./janella.com

Not much happening this weekend. I think we’re still recovering from the holiday season. I’ve still got a little cough/congestion going. What is that now, a month? I think it’s going away, but very slowly.

We’ve been spending a lot of time catching up on the Tivo’d shows as well as movies we haven’t watched. Farrah’s been a little ahead of mean watching movies so her more recent movie knowledge is better than mine! We have almost even picked books we have to read (e.g. The Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Life of Pi, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, etc.) from our bookshelf. May be today we’ll do it.

One of the things I’ve been doing the last two days is rating artists at [launch.yahoo.com]. If you use Launch to listen to music - which you can either through the website or through Yahoo! Messenger - rating artists helps in serving up those songs and similar songs into your radio station. Right now - at this moment - I think that’s pretty cool. I think what will make it better is when Launch’s catalog becomes bigger, allowing for a wider range of music. But for now it will do.

Oh well this is it for now. Farrah has made breakfast (wow, I know) so it’s time to eat.

Rating:**** out of 5

Quick Shot: Vince Vaughn plays the underdog/hero gym owner trying to save his gym from the evil (and hilarious) Ben Stiller.  So how can Vince save the gym?  By entering a dodgeball tournament!

What I liked about the movie: Ben Stiller, who’s in about every other movie made right now, is just funny as hell!  Way better than his turn in Starsky and Hutch.

What I didn’t like: Nothing. It was the perfect DVD to pop in and just laugh away.  Ok, maybe the bit with the pizza was too much but…nah, it was a very funny movie.

Ugh, this cold is still hanging on. It’s coming up on the worst part: the running nose and coughing. It supposed to be a good sign - a clearing of the system. It just feels annoying and uncomfortable to go through.

The only plan on the board is to watch the big football game on Sunday - the Colts at the Patriots - and to watch the Golden Globes later that night. Like I said, no big plans this weekend. Rest and recovery.

Ok, maybe I’ll put some time to getting some more older pictures up on the site.

I got a little stuffy nose action happening these last couple of days. I think I’m sick again! I was sick Christmas week. I managed to take three days off during that week - getting better the Sunday after Christmas. But that didn’t last long.

The next week, the last week of December going into New Year’s Eve, one of my lymph nodes decided to work overtime. It got a little large on the side of my neck and felt uncomfortable for two days. And now these sniffles.

I think the first two were related instances are related but this new round may be something else. Either way I’m grumpy and tired but can’t fall asleep at the moment. It’s just not fun feeling sick.

And so I surf. I see the new pictures of the [iPod Shuffle] on Apple’s site. It’s a sweet little music player smaller than a stick of gum. The difference between the Shuffle and full blown iPod is (1) size/amount of songs it can hold, and (2) it has no display to see what song is playing. It’s a cool little gadget. But I’m a little more interested in the [Mini Mac].

The Mini Mac is basically a Mac box without monitor, keyboard and mouse. You need to buy those items yourself. But the Mini Mac looks cool and comes with a lot of essential software for editing video, photos and music. I’m sure Apple will do well in grabbing some desktop users with that Mini Mac because of its looks and pricing.

Happy New Year!!!!! Have a happy 2005!

Merry Christmas to all!!!

A Christmastime. Farrah, my mom and I went to see Kayla’s play a Christmas in Egypt. Kayla played the part of Delta, an Egyptian with a southern accent. She was one of three southern belle types. The other two were named Cleopatty and … oh, the name escapes me now. In any event, Kayla’s performance was fantastic.

Afterward we went to the Traber’s residence for birthday cake to celebrate Farrah’s upcoming birthday.

Oh its been a short weekend for me. I had to work yesterday because a co-worker needed to take one of their floating holidays before the end of the year. He has one more to take this year so looks like I’ll be working another Saturday soon.

Last night Farrah and I also went to my company’s year end party (called YEP) in San Francisco. It was held at 7th and Brannen in the City as it has been for the last several years. It was pretty cool: food, drinks, fake gambling, and great music. The main music was provided by [Ozomotli who rocked the house! Too bad they came on later in the evening when our feet were already killing us because of walking!!!

Anyway, there are so many things to write about, especially some things from Thanksgiving weekend. I’ll need to find some time to write about more later. Right now I should get to bed. Work tomorrow, y' know.

(as dictated by tessie)

• *regular baking potatoes (5 lbs)
• *gravy (e.g. turkey - can or jar)
• *beef gravy (no mad cow in it)
• *stuffy (e.g. stuffing)
• *corn, green giant (either frozen canned; nibblits)
• *green bean, green giants (can; kitchen cut - no french cut)
• *two cans cream of chicken, campbells
• *dried french onion
• *block of velveta cheese
• *roll, e.g. dinner rolls - heat and serve or pilsbury (freezer)
• *cranberries - canned
• *apple and pumpkin
• *vanilla ice cream
• *chocolate whip cream

The last of the Hawaii trip photos are posted.  The photos are located under Trips | Hawaii 2004 Part II for both the [photos] and [project] pages.  Again, there is no difference in the amount of photos displayed on either page.  The photos are just displayed in two different methods.

For this album (Hawaii 2004 Part II) most of the photos were taken with a digital camera.  I have yet to upload the raw photos to a linked [Shutterfly] page, but will do so when I get the chance.  You can then order pictures and/or see what wasn’t posted on the web site.  Any questions?  Let me know.

New albums posted are:

• Tiana's Birthday 2004 - Tiana's first birthday party celebrated at Ko'olau. Currently only the photos taken with the Nikon cameras are posted. Digital images to follow - when I get a chance.
• Grandma's Birthday 2004 - Grandma's 86th birthday celebration at Auntie's home. Again, only the film images are posted right now.

From the description provided within the album, you can click on a link that will take you to a like album on [Shutterfly], an online photo service. You can access the raw photo album for the specific album you accessed. What is the raw photo album? It is all the pictures I took in the album on Janella.com, plus photos that I did not post. Also some of the photos on Janella.com have been edited (e.g. cropped, resized, etc.) so as to make them more presentable. The photos located on [Shutterly] are the full photo size, sometimes taking up to 3 MB of space. This can take some time to load if presented on a web site, but might be ideal if you want to order photos. If you have any question on this let me know.

Farrah and I found this huge spider on our wall after coming home from Toys R Us:

We tried to corral the spider but, unfortunately, ended up killing it.  We are still trying to determine what kind of spider it is.  Anyone know?

Yeah, we’re back from Hawaii!!! I’m working on getting the pictures posted. Right now I’m a little tired but managed to get the pictures from Grandma’s 86th birthday posted. It’s available through [http://photos.janella.com/] as well as [http://project.janella.com/]

What is the latter site you ask? Just trying to determine if I want to use the [Gallery] engine to post photos or not. I’m still thinking about it, so not all albums are available on the project subdomain. If you don’t have a username/password to the site, just write to me at my email address.

We’re getting ready for our trip to Hawaii (yes again). One of the things we wanted to do before going was to get a new phone plan. Our current plan is geared toward local use. If we travel outside of the state we are charge for making calls. I know I didn’t want to stay with our current carrier, AT & T, so we should look elsewhere for a national plan. Since Farrah’s phone contract was up we decided to try Verizon. Verizon has received good ratings nationally and [locally too].

When we walked into the Verizon store we were able to get a new phone within 45 minutes, with the number transferred over and working!!! The salesperson said the secret was in bringing the billing statement as it had all the information needed to easily “port over” the phone number. Well, we’ll let you know how the phone works during the 15 day trial.