting up Twitter and I am sure that some day when I don't have anything better to do I probably will start Tweeting or some cr@p like that. :::shakes head::: "Twitter' and "Tweeting" just sound so stupid and useless.
Did you know that MC Hammer's DanceJam is the 25th most popular feed on the site?
You can find a list of the most popular Twitterers here - Twitterholic.
