I've recently changed my hair color (it's a dark auburn, I guess) and so this Monday's meme is about hair.
In other news we had a male and female mallard visit today. Yoghurt stood at the screen door and lashed his tail violently. The ducks just sat in the lawn. The female has a very soft voice - it's hardly audible but the male (with a lovely iridescent green head and those curly tail feathers) has a very loud honking quack. She had lots of bits of bread and he just talked while she ate.
I hope they come back!
The Hairy Meme
1. What length do you currently keep your hair?
2. Is that different from 5 years ago? 10? How about when you were a teen?
3. What color is it naturally?
4. If you color your hair do you like to go for natural or colorful (like pink or blue, etc.)
5. Ever done something really dumb with your hair?( I’m thinking back to the poodle perm I had once…)
6. What about the hair of a mate or date do you/would you find attractive?
7. Do you have a long standing relationship with a hairstylist or barber? If so, why? If not, why not?
8. What celebrity hair do you like best? Least?
9. What hair fad of the past do you think was the silliest?
10. If a hair genie gave you one hair wish, what would you wish for?
For folks in most of the US it is Tax Day. I hear that a number of northeastern residents are getting an extra day and people who suffered loss with Katrina are getting until August - but the rest of us, we had to have our taxes filed (and often, paid) by today.
Below the cut is the AW Monday Meme for today - and it's a 'taxing' one, I'm afraid...
Here's the Tax Meme!
Are you some one who
(a) starts working on your taxes the moment you get your W-2?
(b) puts it off a bit but actually does it before April rolls around?
(c) a last minute preparer
(d) heck, I pay someone to do it for me
Are you a
(a) traditional paper and pen, put it in an envelope filer
(b) turbo-tax (or the like) all the way!
(c) heck, I pay someone to do it for me - who knows what they do
If you could make only one change to the tax laws, disallowing total repeal of all taxes, what change would you want to see first?
If you get (or just imagine that you got) a refund - would you
(a) save it
(b) save it and immediately adjust your witholding so you get more money each month and Uncle Sam and you are even next year
(c) spend it on something you planned on getting with your refund
(d) rejoice in your good luck and spend it on something spontaneous and fun
(e) heck, I paid my refund to my tax preparer, this is just a 'reimbursement'
Have you ever waited in one of those midnight lines at the Post Office? If so, was there a party atmosphere or not - tell your tale!
That's today's Tax Meme - I'm sorry it's pretty US-centric for my global readership - next week we'll go back to something anyone can write about.
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This guy traded his way into a free year long lease in Arizona. From Business Week online: Man trading up from paper clip to house.
Amazing. I wonder what one could do with dryer lint?
As for the title of this post, it has nothing to do with anything, but I saw it across the top of my inbox in my gmail today - it's a quote from PJ O'Rourke. I like him. Funny Irish guy (that's probably redundant).
I'm here to triple post the Gift Music Meme. Heaven knows why. I think I've had about 12 visits here since I started posting here again.
Thank yous go out to Macallister and Jenna. Medievalist came up with the meme.
Anyway, the text of the meme is below the cut. Nobody gets tagged here - they all got tagged on Blogger or LiveJournal.
If you read this and think it's a fun idea, go for it with my blessings!
1. Pick one or more of your friends who listens to digital music; preferably someone who already has iTunes and an iTunes account, and who has a blog or Live Journal or something similar.
Songs are .99 cents on iTunes; if people want to send MP3s directly, that's up to them, but post the song title, artist, and album anyway. You can use a credit card or PayPal to purchase songs. You must have installed a copy of iTunes to play or download the songs. I suspect it's possible give music with other music services, but I don't know. There are also lots of good sources for free music on the net; feel free to use those, or to publicize indie artists you like a lot. There are
free songs at Amazon too.
2. Select the song you want to give.
3. Post this meme on your blog or Live Journal, and list your friends, the song you've chosen for them, (keep the song a secret until after you friend receives it, if you'd like), a link to their blog, and these instructions. Feel free to add a comment about why you chose the song.
4. Purchase the single song for each friend, one at a time, (that is don't buy three songs for three friends.) If you use the iTunes store, find the song, then click on the link for the album; you will see a link near the top of the screen that says "Gift This Music; click it, then click the Gift button that's included in the link for the song. When you check out, you'll see a form with spaces for your name, your friend's name and email address, and a short message. This will be emailed to your friend, with instructions about how to download their gift song. Use the message to send them a link to the permalink for your blog post about the meme so they'll know to blog about the song. If you use Tags, tag the post as "Gift Music."
5. If you decide to "gift back" to someone who tags you, please also tag someone else, so we can have a variety of musical tastes, journals, blogs, and people.
Troubleshooting: Get iTunes for Mac or Windows here. It's free. If you can't get the URL/Web link from the email the iTunes store sends to tell you you have a song to download, try copying the URL to a new document, making sure that there are no spaces or returns where the very long URL has broken. You can covert the songs in iTunes from Apples DRM/protecte AAC format to an mp3 if you'd like.
Dawno, OhDawno.org, gift music, Jenna Glatzer, MacAllister Stone, Medievalist, iTunes, Frank Baron,Bettie Page,
Anne Watkins, parrot, Blogging, Blogs, Meme
Every Monday I post the AW Monday Meme at the forum I moderate over on Absolute Write. I stopped posting them on my blogger blog because someone near and dear to me got a teensy bit grumpy that I was posting memes and not much else - I was going thru a rather difficult time but I got over it and since then I think I've only posted a quiz or two and a couple very special memes.
I kind of liked tonite's (I make up a lot of these all on my own, this is another one) so I figured I'd put it up on this blog (under the fold).
I might even answer it eventually. :-)
Personal Archeology Meme
Time to dig into your past! Just use your best recollection – no need to go digging around in the attic or cellar for this stuff.
1. Do you have a picture of yourself as an infant, toddler or youngster in your own scrapbook, picture album or shoebox? If so, how old were you? What where you doing?
2. What is the oldest piece of clothing you have in your closet. What is it? Do you wear it or just keep it for sentimental purposes, or because you haven’t had time to give it away yet?
3. Do you have any souvenirs? If so, what is the oldest one, where is it from and how did you come to have it?
4. Do you have an appliance, utensil, dish, glass, platter, etc., or cooking implement in the kitchen that you got from a relative when you moved away from home? What is it and who gave it to you?
5. What’s the oldest thing in your medicine cabinet? (and maybe it’s time to toss out the expired stuff!)
6. Was the place you currently live in occupied prior to you? Did they leave anything behind? What? If not, have you ever heard any stories about folk who lived there before you did and would you share one?
7. Do you have any old IDs, business cards or other bits of old flotsam in your purse/wallet? What is the oldest thing there and why do you keep it?
8. Do you have your yearbooks? When was the last time you looked at them? What is the thing you like most about your favorite yearbook? What’s the thing you like least about your least favorite yearbook? (I don’t know if this is a ‘global’ question – so forgive me if you are from somewhere that getting a yearbook is not a tradition)
9. Do you have a(ny) old key(s)? Do you know what it/they’re for? Why did you keep it/them?
10. 100 years from now, what would you wish someone had as a memento of you?
Yep. The SO and I went to breakfast at Denny's then to Fry's Electronics. Fry's is the temple of all that is techie. They have appliances too - I got Rudy the Roomba there. But today the SO was after a new AMD Athalon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor (I just copy the words on the box, I have no idea what they mean) and I didn't want anything in particular but once I saw one I wanted a graphics tablet to try out.
I came home with my Wacom (I have to think twice when I type that because I keep wanting to type Wacoal - I think most of ya'll ladies will get that) Graphire4 4x5 tablet. I've been playing with it on and off today. I'm going to have to keep practicing - but it's pretty handy. I already use the mouse that came with it for all my mousing online. It's much easier than the wireless one I was using.
The tablet came with some bundled software as well. I haven't decided if I want to install the PhotoShop Elements - I had that on the laptop before it crashed and needed a new hard-drive. I didn't re-install it because I found it highly confusing and didn't get much use out of it. Besides I have the PaintShop ProX program now and it's working out just fine for me.
But a program called Just Write Office 4 and another called EverNote looked interesting, so I installed them. I'm having much fun with them both.
Just Write puts an interface with my tablet and Word or Excel or Power(shudder)Point. I can do a doodle or write a note in long hand - I'm not sure how valuable it will be - but I'll see how it works for me.
EverNote, though, is really cool. If I highlight anything on the web and click the EverNote icon in my toolbar it saves the quote and the URL on the EverNote which is lie a scrolling tape of notes that can be tagged, organized, and searched. This will be very handy for blogging. You can do other types of clips and also use the graphics pad to doodle or mind map.
Nifty stuff.
I've been reading and cleaning and doing laundry, too today. I'm currently reading a book about the Viet Nam war which has me riveted. I'm going to do a review of it for someone - might even put it up on the 'net somewhere someday - I'm sorry to be so vague, but I can't say much more until things actually pan out.
1. Goose Attacks Toy Store Shoppers I like ducks but I think I don't like geese. At least this one's type.
2. The IRS and debt collectors: A bad marriage - The Red Tape Chronicles - MSNBC.com. Apparently the IRS will start going after delinquent taxpayers with collection services.
I received a notice a few months back that the IRS wanted me to explain my tax returns for the prior two years. I had taken the advice from Turbo Tax on how to claim my employee stock option exercises and it was incorrect. So I went to a CPA, he re-did my taxes, wrote the appropriate letters and I actually ended up with a refund from one year and owed a bit more on the other year. Which I paid with interest. I figured I'd fixed the problem.
They wrote me again back in February - apparently they had received the usual forms from my broker on my option exercises. These forms don't provide all the data about the shares - you have to provide additional documentation with your taxes, which my CPA did. In case you aren't familiar, with employee options you only get the difference between the price of the share when it's granted and the price of the share when you 'exercise' it. If the share price when the option was granted was $10 and you exercise the option at $15 then you only get $5 - less witholding at the max rate. So, my income wasn't $15 a share - it's $5. But the IRS thinks my income was the $15 based on the form they got (which they should know isn't the whole story. Thus, instead of checking on the revised tax forms I sent in for the year for which I paid the extra tax owed, with interest(and have a cancelled check), they just sent me another letter.
My CPA answered it. Now they write me again. They are acting as if they didn't get the letter. They think I owe them a lot of money (a really big huge lot - twice what my taxes were that year). Now my CPA will have to send yet another letter.
Yep, these same wonderfully organized folk will be using on their great ability to know whether or not one has actually paid taxes to decide if they will be sending out Bruno and Spike to get back taxes from folkwho may very well either not owe those taxes or have already paid them.
Any wonder why some Americans keep trying to elect people who have tax reform on their platforms?
3. PNH's Sidelights on Making Light had this great link - Google in 20 years. Heck, I need it now. I can't tell you how often I have to call my cellphone from the house phone to find it.
4. I called gravity a force and my SO told me I was wrong. He said gravity is the shape of the universe. I thought there were strong and weak forces in physics and gravity was a weak force. Has that been changed? He told me to go read it on Wikipedia, that it would probably be simple enough to understand there. Hello, I knew that gravity was called a weak force in physics once upon a time and I never took one physics class. I READ ABOUT IT in all the hundreds of books and Analog articles I've read throughout 40 years of reading about science and reading SF. However, I did go to Wikipedia anyway. What did I find there?
The Wikimedia Foundation servers are currently experiencing technical difficulties.
The problem is most likely temporary and will hopefully be fixed soon. Please check back in a few minutes.
For further information, you can visit the #wikipedia channel on the Freenode IRC network.
In the meantime, you may be able to view Google's cached version of this page.
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Great. So I go to Google and type "what is gravity" and find the cached page from Wikipedia on gravity:
In physics, gravitation or gravity is the tendency of objects with mass to accelerate toward each other. The gravitation is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature, the other three being the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. Gravitation force is the weakest of these interactions, but acts over great distances and is always attractive. In classical mechanics, gravitation arises out of the force of gravity (which is often used as a synonym for gravitation). In General Relativity gravitation arises out of spacetime being curved by the presence of mass, and is not a force. In quantum gravity the graviton is the postulated carrier of the gravitational force.[1]Gee, I see the word 'force' all over the place and gosh - it's the weakest of the 4 forces. I know I can't remember what we had for dinner last night but darned if I didn't remember that. I need to hear his explanation for this one now - I'm not saying he's wrong - I'm saying that if physics has re-classified gravity from a force to 'something else' I'd really be interested in understanding it better. In my other Googling I did find this article, Scientists Say There is No Gravity, but I have reason to doubt it's veracity - perhaps the name of the site is a clue?
I like being as scientifically literate as I can manage without a formal science education. I don't understand in a complete and scientific way what 'quantum foam' is but I've read about it and read stories that discuss it (Baxter's Transcendent being one of the most recent) so I'm not totally ignorant of the concept and I find it fascinating.
One of the funniest things I've seen today, though, is when you Google "quantum foam" one of the ubiqitous Google sidebar ads comes up:
Quantum Foam
Whatever you're looking for
you can get it on eBay.
www.eBay.com
My next post will probably be about something I heard on the radio whilst taking my son to work today. I may have discovered a worthy social/political movement/cause to get involved with - we'll see what I think after I've researched it some.
Meanwhile, I hope your week is lovely!
Dawno, Denny's, Fry's Electronics, Rudy the Roomba, Wacom Graphire4, Making Light, Stephen Baxter, gravity, quantum foam
For those of you who set your clocks ahead I hope you enjoy the longer afternoon. I'm grouchy about the mornings but I do like the extra hour of sunshine later in the day. Of course the setting sun may be in my eyes when I'm heading home - we'll see.
I'm still playing with templates and learning more about CSS as well as working on improving my animation skills. I wish this were a skill set I could make a living off of, I enjoy it so much. At least it's a creative outlet.